Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

Mob Violence by Peter Turnbull

If, like many American readers, you are fascinated by the world of the York police depicted in Peter Turnbull’s Hennessey and Yellich series, which has been running in this magazine for several years, you won’t want to miss the latest installment in the series at novel length. Entitled Informed Consent, and published in May of 2009 by Severn House Publishers, it follows the investigators as they look into a suspect finance company’s possible involvement in murder.

Monday

As George Hennessey, Detective Inspector with the York City Police, had grown older, he had accumulated what he referred to as his “piles.” Each time he did or did not do something the action or inaction of which caused him guilt, the incident went on his “guilt pile.” He also had a “regret pile,” an “achievement pile,” and “good” and “bad experience” piles, all of which grew larger and larger as he became more and more stricken with age. One such pile was his “getting old” pile, composed of sudden, unexpected observations which caused him to realise he was ageing. The first such observation occurred when he was sixteen years old, walking along Trafalgar Road in Greenwich, and he glanced at a passing blood-red London Transport double-decker, on the Waterloo Bridge to Plumstead route, and recognised the driver as a boy who’d been a few years senior to him at school. Then the time came when he found people looking to him for advice and guidance and leadership. Flattered at first, he became significantly less flattered when he realised the only reason people turned to him thus was because he looked older and “fatherly” in their eyes. When he reached the age of fifty years, he found he developed a distaste for new gadgets. There was also a sense that the world had changed, but that he had not changed with it, and there was a sense of being displaced by younger folk pushing him from behind. The latest observation to go on his “getting old” pile was his view of the “English abroad.” English football “fans” who had no interest in football had followed the English team abroad for no other reason than that once fuelled with continental beer, they were up for a fight with “fans” from any other nation. Favoured opponents seemed to be the Germans, for no other reason than the huge wars of the previous century, though that particular summer the English seemed to hold a special grudge against the Turks. And so, George Hennessey, close to retirement, sat on the settee in his living room, his mongrel curled up beside him, watching news reports on the television of “mob violence,” as beer-bellied English youths hurled chairs, tables, anything they could lift at a group of German youths who seemed to Hennessey to be giving as good as they got. Eventually, a charge from the Belgian mounted police dispersed the mob and Hennessey stroked his dog’s ears saying, “You know, Oscar, the Englishman abroad just isn’t what he used to be.” Instantly he knew what he had said and after exercising Oscar he walked into Easingwold for a pint at the Pelican and stayed longer than usual, having something to ponder.

Tuesday

It wasn’t as bloody as he thought it was going to be, but as Detective Sergeant Yellich had said, the man was riddled with bullets. The man was a trim, muscular figure, about forty-five, thought Hennessey, blue shirt, white slacks, brown sandals, and with lots of little black holes all over his chest, and two in his forehead, side by side. Flies buzzed about the room.

“Twenty-two calibre, I’d say.” Louise D’Acre knelt by the body. “I’m no firearms expert, but I’ve seen the like before, small entry wound by comparison to other gunshot wounds, no exit wound. I count twenty-four bullet penetrations of the body. Someone was making sure all right. I doubt that there’ll be difficulty in determining the cause of death in this case. I’ll trawl for poisoning, but I think the cause of death is obvious.” She stood. She was a slender woman with short black hair, graying slightly, no makeup at all save for a trace of lipstick. “Do you know who he is?”

“Yellich?” Hennessey turned to the younger man.

“He is believed to be a man called Phillips, sir. Matthew Phillips. No indication of an alias, all the fuel bills are in that name, for example.” Yellich stepped aside to allow a Scene of Crimes officer to photograph the body.

“Lived here alone?” Hennessey read the room: neat, ordinary, a television, a video recorder, prints of famous paintings on the wall, a Turner, a Monet, a Constable, a row of Reader’s Digests. Mr. Phillips was a man of conservative tastes. The house was a small, three-bedroom, semidetached property with a neat, well-tended garden to the front and a neat, well-tended larger garden to the rear. Back again to the room. It had a “hard” feel. Phillips was a bachelor, no softening woman’s touch in this house.

“Yes, sir.” Yellich shifted again for the S.O.C.O. “No indication of any other resident.”

“Cause, as you say, seems obvious.” Hennessey turned to Dr. D’Acre. “Would you be prepared to estimate the time of death?”

“Time elapsed since death, you mean?” D’Acre smiled warmly at Hennessey and for a brief instant their eyes met. “That would be a better way of putting it. I’d say about forty-eight hours. Rigor is well established, as are the flies. But that’s an estimate.”

“Sunday?”

Dr. D’Acre looked at the body. “Possibly. Possibly Saturday, possibly yesterday. Establishing the cause is the exact science. The when cannot be exact, too many variables. I’ll have a look inside his stomach, look at the degree of digestion of his last meal, that might be a pointer, but frankly, you’d be better asking his neighbours when they saw him last, that will be more reliable than any scientific analysis.”

“He came about a year ago. July now.” The man mopped his brow. “He came in the winter months, so more than a year.” The man stood in his garden, talking to Yellich over the fence which divided his property from that of the deceased. About the two men were lush green suburban gardens, a high blue sky, and a relentless sun. “In the winter of last year. He bought his house through the White Rose agency. I remember their For Sale sign in the front garden. They’ll be able to tell you his exact date of entry.”

Yellich wrote “White Rose” on his notepad. “Kept himself to himself, you say?”

“I would say. Hardly spoke at all, but over the months, from spring onwards, when he spent a lot of time in his garden, we’d chat over the fence. I’m retired now, spend my days in the garden. He was younger than me but didn’t work. He too seemed to spend his days in the garden, growing things, weeding. At first I thought he was an American, had a strange accent at first, a mixture of North of England and American, the States, I mean, but rapidly settled down to North of England, but with a slowed form of speech, a ‘drawl,’ I think it’s called. Like the way you hear Yanks talk on TV. He spoke with an economy of words but spent a long time saying each word.”

“I see.”

“Then there were the Americanisms. He ran a small car. That’s his...” The man pointed to a red Nissan parked against the kerb, in front of the house, by which were also parked police vehicles and a black, windowless mortuary van. A few people, local residents, had gathered in ones and twos looking on. This was the suburb of Dringhouses, York, little of interest happended in Dringhouses, but the incident at the house of Phillips was a clear exception. “His car’s bonnet was a ‘hood,’ the bumper was a ‘fender,’ the boot was the ‘trunk.’ Women were ‘dames,’ men were ‘guys.’ In the evenings he’d walk to the ‘bar,’ not the pub. He once came to my house with a ‘package’ wrongly left at his house by the ‘mailman.’”

“As opposed to a parcel left by the postman?”

“Exactly. He’d clearly lived in the U.S.A. for a considerable length of time, but never talked about it. He gave me the impression of being a man with a history.”

“Source of his income?”

“Could never tell. Bought his house, though, and had a car, fed himself, went out for a beer in the evening. He lived modestly, as we all do round here, but he had enough to meet his needs. You know, the impression I had of him was that his life’s fight was out of him... ‘Fight’ is perhaps the wrong word. I don’t mean aggression or violence, but that energy you need to bring up children, to pay off your mortgage, that seemed to me to be out of him. It’s out of me; that’s all behind me and I think I recognised the same in him, sitting at home, sitting in his garden, except that he’s twenty years younger than me. He was a pensioner in terms of his attitude.”

“Any visitors?”

“His girlfriend and then the two men. I told the other officer about that, after I reported his front door was wide open and had been like that for two days. Suspicious, I thought.”

“Tell me about the two men?”

“They looked to be American. You can tell Yanks by their trousers... Oh yes, he once referred to his ‘garden pants.’ I thought he was talking about his garden panting for breath but he meant his gardening trousers... But American men always seem to wear trousers the bottoms of which are an inch or two higher than is the fashion in Britain. And their suits were loud, a light blue suit, very light blue, and the other had a sports jacket with a very loud check, yellow in places, whereas Englishmen would never wear clothing that brightly coloured. Trilbies, and both carrying briefcases; arrived by taxi.”

“When was that?”

“Sunday, about lunchtime. I thought they were visitors from the States, just caught sight of them arriving. Didn’t see them leave, but on Monday, yesterday, I noticed his front door was wide open, still open this morning, so I called the police. It didn’t look right.”

“You were correct to do so, clearly. Do you recall the taxi company?”

“The blue-coloured ones, nice colour scheme, dark blue — royal blue, I believe it’s called-with a white stripe off-centre, running the length of the car, bonnet, roof, and boot.”

“White Stripe Cabs?”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“That’s their colour scheme. What do you know about his girlfriend?”

“Younger than he was, nice-looking lass, honest face, works at a place called Redmill House. Don’t know what that is, but she drove up in a minibus with some adults in the passenger seats, got out, ran up his drive, popped something in his letterbox, and ran back to the minibus and drove away. But it was definitely Redmill House on the side of the van. A lass who worked with vulnerable people. Nice lass.”

“Wait and return. Real tippers.” The young man sat in the chair with his feet on the desk. He was thin-faced, ginger hair worn in a ponytail, faded denims. Behind him was a scantily clad female underneath whom was that year’s calendar. “Don’t forget tips like that in a hurry...”

The phone rang. The youth excused himself and answered it. “About five minutes, sir.” He replaced the phone and reached behind him for the microphone, switched it on, and said, “Town centre to Selby... any car?”

“Car six,” came a crackly response. “I can take it.”

“Car six... Station Hotel to Selby, two passengers, name of Jenkins. Thanks.”

“Car six... out.”

“Yeah... serious men... Sunday... I was on the rank outside the station waiting for the London train. They got in... slid into the rear seat, gave me an address... Dringhouses... street name and number. Knew exactly where they wanted to go. Got to the address, they said, ‘Wait here.’ Watched them go up the drive, ring the doorbell. A guy answered... He stood looking at them, then he nodded his head and walked into the house. The two guys walked after him. Moments later, they came back, leaving the front door open, told me to take them back to the station, paid the fare, tipped me fifty quid. For a ten-pound fare. Very serious attitude, didn’t talk on the journey other than to tell me where to go. But fifty quid, for a ten-pound fare?”

The phone rang again.

That evening George Hennessey stood in the garden of his home in Easingwold talking to Jennifer, his wife.

“We watched the CCTV videotape from the railway-station monitor, and sure enough, they were there, two men, mid thirties, trilbies, smartly dressed, dark glasses, each carrying a briefcase.” He sipped his tea as he gazed out over the garden to the flat landscape beyond. “Caught them on the platform monitor boarding the London train. They’ll be back in the States by now.” An observer would see a tall man in his late middle years standing in his garden drinking a mug of tea and talking to himself. The observer would not know that the man’s wife had died young, many years earlier, that her ashes were scattered in the garden, and that each day, rain or shine, the man would stand in the garden and talk to her.

Yellich sat at home with his son, Jeremy, aged twelve. Jeremy was making excellent progress. His wife found him tiring, but he was “getting there” and could now identify each letter of the alphabet and do simple division.

Wednesday

“He said that they would not come.” The young woman held the plastic cup in her hands. “We were not very close, but I know that I’m going to miss him. He’s already a significant event in my life and I just know he’ll become of even greater significance in the years to come. He hurt, each day he hurt, deep inside.”

“How did you meet?” Hennessey thought her a sincere young woman.

“At a church social. He didn’t attend often, but he came to a social we had.” Hennessey and Yellich and the woman sat in the dining room of Redmill House. The residents were at their afternoon therapy; behind them the canteen staff sang as they rattled tureens and cutlery, clearing up after lunch. “He was older than me, in his mid forties. I’m in my mid twenties. He really just wanted someone to talk to.”

“And did he? Talk to you? Tell you his story?”

“Not in one go, but I was able to get the gist of it together over the months. Matthew was a very private person and the first impression I had of him was that he was resigned to something. He’d got past being frightened and had become calm and accepting. He knew he hadn’t long to live. Before he came to York he was in London, but he said he knew he couldn’t hide and he’d got tired of running, so he came north to where his roots are, bought a house close to where he was born, not the same street, but the same estate. He said that that was neater.”

“Who was he running from?”

“Organised crime. ‘The mob,’ as he called it. The story was that he’d gone to visit relatives in the States, he got into a ruction in a bar, hotfooted it, and by jumping in and out of taxis ran rings around the police, bribing taxi drivers to tell their control that they’d dropped him off two miles from where they really were, things like that. He and his cousin sent convoys of police cars chasing off in the wrong direction. Unknown to him, his cousin was a ‘gofer’ for the mob, the mob heard about Matthew running rings round the police and they ‘recruited’ him. ‘Work for us or we’ll shoot you.’”

“Some choice.”

“So his six weeks’ holiday extended to fifteen years. He was a pressed man, but pressed or volunteer, you only leave the mob feet first. He did some things he wasn’t proud of.”

“This he told you?”

“Over time. There was nothing between us. I was his ‘confidant.’”

“I see.”

“But he left. He just slipped away, deserted. Got a flight back to the U.K. He’d had enough. He was a good man, trapped in a bad set of circumstances. But the mob’s violence is cool, detached, surgical, and he knew they were coming. ‘They’ll come tomorrow,’ he said, ‘or in twelve months’ time, or five years’ time, but they’ll come.’ All he could do was wait, dig his garden, grow living things; he planted trees in the countryside. He knew he wasn’t going to leave anything else behind him. And he went to the pub and sometimes he came to our church.”

“Had he stolen from the mob?”

“No. He deserted. He was a loose cannon. He had information that could put the mob leaders away for a long time. He said that just as the long arm of the law can reach across the Atlantic, so can the long arm of the mob. It was just a question of time.”

Copyright © 2009 Peter Turnbull