Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher by Ann Cleeves

toast.’
    Ramsay shook his head. He wondered for a moment if he would be wined and dined.
    ‘I usually buy some sandwiches from the deli in Cradlewell. In weather like this I like to eat them outside. It’s a break from the office. Would you mind talking at the same time?’
    So they walked together down the street. Ramsay noticed that for a man of such heavy build Coulthard had very small feet and a walk that was dainty, almost dancing.
    ‘I usually sit in the cemetery,’ Brian said. ‘ You won’t find that macabre? Of course you won’t mind. Not with a job like yours.’
    It was a large Victorian cemetery, too big to keep tidy. The graves were covered in mounds of dead leaves and overgrown with bramble. Where the grass had been cut close to the paths there were snowdrops and in the tangle of undergrowth an overblown, greenish-white Christmas rose.
    The weather was fine, unusually mild, and other office workers strolled down the wide paths. They found a wooden bench in the sun.
    ‘I didn’t know the woman,’ Brian Coulthard said. ‘I mean, you’ll have gathered what it’s like. I’m rushed off my feet. I’m hardly ever at home.’
    ‘But you would have recognized her.’ Ramsay was sure about that.
    ‘No. I don’t think so. Why should I?’
    ‘She walked everywhere. You must have seen her on the roads round the village, striding out. Usually she has a girl with her.’
    ‘Oh was that her? I have seen them. She always struck me as rather odd.’ He paused. ‘And it was the girl, wasn’t it, who turned up at the party?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Poor child.’
    ‘Did you ever speak to Mrs Howe?’
    ‘No. Never. Though I nearly ran over her once. I’d have spoken to her then if I’d had the chance.’ He bit into a tuna roll, wiped mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief.
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘She ran off the pavement like a lunatic, straight into the path of the car. I remember it because it was the day my daughter was born.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘Last September.’
    It was in September, Ramsay thought, that Mrs Howe last disappeared.
    ‘But I suppose you want to know what I was doing that day.’ Coulthard seemed eager to move the interview on. ‘When she died.’
    ‘Last Saturday. Yes.’
    ‘In the morning I came into work.’
    ‘What time did you leave the Headland?’
    ‘Nine. Nine thirty.’
    ‘Did you see Mrs Howe or her daughter on your way out?’
    He could have done. Marilyn had timed the bus’s arrival at nine forty-five.
    ‘No.’
    ‘You seem very definite.’
    ‘As soon as I heard the woman had been murdered I went over things in my mind. I knew you’d be asking.’
    ‘But you didn’t know then who Mrs Howe was.’
    ‘I didn’t see her on my way out. I know because I didn’t see anyone adult. It had snowed and there were a few kids mucking around on the pavement using a black bin bag as a sledge. That was all.’
    ‘Any strange cars?’
    ‘A very flash Mazda parked outside Kim Houghton’s house. I’d not have left a car like that in Cotter’s Row. But I don’t suppose he had car security on his mind.’
    ‘You know Kim Houghton?’
    ‘Only by reputation. They talk about her in the club.’
    ‘Did anyone phone you at work?’
    ‘At weekends all the phones are switched on to the answering machine. Except my personal line. I had one call on that. Mark Taverner – a friend. He paused. ‘ I put in a few hours then came home for about one. To a madhouse. Emma so wound up you‘d have thought Princess Di was coming for afternoon tea, the kids as high as kites.’ He turned to Ramsay. ‘Have you got children?’
    Ramsay shook his head.
    ‘You won’t understand what it’s like, then. When they get excited they fizz.’ He shook his head and smiled. ‘Like an Alka-Seltzer. It starts off bubbling gently then gets wilder and wilder until it overflows.’
    Ramsay said nothing – he could not imagine Marilyn Howe fizzing, even as a