Peter Turnbull - Aftermath

‘Good idea,’ Hennessey smiled. ‘You’ve just talked yourself into a job.’

‘Now,’ Yellich continued, ‘Mr Sparrow did once see a stranger on the estate, a person he described as a “townie”. He gave a reasonable description but this was ten years ago.’

‘So, at the time of the first disappearance?’

‘Yes, sir. He apparently looked as though he was surveying the estate.’

‘Him,’ Hennessey pointed to Yellich, ‘him we need to identify, if we can.’

‘Yes, sir, if we can. Mr Sparrow also made a valid point, being that the man would have had to know the estate was there, the entrance to the drive isn’t grand, it’s modest, just the beginning of a driveway between two trees, no indication that it’s a mile long and leads to a mansion. You’d drive past it without noticing it. That man must have heard about Mr Housecarl abandoning his estate grounds, that information reached his ears by word of mouth. So he links, albeit vicariously, with someone in the village, whether an employee of Mr Housecarl’s or not.’

‘Yes,’ again Hennessey smiled approvingly at Yellich, ‘it’s a link. Ensure you record that in the file.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Pharoah, Ventnor?’

‘We looked into the first identified victim. . the last of the victims, Veronica Goodwin. I’m afraid we came up with a motiveless murder. Lived with her mother, employed at Gordon and Moxon’s, on thin ice at work because of a drink problem, but we came across no one who would want to harm her and no reason for anyone to harm her. She seems to have been a random victim.’

‘All right. So, Webster, back to you. .’

‘Well, the victims we might have identified, eight of the nine, make a strange picture. . their ages are strange.’ Webster glanced at his notes, ‘Twenty-two years. . thirty-three years. . all right, that is the usual sort of age for a woman to fall victim to a serial killer but then the age of the victims rise up to sixty-three. . highly unusual for female victims.’

‘I’ll say.’ Yellich reclined in his chair.

‘We need to find out more about the victims. Women of that age do not walk about the streets late at night; they are at home with their families.’ Hennessey glanced out of the window of his office at the medieval walls of the city and noticed that they were beginning to crowd with tourists. ‘They will link,’ he said. ‘Somewhere they will have something in common. So. . Ventnor. . you look at Angela Prebble and Paula Rees.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Pharoah.’

‘Sir?’

‘Gladys Penta and Rosemary Arkwright.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Webster. . Helena Tunnicliffe and Roslyn Farmfield.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you’d also better have Denise Clay as well.’

‘Understood, sir.’

‘Review here at nine tomorrow. Sunday working I know, but needs must.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘For myself, I have a summons to see the Commander and then a press conference. I think I know what he wants.’

The man killed James Post by strangling him.

The man knew the other man was not up to it, not up to it at all, too weak, utterly spineless. So, when it was that James Post came running up the drive of the man’s house, his face red with exertion, and panting so desperately that the man considered stepping back and letting the Post’s heart do the job for him. But James Post calmed and sat on the man’s couch, his face getting progressively paler as his breathing eased and he became a small man. . worried. . scared. . a man who was childlike in his fear, so the other man, the householder, had always thought. . and childlike in the absence of patience, childlike in his cruelty to his victims. . to their victims. The householder had always scoffed at the notion of childhood innocence. Children, he had always argued, are psychopaths, damaging living things and each other with their absence of empathy. That is why scissors in primary schools are blunt with rounded ends, so that children do not stab each other. And here he is, he that can be so gleefully cruel, shaking with fear on the sofa, whimpering, ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do?’ And so the second man, the calmer of the two, the householder, advanced on the whimpering man with his huge hands outstretched and calmly encircled the second man’s neck with them and began to squeeze, and when James Post looked at him with terror in his eyes, the second man smiled at him and he continued smiling at him until James Post had stopped clawing at his hands and his body fallen limp. He carried James Post’s body into his study and laid it on the floor and then drove into York looking for a suitable container. He found one in a charity shop. It was sufficiently large and robust, and he paid twice the asking price for it and left the shop with, ‘Thank you, sir, very generous,’ singing in his ears.

It was with no little reluctance that George Hennessey tapped on Commander Sharkey’s door, and it was with no little reluctance that he accepted the invitation to sit in the chair in front of the Commander’s desk.

‘Things all right for you, George?’ Sharkey asked warmly, but there was a nervousness in the warmth. ‘I mean, I have no complaints about you but I am still worried. Not overburdened?’

‘No, sir, thank you all the same.’

‘It’s just that Johnny Taighe won’t happen on my watch. It was a bad show. You know, I think about him more and more often. Our very able maths teacher left our school to advance himself and Johnny Taighe, who taught lower school maths, was told to teach final year maths to national certificate level. He just couldn’t do it. He once froze in front of the blackboard because he couldn’t understand the problem he’d put up, and he went and sat in a vacant seat next to a very able pupil and said, “What do you think we should do now?” That stays with me, George, a teacher leaving the front of the class to go and sit among the pupils because he couldn’t understand the subject he was supposed to teach.’

‘That is. . unfortunate. . yes, sir.’

‘And he had a beer belly and a large, red nose, so he was drinking heavily. . self-medicating with alcohol, and smoking too much. . and was full of false good humour, all the indicators, and none of his colleagues picked up on them. He went home one night, complained of feeling unwell and had a massive coronary. That is not going to happen on my watch, so if things are getting too much for you, then let me know.’

‘I am all right, sir,’ Hennessey held up his hand. ‘Thank you, but I am well on top of things now I have Pharoah, Webster and Ventnor to assist me, and Sergeant Yellich. I am more desk-bound than anything. I do miss front line policing though and go out when I can.’

‘Yes, I have noticed. . but you are sure you’re on top of things?’

‘Fully.’

‘Good. . well, like I said, I have no indications to the contrary but I want you to reach retirement. You don’t have long to go, unlike me.’ Sharkey smiled, he was fully ten years Hennessey’s junior. He was a short man, short for a police officer, and an observer would perhaps see him as being immaculately dressed. His desktop was, to Hennessey’s mind, always unhealthily neat and uncluttered, very precise and with everything ‘just so’. Sharkey would not, thought Hennessey, be an easy man to live with. Behind him, on the wall of his office, were two framed photographs, one showing a younger Sharkey in the uniform of an officer in the British Army, and the other showing a similar younger Sharkey in the uniform of an officer in the Royal Hong Kong Police. ‘The other thing, George. . it concerns me. . is what I was part of when I wore that uniform.’ He half turned and indicated the photograph of him in the Royal Hong Kong Police. ‘I keep it there as a kind of presence. . this photograph,’ he indicated the photograph of himself in the Army, ‘this I am proud of. . but the Hong Kong experience. I was and remain contaminated. It wasn’t what you might call active corruption, it was of a passive nature and I was only there for a brief period of time but. . I was told not to go into a certain area of the city on a specific night and I did not, I took my patrol elsewhere and the following morning there would be a brown paper envelope full of cash in my desk drawer. That’s just the way it was. If I had blown the whistle or taken my patrol where I was told not to take it, I would have had my throat cut, I’d disappear, be found floating in the harbour. I got out when I could but I couldn’t cope with anything like that here in Micklegate Bar. You must tell me if there is a whiff of anything like that.’