Peter Turnbull - Aftermath

‘If we could take the hairbrush with us, that will suffice.’

‘You’ll return it?’

‘Yes, I will personally see that it is returned to you.’

‘I’ll let you have it before you go.’

‘Appreciated. Are you happy for us to proceed on the assumption that the deceased is Veronica?’

‘Yes,’ Philippa Goodwin nodded slowly, ‘I am.’

‘The missing person’s report on Veronica states that she didn’t return from a night out with friends. Can you elaborate on that statement?’

‘Elaborate? Well, I recall the last time I saw her, I remember that day like yesterday. The last time you see someone you love, you never forget it.’

Carmen Pharoah smiled in response. ‘You don’t, do you?’

‘Well. . that day she came home from work. . she was a telephonist. . and she came home from work. . it was a Friday. She looked a picture, even in her frumpy winter clothing she was still radiant. She had little to eat, she didn’t eat enough especially in the winter when we need more food than in the summer, but like all young women she was figure conscious, continually weighing herself, but she was not anorexic, I saw to that. That is something else you see in A and E, young women, girls even, who have collapsed in the street or at work or at school and when you peel off their clothes for the initial examination, you find that they are nothing but a skeleton covered in skin, but Veronica was not even close to that stage. I can be a bit ferocious when I have to be and if she didn’t eat at least one substantial meal and two snacks each twenty-four hours, I would get ferocious with her. . and she knew it. So that day she ate, changed into her finery and went out with her friends.’

‘Do you know the names of her friends?’

‘Susan Kent.’

Carmen Pharoah wrote the name in her notebook.

‘Veronica and Susan were very close, as close as sisters. . they were school pals.’

‘What is her address? We’ll have to speak to her.’

‘Her mother lives at the end of the street. . that way.’ Philippa Goodwin pointed to the left-hand side of her house, as viewed from the outside. ‘You know, I don’t know the number but it has a loud. . a very attractive red door.’

‘Loud?’ Carmen Pharoah queried.

‘As in colour, a “loud” colour, a colour which leaps out at you is a “loud” colour. . apparently. That’s something I learned from my husband, Veronica’s father, he was an art teacher but only in his sober moments. So the Kent house has a “loud” red door. . scarlet, fire engine red. You can’t miss it.’ Philippa Goodwin forced a smile. ‘The colour caused comments but they still repaint it every five years. Anyway, Susan said that she last saw Veronica waiting for a cab at the rank in the station. It’s a very short journey, walkable, but for a young woman alone on a dark night a taxi is very sensible, and so Susan didn’t worry about her.’

‘Understandable.’

‘But she didn’t return home. I started to worry by about ten a.m the next morning. If she was going to stop out overnight she would have phoned me, but by ten a.m. I had received no phone call so I phoned the police. They were very sympathetic but they told me that they could not take a missing person report until the person concerned had been missing for twenty-four hours.’

‘Yes, that’s the procedure unless it’s a child or young person under the age of sixteen.’

‘They said that as well. So I went to the police station at one a.m., just after midnight, by which time she had been missing for twenty-four hours. . gave all the details, a recent photograph and gave them Sue Kent’s name and address. They agreed to visit Susan.’

‘And they did. The visit was recorded but Susan Kent didn’t, or couldn’t, tell the officer anything that she didn’t tell you. . Veronica was last seen getting into a car, which apparently drew up at the taxi rank as though she and the driver knew each other. . but no details. . dark night, and the other girl Veronica was with was full of booze and couldn’t tell one car from another anyway.’

‘Then nothing until now, but at least I know what happened to her. She was always so sensible, such a sober minded girl, always let me know where she was. So now I know. .’

‘Yes. . we are very sorry. Do you know of anyone who would want to harm her?’

‘I don’t, I’m sorry but Susan Kent might. She’s married now, she’s moved away from home but still in York, though.’

‘We will ask her, we’ll find her easily enough.’

‘Veronica didn’t seem troubled by anything or anyone, just a happy young woman in her early twenties, just watching her weight and bemoaning her height and the scarcity of tall men in York. . that was my Veronica.’

Carmen Pharoah recorded her and Thomson Ventnor’s visit to Philippa Goodwin and added it to the ‘Bromyards Inquiry’ file, and then walked slowly home on the walls, savouring the summer weather, to her new-build flat on Bootham. She changed into casual clothes and, it being too early and too summery to remain indoors, she walked out of the city for one hour and reached the village of Shipton to which she had not travelled before. She found a small village beside the A19 surrounded by rich, flat farmland. Being disinclined to walk back to York, she returned by bus.

She showered upon returning home and ate a ready cooked meal, castigating herself for doing so, and telling herself of the importance of maintaining her cooking skills and that she should be wary of laziness, for laziness, as her grandmother in St Kitts had always told her, ‘is one of the deadly sins, chile’. Later, irritated and unable to concentrate, even on the television programmes, she retired to bed too early and thus fell asleep only to wake up at three a.m. It was then, unable to sleep, alone at night, that the demons came, flying around the inside of her head, taunting and tormenting her. She thought of her blissful marriage and the advice given to her and her husband by her father-in-law, ‘You’re black, you’ve got to be ten times better to be just as good’, and how determined they were to be ten times better, she as one of the very few black women constables in the Metropolitan Police, and he a civilian employee of the same force, as an accountant. Then the dreadful knock on her door, her own inspector, ‘It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have known anything,’ and she was a widow after less than two years of marriage.

It was her fault. For some reason she was to blame and a penalty had to be paid, and so she applied for a transfer to the north of England where it is cold in the winter time, where the people are harder in their attitude and less giving, and are hostile to strangers. . or so she had been told. . and where the people can bear grudges for many, many years, and there she must live until the penalty for surviving, when her husband had not, had been paid in full.

She lay abed listening to the sounds of the night, the trains arriving and departing the railway station, the calm click, click, click of a woman’s high-heeled shoes below her window, which told her all was well, and later, the whine and rattle of the milk float which told her another day had begun.

George Hennessey similarly returned home at the end of that day. He drove to Easingwold with a sense of ‘something big’ being uncovered, that Veronica Goodwin’s and the other four skeletons were not going to be the sum. He drove through the village of Easingwold with the window of his car wound down and enjoyed the breeze playing about his face and right cheek, and as he passed the place he could not help but glance at the exact spot at which Jennifer had fallen all those years ago on a similar summer’s day. He drove out of Easingwold on the Thirsk Road and his heart leapt as he saw a silver BMW parked half-on, half-off the kerb beside his house. He turned into the driveway and heard a dog bark as the tyres of his car crunched the gravel. At the dog’s bark a man in his late twenties appeared at the bottom of the drive, behind a gate designed to keep the dog from wandering into the road. The two men grinned at each other. The younger man returned inside the house as the older man got out of his car and walked to where the first man had stood, so as to give loving attention to the brown mongrel that was turning in circles and wagging its tail.