Peter Turnbull - Aftermath

‘We’d like to speak to Mr Malpass, if he is at home.’

‘Yes. . yes he is. I am Mrs Malpass by the way. Do come in. We are waiting for a Mr and Mrs Blackhouse, they have been referred to us.’

‘Referred to you?’ Carmen Pharoah stepped across the threshold of the house.

‘Yes, we offer an alcohol abuse counselling service.’

‘I see.’

‘But. . well. . come in. My husband is in the living room, second door on the left.’

Carmen Pharoah, followed by Thomson Ventnor walked into the living room. A tall, well-dressed man stood as they entered. Carmen Pharoah read the room; she saw it neat, tastefully furnished with dark but highly patterned carpet, furniture covered in pastel shades of blues, with blue tinted wallpaper. The bay window looked out on to an equally neatly kept garden, surrounded on all sides by a ten foot high privet.

‘The police, dear,’ Mrs Malpass announced.

The man stepped forward and extended his hand. ‘Ronald Malpass. This is my wife, Sylvia. How can we help?’ He was smartly dressed in white trousers, summer shoes, blue tee shirt.

‘Just a little information, please,’ Ventnor replied, noting how tall Malpass was, over six feet he guessed.

‘In that case, please take a seat do.’ He indicated the chairs and settee in the room as he resumed his seat in the armchair he had been occupying when the officers had entered. Pharoah and Ventnor sat side by side on the settee and Mrs Malpass sat in the vacant armchair. Carmen Pharoah thought Ronald Malpass overly confident and she also noticed a certain look of worry across Mrs Malpass’s eyes.

‘We understand you know, or knew, a lady called Angela Prebble?’

‘Angie. . Angela. .’ Ronald Malpass sat back in the armchair. ‘That’s a name I have not heard for a while. She disappeared, I believe. . some years ago.’

‘Yes, she did,’ Ventnor replied. ‘She’s reappeared.’

‘Oh. .’ Malpass looked alert, interested. ‘How is she?’

‘Deceased.’

Sylvia Malpass gasped. Ronald Malpass’s brow knitted. He remained silent for a few moments and then asked, ‘What happened?’

‘We don’t know but she has been identified as being one of the bodies found at Bromyards.’

‘Bromyards?’ Malpass queried.

‘The big house,’ Sylvia Malpass explained. ‘It’s been on the news. . in the papers.’

‘Ah. . yes, of course. Oh dear, poor Angela. . we did wonder.’

‘How did you know her?’

‘Socially. . not really very close but we knew her.’

‘How? How did you know her?’

‘Socially. As I said.’

‘Can you be a bit more specific, please?’

‘We were in the same bunch of people, the same group.’

Carmen Pharoah sighed, ‘If you could be. .’

‘Alcoholics Anonymous,’ Sylvia Malpass explained. Then she addressed her husband. ‘It was going to come out.’

‘Thank you,’ Carmen Pharoah smiled at Sylvia Malpass. ‘No shame there, alcoholism is a disease. . no shame at all.’

‘There shouldn’t be,’ Ronald Malpass added, ‘but there is the stigma, it’s always there. But I am dry now. . we both are.’ He held his right hand outstretched, palm down, fingers pressed together. ‘Rock steady,’ he said with a note of pride in his voice. ‘I couldn’t have done that at one time, I would have been shaking like a leaf. Dried out about fifteen years ago, before that there is a ten year gap in my memory, can’t remember a thing I did in those ten years. . but now. . I still enjoy the sensation of waking up with a clear head.’

‘Good for you,’ Thomson Ventnor said. ‘I know it can be quite a battle.’

‘Yes. Why? Are you. .’

‘No,’ Ventnor said. ‘I’m not.’

‘So,’ Carmen Pharoah attempted to pull the conversation back to the relevancy of their visit. ‘Angela Prebble was in Alcoholics Anonymous?’

‘Yes, she was.’

‘And that was the extent of you knowing her?’

‘More or less. . well. . we became friends but not close friends. She was from the West Coast of Scotland and had difficulty settling in Yorkshire, though I confess you do hear Scottish accents quite a lot in Yorkshire, in the pubs and the shops.’

‘You go into pubs?’

‘Oh yes,’ Malpass smiled. ‘Why not? I enjoy pubs. . I. . we. . Sylvia and I, just don’t touch alcohol but pubs are enjoyable places. We are aware that just one drop of alcohol and we’d both be off the wagon. We watch each other.’

‘So we met Angela at AA and then met socially outside AA meetings, a coffee and a chat, but that’s all.’

‘Very well.’

‘Now we do our own thing. We offer alcohol abuse counselling, on a one-to-one, or couple-to-couple basis. Have you ever been to an AA meeting?’

‘Can’t say I have,’ Ventnor said.

‘Me neither.’ Carmen Pharoah noticed a pleasant scent of furniture polish in the room, not too strong, not overpowering, but there, in the background.

‘Well, they are large. . as the name implies, very anonymous and that suits many folk, but we found that others need to feel more like individuals with personalities and identities, and need one-to-one or couple-to-couple support and advice. So we thought we’d offer our experience to others. We let AA know and they refer people to us. . in fact we are. .’

‘Yes, Mr Malpass,’ Pharoah interrupted him. ‘We’ll be on our way soon. Did you see Angela Prebble at all around the time of her disappearance?’

‘I can’t recall. It was a long time ago you see. . years. . ten years. I really don’t know how long ago it was. . I think I was sober then.’

‘You were,’ Sylvia Malpass smiled warmly. ‘You had to have been, we met her in an AA meeting, you’d stopped drinking.’

‘Of course, I had gotten sober; I was a dry alky by then. We joined a drink watchers group which was a spin off from mainstream AA.’

‘Drink watchers?’

‘Yes, we didn’t need the AA approach, “Hello, I’m Ronald and I’m an alcoholic”; we just needed human company to help fill up the evenings, but not necessarily talk about our battle with the bottle. So we’d meet in cafes. In the summer we’d go for walks along the river. We just helped each other get through those awful hours from five until eight p.m. We found that if we could reach eight p.m. without a drink then the desire went. It wasn’t for everyone, some folk drank at home at any time of the day or night, but if you drank because you needed human company and then the drink took you, then our little group was a good place to be. . human contact, a chat, but we kept each other off the booze.’

‘Very good.’

‘So we’d get through until eight and then disperse and meet up again a couple of evenings later.’

‘Not every evening?’

‘No, we couldn’t sustain that. If one of our group could not get through the evening they could go to an AA meeting.’

‘Quite a lifeless house, I thought.’ Carmen Pharoah drove slowly away from the Malpass house.

‘Sort of,’ Ventnor glanced to his left at a 1930s’ Rolls Royce parked sedately in the driveway of a neighbouring house. ‘Dead. . lifeless as you say. No plants. . no books on the shelves.’

‘And alcohol is an issue again. This entire investigation is looking like it’s booze related.’

It was Saturday, 15.37 hours.

Sunday, 14th June — 09.15 hours — 21.45 hours

in which two inquiries converge and the kind reader hears of Thomson Ventnor’s private issues.

Hennessey reclined in his chair. ‘Booze, the demon drink,’ he sighed and raised his eyebrows. ‘Seems a likely thread, sir, a likely common denominator,’ Carmen Pharoah sipped her tea. ‘Veronica Goodwin evidently had a significant problem, so did Angela Prebble and Mr Penta was angry about being abandoned in favour of AA. . and alcohol may also explain the unidentified victim, a woman in her sixties, I think she was.’