‘He must have had savings,’ Hunter said, ‘ after all that time on the telly.’ He thought Ramsay was clutching at straws.
‘Perhaps,’ Ramsay said. ‘All the same it might be worth looking into. Check tomorrow with one of those credit agencies. See if he had any debts.’
‘What else?’ Hunter asked. He preferred to be out, knocking on doors, making things happen.
‘It occurred to me that Mrs Wood must have made enemies during her time on the bench. She was notorious for her controversial judgements. There’s a record that her car was vandalized after one unpopular decision. Look into all the cases she’d dealt with in the last few months. See if there’s anything that connects with Gabriella Paston.’
‘All right.’ Hunter was unenthusiastic. It was the sort of work he hated, sitting in an office with a pile of paperwork and a telephone. ‘What will you be doing?’
‘Me?’ Ramsay said. ‘I’ll be tracing a lad called Gary Barrass.’
It did not take Ramsay long the next morning to find out about Barrass, the boy he’d met at the Pastons’ on the day after Gabriella’s death. The lad already had a string of convictions which ranged from shoplifting to carrying an offensive weapon. He was described in reports as ‘easily led’. His most recent charge for burglary had resulted in a six-month sentence at Castington Young Offenders’ Institution. At first Ramsay thought that Barrass might provide the link he was looking for between Amelia Wood and the Pastons, but with all his criminal experience he was still a juvenile and Mrs Wood had never sat on the juvenile bench.
The police file gave Gary’s address as 53 Windward Avenue, the Starling Farm estate. The whole country had seen Windward Avenue on their television screens in the previous weeks. At one end was the small row of shops which had been the target for looting. It had formed the front line between angry teenagers and the police who had tried to stop their joy riding. Later, politicians, churchmen, and reporters had stood on the pavement to hold forth on the causes of the disturbances.
When Ramsay stood on the same pavement he saw that there had been no improvement to the street since the riots had headed the news. He had parked outside the launderette and wondered, without anxiety, if the car would still be there on his return. Two houses at the end of the avenue still had blackened paintwork and crumbling walls. Bright yellow signs nailed to the wall warned that the buildings were unsafe but otherwise it seemed that no steps had been taken to begin repairs. Ramsay saw that it would not be easy to find number fifty-three. The boards used to cover the doors on the empty houses had been used before and were scrawled all over by painted numbers. Many occupied houses had no numbers at all. Was it a deliberate ploy, Ramsay wondered, to confuse the police? There was no one to ask for directions, no sign of life at all except a pit-bull terrier which barked as he walked past, chained to a rusting car.
Then he came to number thirty-seven, which must have been bought by the tenants when the council’s right to buy scheme was first introduced. The house had mock-mullioned windows and a stone-clad exterior. There was a Georgian-style door and a lightly polished brass number plate. The effect was ridiculous but Ramsay could not help but admire the determination which sent someone out every day to polish the brass.
From there he could count the houses until he reached fifty-three. He stood on the pavement for a moment to check that he’d found the right place. It was hard to believe at first that the house was lived in. There were no curtains at the window and in the garden there was a pile of rubbish-a rabbit hutch with a wire-mesh door, an ancient mattress, and a rotting roll of carpet. But as he walked up to the door he saw through the window a Christmas tree made of silver tinsel, hung with baubles and paper chains, and heard a Metro Radio disc jockey announcing the next record then a woman’s voice, singing along with it. He knocked at the door.
The woman who opened it was wearing a threadbare pink dressing-gown, so thin in places that it was almost transparent. She clutched it around her with nicotine-stained fingers. As she opened the door the noise of the radio was suddenly louder and she had to shout over it. She was still swaying to the rhythm of the music.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘Is Mr Barrass at home?’ he asked.
‘Him!’ she said. ‘He left five years ago. I’ve not seen him since.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘ It’s Gary I wanted to see. I’m from Northumbria Police.’
‘Just a minute,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll turn that off.’ And she shimmied reluctantly down the hall to the kitchen, her hips swaying, enjoying the music while she could. There was a sudden silence.
‘What’s he been up to now?’ she said, resigned.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not so far as I know. It’s information I’m after. I think he can help me. That’s all.’
‘He’s still in his bed,’ she said. ‘Bairns today, they’ve nothing to get up for, have they? Stay there and I’ll rouse him.’ She left Ramsay standing in the hall and disappeared up the stairs. He could see through to a kitchen where a box of breakfast cereal and a pile of dirty bowls stood on a table. Presumably there were younger children who had already taken themselves off to school.
The boy came down on his own, stretching and only half awake. He wore black Wrangler jeans and Reebok trainers. His mother hadn’t bought them, Ramsay thought, from her Income Support. The boy led him through into the room with the Christmas tree and motioned uneasily for him to sit down. There was a leatherette suite and a television set and video recorder. In a corner a budgerigar in a cage on a stand scratched at a piece of millet. The walls were covered with orange gloss paint. Gary Barrass perched on the window ledge and stared out at the street.
I should have sent Hunter to talk to him, Ramsay thought suddenly. He would have shouted and bullied and got what he wanted immediately. He felt his own pity for the boy getting in the way.
‘I need to talk to you, Gary,’ he said. ‘It’s important.’
‘It’s no good asking me,’ the boy said. ‘I wasn’t there.’
‘Perhaps you should explain,’ Ramsay said evenly.
‘I wasn’t at the races last night. I can’t help you.’
There had been reports of joy riders tearing round the estate, Ramsay knew, and complaints from respectable residents because the police could do nothing to stop it. But the joy riding was a regular event. Gary had seen him with the Pastons and must have connected him with Gabriella’s murder. They’d be talking about little else on the estate. Was he too stupid or too sly to admit the connection?
‘I’m not here about the racing,’ Ramsay said. ‘It’s more serious than that. I’m investigating Gabriella Paston’s murder. Did you know her?’
The boy turned to face him. The corner of an eye twitched with tension.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘We were at school together. She was two years older than me.’
He was sixteen. From his appearance Ramsay would have guessed he was three years younger.
‘You heard what happened to her?’
Gary nodded and Ramsay saw that he was dumb through terror not insolence. Yet he must have been interviewed by the police dozens of times. What was different on this occasion to make him so frightened?
‘When did you last see her?’ Ramsay asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Gary muttered. ‘ Not for ages. Not since before I got sent down. She’d left the Starling Farm before I went to Castington.’
‘Do you know why she left?’
‘No!’ the boy cried. ‘What are you asking me for? I don’t know anything.’
‘Yet you seemed very friendly with the Pastons,’ Ramsay said quietly. ‘With Alma and Ellen. I understood you were a regular visitor. Didn’t they say anything about it? Didn’t you ever talk about Gabby?’