Aftermath

THREE

Friday, 12th June — 10.15 hours — Saturday 04.10 hours

in which more is learned about the final victim and the gentle reader is privy to George Hennessey’s demons.

Mrs Penny Merryweather revealed herself to be a slightly built and a warm and a bumbling personality. She was dark-haired and wore a ready smile and also instantly struck Yellich as indeed having a character which well befitted her name. She lived in a small council house set among six other similar houses in the village of Milking Nook. She smiled at Yellich upon him showing her his ID and stepped aside, inviting him into her house. Yellich entered and, following Penny Merryweather’s directions, found himself in a cluttered but neat and cleanly kept living room where he sat, as invited, in one of the two armchairs in the room. Yellich scanned the room and all seemed to him to be in perfect keeping with a householder of Mrs Merryweather’s age and means. The television in the corner was small and probably a black and white set having, thought Yellich, the look of that vintage about it. Framed portraits of children and adults stood along the mantelpiece in a neat row. The wallpaper had faded and, like the television, seemed to Yellich to belong to a different, earlier, era. The room smelled heavily of furniture polish. Mrs Merryweather sat in the second armchair and leaned forward, smiling in what Yellich thought was an eager to please and almost childlike attitude.

‘Mr Nicholas Housecarl,’ Yellich began, ‘of Bromyards.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Deceased. Recently so.’

‘Yes, sir, but you can’t say it wasn’t no surprise can you? I mean, his age. He did very well did the old gentleman, very well, all the village said so.’

‘I understand that you worked for him?’

‘Yes, sir, I was one of the staff at the big house and I was the last to leave. I was still there almost to the end I was. . even though in the last ten or fifteen years I used to work part time, just two or three afternoons a week and none at all in the depths of winter. . but still almost to the very end.’

‘One of the staff?’ Yellich settled back into the armchair. ‘How many were there?’

‘Oh. . quite a few at one time, sir, quite a few. . such a big house you see with huge gardens and grounds beyond the garden that needed looking after, not as much as gardens but looking after just the same. . a large field of grass that Mr Housecarl had scythed once every two years.’

‘Scythed?’ Yellich smiled.

‘Yes, sir, couldn’t use a motor mower on it because of stuff laying in the grass like rotting tree trunks and so it had to be scythed. You can believe me on that one, sir.’

‘How many men did that take?’

‘Just the one. . Brian Foot did that. He used to like working alone did Brian, and, with a huge field to scythe, and that he got paid when it’s done, no matter how long it took to do, it suited him. It wasn’t a crop you see, it just had to be cut but not gathered in. Dare say it’s waist high now, but Brian wasn’t on the staff, retired farmworker brought in to scythe the ten acre once every two years. He didn’t gather the grass he scythed, just let it lay there to rot but that’s how Mr Housecarl wanted it.’

‘I see.’

‘So, not only was there quite a lot of people employed by Mr Housecarl at Bromyards, but there was work enough to do that he had to hire in extra help like Brian Foot. He went before some years ago now. . good age though. . but not quite Mr Housecarl’s age to be sure. But one by one he had to let us go. . good days they were. . very good days.’

‘What was Mr Housecarl like as a person?’

‘As a person,’ Penny Merryweather exhaled and then replied in a fairly, but not hard to listen to, high-pitched voice, so Yellich felt, believing Penny Merryweather’s voice might best be described as ‘chirpy’. ‘Well now, see. . see. . now what was he like as a person? He was a nice enough old boy. He did like his own way but it was his old house, I reckon fair play on that one. I like my own way in this little house of mine, so I do, but he always had time for his staff and he took an interest in us, yes he did. You see it seemed to be the case that if you worked for Mr Housecarl then he felt he had more of an obligation to you than just to pay you at a fair rate. He helped quite a few people over the years. . someone needed a new pair of spectacles, then he’d pay for them. . over and above paying their wage and then there was the Head Gardener. . Jeff Sparrow. .’

‘Yes, we’ll have to talk to him. . but please, do carry on.’

‘It was then that Jeff’s son, his only son, fell ill while he was in Australia. . the son that is. . Jeff had never been more than five miles from Milking Nook in all his days, but when his son was in Australia he fell ill.’

‘Oh. . long way from home.’

‘Yes, and it was the fact that he fell ill in here,’ Penny Merryweather tapped the side of her head, ‘in here so he did. . mental. . and he got locked up in a mental hospital. . and do you know what Mr Housecarl did?’

‘Tell me.’

‘He only paid for Jeff to go to Australia and bring his son back to the UK, everything, airfare for the both of them plus spending money for food and rail fares and that. .’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, he did that. It was just like Mr Housecarl to do that for one of his own. He got a lot of loyalty that way. There were other similar things like that he did, but what he did for Jeff Sparrow is the biggest one. The village still talks about it.’

‘I see.’

‘So the staff loved him, they did. . old army officer type, always in tweeds. If you got a job at Bromyards you were in a good way of employment. He paid fair wages but it was that he cared for his workers, took an interest in us and was really sorry when he had to let us go one by one, and we were sorry to have to go, especially old Jeff Sparrow.’

‘So you left at different times?’

‘Yes, sir. . at different times over many years. . it seems as he sort of retreated he let his staff go, old Mr Housecarl, God rest him. I mean at first it was the grounds, so the under gardeners went, then the garden got too much. I mean he had staff to look after the grounds but in here,’ for the second time in the interview she tapped the side of head, ‘I mean in here he couldn’t cope with the grounds. Then he couldn’t cope with the garden in his head, he couldn’t, that’s when he let Jeff Sparrow go. Then room by room it all got too much and so the domestics went, one by one, until I was the last one. He lived in just two rooms by then. Then I heard he just lived in one room. . lived. . I mean ate and slept in one room within that huge, huge house. He was the last of his line, you see, no more Housecarls after him. . not from him anyway.’

‘So we understand.’

‘But he didn’t betray his ancestry, no he didn’t. A proud man he was, sir, principled, a real gentleman of the old school. They say he was camping in the end, cooking on a camping gas stove, getting Meals on Wheels a few days each week and had a nurse looking in on him.’

‘But no one bothered him?’

‘Tormented him, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, sir. The village wouldn’t have stood for it. It kept its own children in check, sir, well in check, you can believe me on that one, and if any youths from another village tried to torment him then they would have been well sorted out. They would have gone home with very sore faces; you can believe me on that one, sir. The men of the village poached his land, sir, tables in this village have all been laid with a roast pheasant or a duck taken from Bromyards, but in return, the poachers kept an eye on him. They would have seen any strangers well off the land.’

‘Poachers?’ Yellich inclined his head.

‘This is the country, sir, poaching happens. You hear shotguns being fired around here each day, they’re not toffs shooting clay pigeons, no they’re not, you can believe me on that one, sir.’

‘Understand that, and I am not going to get anyone into trouble for shooting a pheasant or setting a rabbit snare, but I am interested to learn that men went on to Mr Housecarl’s land at night, and, as you say, kept an eye on him and would have recognized a stranger.’

‘During the day time also, sir. Poaching goes on twenty-four hours. Bromyards. . that is Bromyards estate, has been a source of meat for this village for years now, and a source of fruit. He has apples and pears in his orchard. . dripping with fruit in the season, sir. Folk didn’t do no damage, they just. . don’t know the word. .’

‘Harvested?’

Penny Merryweather smiled, ‘Yes, I like that word to describe what went on, we just harvested the Bromyard estate for game and fruit.’

‘But not vegetables?’

‘None to be had, sir.’

‘So no one ever went into the kitchen garden?’

‘No, sir, no reason, any vegetables in the kitchen garden would be long rotten in the ground and vegetables need planting each year. Fruit grows each year anyway once the tree is established. Fruit farmers have an easy time of it compared to vegetable growers. No annual planting for fruit farmers, just maintain their old trees and harvest every September. Jeff Sparrow will be the man to ask about the kitchen garden, he’ll know when the last vegetables were taken up. . but that’ll be ten years ago now. Fish too.’

‘Fish?’

‘Yes, he had a trout pond. . never did taste better trout. . the villagers harvested that as well. Never took all the fish, left some to keep the stock alive. . trout can look after themselves. . so we had grilled trout for supper, roast pheasant for Sunday lunch with apple pie afterwards, and fruit in the fruit bowl, and it all came from Bromyards, well, the estate, even venison, the poachers brought in deer hounds to bring a deer down. All the while, Mr Housecarl was retreating room by room. This village enjoyed good living for the last twenty years. Now there’ll be new owners, but I dare say all good things come to an end.’

‘You don’t feel guilty?’

‘About accepting food from Bromyards estate, you mean?’

‘Yes, that’s what I mean. . just curious. . not being accusative.’

‘No, like I said, the village was keeping an eye on Mr Housecarl and the poachers were careful to not ever take too much, just what the estate could afford to give and that benefited the estate. It keeps the game and fish numbers healthy and the poachers would never bring down young or male deer, just the old females. . healthy. . good to eat but not going to reproduce any more. They knew what they were doing. Like all villages, we look after our own and Mr Housecarl and the Bromyards estate belonged to Milking Nook so we looked after him and it.’

‘So no one harmed Mr Housecarl, but quite a few men went on his land?’

‘Quite a few, and a lot of women when the apples and pears were ripe. Fruit harvesting has always been women’s work you see, sir, you can believe me on that one.’

‘Interesting.’ Yellich stood. ‘Thank you for your information. Where do I find Jeff Sparrow?’

The slender woman with short, close-cropped hair stood quite still and looked down at the neatly cut area of grass. She might, to an observer, have made a curious spectacle, had it not been for the fact that the small area of grass in question was within Fulford Cemetery, and had it not also been for the fact that on that summer’s day the cemetery was being visited by a small number of people, each, as individuals or in pairs, also visiting a specific grave of some relevance to them. Any curiosity the woman might have attracted to herself would have been instantly evaporated as she knelt on one knee and gently laid a single red rose on the unmarked grave.

‘Veronica. .’ the woman sighed as she placed the carrycot containing a slumbering newborn upon the table in the living room of her small terraced house in Holgate. The smell within the room was of warm milk and rusks and baby food. The washing machine in the kitchen whirred on its spin cycle. Carmen Pharoah had the impression that the machine was in constant use and she thought the young woman looked weary. ‘“Ronny”. . sometimes she was called “Ronny” or “Ronica”. . but how could I forget her? We grew up together. . we were great mates in fact. Can we talk in the kitchen? He’ll wake up if we talk in here.’

In the kitchen of the house Carmen Pharoah and Thomson Ventnor and Susan Boyd, nee Kent, sat round a small, inexpensive metal table with a Formica top. Thompson read the room and did so quickly and discreetly, and found it all appropriate for Susan Boyd’s age and situation. All the contents seemed recently purchased and ‘low end’, a young couple just starting out in life, just as he would expect, a newly qualified primary school teacher, his wife, and their new born firstborn to have as a home.

‘I think about her often. My mother phoned and said that you had called on her. She phoned me. .’ Susan Boyd patted the small mobile phone, which was lodged amid oranges in a plastic fruit bowl on the table. ‘She told me to expect you. . asking about Ronny.’

‘Yes.’

‘So you have found her body?’

‘Have we?’

‘Well, haven’t you? I mean, why else would you call?’ Susan Boyd held eye contact with Carmen Pharoah and then glanced at Ventnor. ‘I mean she disappears eighteen months ago, not a dicky bird is heard, police show no interest. . just silence as the world continues to turn, then, out of the blue, the police come knocking on doors. It means there has been a development. I just hope it is not connected with the discovery out in the Wolds, the garden of that old house. It said they were chained together. .’

‘I am afraid the answer is yes,’ Carmen Pharoah spoke slowly softly, ‘Veronica was one of those victims.’

‘The poor cow.’ Susan Boyd noticed the look of surprise in Carmen Pharoah’s eyes. ‘It’s all right,’ she forced a smile, ‘we used to call each other “cow”. . “you lucky cow”. . “you silly cow”, phrases like that, but if a man called us a cow he’d get his face slapped.’

‘I understand,’ Carmen Pharoah smiled reassuringly. ‘I realized that was what you meant, took me a couple of seconds but eventually the penny dropped.’

‘Thank you. We were very close, me and Veronica.’

‘Yes, both her mother and your mother said the same thing, how special you were to each other. So now we need you to help us. . we really need your help.’

‘Of course, anything I can tell you, anything I can do.’

‘Good.’

‘But, having said that, I remember telling the police everything I could when we reported her. . her mother reported her missing and told the police I was her best friend and the police visited me. I was at my mum’s then in Cemetery Road.’

‘Let’s go over it again.’

‘All right. Well, it was the last winter but one, we went out together, four girls. . young women. We were all at that stage between leaving school and getting married, we went out “on the pull”.’

‘Looking for boys?’

‘Yes,’ Susan Boyd shrugged. ‘In the event I pulled on a walk in the Dales organized by our church, it’s a lot healthier than pulling in a nightclub or a pub.’

‘Yes, I’ll say. . a different approach.’

‘More relaxed. . sober. . broad daylight and there for the pleasure of the walk, much healthier. My mother-in-law belonged to a rambling club and in the book of the club’s annual newsletter was a list of all the couples who had met through the club and who had got married. . the list went back decades. In a nightclub you don’t find passion, you find bodily function. . and all the losers that you meet, no hopers and multiple divorcees.’

Thomson Ventnor winced inwardly.

‘Yes,’ Carmen Pharoah smiled briefly, ‘not a happy hunting ground. I wouldn’t go to one, but let’s talk about that night. . the night in question.’

‘The night in question,’ Susan Boyd echoed, ‘you sound like a lawyer in a courtroom, but anyway, we went for a drink on Micklegate. . no shortage of pubs there. Then we went to Caesar’s nightclub, you get more of a younger sort there than Augusta’s, Augusta’s is for the older set. We got a bit of attention but no bites. . especially not Ronny, so tall, so beautiful, but so tall. She just wasn’t interested in a guy who was shorter than her, but that’s where all the attention came from. So we left the club after midnight and Ronny walked away with Liz Calderwood.’

‘Liz Calderwood?’

‘One of the gang. . one of the four of us.’

‘You didn’t go with her? You lived in the same street.’

‘No, after a few drinks. . it’s just a year and a half ago but I had a different attitude then. Me and the other girl, Moira Little, we decided to slum it and went to Augusta’s. We suddenly had the drunken notion of pulling a sugar daddy but Ronny and Liz had had enough and wanted to go home. They were both a right mess.’

‘I see. . carry on, please.’

‘Liz and Ronny left to walk to the railway station to get a taxi for Liz, who is very small and because of that very vulnerable, so Veronica was going to walk her there. She was going to see Liz safe into a taxi and then walk home. The railway station to Cemetery Road is no distance at all.’

‘Where can we find Liz Calderwood? We’ll have to speak to her.’

‘Liz. .’ Susan Boyd grimaced, ‘Liz. . poor Liz. She went off the rails big time. . I mean, big style.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, she married but did so badly, her man led her into a life of crime, she’s inside.’

‘Prison?’

‘Yes. So you’ll have all the details you need.’

‘As you say,’ Carmen Pharoah and Thomson Ventnor glanced at each other. ‘Makes things easier for us,’ she said.

‘Much,’ Thompson replied, ‘much easier.’

‘She’s in Langley Vale.’

‘Convenient.’

‘So, no one paid Veronica any attention in the nightclub, or earlier in the pub.’

‘No.’

‘And you’d know if she had any such attention?’

‘I’m sure she would have told me. She never mentioned any problem like that. She was quiet when sober but when she had a drink in her she got talkative. It’s then she’d blurt something out, as she once did. She had an abusive boyfriend once. I only found out because she told me when she’d had a few rum and cokes. He knew how to hit her so she wouldn’t show any bruising. . fist to her scalp. . he’d raise lumps on her head. I ran my fingers through her hair that night, it was like feeling a cobbled road surface, but she had such a fine head of hair that it never showed. He was clever like that.’

‘What was his name? Do you know?’

‘Piers Driver.’

Thomson Ventnor wrote the name in his notebook.

‘She was well finished with him before she went missing though.’

‘Even so, it’s a stone we’ll have to turn over. Violent men are often very possessive.’

‘OK, but in the event, it was more like he left her. He found another punchbag he liked better than Veronica.’

‘I see. That’s another feature of the possessive personality, they can discard “possessions” very quickly, especially if acquiring a replacement, but please, carry on.’

‘It seemed that the only thing that Veronica liked about Piers Driver was that he was taller than her, her one big weakness, and it made her fall for a street rat like Driver.’

‘I am beginning to understand her need,’ Carmen Pharoah glanced out of the kitchen window at a backyard and the roof tops of black terraced houses that formed the adjacent street, ‘but we’ll still have to interview him again. You see our point of view, someone who used her as a “punch bag” prior to her disappearing, he sounds interesting.’

‘Yes. I don’t know where he lives though and I don’t want to know, but you know him.’

‘Sounds like the sort of person we would know. . Piers Driver. . in his twenties?’

‘Yes. York boy.’

‘OK. Anything else you think we ought to know?’

Susan Boyd turned and also looked out of the kitchen window, then she slowly returned her gaze to Carmen Pharoah. ‘Well, I don’t know if it is relevant but Veronica had a bit of a drink problem.’

‘She did?’

‘Yes. .’

‘How big a problem?’

‘I think it was quite serious. She hid a flask in her handbag and took nips to add to the drinks she bought, or would go to the toilets and return looking a bit glazed.’

‘I see.’

‘She was worried about her job. She had had a warning from her boss at work.’

‘Really?’

‘So she once told me, but that was a blurt out assisted by alcohol, as well. She wouldn’t have told me if she was sober. It still didn’t stop her going out at night, and especially each weekend, but she didn’t stay in during the week. So it was getting hold of her but the thought of getting the chop at work was a real scare for her. I mean, she was for the shredder if she didn’t get her act to together.’

‘Interesting.’

‘You think it’s relevant?’

‘It could be, it would certainly make her vulnerable. Where did she work?’

‘Gordon and Moxon’s.’

‘The department store?’

‘Yes. Well, it’s more of a household goods store, everything for the householder. Veronica worked in the city centre branch, the main one. It’s a chain organization and has many shops in the north of England.’

‘So I believe.’

‘I don’t know any details; I mean any details about what made her fear losing her job. What happened that they felt they had to give her a warning, she didn’t tell me, but it had to have been serious, affecting her performance.’

‘How long before she disappeared did she tell you that?’

Susan Boyd sank back in the inexpensive metal chair upon which she sat and once again glanced out of the kitchen window. ‘Well, I remember light nights, we were in the pub, we had been in there all evening and the curtains were open. I remember a lovely sunset. . so summertime, it would be the summer before she disappeared.’

‘So about two years ago?’

‘Yes,’ Susan Boyd nodded gently, ‘yes, it would be about two years ago. But she kept her job so she pulled herself back from the brink.’

Somerled Yellich thought that Jeff Sparrow could best be described as sinewy. Yellich saw a man who was slender yet muscular, with a leathery, weather-beaten, tanned complexion, a man who had spent his working life outdoors. Jeff Sparrow occupied a similar house to that of Penny Merryweather, small, council owned, on a small estate of similar houses in Milking Nook. It had not the softness of Penny Merryweather’s house, but rather Yellich found it to have the harder, more functional character of a single man’s house. The mantelpiece, though, contained framed photographs of a younger Jeff Sparrow with a wife and a son, and spoke of happier, more fulfilled times. Sparrow sat in an armchair and his legs were of such a length that they inclined steeply from his waist before his calves fell vertically into the carpet slippers that encased his feet. He wore an old blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of equally aged lightweight summer trousers. The interior of the house had a slight mustiness about it, so Yellich found, and thought that should she be so inclined, Penny Merryweather could do much for Jeff Sparrow in terms of housekeeping. The small garden of the house was neatly kept as, Yellich thought, fully befitted a head gardener (retired).

‘Lonely man,’ Sparrow had a soft but distinct accent of the Yorkshire Wolds.

‘Mr Housecarl?’

‘Yes. Who else? A lonely man. Lovely man but very lonely, very on his own. I got the impression that was what he had got used to rather than how he wanted it to be. But a lovely man just the same.’

‘Yes, Mrs Merryweather told me what he did for your son.’

‘For me and my son. . but yes. . what other man would pay for his gardener to go to Australia and collect his son from an institution and bring him home? Lovely man. We. . his staff, just couldn’t do enough for him when I told them what he had done, the village too. He was worshipped in this village. If ever a position became vacant at Bromyards, in Mr Housecarl’s employment, a queue would form.’

‘I see. How is your son now?’

‘Very ill, but thank you for asking, sir. He has something called “paranoid schizophrenia with complications”, so the consultant told me. He’s in a flat in a housing association tenancy in York. It has a controlled entry so that gives him some protection, and he gets an injection of his medication each week which keeps him. . level. . but that’s not the right word, that’s not the word the consultant uses.’

‘Stable?’ Yellich suggested.

Jeff Sparrow smiled. ‘Yes, that’s the word he used. And because he has his medication injected they know he takes it. I often think it’s like pruning or pollarding a fruit tree, or making sure a lawn is very closely cut, stopping the wild thing inside from growing. It keeps him acceptable, like a well-cut hedge. It’s just the way I think. I’ve never been anything but a gardener. . left school to become an under gardener at Bromyards. So it’s the way I think.’

‘Understandable.’

‘But he’ll always be ill, poor lad, he’ll always be a hedge that needs trimming, but he likes the nurse who visits and the other help that’s been linked in, someone to help him do his shopping. I call round but I know he’s embarrassed about his situation so I don’t visit too often. He had his breakdown in Australia and they put him in a hospital which was run like an army camp, where the patients had to address the nurses as “sir”, but we got him home. . me and Betty had him back. Betty is deceased now but she lived to see him home and settled in his flat, all thanks to Mr Housecarl.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Jeff Sparrow opened the palm of his right hand. ‘It can’t be helped, and she was the sort of woman who would have let Tom be a burden to her, even in her autumn years. It’s best that he’s as independent as he can be.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Yellich smiled. ‘I have a son who has special needs, he’ll always be vulnerable, never have a mental age of more than twelve years. He’ll always be dependent to some degree.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’

‘Well, what can I say? We. . my wife and I, were disappointed of course, but he gives us so much. He’s so warm and generous and a whole new world has opened up to us, and for us, as we have met other parents with Down’s Syndrome children.’

‘I know what you mean, sir. You know I loved my son more when he became ill. I just don’t want him to be a future prime minister any more. . or an international sportsman.’

‘I feel the same. So, Bromyards. .’ Yellich brought the conversation back on track but he sensed he had developed a rapport with Jeff Sparrow. He sensed he had made an ally.

‘Aye, Bromyards. . the bodies. I saw the television news last night. . a rum do.’

‘You wouldn’t know anything about that?’

Jeff Sparrow smiled. ‘No, it’s ten years now since I left Bromyards. Mr Housecarl just shrank back into the house, lost interest in the garden. They tell me that he was living in just one room at the very end, poor old soul.’

‘He was,’ Yellich nodded and committed the ‘ten years’ to memory. It meant none of the remains could have been there for more than ten years.

‘I just don’t like that thought, the thought of him dying like that. Once he lived in the whole house and saw to it that the gardens and grounds were well tended. Then one by one the staff were let go, and he was generous, each man or woman got a year’s pay as a. . there’s a word. .’

‘Severance pay?’

‘Possibly that’s it. . but a whole year’s money. Generous. . I used my money to help Tom furnish his flat.’

‘Good of you.’

‘Well, there’s no pockets in a shroud.’

‘Indeed. So tell me about the kitchen garden.’

‘That was one of the last places to be abandoned. The lawn in front of the house was the last part of the garden to be tended to, the kitchen garden was the next last as I recall.’

‘Did it have a lock on the door?’

‘Yes it did, it was always kept well-greased against the elements but it was never locked. I mean, who’s going to walk a mile from the road to steal some carrots and walk a mile back? No need ever to lock the kitchen garden.’

‘So anyone could enter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who would know it was there?’

‘All the estate workers. . whether gardeners or domestics. . they collected the vegetables.’

‘The domestics dug them up?’ Yellich was surprised at the notion.

‘No, we planted them, we dug them up when they were ready and stored them, the domestics collected them from the vegetable cold store.’

‘I see.’

‘It wasn’t a secret garden like in a children’s storybook.’

‘Could it be overlooked from the house?’

‘Not fully if I remember. If you stood by the door of the garden you could see the upper windows of Bromyards just above the far wall of the garden. So I would say that about two-thirds of the garden, that is the two-thirds nearest the house, could not be overlooked from the house.’

‘Got you.’

‘But I took up the last vegetables just before I left and then closed the door behind me. The old garden just got overgrown I suppose. . well, it would have done.’

‘Did you ever return to the house?’

‘Bromyards? Yes, I did. I used to walk up there to look at the gardens. I put my life into those acres, there’s a whole lot of me in that soil. So, yes, I used to walk up there, not so often now, but newly left I went up each week to walk the grounds. A lot of folk went to poach and I’d often meet someone I knew with a pair of hares slung over his shoulder. .’

‘Yes, Penny Merryweather told me that the estate became a good source of food for the village. She’s worried now, new owners will be moving in.’

‘Yes, we all see the end of a good time coming. I didn’t poach myself but I had a bit of cheap meat over the years, a good bit.’

‘So there were plenty of visitors to the estate?’

‘Yes. . dog walkers too. . it was a good place to take a dog and let him off the lead. . let him go exploring the grounds. More fun than letting him run on a playing field. Mind you, they were lucky not to snag a snare, but if they did, the owner was on hand to free them.’

‘Did you ever see anybody you didn’t recognize on the estate, anyone acting suspiciously?’

‘Just once.’

‘What. . who did you see?’

‘Tall bloke. . very tall. . just looking about the grounds but he was nowhere near the kitchen garden though.’

‘No matter,’ Yellich reached into his pocket for his notebook, ‘tall man you say?’

‘Yes. Six feet tall, probably more. . heavy set. . he caught my eye because he was a stranger and he wasn’t walking a dog and he wasn’t poaching.’

‘No?’

‘No, sir, no dog, and he was too brightly dressed for poaching. . and he crashed through the shrubs. No poacher would make that sort of racket; he’d have sent every pheasant and duck for miles around into the air, and every rabbit or hare down into their burrows. He was interested in the grounds, though he didn’t seem interested in the house. He wasn’t a burglar.’

‘That is very interesting, very interesting indeed.’ Yellich made notes.

‘Yes, I thought it was a bit funny. . you know “curious”. . if that’s the word. It certainly sank into my mind and it has stayed there these ten years.’

‘Ten years?’

‘About that. . I was newly laid off and visiting Bromyards quite frequently, couldn’t separate from the estate very easily, had to keep returning in the early days. . of retirement that is.’

‘I see.’

‘He probably didn’t know he was being watched, townies never do. Moving about. . no attempt to camouflage himself. . no green jacket. . but I saw him and watched him close.’

‘The fields have eyes and the woods have ears?’

‘Yes, that was it. Only a townie would think he wasn’t being watched if he didn’t see anybody around him. A countryman would assume eyes are on him all the time. There is great truth in the expression you just used, sir.’

‘Did you see a car?’

‘No, no I didn’t. . but he would have needed one. There isn’t a bus service to speak of. . isn’t now and there wasn’t then. Two buses a day into York and two back again, it’s the York to Driffield service, they run about once an hour but four times a day, a bus takes a detour into Milking Nook. . two going to York, two going from York. . and they alternate, in-out in-out. . but that man was a car owner, he had the look of money about him, he wasn’t worried about the time.’

‘The time?’

‘Missing the last bus. If you miss the last bus you are stranded in Milking Nook or York until the next day, unless you miss the last bus in or out on Saturday, in which case you are stranded in either place until Monday morning, depending which way you are travelling.’ Jeff Sparrow paused. ‘You know, I think there is something else as well. He must have known about the estate. I mean about Mr Housecarl abandoning the grounds and the garden. He seemed to be on a recce mission.’

‘That’s a good point, a very useful observation,’ Yellich smiled. ‘That could help a lot.’

‘It could?’

‘Yes, I would think so. . a stranger who knew that the grounds and garden of Bromyards had been recently abandoned but not the house itself. Yet all the employees of the estate, the gardeners and the domestics, all live in the village. And no sign of a car?’

‘None, but he could have left it in the village and walked to the estate. He seemed a fit man.’

‘Age. . about?’

‘Middle-aged. . possibly fifties.’

Yellich tapped his notepad. ‘You say that the driveway to the house from the public highway is a mile long?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Was he near the driveway?’

‘Yes, he was, as I recall, not on the driveway itself but only a few yards from it. . about fifty yards when I saw him.’

‘How far along the drive?’

‘About halfway.’

‘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.’

‘I see.’

‘So I smacked her a few times. . gave her a slap, like where it wouldn’t show. I was trying to scare her into not drinking but it didn’t do no good. . all her money went on voddy. She hadn’t got hardly any left to buy my lager. . and that was more important.’

‘You think so?’

‘Well, I’m the man, she’s the woman. . she was the woman. . we need it, they don’t. It’s the way it is. Ask anyone in the pub. That’s why all the punters in here are men, it’s because the women are at home. . stands to reason. And anyway, she was working, I wasn’t, she had to buy me beer, but she couldn’t buy me beer because she spent her money on vodka so I slapped her around a bit. It was for her own good.’

‘Or for your beer, not her own welfare?’

‘Same difference. Alcoholics Anonymous was no help to her, no help at all.’

‘She went to AA meetings?’

‘Yes, but like I said, no good it was. She just didn’t want to stop, see? They all say the same thing; you’ve got to want to stop and Ronny. . she just didn’t want to stop. . not at all. She’d sooner go without food than go without vodka. I mean, she just didn’t know when to stop, did she?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ventnor replied icily, ‘didn’t she?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

A large man in an unironed white shirt and white summer trousers suddenly broke away from a group of men who had been standing at the far end of the bar and ambled slowly but purposefully over to where the officers and Piers Driver were sitting. ‘All right here are we, pal?’ he growled menacingly.

‘Yes, boss. These be the law.’

‘I know,’ again said with a menacing growl.

‘They want to know about Veronica Goodwin. . that lass I knew. . she was one of the women found in the grounds of that big house in the Wolds, been all over the news.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘All right then.’ The man turned and walked back to the bar, and as he approached, the group of men parted to allow him access. He reached out a meaty paw and wrapped it around his beer glass and was heard to say, ‘Seems all right, but watch him anyway.’

‘Yes, boss,’ two of the men answered simultaneously.

‘So we split up, me and her,’ Piers Driver continued, ‘and that was that. She went her own way and I went mine. Then I heard she had vanished into thin air. . about two years ago. Mind you, I had hooked up with another chick by then. . a real player.’ Driver grinned at Thomson Ventnor.

‘You mean she had plenty of money to buy you drink,’ Ventnor responded coldly.

‘Yeah. . she still does,’ Driver replied with a wink. ‘She still does.’

‘She was indeed a very pleasant, a most pleasant young woman.’ Megan Farthing revealed herself to be a warm, motherly sort of woman, or so found Carmen Pharoah who was relaxing very quickly in her presence. Megan Farthing was warm of manner, gentle of speech and seemed comfortable to be in her middle years, wearing a three-quarter length skirt and a ‘sensible’ pair of shoes and a richly embroidered blouse. She sat behind the desk in her office on the top floor of Gordon and Moxon’s Household Goods Store. ‘We were all saddened to hear of her disappearance and frankly, after a few days, we all expressed doubts that she would turn up alive. Young women like her don’t run away, so we began to think that she’d be at the bottom of the river. . now we know what happened to her, poor girl. So young, so much to live for. . it was all ahead of her.’

‘What was she like as a worker?’ Carmen Pharoah sat back in the chair which stood in front of Megan Farthing’s desk.

Megan Farthing smiled a tight-lipped smile, ‘Well. . she was an employee with an issue. .’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. . she was pleasant, well liked. . not a management problem but she had an issue with alcohol which surfaced eventually.’

‘She came to work drunk?’ Carmen Pharoah gasped.

‘No. . no. . she never did that. . but she left in that condition. She had a flask in her handbag.’

‘I see.’ Carmen Pharoah glanced round the office and thought it softly decorated and homely, with photographs of children and infants above a bookcase which stood against the wall of the office, a glass vase on the desk contained flowers in water, behind it on the wall were prints of Yorkshire landmarks, Robin Hood’s Bay, the Ribblehead Viaduct, York Minster, and a sweeping panorama of Swaledale.

‘You see, Veronica would bring a flask to work each day concealed in her handbag, as I said, and she would be a very efficient employee in the forenoon but she became more unsteady as the day wore on. By lunchtime she’d be taking sufficiently frequent trips to the ladies toilets to take a nip. . and by the early afternoon she’d be walking unsteadily on her heels and slurring her words. Now. . this is a good company to work for, it was founded in Victorian times and has resisted takeovers from larger chains which do not care for their workers as we care for ours. We have retained the Victorian attitude of paternalism to our workers. If you work for Gordon and Moxon’s it works for you. . you belong to the family. . it’s a very good employer. If an employee cannot work for an extended period through no fault of their own we will hold their position open for them. If they require money for things like school uniforms we will issue an interest-free loan and take the money back a little bit each week or month, and in such small repayment amounts that the employee won’t feel it. . financially speaking.’

‘Not bad.’

‘Not bad at all. . and we do other similar things for our own, but at the end of the day we have to make money and so we have to have workers, not passengers. Veronica was one of the telephonists and as such she was in direct contact with the public. . paying customers. . voice only but that is still direct contact.’

‘Of course, it’s vital for the telephonists to have a pleasant speaking voice.’

‘Yes. . Veronica had, in the forenoon, and only in the forenoon. In the afternoon her voice was slurred and she became short-tempered. So. . verbal warning at first, given by me in my capacity as Personnel Manager, and then when she didn’t alter her ways. . or when she could not. . because I understand alcoholism. . I have had personal experience of it.’

‘I see. . I’m sorry.’

‘Long time ago now but it gave me insight into the illness.’ Farthing paused. ‘Well, anyway, she received a second written warning and strong advice that she seek help from her doctor or by joining Alcoholics Anonymous. She was then taken from the switchboard, for everybody’s sake, and given a job in the stores on a reduced income. . and that was a real comedown for her. The stores have invited some very cruel names from the workforce. “The bat cave” being one of the kinder ones. It’s where the disadvantaged people work. Again, it’s Gordon and Moxon’s policy to engage people who would, for one reason or another, find it difficult to get a job but we can’t put them on the sales floors.’

‘Appreciate that.’

‘So our senior store clerk is a man who is in a wheelchair because he was born without legs, and damned efficient he is too. Another employee has a glandular problem and rapidly starts to smell of sweat. He has to bring a change of clothing with him each day and take a shower at lunchtime. He’s also a very good worker. And so taking Veronica from the switchboard, where the telephonists regard themselves as a bit of an elite in the company, and sending her to the stores, was a massive comedown for her but it was the only thing I could do, short of dismissing her, and I also thought it might be the jolt, just the sort of wake-up call she needed.’

‘I was thinking the same thing.’

‘And if she sobered up, we’d have her back on the switchboard. . and I told her that. But it was just about then that she disappeared. She’d been in the stores for less than a month. . and the tragedy of it was that she seemed to be getting on top of her drink problem. . she was on her way back to the switchboard, so no reason to run away.’

The agent’s room in HM Prison Langley Vale was square in terms of floor area, about eight foot by eight foot, guessed Thomson Ventnor, who sat at a metal table. It smelled strongly of bleach. The walls were tiled with glazed white and blue tiles, which had been laid alternating with each other laterally, and which had been offset like bricks in a wall. A filament bulb behind a Perspex screen in the ceiling illuminated the room. An opaque glass brick at the top of the outside wall opposite the door allowed in ultraviolet light. Ventnor heard the jangling of keys and the opening and shutting of a large, heavy door, then the agent’s room door was unlocked and opened.

Liz Calderwood was dressed in a blue tee shirt, faded blue denims and white sports shoes. She grinned at Ventnor as she entered the agent’s room and, unbidden, sat down opposite him. She was small, frail, innocent-looking and, thought Ventnor, she could pass for a fourteen-year-old. He saw at once how her charm and innocent-looking appearance would help her defraud gullible people, which she had done, and for which she had collected three years’ imprisonment.

‘Yeah. . I heard,’ she replied in a soft voice after Ventnor had explained his reason for visiting. ‘We get the television news to watch and the newspapers to read and so, yeah, I heard about her being found. . one of a number of women. Nine bodies it is now. Nine. I saw the latest press release. I did wonder what she was doing. Now I know.’

‘We understand that you were the last person to see her alive?’

‘No,’ Liz Calderwood smiled and showed that her eyes had a most un-criminal like sparkle about them. ‘No, that was the person who murdered her. Point to me I think.’

‘Point to you, agreed,’ Ventnor inclined his head in acknowledgement, ‘but of her friends and acquaintances, you were the last known person to see her alive. You left the nightclub together, we understand?’

‘Yes. . that is true. . I remember it well. I didn’t drink as much as she did so I can remember things that happened and I can remember that night all right. . like it was yesterday. She was a mess. . Veronica was a mess. She was drunk and she had vomited in the washbasin in the ladies toilets, it was in her hair. . it was on her clothes. . everywhere. . her tights were torn. She was mumbling about having to get home and rinse her hair but she didn’t want her mother to see her. So we walked. Well, she stumbled and I held her up, even though she was taller than me, and we got to the railway station to try to use the toilets in there to clean her up but by then they had been locked up for the night. . so we hung around. Her old mum would go to bed at midnight she said and it was well after that by this time. So she planned to sneak in quietly, wash her hair and get some sleep. She was tired and that, plus the booze. . well you can imagine what a handful she was. . and she still kept taking nips from her flask. There were no cabs but eventually a car stopped. . I don’t know whether it was a cab or not but I got the impression the driver knew her.’

‘That could be significant.’ Ventnor leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table to. ‘Did you see the driver?’

‘No. . it was dark.’

‘Recognize the car?’

‘No. . I’m an “all-cars-look-the-same-to-me” merchant. I seem to recall that it was a dark coloured car but can’t be clearer than that. So I helped. . no, I poured her into the car and that was the last time I saw Veronica Goodwin.’

Reginald Webster sat heavily and resignedly into one of the chairs in front of George Hennessey’s desk. He held a number of manila folders in his hands.

‘You’ve had some luck, I think.’ Hennessey put his pen down.

‘Yes, sir, I believe that I have matched seven of the nine bodies now known to have been found in the kitchen garden to missing person’s reports.’

‘Good.’

‘Not a difficult job, there are not many mis per reports of females in the Vale, not of the age group we are talking about and helped in the case of Gladys Penta by a disfiguring head injury she had sustained earlier in her life. . the result of a climbing accident in fact.’

‘You look puzzled Webster.’

Webster forced a smile, ‘Does it show?’

‘It shows,’ Hennessey replied. ‘So what is it?’

‘It’s their ages, sir. . the ages of the victims.’

‘Oh?’

‘That is, if they are who I think that they are, we still have to confirm the identity in all the cases, only Veronica Goodwin is confirmed up to now.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well. . the female victims of all serial killers, which is what we seem to be looking at here. .’

‘Seems so. . agreed’

‘Well, in all documented cases the victims tend to be women in young adulthood. .’

‘Yes. . all right.’

‘Because they go out at night. . easy victims.’

‘Yes,’ Hennessey settled back in his chair, ‘and they have their youthful attraction, and you are going to say those ladies do not fit that victim profile?’

‘Yes, sir, that is what I am trying to say.’ Webster held eye contact with Hennessey and then, deferentially, looked down. ‘The first victim, or the last victim, but the first we identified, Miss Goodwin, she stands out as different from the others.’

‘An anomaly?’

‘Yes, sir, that’s the very word. An anomaly.’ He handed Hennessey a piece of paper. ‘Going by height and date of disappearance, I believe these are the names of the victims in order of their age when they disappeared.’

Hennessey took the piece of paper from Webster. He read:

Angela Prebble, 33 years

Paula Rees, 39 years

Gladys Penta, 42 years

Rosemary Arkwright, 45 years

Helena Tunnicliffe, 51 years

Roslyn Farmfield, 57 years

Denise Clay, 63 years

‘I see what you mean;’ Hennessey spoke softly, ‘the youngest is thirty-three years, the oldest sixty-three years, not at all the typical victim profile of serial killers of female victims.’

‘There is one more victim, sir.’

‘One more?’

‘Yes, I can’t fit her with any of our mis per reports but Dr D’Acre confirms she is, or was, middle-aged.’

‘So we have nine victims, these seven, Veronica Goodwin and the as yet unidentified victim?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And, as you say, Veronica Goodwin at a tender twenty-three years is a distinct anomaly. . but something will link them. They’re all from the Vale? Yes, sorry, of course they are otherwise we wouldn’t have their mis per files.’

‘Yes, sir, just the one victim who might be foreign to the Vale, she is a short-term resident who had no social network, so no one to report her missing.’

‘But eight out of the nine are definitely local to the Vale, they were left locally and in the same place. . the perpetrator is local. The kitchen garden at Bromyards speaks loudly of local knowledge, no outsider here coming to the Vale to look for his victims, he knows this area. . he’s local.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the victims, apart from the unidentified one, are local?’

‘Furthest address from the city of York is at Shipton and that’s only five miles away, a gentle stroll for a person in reasonable health, ten minutes by car and failing either, a frequent bus service.’

‘Anything about the time sequence of their disappearances?’

‘It seems there is a gap of between ten and twelve months between each disappearance. They all disappeared in the winter months.’

‘Dark nights. . poor visibility. Interesting. It could be a coincidence but I tend to think it isn’t.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But it does mean that death came quickly to them. . it suggests a quicker and more merciful death by hypothermia than the slower death by thirst that we were worried might be the case.’

‘Yes. . a small comfort.’

‘Well, Yellich is gathering what information he can about the murder scene. Ventnor and Pharoah are interviewing people who knew Veronica Goodwin, so you and I will finish early for today. We’ll review at nine tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have a restful night. I think we’ll all be working hard for the foreseeable future.’

Reginald Webster, not at all displeased to be able to return home earlier than he had anticipated, drove to Selby via the quieter and more rural B1222 via Stillingfleet and Cawood. He turned into the housing estate in which he lived and announced his arrival by sounding his car horn twice, which he knew was, strictly speaking, a moving traffic offence, it being unlawful to sound a car’s horn if (a) the car is stationary or (b) for any other purpose than to announce danger should the car be in motion. He was, however, known to his neighbours, all of whom knew and understood and approved of his method of announcing his arrival to his wife. As he parked his car the front door of his house opened and Joyce stood there smiling. He called a greeting to her, walked up the driveway and as he drew near he deliberately scuffed the gravel beside the concrete of the driveway. At the sound of the scuffed gravel his wife, blonde, short, slender, extended her arms. He embraced her and she responded instantly. Terry similarly greeted him by nudging his nose against his leg and wagging his tail.

That evening they sat down to a filling salad which had been lovingly prepared by Joyce, it being the only meal that he allowed her to prepare because hot food, and especially when created with boiling water, was too dangerous to risk. Later, as evening fell, Webster took Terry for a walk in the nearby woodland, because even working dogs need free time, and as he listened to a close by but unseen skylark he wondered at his wife’s courage. Blinded at just twenty years of age when she was studying fine art at university and yet considering herself lucky because, of the four occupants in the car, she alone had survived.

George Hennessey did not do well in heat. He never understood why people would spend hard-earned money to bake in Corfu in July or August when they could visit Iceland instead, and leave it until January to visit the Mediterranean fleshpots when the weather there is bearable. He often said that if he were to be given a choice of Crete in August or Aberdeen in January, he would choose the latter without a moment’s hesitation, it being preferable, in his mind, to keep warm in a cold climate rather than to try to keep cool in a hot climate. Because of his discomfort in heat he found sleep evaded him that evening. The hot day had given way to a warm evening and as he lay abed underneath just a single lightweight duvet with the window of his bedroom fully open, he still found it impossible to sleep. He was, though, at rest emotionally speaking and thinking of but not particularly preoccupied with the following day’s tasks. . and then he heard the noise. Low at first but getting louder and louder and louder as it approached his house and then faded as the selfsame noise had once before faded into a similar summer’s night. It was a motorbike. And at the sound his state of emotional rest erupted into turmoil.

The gap then appeared, the gap left by Graham, a void, huge, unmissable, a place which should have been filled by his elder brother who died in a motorbike accident when Hennessey was eight years old. An emptiness, always there. .

George Hennessey’s mind would not settle until the birds started to sing and the dawn began to appear, at which point sleep, wonderful, wonderful sleep came to him like a mother and took him unto her bosom.

It was 04.10 hours, Saturday, 13th June.