By five o’clock in Hallowgate police station Stephen Ramsay thought he knew who had killed Gabriella Paston and Amelia Wood. He had motive and opportunity and the description of the person Mrs Wilkinson had seen in Martin’s Dene was more accurate than he could have hoped. But he had no proof, no forensic evidence. At this stage there was definitely not enough to convict. He discussed the problem with his superintendent.
‘Should we go for an arrest?’ he asked.
The superintendent sat behind a desk stacked with paper and was deeply troubled.
‘Think of the publicity,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a media circus. Could we guarantee a fair trial after that, even if we get enough to bring charges?’
‘Not here,’ Ramsay said. ‘ But the trial could always be moved out of the area.’ Besides, he thought, that’s not our problem. My problem is to find the evidence to convict and I’m not sure an arrest would help. A confession’s not enough. Not these days.
‘What about searching the property? Would that be any use?’ The superintendent looked up from his papers. He looked suddenly tired and very old.
‘I think it would. We’ve the forensic report on Lynch’s car back now. There are some unexplained fibres on the driver’s seat. I’d be happier if we could tie them in with something belonging to our suspect.’
‘Yes, I see.’ He paused, seemed to be considering all the options. ‘Not a pleasant job,’ he said. ‘Never is.’ He looked at Ramsay with some sympathy.
‘Will you go yourself?’
Ramsay stood up and walked to the window. He looked out at the rain. A buoy flashed on the south side of the river.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I should go to the Grace Darling Centre.’ The drama had started there, the week before, and he thought that was where the thing would be concluded.
‘How long then,’ the superintendent demanded, suddenly alert and awake, ‘before it’s all over?’
Ramsay turned to him sadly. ‘We’ll get it finished tonight,’ he said. ‘One way or another.’
Ramsay drove to the Arts Centre through the centre of Hallowgate. The shops were still dark and shuttered, the streets almost empty. A squally wind blew litter across the pavement and made the branches of the big Christmas tree outside the shopping centre sway crazily. The large coloured bulbs which were its only decoration scattered light on to the wet streets and the blank shop windows. As Ramsay stopped at a junction a car drove up behind him very fast and overtook him, jumping a red light, almost causing an accident. It sped off at great speed before he could take the registration number and left him with a sense of shock and unease which remained all evening.
At the Grace Darling Centre everything was much as it had been the week before. It was the quiet period before the evening rush. Joe Fenwick sat behind the desk in the lobby, his legs stretched in front of him, his eyes half closed, resting.
Gus Lynch’s sense of elation had persisted. He paced about his office, with his door wide open so his voice carried through the building, speaking on the telephone, trying to drum up advance publicity for The Adventures of Abigail Keene. He used the murders shamelessly.
‘Look,’ he said to friendly reporters, ‘the girl who died was actually playing the lead. You can’t get more topical than that…’
And he replaced the receiver satisfied that they would have all the publicity they could use.
Prue Bennett tried to work but she was distracted by Gus Lynch’s voice and her anxiety about Anna. It was not only a concern for the girl’s safety which made it impossible for her to concentrate on the report to trustees she was trying to prepare. Gus Lynch’s insinuations that Anna had benefited from Gabriella’s death remained with her, persistent and alarming, and other incidents, things Anna had said, took on a new and disturbing significance.
This is mad, she thought. It’s caused by exhaustion and worry. If Anna were here, so I could see her and talk to her, I’d realize it was all nonsense. But still she could not settle to her work and finally she went to the cafeteria and waited there, drinking coffee after coffee, trying to clear her mind of all her suspicions.
At six o’clock Ellen Paston turned up for her shift in the cafeteria. She nodded to Joe in the lobby on her way through as she always did, leaving her soaking raincoat on a hook behind the counter and put on her nylon overall. The place was quiet and she had time to fill all the sugar bowls before the customers arrived. Prue came to the counter to order another coffee but Ellen said nothing of her ordeal of the morning. She kept the humiliation of police questioning to herself, and brooded on it as she worked.
Half an hour later members of the choral society and the writers’ group began to arrive. They talked with ghoulish curiosity of the tragedy that had occurred the week before and spent longer over coffee than they would usually have done.
‘Come on, then,’ one said at last. ‘We’d best get started. I think we’re all here. Except Evan. He said he’d be able to make it this week too. Oh well, if he were coming he’d be here by now. We’ll have to manage without him.’
And they went to make music without giving Evan a further thought.
When Ramsay arrived at the Grace Darling Prue was still in the cafeteria, sitting in the corner where she could watch the door, waiting for a glimpse of Anna. As soon as the inspector came in she got to her feet and hurried to meet him, knocking a coffee cup off the table with the sleeve of her jacket in her haste.
‘Why are you here?’ she said. The colour had drained from her face. ‘Is there any news?’
He shook his head. ‘ You’ve not heard any more from her?’
She tried to hold back her tears.
‘She’ll turn up,’ he said. ‘I promise she’ll turn up.’ He wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her.
At six o’clock news began to come through of disturbances on the Starling Farm. The news hit so quickly because the television companies had been warned in advance by an anonymous phone call about what would take place. The reporters were in position in the grounds of the nursery school which had been left untouched by previous looting. They watched a gang of youths smash the windows of the school and break down the door. They did nothing to assist the caretaker, an elderly man, who tried to stop the destruction, but they turned to each other and called it ‘ good television.’
The mob who had broken into the school ran off with a television, a video recorder, and an aquarium full of newts, but it seemed that they were more interested in provoking a reaction from the police, in bringing them on to the estate, than in what they could steal. When the police arrived to find a road block of burnt-out cars outside the school the crowd cheered and pelted the officers with rocks, bricks, and beer cans. They lobbed petrol bombs like grenades. It was all more organized and serious than the policemen had expected. They retreated and waited for reinforcements.
The police who arrived in the next wave were so anxious not to be overwhelmed by the crowd that they over-reacted. They were aware of the criticism of delay levelled at them after the Meadow Well riots, and decisions were hardened because the television cameras were already there. No one wanted pictures of riot and disorder to be seen again in living rooms throughout the country. The north-east had a bad enough image already. The officer in charge of the operation was insecure, temperamentally unsuited to taking responsibility. He panicked. He thought it was better to have the reputation of coming down hard on troublemakers than going soft. All the political comment in recent months had reinforced his attitude. He was not prepared to wait, to be seen as a coward, a laughingstock.