Ramsay 04 - Killjoy by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online

politicians and the media said, joy-riding wasn’t an invention of the nineties. Since the invention of the motor car there had always been foolish young men who drove too fast.
    ‘We won’t keep you,’ he said to Ellen. ‘If you wait in the lobby I’ll arrange for someone to give you a lift home. My sergeant will come with you and make sure we have your details.’
    He was left alone then, in the cold impersonal room, with Prue Bennett and her daughter. He wanted to say something which would establish some real contact between them, to ask about Prue’s parents, to tell her about Diana and the divorce. But Prue had taken his last words as a general dismissal. She helped Anna to her feet and left the room without a word.

Chapter Four
    When John Powell arrived home the house was empty. It occurred to him briefly that his mother was out a lot lately, but with the self-absorption of youth he only considered her absence as an effect on his own convenience. He had not eaten since lunch time and he was hungry. He was worried that the house might be cold.
    The house was modern, detached, built at the end of a light-bulb-shaped close on a new housing estate. John hated it. His friends at the sixth-form college mocked him for living on the smart new estate. Most of them lived on the Starling Farm or in the terraced houses which spread from Hallowgate Front Street to the river. Some allotments and an adventure playground had been flattened to allow the new houses to be built—the council, poll-tax capped and almost insolvent, had reluctantly sold the land for private development—and feelings in the area had been high. There had been demonstrations and petitions.
    Evan Powell had insisted on the move from the three-storeyed terrace house where John had spent his childhood. That part of Hallowgate wasn’t a good area to bring up a teenager, he said. There were too many distractions, too many temptations, the wrong sort of influence altogether. The new estate, called by the developers Barton Hill, would attract a different class of family. John would meet new friends, find new interests. And the move would be good for Jackie too. It would give her something to do, planning the decoration and the furniture. They could afford it after all since he had got his promotion.
    As John approached the mock-Georgian front door the security light was switched on automatically. The white light threw a shadow behind him and made him blink. Its brightness still surprised him. He unlocked the door and went immediately to the downstairs cloakroom to switch off the burglar alarm. Bloody security, he thought. His father was obsessed with it. What have we got that’s worth stealing anyway? It’ll all be insured.
    He threw his coat and bag on to the floor at the bottom of the stairs and prowled through to the kitchen looking for food. The house was, as always, immaculately tidy. The thick-pile carpet in the living room still lay in strips where it had been hoovered, like a closely mown cricket field, the glass-topped coffee-tables gleamed, the Dralon-covered sofa stood square to the wall. He thought again about his mother and wondered how she stood it on Barton Hill. At least in the old street there had been a bit of life and bustle. This was like a grave. And she wasn’t dumb. She had been training to be a teacher when Evan Powell, fresh from the valleys, had exerted his Celtic charm and swept her off her feet. So how did she put up with the tedium of housework? Her only social life seemed to consist of charity coffee mornings and parties organised in neighbours’ houses to sell imitation perfume. Soon he would be going away to college and then there would not even be his mess to clear away.
    In the kitchen there was a note on the table and a meal for him to microwave. He studied the note with more interest than usual, hoping that his mother had found something more challenging to do with her time. But it said only: Babysitting at