She had been in the vicarage, Ramsay thought, with Patrick Cassidy, trying to persuade him, perhaps, that he did not love her, trying to fend off his teenage passion.
‘What time did she come to the flat?’
‘I’m not sure. At about seven.’
‘She had an appointment to speak to the Armstrong House Residents’ Association at half past. Didn’t that bother her?’
‘She tried to phone them to cancel it,’ Hilary said, ‘but she couldn’t get through. She thought the phone was out of order.’ She paused. ‘I’d disconnected it. I had no plan to kill her then – it wasn’t that I was covering my tracks – but I was afraid she might phone someone else, tell them about Nicola. I wasn’t thinking very clearly.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I made her tea,’ she said. ‘ We talked.’
‘About the baby?’
She nodded. ‘She spoke as if we’d meant to kill Nicola. She went all religious on me. She even began to cry.’
‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that she’d never been able to have children of her own?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t realise. But I’ve never had the chance of children either. It didn’t give her the right to preach.’ She paused. ‘ I had the feeling that she wanted something from me. Some show of remorse. Repentance I suppose she would have called it. I couldn’t give it. I knew that next time, in a similar situation, I would probably do exactly the same again.’
‘What did you do then?’ he asked.
‘She said she was hungry. She would take me out for a meal. Her treat. It seemed bizarre. We’d been arguing for more than an hour and she wanted to share a meal with me. I asked her about the appointment at Armstrong House, but she said it didn’t matter. This was more important. We left her car outside my flat and walked through the fairground to that Italian place in Newgate Street.’
‘You were seen,’ he said, ‘ in the fairground. Joss Corkhill saw you. But when he described you I thought he was talking about someone else. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t recognise you. Then I realised that senior social workers don’t often work directly with clients. That’s how I knew.’
There was a silence. The policewoman moved slightly on her chair in the comer. She gave no indication that she was listening to the conversation and stared out at the shiny cream walls with blank boredom.
Then Hilary continued, although he had not asked a direct question.
‘The restaurant was packed,’ she said, ‘and very noisy. It took us ages to get served. Dorothea ordered spaghetti and ate it very neatly, twisting it between her fork and her spoon. She seemed ravenous. She insisted that I had a meal too, though I wasn’t hungry. I had expected another lecture but still she didn’t mention Nicola once. She talked, I remember, about friendship. When we left the place it was almost ten.’
‘Did you walk back through the fair?’
‘No. We went the long way round, down the end of Newgate Street. When we got to the flat I expected her to get into the car and drive away. It hadn’t even crossed my mind then that I might kill her. She had been a social worker and I didn’t think that she could really let loose all that publicity. She would know what would be likely to happen: the tabloid press, the MPs screaming for my blood, the witch hunt that would affect everyone working for social services. I thought I could make her understand.
‘Then at the car she began to start again. She made me get into the passenger seat. “I can’t let you go,” she said, “until I’ve got some sort of commitment.”’
‘What did she want?’ he asked.
‘My resignation,’ she said. ‘ I think, in the end, that’s what she wanted.’
‘Where did you kill her?’ he asked in the same tone of mild interest.
‘In the car,’ she said. ‘She was going on and on, not shouting you know. She never shouted. But somehow relentless. I wanted to stop her talking. I put my hands around her neck, just to show her how strongly I felt about it. As soon as she went quiet I stopped. But then I realised it was too late. She was dead. Theresa must have felt exactly the same when she killed the baby.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I panicked. I ran out into the street. I wanted to get right away from the body while I worked out what to do. If I’d run into a policeman I’d have told him everything. But instead I ran into Clive Stringer. He’d been to the fair, spent all his money and was hanging around on the corner of Newgate and Front Street, hoping, I think, for trouble.’
‘You got him to move the body for you?’
She nodded. ‘I told him that Theresa had killed Dorothea, because she had wanted to stop her going away with Joss Corkhill.’
So he had been asked to choose, Ramsay thought, between Dorothea and his mother, and he had chosen, then at least, to protect Theresa.
‘Was it hard to persuade him?’ he asked.
‘Not very hard. He was quite excited, you know, at the prospect of driving the car.’
‘Did you tell him where to put the body?’
She shook her head. ‘I told him to put it somewhere quiet, where it wouldn’t be found until morning.’
‘And presumably it was his idea to park the car in Walter Tanner’s drive?’
She nodded. ‘I didn’t know anything about that until today. Apparently the old man didn’t like him. It was Clive’s way of paying him back.’
‘Did you go with Clive to the park?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I just wanted him to get rid of Dorothea. I suppose I wanted to pretend that I wasn’t involved. I took Dorothea’s diary and handbag – I thought she might have made some record of her conversation with Theresa – then I left Clive to it. He must have driven to the little entrance of the park and carried her from there to the path by the river. He was quite remarkably strong. Then presumably he put the car on Tanner’s drive.’
‘He must have driven around a bit first,’ Ramsay said. ‘He didn’t go down Armstrong Street until later.’
‘He was always into cars,’ she said. ‘It must have been a temptation to go joy-riding.’
‘Why did you kill him?’ Ramsay asked.
‘He was nervous, stupid. I thought in the end he would tell someone. He was already feeling guilty. He loved Dorothea.’
‘You had a spare key to Tanner’s house,’ Ramsay said, ‘because the home-help service is organised from your office and Walter’s mother had a home-help. What happened to all the old keys? Were they labelled and left for collection?’
She nodded. ‘In the general office. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss. I thought if Clive were found in Tanner’s house you’d be bound to suspect the old man.’
‘How did you know Tanner wouldn’t come in and surprise you?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I took the risk. By then I was past caring. When I’d dropped you off at the police station I drove towards Armstrong House. Clive had said he was on his way to work. I picked him up and offered him a lift.’
‘How did you get him into Tanner’s house?’
‘I told him to come with me,’ she said. ‘And he came. He was used to doing as he was told, and he was used to not understanding what was going on.’
‘Clive Stringer’s death was premeditated,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it was.’
There was a silence.
‘You took off his watch when you cut his wrists, and you put it back in his room, didn’t you, when you went to look after Theresa? It was a mistake. I didn’t remember until later that Clive never took off the watch because it was a present from Dorothea. It was obvious then that either you or Theresa had killed him – how else could the watch have been returned to his room? And I didn’t think it would be Theresa.’
‘She tried to kill me at the fair,’ Hilary said.
‘Are you surprised?’ he cried. ‘You killed her son.’