Healers by Ann Cleeves

Author:Ann Cleeves [Cleeves, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural, Police, England, Detective and mystery stories, Ramsay; Stephen (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780449149447
Google: zRAMAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0449149447
Publisher: Fawcett
Published: 1994-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

And at least Sal has a modicum of tact and discretion, he thought, but did not say.

“Yeah,” Hunter said, trying not to show how pleased he was, trying to sound as if it were a chore he could do without. “Yeah. All right.”

After Hunter had gone Ramsay sat in the incident room and took out the file he was compiling on Faye Cooper. In a corner a DC was stabbing inexpertly at a typewriter. Otherwise the room was empty and still. Ramsay re-read all the information and tried to form a picture of the girl. He wished he had a photograph. Beside the original police report into the accident at Juniper Hall and the coroner’s statement, he had obtained records from her high school. What occurred to him most was that she had been abandoned by all the adults who had been responsible for her. It was clear that there had been no contact with her parents once she left home, and the staff at the college seemed to have been unconcerned about the way she lived. Perhaps they did not know. Or did not care. Val McDougal would have cared, he thought. She would have had the girl back to her home for meals, kept an eye on her. But once the romance between Faye and James was over, what would have happened to her then? He was becoming fascinated by her.

His teenage years had been stifling. Every move had been monitored by an over-protective mother and an extended family of aunts and cousins with nothing better to do than look out for his welfare. He tried to imagine what it must have been like to be left so completely alone. Exhilarating perhaps, but terrifying. He found himself groping towards an explanation for Faye’s attraction to the people at the Old Chapel. She wouldn’t be turned on by traditional religion. That would seem staid and irrelevant. But the philosophy of Daniel and Win with their close family life, Magda’s evangelical zeal, her charisma, would be more exciting. Belonging to that community of believers would give Faye a meaning to her life and the same sense of comfort as belonging to a church.

It occurred to him that Lily Jackman might have had the same sort of rootless past. More affluent, he thought, but similarly insecure, attracted to the group at the Old Chapel for the same reasons. He wondered what else the two girls might have had in common.

Chapter Nineteen

Faye Cooper’s mother lived in a row of terraced houses which ran steeply towards the river Tyne. Her name after her marriage was Irving. Sally Wedderburn, who had done her homework and was as determined as Hunter to make her mark on the case, called her Joan.

“Just a few words, Joan,” she said as they stood on the doorstep trying to persuade the woman to let them in. “We won’t take up much of your time.”

Hunter looked down to the Tyne, to a dredger moving slowly up the river. Two lads, sitting on the pavement with their feet in the gutter, stared back.

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