Peter Turnbull - Aftermath

‘So he was well inside the estate grounds?’

‘Yes, well inside, a definite trespasser.’

‘I see. . and appreciate it’s going back ten years now. . but was there any direction to his interest?’

‘Seemed to me that he was going towards the house, he was in no hurry but he was making for the house.’

‘All right,’ again Yellich paused, ‘and you know of no employee of Mr Housecarl who lives in York. . Driffield?’

‘No, but we all know people outside the village. I know my son who lives in York, like I just told you, and also another elderly couple, but just on Christmas card terms, that would most likely be the case for all the villagers. One would tell someone about Bromyards and he would tell someone else, the news would get out. . not just to York or Driffield but to all the neighbouring villages as well.’

‘Yes, it’s the sort of news that would travel.’

‘And it did travel. We got boys coming to try their hand at poaching the grounds, till our village boys put them right about just who owns Bromyards. . from a poaching point of view that is.’

‘So, a tall man in his fifties knew about the abandoning of the grounds but also about there not being an imminent sale of the property,’ Yellich pondered aloud.

‘Possibly. . just the ideal sort of place to hide a few bodies, but that is for you to say, I’m a retired gardener not a retired copper. . but if I were to hide a body or a couple of bodies, I would go as near the house as possible and the kitchen garden would be ideal.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, the poachers didn’t go near the house out of respect for Mr Housecarl, they didn’t want to alarm him by firing shotguns under his window. It seemed like there was an agreed “no man’s land”, a zone round the house about a quarter of a mile wide, no one poached inside that zone.’

‘So no poacher would go near the house, let alone into the kitchen gardens?’

‘That’s right. Ideal place to hide a body or two, but they’d be found eventually. . had to be. . once Mr Housecarl died, they’d be found.’

‘As you say. Can you describe the man you saw?’

‘Not in any detail, I was three hundred yards away, but tall, like I said.’

‘Beard, spectacles?’

‘No to both. . clean shaven, no spectacles. Well built. . muscular rather than overweight, as I recall. Important that you remember we are going back ten years, so can’t be sure how accurate the description I give is.’

‘Understood.’

Tang Hall Housing Estate, York YO11, was a development of medium rise slab-sided buildings in the tenement-style favoured in Scotland and Europe; an area where old cars were parked in the street and powerful motorbikes were chained to lamp posts, and the Pike and Heron public house, in the centre of the estate, was the only hostelry. The Pike and Heron was rough on the outside and rougher on the inside. It was brick built in an angular, flat-roofed-style and was known locally as ‘The Fortress’. Inside ‘The Fortress’ Carmen Pharoah and Thomson Ventnor sat opposite Piers Driver. The hum of conversation that had ceased when Pharoah and Ventor entered had, by then, resumed at a lower volume, but the two officers continued to invite hostile looks.

‘You’re quite happy to be seen talking to the likes of little us in here?’ Ventnor asked in a hushed tone. ‘We could arrest you and take you in for questioning if that would look better.’

‘We need information,’ Pharoah added, ‘so the last thing we want to do is make things difficult for you. People seen talking to cops on this estate have been known to wake up in hospital.’

‘That depends on who you talk to and what you say,’ Driver growled. ‘It’s OK; they know I won’t be grassing anybody up.’ Driver was a tall man, as Susan Boyd had described. He had a hard, lined face, short black hair, tattoos on his neck and hands. He sat in front of a half-consumed glass of lager which stood on a circular table that was sticky with spilled alcohol. ‘But they’ll still want to know what you wanted. It’ll be about Veronica.’

‘Yes,’ Carmen Pharoah said, ‘yes, it is. We understand that you knew her. . Veronica Goodwin of Cemetery Road. . that Veronica. . just to be certain we are talking about the same person.’

‘Yes, I meant her. She’s been found.’ Driver nodded to the television set perched high on the wall in a corner of the room, which at that moment was showing motor racing with the sound turned down. ‘I watched it on the news. . at home there’s a lot of coverage, can’t miss it. . not here; here it’s always sports, always with the sound turned down, unless it’s an important football match or something like that.’

‘Yes, she was found along with a few other women.’

‘I saw that too. . chained together but died at different times. . that is weird.’

‘But you knew her?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were prosecuted for assaulting her.’

‘No, I wasn’t. You should check more thoroughly. Yes, I have previous for assault but not against her, I was too fly.’ Driver grinned at Ventnor and withdrew his attention from Carmen Pharoah.

‘It has been said that you were quite free with your fists.’

Driver leered. His flesh seemed to the officers to be ingrained with dirt, he wore a baggy tee shirt which also seemed in need of a wash, as did his jeans which were sufficiently faded that they were nearer white in colour than their original blue. His feet were encased in torn red and yellow sports shoes. His nicotine-stained fingers spoke of heavy smoking and his missing front teeth and heavily scarred left jaw line spoke of street violence. ‘It was for her own good.’

‘And where have I heard that before?’ Carmen Pharoah said quietly and wearily.

Driver glared angrily at her once and then forgot her again. His attitude said that he was a man who did not like women in general and he particularly did not like Afro-Caribbean women, and very especially did not like them if they were police officers. ‘It was though, for her own good I mean.’ He gasped and Ventnor received a blast of alcohol laden breath mixed with halitosis.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that she had a problem.’

‘A problem?’

Driver flicked his index finger at the glass of lager so that the nail struck it causing a soft ‘ping’. ‘A problem with this.’ Driver shrugged. ‘All right, so I take a drink when I can afford it. . but with her it was a problem, a real problem.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, a very serious problem. You’ve visited her mother in Cemetery Road?’

‘Yes, of course, but she didn’t mention anything about a problem with the booze.’

‘She wouldn’t. I mean, she wouldn’t would she, even if it meant finding her killer? She. . Veronica. . she was her only daughter. In her eyes she was little Miss Perfect, even if she is just kidding herself on, just to keep the memory of Veronica that she wants to keep, not the memory of who she actually was. But take it from me, pal, she had a problem. She hid it quite well but she had a problem that she could not hide forever. You know, some of the people all of the time. . and all the people some of the time. . but she couldn’t hide it from all of the people all of the time, though she tried to.’

‘Secret drinking?’

Driver nodded. ‘Voddy. . she was one for the vodka. It suited her if she was hiding it from herself as much as other people.’

‘No hangover, you mean,’ Ventnor suggested. ‘Is that what you mean?’

‘That’s it. Spend the evening drinking red wine or stout and in the morning you feel like your head is being crushed by a steamroller, but spend the night on vodka, you wake up the following morning feeling like you had a dry night. She could get up for work each day you see, and, if she stayed in in the evening, she’d have a bottle in her room and hide the smell on her breath with toothpaste so her old mother never cottoned on, or if she did, she ignored it.’