A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (7 page)

Hunter was directing his attention to the car, taking care not to touch anything. He took special interest in the back which, because it was an estate, was exposed to view.

‘There’s a rug there,’ he said. ‘Do we know if that was here, in the car already?’

Ramsay shrugged.

‘The keys are still in the ignition,’ Hunter said. He wanted to bring the inspector back to the concrete detail of the investigation. Nowadays crimes were solved by scientists, not by detectives asking endless questions and staring up at the sky. ‘No sign of the diary or the handbag but they might be in the dash.’

But still Ramsay looked down the street vaguely as if somewhere behind the mock-Tudor gables and stained-glass porches he would find inspiration.

‘How far is it to Prior’s Park from here?’ he asked suddenly.

Hunter looked up from the car. ‘The little entrance is just at the end of the street,’ he said. ‘It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk away.’

‘Why here?’ Ramsay demanded. ‘Why leave her car here? In the drive of someone who was known to her? Does that mean the murderer knew them both?’

That too, he thought, must be more than coincidence.

‘Do you think the old boy had anything to do with it?’ Hunter asked. The policeman turned towards the house and caught Tanner’s eye as he was looking out at them. Shamefacedly he let the net curtains drop and moved away from the window.

‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Probably not. If he’d murdered Dorothea Cassidy the last thing he’d do would be to bring her car here.’

He felt suddenly that the solution to the case lay with Dorothea Cassidy herself. This wasn’t a random attack on a pretty young woman in a park. It was more complicated, more purposeful than that. He felt that in the discussion with Walter Tanner he had lost the clear image of the woman he had seen in the photographs. Tanner had disliked her and been frightened by her enthusiasm. Through his eyes the picture of Dorothea Cassidy had been distorted. In the vicarage Ramsay had felt that he had known her and he wanted to recapture that intimacy. Unconsciously he echoed the reactions of the boy who had found the body: What’s wrong with me, he thought, that I’m attracted to a dead woman?

‘Stay here,’ he said quietly to Hunter. ‘Wait until they come for the car then organise a door-to-door of the street. I’m going to Armstrong House. They’re a nebby lot. They might have seen something.’

Annie Ramsay lived in Armstrong House and Annie Ramsay had known Dorothea well.

Clive Stringer carried the big television from the common room at Armstrong House to the repair van outside. The van’s driver watched the feat of strength with amazement. He was standing on the pavement.

‘Eh,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t shift it. You’re a strong lad.’ He was a kind man and sensed that Clive Stringer received few compliments. The boy stared at him with distrust, his mouth open as if he had never got the hang of breathing through his nose. They were standing at the main entrance to the flats by the busy road and there was a lot of traffic noise.

‘What are you doing working here, then?’ the driver asked. It was more pleasant outside than in his stuffy workshop and the boy’s unnatural strength fascinated him. ‘Odd-job man, is it?’

‘I was sent here,’ Clive Stringer said. ‘Community service for stealing cars.’

His voice was jerky and excitable and the driver felt a shudder of revulsion. He’s one of those, he thought. Mental. His lift doesn’t go all the way to the top. The boy came closer to him and reached out to touch his arm. Still smiling and nodding, the man quickly climbed into his van. He drove away without saying anything more and Clive was left standing awkwardly in front of the flats, stammering, as if he had something important to say if only the man had waited long enough to listen.

Clive walked furtively around the flats towards the back entrance. From there he could see Dorothea Cassidy’s car and he stood, staring at it, waiting for something to happen. When Walter Tanner emerged on the doorstep, calling out for Dorothea, he felt a desire to giggle but he controlled himself. He thought that anyway there wasn’t much to laugh about.

Clive knew he was in trouble. For as long as he could remember he had been in the sort of trouble that came from not understanding what was expected of him, from being different and awkward. It had been a vague unease, an awareness of unsuspected perils, that he had learned to cope with. But this was different. He knew quite definitely that he had done something wrong and that there was not one person he could talk to who had the power to put it right.

I’ll have to tell someone, he thought, as he moved guiltily from the pavement into the cool of the building, but there was no one to confide in. His mother would not know what to do. He had tried relying on her and she had always let him down. Besides, now she could think of nothing else but the baby. Joss, his mother’s boyfriend, was friendly enough when he was sober, but Clive never knew what to make of him, knew only that he could not be trusted. Those in authority over him – his probation officer, his social worker, the warden of Armstrong House – all had the power to put him in prison. They had made that quite clear on a number of occasions. This is your last chance, lad, they had said. Screw this up and you’ll be away. For a long time. They had frightened him with their descriptions of the youth custody establishment and he knew they were all on the same side as the police. There had been times of crisis before, but then he had turned to Dorothea Cassidy, seeking her out in the vicarage, lurking in the street until she came out. Now he knew that was impossible and Dorothea Cassidy would never help him again.

Emily Bowman sat by the window of her flat and looked out with irritation at Clive Stringer. What was the boy doing, loitering on the pavement with that vacant look on his face? Really, they paid enough rent for the flats in Armstrong House to be entitled to staff with at least a modicum of intelligence. She sat back on the chair and felt the sting of burned skin on her shoulder as it touched the cushion. Her irritation was the result of her tiredness and the late arrival of the ambulance. Clive Stringer had his uses and he had always been an easy target for her annoyance.

Emily Bowman was tempted for a moment to ring for the warden to ask if there was any news of the ambulance but she knew it would be futile. There would be no news. She would have liked some tea, weak and fragrant with a sugary biscuit, but had no energy to get up and make her way to the kitchen. She looked around the room with a detached and calculating eye. Her furniture was solid, of good quality. She had chosen it herself. Her husband had been a decent man, but had a taste for the vulgar and she had allowed him to take no decisions about the house. She moved in the chair and tried to make herself more comfortable as she dreamed of the old life, before Arthur died. They had lived in a bungalow in the best part of town. Arthur had never been promoted in the bank as she had hoped he might be, but he had given her security, a certain position. She had been chair of the Townswomen’s Guild for three years before she moved to Armstrong House. She closed her eyes and dozed, listening all the time for the ambulance, becoming slowly and more uncomfortably aware that she needed the lavatory.

I was strong then, she thought. Independent. Just like Dorothea Cassidy. I never thought it would come to this.

For five weeks Emily Bowman had spent every weekday morning in this state of anxious anticipation. By Fridays she was exhausted. First there was the wait for the ambulance which was supposed to arrive at nine and was always late. Eventually it would come and the warden would help her outside, grasping her arm and patting her hand as if she needed reassurance when all she wanted was for the ordeal to be over. Then there was the bumpy and interminable drive round country lanes and suburban side streets while other patients were collected, the traffic jams at the lights on the Town Moor, the painfully slow crawl past badly parked cars in the hospital complex.

The arrival of the ambulance at the Radiotherapy Centre at Newcastle General Hospital was only the beginning of the waiting. As soon as she got to the centre she would go as fast as she could to the ladies’ cloakroom to remove the undergarments of which the radiographers disapproved so strongly. ‘Wear loose clothes, Mrs Bowman,’ they would say. ‘You’ll be much more comfy without a bra. Look at the state of your skin. Have you used the powder regularly?’ Mrs Bowman did not tell them that the smell of the talcum powder they had given her to put on the affected area made her feel sick, or that she would
never
consider going without a bra, so the daily deception became necessary.

She would emerge from the toilet with her bra and vest in her handbag, like a naughty schoolgirl, mildly triumphant that she had not been caught, only to find that there was no need for the rush. There was always a different excuse for the delay. They said that the machine had been switched off for maintenance or that they were short-staffed. Everyone else seemed to take the waiting in their stride, even to enjoy the opportunity to compare the hours of travelling and side effects, while they drank the dreadful WRVS tea. Emily hated it.

From the large waiting room with its pitiful attempts at homeliness – flower-patterned wallpaper, curtains, easy chairs – she was summoned eventually to a bench in the corridor. Here at least there was something to look at. She could see into the control room where radiographers in white uniforms were working the x-ray machines. One of the most complicated pieces of machinery had a brass plaque attached to it, saying that it had been bought by the Chester-Le-Street Ladies Circle. Why didn’t they mind their own business, Emily sometimes thought bitterly, the ladies of Chester-Le-Street? If it weren’t for their generosity perhaps I wouldn’t have to put up with this nonsense. Then she would be called in by one of the radiographers who had the professional cheerfulness of a nursery nurse.

‘Mrs Bowman,’ she would say. ‘ Strip to the waist, please.’

As if I don’t know that I have to take my clothes off, she thought, after a month of this. But she would go in meekly and suffer the indignity of being positioned on the table – sometimes by a man – and the lonely strangeness of the x-ray treatment itself which lasted only a matter of minutes.

Then there was always the wait for the ambulance to take her home.

A young woman doctor had broken the news to her that she had cancer. She had been very gentle, very sympathetic.

‘Sit down, Mrs Bowman,’ she had said. ‘Don’t hold in your feelings. Cry if you want to. It’s bound to be a shock.’

But Mrs Bowman had not felt like crying. The first sensation had been of exhilaration. This is it then, she had thought. It’s all over but I’ve had a good life. She had one son, but for years he had lived in New Zealand. No one would miss her. She had never been one for taking risks and this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. There was something dramatic about being incurably ill and she had expected a sudden change in her condition, then the final adventure of death. She had not expected the fuss, the tedium and the discomfort of this treatment. It seemed to her a complete waste of time. Even the young doctor had the decency to admit that it had little chance of succeeding. Yet there seemed no way of stopping the process. Emily felt powerless in front of their misguided humanity, their determination to do all they could to save her.

Stop! she wanted to say as she lay on the table and the machine above her head clicked and buzzed. Leave me alone. Really. I’ve had a good life and I’m ready to go now.

But she was so worn down by the waiting and the WRVS tea that when she finally got to the treatment room she did not have the courage or the energy to say anything.

She must have fallen asleep in her chair by the window and she woke quite suddenly, shivering, knowing that she had had a bad dream but was unable to remember it. The sun was full on her face and very hot. The skin on her shoulder was burning.

‘Let the air to your body,’ the radiographers would say. ‘ Take your clothes off for at least an hour every day.’

Emily Bowman breathed deeply, still disturbed by the dream, then pursed her lips. If they thought she would sit naked in her flat where any of the other residents might come in and see her they were very much mistaken. Yet she could feel the sun irritating her burnt skin and knew she would have to move. Besides, by now her bladder was full and she needed to go to the bathroom. It was one of her nightmares that she would be forced to ask the ambulance driver to stop on the way to the hospital. She stood up slowly and walked with difficulty to the bathroom. She was on her way back to the chair when Annie Ramsay burst into the room.

‘This is my flat,’ Emily snapped. ‘I’d be grateful if you had the courtesy to knock.’

She flushed with anger and the release of the tension caused by the waiting. One of the compensations of her illness was that she no longer cared what people thought of her. She was excused rudeness. She could say exactly what she chose.

Annie Ramsay was unperturbed by the hostility. Since Emily’s arrival at Armstrong House she had taken it upon herself to make the woman feel welcome, bringing home-made cakes and invitations to the afternoon bingo sessions with each visit. Emily Bowman had reacted to the attention at first with haughty politeness and later with more direct requests to be left alone. Annie Ramsay seemed not to hear or to understand.

‘It’s no trouble, man,’ she would say, settling into Emily’s only easy chair with her knitting. ‘We’re neighbours and both on our own. It’s a pleasure to have someone to chat to.’

But we have nothing in common, Emily wanted to say. My husband worked in a bank and yours down the pit. You’ve probably never read a book in your life and the very idea of bingo makes me want to scream. But as the cancer and the radiotherapy sapped all her energy she resisted less. She even began to find some relief in Annie Ramsay’s visits. She talked so much that Emily was required to make no contribution to the conversation. There was something relaxing about Annie’s gossip. It was like easy melodic popular music. Her irritability at these regular interruptions had become meaningless and ritual.