When Hunter knocked at the door, there was no reply, and he found Jane Massie in the long back garden feeding hens. She was a short woman, rather overweight, probably in her early thirties. He was surprised. From Ramsay’s description, he had expected someone older. She was wearing a calf-length dress in a patterned corduroy and the sort of shoes with buckles he had only seen on children. He dismissed her in his mind as an aging hippie, but all the same he found her attractive. Her face was young and very pretty. When she saw him, she hitched up her skirt and climbed out of the hen run to meet him. Two small boys in dungarees appeared from the hen house and clambered after her.
She did not seem shocked to see a stranger wandering through the back garden. She seemed, to Hunter, to have great self-confidence. He knew few women like her and was nervous.
“Hello,” she said. “Can I help you?” She came, as he had expected, from the south.
The boys hid behind her.
“Mrs. Massie,” he said, “I’m Sergeant Hunter from the Northumbria police. Could I have a few words with you?”
“Yes,” she said. “What’s wrong? There’s not been an accident?”
“No,” he said. “ It’s nothing like that.”
She took him into the house through a back door into a kitchen that smelled of lentils and garlic. She rinsed her hands under the tap.
“I’m sorry I panicked,” she said. “My husband’s away on business. I hate the thought of him driving down the A1. You hear of so many accidents. Would you like some tea? We don’t drink coffee, I’m afraid.”
He nodded.
“How can I help you?” she asked. In the garden the boys were splashing each other from muddy puddles, but she made no attempt to stop them. He thought his mother would have skinned him alive if he’d dirtied his clothes like that.
“We’re conducting an investigation into certain planning irregularities that might have taken place when the estate over the road was built,” he said. “ I understand you were involved in opposing the development.”
“I certainly was,” she said. “It’s a dreadful eyesore. It’s about time someone put a stop to Henshaw. It’s too late for us, but it might stop some other village from being ruined.”
“Were you aware while you were running the campaign that some of Henshaw’s tactics might be dishonest?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “ Not exactly. Everything seemed to be going as we had expected until the builder appealed to the Department of the Environment inspector. It was a terrible surprise then when Henshaw won.”
“Were you involved in the campaign all the way through?”
“Oh, yes,” she said angrily. “Even when everyone all around me seemed to be losing interest. I kept going to the bitter end.”
“What do you mean that the people around you lost interest?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “ The village just seemed to give up and accept its fate.”
“It wasn’t that one or two prominent members of your committee dropped out?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “It was nothing like that. The committee remained remarkably united. They were very supportive.”
There was a pause. Hunter drank his tea.
“It couldn’t have been that at the end of the campaign you all got”-he hesitated, searching for the word he wanted- “complacent? You thought you would win so you didn’t bother to put up much of a fight?”
“No,” she said. “Really, I’ve thought about it and I’m sure our tactics were just right. My husband’s in public relations and he advised us. Look, if you’re interested, I can show you a file of letters I sent asking for support-to councillors, the local M.P., the media. I kept copies of them all. We had a concerted attack in the last couple of weeks just before the appeal was heard.”
She disappeared into another room and returned with a yellow envelope file bursting with typewritten notes and letters. She sorted through them and took out a handful to show Hunter.
“Look,” she said. “All these are dated in the month before the appeal. I really don’t think we could have done any more. We just didn’t get the response from the public that we could have hoped for. Perhaps the campaign had just been going on for too long and they had a sort of protest fatigue. This sort of development had happened so often in the county that it just didn’t seem exciting anymore.”
“Do you know Henshaw?” Hunter asked. “ Personally?”
She laughed. “ No,” she said. “We don’t move in the same social circles.”
“Did he ever approach you during the campaign?”
“Not during the campaign,” she said. “ He came here afterwards, when the inspector’s decision was finally made public, to gloat. He stood on the doorstep and shook my hand and said that now that the due process of law had been completed he hoped we could be good neighbours.”
“What did you say?”
She shrugged. “What could I say? As far as I knew he was right. Everything was legal and aboveboard. I was as gracious as I could manage, wished him luck for the future, and asked him for a donation for playgroup equipment. As he was so keen to be a good neighbour. I’m on the playgroup committee and we’re always short of money.”
“Did you get your donation?” Hunter asked.
She smiled wryly. “Oh, yes, we got it. And just as the bulldozers were moving in, there was a picture in the local paper of Henshaw surrounded by grateful toddlers and piles of new toys. He knows more about public relations than my husband.”
“Yes,” Hunter said. “I see.” So Ramsay was wrong again, he thought. He should have more sense than to believe Jack Robson’s fairy stories.
She looked at her watch. “I haven’t been a lot of help, have I?” she asked. “ If there’s nothing else you want to know, I’ll have to be out soon to collect my older boys from school. I should avoid that while you’ve got the chance. There’ll be no peace then.”
She let him out of the back door and into the garden again. As he left he saw her rounding up her sons, scolding them halfheartedly for the state they were in, laughing as she gathered them to her.
In the police house Ramsay sat alone and waited for something to happen. He was not sure what he was expecting but sensed that they were close to some resolution. He put out a general call that he should be notified of Mary Raven’s whereabouts, but he did not want to apprehend her. If they found Max Laidlaw, he should be brought in for questioning immediately.
He telephoned Judy, who answered the phone very quickly.
“Yes,” she said. “ Who’s there?” He could sense her holding her breath, praying that it was her husband.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s Inspector Ramsay. I was calling to find out if you’ve heard from your husband.”
“No,” she said. “ I’ve heard nothing. No-one seems to know where he is.”
The children must have been returned to her because in the background he heard one of the children calling for a drink.
“Try not to worry,” he said. “ If Max does get in touch, perhaps you could let me know.”
“Yes,” she said. She sounded exhausted. “Of course.” She seemed not even to have the energy to replace the receiver because as he pressed the cradle to cut off the call he heard the toddler talking again.
The afternoon wore on and he waited for a knock at the door, for the message that someone in the village wanted to talk to him. He switched on the light to make the place more welcoming and phoned the Otterbridge Incident Room again. Mary Raven had been seen in Otterbridge, they said. They were keeping an eye on her.
“Don’t lose her!” Ramsay said. “And don’t pick her up unless she takes you to Max Laidlaw.”
He settled down to wait again.
He welcomed Hunter’s return at least as a break from the tension, but he was disappointed that it was the policeman and not one of the locals who stood outside waiting to be let in.