Aftermath (10 page)

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

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

‘Yes. York boy.'

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

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

‘She did?'

‘Yes . . .'

‘How big a problem?'

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

‘I see.'

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

‘Really?'

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

‘Interesting.'

‘You think it's relevant?'

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

‘Gordon and Moxon's.'

‘The department store?'

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

‘So I believe.'

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

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

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

‘So about two years ago?'

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

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

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

‘Mr Housecarl?'

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

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

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

‘I see. How is your son now?'

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

‘Stable?' Yellich suggested.

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

‘Understandable.'

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

‘I'm sorry.'

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

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

‘I'm sorry to hear that, sir.'

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

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

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

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

‘You wouldn't know anything about that?'

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

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

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

‘Severance pay?'

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

‘Good of you.'

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

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

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

‘Did it have a lock on the door?'

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

‘So anyone could enter?'

‘Yes.'

‘Who would know it was there?'

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

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

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

‘I see.'

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

‘Could it be overlooked from the house?'

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

‘Got you.'

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

‘Did you ever return to the house?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Just once.'

‘What . . . who did you see?'

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

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

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

‘No?'

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

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

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

‘Ten years?'

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

‘I see.'

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

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

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

‘Did you see a car?'

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

‘The time?'

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

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