Ramsay 06 - The Baby-Snatcher by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online Page A

not on duty today though. Weekend off.’
    Ramsay thought that crime prevention couldn’t be best served if a gang of bad boys knew the rota of the only local policeman. Then the target the lads had been aiming at drifted into his field of view. A dead animal, he thought at first. Not a dog. Something with long, grey hair floating on the surface like fine seaweed. The position of the animal shifted as it was buffeted by a wave and he saw that it was wearing clothes.
    ‘Do you know where PC Whelan lives?’ he asked.
    ‘Heppleburn Village.’ The answer was grudging but they were bored and curious.
    ‘I suppose that’s too far for you to go on your own.’
    ‘Don’t be dumb!’ They were scornful.
    ‘Would you be able to go and fetch him? Tell him that Inspector Ramsay is on the Headland and needs him urgently. If you can remember that.’
    It was enough of a dare to send them running across the railway line and up the short cut through the dene. That was all Ramsay wanted. To be rid of them before they realized what was floating in the cut. He used his mobile phone to call Otterbridge Station. He talked to Sally Wedderburn.
    ‘You’ll set it all up then. I’ll wait here.’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘And get here as soon as you can, Sal. I’m going to need you.’
    She was ambitious and he heard her resistance.
    ‘For an accidental death?’ The child abductions were far more glamorous.
    ‘For a suspicious death.’ He didn’t want to be on his own when he told Marilyn Howe that her mother was dead.

Chapter Seven
    ‘She was dead before she reached the water.’
    It was Monday morning. Hunter was so excited that he was almost drooling. He stood at the entrance to Ramsay’s office. In the room beyond a phone was ringing. Members of the public were still calling to report the sighting of a single man with a young boy.
    ‘How did she die?’ Ramsay hadn’t waited on the jetty to see the body lifted out of the water. He couldn’t bear the idea of the gang of kids or an excited neighbour telling Marilyn that a woman had been found in the cut. Especially if Marilyn were still alone. Later the doctor had refused to commit himself over the phone.
    ‘She was stabbed. A violent attack, the pathologist said.’
    Ramsay wondered briefly how stabbing could be anything other than violent.
    In fact when he and Sally had arrived at the house at Cotter’s Row, Bernard Howe was already there. He was sitting at the table in the back room, his hair still wet, his face red and blotchy through coming into the heat from the cold. In front of him was a foil container on a plate and he forked an unappetizing ready-cooked shepherd’s pie into his mouth. There was a recent gravy stain on his sweater. Marilyn opened the door to them and it seemed to Ramsay that she had already prepared herself for bad news. It was Bernard who was shocked. He was the one who couldn’t take it in. He sat with his fork halfway to his mouth while the food dripped on to the oilskin tablecloth.
    ‘We’ll need you to identify the body,’ Ramsay had said. ‘ Until then there’s no certainty.’ Although he had seen the long hair as the waves jolted the body towards the rocks and was quite certain.
    But still Bernard Howe had seemed unable to move.
    In his office Ramsay looked up at Hunter who blocked the doorway.
    ‘A full-scale murder inquiry, then,’ he said. ‘As if we haven’t got enough on our plates. You know the ropes.’
    Hunter nodded but remained where he was.
    ‘You knew her, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘The victim?’ He could be as nebby as an old woman, started most of the canteen gossip.
    ‘Not really. I met her once and I’ve seen her around.’
    ‘They’re a funny bunch out on the Headland,’ Hunter said. ‘I went out with a lass from there once. Her dad took me to the club. You’d have thought I was a Martian. No kidding. The place suddenly went quiet and they all stared.’
    ‘They don’t like outsiders?’
    ‘Oh, they’re