Gift Wrapped (13 page)

‘Even odds, I'd say.' Yellich moved forwards and placed the car neatly in a gap in the traffic stream between two heavy goods vehicles. ‘Even odds.'

‘It's not much to show for sixty years, is it?' the woman said apologetically, looking up at Yellich and Ventnor from the old armchair in which she sat.

‘We've seen worse, Gloria,' Yellich replied gently. ‘Believe me, we've seen much, much worse.'

‘But not that much worse, and not after sixty summers and sixty winters.' Gloria Bond forced a grin which broke across her grime-encrusted face. She brushed her grey, heavily matted hair back over her scalp. ‘I bet you're both thinking what a right old dump this is. I mean, look, I'm not proud but this is the way it has turned out for me.' She pointed to the floor which was strewn with domestic refuse and half-eaten pizzas still in their cartons. The window panes were unwashed and half covered by threadbare curtains.

‘Take it from me, Gloria,' Yellich reassured her, ‘we still have seen much worse.'

‘But I'm clean now, no more drugs for me.' She showed Yellich and Ventnor her forearms. ‘No more booze either, just tobacco and even then it's just roll-ups. I pick my tobacco out of dog ends that folk leave in those ashtrays outside pubs or from off the pavement. I can get three or four good smokes a day doing that, and that's on top of the tobacco I buy. That's all I can afford anyway – just tobacco. I tell you, the pension goes nowhere.' Gloria Bond spoke with a harsh, rasping voice. ‘I'd ask you to sit down but all the chairs are damp. I've got diverticulitis ... I have no bladder control to speak of; it just dribbles out of me.'

Somerled Yellich thought, yes, we can smell your problem, especially on a hot day like this, but said instead, ‘It's all right, Gloria, we're happy standing. We've called on you because we need a little information. We hope you'll be able to help us.'

‘I'm not ratting out my sons,' she replied defensively. ‘They're both good boys. They get a bit hot-headed at times but they're both good boys.'

‘It's all right, Gloria,' Yellich placated her with a raised palm, ‘we want some information about Shane Bond, your ex-husband.'

‘Him!' Gloria Bond almost spat the word. ‘Him! I'll rat him out all I can, that's one rat that well needs ratting on. You see, this is what all that poison does to a woman. All that booze.' She patted her distended stomach. ‘Do you know that men used to fancy me? Can you believe that? I could turn heads when I was a teenager ... now look at me. I mean, I was well fancied, then I married a rat and it all went downhill from there. But my boys are good.'

‘Sorry, Gloria,' Yellich continued to speak softly, ‘it's a rough old ride you've had over the years, but we need a little information. Look, this is a bit of a cheeky question ...'

‘Oh ... pet ...' Gloria Bond smiled and in doing so she revealed a set of coal-black teeth. ‘Cheeky I can handle. I can handle cheeky, all right ... ask away.'

‘All right.' Yellich smiled. ‘We'll take you up on that. So, going back in the day, when you were married to Shane.'

‘Yes ...' Gloria Bond sounded curious, hesitant and cautious.

‘Did you ever play away from home with another man ... possibly while Shane was at sea?'

‘Play away?' Gloria Bond queried.

‘Have an affair ... with another man, while Shane was heaving large quantities of cod fish out of the White Sea? Not often, just once or twice?'

‘Yes ... yes ... I don't mind admitting it, pet,' Gloria Bond smiled. ‘I mean, that rat would drive anyone away from him. But it wasn't once or twice, it was just the once ... just the once I had a bit of the old extra-marital.'

‘Did Shane find out?'

‘Yes.' Gloria Bond suddenly looked to be feeling uncomfortable.

‘What happened when he did find out?' Yellich asked as gently as he could.

Gloria Bond looked to her left, then to her right and then to her left again. ‘I knew it would come out. I knew it couldn't stay buried forever.'

‘What couldn't stay buried, Gloria?' Yellich pressed.

‘You know ... that's why you've come here, isn't it? After all this time?'

‘The murder,' Yellich chanced, ‘yes, we know about it, but we don't know the whole story. If you want to help yourself and if you want to make sure Shane stays locked up, you'll tell us all you know.' Beside him he felt Ventnor tense up.

‘Shane ... he's got a temper ... he's ... he's what's that word? Possessive ... he's possessive ... he wants his things. He wants it all his own way. I'm sorry I kept quiet. I kept it from David and Goliath ... I mean, from David and Patrick. Sorry, that's a family joke, you see ...'

‘Yes ... yes,' Yellich once again held up an open palm. ‘It's all right, we know the joke.'

‘So you've found the body?'

‘Yes,' Yellich replied gently, ‘we've found it. It'll be on the news soon but we need you to tell us all you can. You must decide whether to work for yourself or against yourself.'

‘The boys needed their father,' Gloria Bond pleaded. ‘I did it for them – I only did it for them, David and Patrick; they needed a father, even if it was a swine like Shane. I thought it was still better than no father at all and I needed him to control them ... I couldn't control them and David was getting like his father, wild, violent, bad temper. He's got a chip on his shoulder about being small. It makes him violent. He's doing time now; he went down for manslaughter. He was lucky it wasn't murder ... what he did to that bloke.'

‘Yes, we know, it's how we traced you, Gloria; you're his next of kin. We phoned the prison and they gave us your address.'

‘So I'm just a phone call away.' Gloria Bond sighed. ‘Keeping on the move to stay hidden and all the time I am just a phone call away.'

‘Look, we can't chat here.' Yellich glanced around the room. ‘Let us take you into York, have a chat in our interview suite ... comfy chairs ...'

‘You'll have to disinfect them afterwards or let me go to the toilet every five minutes.'

‘Either way,' Ventnor smiled, ‘you'll be our guest. We'll take good care of you.'

‘Toilet would be better,' Gloria Bond suggested. ‘Better for both of us.'

‘As you wish.' Yellich smiled. ‘We'll lay on coffee or tea if you'd prefer and possibly a bite to eat. You look a little hungry.'

‘Had a bit of pizza yesterday.' She pointed to the half-eaten pizza on the carpet. ‘That's all that's left of it. Don't eat much these days. Hardly eat at all.'

‘So a cup of tea and a sandwich?' Yellich suggested.

‘Tea sounds good. I've been drinking tap water since I ran out of tea bags.'

‘You can have as much tea as you like, Gloria.'

‘All right,' Gloria Bond struggled to her feet, ‘let me get a dry pair of jeans on.'

Forty-five minutes later, Gloria Bond, Somerled Yellich and Thompson Ventnor sat in the interview suite at Micklegate Bar Police Station. Gloria Bond, fortified with a mug of tea and a round of chicken and lettuce sandwiches from the police canteen, became more animated and very willing to talk to the officers.

‘Marriage, you know ... if you ask me the person who invented marriage should be put up against a wall and shot. I really mean that. Shot. Well, I wed Shane and it all went wrong from there. He was always drinking. When he wasn't at sea he was out till all hours drinking with his mates. A woman needs more than three-month-old magazines and a TV set for company, especially when she's newly wed ... so yes, I met a man. Henry, he was called Henry, a nice, gentle man, not anything like Shane.'

‘Henry?' Yellich wrote on his notepad.

‘Henry Hall.' Gloria smiled as if at a good memory. ‘He was a council worker ... a gardener ... he pushed a lawnmower for the council, he kept the lawn nice and fresh cut and he kept the flower beds weeded. Just a gentle soul, close to nature. He didn't deserve to be murdered by a gorilla like Shane Bond. No ... no ... I tell you, calling Shane a gorilla is unkind to gorillas.'

‘Yes.' Yellich smiled. ‘I understand that gorillas are quite gentle creatures despite their size, but do please carry on. What happened to Henry?'

‘Well, you know what happened if you found his body.' Gloria drank her tea.

‘Yes, yes,' Yellich held a straight face, ‘but we don't know how he got there ... not the details ... there are a few gaps we need to fill in.'

‘Shane found out about us – the boys told him, can you believe that?' Gloria shook her head and looked at the floor. ‘My own sons ratted me out to my husband. Mind you, they were still young at the time. Shane took them out and being as bad a lot as he is, even to his own children, David said, “You're not as nice as mum's friend. He's a nice man”, or something like that. Henry was good with the boys, you see, really a natural father; he always got the best out of them. He could always do that. He seemed to be able to make them want to behave just like he could make plants grow – he could bring out the best in difficult children. Children just liked him and he liked them, but not in a bad way. I don't mean like that. So when Shane and the boys came home that day I got a slap, and I mean a trawlerman's slap, and when I came to I got another slap, and when I'd been awake for an hour or two I'd get another slap which knocked me out again. So what could I do? I couldn't go to the police or the hospital. I was trapped in the house, so eventually I told Shane about Henry. A week later ...'

‘A week?' Yellich sighed. ‘You mean Shane waited for a week before he went looking for Henry Hall and you didn't warn Henry?'

‘I was trapped in the house,' Gloria Bond pleaded.

‘Sent him a letter, even a postcard?' Yellich despaired.

‘I never did learn to read and write, pet,' Gloria explained matter-of-factly. ‘Never did.'

A silence fell on the room. It was broken eventually by Yellich, who asked what Shane Bond had done in that week.

‘He bought a motor ... a small van ... a white one. Then he made me go with him to show him where Henry lived. You see, I had told him that Henry lived alone, all by himself, and so we went to where he lived, to his house one day ... well, it was one night really. Anyway, I walked up the path to his little house and I knocked on the door and he says, “Who is it?” and I say, “It's me, Gloria” and he opens the door and smiles because he is pleased to see me, and then Shane, who was standing at the side of the door out of sight, pushes past me and bundles Henry back down his hallway into his house. Henry is as white as a sheet just before Shane planted one on him and busted his nose ... there was blood everywhere. It was all quick and quiet; the neighbours never heard anything. So Shane punched Henry and kept on punching him until he was out cold, and then he carried him like he weighed nothing out to the street where he had parked the van and I shut Henry's front door and followed Shane like he told me to. I always did what I was told by Shane. Always did. I was a good wife like that. I was always good at doing what I was told.'

‘Just carry on.' Yellich strained to control the anger he felt towards Gloria Bond. ‘Henry Hall's body ... what did you do then?'

‘Yes, well, Shane put his body into the back of the van, and I thought he was going to dig a hole in a field and put Henry's body in it,' Gloria Bond explained. ‘But he didn't. He drove out to a fishery instead.'

‘Which one?' Ventnor asked.

‘Oh, I don't know, pet,' Gloria Bond replied apologetically. ‘I really couldn't tell you. Honest I couldn't. So, anyway, we get there and Shane drove through the gateway and along the track, with water on both sides, and he kept going right to the far side of the fishery like he knew where he was going, and pulled up beside a pile of rubble. He dragged Henry's body out of the van, took a spade from the back and brought it down hard on Henry's head a few times. He was making sure Henry was dead all right ... poor old Henry. Then he picked Henry's body up again and put it on the side of the track, then took a knife and stabbed it into Henry's stomach ... for some reason. I don't know why he did that because poor Henry was already dead ... then we began to pile rocks on top of his body.'

‘You helped him?' Yellich clarified. ‘You helped Shane conceal Henry Hall's body?'

‘Yes. On account of my sons, I told you. For their sake I had to. It was horrible.' Gloria Bond shuddered in her seat.

Somerled Yellich breathed deeply. ‘Just carry on, Gloria, you're doing well.'

‘So we buried the body. It was well covered with rocks by the time we had finished, then Shane takes the spade and starts digging the soil about the rubble and putting spadefuls of soil on the rubble which was over Henry's body, not to cover them with soil but because he wanted to make sure there was soil on the stones, for some reason. He seemed to know what he was doing but he didn't tell me. Then he threw the spade and the knife in the water and said to me, “You, girl, you keep your little mouth shut. Or else”, and then he drew his finger across his throat like he was cutting it. “Don't tell anyone about this”, he said, “not anyone”. Then he said, “I mean, think what will happen to the boys if I go inside for life?” So I said, “All right, Shane, I won't breathe a word.” Anyway, by then dawn was coming up fast and he said we'd better go because fishermen like to fish at dawn, for some reason. I don't mean fishermen like trawlermen, I mean fishermen who fish with a fishing rod. You see them by banks of rivers and lakes, just sitting there, not moving even when it's raining.'

‘Anglers,' Yellich said. ‘It's all right – we know what you mean.'

‘Anglers,' Gloria Bond repeated. ‘That's a new word for me ... anglers. I'll try to remember that word. So we left the fishery and drove back to York.'