Fear of Drowning

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘That would be my inclination, sir.’ Yellich smiled. ‘I mean, as to their identity.’

  ‘Yellich, you would sadden me to the point of clinical depression if that had not been your … inclination.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Yellich felt uncomfortable and glared at a constable who was beginning to, but did not actually, smile at his discomfort.

  Hennessey glanced at the bodies. She was slender, light-coloured hair, angular facial features. He was tall, short dark hair, moustache, postmortem stubble. Both seemed to be expensively dressed. She, in her youth, would have considered herself and been considered a beauty: he likewise, handsome.

  ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector.’

  Hennessey turned. Dr D’Acre stood beside him. ‘I’ve just been a few feet away to collect soil samples for comparative analysis, but I think this soil is not alien to the location. They were not buried elsewhere for safe keeping, exhumed and then reburied here.’ She was, like Mrs Williams had been in life, slender, with close-cropped hair, large-framed, stainless-steel spectacles, boldly stating that she is a woman who wears spectacles and does not care at all. Not for her the vanity of contact lenses, nor, Hennessey doubted, when the time comes, would she be one for dentures. But perhaps she would. She was the same height as Hennessey, tall for a woman, he always thought.

  ‘Dr D’Acre.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘I haven’t seen you in a while.’

  ‘Well, things have been quiet, criminally speaking,’ she said. ‘Plenty of PMs on deaths by misadventure, children drowning in the Ouse because it looks inviting on a hot summer’s day, but no one has told them about undercurrents and eddies and stream flow; and farm workers trampled by bulls or impaled on agricultural machinery; elderly people who burn to death because their clothing catches fire. It all happens in the Vale, but little of recent note for the boys in blue. Mind you,’ Louise D’Acre said with a smile, ‘when we do get murders in the Vale, in North Yorkshire, they have a certain class about them, don’t you think? I mean, grubby pit village stabbings on Saturday night belong to South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire has its share of senseless violence, but we in North Yorkshire, particularly in the Vale, have murders of class.’

  ‘If you wish, Dr D’Acre, if you wish.’ It had taken Hennessey some time to fathom Louise D’Acre’s sense of humour, but when it had finally plumbed its depth he enjoyed, even envied, its dryness. ‘But this is murder?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’d say so. Daresay you could commit suicide having arranged for a friend to bury you.’

  ‘I was being serious.’

  ‘So was I. Discounting possibilities, you see. They could have been killed accidentally and buried in a panic, by the motorist who ran into them while they were strolling down the lane and he was speeding whilst under the influence, but again, I don’t think so. The police surgeon has pronounced life extinct. He did that at nine-thirty. Something of a formality in this case, but these things have to be done correctly.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But is it murder?’ The Home Office pathologist glanced at the two corpses, lying on their sides facing each other. ‘It’s not death by misadventure, it isn’t suicide. It also isn’t manslaughter followed by unlawful disposal of human remains. This is murder most foul. A man and a woman in their fifties, I’d say, both well-nourished, lived high on the hog, I suspect. I mean, look at the clothing and the jewellery, and his wristwatch, that’s a Cartier, isn’t it?’

  ‘Most probably, and they did live well.’

  ‘You know them?’

  ‘Well, professionally speaking … yes and no … never met them in life but we have known that they were missing, since Sunday last, but not reported until yesterday. I have every confidence that you’re looking at the remains of Max and Amanda Williams, of Old Pond Road, Bramley on Ouse.’

  ‘That’s not too far from here. A pretty village. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, magnificent yew in the churchyard. The church too is interesting, has ancient beams which look as though they’ve been bored by immense beetles, but not a bit of it, at the end of each hole there’s a musket ball – a group of Cromwell’s soldiers entered the church and blasted it from the inside with their muskets. Vandalism is no new thing.’

  ‘Neither is graffiti. Beverley Minster has it from the sixteenth century.’

  ‘That’s recent. Take a trip to Rome. Anyway, I can at this stage observe nothing that contradicts the report that they were alive a few days ago. But what I can tell you is that they were not buried immediately.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Louise D’Acre nodded. ‘Yes. They were buried about twenty-four hours after being killed.’ She knelt by the shallow grave and took the forearm of the male corpse and bent it at the elbow. It moved quite freely. ‘See that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s no rigor mortis.’ Louise D’Acre stood. ‘You see, rigor begins to set in soon after death and in these climatic conditions, it will be fully established in twenty-four hours. Once the rigor has been broken it doesn’t re-establish itself. So what happened is that they were murdered, then allowed to remain wherever for a period of at least twenty-four hours, then they were moved. But by the time they had to be moved, rigor had established itself and so to facilitate the removal of the corpses, the rigor had to be broken. You do that by forcing a joint to move. Takes a bit of strength to do that. Then, once the rigor has been broken, you can bundle the body up into a compact place, possibly for transportation. I’ll tell you more about the likely time of death once I get them to the pathology department.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘A blow to the head. More than one blow to the head of the man, just one to the woman that I can detect, but a blow to the head nonetheless. Both the scalps are matted with blood so there’ll be traces of blood at the crime scene if the crime scene was indoors, less likely to trace blood if the crime scene was in the middle of a wood.’

  ‘No trace of anything here, sir, except the grave. No tyre tracks, no footprints, the ground is concrete hard – it’s been baked in the sun.’

  ‘Who found the bodies?’

  ‘A farm worker, sir. Gentleman by the name of Less.’

  ‘Less?’ Hennessey smiled.

  ‘Aye, boss. So he says. Colin Less. Lives in a tied cottage on Primrose Farm land. This is Primrose Farm land.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He said he didn’t see or hear anything of the grave being dug, but he knows the farm, he was in this field before the weekend, no trace of it then. But he says his experience would tell him that the grave was dug on Monday or yesterday.’

  ‘I don’t think I can do anything more here,’ Dr D’Acre said. ‘I’ll have the bodies removed to York District. Who will represent the police at the PM?’

  ‘Yellich, can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Hennessey turned to D’Acre. ‘Can I look in the pockets?’

  ‘You can for me, Chief Inspector.’

  Hennessey kneeled and felt the inside pocket of the man’s jacket and extracted a wallet. He stood and opened it. ‘Confirmation,’ he said. ‘As if we really needed it.’ He showed it to Yellich.

  ‘Max Williams,’ Yellich read. ‘Robbery wasn’t the motive.’

  Hennessey showed the wallet to D’Acre. ‘A name for my report then.’

  ‘Certainly looks like it.’ Hennessey turned to Yellich. ‘We’ve got some bad news to break.’

  ‘I can do that, sir, collect the son from the naval base, ask him to formally identify the bodies. That’ll have to be done before the postmortem.’

  ‘Certainly will,’ Louise D’Acre said. ‘I’ll have to peel the skin from the skull. His face won’t be recognizable after I’ve finished. Neither will hers.’

  Yellich and Louise D’Acre departed the scene separately. Hennessey remained at the scene to supervise the removal of the corpse. The corpse of Amanda Williams was last to be lifted from the shallow grave. As it was lifted clear, something shiny caught Hennessey�
�s eye, it was on the bottom of the hole, having been covered by Amanda Williams’s corpse. He knelt down and picked it up. It was a black ballpoint pen with a gold clip. One side was embossed with the words ‘Sheringham’s Gym – York’.

  * * *

  The Alert status was ‘Bikini Red’ when Yellich arrived at HMS Halley, so that on this occasion neither he nor his vehicle were allowed on the base. Lieutenant Williams, they said, would come to him.

  * * *

  Hennessey and two constables drove to the Williamses’ bungalow in Old Pond Road, Bramley on Ouse. He noted that the drive between the shallow grave and the bungalow took just ten minutes. Leaving one of the constables at the entrance to the driveway, Hennessey and the second constable walked up the driveway and entered the garage. Hennessey fumbled for the key in the place it was usually kept.

  It wasn’t there.

  He felt along the shelf. No key to be found. It had been removed. Displaced, at least. Followed by the constable, he walked round to the rear of the bungalow and peered into the back bedrooms. Then into the living room, then the dining room.

  Disarray.

  It was the only word he could think of to describe the state of the interior of the once neat and just-so Williamses’ bungalow. Ransacked, he then thought, might be another word. He turned to the constable. ‘Check the door, will you, please.’

  The constable did so. ‘Unlocked, sir,’ he said. He was, thought Hennessey, about nineteen, about the same age as the young lad with a machine pistol who had greeted him and Yellich when they had visited HMS Halley the previous afternoon.

  Hennessey and the constable entered the bungalow cautiously. It appeared to him that everything had been disturbed. Yet there was a pattern to the chaos. He said so. ‘This is not a burglary.’

  ‘No, sir?’

  ‘No, sir. Tell me why it’s not a burglary?’

  ‘It looks like a burglary to me, sir. I’ve seen houses in this sort of mess that have been burgled. Stuff flung everywhere…’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you have, but this is not a burglary.’

  ‘I’d say it was, sir.’

  ‘Then you’d be wrong.’

  ‘I would, sir?’

  ‘You would. You’d be wrong because items of value remain. That clock, for example. Go into the main bedroom at the front of the bungalow, tell me if a pile of cash is still on the dresser.’

  The constable did so, returned and said, ‘It’s still there, sir.’

  ‘You see, that cash and the clock and other items wouldn’t have remained if this was a burglary. If this was mindless vandalism then there would be damage and the spraying of much paint. You’ve seen that sort of mess?’

  ‘I have, sir.’

  ‘What this is, Constable, is a ransacking. The person or persons who did this were looking for something. And it was done by the person or persons who knew where the Williamses kept their back door key hidden.’ Hennessey took his mobile phone from his jacket pocket, switched it on and pressed a ten-figure number. The constable standing close to Hennessey heard the full, high-pitched, crackly exchange.

  ‘Yellich.’

  ‘Hennessey. Where are you?’

  ‘Outside the naval base. They’re fetching Lieutenant Williams for me.’

  ‘Right. Listen. When you’ve done the identification, take him to Micklegate Bar and put him in an interview room.’

  ‘Why, sir? He’s not a suspect, is he?’

  ‘No, he’s not, but someone has ransacked his parents’ house, as if looking for something. He might know who’d want to do that, or what they were looking for.’

  ‘Very good, sir. Do you want me to tell him that as soon as I can?’

  ‘Why not? Give him a chance to think. How long do you think you’ll be?’

  ‘Can’t really … hang on, this looks like him now, Land Rover’s approaching the gate at a rate of knots, officer in the front passenger seat … yes, this is Williams now.’

  ‘Right. I’ll see you back at Micklegate Bar.’ Hennessey switched off the mobile phone. ‘Right, lad.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Someone looked for something. That means one of two things.’

  ‘He or she or they found it or they didn’t?’

  ‘Good. What do we do first?’

  ‘Look for it ourselves, sir?’

  ‘No. This is now a crime scene. If it wasn’t before, it now is. We need Scene of Crimes down here, get this photographed and dusted for prints. Then we’ll talk to the neighbours, see if they saw anything.’ He took his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled Micklegate Bar Police Station. ‘You go and join your mate at the bottom of the drive.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘No one enters the property unless it’s the police.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  * * *

  Yellich drove at a steady pace from HMS Halley to the York District Hospital on Wiggington Road. Initially the two men sat in silence, but as soon as they had cleared Knaresborough and were once again driving through open country, Yellich said, ‘I’m afraid that I have to tell you, sir, that we have every reason to believe that you’ll be making a positive identification.’

  ‘You believe so?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m very sorry. We found a wallet on the person of the deceased male. It had your father’s name and address.’

  ‘Oh…’ The man seemed distant, hardly surprising, thought Yellich … in any man’s language, this is a milestone in his life. Then Williams said. ‘The little cretin.’

  ‘Sir?’ Yellich turned to Williams and saw then that the man wasn’t in a state of shock at all, his silence was caused by his being in a state of anger, jaw set hard as if burning up with resentment.

  ‘I said, the little cretin.’

  ‘Who, sir, not your father surely?’

  ‘No … not my father … I’m sorry for him … I want to help you as much as I can … but I meant that bloody able seaman. You might have seen him on the platform outside the provost marshal’s office.’

  ‘We did, sir.’

  ‘He went absent without leave. Went home because his mother was ill. Commander fined him three days’ pay. Me, I would have strung the cretin up from the yardarm. I mean, what would happen to the Queen’s Navy if we all went home every time mummy sneezed? Tell me that.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Did you hear what I said about the likelihood of you making a positive ID in a few minutes’ time?’

  ‘Yes. I heard. You found my father’s wallet.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be bothered.’

  ‘Why should I be? What’s done is done. It’s the living that matter. And naval discipline … that cretin went away chuckling with his mates … I’ll get him for something. Don’t you worry about that. No one gets the better of me.’

  Yellich stared at the road ahead of him. ‘We don’t believe that money was the motive for your parents’ murder … there was cash in the house, and your father’s watch … if it is your father … his watch was on his wrist … it’s a Cartier.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And, like I said, his wallet was in his jacket pocket, had a bit of money in it, plus his credit cards…’

  ‘So what was the motivation?’

  ‘That’s what we were hoping you’d help us with.’ Yellich was pleased that Williams was now focusing on the murder, rather than a hapless young able seaman. He feared for the welfare of any young serviceman whose officer had ‘got it in for him’. ‘You see, there’s something else I have to tell you, sir, and that is that your parents’ house has been ransacked.’

  ‘Ransacked! The village lads have got in.’

  ‘No … someone let themselves in, and appeared to be searching for something.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  ‘Well, that’s the question I was going to ask you, sir. Do you know who would want what from your parents’ house?’

  ‘I don’t really.’

  ‘We found a ballpoint pen where the deceased were
buried, had “Sheringham’s Gym” embossed on it.’

  ‘My mother went to the gym to work out. She wanted to keep her figure as long as she could. The gym gave the pens out as freebies some time ago, promotional gimmicks. My mother used the pen, but only in the home … wouldn’t be seen dead … sorry … didn’t want to be seen writing cheques with it, but in the home was acceptable in her eyes.’

  ‘We were hoping it might mean something.’

  ‘I don’t think it does. But that cretin better have a guardian angel.’

  The rest of the journey was passed in silence. Stressful, tense, silence.

  In the mortuary of York District Hospital, Yellich and Williams sat on a bench in a softly lit, silent room, a velvet curtain hung over one wall. A door opened and a nurse came in and with an attitude of sorrow and solemnity, held a cord by the side of the curtain.

  ‘It will not be as you have seen in the films,’ Yellich said. ‘If you’d like to stand in front of the curtain.’

  Williams nodded. Yellich in turn nodded to the nurse when he and Williams stood side by side in front of the curtain. The nurse then pulled the cord and the curtain opened in complete silence. The dead man lay on a trolley in a darkened room. His head was neatly and tightly bound with bandage, the sheets were neatly and firmly tucked in, so that viewing the body through the mirror, by some trick of light and shade, he appeared to be floating in space.

  ‘That,’ Williams said, ‘is my father.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Yellich nodded to the nurse and the curtain slid shut. The nurse exited by the door through which she had entered and moments later returned to the room. She glanced at Yellich, who nodded, and the curtain was once again opened.

  ‘And that,’ Williams said. ‘That is my mother.’

  * * *

  ‘Back again?’ Thom stood outside his house, the front door was open and Thom’s dog sat in the hall of the house, keeping himself out of the sun, though he eyed Hennessey cautiously as he walked up the drive.

  ‘Back again?’ Hennessey smiled.

  ‘You are the police. I can see two constables at the Williamses’ bungalow and you have that stamp about you. I can tell police officers, with or without a uniform.’