Grief Encounters (17 page)

‘You need a solicitor,’ I said. ‘You’re bailed to appear in court one day next week, but he can ask for an adjournment. Has it all been explained to you?’

‘Yes, Inspector.
Ad nauseam
.’

‘Meanwhile, I’ll have someone try to find this Richard. See what he’s all about. No Mazda RX8 was reported stolen last night. Can you definitely say that his car was a Mazda?’

‘Definitely. I admired it. Truth is, I’m a bit of a petrol head. It was an RX8 all right.’

‘Well that should make him easy to trace. Is his wine glass still standing unwashed on your kitchen table?’

‘Um, I imagine so. And his coffee mug.’

‘Good. Pick them up carefully and put them somewhere safe. Then, if necessary, we can check his fingerprints. I’m afraid I haven’t anybody to send over at the moment.’ And, of course, it gave me an excuse to renew our acquaintance at a later date.

‘Do you think he spiked my drinks, Inspector?’

‘Only with alcohol. Rohypnol, the date rape drug, is a bit of a myth. As far as I know there’s never been a proven case of its use in this country. The preferred drug of the date rapist is alcohol. Some of those Australian wines are quite strong, and you were mixing them.’ I thought for a few seconds, then said: ‘You mentioned something about having trouble with the school governors. What’s that all about?’

‘Oh, you may have read about it in the papers. We have the usual fundamentalists on the panel and they want creationism to be taught as an alternative to evolution. I’ve said over my dead body.’

‘Intelligent design?’

‘And that.’

‘Good for you. Do you think they could be behind this? Wanting to discredit you?’

‘Not really. They’re a couple of old dears, but are still living in the seventeenth century.’

But, I thought, they could have friends, be members of a church that had strong views about these things. Strong enough to take violent action. I hoped that Christian fundamentalists weren’t behind it. I’d have prayed they weren’t behind it if it hadn’t seemed so hypocritical.

I said: ‘Fair enough. Finish your coffee and then you can leave. The car’s outside so it must be driveable. Sorry I can’t be more helpful but that’s how it goes.’

She said: ‘Well, thanks for listening to me. I’d never felt so lonely until you came in. I’m very grateful.’

I smiled at her. ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m a sucker for women with runny mascara.’

She wiped under her eyes with her fingers. ‘Uh! I hardly ever wear it. So do you believe me?’

‘Oh yes,’ I told her. ‘I believe you. Those are very sensible driving shoes you’re wearing, but I can’t see you going on a special date in them.’

She lifted her feet to look at them, toes pointed inwards, and gave me the nearest thing to a smile she’d managed all night. I waved a goodbye and stood up to leave. At the door I said: ‘One last question, Miss Birchall. Where did you first meet this Richard?’

‘Oh God,’ she said, putting her hand to her head. ‘Yet another embarrassment. I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that.’

The top-of-the-range Rover 75 in Ted Goss’s garage was almost certainly the one he was seated in when the compromising photo was taken, so I had a SOCO go over it for samples. We’d keep them on file for future reference, if required. The coroner had declared his death a suicide, but he was an MP and there were the inevitable questions asked about his dealings, both financial and political. For some strange reason they’d kept off the sexual possibilities, but the press would have a feeding frenzy if they ever saw the photo. Fortunately only Edwin Turner and I knew of it. And, of course, the photographer.

The nearest Mazda dealer was in Huddersfield, and only nine RX8s were registered to owners who lived in Heckley, just one of whom was called Richard. Richard Wentbridge lived at the Flour Mill, Hunter’s Valley, on the soft, southern edge of town. Gillian Birchall had blushed like a navvy at an ante-natal clinic when she confessed that she’d met her Richard at a speed-dating agency. Now where have I heard that before? I thought. The Flour Mill had been just that a hundred years ago, but now it was a desirable residence suitable for a captain of industry, a cancer surgeon or a TV weather girl. I drove by, now and again, and saw the Mazda and a brand-new Series 1 BMW on the drive a couple of times, but no people.

Philip, the other early starter when the York and Durham was raided back in 1978, was now assistant manager at their Burnley branch. Brendan and George went to interview him and reported that he was married with two grown-up children and lived a lifestyle appropriate to his earnings. He remembered Gail fondly, said he fancied her like mad back then, and was heartbroken when she left. He didn’t realise she’d been fired. They told him that she wasn’t doing too well and he said he might try to contact her.

We tracked down a few more students and a couple of them recognised Magdalena but had nothing to offer about who her friends were. The hole-in-the-wall gang were interviewed again and leant on fairly heavily, but none of them had any idea where Ennis might be living.
Crimewatch
showed a 25-year-old photograph of him and a computerised morph of what he might look like today. Thirty-two people phoned in, and during the following week every sighting was traced and eliminated. We showed his photo at Doncaster, Sheffield and Belle Vue dog tracks, but only received shakes of the head. We’d have been better employed showing it to the dogs. Their wagging tails would have told us if they were hiding anything.

Gillian Birchall’s case was adjourned on the grounds that there might be mitigating circumstances and I received a postcard at the nick showing canoeists disturbing the reflections on Lake Louise, near Banff, and signed with a G. Then the breakthrough came.

‘DI Priest,’ I said into the phone. It was Thursday afternoon, my feet were on the desk and I was about to go home early for once. The sun was shining again after a couple of days of showers, and my grass desperately needed cutting.

‘Oh, hello, could I speak to DI Priest, please?’ The voice was nervous, and sounded like a schoolboy.

‘This is DI Priest. How can I help you?’

‘Oh, hello. This is the Blue Sky Trust. We’re a multi-ethnic, non-religious, non-sectarian charity that works with ex-offenders; trying to help them re-integrate with society.’

‘Uh uh.’ I swung my feet back onto the floor.

‘I’m assistant to the regional coordinator, standing in for him while he’s on holiday.’ 

‘Ye-es.’

‘Well, earlier today I took a call from a man called Peter Ennis. He sounded desperate, wanted our help.’

I sat up, swept the papers on my desk aside and grabbed a pen. ‘Go on.’

‘So I told him we were understaffed at the moment but if he’d come back in a week’s time we’d arrange an appointment. I started to make a file out for him, on the computer, but then I saw that there was already one there, presumably done by my boss. It didn’t have much on it. It just said: “If makes contact tell him that a DI Priest, Heckley CID, is trying to find him”. So that’s what I’m doing.’

I thought about explaining that he was supposed to warn Ennis that I was after him, not the other way round, but decided not to. He was probably on work experience during his uni’s recess, and finding it difficult in the big, wide, bewildering world.

‘Cheers,’ I said, airily, as if I couldn’t care less. ‘He left a couple of rather good oil paintings behind when he was released, and we want to get them to him. Do you have a forwarding address?’

‘Primrose House, Primrose Avenue, off Lumb Lane, Bradford. It’s a squat. There’s no postcode, I’m afraid.’

‘We’ll find it. Thanks for your help.’ I put the phone down, picked it up again to confirm that the connection was broken then punched the air. ‘Yes!’ I shouted. ‘Yes!’

Dave and Maggie saw my jubilation and came to investigate. ‘That’s his address,’ I told them. ‘Ennis’s. Also known as the Pope. Ring Bradford, Dave. Tell them we’re a-coming.’

There are squats and there are squats. Some are sordid, stinking houses with no facilities, lived in by society’s misfits who have no respect for anything and are happy to live in their own muck. They strip the plumbing out, burn the floorboards and live in conditions that the RSPCA would find intolerable for pigs. These are the lost generation, and the next fix is as far as their universe stretches.

Some, a few, are more responsible, and for them squatting is a political statement, a defiant gesture against capitalism. They see big, fine buildings deserted and falling into decay because the absentee landlords want to develop the site some time in the future, and they move in.

Primrose House was in-between. The intention of the original squatters may have had a touch of the noble about it, if living rent-free in somebody else’s property can be regarded as noble, but because of the location next to the red light district they were soon swamped by runaways and dropouts of both sexes, happy to sell their bodies for the price of a hamburger. Now, the goodies had retreated to the upper floors and abandoned the ground floor to the junkies. Ennis, an informer told us, dossed downstairs, and slept with his eyes open. He’d tried to move upstairs but they had children and didn’t want him near them.

Because of the kids we decided against an early morning raid. We watched the house over the weekend and he was seen twice, going for a walk into the town centre, where he busked with a penny whistle. He performed in Forster Square on Saturday and in the cathedral precinct on Sunday, and barely made a couple of pounds each time. We knew he hadn’t signed on for the dole, and had presumed this was because he had access to the proceeds of the bank raid. It looked as if we were wrong.

Monday morning we lifted him. It was all very civilised. The sun was shining and we were in our shirtsleeves, some wearing shades. We approached him from four directions, just as he was about to launch into Barbara Allen, his party piece, for the eleventh time.

‘Peter Ennis,’ I said. ‘I’m DI Priest from Heckley CID, and I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

He stood transfixed for several seconds, the flute halfway to his mouth, then said: ‘Thank God for that,’ and offered his hands for the cuffs.

We fed Ennis, let him take a shower and found some clean clothes for him. Prison reduces a man. It takes him and wears him down, in his head and in his body. But Ennis had survived twenty-five years of it, kept going, we believed, by the knowledge that a fortune was waiting for him when he was released. But the money hadn’t been there. Gwen Rhodes told me that he was an authoritative figure, commanded respect from the other prisoners, but the twelve months or so that he’d been free had eroded all that. All I saw when we arrested him was a stooped old man whose clothes hung on him, with sunken cheeks and dark, darting eyes. He’d been living on his wits and it had scoured him to the bone.

‘You were released towards the end of August last year,’ I told him. ‘Where have you been living since then?’

We were in interview room number one, the tapes were running and he’d adamantly refused a solicitor. Dave was sitting next to me.

‘Here and there,’ Ennis replied.

‘I believe you knew a woman called Magdalena Fischer.’

‘What of it?’

‘Did you know she was dead? That she’d been murdered?’

‘Yeah.’

‘When did you last see her?’ 

He didn’t reply. Just sat there, his mind racing like a runaway engine, his eyes flicking from me to Dave and back to me.

‘Have you seen her since you were released?’

No reply.

‘How did you learn of her death?’

‘Read it in a paper, didn’t I.’

‘Did it name her?’

‘No. There was a picture. A drawing, done when she was a lot younger.’

‘And you recognised her from it?’

‘Yeah. It was her all right.’

‘Memories play tricks sometimes. Especially to someone who’s locked up, I imagine.’

‘She came to visit me inside, didn’t she.’

‘Often?’

‘As often as she could. It wasn’t easy for her.’

‘Because she was living with someone?’

‘Maybe she was. I don’t know.’

‘Living with someone and spending all your money. Was that it?’

‘What money?’

‘You know what money. You didn’t spend twenty-five years in jail because you liked the food. You’re what? Fifty-four? That’s a good age to retire at, with a nice little nest egg to help you along. Except, there doesn’t appear to have been any nest egg, so what happened to it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, do I.’ 

‘Had she spent it all? Did she and her lover spend all your money? That’d be a disappointment for you, wouldn’t it? Twenty-five years in the slammer with nothing at the end of it, when you could have been out in ten with a bit of cooperation. If it were me I’d have been annoyed. Were you annoyed, Peter? Or were you raving mad?’

He didn’t answer, picked up his coffee beaker, realised it was empty and put it down again.

‘Tell us about Magdalena,’ I said.

‘What’s to tell?’

‘Where did you meet her?’

‘In a pub in Leeds. The Coburg, I think.’

‘A good pub,’ I said. ‘Jazz nights, would it be?’

‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

‘Did you go for the jazz, or was it for the university talent?’

‘Bit of both, I s’pose. And the beer.’

‘She was there and it was love at first sight.’

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘I’d have thought Magdalena was just a little too sophisticated for a piece of rough like yourself, Peter.’

He gave a little ‘huh’ with a hint of a smile, and said: ‘Yeah, so would I.’

‘But she fell for you?’

‘Yeah, in a big way, didn’t she.’

‘Tell us about it.’

‘What’s to tell? We moved in together. A year later we had a little girl. Angela. Then I got banged up for…you know…the bank job. Magda came to see me for a while, with the kid, but I asked her to stop coming. It upset us both too much. I told her to tell Angela I was dead. She could wait for me, if she wanted, but to stop coming to the prison. So she did.’