H&Y20 - Deliver Us from Evil (10 page)

‘All right. That’s interesting. Did he ever indicate to you or anyone that you know of, did he ever hint at his purpose? I mean did he indicate the nature of the agenda you mention?’

‘No . . . not to me though he was apparently interested in the old house out of the village, the crumbling mess occupied by an old boy called Beattie. You can’t miss it.’

‘Yes, we have visited Mr Beattie. He also mentioned the large, well built man looking at his house but he thought that the Canadian, being the man in question, was more interested in the occupants than he was interested in the house itself.’

‘Occupants? Since his wife died the old boy is the sole occupant, the old boy who is rumoured not to feel the cold . . . they say he sleeps in his kitchen.’

‘Oh, he feels it all right,’ Yellich replied, ‘he feels it, he just has a different attitude towards it than do the rest of us. We believe that when the Canadian was in the vicinity he, that is Mr Beattie, had a live-in help . . . a lady . . . as a domestic assistant. We believe that she was the object of the Canadian gentleman’s interest.’

‘Ah . . . of that I know nothing. He said nothing about that when he was drinking his beer.’

‘I see. Did he talk to any other customers in the pub?’

‘Anybody who talked to him but he preferred his own company. He came in for a few beers, not idle chat. He was that sort of man.’

‘Did you find out anything about him, anything at all?’

‘Came from Barrie, he said. He did tell me that.’

‘Barrie?’

‘Confess I had never heard of the place, but it’s north of Toronto. I could name Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver as Canadian cities but never heard of Barrie . . . spelled with an “ie” at the end, not a “y”.’

‘Well, you got closer than anyone, physically closer, that is to say, and so we’d like you to help us construct a photofit of the man, or rather a computer generated image. What time would suit you?’

Selsey gave Yellich a sour look, ‘If you could manage to avoid weekend evenings I’d appreciate it.’

‘Later today perhaps?’ Yellich suggested. ‘Would that be convenient?’

Carmen Pharoah drove away from Stanley Hemmings’s house and then parked her car and walked back the 200 yards and knocked on his neighbour’s door. Her knock sounded loudly and hollowly within the house. As she waited for the knock to be answered she glanced at Hemmings’s house. She did not see him and thus was relieved that he clearly had not seen her. If he had noticed her it would not have mattered, but on balance, she preferred him not to have seen her. It made things easier somehow. The door was eventually opened by a late middle-aged woman, short, with a pinched face, who met Carmen Pharoah with a cold stare and clear dislike of Afro-Caribbeans.

‘What?’ She demanded. ‘What is it? What do you want? Who are you?’

‘Police.’ Carmen Pharoah showed the woman her ID.

‘Oh?’ The woman seemed to relax her attitude a little, though she still demanded ‘What?’ for a fourth time.

‘May I come inside? I’d like to ask you some questions.’ Carmen Pharoah asked calmly.

‘About what?’

‘Your neighbour.’

‘Which neighbour?’

‘Mr Hemmings.’

‘Oh . . . those two?’ The woman sniffed disapprovingly.

‘Yes, those two.’

The woman stepped nimbly to one side and allowed Carmen Pharoah to enter her house. Carmen Pharoah read a neat, well kept, clean but spartan home; hence, she realized, the echoing quality to her knock, there being little to soften the sound. ‘Second on the left,’ the woman said, closing the front door behind her.

Carmen Pharoah entered the living room which had upholstered furniture and a table covered in a brown cloth. Of daffodils in vases and a small television set in the corner of the room on a small table. A modest coke fire glowed dimly in the hearth. The window of the room looked out over a small but well tended rear garden and the wooden fence which divided her property from Stanley Hemmings’s property.

‘Well, sit down,’ the woman spoke snappily, ‘the chairs don’t bite.’

‘Thank you.’ Carmen Pharoah settled on the settee and opened her notepad. ‘Can I ask your name, please?’

‘Winterton. Amelia. Miss.’

‘Occupation, please.’

‘Schoolteacher, retired recently, a few months ago. Still don’t know what to do with all my free time.’

Carmen Pharoah shuddered internally. She felt she knew the type of schoolteacher Winterton, Amelia, Miss, had been, acid-tongued, short-tempered. She had survived just one such teacher in her primary school on St Kitts.

‘So, you are enquiring about the couple next door?’

‘Yes . . . yes, we are.’

‘She disappeared I heard . . . it’s the talk of the street.’

‘So we believe.’

‘Oh, well, don’t know what I can tell you . . . probably not much at all. He was a long time bachelor and then he takes her for his wife. I don’t think she was a happy woman.’

‘Why do you say that? Did they argue?’

‘No, I never heard any arguments or rows, nothing like that, not ever. She just didn’t seem right for him. If you ask me they made an odd couple. You know Stanley, he works in the biscuit factory, harmless, kind old man, sort of character that you find in children’s books, like the toymaker, and she . . . sort of brash and materialistic. I just never saw her looking happy, if you see what I mean, and often going out alone . . . separate . . . by herself. But when we talked, over the back fence sort of chats, that is Stanley and I, I never talked to her, he just sang her praises all the time. Edith did this and Edith does that. He seemed so proud of her, but frankly I never saw her do anything . . . good or bad. You know once I called round one Sunday morning because the brain-dead paperboy had delivered their newspapers to my address by mistake and he was in the kitchen in a pinafore very contentedly preparing Sunday lunch and I called again the same day and he was back in the pinafore equally contentedly doing the washing-up, and madam was just nowhere to be seen. He seemed to worship her and do everything in the house. She just scowled all the time.’

‘I see.’

‘Mind you, that Sunday I mention, in fairness that was just one day and so it might have been atypical. But I never saw her do any work. Never saw her weed the garden, put out the laundry on the line. She never brought shopping home, only him, only ever him in the garden, only ever him bringing the shopping home. She seemed to be content to stay in the house. They went out together occasionally in their little ex-post office van. She also wore a wig, she seemed to fancy being a blonde from time to time.’

‘Yes . . . the wig.’

‘She would go out alone in the evening. That’s something she did do, go out by herself. I heard her heels click, click, click away into the night and she’d return late at night. It was a strange union, ill-matched. I could never see what they saw in each other. He seems lost now though. You know I went round yesterday to see if he needed any help at this difficult time . . . found him sobbing his eyes out . . . poor man . . . he must have loved her very much.’

Yellich and Webster returned to Micklegate Bar Police Station. Upon arrival they shared the recording to be added to the file of the murder of Edith Hemmings. Yellich recorded the longer interview with Alexander Beattie and Webster the two shorter interviews with Ben Tinsley and Terry Selsey.

Yellich then drove thankfully home to his new build house in Huntingdon to the north of York. He halted the car by the side of the road as Jeremy ran out of the house to greet him and Yellich braced himself for the impact of the heavy, and large for his age, twelve-year-old. Father and son walked hand in hand back to the house where Sara Yellich welcomed her husband with a warm smile and told him that Jeremy had been a very good boy since he returned home from school that afternoon. Later, when he had changed into more casual clothes, Somerled Yellich took Jeremy for a walk in the fields close to their home as a reward for being a good boy and they observed the beginning of spring, the snowdrops and crocuses, the first leaves on some species of tree . . . and geese . . . a skein of geese flying northwards against the grey sky.

Somerled and Sara Yellich had, like all couples in such circumstances, experienced feelings of disappointment when told that their son would not be of normal intelligence but would be deemed ‘special needs’. In Jeremy Yellich’s case the diagnosis being Down’s Syndrome. But as Jeremy grew a new world opened up to them as they met other parents of similar children and formed real and lasting friendships with them. Jeremy too had given so much, developing as he had into a loving and trusting individual and one who would never be a source of angst to his parents as he grew into a teenager. For Jeremy Yellich the future would be of semi-independent living in a supervised hostel as he entered what might, sadly, be a short adult life with him achieving a mental age of approximately twelve years.

Later that evening Somerled and Sara Yellich sat with each other, resting against each other sipping wine and listening to Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto. There was just nothing they needed or had to say to each other.

THREE

T
he drizzle turned slowly to snow as George Hennessey looked casually out of his office window and across the road to Micklegate Bar. He thought how it was that the weather made the walls of the ancient city look exceptionally cold and forbidding. He then turned to face the team assembled side by side in chairs in front of his desk forming a tight semicircle: Yellich, Webster, Ventnor and Pharoah. ‘So,’ he said as he relaxed in his chair, ‘it appears that we need to trace the mysterious Canadian gentleman. He seems to have some explaining to do.’

‘Seems so, Skipper,’ Yellich replied and then delicately sipped tea from the mug he was holding.

‘So what do we think about Mr Stanley Hemmings? Is he in the frame?’

‘He seems genuinely grief-stricken, sir.’ Carmen Pharoah sat forward cradling her mug of tea in both hands. ‘It did not sound like a blissfully happy union. He seems to have been besotted by her but . . . it wasn’t . . . what’s the word?’ She appealed to her colleagues.

‘Reciprocated?’ Webster suggested. ‘Is that the word you’re looking for?’

‘Yes, that’s the very word. The passion seemed very one-sided, even allowing for their neighbour embellishing her own cynical view of things; Edith Hemmings did seem to be a bit of a handful of a woman. I did take her passport details so I can contact the Canadian authorities, although Mr Hemmings didn’t indicate she had any relatives.’

‘Yes, we must find out who she is . . . was . . . and determine her name; was she “Julia” or “Edith” and why did she seem so frightened of the Canadian gentleman who was looking for her? Something happened in Canada. Something very serious.’

‘She was an orphan,’ Yellich said, ‘so we understand, at least according to Mr Beattie, though some relatives may exist, some extended family.’

‘Yes, we have to involve the Canadians. That’s one for you, DC Pharoah . . .’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There is nothing to report in respect of the industrial units,’ Ventnor reported. ‘I visited them yesterday, a struggling property company. The units have been empty for some time, quite isolated but also easily stumbled across. How he found them is a question we’ll likely put to the Canadian when we catch up with him. Seems he is our man, stalking Mrs Hemmings like he did, over a number of years. We really need to find him.’

Hennessey paused. ‘So, time for action. DC Pharoah, contact the Canadian Embassy as you suggested. What else have you got on?’

‘Two serious assaults, sir, both domestic, and I am helping the CPS to frame charges against a serial shoplifter, “Liz the lifter” as she is known, and prolific isn’t the word and that’s just going on what we know. What we don’t know about would probably fill Marks and Spencer’s twice over . . . and she’s still only seventeen.’

‘We’ll be getting to know her very well,’ Hennessey smiled.

‘Indeed, sir . . . very well indeed.’

‘Sergeant?’

‘Fatal stabbing in the city centre, sir, not far from here . . . by the cholera burial pits. The felon is in custody and will be pleading guilty. His brief is trying to negotiate a reduced charge but we’ll get a result one way or the other. Other than that I have much paperwork to do.’

‘OK. Ventnor?’

‘Car thefts in the main, sir. Seems like an organized gang is behind them, they are targeting high value prestige motors, but there has been nothing for six weeks now, unless they have moved on to another city. So it’s become a waiting game.’

‘Very well. Webster?’

‘Burglaries in the main, sir, and also possibly one very well organized gang . . . and again, it’s also a waiting game. They’ll slip up one day but these fellas are very clever, very thorough. They seem to be well aware that every contact leaves a trace . . . so very careful . . . most carefully not wanting to cut themselves it seems, so as not to leave DNA behind . . . clean breaking of panes of glass has become their hallmark.’

‘Right,’ Hennessey sat forward, ‘so Webster and Yellich, I want you two to team up. Find this damned Canadian and find out more about the victim. She came from somewhere and he has gone somewhere. Pursue both lines of enquiry. At some point they will converge.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich replied promptly.

‘For myself, I intend to visit a gentleman who has been helpful before. I doubt he will know the Canadian man but he might know Mrs Hemmings. If she has been stealing from her employers in the Vale for a number of years then my man will probably know her. Was the date of entry stamped on her passport?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No matter. So the other place of employment she had before she worked for Beattie . . . that will have to be visited, and we also need to find the guest house he used when he was in the area.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, leave it to you two gentlemen to see what you see and to find what you find.’