Free Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher by Ann Cleeves Page B

clear-sighted. Sally was a good officer but she needed to learn patience. Which she would be doing sitting in this tiny house with nothing to do but listen.
    ‘How’s it going?’ he asked in a whisper. They were standing very close together in the narrow hall.
    ‘The women are in the living room. Mr Howe’s upstairs. He said he wanted to be on his own.’
    ‘Distressed?’
    ‘Not outwardly. He was all set to go to work this morning until I persuaded him it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. More puzzled. As if he can’t get his head around the idea that his wife’s dead.’
    ‘And the women?’
    ‘Shocked I suppose. No tears. Not while I’m there at least. They don’t talk. Not to each other or to me.’ She was disappointed. She had hoped to have something for him and felt she had failed.
    ‘Time enough for that.’ But he was disappointed, too.
    ‘Do you want to come through?’
    ‘I’ll see Mr Howe first. Don’t announce me. I’ll go on up.’
    He found Bernard Howe in a room at the front of the house. Although it was clearly the biggest bedroom most of the space was taken by a high double bed, spread with a blue candlewick quilt. There was a wardrobe but no chest of drawers and clothes were piled untidily on shelves which covered one wall. The shelves also held books and the equipment for Uncle Bernie’s magic act. There were strings of brightly coloured ribbons, chiffon scarves, wooden boxes. A cup hook had been fixed to the highest shelf and hanging from it, by its neck, was a ventriloquist’s dummy. The latex head was egg shaped, bald at the top with long wispy strands of hair at the back and the sides. It looked remarkably like Mr Howe, a mirror image of the man who sat on the bed, playing with a pack of cards, shuffling and twisting them with supple fat fingers.
    ‘Practising?’ Ramsay asked.
    Bernard Howe looked up, startled. He had not heard the footsteps on the stairs.
    ‘I find it very relaxing,’ he said. ‘ The doctor wanted to give me tranquillizers, but Kath wouldn’t have approved of that.’
    ‘Wouldn’t she?’
    ‘No. She was a strong woman. She didn’t like props of any sort.’ He set down the cards and gave both hands a little flick so the cuffs of the shirt and the cardigan he was wearing settled back over his wrists.
    ‘Who are you?’ he asked. It was a direct, childlike question which Ramsay found unnerving.
    ‘Stephen Ramsay. I’m a detective inspector. In charge of the case.’
    ‘There is a case then? She didn’t just fall? No one’s said. Not really. I mean perhaps Miss Wedderburn explained but I didn’t take it in.’
    ‘We weren’t sure until this morning. But she didn’t just fall. She was stabbed.’
    ‘Ah.’ All his reactions seemed very slow. Ramsay thought they would have made an odd couple: Kathleen with her principles, her tense and purposeful marching, and Bernard. He groped for a word to describe Bernard and came up with simple. Not in the sense of unintelligent because it was clear he held down a reasonable job, but uncomplicated, easily satisfied.
    ‘How long have you been married?’ Ramsay asked. He took a seat beside Bernard on the bed.
    ‘Nearly seventeen years.’ He had not had to think about it. ‘We both worked in the same office. Clerical officers with the Civil Service. And then we got married.’ He still seemed mildly surprised at that as if he had woken one morning to discover he had a wife. He turned to face Ramsay. ‘She took me on,’ he said.
    ‘And you’re still doing the same job?’
    ‘More or less. It’s not the same. It was all paper then. Now it’s computers. I quite liked computers once I got into them.’ And Ramsay could see that he would. He would enjoy the clear instructions, the simple rules. He would get lost in the patterns.
    ‘I haven’t progressed much in the organization.’ Bernard smiled sadly. ‘ Not management material I see that. Kath would have been better at it than me – much more