‘Yours?’ Yellich gasped. ‘Yours?’
‘In my grief I didn’t notice small but valuable items had gone missing . . . jewellery . . . Earl’s collection of pocket watches . . . the silverware. No wonder she was keen to go shopping, she was taking more out of the house than she was bringing home. So Earl had gone, our valuables had gone and she had gone . . . like the snow . . . just melted away leaving me alone in the springtime and the beginning of a very long autumn of my life. Just me. Earl and I had no children. So just me alone.’
McTeer’s Bar on Dunlop Street was housed in what was clearly one of the original buildings of Barrie. It was of three storeys and flat roofed. The interior was darkened, the effect being obtained by tinted windows which Ventnor noticed could be wound upwards and thus spoke for the high temperatures experienced in the locality in the midsummer. Illumination on that day was gained by a few dim lights and numerous flickering television screens. Ventnor counted twenty-three and noted that each screen was tuned into a different channel from the others. The sound of the televisions was muted, the background entertainment being a radio channel which, as elsewhere when Ventnor had heard it, was playing songs which had been popular in the UK twenty years earlier. The proprietor was a heavy set, well built, bald headed man. ‘Help you guys?’ he asked, placing two meaty paws on the bar.
‘Police.’ Auphan showed the bartender her badge.
‘I know,’ the man smiled. ‘I don’t need to see your badge. It’s written on your forehead. So, help you?’
Auphan levered herself on to a high chair in front of the bar. Ventnor stood. ‘Ossetti,’ Auphan said, ‘Heather Ossetti.’
‘What about her?’
‘You know her?’
‘She used to be one of the regulars. We haven’t seen her in here for some time though . . . like a few years.’
‘You won’t be seeing her again.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Yeah . . . she’s dead, already.’
The bartender’s head sagged. He allowed himself a generous few moments to recover. ‘So what happened?’
‘She was murdered. In England.’ Ventnor spoke for the first time.
‘You English, buddy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Another cop?’
‘Yes.’
‘So she was iced over in the UK?’
‘Yes, that’s a good way of putting it, a very appropriate way in fact.’ Ventnor glanced round the bar. It was almost empty, just two other patrons sitting separately, both males, both reading tabloid newspapers.
‘But you’re over here looking for someone for it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Someone from Barrie went all the way to the UK to see to Ossetti?’
‘We believe so. Do you know who would want to harm her?’
The man looked uncomfortable. He glanced around him. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anyone who’d want to harm her.’
‘Yes you do,’ Auphan spoke coldly. ‘Your body language is all wrong. We could come back later when the bar is full. We could even take you into custody for withholding information . . . we have a lot of empty buckets waiting to be filled.’
‘Won’t make any difference, within two hours all the customers will know I’ve been talking to the law. Barrie is a very small town.’
‘Just one name and we’re out of here.’
‘OK, but it didn’t come from me.’
‘Scout’s honour, already.’ Auphan remained stone faced.
‘Tenby.’
‘Tenby?’
‘You should look into the death of Felicity Tenby. She was eight years old when she died . . . Ossetti’s fingerprints were all over that incident.’
‘Eight!’ Ventnor groaned.
But by then the barman had pushed himself into a standing position and was walking away into the gloom.
‘Tenby,’ Yellich responded. ‘Same name.’
‘Yes.’ Auphan sat at her desk.
Ventnor glanced out of the office window at the vehicles on Highway 400.
‘Showed the barman at the Sign of the Whale bar the E-FIT and that is when he gave me the name Hank Tenby. He gave me his address as well but said Hank wouldn’t hurt anybody.’
‘That’s for us to decide,’ Auphan said, ‘but we were given the same name, as we have told you. Same surname anyway.’
‘So we visit,’ Yellich addressed Marianne Auphan, ‘but not all three.’
‘Agreed. That would be too heavy handed. Just you and me, Somerled. Just you and me. The two lines of inquiry have now converged as we knew they would.’
It was, thought Yellich, a very accurate E-FIT. The man who opened the door of the condominium overlooking Kempenfelt Bay did indeed appear to be very similar to the E-FIT image compiled of the man who had stayed at the Broomhurst Hotel and who showed great interest in the old, cold, rambling house in which Heather Ossetti had recently once lived and worked. A little shorter than was described but the same man.
‘You’ll be the British police officer.’ The man spoke in a slow but warm voice. ‘They phoned me, the people at the Sign of the Whale, telling me a British cop was looking for me and that they had given him my address.’
‘Yes, I am DS Yellich, Vale of York Police.’
‘Marianne Auphan, Barrie City Police.’
‘How can I help you?’
‘Be better if we talk inside.’
‘OK.’ The man stood aside, allowing the officers to enter his apartment.
Inside, the apartment showed itself to be on two levels, and built into a tower block. The rooftops of Barrie were seen below to the left and the right and the bay lay in front of it. The apartment was clean, neat and decorated in a modern manner, so thought Yellich, modern art prints on the wall, pine furniture and a flat screen television on the wall, the latter being, in Yellich’s opinion, tastelessly large and more suited to a cinema than the living room of a home.
‘You are Hank Tenby?’ Yellich asked.
‘Yes,’ the man nodded. ‘Please take a seat.’ When he and the two officers were seated he said, ‘This can only be about the Ossetti female.’
‘Yes, it is. We are investigating her murder. A man of your description was seen apparently stalking her for quite some time before she died . . . so you will appreciate our interest in you,’ Yellich explained.
Tenby’s reaction came as a surprise to both officers, for he sat back and smiled broadly. ‘Well, how appropriate.’
‘You, of course, know nothing about her murder, already?’ Auphan spoke coldly.
‘No, already,’ Tenby continued to smile, ‘but the news is very welcome.’
‘It is?’
‘Oh . . . very welcome . . . I can’t tell you how welcome it is.’
‘We’ve been asked to look into the death of Felicity Tenby. There is no record in our files. Who is she?’
‘My niece, on my brother’s side of the family.’
‘What happened?’
‘She died. She ate a laburnum seed.’
‘Oh . . . we have laburnum in the UK. It does happen occasionally that children eat the seed.’
‘This was more sinister . . . it was not an accident.’
‘In what way?’ Auphan pressed.
‘My brother and his wife had hired the Ossetti woman as a home help during my sister-in-law’s second pregnancy. They lived just outside Barrie, in Orillia.’
‘Yes . . .’ Auphan nodded.
‘They had a house with a large garden. In the garden, tucked away among the shrubs right at the bottom, was a laburnum tree. None of us knew the tree was poisonous until it was too late.’
‘I see.’
‘Heather Ossetti was asked to watch Felicity for an hour or so while my brother and his wife went out to the mall. Came back to police cars and an ambulance outside their house. Felicity had swallowed a laburnum seed and had died.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘The family rallied round and Ossetti was there, full of tears, and she said in a whiny, pathetic voice, “I told her not to eat laburnum, I told her”.’
Auphan groaned. ‘You mean she put the suggestion into the little girl’s head by telling her not to do it?’
‘We believe so . . . possibly, in fact highly likely she said it in a very gentle voice and with a smile . . . but none of us being there . . . She might even have given her a laburnum seed to eat and said, “Try this, it’s good”, and Felicity was the sort of girl who’d eat one if an adult told her it was good.
‘The women of our family saw through Ossetti before the men did . . . all that female intuition . . . but by then she had fled, she’d done what she intended to do, taken a life without being able to be prosecuted for it. But my sister-in-law is one of five sisters, they would have killed her for doing that to Felicity, and Ossetti knew that so she fled.’
‘You followed her to England. Why?’
‘To kill her,’ he spoke matter-of-factly. ‘I went to England to kill her. With me though it was more in cold anger than in hot passion. All I had to go on in terms of her whereabouts was a postcard she had sent to her buddies care of McTeer’s Bar, a postcard of the city of York. I teach . . . at the university in Toronto . . . Modern History. I don’t have academic permanency, just a series of short-term contracts, so when I had time I flew over a few times and gradually hunted her down. It took a year or two. Had to make sure it was her, she was well disguised.’
‘We know.’
‘Eventually I cornered her in the street in York with folk all around us. I told her. I said, “I have come all this way to kill you and you know what? When it comes to it you’re just not worth it. I don’t see why our family should lose two people because of you. We lost Felicity . . . I don’t want our family to lose me as well.” I mean, twenty years in a British prison, then extradited back to . . . back to nothing . . . stripped of my job prospects, and too old to work anyway. She would have won twice over but I said to her, “Don’t ever return to Ontario because if you do, then I know a bunch of women who will tear you apart” and since Ontario province is her home, that would leave her rootless for life. Then I turned and walked away . . . went to London and the following day I threw a couple of coins in a fountain and then took the subway out to the airport and flew home.’
‘We’ll have to take a statement,’ Yellich said, ‘but that won’t be the end of it.’
‘I appreciate that,’ Tenby smiled. ‘My denial is not proof of my innocence. I will cooperate all I can, but I have delivered myself and my family from evil . . . delivered us from evil . . . real evil . . . a weight is lifted from us.’
Marianne Auphan stood naked at the window of her bedroom and watched as a yellow tractor trailer entered the yard of the business premises a quarter of a mile away across the open field which still boasted remnants of snow despite the hot sun and clear blue sky. ‘Well, one of us will have to relocate . . .’
‘I know,’ Ventnor, also naked, lay atop the bed and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I know.’
‘And it won’t be me, I am too strongly rooted in Canada, this is my home. You have a decision to make.’
‘I know that also.’ Ventnor rolled on his side and looked at her. ‘I know that . . . don’t I know that, already.’
Carmen Pharoah and Reginald Webster drove out to the derelict business park where Edith Hemmings/Heather Ossetti had been held captive prior to being strangled and left for dead beside the canal. They had photographs to take of the location to complete their report. As they approached they saw a small figure in a raincoat and hat standing in front of the unit in which Ossetti had been kept hostage and as they drew nearer the figure was recognized to be that of Mr Stanley Hemmings. His small red van was parked close by.
The two officers left their vehicle and approached Hemmings. ‘I am just trying to get some closure,’ he explained in a shaky voice.
‘How did you know she was held here?’ Webster asked. ‘Not just at this site, but in this very unit?’
‘You told me.’
‘No we didn’t,’ Carmen Pharoah spoke quietly, ‘we kept this quiet. No one, only the police, knew that this was where your wife was kept before she was murdered.’
‘I think you’d better come with us,’ Webster added. ‘Do we need handcuffs?’
‘No,’ Hemmings shook his head slowly. ‘No, you don’t need them.’
The middle-aged man and woman, clearly, to an observer, very comfortable in each other’s company, sat beside the log fire in the pub. They wore walking boots and had placed their knapsacks on the floor at their feet.
‘Her husband was her last victim in a sense,’ the man said. ‘Harmless sort, worked in a biscuit factory, and who brought evil into the house where he had grown up. Could no longer cope with her endless complaints that compared him to the other men she had had, constantly telling him that she was now demeaning herself being with him. Eventually, the worm turned . . .’
‘What will he collect, do you think?’
‘Life . . . but he’ll serve only about five years, probably less . . . come out to nothing but the dole for the rest of his days. Well, dare say we got our man and the Canadians got their first female serial killer.’
‘Second,’ the woman smiled at him.
‘Second?’
‘Yes, you’re forgetting Karla Homolka . . . remember? Murdered three teenage girls, her together with her boyfriend, one of their victims being Homolka’s own younger sister.’
‘Ah, yes . . . how could I forget her? So they got their second female serial killer.’
‘That they know of.’
‘Yes, that they know of,’ the man nodded. ‘Frightens me sometimes . . .’
‘What does?’ She laid her hand on his.
‘What is going on out there that we don’t know about, all the missing person reports that should be murder inquiries . . . but just think . . . all that travel and the expense of same and the felon was under our noses all the time.’
‘Annoying,’ said the woman. ‘Must have been a good experience for DS Yellich and DC Ventnor though. I would have found it very interesting.’
‘Don’t know what they thought about it. Yellich seems happy to be back home with his family . . .’ The man paused. ‘Ventnor, he’s returned as though he is incubating a tropical disease. He’s listless and detached and has somehow acquired the annoying habit of adding the word “already” to the end of every sentence he speaks.’
‘Oh, that could be irritating, already,’ the woman smiled, ‘but you know what’s happened there?’
‘No.’
‘He’s in love, already.’
The man groaned and then fell silent as a cheery young woman approached them carrying a tray of steaming food. ‘The steak and kidney pie?’ she asked.