Gift Wrapped (15 page)

‘Like a pile of stones large enough to hide a human body?'

‘Well ... yes ... in fact, yes, as large as that,' Yellich confirmed.

‘Wait till I tell my old lass about this.' The gatekeeper began to grin. ‘Just wait.'

‘Rather you told me first,' Yellich growled as he brushed another fly from his face.

‘All right, all right ... the pile I am thinking of is between ponds three and six.' He raised his right arm pointing to the far side of the fishery.

‘Three and six? Sorry,' Yellich forced a smile, ‘we'll need directions. Ponds three and six don't mean anything to us. They don't seem to have signs indicating which number they are.'

‘They don't – we just know which is the number of each pond.' The gatekeeper kept his hand raised. ‘The ponds are numbered outwards from the entrance, three ponds on either side of the track.'

‘Yes.' Yellich looked out over the fishery. ‘All right, I see six ponds.'

‘Well,' the gatekeeper explained, pointing to the ponds as he did so, ‘from here down to the left side of the track is pond one, then two, then three ... and from here down the right-hand side of the track is pond four, then five, then six.'

‘Got you.' Yellich smiled his thanks. ‘So ponds three and six are the two furthest ponds from the entrance here and the mound of stones you mention is between ponds three and six?'

‘That's it, squire.' The gatekeeper beamed. ‘You can't miss it ... or them ... the pile of stones is well overgrown, though; they've been here a long time going by the weeds growing on them. They were certainly here when I came – no one seems to know what to do with them so they just get left alone.'

‘I see. So tell me,' Yellich asked, ‘do you know how many anglers are here at the moment? I see only about ten, but I imagine that there must be others hidden from view?'

‘Yes, there are, squire, you imagine correctly, squire.' The gatekeeper glanced at a clipboard which hung on the wall to his left. ‘There are twice that ... there are twenty anglers at the moment, it being midweek, you see, squire. We're busier at the weekend, as you'd expect.'

‘Indeed,' Yellich noted. ‘Listen, I am sorry but I am going to have to ask you to clear the fishery. All anglers must pack their stuff up and leave. We'll ask them if you don't want to ... and we'll need to speak to the owner.'

‘I can let you have his phone number,' the gatekeeper replied. ‘I'd also like the police to clear the fishery, if you don't mind. They'll move more quickly for you anyway. If I ask them they'll just grumble and drag their feet.'

‘Understood.' Yellich again glanced at the fishery. ‘As you say, it's probably better coming from us.'

A police constable saw the skull first. A human skull, grinning, it seemed. Once the fishery had been cleared of complaining but also curious anglers, who carried their rods and bait and keep nets and stools away, the police constables, helped by Yellich and Ventnor, began to lift the stones from the pile of rubble one at a time, carefully pulling them loose from the weeds which served to bind them together, and laid each dislodged stone in a new pile, creating a new mound of rubble parallel with the original one. The team worked in silence and methodically until a young constable stood up suddenly and exclaimed, ‘Oh!' He then collected himself and said, ‘Sergeant Yellich, here please, sir.'

Yellich walked three paces from where he was standing and viewed the skull. ‘Very good, we have found what we are looking for,' he said, then addressed the team of constables. ‘Keep removing the stones, one by one, until the whole skeleton is exposed, but do not touch it.' He spoke to Ventnor. ‘I'm going to phone this in; I'm going to tell Mr Hennessey what we have found. I'll be requesting the attendance of SOCO and a pathologist.'

Ventnor nodded. ‘Right, Sarge.'

‘Henry Hall? I haven't heard that name for a while.' The publican stood back from the bar and folded his muscular arms as he did so. He was tall and broad-chested, dressed in a blue shirt, blue tie and white slacks. ‘Yes, I well remember Henry. Twenty years ago now, must be about that, but I remember him very well. Damn shame that.'

‘Shame?' Carmen Pharoah repeated. ‘What was a shame?'

‘Well, the old boy going missing like that. I mean, something must have happened to him. I still keep wondering what it was. He wasn't a man to go off, not just like that. Not easy to do, anyway, not these days. You can't pawn the family silver and invent a new life for yourself in another part of the country, not these days you can't.'

‘Did you know him well?' Pharoah glanced round the pub. It seemed to be neatly kept, well-polished, with just two elderly female patrons at that moment, sitting together, both with a schooner of port but not talking to each other. The television on the wall was turned on and was showing an ice hockey match, but the volume was, to Pharoah's great relief, on mute.

‘He was a regular, an early bird,' the publican replied. ‘He liked a pint after a hard day's gardening in the park. He was very quiet,' the publican glanced to his right, ‘always well behaved, never caused any trouble and he knew what he liked. Yes ... yes ... a harmless, peaceable sort. He'd have a game of arrows with the other early evening regulars and a few pints of low-strength beer, then he'd leave about eight for an early night. He liked to get up early for “the best job in the world”, as he would often describe his work. He spoke about that rich smell of turned soil, of delicate plants, being outdoors, and he liked being left alone to get on with his job. Then he goes missing ... damned iffy if you ask me ... damned iffy. So, has he turned up?'

‘Possibly.' Carmen Pharoah diplomatically kept her cards close to her chest. ‘What do you know of Henry Hall's social life?'

‘You're standing on it.' The publican smiled. ‘This, the Empress, was his social life ... this pub, his job, his little council house ... that was the sum of Henry Hall's world, so far as I could tell.'

‘Did you notice anything strange about Mr Hall at around the time he disappeared?' Carmen Pharoah asked. ‘Anything you thought to be a little odd or unusual?'

‘I didn't.' The publican slowly shook his head. ‘You see a lot from behind a bar but not everything. You should ask Bill Knight. If anyone knows anything it'll be old Bill Knight.'

‘Bill Knight?'

‘Bill Knight,' the publican explained, ‘is a neighbour of Henry Hall's. Or he was, I should say.'

‘Where can I find him?' Pharoah asked. ‘A neighbour, you say, as in the next-door house?'

‘If you like you can visit him at home, but he's behind you.' The publican raised a fleshy finger, indicating the area behind Pharoah.

She turned and saw a tall, thin man entering the pub. He seemed unkempt, with straggly, untidy hair, and wearing old, saggy clothing.

‘This is old Bill Knight,' the publican explained. ‘He's here for a pint. He'll take an hour to drink it, and then he'll go home until this time tomorrow.'

‘It used to be a gravel quarry.' Phil Edwards was a rotund, bearded individual who spoke with a thick Cornish accent. He was, Yellich thought, very well presented but he was also casually dressed; wearing a yellow T-shirt and white slacks, he kept his arms folded as he leaned on the side of his highly polished black Mercedes Benz. Yellich estimated that he was in his late middle years, somewhere on the fifties/sixties cusp. ‘The ponds are the remains of one huge gravel bed which was quarried out.'

‘Deep?' Yellich queried. ‘I mean, are they deep for fishing ponds?'

Phil Edwards chuckled. ‘I was going to say, not compared to the Atlantic Ocean, but yes, they are deep enough for fish ponds – ten to fifteen feet. Nice depth for angling, but deep enough for gravel beds. It made me, financially speaking.' He turned. ‘This little acre and a half made me.'

‘Oh,' Yellich prompted the man to talk. ‘Fisheries are a good business to be in?'

‘Yes, they certainly are.' Edwards whistled. ‘I shudder to think what a mess I would have made of my life if my lady wife had agreed to leave Yorkshire and come back to Cornwall with me. I reckon I would have done something small but nothing like I have done up here. You see, the ponds used to be a grassy area, like a meadow on the banks of the canal. There's a canal just this side of the railway embankment, and the meadow was soggy so didn't attract builders, who didn't want to build houses next to a canal and a railway anyway. They'd never sell them. The meadow came up for sale and it had a few caravans on it which people used for weekend getaways. It was quite remote then, this area. That housing estate,' he pointed to his left, ‘wasn't here, just the village about a mile away on the other side of where the estate is now and the few isolated farmworkers' houses. Anyway, I took a big gamble and I bought the land thinking I could use the soggy ground to my advantage. I then made the caravan owners a fair offer for their vans. I told them to sell to me because if they didn't I would tow them off my land and leave them in the road.'

‘That was fair?' Yellich growled. ‘Sounds a bit cut-throat to me, Mr Edwards.'

‘Of course it was fair.' Phil Edwards looked at Yellich in a despairing manner. ‘It was wholly fair; you see, that way they at least got something for their vans. I could have served them with notices to remove their vans which, if they did not comply, would have then entitled me to tow them on to the road, leave them there and not give the owners a penny piece. They wouldn't have got anything because the council would have removed them from the public highway and then it would have scrapped them, so yes, very fair, very, very fair.' Edwards breathed deeply. ‘They got something and I got a swamp. I had intended to hollow it out to about five feet deep and build a marina for narrow canal boats with some hard standing so the narrow boats could be lifted out of the water for maintenance. The plan was that I'd make money from canal boat owners from berthing fees and then I planned to acquire about six narrow boats and hire them out to holidaymakers. I had the planning permission and everything but I then fell lucky, didn't I?'

‘I don't know,' Yellich replied. ‘Did you?'

‘Yes.' Edwards smiled contentedly. ‘Yes, I did. So we did a few test bores to find out how deep the meadow went down and to see if there was bedrock beneath it. Anyway, we went down the eighteen inches and hit gravel ... this whole area was gravel. I'd paid for a swamp and I'd bought a gravel bed.'

Somerled Yellich gasped. ‘Fell lucky, as you say. I could do with luck like that in my life.'

‘Yes, so then I was a millionaire overnight. I made my million.' Edwards smiled smugly. ‘I excavated the gravel and sold it to the building trade. Anyway, once we had taken all the gravel out we were left with a massive hole in the ground which was too deep for a canal boat marina. Yachtsmen can cope with a good depth of water under their keel but not canal boat owners; three feet of water under their keel is all they need, and it's all they want. But then when I was deciding what to do, like offering the land to the council as a landfill site, I noticed how the hole was filling up with rainwater, and also how the water from the surrounding land was draining into it. So then I had an idea. You see, my old man was a keen trout fisherman, so I decided to create a fishery. I put some rubble in to divide the area into six ponds with a central road running the length of it, though the ponds are all interconnected with hollow pipes about six feet below the surface. I then covered the dividing bits with soil and here I am, charging annual fees to permit a fisherman to fish for his supper. I keep the fishery well stocked and provide a little live food for the fish. So, a body has been found on my little acre and a half, in my little gold mine?'

‘Yes, about twenty years buried, we think,' Yellich advised.

‘Twenty years? I had not been long up and running by then ... definitely the first few years of the fishery. Definitely.'

‘Can I ask,' Yellich said, ‘if you employed many men when you were building the fishery?'

‘Yes, I dare say I did.' Edwards pursed his lips. ‘Yes, I had quite a crew when we were dividing the large, original hole into the six ponds we have now, but it was all casual labour.'

‘Do you remember any names?'

‘I might if I had reason to do so ... same as schoolteachers. One of my customers is a retired schoolteacher; I was chatting to him one day and he told me that after thirty years' teaching he only remembers the good pupils and the bad ones – the rest, the majority, made no impression on him at all and have evaporated from his memory ... it's a bit like that,' Edwards explained, continuing to lean on his Mercedes Benz with his massive arms folded. ‘I remember the good workers and I remember the ones that caused trouble.'

‘Shane Bond.' Yellich floated the name. ‘Does that name ring any bells?'

‘The trawlerman!' Edwards held eye contact with Yellich and then looked away. ‘Yes, I remember him very well.' Edwards' jaw set firm. ‘Yes, he was employed here. For some reason he couldn't go to sea at that time, he was injured ... I recall that he had an injury to his back.' Edwards patted his lumbar region then folded his arms again. ‘He had done something to his back which prevented him lifting heavy loads. He came here looking for work and I was able to set him on doing light duties. He could fill a wheelbarrow with rubble, one stone at a time, but he couldn't lift and push the barrow, work like that.'

‘I see,' Yellich replied.

‘And at lunchtime he was the team's gofer. He'd be the one to go and fetch the fish and chips from the chippy in the village. He wasn't a popular man ... not Shane ... even got into a fight with an Irishman who was built like the side of a house and collected the second prize. He walked off the site – I mean, he stormed off it – and returned with a knife to fillet the Irishman and took the second prize again. After that I paid him off – I let him go, I had to – he was bad news all round, and I never saw him again. I assume his back injury repaired itself and he went back to the trawlers where he belonged. I wasn't sorry to see him go.'