Gift Wrapped (10 page)

‘Yes, I did just exactly as you said. Do you think I want to lose a husband?' The woman forced a smile. ‘Especially such a wealthy one?'

The man smiled. ‘Yes, you're right. It will blow over. They can't link me to him. It'll all be ancient history this time next week – you'll see.'

‘So, how did you find me?' Muriel Bond revealed herself to be a small, slight of frame and, Yellich thought, a finely made woman. Her voice seemed calm but Yellich saw great fear in her eyes.

‘A simple criminal records check – we do that as a matter of course when a name comes our way.' Yellich spoke calmly. ‘But we only need a little information. Don't be fearful, we are only interested in what you might be able to tell us.'

‘No more charges?' Muriel Bond replied with clear hope in her voice.

‘None ... not from us anyway.' Yellich smiled, hoping to calm the woman. ‘We just want a little chat.'

The agents' room at Skerne Women's Prison was bleak and functional. Metal chairs at a metal table, tiled walls painted clinical white. A slab of thick opaque glass set high in the wall allowed natural light into the room but the illumination was provided by a filament bulb set in the ceiling. Muriel Bond wore a thick blue cotton shirt, faded denim jeans, white socks and tennis shoes. All jewellery had been confiscated but she had self-inflicted tattoos on her arms for decoration. She was forty-two years old but Ventnor, sitting beside Yellich across the table from her, thought she looked older – much older. She had deep wrinkles and a cold attitude. She had evidently been hardened by her husband, hardened by prison, hardened by life. Yellich, for his part, thought she had ‘victim' written all over her.

‘Well,' she spoke in a thin, whiny voice, ‘a girl has to make ends meet, doesn't she? I am long past being able to sell myself on the street, so all I could do was go on shoplifting expeditions, wasn't it?'

‘A few expeditions, we believe?' Yellich replied. ‘You seem quite skilled.'

‘Yes, a few. I was only caught a few times. But most times I got away with it, and I made good money ... sell it all for half the marked price,' Muriel Bond explained. ‘So I don't blame the York magistrates – they gave me second chance after second chance and then finally I went down on the tenth conviction, but it's better than a fine. See, you got to pay a fine, but here there's no rent and no food to pay for. I stopped myself from smiling when the chief beak said, “six months”, and pretended to be upset, but inside I was grinning like a Cheshire cat. I'll be at it again when I get out ... but here ... all this clean water, all this food, all the free time, a gym to play in, a library which has magazines ... I like it in here.'

‘All right, so you're a door revolver.' Yellich sighed. ‘Anyway, we're here to ask for your help. Heavens, it was the police who got you on your way here, so we can ask a favour in return.'

‘Oh.' Muriel Bond gave a brief smile. ‘Since you put it like that.'

‘Yes.' Yellich sat forward. ‘We'd like to know about James Wenlock.'

‘You know, I thought that'd be what you wanted to know about.' Muriel Bond nodded. ‘I saw the news, I read the papers ... I knew that's why you called on little me. I am going to go there ... it's on my bucket list.'

‘Where?' Yellich asked. ‘Where are you going to go before you kick it?'

‘Wenlock Edge,' Muriel Bond replied flatly. ‘James said he'd take me there and then he vanished, he did. Now his body has been found I think I will go there and light a candle for him.'

‘It would be a better thing to do than spend your time shoplifting,' Ventnor snarled.

‘Oh ... I'll have to go lifting to raise the bus fare, sweetie ...' Muriel Bond winked at Ventnor. ‘Old Muriel can't raise the money no other way.'

‘So,' Yellich continued, as Ventnor sat back, deflated by her reply, ‘you'll know that your husband threatened him.'

‘He did ... and it's ex-hubby, if you don't mind. I got out of that mess eventually ... after he put me in hospital – it was then that I left. I'd had a few black eyes and a sore face and bruised ribs, but that's marriage, isn't it? You expect that, but when he found out about James, well, I woke up in hospital all plastered up like an Egyptian mummy and I still have no memory of the attack. That's why he got away with it – because I had no memory of it and there were no witnesses; he made sure of that. I was apparently found by the roadside. He took me out of the house, going for a drive, he said ... he just wanted to get me out of the house and into a field ... after dusk. A motorist found me by the roadside and called an ambulance. They thought I was the victim of a hit and run, then they realized the injuries didn't match up to a hit and run – more like an assault. But I didn't remember anything, like I said, and in a field at night, there's not many witnesses, darlin' ... not a lot of eyes. Despite what they say about the woods having ears and the fields having eyes ... there were no eyes in that field that old night – not when Muriel was getting her hiding. He was a trawlerman on the Hull trawlers. A hard man.'

‘Was?' Yellich queried.

‘Yes, darlin', was.' Muriel Bond leaned back in her chair, clearly beginning to relax in the officers' presence. ‘The fishing's gone now. He was on the last of the trawlers. You know, I felt safe with him at first ... I felt I was being totally protected. He was a large man and it was that that made me feel safe but when he turned on me ... and his fist was as big as my face ... then I felt the opposite. Sometimes he'd punch me just because he felt like it or just out of spite. He was that sort of man, Shane Bond. So that was my lot until James Wenlock came into my life like a ray of sunshine ... a rescuer ... but he wouldn't leave his wife. Me, though, I would have left Shane like a shot.'

‘Shane?' Yellich asked. ‘Your ex-husband, Shane Bond?'

‘Yes, darlin', Shane Bond.' Muriel Bond smiled. ‘What a silly name; it makes him sound like a cowboy, doesn't it? Shane Bond ... tall in the saddle with his Colt 45s and his Winchester repeating rifle.'

‘Can I ask,' Yellich said, ‘how long you and James Wenlock were involved with each other?'

‘Just a few months, darlin'. Over the spring and the following summer, so not very long ...' Muriel Bond glanced up at the ceiling. ‘No ... no ... longer than that, from the winter into the summer, maybe, but it was definitely less than a year. We met at a singles bar – I might be a bit of a mess now, darlin', but I could pull in those days. Caesars Nightclub. Do you know it?'

‘No,' Yellich and Ventnor both replied in unison.

‘Lucky you two.' Muriel Bond smiled. ‘It's where all the lost and the desperately lonely go and it's there that we met. James ... James ...' She sighed. ‘He was just what I was looking for; he was just the opposite of Shane. Shane was large and muscular; James was small and slight. Shane had a rasping voice; James had a smooth, soft voice like a television newscaster. Shane was all beer and cigarettes; James was a little wine and no smoking at all. Shane was football; James was art galleries and museums. Shane was rock music from his youth; James was classical music. Shane would boast about the times he'd been drunk and the fights he'd been in; James wanted to know me as a person. I was on the edge of Shane's life but I felt at the centre of James's. James was like a ray of sunlight into my dark little world and he made me feel so very special; he made me feel as though I really mattered. James rented a flat for us, a little self-contained flat in a large house ... it was what was originally the downstairs living room of a large old house, but we had a double bed and a little cooker and a TV, a couple of easy chairs and it had a solid lock on the door. We'd meet there, we would ... but James kept the keys ... I couldn't keep them in case Shane found them. We were careful like that – really very discreet, but sometimes we'd go out for the day. Once, one day in the summer, we went to the coast. James made an excuse not to be at work ...' Muriel Bond's voice tailed off and she looked downwards to her left.

‘Something?' Yellich asked gently. ‘You're remembering something?'

‘Yes ... yes ...' Muriel Bond took a deep breath. ‘Yes, you see, it was at the coast that day that we were rumbled and it was the end for us. Shane was at sea; we went to Bridlington and we were walking along the promenade at Brid when we met a neighbour and his wife. I mean, one of my neighbours ... not one of James's neighbours.'

‘Oh, no ...' Yellich sighed, ‘I think I know where you are going.'

‘Oh, yes, darlin'.' Muriel Bond forced a smile. ‘Oh, yes ... oh, yes ...' She took a deep breath. ‘Well, what can I say? I knew it was the end. We just glanced at each other, me and my neighbour, as we walked past each other, two couples arm in arm, but a really evil gleam crossed her eyes. Really evil. He looked uncomfortable but his wife looked like a little girl on Christmas morning opening up her presents under the Christmas tree. I told James that she'd find some way of telling Shane. I knew that her man wouldn't say anything but I also knew that she would ... evil cow that she is, downright evil. I knew she'd let Shane know somehow; it would be anonymous but she'd do it. We didn't know what to do but Shane wasn't due back for a few weeks – he was deep-sea fishing in the White Sea – so we carried on seeing each other. I was never worried for James but I knew Shane would have it in for me. I always thought that Shane would keep it between me and him so as to keep the police out of it. I just didn't know how angry he'd get with me, and I never thought he'd go after James at all, never thought that ... never did think that, so help me I didn't. Murder him and then bury him. I never thought he'd do that.'

‘So,' Yellich asked, ‘what happened?'

‘Well ... it was just as I thought; in fact, it was worse than I thought: the neighbour played a sly trick,' Muriel Bond explained. ‘Shane had been back for about three weeks and nothing was said. He was getting ready to go to sea again and I was beginning to think that I had got away with it and the neighbour wasn't going to say anything after all. I even sent James a letter to the bedsit telling him we could pick things up again when Shane went to Hull to join his ship, but the neighbour, the cow, was just playing a waiting game, I reckon, holding off until she knew that I was beginning to think I had got away with it. Then Shane gets the anonymous letter I'd been dreading printed so as to disguise any handwriting, telling him all about me and my “fancy man” and enclosing a photograph of us with our backs to the camera. She must have turned round and taken the snapshot when we were walking away from her but it was me all right, wearing a very distinctive jacket I had then, purple with a fawn patch on the back. I don't mean a repair make-do-and-mend patch but a designer patch. So then Shane keeps it to himself and tells me that we are going for a drive. We drive out into the country and he parks up in a narrow lane by a field and shows me the letter and the photograph, then he takes me into the field and plays football with my body ... all the time wanting to know who the “fancy man” is. After that I don't remember anything – it's all blank. It's still all a blank. Shane got arrested for assault but got away with it ... no witnesses ... no trace of my blood on his clothing. He'd changed his clothes by the time the cops arrested him. He had probably burnt the ones he was wearing in the field.'

‘Will we know your ex-husband?' Yellich asked.

‘Oh, yes, he's got a record. He's got convictions for violence. Anyway,' Muriel Bond continued, ‘I never heard no more from James. I just assumed he'd gone back to his wife and was keeping his head down because he knew a mad mountain of a trawlerman was looking for him. It never occurred to me that Shane had murdered James. Not once did that occur to me.'

‘You know that's what happened?' Ventnor pressed.

‘No ... no, I don't ... Shane never said anything, it's just that's what I assume. The murder, well, that I can understand, but not the burial part.' Muriel Bond held eye contact with Ventnor. ‘The Shane Bond I know, or knew, would have left James's body lying in the open somewhere waiting to be found ... so long as no one saw anything and there were no witnesses ... that's all Shane would be worried about. He wouldn't go to the trouble of burying someone he'd killed. Mind you, he had the van; he had all the tools he would need to dig a deep hole kept in his allotment shed ... a pick ... a spade ... so I don't know. It's just what I think must have happened.'

‘So what ... yes, so I gave her a bit of a slap, so what? She was fishing for it.' Shane Bond sneered at the question. He was, Yellich and Ventnor found, a tall, muscular man, as Muriel Bond had described him as being, with the biting salt sea air seemingly engraved in his ragged, jagged facial features. He had, thought Yellich, very small pupils, which seemed to pierce rather than look. ‘I mean, you tell me, what marriage doesn't have that bit? Which wife never gets what's coming to her now and again? It's what makes any marriage work, isn't it?'

‘It didn't seem to make your marriage work, Shane,' Somerled Yellich observed coldly.

‘It didn't exactly destroy it either,' Bond retorted savagely. ‘She left, didn't she? I didn't chuck her out. She could have stayed but she left. Her choice.'

Shane Bond's house and home was a small, soot-black terraced house in Holgate behind the railway station. Like all the other houses in Holgate, it had just two rooms downstairs and a kitchen. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a bathroom. There was a small backyard enclosed by a high wall and a cobbled stone-surfaced alley running parallel to the houses beyond the wall. The room in which Shane Bond talked to Yellich and Ventnor was small and cramped. Newspapers were strewn over the floor and a large television set dominated the room.