Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher by Ann Cleeves Page A

consensus.
    ‘We didn’t see her. But we mightn’t have. It was drizzly and misty. Like today only worse. And it was sodding cold. You couldn’t see much. Especially when it started to get dark.’
    Ramsay imagined them, banned from their homes by the men who wanted to watch Grandstand in peace, hovering round the gate of the Coastguard House, attracted by the noise and the flash cars. Being a nuisance. Getting in the way. If they were noticed at all.
    ‘So you didn’t see anything unusual?’
    But by then they’d lost interest and they were already swaggering away, back to the jetty, to swing on the blue and white tape and shout insults at the constable on duty.
    Ramsay walked up the hill to the Coastguard House.

Chapter Eight
    Claire didn’t turn up for work at the Coastguard House on Monday morning. Emma hadn’t really been expecting her to. She’d heard about Kathleen Howe’s death from Brian who’d gone down to the club for a pint after his Sunday lunch and found the jetty cordoned off, the place crawling with coastguards and police.
    ‘What a terrible accident!’ Emma had said, meaning it at first and only thinking of the implication later. Then there was a feeling which was not so much relief as gratitude.
    ‘Not an accident.’ Brian’s words were slightly slurred. The club might have been shut but he’d had a few cans at home and most of a bottle of Rioja with his roast beef. ‘That’s what the talk is. The lass spoke to the blokes who fished her out.’
    She hadn’t replied. Couldn’t. She would have expected Brian to go on about the tragedy all afternoon, making sick jokes, even phoning his friends to tell them. Luckily he never mentioned it again.
    When the doorbell rang late on Monday morning Emma hoped that it would be Claire, deciding that she would be happier at work after all. Claire would know what was going on.
    But Claire would have gone round to the back and let herself in. Instead there was a man who waited patiently while Emma unlocked the door and tugged at it. It always warped in the damp.
    ‘Yes?’ she said briskly. She tended to become officious when she was nervous.
    ‘Mrs Coulthard?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘My name’s Ramsay. I’m a detective inspector with Northumbria Police.’ He paused. ‘It’s about Mrs Howe.’
    Ramsay was a man who wouldn’t be easily fooled. Emma saw that at once. Before the babies she’d headed up the Human Resources Department of an electronics firm which had moved to Wallsend and she’d worked with men of authority. She’d admired them. Not the bullies, the pushy, lippy little men – they almost always were men – who blustered and posed and did sod all work if they could help it. But the one or two decent managers who meant what they said. Always.
    He was not particularly impressive to look at. About her age. Possibly a bit older. Tall, bony and angular with long limbs like a marionette. Dark hair which could do with a cut. She was too nervous to focus on his face but she saw dark eyebrows almost meeting in the middle which left the impression of a continual frown. He was wearing a raincoat. It was too big for him and hung over the shoulders, dragged out of shape by the weight of the material so it looked like a cavalry officer’s cape.
    ‘Claire’s not here today,’ Emma said quickly. ‘I don’t expect she could face it.’
    ‘She hasn’t been in touch?’
    ‘They haven’t got a phone. She’d know I’d understand.’
    ‘Of course.’ Ramsay paused so long that Emma wondered if that was it, if now he would turn away and walk down the hill to Cotter’s Row.
    ‘It was really you I wanted to talk to,’ he said at last. ‘ You or your husband. Perhaps I could come in. If it’s convenient.’
    ‘The children are here.’
    ‘Oh, I won’t need to disturb them.’
    ‘But they might disturb us. That’s what I’m saying.’
    He smiled. ‘We won’t mind that, will we?’
    So she had no alternative then but to stand aside and