She laughed triumphantly and he understood now what lay behind her confidence and good humour. She had no anxiety about her own future. She did not care at all what would happen to her if she were caught. All that mattered was that John Powell was brought down with her.
‘Is this what all this has been about?’ Hunter demanded. ‘Revenge?’
‘Evan Powell took my son,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken his. In a way.’ She levered herself to her feet and lumbered to the door.
‘You’ll find what you’re looking for in the loft,’ she shouted out to the two police officers who had begun to search her bedroom. ‘No need to wreck our home, is there? It’d upset Ellen, you see. She’s that houseproud. And the money’s in the commode by my bed.’ She walked back to Hunter and patted his hand. ‘The Red Cross brought it but I never use the thing,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got all my faculties.’ She laughed again.
‘You’ll have to come to the station to make a statement,’ Hunter said sullenly, withdrawing his hand. He knew he’d been used.
‘That’ll be a treat then, hinnie. A ride in a police car. I’ve always wanted one of those. Will you let me start the siren?’
She returned to her chair and stared at Hunter through narrowed eyes.
‘I could say that it was all young Powell’s idea,’ she said. ‘That I was just keeping the stuff for him, that he bullied me into doing it.’
‘How did you get him involved?’ Hunter asked. He knew this was out of order. He should wait to begin the interview until they were in the station, with the tape-recorder running, a WPC present, but he knew damn fine that Alma Paston would say nothing in front of witnesses unless she felt like it and she was well able to look after her own civil rights.
‘He involved himself, hinnie,’ she said. ‘I’m not a witch.’
‘Who brought him here?’
‘A friend of mine,’ she said. ‘A lad from the estate.’
‘What’s his name?’
She shook her head. ‘You’ll not expect me to tell you that,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you. It was a friend. A good boy.’
‘Why did John Powell do it?’ Hunter cried. ‘A lad like that with everything to lose.’
‘It was the excitement,’ she said. ‘The danger. My Robbie was just the same. I could tell that the minute Johnny was in the house. I recognized the signs. It was like my Robbie all over again. I knew once he started he’d never be able to stop.’
‘So you encouraged him to steal cars?’
‘I bought what he had to sell,’ she corrected him. ‘Mostly radios, of course, but you’d be surprised the stuff that gets left in cars.’ She shut her eyes and continued in reminiscence. ‘I did a nice little line in designer raincoats and jackets for a while: Burberry, Berghaus, you know the sort. You can get a good price for a famous label if it’s in decent condition, even secondhand. The lads and lassies around her appreciate quality.’
‘How did you sell it on?’ he asked. ‘You never leave the house. Did the customers come here?’
She opened her eyes and looked at him disapprovingly. ‘I’d not be such a fool,’ she said.
‘Sarge!’ There was a shout from the hall. The DC was standing on a short stepladder with his head stuck through a square hole in the roof. ‘I think this is what we’re after!’ He descended, wiping the dust from his hands, and Hunter took his place and shone a torch into the roof space. There, neatly piled in boxes on the floor, was a variety of stolen goods. Most of the boxes contained radios and cassette-recorders, but there were briefcases, ladies’ handbags, leather gloves. He could see boxes of wine, jewellery, small electrical household items. Alma was standing at the foot of the ladder.
‘It’s a canny storeroom, isn’t it?’ she said with satisfaction. ‘That’s all Ellen’s work. I can’t get up there myself.’
‘Where did you get the toasters, then?’ Hunter shouted down. ‘And the booze? The kids’d not have found that in stolen cars. Not all of it at least.’
‘No,’ she conceded. ‘Well, we found we’d saturated the market with in-car entertainment-that’s what they call it you know, the radios and cassettes. So we decided to branch out.’
‘The ram raids,’ Hunter said. There was a grudging admiration in his voice. She had nerve, you had to give her that, and she’d been conning them all for years. ‘ Was Powell involved in that too?’
He climbed down to join her.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I think you can say that Johnny was the leading light behind the ram raids. The moving force.’ She touched Hunter’s arm conspiratorially. ‘The attack on the Coast Road hypermarket on the night Gabby died,’ she said. ‘That was all his own work. I wasn’t pleased about that. I thought the timing lacked respect. But he’s always had a flair for organization.’
‘You were telling me how you get rid of the stuff,’ Hunter said.
‘Was I?’ She was teasing him, pleased by his interest. ‘ Perhaps I’ll let you work that one out for yourself. We don’t want to make it too easy for you.’
‘You’ll stop mucking me about,’ he said.
‘I run a sort of franchise,’ she said proudly, not intimidated in the least. She had wanted to tell him anyway. ‘I suppose that’s what you’d call it. I have agents who do the selling for me. I take a commission.’
‘That bloke who was in court on the afternoon Mrs Wood died,’ Hunter said. ‘Tommy Shiels. Was he one of your agents?’
She nodded. ‘Not one of the best, though, hinnie. You mustn’t think I only deal with the losers.’
‘At least he kept his mouth shut,’ Hunter said. ‘He never let on he was working for you.’
‘Oh, they all keep their mouths shut, hinnie,’ she said. ‘ They know that some of my friends are…unpredictable.’ She touched his arm again with her thick soft fingers. ‘ You might not believe this, but they’re frightened of me!’
She seemed to find the idea hilarious and burst into laughter, rocking backwards and forwards. Hunter, watching her felt suddenly sick and chill. Like Ramsay he could believe her capable of anything.
Before he could settle to the investigation Ramsay phoned Prue Bennett at the Grace Darling Centre. The disappearance of Anna disturbed him, nagged at his subconscious all day. He did not see how she could be in real danger but knew that he would always blame himself if anything happened to her. Prue had been determined to go in to work and had left Otterbridge at her usual time. If she stayed at home she’d just mope, she said. She needed to keep busy. Anna would know where to find her.
‘Any news?’ he said.
‘Yes. I was just going to ring you.’ She sounded almost drunk with relief. ‘ She phoned in to say she was all right.’
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t speak to me. Her pride, I suppose. Or she’d think I’d just make a fuss, get cross. She left a message with Joe.’
‘What exactly did she say?’
‘That she was sorry to have worried me, she was fine, and she’d be at the rehearsal tonight. She’d explain it all then.’
Ramsay said nothing.
‘Stephen,’ she said, perhaps sensing his disquiet. ‘You don’t think anything’s wrong, do you? She is going to turn up this evening, full of the adventure?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course she is.’ There was no point in frightening her.
But as soon as she had replaced the phone he dialled again and spoke to Joe Fenwick.
‘That message you took for Miss Bennett this morning,’ he said. ‘You are sure it was Anna on the phone?’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘ For sure. I knew it was her before she gave her name. There’s not much of the Geordie in her voice, y’knaa, and it’s very quiet. I’d recognize it anywhere.’