Aftermath (8 page)

She showered upon returning home and ate a ready cooked meal, castigating herself for doing so, and telling herself of the importance of maintaining her cooking skills and that she should be wary of laziness, for laziness, as her grandmother in St Kitts had always told her, ‘is one of the deadly sins, chile'. Later, irritated and unable to concentrate, even on the television programmes, she retired to bed too early and thus fell asleep only to wake up at three a.m. It was then, unable to sleep, alone at night, that the demons came, flying around the inside of her head, taunting and tormenting her. She thought of her blissful marriage and the advice given to her and her husband by her father-in-law, ‘You're black, you've got to be ten times better to be just as good', and how determined they were to be ten times better, she as one of the very few black women constables in the Metropolitan Police, and he a civilian employee of the same force, as an accountant. Then the dreadful knock on her door, her own inspector, ‘It wasn't his fault. He couldn't have known anything,' and she was a widow after less than two years of marriage.

It was her fault. For some reason she was to blame and a penalty had to be paid, and so she applied for a transfer to the north of England where it is cold in the winter time, where the people are harder in their attitude and less giving, and are hostile to strangers . . . or so she had been told . . . and where the people can bear grudges for many, many years, and there she must live until the penalty for surviving, when her husband had not, had been paid in full.

She lay abed listening to the sounds of the night, the trains arriving and departing the railway station, the calm click, click, click of a woman's high-heeled shoes below her window, which told her all was well, and later, the whine and rattle of the milk float which told her another day had begun.

George Hennessey similarly returned home at the end of that day. He drove to Easingwold with a sense of ‘something big' being uncovered, that Veronica Goodwin's and the other four skeletons were not going to be the sum. He drove through the village of Easingwold with the window of his car wound down and enjoyed the breeze playing about his face and right cheek, and as he passed the place he could not help but glance at the exact spot at which Jennifer had fallen all those years ago on a similar summer's day. He drove out of Easingwold on the Thirsk Road and his heart leapt as he saw a silver BMW parked half-on, half-off the kerb beside his house. He turned into the driveway and heard a dog bark as the tyres of his car crunched the gravel. At the dog's bark a man in his late twenties appeared at the bottom of the drive, behind a gate designed to keep the dog from wandering into the road. The two men grinned at each other. The younger man returned inside the house as the older man got out of his car and walked to where the first man had stood, so as to give loving attention to the brown mongrel that was turning in circles and wagging its tail.

Later, when father and son sat on the patio at the rear of Hennessey's house, and watching Oscar crisscross the lawn, having clearly picked up an interesting scent, George Hennessey asked, ‘What are you doing . . . where?'

‘Newcastle,' Charles Hennessey replied, ‘representing a felon who definitely did not commit a series of burglaries during which not a few householders were injured, some seriously, despite leaving his DNA and fingerprints behind him in an easily followed trail . . . he had a crack cocaine habit, you see.'

‘Ah . . .'

‘The police couldn't lift him because he was unknown to them, no previous convictions, so no record of his DNA or fingerprints.'

‘I see.'

‘So lucky . . . but luck ran out in the form of him getting into a fight in a pub . . . nothing to do with burglaries.'

‘But a recordable offence and the Northumbria Police had his DNA and fingerprints taken.'

‘Yes, so they raided his home and found a number of items taken from the burglaries which he had still to sell for money for crack cocaine . . . and still he is insistent on his innocence. He's trying to convince himself, of course, as much as anyone else.'

‘I know the type.'

‘I bet you do . . . but will he listen to reason? So, I am instructed to fight his corner with nothing to fight it with. His story that he found the stuff in the street won't wash and, even so, that is still an admission of theft by finding . . . And you . . . your work?'

‘Five murdered women?'

‘Five!' Charles Hennessey glanced at his father.

‘Five . . . and my old copper's waters tell me that there will be more.'

‘What's the story, so far?'

Hennessey told his son the details.

‘A big one.'

‘Yes. We have issued a press release, it'll make this evening's television news and tomorrow's newspapers, the press will be all over this one.'

‘And your lady friend?'

George Hennessey smiled. ‘Very well, thank you. You'll meet her soon.'

‘We hope so . . . she sounds . . . she sounds just right for you, father. You've been on your own quite long enough. I realize now how hard it was for you to be a single parent.'

‘I had help.'

‘Yes, I remember, but a housekeeper is not a parent and is not a partner.'

‘Jennifer was with me, I felt her presence. I still feel it.'

‘Yes, that is interesting, I don't doubt you.'

George Hennessey smiled. ‘Oh, she's here . . . she's here . . . I can feel her presence. She loves her garden.'

‘Yes,' Charles Hennessey looked out over the neatly cut lawn to the hedgerow, which crossed the lawn from left to right with a gateway in the middle, leading on to an orchard in the corner of which were two garden sheds, both heavily creosoted. Beyond the orchard was an area of waste ground dominated by grass, within which was a pond with thriving amphibious life. ‘Her garden built according to a design she drew up when heavily pregnant with me.'

‘Very heavily pregnant, you arrived a few days later.'

‘I remember her. I remember being on her lap and looking up at her. It's my first memory. I have continuous memory from about the age of four, islands of memory before that.'

‘As is usual.'

‘So unfair, sudden death syndrome.'

‘Yes, just walking through Easingwold . . . on a day like today and collapsing. Folk thought that she had fainted but there was no pulse and her skin was clammy to the touch. Dead on arrival, or Condition Purple in ambulance speak . . . and you just three months old. As you say, so unfair.' Hennessey paused. ‘So when do I see my grandchildren again?'

‘Quite soon, they're clamouring to see Grandad Hennessey again . . . tend to think it's because you spoil them rotten.'

‘Which,' Hennessey smiled, ‘is exactly what grand-parents are for.'

Later still, when Charles Hennessey had left to drive to his home and his family, George Hennessey made another cup of tea and carried it out to the orchard and stood where he had scattered one of the handfuls of his late wife's ashes and told her of his day . . . as he always did . . . winter and summer, and then he told her again of the new love in his life and assured her that it did not mean that his love for her had diminished. If anything, he told her, over the years it had grown stronger, and once again he felt himself surrounded by a warmth which could not be explained by the rays of the sun alone.

After sunset, and after spending a pleasant two hours reading a recently acquired book about the Zulu wars, which was already a valued addition to his library of military history, and after eating his supper and feeding Oscar, Hennessey took the dog for a walk of fifteen minutes, out to a field where he let the animal explore for thirty minutes and then man and dog returned to Hennessey's house. Hennessey then walked out again, alone, into Easingwold for a pint of brown and mild, at the Dove Inn, just one before last orders were called.

THREE

Friday, 12th June – 10.15 hours – Saturday 04.10 hours
in which more is learned about the final victim and the gentle reader is privy to George Hennessey's demons.

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

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

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Deceased. Recently so.'

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

‘I understand that you worked for him?'

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

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

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

‘Scythed?' Yellich smiled.

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

‘How many men did that take?'

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

‘I see.'

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

‘What was Mr Housecarl like as a person?'

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

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

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

‘Oh . . . long way from home.'

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

‘Tell me.'

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

‘Really?'

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

‘I see.'

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