Gift Wrapped (5 page)

‘That's all right. We'll have the report here. After the person has been reported missing for more than forty-eight hours the information is sent here, to this police station to be placed in our archives.' Hennessey continued to talk in a relaxed and an assured manner. ‘How old was Mr Wenlock when he disappeared?'

‘Forty-six,' Mrs Wenlock replied. ‘We were already planning to take a cruise for his fiftieth birthday ... we had all the brochures and were poring over them.'

‘I see. I am sorry to hear that.' Hennessey scribbled on his notepad. ‘That really is quite tragic. It must have been quite a loss to you ... really quite a blow.'

‘It was at the time, it was a massive blow ... but now these days it's the not knowing which gnaws away at me,' Mrs Wenlock explained. ‘The horrible not knowing. It's awful.'

‘Yes, it would do. I can understand that. Well, hopefully this might be the beginning of the end of it all for you; you might at least get some closure now,' Hennessey replied. ‘Thank you for calling us, Mrs Wenlock ... two of my officers will be with you very shortly.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Mrs Wenlock replied with a soft but strong voice now fully calmed. ‘Thank you very much.'

‘No ... it is really for us to thank you, ma'am,' Hennessey assured her. ‘Yours was a very prompt response. Thank you.' He gently replaced the handset then picked it up again and dialled a four-figure internal number. ‘Collator?' he asked when his phone call was rapidly answered.

‘Yes, sir.' The male voice was crisp, alert, reassuringly efficient sounding.

‘Can you please dig out a missing persons file in the name of James Wenlock, aged forty-six when he disappeared about ten years ago? He had a home address in Selby,' Hennessey asked.

‘Got it, sir,' replied the crisp, alert voice. ‘Wenlock, James, forty-six, home address in Selby. I'm on it. Leave it with me.'

‘Good man,' Hennessey again let his smile be heard down the phone. ‘Send it up to me as soon as you have retrieved it from the archives.'

‘Yes, sir. It will be with you asap.'

Once again Hennessey replaced the handset of his telephone, then picked it up but thought better of using it. Picking up his notebook, he stood and walked down the CID corridor to the detective constables' room, and for a few seconds stood motionless on the threshold. He noted both Reginald Webster and Carmen Pharoah to be present. Carmen Pharoah was sitting at her desk writing; Webster, by contrast, Hennessey observed, was standing at the window looking out at the townscape behind Micklegate Bar Police Station, hands in his trouser pockets.

‘Not too busy, I see, Reg.' Hennessey quietly announced his presence. Webster spun round, white-faced. ‘Oh, sorry, sir. Really just this very second I stood up, a loud bang, like an explosion ... and being a copper ...'

‘That's true, sir,' Carmen Pharoah added, ‘it was really quite an explosion. We were both startled by it; it's strange you didn't hear it.'

‘Yes, yes ... all right.' Hennessey held up his hand. ‘Well, one of you write this address down, please.' Hennessey then read out Mrs Wenlock's address in Selby.

‘I have it, sir,' Carmen Pharoah replied, having written on her own notepad. ‘That's quite a well-to-do area of Selby, I believe.'

‘Well, I dare say you'll find out if you're right or not.' Hennessey closed his notebook. ‘I'd like you two to visit her. She, Mrs Wenlock, has just phoned claiming to recognize the e-fit printed in today's paper as being that of her husband, her missing husband. One James Wenlock, Esquire.'

‘Really?' Webster took his jacket off the back of his chair. ‘That was timely.'

‘So she claims, and she sounded very earnest. I'd like you two to visit her, asap – see what you see, find what you find.'

‘Yes, sir.' Carmen Pharoah stood and reached for her lightweight summer jacket. ‘Movement already, that can't be bad ... can't be bad at all.'

‘Obtain a sample of his or his familial DNA if you can,' Hennessey said as he turned and left the room. ‘That would clinch the issue of identification very neatly.'

‘Yes, sir,' Webster responded promptly as he put his jacket on.

Reginald Webster and Carmen Pharoah glanced at each other when Hennessey had left the room. Pharoah inclined her head reproachfully and Webster shrugged and then grinned. ‘Thanks,' he said quietly, ‘I owe you one.'

She returned the grin. ‘Well, we work with liars and con men all the time; their well-honed skill tends to rub off on one. But I confess I was wondering when you were going to return to your desk, roof tops and backyards and new buildings on the skyline indeed. What on earth was it that held your fascination for so long?'

‘Well, nothing really,' Webster conceded as he picked up his notepad. ‘The world outside just suddenly became more interesting than the monthly statistical returns for the merry month of May just gone. All right, let's go and visit a lady in beautiful Selby; see what we see, as the boss says ... and find what we find.'

Upon returning to his office Hennessey saw that, in the brief period of his absence, the missing persons file in respect of James Wenlock, forty-six, late of Selby, had been placed on his desk and had been done so with due deference, in the middle of his desk facing him, rather than left as if dropped haphazardly. He sat in his chair, picked up the file and opened it. He saw instantly that the photograph in the file did indeed resemble the e-fit published in that morning's newspaper, and was of a man with a smaller nose than that shown on the e-fit, but other than that, Mrs Wenlock was, he strongly suspected – indeed, believed – going to be proven correct. Her husband, or the remains of, at least, had now been found. Mr Wenlock's occupation, Hennessey read, was given as that of accountant. Other than that there was no more information in the file. The police had evidently done all they could at the time: they had taken note of the name of the missing person, the address, next of kin, put a photograph in the file and noted the date that James Wenlock was reported missing, knowing that the missing person would turn up alive and well within twenty-four hours, as most missing persons did, or else their body would either be found or it wouldn't. Only in exceptional circumstances, where there was clear evidence of foul play, would the police search for an adult missing person and, as Hennessey saw, this clearly had not been one such occasion. James Wenlock had quite simply vanished.

Mrs Wenlock's house revealed itself to be, as Carmen Pharoah had suggested, in a prestigious area of Selby. It stood set back from the main road leading westward out of the town. A well-tended sunken lawn of perhaps thirty feet in depth separated the house from the roadway. The lawn was bounded on both sides by thick and neatly kept shrubs; beyond the line of shrubs to the left, as an observer would view the house, there was a stone-paved drive, at the top of which was a brick built garage affording accommodation for just one car, and which stood separate from the house. The house itself was inter-war vintage, probably built in the late thirties, Webster guessed. A front door stood between two large bay windows with windows above those on the ground floor and also above the door. The house was, by then, built of faded red brick under a steeply sloping black-tiled roof which evidently, thought Webster, as he and Carmen Pharoah viewed the house, afforded much attic space. The house would, he further thought, greatly please his father-in-law, who had endlessly advised him not to consider buying any property built after the end of the Second World War. ‘Take it from me, Reginald – they just don't build them any more – not properly anyway. They throw them together these days.' He had gone on to disappoint his father-in-law by buying a new-built house on the edge of a village. It was all very well for his father-in-law to have given that advice, he had argued, but let him try buying an inter-war house in the area of a town, any town, where he and his wife would want to live and do so on a detective constable's salary.

He and Carmen Pharoah walked slowly but purposefully from where they had parked their car at the kerb in front of the lawn of Mrs Wenlock's house, side by side up the driveway, at the top of which they turned to their right and walked past the first bayed window to the front door. The door, like the rest of the wood of the house, the window frames and the garage door, had been painted a loud canary yellow. The battery operated bell, when pressed, they discovered, rang the Westminster chimes.

‘A burglar deterrent?' Carmen Pharoah glanced at Reginald Webster. ‘What do you think?'

‘Sorry?' Webster, listening with interest to the plethora of sound, the birdsong, a railway locomotive's two-tone horn in the far distance and the low rumble of traffic from the road beyond the lawn, was caught off-guard by Pharoah's questions.

‘The colour of the house,' Pharoah explained, ‘the yellow painted wood and the drainpipe too ... it's not at all to my taste.'

‘Nor mine,' Webster agreed.

‘But it might deter a burglar?' she suggested.

‘You think?' Webster raised his eyebrows.

‘Well, yes ... colours have different effects on people and yellow is a colour you shy away from.'

‘Really?' Webster was intrigued.

‘Yes, I believe so.' Carmen Pharoah turned and pondered the large amount of work that had clearly gone into maintaining the garden. ‘All things being equal – all other things, I mean – a burglar would be less attracted to a house painted yellow than he would to a house painted black, for example, which is a colour which folk apparently find attractive and welcoming despite its association with funerals. The burglar would probably not be conscious of being attracted or repelled by a colour but I bet the influence would be felt on a subconscious level.'

‘Maybe ...' Webster also pondered the garden. ‘I confess I didn't know that ... about colours, I mean.'

‘Oh, yes ... for example, haven't you noticed how all the fast-food eateries lure you in with a bright red sign on the outside of the building, and yet once you are in and seated you are assaulted with the colour yellow glaring at you from every angle? The red pulls you in, you see, and then, once they have your money, the yellow hastens you on your weary way.' Carmen Pharoah raised her eyebrows. ‘It's quite true. Believe me. There's thinking and pre-meditation behind the red and the yellow in these places.'

‘My eyes,' Reginald Webster inclined his head in gratitude, ‘have been opened, widely so.'

Any further discussion about the influence of colours upon the human psyche between our two heroes, was, dear reader, prevented by the opening of the front door. It was swung open, widely so, in a confident manner by a slender, middle-aged lady who was dressed in a yellow blouse which was the same shade as the colour of her house, a white three-quarter-length skirt, light shaded nylons and yellow shoes with small, sensible heels. She wore her hair short cropped. She had rings upon her fingers and bracelets, and a small watch upon her wrist. ‘The police?' she asked. Her face was narrow with high cheekbones, her voice soft and pleasing.

‘Yes, ma'am.' Webster took his ID from his jacket pocket and showed it to her. Carmen Pharoah did likewise. ‘You are Mrs Wenlock?'

‘Yes, yes, I am, and I am, of course, expecting you. I spoke with your Mr Hennessey earlier today. He indicated that two of his officers would be calling on me directly.' Mrs Wenlock's voice, as well as being soft and pleasing, Webster noted, could, he thought, also be accurately described as mellifluous.

‘Yes.' Webster replaced his ID in his jacket pocket. ‘Mr Hennessey is our boss, and we are part of his team. We are the two officers he spoke of.'

‘I see.' Mrs Wenlock stepped nimbly aside. ‘Well, do please come in.'

The door opened on to a wide hallway with a dark brown-coloured carpet and highly polished wooden panelling, and smelled strongly of a mixture of carpet cleaner and wood polish. A black telephone stood on a low wooden table beyond the door, and a wide carpeted stairway rose up to the upper floor of the house. China plates gripped in metal braces and attached to the wall panelling provided tasteful decoration.

‘If you could please go into the rear sitting room,' Mrs Wenlock closed the front door, ‘second door on the right, or the parlour as my late father would have referred to it, God rest his soul.'

Webster, followed closely by Carmen Pharoah, walked quietly down the hall, pushed upon the second door on the right, as directed, and entered a large living room, gently decorated with a light blue fitted carpet and cream-coloured coverings over the armchairs and settee. Full bookshelves lined the wall opposite the door; the window looked out upon what Webster thought was a disappointingly modest rear garden though it was as well tended as the front garden. A small television set stood in the corner of the room, beneath which was a silver-coloured hi-fi system and a CD player.

‘I put the dogs outside, which is why I was a little delayed in answering the door,' Mrs Wenlock explained as she entered the room. ‘If you can't see them it's because they will have found some shade for themselves. Two black Labradors ... like all brown and black dogs they do not do well in the heat. I knew you'd be the police so I knew I'd be safe, but I'm exceedingly grateful for their presence, during the night especially.'

‘You live alone?' Carmen Pharoah ‘read' the room: all age and social class appropriate, she thought, and felt, thusly, reassured.

‘Yes, yes I do.' Mrs Wenlock sank gracefully into an armchair and, with a clearly practised gesture of her right arm and open palm, invited Webster and Pharoah also to take a seat. Reginald Webster sat in the remaining armchair, whilst Carmen Pharoah contented herself with the centre of the settee. ‘I have two sons,' Mrs Wenlock continued. ‘Both went to university and both didn't come back, as is often the way of it, and so for the greater part of each year, these days, I am alone in the house, but I am visited at Christmas and my birthday and also on one or two other occasions. The boys were much closer to James, my husband, than they were to me, so because of that the “old woman” is visited out of a sense of duty only – just token visits, with limited access to my grandchildren. Very limited access. I am held to blame for my husband's disappearance, you see.'