Peter Turnbull - Deliver Us from Evil

‘I did? I only met you once.’

‘But what a once. . took me to lunch instead of dropping a coin into my plastic cup. I went straight home after that, and that night I combed my hair for the first time in many days. . I mean properly combed it. I even tidied up my little flat. So, thanks, George, I really owe you one. . and you also gave me the confidence to stand up to him. I’ll give evidence this time.’ She paused and looked down at the bed sheets. ‘I imagine you have a lady in your life?’

‘Yes. . yes, I do.’

‘She’s very lucky.’

‘I am very lucky. I know how fortunate I am.’

‘You should marry her.’

‘Perhaps. . one day. . but that’s a joint decision.’

‘Yes, don’t I know it? So you’ll arrest him?’

‘We will. I won’t. . our officers from the Female and Child Abuse Unit will do that.’

‘I see,’ again she paused and looked at the bed sheets, ‘so, my future. .?’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s a university here, isn’t there? In York I mean?’

‘Yes, a very good one.’

‘I’ll apply there. I’ll be a mature student, thirty-seven now, forty or forty-one before I get a degree, which I should have had at twenty or twenty-one, but I fell for the charms of Noel Sigsworth. Imagine swapping a classy sounding name like Pakenham to become Mrs Sigsworth. . what a silly sounding name, but I did it. We made such a handsome couple but I came back from my honeymoon with a bruise the size of a football on my back.’

‘And you remained with him?’

‘Yes, women do. . the apology, the promise it will never happen again. . the remorse. . the charm, and with that comes the feeling that it was somehow my fault all along.’

A silence descended. It was broken by Hennessey who said, ‘Well, we’ll arrest him and this is the first day in the rest of your life.’

Matilda Pakenham smiled. ‘The first day in the rest of my life. . I like that, and you’re right George, it starts fresh from here.’ She bit her lip and looked thoughtful. ‘George, can I ask you something and tell you something?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Have you ever come across a guy, and I mean a criminal, called Malpass? He and his wife, Mr and Mrs Malpass?’

‘The name rings no bells. . criminal or otherwise. Why do you ask?’

‘Because you didn’t meet me when I was at my worst. . I’ve been lower. I once had a bad drink problem.’

‘Oh. . but quite understandable.’

‘The reason I ask is that I met someone at the AA meeting and they invited me to join their private alcoholics club, meeting in cafes just to pass the time to keep each other off the booze. So I went one evening, the Malpasses were there, sort of like Lord and Lady among the alcohol lowlifers with no money. The Malpasses always paid for the coffee and nibbles to eat. They were suave, charming, just like hubby was suave and charming and so I was on my guard with them.’

‘Yes. .’ Hennessey leaned forward slightly.

‘So I went to their meetings a few times. . claimed to be dried out alcoholics but I don’t think they were. They said, “Look at us, we’ve cleaned our act up, so can you.”’

‘I see.’

‘But as I just said, I was suspicious because of my marriage. Anyway, one day they invited me to go with them for a day trip to the coast and when I declined they looked crestfallen. . I mean more than disappointed. . and also they looked angry. Maybe I am being paranoid or maybe it’s women’s intuition but I got the feeling that if I had accepted their offer of a trip to the coast I wouldn’t have come back.’

‘That is interesting,’ Hennessey replied with a serious tone to his voice.

‘I wouldn’t have been missed. I was socially isolated and there was another woman who used to attend and suddenly didn’t any more.’

‘Oh?’

‘And when I asked about her they said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about her, she’ll have moved on. . it happens.’

‘Malpass, you say?’

‘Yes. Ronald and Sylvia Malpass.’

Thomson Ventnor glanced in an interested manner to his left and right as Marianne Auphan drove slowly along Scott Drive, Letitia Heights. He saw small detached houses built with brick up to a height of approximately two feet and thereafter the walls seemed to be made of aluminium sheeting, as were the roofs, and all painted a uniform dull green colour. Each house had a small porch in front of the front door and each porch seemed to him to have a white plastic chair upon it. Any car that was parked in the short driveway of the houses or at the kerb appeared to Ventnor to be elderly and of indifferent value. Again, he noticed that no one was seen in the area, no pedestrian upon the sidewalk, no one addressing garden or home maintenance for example. It seemed the norm to him that no one was ever seen in suburban Barrie, unless they were driving a car or were a bus passenger. ‘Frost. . Kipling. .’ he observed.

‘Yes, the streets round here are all named after poets, not throughout Letitia Heights, just this particular area.’

‘I see.’

‘Well, this is about as bad as Barrie gets,’ Marianne Auphan turned to Ventnor and smiled.

‘Listen, this is not bad at all, you should see parts of York, the places the tourists don’t get to see.’

‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ she turned her head again to look at the road, ‘that would be good.’

‘Same in every town,’ Ventnor observed dryly, ‘always an underbelly.’

‘Dare say. I have ancestors from near London, is that close to York?’

Ventnor smiled. ‘Well, I dare say it’s quite close if you’re in Ontario but Londoners don’t consider themselves close to York and vice versa. It’s about two and a half to three hours by fast train.’

‘Oh. . OK, but that’s close, believe me, that’s close. Here guys do that drive to work and then back again and think nothing of it. Kingston Female Penitentiary, which serves Ontario province, that’s five hundred miles return from Barrie. I can do that journey in a single day.’

Ventnor gasped, ‘That’s not much short of the distance from the north coast of Scotland to the south coast of England. . astounding.’

‘Different world, but we have freeways and drive cars that are built for distance working.’ Marianne Auphan slowed the car to a halt outside a small house with an untidy garden, which was separated from the nearest house by a thick stand of spruce. It was similar to the nearby houses, with a brick built base and thereafter the outside wall and roof were the same sort of dull green painted aluminium sheeting. Marianne Auphan opened the car door and invited Ventnor to accompany her. They walked side by side and in close proximity up the short drive and on to the wooden porch which creaked under their combined weight as soon as they stepped on to it. ‘You’d better let me do the talking.’ Marianne Auphan pressed the electric door buzzer. ‘The English accent could be a barrier, a lot of Irish descendants, a lot of French Canadians, they don’t like the English, already.’

‘Fair enough, whatever you say. Interesting though that you have English ancestry. Myself and Somerled Yellich thought you were French Canadian.’

‘I am,’ Marianne Auphan turned and smiled and looked at Ventnor with dilated pupils, ‘in the main. You see my mother’s relatives came over in the Empress of Ireland . They sailed from Liverpool in the early twentieth century and settled in Vancouver in the west of Canada but she married into a French Canadian family who lived here in Ontario and so I grew up in a large French Canadian family. Only my mother, and her relatives in faraway Vancouver, are my English Canadian connection, so, that’s me, mainly French Canadian but with a little English Canadian in the mix.’