A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (24 page)

In the small house in Armstrong Street Walter Tanner lay on his bed, wide awake. The police had wanted him to move out for the night, had even suggested that they might put him up in a hotel if he had nowhere else to go, but with uncharacteristic spirit Walter had stood up to them. This was his home, he said. Body or no body in the bath. Despite the horror of it all he was happier here than anywhere else. He was too far from the fairground to be troubled by noise inside the house – he could hear the music but only faintly. Yet still he found it impossible to relax. Images whirled into his mind like the figures on a carousel. There was his mother, peevish and complaining, holding taut between her hands the wire she had used in the shop to cut the cheese; there was Dorothea, dressed as she had been on one of her visits to him in a white sleeveless sundress, held up only by thin straps at the shoulder; there was Clive Stringer, moronic and cunning, bent double with laughter. Walter got out of bed, walked to the window and opened it, thinking some air might help him to sleep. As he pushed against the rusty catch, there must have been a lull in the music, because when the window finally swung wide open he quite clearly heard a woman scream, and then there was silence.

Ramsay walked quickly but at the end of the bridge he stopped to call Hunter again to see if there was any news about the warrant.

‘They’ve been seen!’ Hunter said. He was very excited. ‘In the fair. But it’s a madhouse in there and our blokes lost them in the crowd.’

‘That’s all right,’ Ramsay said. ‘Pull all our people out and cover both ends of Front Street. They’ll have to come that way and it’ll be easier to get them on their way out.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ Hunter asked. Ramsay knew his sergeant would like to be there for the arrest. He would hope for some dramatic chase so he could show off in front of the crowd.

‘Supervise the search,’ Ramsay said. He sensed Hunter’s disappointment but insisted. Hunter would be mercilessly thorough and he still thought they would need Dorothea’s belongings to secure a conviction. ‘Get in touch if you find anything.’

Suddenly he felt very tired. He longed for it all to be over. The whole town, it seemed, was a madhouse. Two women in fancy dress walked towards him in the middle of the road. Each had an arm around the other’s shoulders, and they did a shuffling dance which ended when they collapsed into giggles. Somewhere, someone was singing ‘The Blaydon Races’, tunelessly, very loud.

He walked on, ignoring his own advice, pushing through the crowd on to the fairground. On the dodgems boys in black leather did battle in earnest silence, leaning forward over the driving wheels, bracing themselves for the shock of collision. The cars squealed as the boys braked and turned and blue sparks cracked at the end of the power lines. Some of the smaller stalls and the roundabouts for young children were being dismantled, but the crowd seemed reluctant to leave. Still people queued to ride the Pirate Ship, the waltzers and the Big Wheel, and while they were prepared to pay the fair stayed open. Ramsay stood by the Pirate Ship, scanning the faces and watched as it began to rock, at first slowly like a large version of an old-fashioned swinging boat, then more deeply in sickening plunges until it made a complete revolution. He turned away, no longer interested, certain that there was no one on the ride he recognised.

Ramsay saw the two figures at the top of the Big Wheel from a distance, and thought at first that they were children messing about. He wondered angrily what sort of parents allowed their bairns to be out at a time like this, then thought he had no right to judge. If he and Diana had produced children they would probably have been uncontrollable. He walked on, moving backwards and forwards over the litter-strewn grass to cover as much ground as possible, scanning the crowd at head height, vaguely aware that the Big Wheel was moving. He came back to the Big Wheel from a different angle just as it was stopping again. The operator, a short, square man with huge hands was shouting:

‘Last ride, please, ladies and gentlemen. Last ride.’

And there was a jostle in the queue as they all pushed forward anxious not to miss out. Very slowly the wheel moved round to allow people off two at a time and the new riders on.

Ramsay walked down the length of the queue, looking at the faces, then began to move away, thinking he would join his colleagues in Front Street. He had an irrational fear that without his supervision they would make a mess of the arrest.

When he heard the showman shout: ‘Take care, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t push,’ he glanced back briefly. There was a skirmish at the front of the queue. Two teenage boys had been pushing for first place and the struggle had got out of hand. One of them had a cut lip. Their friends pulled them apart and Ramsay might have walked on when his attention was caught by the same two figures on the Big Wheel he had seen earlier, only as silhouettes. Now he could see them in detail and he recognised them immediately. They would be the last people to get off the ride and still their chair had not reached the peak of the circle. As he watched it rocked violently and he knew that this was no children’s game of dare.

He moved to see more clearly. Theresa Stringer had her hands around Hilary Masters’ throat and was trying to force her backwards, out of the chair. Hilary’s knees were caught under the safety rail but her back was arched beyond the top of the chair and each time Theresa rocked, it seemed inevitable that she would fall.

Nobody else had seen what was going on. The drama was taking place above their heads, beyond their line of vision. They were too eager not to miss the last chance for a ride to look about them.

Ramsay shouted, but with the fairground noise, nobody heard. He rushed towards the operator, pushing his way through the crowd. They thought he was trying to jump the queue and stood together, shoulder to shoulder, menacing, and would not let him through. He waved and pointed and they thought he was drunk. In his panic he had lost all his authority.

The Big Wheel moved round again and Theresa and Hilary, still struggling, swung to the highest point of the circle.

Then, perhaps because someone in charge had decided that they could flout the bye-laws no longer, that the evening would have to end soon, the music was switched off. In the silence that followed Hilary’s scream came as clear and sharp as a whistle, and everyone turned to watch, straining their necks in an effort to look up, as if this was some free entertainment to end the show. Ramsay thought it was like witnessing some dreadful pornography: the women locked in combat, their skirts pulled round their thighs, scratching and tearing at each other’s hair and faces, and the crowd breathless, excited, aroused by the possibility of tragedy. For a moment the showman stood, entranced, as if he were waiting for Hilary to fall at last. Then Ramsay swore at him and he pulled a lever and the wheel moved round jerkily until the women had reached the ground.

‘They must be pissed,’ someone in the crowd said. ‘Lasses shouldn’t drink. They can’t take it.’

That seemed to relieve the tension and the people moved away, realising that there was no chance now for a last ride.

Hilary still sat in the chair, her head in her hands, crying. Theresa jumped out furiously. She was like a cat, spitting and clawing, and would have gone for the social worker again if the showman had not pulled her off. He stood, holding her from behind by the elbows and she was so small and frail that she hardly reached the ground.

Ramsay’s radio buzzed and cracked and Hunter’s triumphant voice cried out:

‘We’ve found them. Just where you said they’d be. We’ve got her now.’

Yes, Ramsay thought sadly. We’ve got her now.

He walked up to the two women. ‘Hilary Masters,’ he said, not looking at her, ‘I’m placing you under arrest. I must ask you to come with me to the police station.’

He put his hand on her shoulder and felt the silk of her blouse and the bone underneath and thought sadly that he had been wanting to touch her all day.

He sat with her in the interview room. There was a woman constable sitting in a corner her knees primly together, her hands on her lap, but they took no notice of her. They were like lovers in a crowded street, so caught up with each other that they can see no one else.

‘She can’t understand,’ Hilary said. ‘I only did it for her.’

‘Theresa?’ he said. ‘ You’re talking about Theresa?’

She nodded. She wanted to explain.

‘It didn’t seem fair,’ she said, ‘to rake it up after all this time.’

‘To rake what up?’ he asked, though he had guessed.

‘The baby,’ she said. ‘Nicola.’

‘It wasn’t a cot death?’

She shook her head. ‘Theresa smothered her.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘The baby was in her cot. She was a difficult child and Theresa didn’t have the patience to cope with her. She put a pillow over her head and smothered her. Then she phoned me. When I got there she was sitting on the stairs, weeping. The baby wouldn’t stop crying, she said. She had to make it stop crying.’

Hilary spoke flatly, with the same detachment as she had in her office.

‘You didn’t tell the police?’

She shook her head. ‘I was young,’ she said. ‘ Not very experienced. I thought I’d get the blame. And I didn’t want Theresa to endure the court case, the publicity. Even if they didn’t send her to prison I didn’t want her to have to go through all that. And it was my fault. I should have seen how desperate she was. She’d asked me to visit the day before and I’d been too busy to go. I felt responsible.’

‘So you covered it up?’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean to cover it up. I didn’t want to be the one to give her away, but I thought there would be a post mortem. I thought they would discover then that it wasn’t a natural death, but apparently it isn’t that easy to detect.’

‘Weren’t you worried that Theresa might turn on Beverley in the same way?’

‘No!’ she said sharply. It was as if he were questioning her professional judgement. ‘ Really I wasn’t. Theresa had matured a lot in that time. Clive was grown up and she could give all her attention to the baby. And I gave the case to Mike Peacock. He’s young but he’s a very competent social worker. Then, as soon as there was a hint that the child was being abused, I took her into care.’

So, Ramsay thought, that explained the speed with which the child was removed from the family. And the haste had made Dorothea suspicious and had led to her death.

‘When did Dorothea find out about Nicola?’ he asked.

‘Yesterday afternoon. You knew she went back to the Stringers’ in the afternoon?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ I think we have Dorothea’s movements for the afternoon worked out quite precisely now, thank you.’

It was as if she were still a colleague and they were working together to get at the truth.

‘Theresa was upset,’ Hilary said. ‘She’d come to terms with the fact that if she wanted Beverley back she’d have to give up any idea of going away with Joss Corkhill. That made her depressed. And then Dorothea was suspicious. “ I can’t quite understand why Miss Masters is so keen to take Beverley away from you Theresa. I think there must be something you haven’t told me. How can I help you if you won’t tell me the truth?’”

‘So Theresa told her,’ Ramsay said.

‘How could she help it? I’ve explained that she was already depressed, feeling sorry for herself. You don’t know what Dorothea was like.’

I think I do, Ramsay answered silently. I feel as if I’ve spent all day with her.

‘How did you find out that Theresa had confessed to Dorothea?’ he asked.

‘Theresa phoned me from a call box on the Ridgeway. She was hysterical. At first I couldn’t work out what had happened. It was like the time she phoned me after Nicola died.’

‘Did you look for Dorothea?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I waited for her to come to me. I knew she would be in touch.’ She looked at him. ‘ I didn’t have any plan. It wasn’t in any way premeditated.’

‘How did Dorothea get in touch with you?’

‘She turned up at my flat. The waiting was awful. I had expected her earlier. She said there had been something urgent she’d had to attend to. Some family business.’

She had been in the vicarage, Ramsay thought, with Patrick Cassidy, trying to persuade him, perhaps, that he did not love her, trying to fend off his teenage passion.

‘What time did she come to the flat?’

‘I’m not sure. At about seven.’

‘She had an appointment to speak to the Armstrong House Residents’ Association at half past. Didn’t that bother her?’

‘She tried to phone them to cancel it,’ Hilary said, ‘but she couldn’t get through. She thought the phone was out of order.’ She paused. ‘I’d disconnected it. I had no plan to kill her then – it wasn’t that I was covering my tracks – but I was afraid she might phone someone else, tell them about Nicola. I wasn’t thinking very clearly.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I made her tea,’ she said. ‘ We talked.’

‘About the baby?’

She nodded. ‘She spoke as if we’d meant to kill Nicola. She went all religious on me. She even began to cry.’

‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘that she’d never been able to have children of her own?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t realise. But I’ve never had the chance of children either. It didn’t give her the right to preach.’ She paused. ‘ I had the feeling that she wanted something from me. Some show of remorse. Repentance I suppose she would have called it. I couldn’t give it. I knew that next time, in a similar situation, I would probably do exactly the same again.’

‘What did you do then?’ he asked.

‘She said she was hungry. She would take me out for a meal. Her treat. It seemed bizarre. We’d been arguing for more than an hour and she wanted to share a meal with me. I asked her about the appointment at Armstrong House, but she said it didn’t matter. This was more important. We left her car outside my flat and walked through the fairground to that Italian place in Newgate Street.’

‘You were seen,’ he said, ‘ in the fairground. Joss Corkhill saw you. But when he described you I thought he was talking about someone else. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t recognise you. Then I realised that senior social workers don’t often work directly with clients. That’s how I knew.’