‘Powell’s a local man,’ he said. ‘He knows this patch inside out. We might need him.’
Hunter shrugged. If I ever need to ask for help from someone like that, he implied, it’ll be time to give up.
‘I’m on my way to the Starling Farm,’ Ramsay said. ‘ I want to talk to Gabriella’s grandmother and to the aunt again. At present she’s the last person to have seen the girl alive. And there was something very odd about her attitude, didn’t you think? No grief at all. It might just have been the shock, but all the same…’ If he had been talking to Powell he might have added that he wanted to be out, on the ground, listening, building an image of the girl he had lost during a morning of meetings. But Hunter would have considered the idea fanciful and he kept it to himself.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Hunter demanded. He too was bored with a morning of administration. He wanted some action.
‘Go to Hallowgate Sixth-Form College,’ Ramsay said. ‘Talk to her teachers, her friends. Find out if she was there at all yesterday. Did she give any idea where she was going in the afternoon? Get a list of all her special friends, especially boyfriends-’
‘All right,’ Hunter interrupted. ‘I get the picture.’ He had never liked being told what to do and the thought of going to school made him nervous.
The Starling Farm was still not the worst estate of its kind in the area. It could not compete, for example, with the Meadow Well along the river, where the houses were almost derelict and the residents were bitter, embattled, or on tranquillizers. The Starling Farm still had some streets where the gardens were tended, and the houses were all occupied. It was still safe for children to play in the streets during daylight, if they kept away from the broken glass. Women on their way to the only food shop which remained stopped to gossip and exchange jokes. But the place was shabby and dispirited. The disturbances had left it in a state of shock.
Alma and Ellen Paston lived in one of the older, more pleasant streets, in a crescent of semi-detached brick bungalows which had been built specially for the elderly at a time when the council could afford to care for you from the cradle to the grave. Some of the residents of Seaton Crescent had been children during the depression. Their dads had marched from Jarrow. They stood in the back gardens, with their rows of vegetables and home-made pigeon lofts, and discussed with puzzled voices the fact that nothing had changed. Starling Farm had been built with such hope just after the war and now it was just a slum, like the old slums of Jarrow and Shields. They blamed the young people, of course, for disturbing their peace with car chases, the loud unfamiliar music played from stolen ghetto-blasters in the streets, but they had grandchildren themselves. They understood the frustration. They wondered if they might be in some way to blame.
Ramsay followed a WRVS van delivering meals on wheels into Seaton Crescent. The spry white-haired woman who carried trays to the doors was herself of pensionable age. He wondered, uncomfortably, what he would find to do in retirement. No meals were delivered to the Pastons’ house. Ellen, presumably, catered for her mother.
It was Ellen who came to the door. She must have recognized him but she did not ask him in.
‘Yes?’ she said cautiously.
‘It’s Inspector Ramsay,’ he said. ‘We met last night at the Grace Darling Centre. Perhaps I could come in.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Mam’s having her dinner. She doesn’t like being disturbed.’
‘Ellen!’ said a deep, unctuous voice from inside. ‘Who is it, hinnie?’ And Alma Paston appeared behind her daughter. She was a huge woman, medically obese, with thick shapeless legs and blotched, flabby arms. Ramsay felt in his pocket for his warrant card, but he did not need to explain who he was. Alma Paston could smell a policeman from the other side of the Tyne.
‘Eh, hinnie,’ Alma said. ‘What are we thinking of? Stand aside, pet, and let the officer in. We’ll stick w’ dinners in the microwave when he’s gone.’
She led Ramsay into a front parlour. Ellen was left in the hall to shut the door. The room was very warm and dark. A fire burned in the tiled grate. There was a thick red carpet on the floor and red-and-gold patterned wallpaper. The table was covered with red-plush cloth. Alma waddled across the room, stood poised before a large armchair, then dropped into it. For a horrifying moment Ramsay glimpsed long grey knickers. Ellen stood, feet slightly apart, just inside the door.
‘Now, hinnie,’ Alma said. ‘ Sit down and tell me what all this is about.’
She peered at him, her small eyes almost hidden in folds of flesh. It was an affectation. She must know very well why he was there.
‘It’s about Gabriella,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ Alma said. ‘The poor bonny lass.’ She sighed theatrically. Then: ‘She wasn’t living here, you know. You mustn’t think that we can help you. She found herself lodgings with some folks in Otterbridge.’
As with Ellen, Ramsay was surprised by the lack of feeling. It was almost as if she had disowned the girl. Did they regard Gabby as her mother’s daughter, hardly related to them at all?
‘But you kept in touch? You must have seen her?’ He was trying to get some angle on the relationship.
‘Not for months,’ Alma said quickly, then, realizing that she had been too abrupt, she added in explanation: ‘ I can’t get out, you see, hinnie. I’d never make it to the end of the street. And she always said she was too busy to come to see her poor Gran. I had news of her, of course, through Ellen.’
‘Why did she leave?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Was there a row?’ It was hard to imagine a lively teenager in this house but something, surely must have provoked her into leaving. And if she had left amicably wouldn’t she have made some effort to keep in touch with her grandmother?
‘No,’ Alma said. ‘No row. Nothing like that. You know what bairns are like these days. They think they’re so grown up.’ But as she spoke she shot a warning glance at Ellen and Ramsay did not quite believe her.
‘Did she take her stuff with her when she went?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps I could see her room.’
‘She took everything,’ Alma said. ‘There’d be no point.’
There was a pause. Ramsay felt the questions were getting nowhere. He had come across unresponsive witnesses before but had known no one as impenetrable as the Pastons. Alma sat beaming at him, unruffled and in control. By the door Ellen stirred impatiently.
‘Is that it, then?’ she demanded. ‘ Can we have w’ dinner now?’
Alma shook her head indulgently as if Ellen were a naughty child.
‘You mustn’t mind Ellen, Mr Ramsay,’ she said. ‘She’s never liked the police. Not since her brother died. They were twins you know, as close as can be. She’s never got over it.’ And although Ellen was watching she tapped her head significantly to suggest mental derangement.
‘I don’t understand,’ Ramsay said, ‘how the police were to blame.’ He realized later how cleverly Alma had changed the conversation and how defensive he had suddenly become.
‘It was harassment,’ Alma said. ‘They covered it up at the inquest but everyone knew.’
‘Everyone knew what?’ It was an Alice in Wonderland conversation with a strange logic of its own.
‘That Mr Powell wouldn’t rest until he got our Robbie.’
‘Evan Powell?’ he said, shocked, giving away more than he had intended.
Alma Paston smiled, pleased by the response.
‘He was still in uniform then,’ she said. ‘Based on the Starling Farm. We all thought he was such a nice man, didn’t we, Ellen? At first. He went into the schools and talked to the bairns, visited the old folks. A community policeman, I suppose they’d call him now. It was a new idea then. He was supposed to solve all our problems.’