Ramsay 04 - Killjoy Read Online Free

garden and dripping trees. This time Ramsay answered.
    ‘It’s the Grace Darling Arts Centre,’ he said. Diana, his ex-wife, had brought him to the Grace Darling when she was trying to educate him, to see experimental theatre groups and exhibitions by obscure local artists. He had no positive memories of these experiences but remembered what Diana had told him about the place. ‘It was a big private house. The old lady who lived here left it in her will to the community to be used as a centre for encouraging the arts. She came from Bamburgh originally and stipulated the name. Eventually the trustees bought up the house next door and extended it.’ He stopped, knowing that Hunter hated to be lectured and saw that his attention was already wandering. He was staring at the body.
    ‘I think I may have seen her around,’ Hunter said. ‘In Otterbridge. In that new night club on the market square. She was a cracker. You couldn’t help noticing her.’ He paused and Ramsay thought he might express some grief, a reflection on the waste of a young life, but he continued cheerfully, ‘I offered to buy her a drink once but it didn’t do me any good. She could have had any bloke in the place.’ He swung round and faced the uniformed constable. ‘Who found the body, then?’
    ‘A mother and daughter,’ the man said. ‘But it’s not their car. Apparently the owner gave them his keys to fetch something from the boot.’
    ‘Where is the owner of the car now?’ Ramsay asked.
    ‘In the Centre with the other witnesses. We’ve got the names and addresses of the people who were here when we arrived but we’ve let most of them go home. There weren’t that many—mostly kids from the Youth Theatre hanging around the cafeteria. Apparently it was very busy earlier on but most people went at about nine. The only people left now are some security and domestic staff, Gus Lynch the director, who owns the car, and the two women who found the body.’
    ‘We’ll need an appeal on local radio tomorrow morning asking everyone who used the Centre today to come forward,’ Ramsay said, thinking out loud. ‘Then we’ll need more men to take statements.’
    ‘You won’t be popular,’ Hunter said, grinning, thinking again about overtime. ‘I hear they’ve already exceeded their budget.’
    Ramsay turned away and muttered under his breath. This would be hard enough—working on an unfamiliar patch—without the political pressure of keeping costs down. Perhaps over-work wasn’t the only reason why his North Tyneside colleagues had handed the case to an outsider. He shivered, feeling suddenly very cold. The mist was thinning again and above the grey slate roof of the Grace Darling appeared a small sharp-edged moon. In the distance they heard the wailing siren of a police car or fire engine, the sign, perhaps, of more disturbance.
    ‘Come on,’ Ramsay said. ‘Let’s go in and see what they’ve got to say for themselves.’ Then, with an optimism he did not feel, ‘This might be a straightforward one. Perhaps we’ll have it all wrapped up by morning.’
    The sound of the siren came closer.
    In the lobby of the centre many of the original features of the old house remained. There was wood panelling, a huge portrait of a stern Victorian, a chintz-covered sofa. How did they survive, Ramsay wondered, these remnants of gracious living, without being stolen or vandalized?
    Joe Fenwick recognized the men as police as soon as they came in. Until he was fifty he had worked as a bouncer for one of the roughest clubs in Newcastle. He was a squat tub of a man, known to his opponents in the ring as Popeye, because of his protruding head and his ability to find sudden bursts of strength from nowhere. He had retired from boxing thirty years ago and still missed the excitement. The work at the Grace Darling was steady, without the aggravation of the club, but he found himself perpetually bored. The murder had lifted his spirits considerably. He