‘It’s all right, we know about the wig.’
‘Very well. The Canadian hung around for a few days, and unlike his quarry he made no attempt to hide himself. He seemed to base himself in Malton . . . that was his operational base. He became a bit of a local figure and he liked his English beer, which is strange for a Canadian or an American. When they are over here they seem to prefer lager because that is very similar to American beer . . . served chilled like American beer . . . and the same colour, but English beer, brown coloured and served at room temperature, is not to their taste. You know I once saw a group of American sailors, first time in the UK, that was obvious, they came into a pub and ordered beer. The way they looked at it, absolutely aghast, then the way their faces screwed up when they tasted it . . . it really was so very funny. Anyway, someone in the pub realized what had happened and told them that he’d been in the States and knew how they liked their beer to be served and he suggested that they try the lager, which they did and were very happy campers after that . . . but the Canadian . . . he liked his English beer. He had acquired the taste. So the point being that a publican in Malton might remember him.’
‘You’ll be the police?’ The man leaned against the back of the bar of the Jolly Waggoner in Malton, dressed in a neatly pressed white shirt and black trousers with a black clip-on tie. He wiped a glass with a starched white towel. ‘You have just visited Mr Rigall, the fox hunting man.’
‘He hunts?’ Yellich replied, observing a clean and neatly kept pub.
‘Rides to hounds is the correct term but yes, he hunts the fox in his hunting pink and white breeches and black hat. He has some status in the hunt. He’s not the master but has some significant position. He is a very and a most proper gentleman, is the good Mr Rigall.’
Webster and Yellich noticed a note of sarcasm in the publican’s voice.
‘You don’t like the hunt?’ Webster probed.
The barman shrugged, ‘I wouldn’t protest against it, but I wouldn’t protest for it. I dare say I am what is known as a camp follower. I support the hunt without being part of it.’
‘Interesting position to put yourself in,’ Yellich smiled.
‘Well, this is rural England. It’s about as rural as it can get and in here you pick up the local attitude and the local attitude is “leave the hunt alone”. I am not local myself. I came down from “the boro”, but I have to make this pub work.’
‘The “boro”?’
‘Middlesbrough, Teesside . . . which is about as urban and industrial as you can get.’
‘Ah . . .’
‘Well, folk round here haven’t a good word to say for the fox, it’s an “animal of an animal” they say. If the fox just took what it needed it wouldn’t be so bad but you see I am told that if a fox gets into a chicken run and there are twenty chickens in the run, it will kill all of them, then make its way home taking just the one chicken it needs to feed himself and his litter. But you see, for some smallholders and agricultural labourers, the loss of all their chickens to wantonness is a lot to bear . . . it’s a big loss for them. No fresh eggs . . . no poultry . . . have to buy it all until they can restock with more chickens.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘And the hunt also brings in big money and keeps traditional rural crafts alive. We have a blacksmith and he’s only here because the hunt keeps him in work. He can walk down the main street holding his head up as a proud man but without the hunt he’d be nothing . . . a man on the dole, looking for work, any work, no matter how menial.’
‘Interesting point of view.’
‘So I say, keep the hunt, it keeps the money coming in and we need it, trade is slow but we are still afloat.’
Webster glanced round the pub. A few elderly men, four he counted, sitting silently, apart from each other and in front of glasses of beer. Slow trade as the publican said, but, Webster pondered, he is at least still open midweek which is more than the lot of the publican of The Hunter’s Moon in Stillington.
‘So how can I help you, gentlemen?’
‘Yes, we have visited Mr Rigall . . .’
‘One of his estate workers drinks in here,’ the publican smiled. ‘Called in for one on his way home for his lunch, he is a bit of a daytime drinker but he can handle it, and he told me to expect you.’
‘Yes, he was correct to tell you to expect us. We are looking for a Canadian gentleman; we believe he might have been in here enjoying a beer, some months ago now.’
‘Piers?’ The publican smiled broadly. ‘Piers, the Canadian?’
‘Is that Piers?’ Webster showed the computer E-FIT to the publican.
‘Yes . . . well, it could be Piers, there is a likeness, Piers was the only Canadian to hang round here. Went away, then came back to see us a few days ago . . . nice bloke, he said he had done what he came to do . . . job done, he said. He looked more satisfied than pleased; he said he was shortly to be going back to Canada. He bought a beer and put one in the pump for me. We shook hands and he walked out the door . . . and that’s the last I saw of him.’
‘A few days ago?’ Yellich could not conceal his excitement.
‘Yes, Tuesday of this week, day before yesterday. It would be mid evening when he called in, seven, eight p.m., that sort of time. He used to stay with Mrs Stand.’
‘Mrs Stand?’
‘Next door but one . . . that way,’ the publican pointed to his left. ‘Double fronted house, Broomfield Hotel to give it its proper name, but it’s a guest house . . . bed and breakfast, not a proper hotel. He stayed there.’
Yellich smiled. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks a lot.’
George Hennessey spent that morning at his desk addressing necessary paperwork. He was all too aware of the gripes of police officers about the mountain of forms they have to complete and reports they have to write, but he found that he enjoyed paperwork and he gave a lot of care to the task, knowing as he did the necessity of accurate and up-to-the-minute recording. At midday, and noticing the sleet-laden rain had eased, although the cloud cover remained at ten tenths in RAF speak, he stood and clambered into his woollen coat, wound a scarf round his neck and screwed his brown fedora on his head. He walked casually from his office and signed as being ‘out’ at the front desk and, after exchanging a word with the cheery police constable who was on duty there, he stepped out of the building into a grimy Micklegate Bar. He glanced up, as he often did, drawn with horrific fascination, at the spikes on the wall above the arch where the heads of traitors to the Crown were impaled and then left for three years as a warning to any other would-be renegade, the last such impaling taking place during the mid eighteenth century. Hennessey crossed the road and climbed the steps on to the wall and turned to his right to walk the wall from the Bar to Baile Hill, knowing, as every York resident knows, that walking the walls is by far the speediest and most efficient means of crossing the city. The stretch of wall he walked that day was, he always found, the most pleasing, affording good views of the neat and desirable terraced houses of Lower Priory Street and Fairfax and Hampden Streets which stood snugly and smugly ‘within the walls’, and to his right the much less expensive, the less desirable, less cared-for houses of the streets joining Nunnery Lane, being ‘without the walls’. The last few feet of that stretch of wall ended in a small copse which Hennessey always thought had a certain mystical quality about it. He left the wall at Baile Hill, as indeed he had to, and crossed the road bridge over the cold and deceptively sluggish looking River Ouse, turning right on to Tower Street and, exploiting an infrequent gap in the traffic, jogged hurriedly across the road. Once over the River Foss at Castle Mills Bridge, he was, as he always thought, in ‘any town – UK’.
It was an area of small terraced housing with inexpensive cars parked at the kerb. He glimpsed a motorcycle chained to a lamp post, the unexpected sight of which caused a shaft of pain to pierce his chest. He continued, walking up quiet Hope Street, crossing Walmgate and entering Navigation Road. He was by then deeply within the part of the city which could have been anywhere in England. All round him were the same type of small terraced houses with only the light grey colour of the brick suggesting that he was in the Vale of York. Hennessey strolled on and turned into Speculation Street and at the end of the street he walked through the low doorway of The Speculation Inn. He turned immediately to his left and entered the taproom. In the corner, on the hard bench which ran round the corner of the room, in front of a small circular table, sat a slightly built, smartly dressed middle-aged man. The man smiled at Hennessey; Hennessey nodded to the man and walked to the serving hatch, there being no bar in the taproom of The Speculation. Hennessey bought a whisky and soda and a glass of tonic water with lime from the jovial young woman who served him. He carried the drinks across to where the middle-aged man sat and he placed the whisky in front of him. Hennessey then sat on a highly polished stool in front of the man and raised the glass of tonic water, ‘Your health, Shored-Up.’
‘And yours, Mr Hennessey. And yours.’ The man eagerly sipped the whisky. ‘You come to your humble and obedient servant this day as a ray of sunshine would come upon a dark place. I didn’t know how I was going to make that drink last and then you walked in the door . . . a saviour to a man in need.’
‘Well, I may have need of you . . . anyway I see you survived Her Majesty’s Prison, Shored-Up?’
‘Oh, Mr Hennessey, I tell you, HM hotels are getting rougher and rougher. So very rough. I had to share a cell with three others, and our cell was originally a cell designed for one, and they were all rough boys . . . that terrible youth . . .’ The man shuddered. ‘How I resent him.’
‘The one that dobbed you in?’
‘Yes, him . . . that one . . . who dobbed me in, as you say. No sense of honour.’
‘You would have done the same, Shored-Up, especially if it meant avoiding a spell inside . . . which is what he avoided.’
‘How is a man to make a decent living? The dole goes nowhere. It wouldn’t keep a church mouse alive . . . and I never harmed anyone . . . I don’t do violence.’
‘Stealing elderly ladies’ Rolls Royces . . .’
‘Yes, but not harming the ladies themselves and so lucrative . . . a way of making a living.’
‘So criminal also.’ Hennessey cast an eye over the man’s clothing. Expensive at first glance, threadbare at the second and as always saying ‘charity shops’ very loudly at the third glance. The image of the ‘distressed gentleman’ came to Hennessey’s mind, usefully assisted by the man’s ‘gentlemanly’ manner, which had been honed over the years by observing the real thing. ‘So are you at it again?’
The man shrugged. He delicately sipped the whisky Hennessey had bought him. ‘Chap has to earn his living . . . there are no free rides.’
‘You’ve been out how long? Can’t be a full month yet?’
‘Three weeks tomorrow.’ The man smiled, ‘I confess that fresh air never did taste so sweet. Now I am settling into my nice new flat. I gave up the old one; or rather it gave up on me.’
‘Yes, I can imagine you’d have difficulty paying rent when you’re inside doing twelve to the inch.’
‘I had a little put by. I could have kept the flat going but paying rent on an empty flat, it went so much against the grain. Flats are easy to come by, and I quite like my new little drum. And I escaped the torture of sewing mailbags, opted for education, “good citizenship” in the main. Easier and anyway they don’t sew mailbags in the prisons any more. The GC class enabled me to sit and daydream; usually I carried myself off to a sun drenched and very faraway place.’
‘And now you are seeking another victim?’ Hennessey growled.
‘Client, Mr Hennessey, please. They are your humble servant’s clients.’
‘Clients,’ Hennessey sighed, ‘you mean a string of wealthy old ladies who seek male company of the manner that used to be enjoyed by them.’
‘Provide comfort and succour to those in need . . . that’s what I do, Mr Hennessey.’
‘Living and dining with ladies who pick up the bill.’
‘And where is the crime in that, Mr Hennessey?’
‘None, none at all, not until you begin to tell them about the tin mine in Bolivia which could produce unheard-of riches and which needs some development money to get it into full production or the location of the treasure-laden ship which went down in a storm some centuries ago . . . and would they like to invest in a little mining concern or a salvage venture with a guarantee of their money back plus at least fifty per cent? It’s then it becomes off side, very left field.’
‘But I am also of use to you, Mr Hennessey, am I not? . . . great use.’
‘Which is why I am here.’ Hennessey glanced up at the frosted windows upon which was etched the legend ‘Sanders and Penn’s Fine Ales’, being a relic of the earlier days of The Speculation Inn when there was evidently a local brewery called ‘Sanders and Penn’.
‘Ah . . .’ the man smiled. He drained his glass and pushed it across the highly polished, brass-topped table towards Hennessey.
‘Not so fast. Two nights ago a woman was found by the side of the canal . . .’
‘I know,’ the man smiled.
‘You know? How? We haven’t released a press statement.’
‘Can’t keep a thing like that quiet, it’s not possible. The boys know, the boys in “the Den”; they know. Suspicious circumstances, the old jungle telegraph, the boys in the Den need to know things like that . . . got to keep abreast of developments. Survival depends upon it.’
Hennessey sighed. ‘I imagine, but the reason why I have called here in the hope of finding you “at home”, as it were, is because the deceased, the victim, was not as clean as the driven snow herself, so we are discovering, quite a naughty lady. In fact you two would have made a very good team, you fleecing old ladies and she fleecing her gentlemen employers. What a duo you would have made.’
‘Really?’ There was a glint in the man’s eyes. ‘Now you tell me.’
‘She was a Canadian.’
‘Not Becky?’ Shored-Up looked genuinely saddened. ‘You don’t mean Becky?’
‘You know her?’
‘Becky the Canadian, black hair but liked to wear a blonde wig?’