Deliver Us from Evil

FOUR

Saturday, 17.30 hours in which Yellich and Ventnor travel overseas and the gentle reader is privy to the demons which haunt Carmen Pharoah and also to those which haunt George Hennessey.

Yellich thought that Aiden McLeer did indeed look like a Canadian, whatever Canadians are supposed to look like. McLeer was well built, broad chested, muscular, neatly dressed in a grey suit with a red tie over a white shirt. He was short-haired, but not crew cut, and was clean shaven. He had an air of affability about him, Yellich found, which mixed wholesomely with an attitude of politeness, humility and gentleness. He had a slow but very masculine way of moving and Yellich thought that had he not been an officer in the Barrie Police Homicide Unit, he would have been clad in fur, trapping for beaver in the vast, snow covered wilderness. McLeer, Yellich and Ventnor sat in McLeer’s office in the Barrie Police headquarters on Sperling Drive, Cundles East, Barrie, which had transpired to be a newly built building of brick walls with vast window areas, under a pale green painted roof of metal sheeting. The flagpoles stood in a small traffic island in front of the building; the one to the left had a flag flying the red maple leaf of Canada, the second, the emblem of the Barrie Police. McLeer’s office, air-conditioned, at the front of the building, looked out over the rear of a large Zehrs shopping mall that Yellich and Ventnor were to find was pronounced ‘z-hears’. The rest of the police station was bounded by Highway 400 from which came the constant hum of car tyres rotating at speed over the road surface.

‘I read over the report your boss faxed to us yesterday. It made very interesting reading. Our chief has asked me to head up at our end.’ McLeer had a soft speaking voice with a distinct Canadian accent. He was not a migrant, definitely first, second or even third generation Canadian, possibly more. He was, Yellich immediately found, a man who seemed to be at peace in his own country.

‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich responded quickly. He felt a little on edge, he felt eager and keen to make a good, and also a lastingly good, impression amongst the Canadians.

‘Aiden, please,’ McLeer smiled at him. His eyes were warm, sincere, blue.

‘Thank you. I am Somerled,’ Yellich replied, ‘S.O.M.E.R.L.E.D., pronounced “Sorley”. It’s Celtic, quite old I believe.’

‘I was going to ask,’ McLeer grinned. ‘It’s a name I have never come across before.’

Thomson Ventnor added, ‘Dare say you’ll find that I have another strange name.’

‘I do.’ Again a warm smile.

‘It’s also unusual, but it’s only a north of England variation of Thomas. I am the third Thomson Ventnor.’

‘Interesting.’

‘You grow up with an unusual name,’ Yellich explained, ‘and after a short while it just becomes. . well, ordinary. You do learn to live with it getting remarked upon each time you meet someone new, but that’s easily coped with.’

‘I can imagine.’ McLeer clawed his mug of coffee in a meaty paw and added, ‘I thought Aiden was a little unusual, but as you say, after a while. . Well, the report. . we can talk about unusual names later.’

‘Yes,’ Yellich sat forward, ‘dare say we’d better get down to business.’

‘Indeed, well the report seems clear enough.’ Aiden McLeer held the fax in his left hand. ‘A lady who is. . who was not who she claimed to be and who was murdered, possibly by a Canadian male who travelled to England for the express purpose of said murder. She further seems to have taken the identity of a Canadian lady who once lived in the city. Seems about it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The Canadian link, the Canadian connection is clear. . the Barrie connection is clear. . and you have no local suspects?’

‘None, sir. . sorry, Aiden. None, Aiden. She didn’t seem to be particularly integrated in the legitimate community apart from her socially isolated marriage, but our boss, Mr Hennessey, has unearthed information that she was well submerged in the criminal milieu of York.’

‘Yes, he said so. . to the complete ignorance of her husband.’

‘Yes, sir, she is, she was, a lady who led multiple lives. She seemed to be trying to disprove the notion that you “can’t be all things to all men”.’ Yellich sipped his coffee but yearned for tea. ‘Her husband knew her only as a suburban housewife, keeping house for him. Yet when she did leave the house alone, she went out to engage in crime. . and she became known to the York underworld as “Becky”.’

‘How did her husband react to that news?’

‘He didn’t,’ Yellich replied flatly. ‘Or he hasn’t yet.’

‘You mean he doesn’t know. . yet?’

‘Yes, sir. . Aiden. “Yet” being the operative word. He’ll learn of her true nature eventually but, at the moment, Mr Hennessey is leaving him alone with his grief and his mourning, an important process for him to go through. He needs time and space to go through it.’

‘Yes, that is very thoughtful and very sensitive of your Mr Hennessey.’

‘I think so,’ Yellich smiled. ‘I like working for him. .’

‘And there is also the issue of the Canadian man who was apparently stalking her. . and he is your prime suspect.’

‘Well, looking for her, sir. . rather than stalking her.’

‘Yes. . better, stalking means something else. . yes, and the implication is that he found her and left her on a canal bank to die of exposure. Cold winter you are having.’

‘Unusually so, Aiden, confess this is warmer than we expected.’

McLeer glanced to his left out across the low-rise roof of Zehrs to the still bare trees and the blue sky beyond. ‘Yes, seems spring is early this year, but don’t get fooled. It will freeze tonight. That’s why you can walk out in shirtsleeves right now but the lake is still iced over. When the sun goes down the temperature will drop like a stone. This warmth won’t hang around; if you’ve brought your thermals with you, you’ll need them this evening.’

‘I see,’ Yellich followed McLeer’s gaze. The bare tree branches said it all for him. He was pleased he had indeed brought warm clothing. ‘Small town,’ Yellich observed. ‘Seems so. .’

‘Yes, Barrie is quite small but,’ McLeer smiled and shrugged his left shoulder, ‘it’s enough to keep us busy. Our buckets are full every Friday and Saturday night. So you have no local suspect for the murder of. . the lady in question?’

‘None. . none at all, Aiden. All signs point to the Canadian gentleman who was trying to track her down. He paid cash wherever he went so as to avoid leaving a trail for us to follow and the photofit. .’

‘Yes,’ McLeer picked up the photofit, ‘square-jawed, bearded, no distinguishing features at all. . there’s many like him in Barrie.’

‘More’s the pity.’

Ventnor glanced casually out of McLeer’s office window and watched a young woman in jeans and a sweater push a young child in a buggy along the pavement beside Zehrs and he thought that he could be viewing a similar street scene in York, or indeed anywhere in the UK, except that, when she crossed the road, the young woman looked left before looking right.

‘Well,’ McLeer sat back in his chair and interlaced the fingers of both hands behind his head. ‘Not a lot to go on but we have solved cases with less to go on and we rise to the challenge. So, tell me, gentlemen, how’s your French?’

‘Non-existent,’ Yellich admitted.

‘Same here,’ Ventnor added, with a distinct note of apology in his voice. ‘Why?’

‘Ah. . the English,’ McLeer smiled a broad smile and released his fingers and placed his meaty hands gently on his desk, ‘you expect everybody to speak English but you do not attempt to learn other languages. Not true, I know, but I have heard that said of the English many times.’

‘We don’t really have the incentive to be fair,’ Yellich said defensively, ‘English being the international language, especially of commerce and air travel.’

‘Fair enough, but the reason I ask is the name, Piers. . Piers, you see, is French, and one of the names the deceased used was Edith Lecointe. Lecointe is French also. If I know Canada, if I know my country, I think we will be venturing into the French Canadian community. Mainly it is centred in Ottawa and the rest of Quebec province but we have our fair share of French Canadians here in Ontario. . people. . families. . and I mean whole kinship groups for whom French is the language of choice. They are well integrated, they have not formed a ghetto or been forced into an enclave but they still form a distinct and separate group of citizens. Piers might well be an alias but the choice of Piers as a name would be a choice made by a French Canadian. Did he use a car when in the UK?’

‘Yes, he did, we believe, a hire car, but no one took a note of the registration number,’ Yellich explained. ‘No one had any need to do so. And he wasn’t caught on CCTV. Where he went was a bit remote for CCTV. . even in the UK.’

‘And paid in cash. He was a man who clearly put a lot of effort into covering his tracks. I can see why you are suspicious of him.’ McLeer paused. ‘Seems to me we will need a French-speaking officer. I speak a little. It is expected of our officers to be as bilingual as possible but my French is not good enough if there is a possibility that we are going into the French Canadian community. . the French Canadians have developed their own form of French which makes French purists cringe.’

‘I see,’ Yellich said for want of something to say in reply. ‘Interesting.’

‘Not to worry, I have an officer in mind but she has authority in this matter, she has tactical command. This is a Barrie Police investigation. We must agree on that now.’

‘Understood,’ Yellich nodded. ‘And agreed.’

‘Clear as a bell,’ added Ventnor, ‘protocol will be observed.’

‘Cooperation will be of the fullest, of course, and we are keen to know how come Edith Lecointe’s or Avrille’s name was used. . like, where is she now? There may be a heap more to this than the murder which occurred in England.’

‘Absolutely, as is always the case.’ Yellich raised his eyebrows and settled back in his chair. ‘Yet the lady was frightened. She was scared of something or someone. She was in hiding, going out in disguise and doing what she could to raise hard cash and we don’t know who she was, because neither her fingerprints nor her DNA are on our database.’

‘None on ours either.’ McLeer pronounced ‘either’ in the American way of ‘ee-thuer’ which grated on the ears of Yellich and Ventnor who both pronounced ‘either’ and ‘neither’ as ‘I-ther’ and ‘ni-ther’ as they had been taught and as they believed was the right and proper pronunciation. ‘So,’ McLeer continued, ‘we have to find out who Edith Lecointe or Avrille is. . or was.’

‘It’s the only place we can start,’ Yellich offered.

‘Yes, yes it is. How are you feeling?’

‘Tired.’ Yellich forced a grin.

‘Yes, you would be.’ McLeer looked at his watch. ‘Four p.m. . your body clock is at eight p.m., just a few hours’ time difference at the moment. Usually it’s five but we put our clocks forward two weeks before you do and back two weeks earlier also. So there are two two-week periods each year when we have a four-hour time difference, once in the spring and once in the fall but even so, four hours is still four hours and after a long flight. Is the hotel to your liking?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ It was, thought Yellich, a diplomatic reply.

‘We put you centrally but you will find that it will be quiet. Barrie is not New York City, as you will see. Tomorrow I will introduce you to Sergeant Auphan, the French-speaking officer I have in mind. Sergeant Auphan has room at the moment to work with you on this case.’

‘Thank you.’ Yellich stood, as did Ventnor. Both men were weary and in need of a shower and a long sleep.

‘So this is it. . this is where it all ended for little you. . little you and your little games.’ The man looked at the area beyond the blue and white police tape which fluttered loudly in the strong breeze. ‘. . All just to fetch up here. . and isn’t it just such a lonely place to die? What a dance you led me. . what a dance, but I got you in the end, didn’t I. .? Eh. .? Didn’t I get you in the end?’

Sunday, 29th March, nine a.m.

The woman was tall, dark-haired, slender with high cheekbones. She had a gentleness of manner and a soft speaking voice which appealed to both Yellich and Ventnor. Particularly to Ventnor. She smiled warmly as she entered the room in which the two officers had been asked to wait, which overlooked the 400 Highway, the rooftops and thick stand of trees to the high-rise development of central Barrie in the mid distance. She extended her hand and said, ‘Hello, I am Detective Sergeant Auphan, Marianne Auphan’. She slid gracefully behind the desk in the room and laid a manila folder on her highly polished desktop. She immediately invited Yellich and Ventnor to resume their seats with a deft feminine wrist action. ‘So,’ she said, ‘Edith Lecointe.’ She spoke with a slight French accent which suggested that was her dominant language although she was to prove herself word perfect in English. ‘I have her file here. She died three years ago, aged forty-seven years. Is that in keeping with the age of the deceased in question?’

‘Yes,’ Yellich replied, ‘it is.’ He opened the file he carried and handed her photographs of the woman as she was found on the canal bank on the outskirts of York.

‘Strange half sitting position,’ Sergeant Auphan remarked.

‘Yes, we believe she was left for dead but in fact regained consciousness briefly only to succumb to hypothermia. The post-mortem revealed that she had no food in her stomach. We believe she was kept against her will for two days and deprived of food in that period. That of course didn’t help her retain her body heat.’

‘It wouldn’t. A full stomach is like a form of central heating, or so we are constantly being told and in Canada it is vital to keep our young women eating sufficiently. . anorexia and Canadian winters are not a healthy combination, even if we or they do dress for it.’ She turned and glanced out of her window. ‘It’s mild now but we will have more snow before the spring is finally here, then Ontario will bake. Believe me, gentlemen, in Ontario you are either in the fridge or in the oven with some in-between sort of days in spring and in the fall. . and they are few and far between.’

‘So we believe,’ Yellich answered.

‘This is a fortunate time for you to come really, over the worst of winter and before the full force of summer. You might even find the weather tolerable. But, to the matter in hand, there is clearly foul play here,’ she looked at the photographs, ‘so our first port of call must be Edith Lecointe’s last known address on Wattie Road in Midhurst. So, shall we go?’

Wattie Road, Midhurst revealed itself to be approximately two miles north of downtown Barrie. It was a narrow, winding road which both Yellich and Ventnor thought was poorly surfaced with cracks and potholes every few feet thus making driving a slow and careful procedure. The area itself was, it seemed, prestigious with large houses, some in the European style of two storeys with pronounced angled roofs, others in a more traditional New World style, a single storey but with a very broad frontage and with either a flat roof or a slightly angled roof, but all with a double garage built into or at the side of the main building, and each occupying its own very generous parcel of land. Each house also seemed to have a porch on which stood one or two plastic chairs, the observation of which triggered a distant memory of Yellich’s of once reading that the favoured pastime of Canadians was sitting on the front porch in the long summer evenings. What few cars were parked in the driveways of the houses were new and large and mainly American, although catching sight of a solitary Jaguar made Ventnor feel at home. Between the houses and behind them were trees, at that time of year without foliage. What both the British officers noticed was how uniformly tall and upright the trees seemed, and how close together they stood, more akin to stalks in a cornfield than trees in a wood. So tightly packed were they that a man would have to weave continually between them if he were to make any progress through the woodland, and Yellich guessed that any man entering the wood and walking away from an observer on the roadside would be lost from sight ere he had walked ten feet. Yellich asked what sort of trees they were.

‘Spruce,’ Marianne Auphan replied confidently as she turned the unmarked car into the driveway of a wide, flat roofed property painted pale blue and halted the car between a bright yellow and highly polished Cherokee Jeep and a speedboat and trailer. ‘They’re green spruce, already.’

Marianne Auphan left the car and, without locking it, led Yellich and Ventnor to the house. She walked up the wooden steps of the porch and knocked on the door with an odd, thought Yellich, yet pleasing and effective mixture of reverence and authority, a knock which was clearly well rehearsed and practised. It was evident to both Yellich and Ventnor that Sergeant Auphan had honed her ‘people skills’ over the years and knew how to win the public over to her side. Her attitude made Yellich and Ventnor feel comfortable and wholly reassured. The door of the house opened and a middle-aged woman in a blue sweater and thick tartan patterned skirt stood in the doorway. She seemed to the officers to be well nourished; her figure may, they thought, be fairly described as ‘curvy’ but the ‘curvy’ nature seemed to have developed from a more slender figure of her youth. Her hair was silver and close cut. Spectacles hung on a silver chain round her neck as did not one, but three, necklaces. Her fingers were adorned with rings and stones. The wristwatch she wore was large and manly. ‘Help you?’ she asked, not seeming to be afraid of the strange woman and two strange men who had called on her without any prior warning.

Sergeant Auphan showed the householder her badge. ‘Police,’ she said softly. ‘These two gentlemen are from the British Police.’

‘The British Police!’ The householder’s voice was of a strange mixture of alarm that the police had called upon her, tinged with excitement and curiosity that two of the three officers were of the old country.

‘Yes. Nothing for you to worry about,’ Auphan spoke with a reassuring tone. ‘I wonder if we can come in?’

‘Sure.’ The woman stepped aside and the officers entered and were met by two inquisitive cats, both grey and white and one noticeably larger than the other. Interlocking rubber matting had been placed over the carpet as a protective covering. The ceiling of the house seemed low to Yellich and Ventnor and the yellow and black pattern of the carpet which evoked a tiger skin was not to either man’s taste. The house seemed unduly dark inside and rooms were separated by hanging fabric rather than doors, again not to the taste of either Yellich or Ventnor. ‘I wasn’t expecting no visitors,’ the woman explained. ‘It’s a bit of a dumpster right about now.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Auphan smiled gently, ‘we are not from Better Homes and Gardens.’

‘Well, come through.’ The woman closed the front door behind the officers and led them to the rear of the house and invited them to sit at a circular table which was still covered with the manufacturer’s plastic seal. The chairs were, the officers found, too low for the table and must have made eating from it somewhat difficult. To Yellich’s right was a bookcase within which had been placed, oddly, he thought, a coffee making machine; to his left a window looked out across a rear garden which was still covered in a thick, but clearly thawing, layer of snow, and beyond the garden was yet another seemingly impenetrable stand of dark grey trunks of green spruce.

‘We and the UK police,’ Marianne Auphan began once the officers and the householder were seated round the circular table, ‘are making inquiries into the late Edith Lecointe or Avrille, once of this address.’

‘Edith!’ The woman gasped, her jaw slackened. ‘Edith. .’

‘Yes.’

‘She is gone before. . as you say, she is the late Edith Lecointe.’

‘But this was her last address?’

‘Yes. She and I lived here. She was my sister. I am Blanche Lecointe.’

‘Well,’ Marianne Auphan began, ‘we need to know as much about your late sister as possible. I am sorry if this is difficult for you.’

‘Difficult. . so sudden. . but why? Sorry. . I have to gather my thoughts. .’

Marianne Auphan glanced at Yellich. ‘Perhaps, Mr Yellich, you could explain?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Yellich sat forward and as he did so his eye was caught by a black squirrel sitting on the fence at the bottom of Blanche Lecointe’s garden. He had not until then realized the subspecies existed but he knew it was not the time or place to comment. ‘Yes. . you see, I repeat Miss Auphan’s apologies for the suddenness of this. . the unexpected nature of our call and the purpose of it. . very sorry.’

‘Sure,’ Blanche Lecointe held fascinated eye contact with Yellich as she rapidly regained her composure.

‘Well. . this is not easy to explain. . so I’ll just say it, but in the first instance can I ask you how you know your sister is deceased?’ He paused. ‘What I mean to say is that even though your sister’s death was registered, what identification was made of the deceased? Can you confirm the deceased in question was your sister?’

‘Yes,’ the woman replied softly, ‘yes, I can.’ She remained composed, impressively so, so thought all three of the officers. Given the unexpected nature of the call, the revealed purpose of it, Blanche Lecointe’s speedy recovery of her composure was impressive. ‘I identified the body in the Chapel of Rest. She lay in an open casket. I kissed her forehead. That is how I know it was Edith.’

The three officers exchanged eye contact and nodded slightly.

‘That’s good enough,’ Yellich said. ‘In fact it’s more than good enough.’ He then addressed Blanche Lecointe. ‘It seems that a woman has been using your late sister’s identity in the UK.’

Blanche Lecointe gasped.

‘We are extremely anxious to find out the identity of the woman who stole your sister’s identity. This lady had a North American accent, she knew this part of Canada and she had a Canadian passport in your sister’s name. . your late sister’s name. . and she herself was murdered a few days ago.’

‘My. .’ Blanche Lecointe put up a hand to her mouth, ‘oh, my.’ She sank back against her chair. ‘My. .’

‘We have good reason to believe the person who murdered her to be a Canadian, a Canadian male, and that he is now back here in Canada.’

Blanche Lecointe forced a smile. ‘In Canada? It’s still a lot of territory, largest country in the Commonwealth.’

‘Appreciate that, it’s an awful lot of pink on the map, twice the land area of the USA. . more. . in fact.’

‘The big empty, but yes, it’s a large country.’

‘Again, all I can say is that I appreciate that but this is our only lead,’ Yellich replied calmly.

‘We have to start somewhere,’ Marianne Auphan smiled, ‘and this is the one address, the only address we have. There must be some connection between your sister and the woman who was murdered in England a few days ago.’

Yellich deftly plunged his hand into the large manila envelope he carried and extracted the passport found in Edith Lecointe’s bedroom in her home in Dringhouses, York. He handed it to Blanche Lecointe, opened at the photograph page.

‘That is not my sister, definitely not Edith. Not her. . no way, not even the slightest similarity, and before you ask, no I do not recognize the woman in the photograph. . what an evil-looking woman. . those eyes, heavens just look at those eyes. Edith had such warm eyes but this woman. . Who is she? Who is she?’

‘If we find that out. .’ Yellich allowed his voice to fade.

‘What can you tell us about your sister?’ Ventnor asked.

‘I’d rather you asked questions, it would be easier,’ Blanche Lecointe smiled. ‘I mean I could tell you a whole lot about Edith but none of it would be any help. . like how she took her coffee and all. . ask me of the details you need to know.’

‘Point taken,’ Ventnor smiled. ‘You’re right, of course.’

‘I can tell you that we were not full sisters in actuality, we were half-sisters. Same father, different mothers.’ Blanche Lecointe leafed through the passport. ‘She didn’t go far, did she? The mystery woman I mean, just one stamp. . Heathrow. Where is that? London? Oh yes, it says so. . oh. .’

‘What is it?’ Marianne Auphan sat up, suddenly alert. ‘Have you noticed something, ma’am?’

‘The date, the date the passport was issued.’

‘What about it. . is it significant?’

‘It is dated a year, a full year before my sister died.’

A silence descended on the room.

‘Are you certain?’ Marianne Auphan asked.

‘Sure. Sure I am sure.’ The woman’s voice rose with impatience. ‘It’s easily verified, but yeah, I am sure.’ She handed the passport back to Yellich. ‘Go check. Go check. But I tell you that passport was issued one year, one full year before my sister Edith died.’

Yellich took the passport and checked the date of issue against the death certificate in respect of the passing of Edith Lecointe. He felt acutely embarrassed. ‘Something we should have noticed,’ he said. ‘Elementary, but yes, the passport was issued twelve months prior to the death of Mrs Lecointe.’

‘Miss Lecointe,’ Blanche Lecointe corrected Yellich with clear indignation.

‘Sorry,’ Yellich smiled apologetically, ‘Miss Lecointe. And it was issued fraudulently. The person who obtained the passport was not Edith Lecointe. Can you tell us about Miss Lecointe’s death?’ Yellich addressed Blanche Lecointe. ‘I’m. . we are sorry if this is difficult for you.’

‘It was recorded as being accidental,’ Blanche, Lecointe replied softly. ‘And it is not difficult, but thank you.’

‘We’ll have to take a fresh look now,’ Marianne Auphan added. ‘It is now raising suspicions.’

‘Who issues passports in Canada? What is the procedure?’ Yellich turned to Marianne Auphan.

‘I believe it is the same system as in the UK, by post from the passport office. The nearest one to Barrie is Toronto. . completed form, a copy of the birth certificate plus two photographs, plus fee. The form has to be signed by a professional person authenticating that the applicant is who he or she claims to be and also that the photograph is authentic. I admit it’s the damned easiest thing in the world to obtain a passport in somebody else’s name and the passport officials, hard pressed as they are, won’t be suspicious. Miss Lecointe’s application won’t ring any alarm bells about illegal immigrants, she is, after all, white European, mid forties, resident in a small city which has no appeal for ethnic minorities or illegals, nothing suspicious there at all. Her application will be rubber-stamped. Here, in this situation, Miss Lecointe was still alive when the passport was issued so there would be no death certificate to nullify the claim. But passport applications are not cross-referenced to death certificates anyway.’

‘Not in the UK either,’ Yellich spoke softly. ‘Big hole in the procedural tightness methinks.’

‘Indeed.’ Marianne Auphan glanced at Blanche Lecointe and smiled. ‘I am afraid we will be here for a little time.’

‘Sure. . I’ll fix us all some coffee.’ She rose from the table.

Moments later, when all four were sipping coffee sweetened and with milk according to taste, Yellich asked, ‘So, could you tell us what you know about your half-sister? Did you grow up together? We need to go as far back as we can. . I am sorry.’

‘No. . sure, it’s OK, like I said. . don’t be sorry for anything,’ Blanche Lecointe smiled. ‘Happy to help. So, well, I am older. I was planned; Edith was not planned and was fostered from birth. She was given our family name and then forgotten.’ She shook her head, ‘Horrible. . just horrible to do that to a child.’

‘Where did she grow up? Do you know?’ Yellich asked.

Ventnor remained silent, occasionally glancing at Marianne Auphan; less occasionally their eyes met.

‘In foster care,’ Blanche Lecointe sighed. ‘All that unmet need. . Foster care can be like natural parenting, I guess it can be good or it can be bad. In her case, I don’t know the details but it definitely wasn’t good. Later I found out that she criminalized herself when she was still a juvenile and was sent to live with the nuns at a place called St Saviours. I don’t know where that was. . or still is. Like I said, all that unmet need, poor girl. We had no contact at all with each other, then she suddenly showed up on my front stoop with a valise or two and said, “Hi, I’m your sister”. Took the breath right from me. We even looked similar which was strange because girls are supposed to grow up to look like their mothers and boys like their father. . but me and Edith, we were our father’s daughters all right. And that, let me tell you, was the first I knew that she existed.’

‘You were not told about her?’

Blanche Lecointe shook her head. ‘Not a word, not a whisper, not a hint. Nothing. But she had her birth certificate, on it were daddy’s name and address and his occupation. . mechanic. . an auto mechanic. He was a blue collar, beer loving guy but I never figured him for a Lothario, always seemed to be a home boy, apart from Friday and Saturday nights in the Tavern but other evenings he was happy to sit home. . dug his garden at the weekends and took us on family vacations, so it came as a shock when Edith rang my doorbell with a couple of valises at her feet. Some shock.’

‘She brought valises?’ Marianne Auphan commented.

‘Valises?’ Ventnor queried.

‘Suitcases,’ Marianne Auphan explained quickly, glancing warmly at him.

‘Yes,’ Blanche Lecointe continued, ‘that’s the point, she wasn’t visiting with her half-sister, she was looking for a cot and a roof, already.’

‘And you let her in? I mean, you let her stay?’

‘Yes, after we had chatted some and she showed me her birth certificate. . and we looked like each other and we fell to talking quickly. Yes, I had a spare room and she was kin, so no reason not to, but the agreement was that it would be for only a short while; she had to look elsewhere for something permanent. It worked out well, she stayed for little under a year, she worked and she paid fair rent, picked up after herself like a good house guest and did her share of the housework.’

‘She took up employment?’

‘Yes, she did. She worked in a realtor’s in Barrie. She had office skills, you see. She had a good resume and got a job quickly. It wasn’t much, she was just a middle-aged secretary without a family, but she had a steady job and that was when the economy was beginning its downturn. I’m afraid I don’t know what it’s like in the UK right now but here in Canada. . well, there’s not much work right now.’

‘Same in the UK,’ Yellich said. ‘Myself and DC Ventnor here don’t get paid much but we see life and we have security of employment. We are among the lucky ones and we are not ungrateful.’

‘I know what you mean. I taught school. I have this house and an inflation-proof pension. I need to budget but I am also a lucky one.’

‘Yes. . so you and your sister must have talked?’

‘Yes, did we talk. . I mean did we talk. . we had a lot to talk about, a real lot to talk about, years to catch up on.’

‘Did she indicate she felt to be in danger?’ Yellich asked. ‘Did she say that someone was out to harm her?’

‘No,’ Blanche Lecointe shook her head slowly, ‘she didn’t but you know, for all that we talked, and we had a lot to talk about, she was always a very guarded and a private person. She had a social life that I wasn’t allowed to be part of.’

‘Any friend in particular?’

‘Sally Brompton. She was a co-worker at the realtor’s. They would go out together two or three nights a week. I reckon Sally Brompton will be able to tell you more that I can about her private life. She worked for Andrew Neill Realtor. .’

Ventnor scribbled the name in his notebook. ‘We’ll pay a call on her.’

‘They’re in Barrie near the terminal.’

‘The terminal?’ Ventnor queried.

‘The bus terminal on Simcoe Street, very near your hotel,’ Marianne Auphan explained. ‘I’ll let you have a street map, already, you’ll need it.’

‘Thanks.’ Ventnor smiled briefly and held eye contact with her.

‘So,’ Yellich rested his arms on the tabletop, ‘probably a bit of a difficult question, but what can you tell us about your half-sister’s death?’

‘No. . it’s all right and essential that you know. She died of exposure one winter.’

Marianne Auphan groaned and put her hand to her forehead, ‘One of those? It happens each winter, all across Canada. . it’s so tragic. . cometh the spring, cometh the grief.’

‘Yes,’ Blanche Lecointe repeated, ‘One of those. Her body was found near Bear Creek in Ardagh Bluffs. .’

‘It’s quite close to here,’ Marianne Auphan explained, ‘and also quite a similar housing development mixed in with spruce plantations. You can seem to be well out in the boonies. . out in the country, yet you are just a short walk from someone’s house or from a main road.’

‘I see. . ironic though,’ Yellich commented.

‘Ironic?’ Blanche Lecointe turned and glanced at him.

‘Well, that was how the lady using your half-sister’s identity died, of exposure in a cold spell, in an open area beside a canal. . not in woodland but. . nonetheless, she died of exposure.’

‘I see what you mean, but Edith had no connection that I knew of with Ardagh Bluffs or with anyone living there.’ Blanche Lecointe glanced out of her window. ‘I well remember the last night I saw her, dressing up in her finery and she a middle-aged woman. She was going out on a date like an excited teenager. It was winter. Snow had fallen. More was forecast. She didn’t come home. I filed a missing person’s report forty-eight hours later, then. . nothing. . nothing. . nothing until the thaw, it was about this time of year when her body was found. It had lain under the snow all winter.’

‘That is what I meant by “one of those”,’ Marianne Auphan explained to Yellich and Ventnor. ‘Come each thaw. . come each spring. . all across Canada missing person’s reports are closed. Sometimes there is evidence of foul play but mostly it is misadventure. . accidental. . very often young men walking home with too much drink inside them, they take a short cut through an area of woodland, succumb to the alcohol, lay down or collapse, snow covers their body and keeps it covered.’

‘I see. Tragic,’ Ventnor said.

‘It’s Canada. . and it’s any country with heavy snowfall.’

‘Dare say,’ Yellich echoed. ‘So can we please go back a little further if possible? What do you know of her life before she turned up so unexpectedly at your door?’

‘Not a great deal. She did talk a little about it, but not a lot. The foster home sounded more like an institution than a foster family. It seemed that it was a large house full of children supervised by a single foster mother. Then she was with the nuns. . she didn’t talk about that at all. . and that says a lot.’

‘I see. . and yes, it does.’

‘It was out at Aldersea, the foster home, I mean.’

‘That’s an easy drive from Barrie,’ Marianne Auphan turned to Yellich, ‘by the side of Lake Simcoe.’

‘Another lake?’ Yellich replied.

‘Same one really. Barrie is on Kempenfelt Bay but Kempenfelt is a bay of Lake Simcoe.’

‘I see.’

‘So. .’ Blanche Lecointe continued, ‘Edith told me she left the nuns at sixteen years old so she must have been very vulnerable, no family. . no money. She moved to Toronto to live in the big city. I swear it never had any attraction for me. I always thought that Toronto is such a mess of a city. . not like Montreal. I could live in Montreal. I really could live in that city. She returned to Barrie when she was in her thirties.’

‘Did she marry?’

‘No. Well, she never said she did. . Edith never had a ring on her finger. . and she used her maiden name. She had a warm personality all right. So neither of us are or ever were catwalk models but we were still not bad looking. She had a warm personality like I said, she was a very giving sort of girl. She had no career to pursue, just had office skills, which are good enough but hardly a substitute for a family. So you’d think she would be hungry for marriage, but no, she never did marry. Two spinster half-sisters we,’ Blanche Lecointe smiled, ‘that was us.’

‘Where did she live before she turned up at your door?’

‘Dunno,’ Blanche Lecointe inclined her head, ‘that will be one for Sally Brompton. I believe she could answer that question.’

Driving away from Blanche Lecointe’s house along Wattie Road, Marianne Auphan said, ‘It’s looking like murder. I didn’t want to say anything in there but it’s a common method of murder here, all over Canada really, pour alcohol down someone’s throat. . or some other substance, carry them outside in a snowstorm, leave them somewhere, some semi-remote place. . and a stand of spruce at Ardagh Bluffs is ideal. Just perfect. . near at hand and not easily overlooked. Without a witness or a confession all the coroner can do is return a verdict of “death by misadventure” but in not a few cases we have our suspicions.’

‘I’ll bet,’ Yellich replied from the front passenger seat. ‘I’ll bet you do.’

‘Sometimes. .’ Auphan manoeuvred the car to avoid a pothole in the road surface.

‘You’re thinking of something?’ Yellich turned to Marianne Auphan, as she straightened the course of the car.

‘Yes, I am thinking of something and I am still angry, very angry about it. Last winter a sixteen-year-old girl went out dressed in a party dress, no top coat or hat, didn’t get back home by the designated hour and her father refused to let her in, wanted to teach her a lesson about timekeeping, he told us, but it was subzero. . for all the clothing she was wearing she might as well have been naked. .’

‘Oh. .’ Yellich groaned.

‘We don’t know what happened to her, not exactly, and we probably never will, but in her desperation she most likely accepted a suspect lift from a stranger, anything to get out of the cold. Her body was found thirty miles away and so the next time her parents saw her she was on a slab. Some lesson about timekeeping. I wanted to prosecute but our top floor vetoed it. Dare say they were right. This girl was their only daughter, only child in fact. He might have been a bit of a hard father but in his own way he loved her very much. His grief and guilt were genuine and his wife left him over the incident. Just packed her bags and walked out on the same day they identified her body. No purpose to be served by prosecuting, so the top floor said. Now I think that the top floor was right but then. . back then I wanted to throw the book at him.’

‘Understandable.’

‘But here,’ Marianne Auphan pointed behind her, indicating the Lecointe house, ‘here someone wanted Edith out of the way so they could use her passport. . here is deep suspicion. We need to reopen the file on Edith Lecointe’s death, already.’

Carmen Pharoah woke early. She lay in bed in her small but functional new build flat on Bootham and listened to the city slowly awakening around her, the milk float whirring in the street below her window, stopping and starting and accompanied by the ‘all’s well’ sound of the rattle of milk bottles in metal crates, of the different, deeper whirr of the high revving diesel engines of the first buses, and the distant ‘ee-aw’ sound of a passenger train leaving York Station to go north to still dark Scotland, or south to London and the home counties where the day had already dawned.

She thought, as she lay under the freshly laundered quilt, of the other life she had once had, of the other life she had felt forced out of. She and her husband, both Afro-Caribbean, both overcoming prejudice by professionalism, observing the advice her father-in-law gave her and her husband upon their engagement, ‘I am proud of both of you, very proud, but you’re black, you’ve got to be ten times better just to be equal’. And how they were ten times better! Both ten times better, both employed by the Metropolitan Police, she as a Detective Constable and he as a civilian employee, a Chartered Accountant, assisting in managing an annual budget of millions of pounds.

Then. . then. . what was it called? She turned and lay on her back looking up at the ceiling. ‘Survivor guilt’, that was it. . that is the phrase, ‘survivor guilt’. Those who survive feel guilty for having survived. The awful news was broken gently by one of her senior colleagues. Her husband could not have known anything, he had said, death must have been instantaneous and the accident wasn’t his fault. . not his fault at all, that they would be prosecuting the other motorist of course and then leaving her to face dreadful widowhood when she was still short of her thirtieth birthday.

Then she had, soon after the funeral, transferred to the north, to Yorkshire. She had chosen Yorkshire because it has a reputation of being cold and unforgiving in terms of its climate and landscape and its people are also, it is rumoured, hard and unforgiving; no one, it is said, can bear a grudge like a Yorkshire man. An ideal place for a guilt-laden survivor to live until she feels the penalty she must pay has been paid.

In full.

‘Got a hit.’ Marianne Auphan leaned on the lightweight doorframe of the office which had been designated Yellich and Ventnor’s office accommodation for the duration of their visit. She smiled a smug, self-satisfied smile and held up a sheet of paper. ‘The prints of the deceased, that is your deceased, whose name is not Edith Lecointe, she is known to us.’

Yellich sat up and smiled, ‘She is?’

‘She is.’ Marianne Auphan advanced into the cramped office which overlooked Highway 400. Ventnor also displayed a look of intrigue.

‘Yes, the latents belong to a felon called Heather Ossetti. She has previous for minor offences but it’s her all right, a regular feloness. She was convicted in Vancouver for shoplifting twenty years ago. Not known to the Barrie Police, not known to Ontario Province Police, so I went national.’

‘Good for you,’ Yellich smiled though not fully understanding the Canadian system of data filing; city, province, national. .

‘Nothing violent though. . receiving stolen goods, non-payment of a fine. . she went to jail for that. So it’s a strange pattern of previous convictions given that she is a murder suspect and not reading like the sort of person that someone would want to starve of food before murdering them. She’s just a petty crook according to this profile.’ Marianne Auphan sat in the one vacant chair in the office and as she did so she glanced out of the window at the towering grey clouds above Highway 400 and the houses glimpsed between the trees beyond the freeway. ‘Snow in the sky,’ she said, ‘that’s a snow sky.’ She turned to Yellich. ‘So how do you want to handle this?’

‘Two pronged, I think.’ Yellich turned from the window after studying a ‘snow sky’ of black mountainous clouds which seemed to be descending on the town on the bay. ‘You’ll be reopening the file in respect of the death of Edith Lecointe, I assume?’

‘Yes, already activated. The file is being sent up from archives and I have talked it over with Aiden McLeer. He fully shares my. . our concerns and suspicions.’

‘I see, well, it’s your pigeon, you are the Barrie Police and as agreed, you have tactical command but if you’ll permit, I would like to investigate the background of Edith Lecointe. She was not a criminal, is not a suspect so it would not be a criminal investigation as such. I can do that alone with your permission and approval. At some point she must have crossed paths with Heather Ossetti. . when I find that point I stop. . and consult your good self.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Perhaps you two could investigate Heather Ossetti? We both need to know who she is. . or was. . I mean that both the Barrie Police and the Vale of York Police need to know about her, so let’s use one officer from each force and at some point our inquiries will converge.’

‘Yes. Agreed.’ Marianne Auphan and Ventnor nodded to each other and then looked at Yellich. ‘Yes, that sounds neat and sensible.’

‘I’ll need a car,’ Yellich said. ‘Can you provide one for me, please?’

‘No problem. We’ll let you have one of our unmarked vehicles. Fuel up here when you need to do so. Do you want to fly solo?’

‘Yes,’ Yellich smiled. ‘I’ll squeal if I need help, but solo is preferable in the first instance. I’d be happier on my own on this one.’

Marianne Auphan took Ventnor to Hooters Bar on the shore of Kempenfelt Bay. Upon entering they were greeted by the Hooters girls in figure-hugging white vests and red shorts who cried out, ‘Hi, welcome to Hooters’ as they entered.

‘I thought you might like it here,’ Auphan smiled at Ventnor, who sat at a polished pine table by the window which overlooked the bay. ‘It’s very American. . in fact it is an American organization.’ She sat opposite him and Ventnor noticed her large brown eyes dilate as she held eye contact with him. ‘Just what a Limey needs,’ she added with a soft smile, ‘an injection of genuine North American culture.’

‘Appreciated.’ Ventnor looked around him. He saw that the bar was doing good business. It was perhaps, he thought, about half full and it was still early in the day. Large muscular men ate large portioned cheeseburgers and French fries and drank chilled beer served eagerly and efficiently by the Hooters girls. ‘And if this is North American culture,’ he said as a Hooters girl slid up to their table to take their order, ‘then it’s something that this Limey can get used to. I promise I wouldn’t put up any kind of fight at all.’

‘Good,’ she smiled, ‘so welcome to Barrie, Ontario province.’

Later, before returning to the police station, Auphan and Ventnor walked side by side along the shore of the bay, not talking, but occasionally their shoulders would rub gently.

Sally Brompton revealed herself to be a short woman, well presented in terms of her own dress sense, wearing ‘office smart’ clothing and large spectacles. She had a round face, close cropped hair. She had painted her fingernails in loud red paint and wore ‘sensible’ shoes, feminine but with a small heel. She talked with Yellich in one of the interview rooms in the realtor’s office in which she worked. Yellich had been unsure exactly what a ‘realtor’ was and had been afraid to ask but from the photographs of properties for sale on the wall of the foyer of the building in which Ms Brompton worked he surmised that ‘realtor’ was Canadian for estate agent. It was in much the same way that he was disappointed to find that Canadians have ‘tires’, not ‘tyres’, but he was equally relieved to find that a lawyer is a barrister or a solicitor and not an ‘attorney’ and that a cheque is a cheque, not a ‘check’.

‘Oh my. . oh my,’ she repeated as she sank further back into the yellow armchair, ‘oh my.’

‘Bit of a shock. I am sorry.’ Yellich spoke softly.

‘You could say so, though I haven’t heard about her in a while. Losing her life in the snow. . it happens a lot in Canada. . but now you tell me there is more to it. . something sinister.’

‘At this stage it is only a possibility.’

‘We thought it was an accident but now you tell me someone stole her identity and went to England with it. What sort of theft is that?’

‘Callous,’ Yellich suggested. ‘Perhaps callous is the word.’

‘Yes, callous. . callous. . so callous. So, how can I help you?’

‘By telling me all you can about Edith Lecointe, as you recall her, and anything she told you about herself. We have spoken to Blanche, her half-sister, but Blanche told us that Edith was a private person and told her little of herself.’

‘Yes, she was very quiet like that.’ Sally Brompton paused and looked to her left and out of the interview room window as a white single-decker Barrie Transit bus arrived at the small bus terminal and ‘knelt’ on its suspension to allow the egress and ingress of passengers with walking difficulties. ‘We became friends when she arrived here to work. We were both of the same age. . we are. . we were lucky to have an employer who doesn’t discriminate. I still am. If you are a clerical worker you have a distinct advantage in the job market if you are young and pretty. Most employers like an attractive typist or two to set their office off but Mr Neill, he seeks efficiency above anything else, so we got a position here. I think. . no, I know, Edith felt her lack of advancement in life more than I did. She had no family as you probably know. . no husband. . no children. . but I am fulfilled in that sense, soon to be a first time grandparent. So I don’t mind a lowly old job but Edith, all she had was a lowly old job. She wanted more out of life than life had given her. But Edith, she got asked out by older men. . or men of her age but she seemed unable to settle, unable to commit. She was wounded, I think.’

‘Wounded?’

‘In here,’ Sally Brompton tapped the side of her head, ‘or maybe here,’ she pointed to her chest. ‘She wasn’t insane, nothing like that, but just damaged emotionally. She had difficult years, a bad start in life.’

‘Yes, she was fostered, was that a bad experience for her? Did she ever tell you about that?’

‘Well, she didn’t talk about it or about the time with the nuns and that’s always a sign of something bad. . you must assume what you must assume.’

Yellich nodded. ‘I know what you mean.’

‘So that really was Edith’s life, many dates with divorced or widowed men in their middle years. She wasn’t a cougar though.’

‘A cougar?’

Sally Brompton smiled. ‘You’ll have them in England but you’ll know them by a different name. In Canada “cougars” are middle-aged women who seek younger men.’

‘Oh yes,’ Yellich smiled, ‘sugar mummies.’

‘There is a bar here in Barrie where a lot of that sort of thing goes on. The young men sit alone and the “cougars” approach and offer to buy the drinks. . all upside down. . all reversed. . back to front. . but Edith wasn’t like that, her dates were of her generation, the sort of men that need to pop a little blue pill if they are going to satisfy their date.’

‘I see,’ Yellich smiled.

‘But nothing for her ever got beyond one or two dates with the same man.’

‘So there was no one special in her life when she disappeared?’

‘No one, and I am sure I would know if there was. We went out socially from time to time as well as talked in here. I am sure I would have known if there was someone special, as would her sister in Midhurst, but you’ve seen her, you say.’

‘Yes. Now the other question. .’ Yellich paused, ‘the other question is, did she seem frightened at all?’

‘Frightened?’

‘Yes. . of someone. . of something?’

‘Not that I recall but as you said and as I also said, she was a private person, she probably wouldn’t have told me if she was frightened but I got no sense of her being in a state of fear. . but her emotional hunger took her to some worrying places.’

‘Worrying places?’

‘Dark bars on Dunlop Street.’

‘Oh, our hotel is on that street, seems quiet.’

‘Oh it is, during the day. . during the day it’s a very quiet street. . but at night. .’

‘Ah. .’

‘The bars stay open until two a.m. and Edith would occasionally come to work with bloodshot eyes. It never seemed that it affected her work though; Mr Neill never had any complaints about her. She was very efficient, very good at her job. When we went out together we were always home early, but she went out alone occasionally.’

‘Did she ever mention a woman called Ossetti. . Heather Ossetti?’

‘Heather Ossetti? No, no she never mentioned that name to me.’

‘I see. Where was the foster home in which she grew up?’

‘Out on the coast at Safe Harbour, in Aldersea, by the side of Lake Simcoe.’

‘Safe Harbour?’

‘Yes, she said it was anything but safe and harbour-like, it was on a road. . called. . she mentioned it, an English name, an English place name famous in history. . where the Normans landed. .’

‘Hastings?’

‘Yes,’ Sally Brompton smiled, ‘Hastings Road, Safe Harbour, Aldersea. Not a happy time for her.’

‘Thank you,’ Yellich stood. ‘I’ll pay a visit, see if anything is still there, or anybody.’

George Hennessey slowly and sensitively opened the door and smiled at Matilda Pakenham who sat propped up in the bed. He saw how extensively bruised about the face she was. Her body was covered in a hospital gown and the bed covers and Hennessey doubted that the bruising would be confined to her face and head. She forced a smile and said, ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘Well I did say you could phone me.’ Hennessey sat on the chair beside the bed and placed a box of chocolates on the bedside cabinet. ‘Bad for the figure I know. .’ he tapped the chocolates, ‘but I think you can make an exception under the circumstances.’

‘Yes. . thank you. . I think I will enjoy them, and thank you again for coming, you were the only person I could think of to call. They put me in a private ward as you see. . well, it’s not really a private ward. . it’s a little room off the main ward. They exist because some patients need isolation. . what’s the term? Barrier nursing. . if they have a contagion.’

‘Yes, that’s the term, “barrier nursing”.’

‘And the rooms are also useful so battered women like me don’t get stared at by the other patients, so they shove us in here. I prefer it really. I am just not in the right frame of mind to spend the day chatting to other women.’

Hennessey thought the room was best described as ‘cosy’. It had room for just the one single bed, and the cabinet and the visitor’s chair. Windows on each wall above waist height ensured that it was well lit by natural light. A small radio with headphones was mounted on the wall behind Tilly Pakenham’s head.

‘So what happened?’ Hennessey asked. ‘I mean apart from the obvious. Perhaps I should ask, “how did it happen?”’

‘I told you he was in the town. .’

‘Yes.’

‘I told you that I sensed him being here in York. Was I right or was I right? So he found me last night. . he followed me home, followed me back to my little drum and jumped me just as I opened the door, pulled me back and shoved me into the alley beside the house. . but I scratched him good. I have never done that before but I have read about DNA so I knew what to do.’

‘They scraped your nails?’

‘Yes. . it was a bit uncomfortable.’

Hennessey nodded. ‘Yes, it can hurt a bit but our officers are taught to be as gentle as possible. . we need the evidence.’

‘I understand. Thank you again for coming.’

‘My pleasure. So now he’ll be arrested, we now have the evidence to put him away for this. . he won’t like that at all.’

‘Yes. This time I am going to stand up to him.’

‘Good. .’ Hennessey smiled, ‘good for you. So where now? I mean after you are discharged.’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Nowhere?’

‘I mean I have nowhere else to go. . I want nowhere else to go. It’s time for me to stop running.’

Hennessey smiled warmly at her. ‘York is a good city to live in, although I always find it too small. I am a Londoner myself. You can’t hide in York like you can hide in London; you can really lose yourself in the smoke.’

‘Yes, I noticed your London accent. I’ll settle here. . and no more of that.’ She indicated her tin whistle which lay atop the bedside cabinet close to where Hennessey had placed the box of chocolates. ‘I’ll keep it though. . it’ll remind me of the gutter.’

‘What will you do? Do you have any plans?’

‘Get educated. Just lying here or sitting here you cannot do anything else but plan. So I’ll get an education.’

‘Good for you.’

‘I’ll build on what I already have and I have quite a bit I’ll have you know, George.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. I have university entrance level qualifications and I can operate a word processor. So I can work to pay my way if I have to.’

‘And you ended up sitting in a doorway wrapped up against the cold playing a tin whistle?’

Matilda Pakenham closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’ She opened them again. ‘Yes. Quite a fall from grace wouldn’t you say? But it’s a question of self worth. If you are battered often enough and told that you are no good often enough you come to believe it. After a while all you think that you are worth is a doorway and a tin whistle and a plastic coffee cup for folk to drop their kindness or their pity into. But it was you that began the turn round for me.’

‘I did? I only met you once.’

‘But what a once. . took me to lunch instead of dropping a coin into my plastic cup. I went straight home after that, and that night I combed my hair for the first time in many days. . I mean properly combed it. I even tidied up my little flat. So, thanks, George, I really owe you one. . and you also gave me the confidence to stand up to him. I’ll give evidence this time.’ She paused and looked down at the bed sheets. ‘I imagine you have a lady in your life?’

‘Yes. . yes, I do.’

‘She’s very lucky.’

‘I am very lucky. I know how fortunate I am.’

‘You should marry her.’

‘Perhaps. . one day. . but that’s a joint decision.’

‘Yes, don’t I know it? So you’ll arrest him?’

‘We will. I won’t. . our officers from the Female and Child Abuse Unit will do that.’

‘I see,’ again she paused and looked at the bed sheets, ‘so, my future. .?’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s a university here, isn’t there? In York I mean?’

‘Yes, a very good one.’

‘I’ll apply there. I’ll be a mature student, thirty-seven now, forty or forty-one before I get a degree, which I should have had at twenty or twenty-one, but I fell for the charms of Noel Sigsworth. Imagine swapping a classy sounding name like Pakenham to become Mrs Sigsworth. . what a silly sounding name, but I did it. We made such a handsome couple but I came back from my honeymoon with a bruise the size of a football on my back.’

‘And you remained with him?’

‘Yes, women do. . the apology, the promise it will never happen again. . the remorse. . the charm, and with that comes the feeling that it was somehow my fault all along.’

A silence descended. It was broken by Hennessey who said, ‘Well, we’ll arrest him and this is the first day in the rest of your life.’

Matilda Pakenham smiled. ‘The first day in the rest of my life. . I like that, and you’re right George, it starts fresh from here.’ She bit her lip and looked thoughtful. ‘George, can I ask you something and tell you something?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Have you ever come across a guy, and I mean a criminal, called Malpass? He and his wife, Mr and Mrs Malpass?’

‘The name rings no bells. . criminal or otherwise. Why do you ask?’

‘Because you didn’t meet me when I was at my worst. . I’ve been lower. I once had a bad drink problem.’

‘Oh. . but quite understandable.’

‘The reason I ask is that I met someone at the AA meeting and they invited me to join their private alcoholics club, meeting in cafes just to pass the time to keep each other off the booze. So I went one evening, the Malpasses were there, sort of like Lord and Lady among the alcohol lowlifers with no money. The Malpasses always paid for the coffee and nibbles to eat. They were suave, charming, just like hubby was suave and charming and so I was on my guard with them.’

‘Yes. .’ Hennessey leaned forward slightly.

‘So I went to their meetings a few times. . claimed to be dried out alcoholics but I don’t think they were. They said, “Look at us, we’ve cleaned our act up, so can you.”’

‘I see.’

‘But as I just said, I was suspicious because of my marriage. Anyway, one day they invited me to go with them for a day trip to the coast and when I declined they looked crestfallen. . I mean more than disappointed. . and also they looked angry. Maybe I am being paranoid or maybe it’s women’s intuition but I got the feeling that if I had accepted their offer of a trip to the coast I wouldn’t have come back.’

‘That is interesting,’ Hennessey replied with a serious tone to his voice.

‘I wouldn’t have been missed. I was socially isolated and there was another woman who used to attend and suddenly didn’t any more.’

‘Oh?’

‘And when I asked about her they said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about her, she’ll have moved on. . it happens.’

‘Malpass, you say?’

‘Yes. Ronald and Sylvia Malpass.’

Thomson Ventnor glanced in an interested manner to his left and right as Marianne Auphan drove slowly along Scott Drive, Letitia Heights. He saw small detached houses built with brick up to a height of approximately two feet and thereafter the walls seemed to be made of aluminium sheeting, as were the roofs, and all painted a uniform dull green colour. Each house had a small porch in front of the front door and each porch seemed to him to have a white plastic chair upon it. Any car that was parked in the short driveway of the houses or at the kerb appeared to Ventnor to be elderly and of indifferent value. Again, he noticed that no one was seen in the area, no pedestrian upon the sidewalk, no one addressing garden or home maintenance for example. It seemed the norm to him that no one was ever seen in suburban Barrie, unless they were driving a car or were a bus passenger. ‘Frost. . Kipling. .’ he observed.

‘Yes, the streets round here are all named after poets, not throughout Letitia Heights, just this particular area.’

‘I see.’

‘Well, this is about as bad as Barrie gets,’ Marianne Auphan turned to Ventnor and smiled.

‘Listen, this is not bad at all, you should see parts of York, the places the tourists don’t get to see.’

‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ she turned her head again to look at the road, ‘that would be good.’

‘Same in every town,’ Ventnor observed dryly, ‘always an underbelly.’

‘Dare say. I have ancestors from near London, is that close to York?’

Ventnor smiled. ‘Well, I dare say it’s quite close if you’re in Ontario but Londoners don’t consider themselves close to York and vice versa. It’s about two and a half to three hours by fast train.’

‘Oh. . OK, but that’s close, believe me, that’s close. Here guys do that drive to work and then back again and think nothing of it. Kingston Female Penitentiary, which serves Ontario province, that’s five hundred miles return from Barrie. I can do that journey in a single day.’

Ventnor gasped, ‘That’s not much short of the distance from the north coast of Scotland to the south coast of England. . astounding.’

‘Different world, but we have freeways and drive cars that are built for distance working.’ Marianne Auphan slowed the car to a halt outside a small house with an untidy garden, which was separated from the nearest house by a thick stand of spruce. It was similar to the nearby houses, with a brick built base and thereafter the outside wall and roof were the same sort of dull green painted aluminium sheeting. Marianne Auphan opened the car door and invited Ventnor to accompany her. They walked side by side and in close proximity up the short drive and on to the wooden porch which creaked under their combined weight as soon as they stepped on to it. ‘You’d better let me do the talking.’ Marianne Auphan pressed the electric door buzzer. ‘The English accent could be a barrier, a lot of Irish descendants, a lot of French Canadians, they don’t like the English, already.’

‘Fair enough, whatever you say. Interesting though that you have English ancestry. Myself and Somerled Yellich thought you were French Canadian.’

‘I am,’ Marianne Auphan turned and smiled and looked at Ventnor with dilated pupils, ‘in the main. You see my mother’s relatives came over in the Empress of Ireland. They sailed from Liverpool in the early twentieth century and settled in Vancouver in the west of Canada but she married into a French Canadian family who lived here in Ontario and so I grew up in a large French Canadian family. Only my mother, and her relatives in faraway Vancouver, are my English Canadian connection, so, that’s me, mainly French Canadian but with a little English Canadian in the mix.’

The lightweight wooden door was opened by a middle-aged woman with matted hair and hard, cold-looking eyes. Ventnor recognized the type, hostile, he sensed, very hostile towards the police. She held a cigarette in the corner of her mouth which she had smoked almost to the filter. She wore a tee shirt which hung loosely on her body and black shorts which revealed lower legs covered in hair. She was barefoot. ‘Snow was called on the radio this morning so I expected that,’ she spoke with a harsh rasping voice, ‘but I didn’t expect the police. You’re going to throw me in the bucket. Again.’

‘No need to show you our ID in that case.’ But Marianne Auphan did so anyway. Ventnor did likewise. ‘And no, we’re not going to bucket you. . we do have plenty of room in there though. We’re looking for information.’

‘Just information?’ The woman sounded relieved.

‘That’s all.’

‘You’d better come in.’ She stepped aside with unsteady and uncoordinated movements and the two officers entered her dark and musty smelling home. ‘Sit if you want to but if I were you I’d stand, I truly would.’ She indicated a pile of empty beer cans on the floor next to an ancient looking gas fire. ‘All the chairs are damp if you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, I can guess what you mean, ‘Marianne Auphan replied, ‘and thanks, but we’ll take your advice and stand.’

‘Sensible.’ The woman sank heavily into an armchair which was ripped and torn in many places. She dogged the cigarette butt in an overflowing ashtray and lit another cigarette from a blue packet.

‘Better for you to be indoors anyway,’ Marianne Auphan spoke quietly, ‘your feet look cold.’

‘Can’t really feel them,’ the woman smiled, ‘circulation problems.’

‘You’re not helping any by smoking and drinking already.’

‘That’s what the clinic told me but what else is there for me but smoke and the booze? I only got that for company.’ She jabbed the air indicating an old television set in the corner of the room. ‘And maybe that.’ She indicated an equally ancient hi-fi system which made Ventnor feel like he was back in Tang Hall YO10.

‘So what do you want?’ The woman lit the cigarette with an orange coloured disposable lighter, activating it with a clumsy twin-handed method. She inhaled deeply and breathed the smoke out through her nose. ‘So what can I tell you? Hey, I thought I’d get snow but I got cops instead, but at least cops can talk. . snow don’t say much.’

‘We also listen. So are you Jordana Hoskins, already?’

‘Yes.’ The woman had the remnants of an Irish accent. Mainly she had a Canadian accent, thought Ventnor, but the Irish came unmistakably through. He fully understood the need to keep silent. His place was to listen, to look, to observe, and to receive an impression, but not to say a word.

‘Yes, that’s me, Jordana Hoskins, from Dublin City. . but that was forty years ago. I had no say in leaving; my parents brought me over on a boat. So it’s the Garda in Ireland, and the police in Canada, all wanting information. So how can I help you?’

‘Heather Ossetti.’

‘What about her?’ Jordana Hoskins was clearly standing her ground against the officers. She wasn’t denying knowing Heather Ossetti but was also certainly very protective of her. Ventnor realized that information would not be easily forthcoming from the woman.

‘You and she were buddies, already,’ Marianne Auphan said, ‘what we call “criminal associates”.’

‘Yes, we got thrown in the bucket together, me and Heather. A few times.’

‘We know. When you lived in Ottawa, already.’

‘Ottawa is a good province. I like Ottawa.’

‘So where is she now? Do you know?’

‘Heather?’ Jordana Hoskins once again drew heavily on the cigarette. ‘Not seen her for some time. . like years. . maybe a few years.’

‘You won’t be seeing her again. Not in this world anyway.’

Jordana Hoskins gasped, allowing a large cloud of cigarette smoke to escape from her mouth. ‘She’s dead?’

‘Yes, already,’ Marianne Auphan spoke matter-of-factly. ‘It happens to all of us, sooner or later.’

‘Yeah, I worked that out some time ago, but Heather. .’ The officers thought her reaction to be genuine, she definitely did not know where Heather Ossetti was.

‘I’m afraid so. Don’t like to bring bad news, not when we’re looking for help, but that’s the way of it sometimes. . like a hand in a glove. . bad news wrapped up inside a request for information.’

‘Yeah, reckon it is.’ Jordana Hoskins stared into the middle distance. Her eyes did not seem focused on anything. ‘How? I mean Heather. . Can you tell me?’

‘She was murdered.’

‘I don’t ever hear nothing about that.’

‘In England. She was living in England when she was murdered already.’

‘So that’s why I haven’t seen her, that’s why I didn’t even hear of her being iced. England. . you know I’ve never been there.’

‘So, you and Heather?’

‘Yes, just a couple of lowlifes, real losers. . skanks, thieves. . anything for a fast and easy buck, that was the Ossetti/Hoskins gang.’

‘Being a skank isn’t easy money.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t know that until you’re in and once in, it’s not so easy to get out and it becomes a way of life more than a job to do but eventually the younger women push you off the turf. That’s what happened to me and Heather Ossetti. That’s when we took to thieving. . then we got thrown in the can, had to happen eventually. . then we came to Ontario, looking for a new start. Heather comes from round here, so I came too. That’s why we settled in Barrie. . Heather knew the town. Didn’t do me any good because this is how I live. You see how I live. You see how I live, I’d be better off on a croft in Donegal. She was murdered in England?’

‘Yes. The British Police believe a Canadian guy followed her there, tracked her down and did the business.’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’ Jordana Hoskins inhaled deeply and reached down beside her and pulled a can of beer from a pail of cold water which stood beside the chair. ‘Fridge is out,’ she explained. ‘I’m on welfare, I can’t afford to get it fixed or even buy another used one.’ She heaved the ring pull off the top of the can with what Ventnor thought was a masculine grappling of her fingers. ‘Not too early for the first beer of the day and a good reason to start.’

‘That’s one way of putting it, already,’ Marianne Auphan replied. ‘So who did she annoy. . do you have any idea? She rubbed someone up the wrong way.’

‘Heather. . well. .’ Jordana Hoskins paused and looked down at the threadbare carpet at her feet.

‘It won’t have come from you.’ Auphan read Hoskins’s mind.

‘I’ll end up the same way as her if it does.’

‘Understood. Mum’s the word. She had stolen someone’s ID when she died, she was running scared.’

‘I just hear things. . some things I just hear. OK?’

‘OK. So what did you just hear?’

‘Well, Heather, she wasn’t a real close buddy of mine. We did get into badness together but we were never close. Heather, she has, she had, an evil streak, you know. I mean well evil; she had the devil in her. I seen it once or twice and it, you know, it really frightened me. She was well angry about her start in life in a children’s home near here. . but she had. . she was born with devil in her.’

‘Which home?’

Jordana Hoskins drank the beer. ‘On the coast of Lake Simcoe, can’t be that many. If it’s still there, those places open and close down again like stores that don’t pay.’

‘Did she ever mention a woman called Edith Lecointe? She’d be about Heather Ossetti’s age, already.’

‘And mine. Be. .? Is she dead also?’

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’ Jordana Hoskins took another large drink from the can. ‘Is there no end to it?’

‘Edith Lecointe,’ Marianne Auphan pressed, ‘did she ever mention that name, already?’

‘Not to me. Why?’

‘It was her ID that Heather Ossetti stole. She was calling herself Edith Lecointe when she was murdered. And other names. She even had a passport in Edith Lecointe’s name.’

‘Did Heather kill her for it?’

‘Don’t know. Edith Lecointe was found frozen to death; her death was recorded as accidental.’

‘She killed her for it.’ Jordana Hoskins spoke matter-of-factly.

‘She did?’

‘Yeah. I saw it in her eyes most often but sometimes in what she did also. I can’t say too much but that’s got Heather Ossetti’s fingerprints all over it. Get hold of their birth certificate, or a copy of it, any other useful documents and then kill them and you can take their ID. Simple. But clever in a way. Then you leave the area and go where nobody knows the person whose ID you have stolen. Moving to Toronto or Windsor would be good enough; you stay in Ontario that way. . but England. . England. . that is making sure, already. That really is making sure. She would not have gone to England unless she was frightened. Really well scared. Just look up the death of Nathan Fisco, three, four years back. Then you’ll see what I mean about her fingerprints.’

‘Nathan Fisco.’ Marianne Auphan took her notebook from her handbag and scribbled the name on a blank page.

‘Guy in his fifties.’

‘About three years ago? In Barrie, already?’

‘Yes. In Barrie.’

Hennessey stopped at his pigeonhole and took the papers which had accumulated therein out and stood and read them. He found the usual circulars about office economy, requesting staff to write on both sides of a sheet of paper, use second-class postage and make all phone calls after two p.m. whenever possible. The papers also contained a reply from the National Police Computer in respect of his query about Malpass, Ronald and Sylvia. There was, it read, ‘nothing known’. George Hennessey found that he trusted Matilda Pakenham’s intuition, honed by her worldly experience of suave monsters, and growled, ‘Not yet. . nothing known. . yet.’

Somerled Yellich strolled along the uneven brick sidewalk at the junction of Bayfield Street and Dunlop Street. This was, he found, the central or ‘downtown’ area of Barrie and was much smaller and quieter than he had envisaged it. An old hotel stood on the corner with a sign on the front of the ‘V’ shaped building dating it to 1876; it was three storeys with a flat roof, disproving, thought Yellich, the builders’ maxim that ‘flat roofs don’t work’ because this particular flat roof had clearly worked for nearly one and a half centuries. Further along Dunlop Street were similar flat roofed buildings which also appeared to date from the mid to late nineteenth century, behind which were late twentieth century apartment blocks that towered over the original buildings. To his right was the lake shore, a modern piece of metal sculpture, the ‘spirit catcher’, with components which swung in the breeze, and a cannon which sat forlornly on a piece of waste ground as if abandoned and forgotten by the army. Closer at hand a silver-haired woman had backed herself into the doorway of an unused building and stood talking to herself, youths placidly panhandled despite signs warning that it was an offence to do so. A white police car was parked carelessly outside the small police station in the bus terminal building with one front tyre up on the kerb and the other three tyres on the road surface. Yellich was particularly struck by the large number of morbidly obese people and also the large number of people who needed some form of walking aid, and all, he thought, too young, far, far too young to be one, or need the other.

Marianne Auphan drove Ventnor to Mapleview West. ‘It’s like the Pied Piper visited with Barrie one time already,’ she calmly explained, ‘played his flute through downtown and lured all the services out of the city to the suburbs. You want anything, you don’t go downtown, you go into the suburbs. . bars, shopping malls, it’s all in the suburbs and folk here work in Toronto for the main. . they don’t need no downtown. I don’t like the dead heart but hey, services in the suburbs are what folk want.’

‘So I see.’ Ventnor glanced at a complex of shops next to a Honda retailer.

‘A few industrial complexes but not enough to support the city. Barrie’s wealth is limited to Toronto or dependent on Toronto.’ She pulled into a large car park and halted the car as close as she could to the entrance of a single storey modern looking bar called Dusty Jack’s. Inside Dusty Jack’s she walked up to the bar and sat on one of the high chairs. Ventnor sat next to her. A jovial young blonde in black tee shirt and slacks asked if she could help them.

‘Two Buds.’ Marianne Auphan ordered for both of them.

The girl brought two bottles of Budweiser and two chilled glasses and placed them on beer mats on the highly polished wooden bar. Marianne Auphan said, ‘Thanks,’ and the girl smiled and revealed perfect glistening white teeth and said, ‘You’re welcome. . enjoy your beer.’

‘I figured that woman was right,’ Marianne Auphan forwent the chilled glass and drank straight from the bottle and did so deeply, taking large masculine draughts rather than small ladylike sips, ‘it’s not too early for the first beer. Unless you want to work some more, already?’

‘Not particularly.’ Ventnor also drank from the bottle.

‘I got cut off here one time.’ Marianne Auphan smiled at the memory.

‘Cut off?’

‘One of my girlfriends got herself out of a bad situation with a mad Irishman she was hooked up with, not married but they’d pooled their money to buy a house, so not easy to get out, but she did so. So then a bunch of us girls brought her here to celebrate, so we drank until we got cut off. . wouldn’t serve us any more. . cut off and me a cop, already.’

‘I see.’ Ventnor glanced round the bar. Tables were set for meals with four places at each table. A few booths along the far wall were occupied by couples or two or three men. Four televisions were installed high up on the wall, all four tuned to the same channel which, at that moment, was showing a murderous fight between two huge ice hockey players, during a match, which rapidly escalated until all the players became involved in the brawl and the referee lost his balance and sprawled on his back on the ice.

‘So,’ Marianne Auphan put the beer down on the bar, ‘we can stay here until the last dog is hung, or we can go to my place on Veterans Drive.’

‘The last dog?’

‘Until they stop serving, but that’s not until two a.m. My apartment’s just twenty minutes’ slow drive away.’ She sipped her beer. ‘Well, it’s what we’ve both been thinking since we met, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Thomson Ventnor replied in a shaking voice. ‘It is what we’ve been thinking, already.’

George Hennessey found himself drifting off to a pleasant sleep when the noise jolted him into waking watchfulness. It had, he thought, been a pleasant evening. As was his normal practice, he had returned home to his house on Thirsk Road in Easingwold to be met by an excited Oscar. He had then taken a mug of steaming hot tea into the back garden and, whilst standing on the patio, sipping it, had told his late wife of his day, knowing that she was hearing him, listening to every word. Later he had eaten a simple but wholesome meal of pork chops and as his meal settled, had read a readable yet scholarly account of the Russian convoys during the Second World War. The author was, he found, able to evoke the freezing conditions and the mountainous seas and Hennessey learned that a near miss of a high explosive shell during the Second World War could still sink a ship by ‘springing’ its plates. Later, his meal settled, he had taken Oscar for his customary evening walk and had then walked alone into Easingwold for a pint of brown and mild, just one, before last orders were called. Later still he was about to succumb to a well-earned sleep when he heard the noise.

It was the sound of a motorbike being driven at speed along Thirsk Road, possibly, he believed, by a young man who thinks ‘it’ can’t happen to him, or in these days of endless leisure possibly, Hennessey pondered, by a ‘grey biker’ who might see only frailty and senility ahead of him and so was careless of other road users, prepared to take the risk that ‘it’ might very well happen. In either case, the sound transported Hennessey back to the Greenwich of his boyhood when ‘it’ had happened to his elder brother. He recalled how Graham had lavished loving care on his silver Triumph, of how Graham would take him for a ride on Sunday mornings out from Greenwich, across the river at Tower Bridge, back across Westminster Bridge, round Blackheath Park and home. Then there was that horrible, horrible fateful night when he, abed, heard Graham kick his machine into life and listened as he drove away down Trafalgar Road, straining his ears to catch the last decibel of sound. Then there were the other sounds: ships on the river, the Irish drunk walking up Colomb Street, beneath his window, reciting his Hail Marys. Then, then. . that knock on the door, that distinct police officer’s knock, tap, tap. . tap. . the hushed voices, followed by his mother’s wail and his father coming to his room, fighting tears, to tell him that Graham had ‘ridden to heaven’, to ‘save a place for us’.

Then there was the funeral. The first summer funeral of Hennessey’s life and he saw how alien, how incongruous it was to conduct the ceremony of the hole and the stone when flowers are in full bloom and butterflies and bees are in the air; then there was the inadvertently insensitive playing of ‘Greensleeves’ from the ice-cream van, unseen, but close by. Two decades later he was to have the same feelings as he scattered his wife’s ashes in the garden at the rear of his house, also on a summer’s day. His father, by contrast, had had the fortunate good grace to die in the winter of the year and Hennessy thought it so fitting, so very fitting that the coffin was lowered into rock hard soil amid a snow flurry.

Hennessey had lived with the gap in his life where an elder brother should have been and always for him was the question, what manner of man would he have been? At the time he died, Graham had worried, if not alarmed, his parents by announcing his plan to leave his safe job at the bank and go to art college and there to specialize in photography so as to become a photographer. George Hennessey was certain that for his brother it would not be the sleazy world of the fashion photographer or the sniping world of the paparazzi but rather, for Graham, it would be the noble world of photo journalism, where a single image can alter a world opinion. He would have married, George Hennessey believed, successfully, he would have been a good father and a good uncle to his nephew Charles. He would have been a brother George Hennessey would have loved and would have been proud of. . all the might haves, and all the would haves, and all the could haves, and all the never will knows all taken from him because of a patch of oil on Trafalgar Road all those years ago. The thoughts. . the demons then, that night, kept whirring and whirling around Hennessey’s mind, torturing him, until the beginning of the dawn chorus, when sleep mercifully rescued him.