Fear of Drowning

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘That means he likes you,’ Mrs Richardson smiled. She spoke with a strong Irish accent. ‘Not all our visitors get that treatment. I tend to let my animals do my thinking for me. I’ve found over the years that if they like someone then that person is allright, and they’ve never been proved wrong. Female intuition is nothing compared to animal instinct. But if she annoys you, lift her off.’

  ‘She doesn’t bother me.’ Yellich stroked the cat’s ears and back. The beast began to purr softly. He pondered that cats are nice creatures unless you happen to be a mouse. Your view depends on your standpoint. Mrs Richardson, with her pleasant manner and very well-appointed home, with framed black and white photographs of old Ireland – a man on a cycle, on an endless rural track, another which could be anywhere but was entitled ‘Phoenix Park 1912’ – may well be a nice woman, unless you were her victim. Then he said, ‘No point in denying it. What do you mean?’

  Colleen Richardson reached for a cigarette from a cigarette box which was far too elaborately designed for Yellich’s taste, and lit it with a cigarette lighter of the type which, he thought, had gone out of fashion many years earlier. A huge paperweight of a contraption, conventional mechanism at the top but a body as big as an orange, and the colour of same. ‘No point in denying it. He hated Williams. I’ve never known two things about my husband. I’ve never known any reason to fear him, and I’ve never known him capable of hate. The Williamses came into our lives and I knew both. Reckon after twenty-something years of marriage, I finally knew my husband. But they say that you never really know the person you live with, either they keep changing so they’re one step ahead of you, or you keep discovering something new about them. But Michael didn’t kill them.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know what I just said, but I do know my husband well enough to know that he didn’t kill them. He’s got a terrible temper, but if he was violent I would have seen that by now, surely to God. I mean, he’s been in a few pub fights when he’s been too much in the black stuff and when he was a youth, but nothing since and nothing when he’s been sober.’ She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. ‘To think that when I went away to Ireland I thought things couldn’t be worse. Michael’s business in the bog, us having to sell this house to pay his crew and supplies, and this, the home we’d worked so hard for … Michael built these houses, did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Two streets, for young or junior professional people, he picked out a corner plot for this house. Extra bit of land, you see … so I went to see my old father in Galway, told him things couldn’t get worse and sure, when I came back he’s become a murder suspect. Just shows, when you think you’re on the bottom, when you think it can’t get any worse, you get pushed down even further … I mean, in the name of the Holy Mother, where is the justice in that? Is there justice in the world, let me ask you that?’

  ‘We haven’t charged your husband with anything, Mrs Richardson.’

  ‘Being a suspect is bad enough. Thank the Almighty our children are away so they don’t see this.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Leeds. They’re flapping their wings, their father taught them the trade, so they’ve moved away. Richardson Brothers, Builders, Leeds. Sure, I can see Michael asking them for a job. You’ll be making a case against Michael?’

  ‘No. That’s old-fashioned police thinking.’ Yellich continued to stroke the cat and then stopped and lifted the beast from his lap. It occurred to him that by favouring Mrs Richardson’s pet he was blurring professional boundaries. The cat arched its back in indignation and curled up on the deep pile carpet in front of the hearth into which Yellich noted that Mrs Richardson was in the habit of throwing her cigarette butts. ‘We used to do that. Identify a suspect, try to build a case against him, if we could we’d run with it. Now we tie.’

  ‘Tie?’

  ‘TIE. Trace. Interview. Eliminate. Cast a wide net, trace anybody and everybody who has some connection with the crime, interview them, and if we can’t eliminate them we … look at them a little more closely.’

  ‘And Michael?’

  ‘He hasn’t been eliminated.’

  ‘So he’s a suspect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the name … he lost more fights than he won. Often he went down to men half his size. We’re ruined. Finished. Now this…’

  ‘So your husband’s business is finished?’

  ‘Aye. So he says. A couple of little jobs, but that won’t pay the bills. So the house, our home, it’ll have to be sold. We came with nothing, we’ll go with nothing.’

  ‘He could sell the house he built for Max Williams?’

  ‘Not at a profit. And anyway, the house is just too fancy, a lot of fixtures and fittings, sunken baths and gold-plated taps. It’ll not sell well in this part of England. In the south, maybe, but the north of England, those sort of knick-knacks just are not to folks’ taste. He could sell it, to be sure, but at such a loss … Michael thinks we’ll be better off selling this house, but we want this house, not Williams’s fairy-tale design. See, the upshot is that we’re finished and that’s down to Williams.’

  ‘It’s like your husband blundered into something.’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly.’ Colleen Richardson took one last deep drag on the half-smoked nail and flicked the still burning butt into the fire grate where it smouldered harmlessly into extinction. ‘See, Williams has a … had a reputation in the Vale for being a good touch.’

  ‘A good touch?’

  ‘For money.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Aye, so he was. A lot of businesses have been started up and kept going in the Vale over the last ten years or so using Williams’s money as seed money. His name is well-known by businessmen in the Vale. See, that’s why Michael went ahead and built the house, Williams’s reputation, his money supply was endless. Williams must have known what he was doing, must have to make money like he could throw it around. It was like he was making the stuff … Michael said he bought into companies when they were new, helped them off the ground, rode piggyback and then sold his share, or his shares, when they were up and running with full order books. Reckon that’s how Michael got in so deeply, based on Williams’s reputation.’

  ‘Reckon that’s it. Tell me, did your husband ever mention a fella by the name of Sheringham?’

  ‘The man at the gym? That’s the only Sheringham we know.’

  ‘What is your husband’s relationship with him?’

  ‘Tim Sheringham? Drinking partners. There’s some age gap between them. Twenty years or so. More. They met at the gym. Tim’s the owner, I think. They occasionally went for a beer after Michael had been for his workout. Michael always booked in for the last session, nine till ten, so there was an hour’s troughing time left. That’s how stupid men are. All that good done to their little bodies and then they go to the pub and undo it all. But Michael and Tim Sheringham were not in business or anything.’

  ‘But they knew each other in a social manner?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Do you know when they last went out together?’

  ‘Last week, last Thursday evening. That’s Michael’s night at the gym.’

  ‘You were in York then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not in Ireland?’

  ‘No. Left for Ireland on the Friday. Returned yesterday.’

  ‘Your father will vouch for that?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Colleen Richardson flushed with anger.

  ‘What I said. He’ll vouch for that if we contact the Gardaí in Galway, ask them to call on him, he’ll tell them that you were with him?’

  ‘He’ll tell them nothing. They’ll need to get where he is before he’ll speak to them.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning he’s in the ground, God rest him. He died a year ago this weekend gone and I was not there, God forgive me. I went to his graveside and I told him how I was, how I was
not.’

  ‘Who else did you speak to?’

  ‘Nobody. I stayed in his wee terraced house. It still belongs to us while we contact two of my brothers to sort the estate.’

  ‘So nobody can confirm you were in Ireland?’

  ‘No. You tying me now, are you?’

  ‘Should we?’

  ‘Get out!’ Colleen Richardson leapt to her feet, her fists clenched to her sides. The cat ran from the room. ‘Get out! Get out!’

  * * *

  ‘Going to get gobbled up soon, I expect, Mr Yellich. We can’t survive, can’t compete, can’t offer the breadth of service to compete with the main high street banks. But we’re clinging on with our fingertips, proud to be the last independent bank in England. Over three hundred years of continuous trading. Still owned by the original two founding families, the Sachses and the Lindseys. Used to be called Sachs and Lindsey’s, but in a doff-the-hat to modernization, we changed our name to the Yorkshire and Lancashire Bank, and brought in those infernal machines which still make me believe all our employees spend their day watching television. Ledgers were good enough in my day. Once we had five hundred branches, now we’ve got fifty. Most on this side of the Pennines.’ Benjamin Ffoulkes, the manager of the York branch of the Yorkshire and Lancashire Bank, was a portly man with a handlebar moustache, a yellow waistcoat and a maroon-coloured suit. He sat in a swivel chair in front of a huge wooden desk in an office of panelled wood, with velvet curtains, maroon to match his suit, held back from covering the sash windows with tasselled cords, yellow to match his waistcoat. A grandfather clock stood majestically in the corner of the room, ticking softly. Yellich found it had a quarter jack and so chimed every fifteen minutes. ‘We quite enjoy our quaintness, Mr Yellich. We have our computers, as I’ve mentioned, but we have retained our atmosphere. This smells and sounds and looks like a bank of yesteryear, and we have applications for positions from many youngsters who want employment with us because of it. Our cheque books used to be as big as school exercise books but we had to standardize because retailers refused to accept them. One more nail in our coffin. But we enjoy a lot of customer loyalty, this branch particularly; there’s a lot of old money in the Vale of York and that helps us to stay afloat. So a concession here and there is a price we can afford. But you’ve come to discuss the account of the late Mr Williams, of Bramley on Ouse?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Mmm…’

  ‘A problem?’

  ‘It’s one of ethics, really.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, yes, confess that in all my born days I’ve never come across a problem like this. Customer confidentiality is one thing, but if the customer is deceased, as is his wife; and I have not yet had the necessary notices, copy of the death certificate, or notification from his solicitor confirming his next of kin, I don’t know whether I can help. But, if the police seek to apprehend the perpetrator of this dreadful deed, then I feel obliged … you know I do want to help, Mr Yellich, I really do.’

  ‘It is a double murder.’

  ‘It’s that that makes me want to help. I confess I felt bowled over when I read of the murders in the Post. And I suppose you could come back with a warrant?’

  ‘We could.’

  ‘In a sense that would make it easier for me. The decision would be out of my hands, you see.’

  ‘Time is of the essence, Mr Ffoulkes. If it makes it easier, we don’t actually believe that money was at the root of this murder, but money has a way of shadowing all of us, our financial affairs are a profile of our lives.’

  ‘Yes…’ Ffoulkes smiled. ‘I rather like that. Tell you what, young man, I’ll offer a compromise.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘I’m familiar with the account. I’ll answer questions but I won’t allow you access to his file, not without a warrant.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Well, in the first place, please think of a child’s balloon.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A child’s balloon, just like those out there in the street, all the street entertainers entertaining the trippers. Good for local business, keep the street full of tourists, that’s what I say. But a balloon, new, smooth, limp. Suddenly it gets inflated, then is allowed to deflate, then it’s limp and wrinkled.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That, in a nutshell, is Max Williams’s account. You know the source of all the seed money, all venture capital, all start-up loans in the Vale over the last ten years has been one account.’

  ‘Max Williams’s.’

  ‘Yes. In one. He let it flood out, haemorrhage isn’t the word. But before it deflated it had to inflate.’

  ‘He came into money?’

  ‘Yes. Suddenly and magnificently. From his brother, I believe.’

  ‘About how much?’

  ‘Off the top of my head, it was about six.’

  ‘Six? Thousand, hundred thousand?’

  ‘Million. Six million pounds.’

  The quarter jack on the grandfather clock chimed, allowing time for Yellich to recover his jaw.

  ‘He came from nowhere.’ Ffoulkes smiled, and Yellich could tell that he was enjoying his obvious surprise. ‘Just a building society account and a pinkish current account with the Midland or the National Westminster. He walked in with a cheque and almost caused the cashier to faint, asked to open an account. We told him we needed time to follow up references, which we did. No bad news came and so we welcomed him with all the warmth which you can buy with six million pounds. This was some ten years ago.’

  ‘Which is a lot of warmth, especially ten years ago.’

  ‘Sat here in this room, drinking my last bottle of vintage claret, spent the time doing my best to persuade him to invest it, or at least put it in a deposit account, but he wanted a current account.’

  ‘Silly man.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. Confess, Mr Yellich, I had cause to regret the sacrifice of my last bottle of vintage claret. Very rapidly did I form the opinion that I was in the company of a fool. And you know what they say about a fool and his money?’

  Yellich nodded. ‘I do that, sir.’

  ‘Well, no sooner had the balloon inflated than it began to deflate. It was depressing to watch, but it’s his money … I mean, properly invested that six million pounds would have grossed another six million in those ten years, but all the balloon did was to deflate. All Max Williams was interested in was writing cheques. Settled some money on his children, a miserly sum in proportion … about ten thousand each, spent the rest on himself and did so foolishly. He bought a rambling but rotten eighteenth-century mansion in a parkland, looked the part, and a Rolls Royce to go with it. He achieved the image … the day trippers from Leeds and Sheffield and such places would drive past his house set back from the road and doubtless be reassured that the English gentry is alive and well.’

  ‘Do you know where the money came from, sir?’

  ‘I can find out for you.’ Ffoulkes turned in his high-backed wooden swivel chair and reached for a cord which hung from the ceiling and which was flush against the wall behind him. Yellich heard a bell jangle beyond the door of the office. There was a knock on the door. ‘Come.’ Ffoulkes answered. A young woman entered the room, looking deferential and nervous. she wore summer clothes, but of an earlier era, with heavy but comfortable-looking shoes. ‘Fiona.’ Ffoulkes spoke in a pleasant but fatherly manner.

  ‘Yes, Mr Ffoulkes?’

  ‘Can you look up the Williams account, Max Williams. You know the account I mean, he and his lady wife being recently deceased.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Ffoulkes.’

  ‘It was opened about ten years ago on receipt of a cheque payable to Mr Williams, drawn on the account of a firm of solicitors. Can you find out who that firm was?’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’ Fiona turned smartly and left the room.

  Ffoulkes and Yellich sat in silence, broken eventually by Ffoulkes, who asked if Yellich was a married man.

  �
��Yes, sir,’ Yellich beamed. ‘One son.’

  ‘Good man. How old is he?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Nice age. Getting a bit full of himself, is he? A bit cocksure? Mine all did at that age. I gave out most of my good hidings when they were between nine and twelve, about. As I recall.’

  ‘Well, he is a bit of a handful, but not so much a management problem. He’s got special needs.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, you know, I’m not, Mr Ffoulkes. There’s no denying that we were disappointed when we realized that he wasn’t going to be prime minister one day, but now we feel a sense of privilege … a world previously unknown to us is opening up that we would not have otherwise encountered … and Jeremy is such a sincere, genuine person … he’s growing up more slowly, he’s hanging around that age which is a lovely age for all parents.’

  Ffoulkes smiled warmly.

  ‘We’ve been told that with love, and care, and stimulation and stability he could achieve a mental age of about twelve by the time he’s twenty or twenty-five. And he could live in a hostel where he’ll have his own room and cook his own meals if he wants to but staff will always be there, and prepared meals will be available if he wants them.’

  ‘There is that provision then?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And it means that we’ll be a little out of the mainstream of life. We won’t have grandchildren, but where Jesemy has led us and what he’s given us is not at all unpleasant.’

  ‘Good … good.’

  There was a tap on the door. Ffoulkes said, ‘Come?’

  Fiona entered and handed Ffoulkes a slip of paper. ‘The information you wanted, Mr Ffoulkes.’

  ‘Thank you, Fiona,’ Ffoulkes said as she turned to leave the office. Then to Yellich he said, ‘Ibbotson, Utley and Swales, solicitors, Malton. Mmm. Names as solidly Yorkshire as you’ll find anywhere. Do you know the origin of your name, Mr Yellich?’

  ‘Don’t, confess, Mr Ffoulkes. Eastern European, but it’s been altered over the generations.’

  ‘As it would, I daresay.’

  ‘But back to Mr Williams.’ Yellich wrote the name of the firm of solicitors on his notepad. ‘Was there any pattern to the spending?’