Ramsay put on his shoes and walked out into the sunshine. He stood, leaning against the rough stone wall of the barn to wait for his colleagues. Above him the brown heather moor stretched to the distance, the skyline broken occasionally by a shooting butt where the gentry would come in the autumn to shoot grouse. Below was the improved land, grazed by sheep, the short, cropped grass sprouting in damp places with juncus grass and soft reed. Beyond that, down the line of the valley he could see the village. There was Henshaw’s monstrous bungalow, Grey’s Farm, and to the north, as much a part of the landscape as the rock and the moor, was the Tower. On the horizon, a thin line of reflected light, was the sea.
Ramsay could see that the Land Rover had arrived at the farm. Soon it would begin to climb the track again with Hunter and the scene of crime team. Before then, before the concentration on detail, he wanted to order his thoughts.
When Hunter arrived, he was driving the Land Rover himself. He had enjoyed the trip from the farm to the hill immensely. Action was what he had joined the police for. He had imagined high-speed car chases and midnight stakeouts. He had received the call about the discovery of Charlie Elliot’s body on his return to his car after talking to Mary Raven’s friend. He had driven straight to Brinkbonnie, jumping red lights, scaring old ladies on pedestrian crossings. Manoeuvring a Land Rover too fast up a slippery, occasionally dangerous track was action, too, and provided some compensation for the hours of boredom and routine.
When he got to the barn, Ramsay was still outside, deep in thought, apparently surprised to see them though he must have heard the noise of the engine miles away.
“You were right then,” Hunter said angrily. “Charlie Elliot didn’t kill Mrs. Parry.”
“I don’t know!” Ramsay said. “ I don’t think we can be certain of anything at this stage.” He saw that Hunter was wearing green Wellingtons that had remained miraculously clean.
“What do you mean?”
“That we must keep an open mind.”
Hunter walked past him and stood at the entrance of the barn, looking inside. The scene of crime team had begun their work.
“He was stabbed then,” Hunter said. “ Just like Mrs. Parry.”
“All the same,” Ramsay said. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Charlie Elliot had enemies in his own right. It could be a copy-cat murder committed by someone with an alibi for the time of Mrs. Parry’s death. The murderer might have thought we’d assume both were killed by the same person.”
“It doesn’t sound very likely,” Hunter said.
“Perhaps not,” Ramsay said. “ But as I see it there are three possibilities. The first is the copy-cat theory-someone wanted to be rid of Charlie Elliot and saw Mrs. Parry’s death as an excellent opportunity to cover it up.
“The second is that Charlie Elliot murdered Mrs. Parry and he was killed as an act of revenge. Mrs. Parry was popular. Her support for the Save Brinkbonnie campaign stirred a lot of emotion in the village.” He remembered Olive Kerr, red-eyed and desolate, and Fred Elliot’s moving description of his affection for Mrs. Parry. He could imagine a sense of outrage so ferocious that it led to murder.
Hunter yawned theatrically. He had never taken to being lectured.
“And the third possibility?” he asked.
“Obviously that Parry and Elliot were killed by the same person. That’s probably the most likely theory. Elliot saw something or discovered something, which made him dangerous to the murderer, so he was killed, too. As you say, both were stabbed with a wide-bladed knife.”
“How did anyone know he was here?” Hunter demanded. “It’s miles from anywhere. It’s not the sort of place you’d come across by chance. Especially in this weather.”
“No,” Ramsay said absent-mindedly. “It’s not the sort of place you’d come across by chance. But Charlie Elliot turned up here, I wonder why? We’ll have to find out if he was friendly with the Greys.” He remembered the noise made by the farm dogs when he had disturbed them. It was impossible to think that a noisy motorbike could have gone up the track without the Greys being aware of it. It would be important to check if there was another way onto the hill.
“He can’t have brought all that stuff with him when he first came,” Hunter said. “He left the village in too much of a hurry. He must have gone back for it.”
“Perhaps,” Ramsay said. “ Or perhaps he had help. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Hunter said. “Not yet. But your Mary Raven can’t have killed Mrs. Parry. She was at that party in Newcastle by midnight on Saturday night.”
“But she could have killed Charlie,” Ramsay said, almost to himself. “He saw her in the churchyard.”
Hunter did not reply and hardly seemed to be listening. He was eager to get down to practicalities, to see the blood, to discover if the scene of crime team had found anything to work on. Ideas always made him impatient. Why was Ramsay standing there, rambling away to himself, when there was so much to do?
The inspector seemed suddenly to come to a decision.
“Look,” he said. “ You look after things here. I want to talk to the Greys. There’s something odd going on there. I’ll send Grey back to fetch you later.”
Hunter watched the Land Rover move over the hill and shook his head.
Promoted beyond his competence, he thought again, and turned with relish to the body in the barn.
Chapter Fifteen
Ramsay stood on the storm porch at Grey’s Farm and knocked on the door. He could see Robert Grey in the tractor shed, bent over the engine, but although the farmer must have seen the return of the Land Rover, he made no move to come into the house. Ramsay thought his feet were wet enough and refused to cross the muddy yard to fetch the man. The door was opened by the woman who had come into the yard when he had strayed into the drive by mistake. She was tall, attractive, rather grave. Her dark hair had a streak of grey along the centre parting. Behind her he saw a wide hall with uneven flags on the floor where eggs were stacked in trays.
“Yes?” she said, imperious, ready to send him away though she must have guessed who he was.
“I’m Inspector Ramsay,” he said. “Northumbria police. I’ll need to speak to you and your husband.”
“We’ll not be able to help you,” she said.
“A man was murdered on your land,” he said. “You can see it’s important that I talk to you.”
She opened the door wider to let him into the hall, then stood outside and called to her husband.
“Robert. Come here, please. The policeman wants to speak to you.”
It was the voice of a woman speaking to a child or an employee, not to an equal. Ramsay wondered what sort of relationship they had. He presumed that the farm had been inherited from her family and thought she might have married Grey to do the work. The man walked to join them. He was shorter than she was, slightly bow-legged. At the door he stopped and took off his boots.
“We’ll go into the kitchen,” she said. “ It’s the only warm room in the house.”
She must have been in the middle of baking. There were bowls and trays on the table and the smell of cooking in the air. On one chair there was a pile of unironed clothes, but the woman did not apologise for the mess.
“You’d better sit down,” she said.
“I won’t disturb you for long,” Ramsay said.
“Well,” she said. “You’ve done that already.”
He ignored her and turned to Grey.
“What time did you find the body?” he asked.
In his wife’s presence the man seemed even more awkward and inarticulate than he had before. It was not, Ramsay thought, that he was stupid. He had difficulty expressing himself as accurately as he wanted and that frustrated him.