Peter Turnbull: Aftermath

The sitting room of the flat was found to be airless, with all windows closed, and in an untidy and unclean state. As so often, during the summer months, the fireplace had become a receptacle for all things inflammable, awaiting the first chill of autumn before being ignited. The furniture was inexpensive, covered with a fine layer of dust and the carpet was sticky to walk on. Two of the bedrooms had beds without bedding and wardrobes which proved, upon inspection, to be empty. The third, and largest, bedroom contained a double bed covered with crumpled sheets and there was male clothing strewn liberally about the floor and atop a chest of drawers.

‘Definitely a teenager,’ growled Webster.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, the Chief’s recording stated he wore youthful clothing and footwear, and clearly still hasn’t learned to tidy his room.’

Ventnor laughed softly. ‘Reminds me of a sticker I once saw on a teenager’s bedroom door, “Why should I tidy my room when your generation has made such a mess of the world?”’

‘Hard to argue with that.’ Webster turned and stepped from the room and Ventnor followed, to complete the ‘sweep’ before commencing a detailed drawer by drawer, shelf by shelf, cupboard by cupboard, search of James Post’s home. The officers opened the door of the last of the rooms to be entered and stopped short at the threshold. The room was a small box room or store room close to the entrance of the flat. It had no natural light and smelled strongly of chemicals. Webster switched on the light which glowed a soft red. A bench ran across one wall containing phials of chemicals, film negatives hung by clothes pegs from a length of cord which was suspended from wall to wall across the room.

‘Well, now we know how he spent his free time,’ Webster commented.

‘Serious kit,’ Ventnor said.

‘The plastic tools?’

‘No. . that,’ Ventnor pointed to a camera lying on the bench furthest from the well, ‘a Nikon I think, very nice piece of kit.’

‘You’re a photographer?’

‘Hardly, just dabble in it, but I know enough to know I’d be hard pressed to afford a camera like that.’

‘I see.’

‘But it’s at odds with the rest of the contents of the flat, everything is cheap and tacky.’

‘Stolen, you think?’

‘Possibly, or he might have bought it, if he had a little undeclared business going on here. . printing naughty pics, the sort that folk wouldn’t want to send to the chemists. .’

‘Where would he keep any prints?’

‘Somewhere flat, like the inside of a drawer or an album. . even a large envelope, somewhere out of natural light which will make prints fade.’

A drawer underneath the bench on which the developing chemicals stood did indeed contain a number of large padded envelopes, which contained prints of a risque nature, as Ventnor suggested, not the sort of film one would send to the high street chemist to develop, but one envelope caught his eye, it was labelled ‘Bromyards’. He picked it up gingerly and pointed the label out to Ventnor, ‘Small world,’ he said.

‘Wheels within wheels,’ Ventnor gasped.

Webster took the photographs from the envelope. Each photograph was of one of the victims of the Bromyards kitchen garden murders, all were naked, all were attached by their ankle to the length of chain. Some of the victims had a blank expression as if accepting their fate, others displayed a look of extreme fear, others were pleading with their eyes. . and each was labelled by name on the reverse of the print, each with their full name: Angela Prebble. . Veronica Goodwin. . save for one which seemed to the officers to be a photograph of the one victim that had not been identified, who was known to Post as simply ‘Old Annie’. ‘Old Annie’ had clearly kept her identity a closely guarded secret, even to the end.

The two officers laid the photographs on the bench and withdrew from the room, and from the flat, touching as little as they could.

Webster went calmly but quickly down the stairs and out into the gardens at the front of the building to contact DCI Hennessey on his mobile phone, to notify him of the discovery in James Post’s flat and request his attendance and the attendance of scene of crime officers. Ventnor began to knock on the doors of the neighbours of James Post, and found he took an instant dislike to the first woman who opened her door upon his calling. It was her eyes, he thought, all in her eyes. The woman seemed to be smirking at him. So natural was her look that Ventnor guessed she would probably be smirking at the world, as if it was all a joke and all beneath her in some way, as though she was above all, superior to all; her and her little flat on the Tang Hall Estate of the city of York where the tourists never venture.

‘Don’t know much about him,’ she said, smiling with her eyes and her mouth as if she was giving an eager to please act, thought Ventnor, but he also sensed that she was about to burst into laughter at his expense, and she also seemed to know that she was annoying him and delighted in doing so. She was, he sensed, the sort of woman who would provoke any male partner to punch her. ‘He was just the little man across the landing who didn’t say much and who kept strange hours. . strange man with strange hours.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, coming and going at all hours of the day and night. He used to have a drink problem many years ago, that’s why she left him.’

‘She?’

‘A woman and her children. They were not married, they cohabited.’

‘Did you see anyone call. . any friends, for example?’

‘Him! With friends?’ She snorted with laughter. ‘He just kept himself to himself, never even knocked on my door to borrow a drop of milk if he ran out of the stuff. He was the quiet man on the stair but always seemed preoccupied.’

‘But you don’t know with what?’

‘No, not in the twenty years I have been here. The others on the stair will probably say the same about him. Ask them if you like.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ventnor turned away, ‘we will.’ Then he turned back and asked of the woman as an afterthought, ‘Did Mr Post own a car?’

‘No.’ The woman answered clearly. ‘He walked from his home and walked back. I never even saw him get out of a car, or into one as a passenger.’

Somerled Yellich handed the photographs back to Hennessey, all printed in black and white on coarse matt finish, sixteen prints, some of which showed a victim, clearly a victim, a middle-aged man or woman, dressed in ill-fitting rags, the men with distinct facial hair and all with matted scalp hair, all lying or kneeling or on all fours, all with that look of resignation or despair or bewilderment, which was also in the eyes of the victims photographed in the kitchen garden at Bromyards. Yet, in the photographs of the victims taken out of doors, the photographer had clearly knelt to get the camera angle level with the eyes, so that he not only captured the look therein but also a distinct landmark. In one, the background showed the unmistakable outline of the Forth Railway Bridge, another showed the entrance to the Box Railway Tunnel in Wiltshire. Yet another showing Boston Stump in Lincolnshire, and yet another which showed not a famous landmark but a road signpost which was easily distinguished and read ‘St Mabyn — 1 mile’.

‘St Mabyn?’ Hennessey queried taking back the prints from Yellich.

‘It’s in Cornwall, boss. I looked it up in my road atlas.’

‘Cornwall,’ Hennessey sighed, ‘Cornwall. . so we have Scotland, Wiltshire, Lincolnshire and Cornwall, as well as others whose landmarks have still to be identified.’

‘Yes, sir. . and then five showing no body at all, just Post standing in a Hindley-esque manner, looking down at the ground on which he is standing, and, like Myra Hindley, he seems to have favoured moorland.’