Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher by Ann Cleeves

transit van with a noisy exhaust rattled to a stop beside the group. On the side ERIC WILSON MOBILE SHOP was painted in uneven white letters. This was the excuse for the gathering, though Ramsay thought that on normal Mondays it would be the women who’d be waiting. Perhaps the men had persuaded them it wouldn’t be safe to be out.
    Eric Wilson jumped out and opened the back doors of the van. Apparently from nowhere a group of children came running down the road. They pushed to the front of the queue and began pointing at the trays of improbably coloured sweets and chews which the shopkeeper stored sensibly out of their reach. The men muttered disapproval but did not try to stop them. It was as if they were scared to. These were the children who had been throwing stones at Kath Howe’s body.
    Ramsay waited until they had been served then made his way towards them. They munched silently, surrounded by a scattering of dropped sweet wrappers. In other circumstances he would have ordered them to collect the litter, but he resisted the temptation and said mildly, ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’
    They grinned as if they had caught him out.
    ‘Na. Half term, isn’t it?’
    It was only later that he realized he’d seen the school-crossing lady in Heppleburn Village. A sudden death on the Headland had been too much for them to resist.
    ‘Were you playing round here on Saturday?’
    ‘We might have been here.’ As if playing wasn’t a concept they recognized.
    ‘I need your help.’ He began walking away from the men buying bags of potatoes and tins of beans. The children followed. When they could not be overheard he said, ‘It’s a murder inquiry.’
    That had them hooked. They wanted to know if Mrs Howe had been shot, stabbed or had her head cut off. They acted out scenes from particularly nasty videos and pretended to be carrying automatic machine guns. Every other word was an obscenity. Ramsay felt out of his depth. He’d been imagining the Gorbals Diehards not these manic addicts of celluloid pornography.
    ‘Was it a serial killer?’ one of them asked. ‘Was it?’
    ‘No!’ he said, more sharply than he’d intended. ‘And if you’re going to be stupid I’ll ask someone else to help.’
    Then they calmed down because above everything else they were bored.
    ‘What time were you here on Saturday?’ he asked.
    They looked confused. They didn’t own a watch between them.
    ‘Before tea or after tea?’
    Again that had little meaning. They seemed to eat continually when they weren’t at school, scrounging crisps and biscuits from whichever mother they could con into providing them.
    ‘What was on the television before you went out?’
    ‘ Live and Kicking . When that was finished there was only the sport.’
    ‘And what was on when you went back in?’
    ‘ Baywatch ’. It was the oldest boy. He gave a lecherous smirk. ‘My dad always watches that.’
    ‘So you were out all afternoon?’
    They nodded.
    ‘Where did you go? Were you down by the jetty?’
    ‘Earlier on.’
    ‘Did you see anything?’
    ‘The murder, you mean? Na.’ He shook his head, disappointed, then gave a blood-curdling scream, an imitation presumably of a woman being stabbed. ‘Later we hung around the Coastguard House. There was something going on. Loads of big cars.’
    ‘It was a birthday party,’ one of the younger boys said almost wistfully, then added, ‘Not that we’d have wanted to go.’
    ‘Na!’ they all joined in.
    ‘Did you see Mrs Howe that afternoon? You would all recognize Mrs Howe if you saw her?’
    ‘Course we would. She was an ugly bitch. And a stuck-up cow.’ A pause. ‘ That’s what my mam says.’
    ‘Did you see her on Saturday afternoon? At the jetty?’
    They shook their heads, quite certain.
    ‘What about later? You’d have had a good view down the Headland from the Coastguard House.’
    They looked at each other. Ramsay thought they were taking the question seriously, trying to reach a