Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher (19 page)

He chose a boy to help him, picked him out from the front row.

‘And what’s your name?’

‘Alex.’ He wasn’t the least bit shy.

‘And how old are you, Alex?’

‘I’m six.’

He wore red braces and a blue tie, a miniature merchant banker. His hair was still damp where his mother had slicked it into place. Throughout the show Alex watched every move Bernard made and gasped as each trick was performed. The audience followed his example and gasped and laughed in all the right places. The adults at the back clapped and shouted compliments.

This time the climax of the performance was not the creation of a birthday cake. Bernard had performed that many times before and was bored by it. Instead he reached into his bowler hat and threw handful after handful of sweets into the audience and then scattered, with a sweep of his arm, a cloud of silver stars which floated down on to the upturned faces like snowflakes.

He gave a deep bow and the room erupted into cheers.

He asked Alex if he’d like to help him pack his magic bag.

‘Can I?’

‘Of course.’

The two were left on the stage, forgotten, while the children chased round the room after the sweets he’d thrown. The helpers came out of the cloakroom with armfuls of coats.

‘I’m going to wait outside for my taxi,’ Bernard said. The boy was standing very close to him and he could tell now that the hair was slicked back not with water but a glutinous cream which had a strong and distinctive smell.

‘You can come with me if you like.’

Bernard had already been paid. He supposed he should say goodbye to the women but they seemed busy and Alex was pulling him by the hand through a side door.

‘Here,’ Bernard said. ‘Round the back. This is where it’ll be.’

There was a short, tree-lined path, which led to the street. It was quite dark. The parents collecting their children must be using another entrance. The boy still held his hand. They were close enough to the building to hear laughter, shouting mothers, but here they were alone. It was starting to get cold again. The boy shivered.

Suddenly a door was flung open and from the oblong of light a tiny woman in a short skirt, leather jacket and high-heeled shoes hurtled towards them. She was followed at a more measured pace by the helper in the floral dress.

The stranger grabbed Alex by the arm and pulled him away from Bernard. For a moment she stood with her arms wrapped around the boy. Her chin was bent towards the child’s hair and it occurred to Bernard that at such close quarters the scent of the gel would be overpowering and very unpleasant. She raised her head and said to Bernard. ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’

It was a southern voice, deeper than he had expected, furious.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me. If we hadn’t come out then you’d have had him away.’

‘No,’ Bernard said. ‘Really. No.’

‘You drag him into the dark without telling anyone…’ She turned away from him in disgust and started on the Sunday school teacher. ‘You’re supposed to be looking after them. Not letting them wander off with any pervert who wants to abduct them. I should call the police.’

In the end the woman in the flowery dress who was, it seemed, the minister’s wife, calmed the situation. She explained who Bernard was and they all agreed to put the incident down to a misunderstanding. The taxi pulled up and Bernard was allowed to climb into it. He tried to say goodbye to Alex but the boy wouldn’t look at him. Bernard felt cheated. The day had been so promising and now it was spoiled.

Alex’s mother had a short fuse and soon forgot to be angry. When she got the boy home and he told her again what had happened she saw that no harm had been done. She even, felt a bit sorry for the bastard for laying into him. The look on his face!

The minister’s wife was not able to treat the event so lightly. She thought about it all evening and then, without discussing it with her husband, who tended to think the best of everyone, she phoned the police station.

‘It’s probably nothing,’ she said. ‘If it weren’t for all those other incidents I wouldn’t bother mentioning it.’

Before her marriage she had worked as a psychiatric social worker. She had met sad adults still troubled by unpleasantness in childhood.

To her discomfort the woman on the other end of the line took her seriously and said an officer would be sent that night to take a statement. Then the following day two detectives, a man and a woman, turned up at the manse and she had to explain again, or at least try to, what it was about Bernard Howe which had made her concerned.

‘It wasn’t anything he actually
did
,’ she told Ramsay and Sal Wedderburn. ‘I mean he was very nice. Charming, in fact.’

The house, like the church hall, was new and they sat in a bare living room which still smelled of paint, looking out over an untidy garden. As it was Sunday the minister was busy. She paused. Ramsay looked at Sally, warning her not to speak. In the garden a noisy blackbird was gathering dry grass for a nest. The woman continued.

‘We have a number of elderly spinsters who run the Sunday school, and they fussed over him. They had heard, of course, that his wife had died in tragic circumstances. He played up to them. I thought at first he was just being kind. Most men are embarrassed by the attention.’

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.’

‘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.

‘Mattie came to supper,’ she said. ‘I meant to clear up, then I started reading this play. Have you eaten?’

‘Not much.’ A dubious canteen pie.

‘There’s some salad. Nice cheese.’

She was distracted. He could tell she was still thinking about the play.

‘That’ll be great.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’

She shut the book she’d been reading and gave him her full attention.

‘Don’t be daft. I mean I was half hoping you’d turn up. But I knew you were busy. You will stay?’

He hadn’t intended to. ‘Of course.’

She poured him some wine, fetched a bowl of leftover salad and a lump of Stilton from the fridge.

‘You went to Sheena Taverner’s funeral, didn’t you?’ he asked.

‘So that’s why you’re here!’ It was said with resignation, even humour, not resentment. She was determined not to make demands on him. It helped that she was an actress.

‘No.’ But his acting skills were non-existent.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Did you recognize most of the mourners?’

‘Hardly any of them. The ones I’d come across through Northern Arts. Other writers who’d done stuff for me in Hallowgate. That was all. I suppose the rest were relatives, friends of Mark’s from the high school.’