She paused again. ‘I’m not explaining this very well. It wasn’t a real, adult conversation. He was behaving like a spoilt eight-year-old. As if all that fussing was due to him. It wasn’t normal.’
‘I see,’ Ramsay said. ‘Did he have any difficulty communicating with the children?’
‘None at all. They loved him. The little boy who went outside with him wasn’t frightened and I’m sure nothing untoward happened.’
‘Yet you felt sufficiently concerned, that you contacted us.’
‘Yes. There was something about the pair of them, standing there in the shadow hand in hand… Mr Howe didn’t seem to realize he was in a position of trust. When we went outside – the mother, of course, was frantic – it was as if he felt no more responsible for the incident than the boy. It was a sort of arrogance. He was the only person who mattered. We were inconsiderate fools to cause a scene.’
Ramsay leant forward.
‘Are you saying you think he would be capable of abducting a child?’
She looked back at him, troubled.
‘I suppose I am. He’d do it thoughtlessly. Probably not meaning to cause any harm. Just for the company. Not realizing what people might think. The spoilt child again.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘I knew he was a queer bastard.’
The weather was still cold in the evenings and Hunter stood with his backside against the radiator. It was the Sunday night after the children’s party at the church hall. The station was quiet. The three of them were crammed into Ramsay’s office.
‘So what do we do now?’
‘Nothing,’ Ramsay said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Think about it.’
‘What’s there to think about? It’s obvious, isn’t it? Uncle Bernie has a taste for little boys and his wife finds out. So he stabs her. What better motive can there be?’
‘Think about it,’ Ramsay said again. ‘Think about the other abductions. What were the common features?’
‘The kids were given sweets. He sat them on his knee and cuddled them but he didn’t actually interfere with them. That fits, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what the vicar’s wife said? That Bernie wouldn’t have the bottle to do anything.’
‘You’d admire him more if he had?’ Sally Wedderburn spat at him.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, that’s not what I said.’ He turned his eyes to the ceiling. ‘You can’t speak in this place without someone twisting your words.’
Moody cow, he thought. Really it took the patience of a saint to work with Sal Wedderburn. They should pay a special allowance for it.
‘What was the other common feature?’ Ramsay asked.
Hunter looked blank, Sally triumphant.
‘He was a driver,’ she said. ‘Different cars. One red saloon, one blue estate. But each time he drove the kids around and then he dumped them by the side of the road. Bernard Howe doesn’t drive.’
‘Just because he doesn’t usually drive doesn’t mean that he can’t.‘ Hunter’s voice was superior but they could tell he was clutching at straws. ‘And using different cars. That would be significant. It might mean that he doesn’t own a vehicle but that he has to nick or borrow one specially.’
‘I can’t quite see Bernard Howe as a car thief,’ Ramsay said. ‘Can you?’
‘So it’s a coincidence? Is that what you’re saying? The fact that he likes little boys.’
Sally Wedderburn turned on him again.
‘Get real. How many calls do you think we’ve had about the abductions? Hundreds. Probably running by now into thousands. All from people accusing men of liking little boys. It might be a neighbour who watches their kids playing in the street. Or an overfamiliar lollipop man. Or a football referee who puts his hand on a lad’s shoulder before sending him off. We’ve had the lot. At a time like this folk overreact. You can’t blame them. Anyone who has regular contact with kids is going to be a target. As you say, it’s a coincidence.’
‘All the same,’ Ramsay said, ‘I don’t think we can dismiss the allegation altogether.’ Working with Hunter and Wedderburn he felt not so much a superior officer as a mediator trying to keep both parties sweet, to find some point of contact. ‘ Besides anything else it tells us more about Bernard, doesn’t it? Informs the picture we already have, at least, of a lonely man with no adult friends, who’s chosen a hobby which brings him into contact with youngsters.’
‘Like I said,’ Hunter interrupted. ‘A queer bastard.’
‘Perhaps. Anyway I think we should check. Discreetly. If the press gets wind of the fact that Bernard could be involved in the abductions they’ll have a field day. There’ll be no chance of operating effectively with them baying for his blood. Gordon, find out if he’s ever had a licence or owned a car. Sal, have you got the times and the dates the kids were snatched?’
Not so much a mediator, he thought, dishing out the tasks equally so there’d be no cause for complaint. More a bloody nursery nurse.
Sally returned almost immediately with the information. An apparently random list of four dates and times.
‘Look at this.’ Ramsay was speaking to himself. ‘The second was in Newcastle. The second week of January. A Thursday at five thirty. A child was left outside the post office in Eldon Square while his mum dashed in before it closed. Bernard Howe always visits his mother on Thursday. He hasn’t missed one, apparently, even since Kath died. He goes straight from work then cycles back to arrive home at about ten. If she can confirm that he’s turned up every Thursday since Christmas we can almost certainly dismiss him as a possible abductor. If he wasn’t at her house that day.’ He looked up at Sally, smiled. ‘ Well, that will probably mean that Gordon’s right and Uncle Bernie has something to hide.’
‘Do you want me to check with the mother?’
‘No. I’d like to do that. Tomorrow you go and check with the woman who runs the Shining Stars Nursery. She saw someone hanging around on the street the day the kid went missing from there. See if the description matches Bernard.’
‘Right.’
On her way out she bumped into Hunter, who was looking despondent. She gave him a wide and patronizing grin.
‘No joy, then,’ Ramsay said, as Hunter took up his position next to the radiator again.
‘Na. Bernard Howe’s never had a licence, not even a provisional one and he’s never owned a car.’
‘We can’t rule him out altogether. You know as well as I do that there are ways round the system.’
‘Not very likely though, is it?’ Hunter knew his boss was just being kind.
‘How did you get on in Whitley on Friday night?’
Hunter shrugged. ‘It’s not been my week.’
‘No one had ever met this chap Paul?’
‘Oh aye, they’d met him, but they couldn’t tell me anything about him. Nothing useful at least. He’s still the mystery man. The bar staff at the Manhattan will give me a ring if they think they see him but I don’t hold out much hope.’
‘You said you didn’t get anything useful. Did you get anything at all?’
‘Just the fact that he once went to a funeral,’ Hunter said flippantly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There were two women, friends of Kim’s, who think they remember him. The first time they met he was pissed out of his skull. Upset, apparently, because he’d been to a funeral.’
‘When was that?’
‘Last September. Is it important?’
‘Probably not.’ But Sheena Taverner was buried in September. Ramsay wondered if that were a coincidence too.
When he left the police station Ramsay drove to the crumbling Edwardian house where Prue lived with her daughter. Prue wasn’t expecting him. When she opened the door she was in a striped towelling dressing gown. In the kitchen there was a half-drunk bottle of wine on the table and a pile of plates in the sink.