Gift Wrapped (14 page)

‘What do you remember of the return journey, Gloria?'

‘Not much. It was a good while ago now and old Gloria's memory lets her down a bit these days ... it does ... it's the booze, you see, but I did right for my boys.'

‘All right, so no details of the return journey come to mind, no names of pubs, no significant buildings?' Yellich asked.

‘No ... sorry, pet.' Gloria Bond shook her head.

‘So you said it was dawn – where was the sun as you returned home?'

‘Right in my eyes, pet, I remember that. Shane pulled over because of the glare.'

‘So you travelled eastwards to return to York?'

‘I don't know, pet, but I remember the sun blinding us.' She paused. ‘Anyway, I thought you said you'd found his body.'

‘A little poetic licence, Gloria,' Yellich replied. ‘We were stretching the truth a little, I'm afraid.'

‘Poetic what?' Gloria Bond looked confused.

‘Never mind, I'll explain later,' Yellich placated her. ‘So the fishery was to the west of York?'

‘Dunno, pet. Don't know where it was.'

‘Well, it must have been if the sun was shining in your eyes as you drove home at dawn,' Yellich explained. He then asked, ‘How long was the journey home, in terms of time, I mean?'

‘Not long. It was not a long journey.' Gloria Bond looked vacantly around the interview suite. ‘Not too long.'

‘About?'

‘About half an hour,' Gloria Bond replied, ‘half an hour tops, as near as I can remember.'

‘Good ... that helps us.' Yellich and Ventnor stood. ‘Just wait here, will you, please, Gloria?'

‘Yes, pet, but are you going to drive me back home soon?' Gloria Bond whined.

‘Not yet,' Yellich replied firmly. ‘Just remain here, please.'

‘We'll be right back,' Ventnor added as he and Yellich left the interview suite. ‘We won't be very long.'

In the corridor outside, Thompson Ventnor turned to Somerled Yellich and said, ‘So, a fishery about fifteen miles to the west of York? There can't be many.'

‘Yes ... not many at all,' Yellich pondered. ‘Can you please get a map and see if one such is marked and I'll look out the missing persons file on one Henry Hall, Esquire. I don't think that there will be many of those either.'

Somerled Yellich spread the Ordnance Survey Map across Hennessey's desk. ‘Thompson Ventnor has been able to identify only one candidate, sir,' he explained, ‘and frankly I would go along with him ... just here.' He put his fingertip on a small area of blue on the map fifteen miles to the west of York, close to a railway line. ‘It's about a thirty-minute drive, but it's pretty well due west of York, as you can see.'

‘Yes.' Hennessey looked at the map. ‘The only likely fishery; it's the only fishery in the area, in fact, unless the actual one has been filled in and levelled for housing and this fishery shown here is an entirely new venture – the crime in question being, what did you say? Twenty years old?'

‘Yes, sir.' Yellich stood up. ‘That is a possibility; but we'll have to take that chance.'

‘Yes, we have to.' Hennessey leaned back in his chair. ‘What do you suggest?'

‘Oh ... well, I think I'll visit the fishery with a team of constables to move the pile of rubble one stone at a time in case it is the correct place. Then if we do find a corpse I'll whistle up for SOCO and a pathologist.'

‘Very well. We'll also need divers if we are going to recover the murder weapon and the spade.' Hennessey paused. ‘Do you require sniffer dogs?'

‘I don't think so, sir,' Yellich replied. ‘The body is reportedly concealed in a mound of rubble rather than being buried. I'll use the old mark one eyeball; it should be easy enough to identify the rocks – they're at the far end of the fishery, according to Gloria Bond.'

‘Yes.' Hennessey nodded. ‘Where is your informant?'

‘Still in the interview suite, sir. We listened to what she told us but didn't take it down as a statement for her to sign as such.'

‘No?' Hennessey raised an eyebrow. ‘Why not, Somerled?'

‘Well sir, I think we'll need an appropriate adult on this one,' Yellich replied calmly.

‘Oh?' Hennessey nodded. ‘I see ... I see ...'

‘Yes, sir, you see, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act I think she would be termed “vulnerable”,' Yellich replied.

‘Really?' Hennessey nodded.

‘Yes, sir. I think she is at least educationally subnormal, or in today's speak she has “learning difficulties”. She has also not helped her mental state by long-term alcohol and heroin abuse.'

‘Heroin?' Hennessey expressed surprise. ‘At her age?'

‘Yes, sir. She is a sixty-year-old smackhead. Anyway, she confessed freely to her involvement in the murder of Henry Hall without her seeming to realize the implications of what she was saying, and so Thompson and I didn't, and in fact couldn't, make it an official statement on her part. We just listened to what she told us but what she said won't hold up in court. She'll have to be re-interviewed with a legal representative and an appropriate adult both being present.'

‘I see,' Hennessey replied.

‘I would also think it unlikely that the Crown Prosecution Service would proceed against her. She can argue that she was under duress, and overbearing intimidation on the part of Shane Bond. She is, I think, of such meagre mental capacity that she could well be deemed not guilty by reason of “diminished responsibility”, but right now she is singing like a blackbird in spring time ... so sweet and melodious it is a pity to shut her up.'

‘Understood,' Hennessey replied, with a smile. ‘We can act on her information without compromising the investigation but I suggest you consult with the CPS before taking a formal statement and charging her.'

‘Very good, sir.' Yellich nodded. ‘I'm very happy with that approach.'

‘Good, good.' Hennessey glanced out of his office window at the walls of the ancient city. ‘You know, with a bit of luck we might be able to wrap this up today and charge Shane Bond with not one but two murders. That would be nice and neat.'

‘Indeed, sir.' Yellich smiled. ‘That would be neat, as you say, very neat indeed.'

‘But we still need to find out more about Henry Hall. Can you give his mis-per file to Reginald and Carmen?'

‘Yes, sir,' Yellich replied sharply. ‘Will do.'

‘Ask them to get background information on the gentleman. All they can.'

‘Yes, sir.' Yellich nodded.

‘Then if you and Thompson Ventnor stay teamed up on the visit to the fishery ... see what you see, find what you find,' Hennessey added.

‘Yes, sir.'

Carmen Pharoah settled back in her chair behind her desk, sipping a mug of coffee, and began to read the missing persons report on Henry Hall.

Henry Hall, she read with interest, was a single man at the time he was reported missing, and lived alone. He was reported as missing by a concerned neighbour who had not seen him for some days. He had been employed by the local authority as a gardener, as Gloria Bond had described, and he seemed to have been a man of quiet habits, liking nothing more than to walk up to his local pub, the Empress of India, after a day's work, leaving the pub at 8.00 p.m. to return directly home, before it got unpleasantly noisy and crowded. Henry Hall seemed to have been a quiet, harmless man who had disappeared, now believed to have been murdered at the age of forty-five years. After reading the report and noting the details, Pharoah rose from her chair and walked to George Hennessey's office, knocked reverentially on the frame of the open doorway and entered. ‘I would,' she announced, ‘like to pay a visit to the Empress of India public house, sir. It's mentioned in Henry Hall's mis-per file as a favourite haunt of his. We might obtain more information about the gentleman by chatting to the publican and the regular patrons. Even if it is twenty years on.'

‘Yes,' Hennessey nodded, ‘as much background as possible on Shane Bond's first known victim will be useful. As you say, after such a length of time it's a bit of a long shot but they've paid off before. I think we'll keep Gloria with us for a while – the custody sergeant is ensuring that she has regular access to the ladies' toilets.' He paused. ‘She has a certain medical condition, you see.'

‘I see, sir.' Carmen Pharoah smiled. ‘Like the one brought on by too much alcohol over the years?'

‘Yes.' Hennessey returned the smile. ‘Like that one. Are you happy to go by yourself to the Empress?'

‘Oh, yes, sir. I'm going now about midday just to talk to the publican.'

‘Very well, but if you go anywhere after that let me know. You know the drill – we must know where you are at all times,' Hennessey reminded her.

‘Understood, sir.' Carmen Pharoah nodded. ‘Fully understood.'

‘Somerled Yellich and Thompson Ventnor are at the fishery at the moment,' Hennessey explained. ‘If they find his body we'll have a clearer picture of what happened.'

‘Yes, sir.' Carmen Pharoah turned smartly away and walked back to her office, to collect her jacket and handbag.

Somerled Yellich parked the car close by the entrance to Liskeard Fisheries and got out of car to talk to the gatekeeper, leaving Thompson Ventnor in the passenger seat. A white police minivan containing a sergeant and six constables halted behind Yellich's car.

‘A strange name,' Yellich commented to the initially bemused and then worried-looking gatekeeper, ‘I mean, Liskeard Fisheries ... here in deepest Yorkshire, of all places.'

‘Yes, I suppose it is a trifle strange.' The elderly gatekeeper kept a watchful eye on the police vehicles and seemed to Yellich to be growing increasingly wary and apprehensive, as if some long past felony he had committed was haunting him. ‘The owner of the fisheries is a Cornishman. He named the business after his home town ... so they told me when I started work here.'

‘He's a long way from home.' Yellich glanced at the area beyond the gate: a half-a-dozen ponds, he thought, shrubs and a few anglers sitting motionless by them. Beyond the fishery was a long mound with a flat surface. A signal post told Yellich that a railway line ran atop the surface of the mound.

‘Aye ... too far away, he always says; he pines for Cornwall but he married a Yorkshire lass who wouldn't leave home, so it was that Mohammed came to the mountain, so to speak, or so I understand the case to be.' The gatekeeper shrugged as he sat in the booth at the entrance to Liskeard Fisheries. He seemed to Yellich to have found a peaceful, open-air, undemanding job to help eke out his state pension. He wore faded denim jeans and a green T-shirt, and Yellich noted a mottled green military-style combat jacket hanging from a hook in the booth behind the gatekeeper's head. A tabloid paper lay clumsily and untidily folded upon a shelf within it. ‘So, how can I help you? Are you looking for stolen goods hidden in the water?' The gatekeeper laughed softly, ‘Or a dead body or two? In fact, the members have complained that the fish have not been rising to the bait recently; maybe they're staying down because they are chewing on someone's flesh. Perhaps that's the reason, eh?'

‘That's probably closer to the truth than you realize.' Yellich brushed a fly from his face. ‘An awful lot closer.'

‘Oh, yes?' The gatekeeper's eyes narrowed as he looked at Yellich.

‘Yes.' Yellich nodded slightly whilst holding solemn eye contact with the old man. ‘In fact, it could be much closer to a certainty but not in the water.'

‘Buried?' The gatekeeper's jaw sagged slightly. ‘Buried between the pools?'

‘Maybe.' Yellich glanced at the rough track which led from the gate into the fishery. It was, he guessed, quite wide enough to accommodate a motor car or a small van and seemed to extend to the further side of the grounds. Between the ponds was rough scrubland dotted with bushes, but he could not, from where he stood, detect a mound of rubble. The anglers looked at him and the other policemen, though none moved unless it was to throw a handful of bait into the water. Above the scene the sky was an expansive, near-cloudless blue.

‘So you won't be dragging the ponds?' the elderly gamekeeper asked.

‘We might have to send divers in,' Yellich replied. ‘Why do you ask? Will dragging the ponds cause some sort of damage?'

‘No, it won't cause any damage but it will upset the fish,' the gatekeeper explained. ‘They'll stay well down after you have dragged the ponds. The fish have to be kept calm – they mustn't be alarmed and they graze for their food; trout do, anyway. I dare say piranhas hunt but we don't have them,' the man grinned, ‘just trout and they're not pellet fed either, so you can eat them. We keep 'em alive by emptying bucket loads of maggots into the ponds ... but not too many. We have to keep the edge on their appetite, or they won't take the anglers' bait.'

‘Well, we will probably only need to search one pond, if at all,' Yellich explained. ‘So tell me, there is no gate at the entrance. A permanent open entrance is a little unusual, isn't it?'

‘Not needed, mate; we just need two posts to make the entrance and a wooden hut for me or the other gatekeepers to sit in while we check licences. There's nothing to steal, you see.'

‘So someone could drive a vehicle into the fishery at night?' Yellich asked.

‘Yes, if they have a mind to,' the gatekeeper replied. ‘There's nobody to stop them – not at night, anyway.'

‘Has that always been the case?' Yellich asked. ‘Do you know?'

‘Yes.' The man gave a brief nod of his head. ‘I have been a gatekeeper here for the last three years but I have lived around here all my life and I have never seen gates on the fishery.'

‘That is interesting.' Yellich once again glanced around the grounds. ‘Would you know where there is a pile of stones in the fishery, or a pile of rubble?'