‘Aren’t you related to Evan Powell?’ he demanded abruptly, and the boy turned, more hostile than ever, and nodded.
It was a complication he could do without, Hunter thought. He would have to treat the boy carefully. He didn’t want any more bloody lectures from Evan Powell. John regarded Hunter warily.
He felt suddenly very tired, drained of energy. The sleepless night was beginning to tell. He knew he would have to concentrate.
‘Tell me about Gabriella Paston,’ Hunter said. It was one of Ramsay’s tricks, the open question which could not be answered with a monosyllable. Ramsay had his faults as a detective but Hunter was prepared to learn from him. Now they were walking side by side and Powell answered without breaking his stride.
‘She was a bloody good actress,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Even Gus Lynch admitted that and he usually liked to think he was the only one with talent.’ He stopped speaking suddenly, as if it were some sort of weakness that he had responded at all. If he weren’t so tired, he thought, he’d be able to make a show of it, turn on the charm a bit. As it was all he could do was make sure he gave nothing away.
‘Fancied her, did he?’ Hunter said.
‘What!’
‘I’m asking you if Gus Lynch fancied Gabby.’
‘No…at least I don’t think so. She never said.’
‘What were you doing yesterday afternoon?’ Hunter asked conversationally.
‘History,’ Powell said. ‘All afternoon.’
‘You didn’t take Gabriella to Martin’s Dene, to lunch?’
‘Are you joking? I couldn’t afford that place. I was here. You can ask anyone.’
‘And after college,’ Hunter said. ‘Where did you go then?’
‘To the library to work.’
‘The library here in college?’
‘No. They close the library here at five. To Hallowgate library. It’s just off the square. It’s handy for the Grace Darling. I often work there on Mondays.’
‘Were you with anyone?’
‘No.’
On the rugby field the team was forming a scrum. Hunter, who had always been a football supporter, watched the swaying buttocks with distaste.
‘What about Gabriella Paston?’ he said. ‘Didn’t she come to the library to work with you before rehearsals?’
‘Sometimes. She came sometimes. But not last night. I didn’t see her after English in the morning.’
‘But you expected her to be at the rehearsal? She hadn’t told you that she wouldn’t be there?’
‘No. The last thing she said before she ran off at lunch time was “See you tonight!”’
They walked on in silence.
‘Tell me about you and her,’ Hunter said at last. ‘Everyone says you were special friends. Tell me. How special was she?’
John Powell stopped and turned towards the policeman, irritated by all the questions, losing control for a moment.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.’
‘Try me,’ Hunter said.
‘All right!’ Powell said angrily. ‘ She fancied me. She really fancied me. Only I wasn’t interested.’
‘Why not?’
Powell shrugged. ‘I suppose she wasn’t my type.’
‘What is your type?’ Hunter demanded, goading. ‘Got a girlfriend at the moment, have you? You’ll have to introduce me so I can see what your type is.’
Powell swore under his breath and walked on, kicking up the beech leaves with his boots.
‘Come on!’ Hunter said. ‘ Don’t be shy. Have you got a girlfriend?’
‘No,’ Powell shouted, losing his temper. ‘I haven’t got a girlfriend. Is that a crime? I’m busy. I’m studying for ‘A’ levels. I haven’t got time for a girlfriend.’
Hunter did not believe him. Even brainy eighteen-year-olds had hormones. There weren’t many lads who would turn away a girl like Gabriella Paston.
‘Look,’ he said, trying to sound friendly, approachable, to imply that after all they were much of the same generation. ‘Is it your father? Did he disapprove of Gabriella? This conversation is confidential. I’m not going to say anything to him.’
‘No,’ John Powell said. ‘It’s not my father. You can say whatever you like to him. You don’t understand anything at all.’ He turned to face Hunter, blocking his path. ‘I know my rights,’ he said. ‘ I don’t have to answer any of these questions. You haven’t arrested or cautioned me. You’ve no business prying into my private life. So you can sod off and leave me alone.’
And he walked away, not back to college, to his English lesson and a discussion of Hamlet as a tragedy, but over the frosty playing fields towards the Starling Farm estate.
Chapter Seven
On his way from Hallowgate to Otterbridge Ramsay called in at his home. In Heppleburn, the village where he lived, the children were coming out of school and he was stopped by the fat lollipop lady in the shiny white coat which might have been fashionable in the sixties. His cottage was cold. The fire which had still been smouldering when he had left in the morning was out. He took the milk from the doorstep and picked up the mail. There was an early Christmas card from an aunt in Canada, who thought letters still took six weeks to cross the Atlantic. Ramsay, who never sent any to her, felt slightly guilty. The rest were circulars and went into the bucket by the grate. They would help start the fire when he finally got home that night. He washed in tepid water and put on the kettle for coffee.
He had thought of Prue Bennett many times since she disappeared to Cambridge. Occasionally he had dreamed of her. The memories had been gentle, romantic, idealized. He had sense enough to know that she would not live up to them, that disappointment would inevitably follow the new acquaintance. Diana had been something quite different. Diana had been a passion, an addiction, and he had married her knowing that it had little chance of succeeding but prepared for once in his life to take the risk. Even now, given the choice between Diana and Prue, he was not sure he would not take Diana. But this is ridiculous, he thought, the fantasies of a lonely middle-aged man. Prue’s probably married, settled. Why would she be interested in you? And why do you think you have any choice?
She lived in the same house he had visited as a boy. It was called, for some reason, Minsmere, and the letters were painted in flaking gold on the semicircle of glass over the front door. He recognized them immediately. It had seemed very grand to him twenty years before to live in a house with a name and a number.
The house was red-brick and would have been rather ugly, but its outlines were softened by a Virginia creeper climbing up one corner and by large trees in the front garden. It was at the junction of two residential streets and was still shabbier, much less smart than the surrounding houses. At first it was quite unfamiliar to Ramsay and he almost walked past it, then realized that it only seemed different because he had never been there in the winter. He had only seen it when the trees were in leaf and his memory was so fixed that now, in the gloomy half light, it was almost unrecognizable. It was the letters over the front door which stopped him short and made him turn into the drive.
When Ramsay arrived at Minsmere it was nearly dark and the street lights were on. It was already very cold. Through the living-room window, where the curtains had not yet been drawn, he saw the shape of a grand piano and the stool where Mrs Bennett had perched to give music lessons. He knocked at the door and wondered why he had never bumped into Prue in a place as small and intimate as Otterbridge. He did not flatter himself that she had been avoiding him. He had not been as important to her as that. Perhaps he had seen her shopping in Front Street on a busy Saturday morning with her daughter and not known her. The thought distressed him.