He was on his way out of the incident room when Ramsay called him back.
“Take Sally Wedderburn with you,” he said. “She’s on her break but she’ll be back in five minutes. She could do with the experience. And Faye Cooper’s mam might find it easier to talk to a woman.”
And at least Sal has a modicum of tact and discretion, he thought, but did not say.
“Yeah,” Hunter said, trying not to show how pleased he was, trying to sound as if it were a chore he could do without. “Yeah. All right.”
After Hunter had gone Ramsay sat in the incident room and took out the file he was compiling on Faye Cooper. In a corner a DC was stabbing inexpertly at a typewriter. Otherwise the room was empty and still. Ramsay re-read all the information and tried to form a picture of the girl. He wished he had a photograph. Beside the original police report into the accident at Juniper Hall and the coroner’s statement, he had obtained records from her high school. What occurred to him most was that she had been abandoned by all the adults who had been responsible for her. It was clear that there had been no contact with her parents once she left home, and the staff at the college seemed to have been unconcerned about the way she lived. Perhaps they did not know. Or did not care. Val McDougal would have cared, he thought. She would have had the girl back to her home for meals, kept an eye on her. But once the romance between Faye and James was over, what would have happened to her then? He was becoming fascinated by her.
His teenage years had been stifling. Every move had been monitored by an over-protective mother and an extended family of aunts and cousins with nothing better to do than look out for his welfare. He tried to imagine what it must have been like to be left so completely alone. Exhilarating perhaps, but terrifying. He found himself groping towards an explanation for Faye’s attraction to the people at the Old Chapel. She wouldn’t be turned on by traditional religion. That would seem staid and irrelevant. But the philosophy of Daniel and Win with their close family life, Magda’s evangelical zeal, her charisma, would be more exciting. Belonging to that community of believers would give Faye a meaning to her life and the same sense of comfort as belonging to a church.
It occurred to him that Lily Jackman might have had the same sort of rootless past. More affluent, he thought, but similarly insecure, attracted to the group at the Old Chapel for the same reasons. He wondered what else the two girls might have had in common.
Chapter Nineteen
Faye Cooper’s mother lived in a row of terraced houses which ran steeply towards the river Tyne. Her name after her marriage was Irving. Sally Wedderburn, who had done her homework and was as determined as Hunter to make her mark on the case, called her Joan.
“Just a few words, Joan,” she said as they stood on the doorstep trying to persuade the woman to let them in. “We won’t take up much of your time.”
Hunter looked down to the Tyne, to a dredger moving slowly up the river. Two lads, sitting on the pavement with their feet in the gutter, stared back.
The woman was reluctant. The door was only open a crack and she was ready to close it again.
“No, thank you,” she said, as though they were selling dusters and broom heads. Then: “My husband wouldn’t like it.”
“Come on, pet,” coaxed Sally Wedderburn. “He need never know we’ve been here.”
“Of course he’ll have to know,” the woman said sharply. She peered out, saw the lads on the pavement and drew back her head. “The people round here have nothing better to do than mind other folk’s business.”
“Tell him we’re the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Sally said. “Come to convert you.”
“I’ll have no blasphemous talk in my house,” Joan Irving said, but by then somehow they were in, standing crushed together in a small hall. There was a smell of lavender furniture polish and bleach.
“Is the lounge through here?” Sally asked. She pushed open the first door she came to. “Nice little places, aren’t they, these? Cosy.”
The room they entered was small and square, dominated by the harmonium that stood against one wall. The colour scheme was brown and mustard. The smell of furniture polish had become overwhelming. It was impossible that anyone sat here and relaxed. The cushions propped against the brown leatherette settee were symmetrically arranged. There were no books or newspapers. The only ornaments were framed religious texts which hung on the walls and were propped up on the tile mantelpiece.
Hunter shivered. This wasn’t what he’d expected at all. From Ramsay’s description of the family he’d imagined someone feckless, a slut who’d got herself pregnant, then conned some poor bloke into marriage to get the rent paid and her brat cared for. Someone with loose morals who’d ditched the girl as soon as she could. Not this stern, pinch-faced woman who was only forty but looked older than his mam. He wasn’t sure how to handle the situation but he wasn’t going to let Sally Wedderburn have all the running.
“Is your husband out at work?” he demanded.
She did not answer, but backed away from him, apparently panic-stricken, until she was pressed against the wall.
Christ, he thought. She’s mad as a hatter.
“Well?” he said impatiently. She looked wildly about her. Still she did not speak.
Hunter swore under his breath.
“Haven’t you got a call to make, Sarge?” Sally Wedderburn said.
“What?” He turned his anger towards her.
“A call. From the car.” She motioned for him to leave the room. He stamped out, banging the front door behind him, then stood on the pavement smoking a cigarette. It came to something when you were ordered out of an interview by a subordinate. Still, he told himself viciously, it was better to let a woman deal with the hysterics. It was all they were good for.
In the brown and mustard living room Joan Irving had begun to tremble.
“Can I get you something?” Sally asked.
The woman shook her head. “It’s my nerves,” she said. “I’ve always been bad with my nerves. There was no need for him to shout.”
“No,” Sally agreed. “Why don’t we sit down and start again. I can explain properly why I’m here.”
“I don’t know,” the woman said. “My husband’s out at work. At Swan’s. But he’ll be back soon. They’ve been on short shifts since the receivers took over the yard.” But she did as she was told and sat on a straight-backed, fireside chair, her knees locked together, her hand gripped in her lap.
“I’m here about Faye,” Sally said gently.
“That’s all over,” Joan Irving snapped. “She’s dead.”
“Are you sure it’s over?” Sally asked. “As far as you’re concerned?”
“I don’t know what you mean!” The panic was returning. She began to take gasping breaths. Sally moved closer to her and took her hand. She waited until the breathing returned to normal, then said:
“We had a letter about Faye this morning. We wondered if you’d written it.”
There was a silence.
“No,” Joan Irving said at last. “I don’t understand.”
“We’re investigating two murders. A farmer at Mittingford and a teacher from Otterbridge. Perhaps you read about them.”
Joan Irving nodded. Ron had pointed the items out to her in the Chronicle. A sign of the times, he had said.
Sally continued, “Then someone wrote to us and suggested that Faye’s death could be linked. To these murders. Do you know why anyone would think that?”
The woman shook her head. She seemed genuinely bewildered.
There was a pause and Sally tried again. She could see the back of Hunter’s head through the window. It was a sort of challenge.
“It must have been a shock hearing out of the blue that Faye was dead,” she said tentatively.