‘I am not at liberty to tell you. I’m sorry.’ Swannell glanced at the settee and then decided to sit in the vacant armchair. ‘Not yet, anyway.’ Swannell read Edward Moffatt’s living room and found it to be age and social status appropriate. It was neat, he thought – cosy, in a word, smelled richly of furniture polish and thus was exactly what Victor Swannell had anticipated finding, being the home of a late middle-aged man who employs a cleaner to help him keep on top of it. Swannell’s eye rested on a framed photograph of a middle-aged woman in a blue summer dress which stood proudly upon the mantelpiece above the empty fire grate.
‘Oh … that’s my Sara.’ Edward Moffatt followed Swannell’s gaze. ‘She has gone before me.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Swannell settled back into the armchair.
‘I’m not.’ Edward Moffatt smiled briefly and Swannell noticed that the man had a genuine look of warmth in his eyes. ‘Now, don’t please misunderstand me,’ Moffatt continued speaking with a soft, homely London accent. ‘Sara and I had a lovely marriage and we were very happy, but if I had gone first she would not have coped very well at all. You see, of the two of us, she was the much more dependent. She married from home, you see, and so she always had family around her. She got very depressed when the children left and only recovered her spark when the grandchildren arrived. They’re all pretty well grown up now; she was feeling a bit redundant with just her old man to look after. So if I had gone before she would have been down in the dumps each day and every day. She would have felt very isolated and been a very lonely woman. Now me … me on the other hand, I left home early in life. I had ten brothers and sisters and our family was so chaotic that one of my sisters told me later that it was three days before I was noticed to be missing. Anyway, I joined the army as a boy soldier. After I was time expired I did a stint in the Merchant Navy, then I worked as a long-distance lorry driver which also kept me away from home, though not as long as the navy or the army had done, so I am well used to being by myself – it doesn’t bother me at all. I think it is fitting that Sara went first. She went peacefully as well. She was sitting in that chair, the one you are sitting in, and she seemed to be asleep, so I said, “Are you asleep? Come on if you’re feeling tired, we’ll go up to bed. We’ll not stay up to watch the film like we planned, it’ll be shown on TV again”, but she didn’t reply and I knew she had died. She had just slipped away in her sleep, so peacefully, not distressed or knowing any discomfort, and she died in her home, not in some hospital. She just went with a lovely marriage and three children and seven grandchildren behind her. It was her time and the Good Lord called her unto him. It was how it should be … it really could not have been any better at all.’
‘That is … a very uplifting attitude.’ Swannell relaxed quickly in Edward Moffatt’s company, having found him to be a calm, philosophical and spiritual man. In fact, all the gardeners he had ever met he had found to have similar qualities, although whether it is the case that gardening fosters such attitudes or men with such attitudes are drawn to gardening, he did not know. ‘I am pleased for your good fortune.’
‘Thank you.’ Edward Moffatt inclined his head to one side. ‘I do have wonderful memories. I probably don’t have a lot to show for my years in terms of possessions but I do have a head full of lovely memories. I sit here thinking of the things that happened, the things we did as a family … and that, let me tell you, is far, far better than being one of those elderly people who sit and wonder what might have been if they had done things differently and not taken that decision, not let that opportunity slip through their fingers. That must be an awful way to have to pass your final days. Really awful.’
‘Indeed, it must be.’ Victor Swannell felt a chill drive through him as he suddenly feared for his own autumn. ‘But if you don’t mind, I have a couple of questions for you.’
‘Of course.’ Edward Moffatt was a short, sinewy man who appeared to Swannell to have a strong and wiry constitution.
‘I understand that you rent one of the allotments on Malpas Road? Number twenty-four, to be precise.’
‘Yes, I do.’ Moffatt nodded. ‘It’s been my little patch of London for the last twenty years, probably more. I need the allotment: there are no gardens in these flats. We moved here, me and Sara, once the children had grown up; our previous tenancy was too large for our needs. It seemed it was a good move at first but I missed the smell, the aroma of freshly turned soil. So I took an allotment when one became free.’
‘I see … that could be quite useful because we are interested in the next plot to yours, allotment number twenty-three,’ Swannell advised.
‘Yes … twenty-three is the next allotment to mine, nearest the gate. That plot has had a few rentees over the years.’ Moffatt pondered. ‘It’s not been a good producer but that might have been the way it has been worked. It ought to be quite rich; it’s been left alone for long periods and other allotment holders have placed vegetable matter on it to compost down.’
‘We are interested in a man called Hill,’ Swannell continued. ‘He rented it some years ago. Do you remember him at all? He did not have the plot very long, just a few months really.’
‘Hill?’ Moffatt glanced up at the ceiling of his living room. ‘Yes … you know, I think I do remember him. He wasn’t up to much as a gardener. I think he was like so many others: he fancied the idea of growing crops but the hard work involved came as an unpleasant surprise. The plot had lain fallow for a few months before he took it and so it needed completely digging over. It would have made a good allotment once it had been turned and all that composted material had been worked into the soil. We hadn’t got the mechanical rotavator in those days so it all had to be done by hand. He did dig it but his heart wasn’t in it.’
‘Really?’ Swannell glanced out of the window of Edward Moffatt’s third-floor flat and saw the upper floors and rooftops of the large Victorian-era houses which made up the bulk of the housing on Manor Avenue.
‘Well, yes,’ Moffatt continued, ‘so it seemed to me anyway. He turned the bottom half of his allotment but had no desire to turn the rest of the plot.’
‘Did he plant crops?’ Swannell asked.
‘None.’ Moffatt smiled briefly. ‘None at all. He turned half the plot then gave up and bought his vegetables from the supermarket, I should think. Easier maybe, but expensive and tasteless. The plot was eventually taken over by a man called Dickinson … he worked it before he gave it up.’
‘What did Mr Dickinson grow?’ Swannell asked.
‘Potatoes,’ Moffatt answered promptly.
‘They grow under the surface, don’t they?’
‘Yes,’ Moffatt replied, ‘just under.’
‘So … if something was buried say two or three feet beneath the surface, it wouldn’t be found by someone harvesting a crop of potatoes?’ Swannell asked.
‘No … no, it wouldn’t.’ Moffatt pursed his lips. ‘Not at that sort of depth. ‘You can dig them up with a garden fork. In fact, plant for plant they are quite an easy crop to lift. Digging for potatoes only becomes backbreaking work if you have to lift a whole field of them.’
‘I see,’ Swannell mused. ‘So what can you recall about Mr Hill? The allotment register gives his name as being Patrick Hill.’
‘Patrick … yes, I do remember that that was his name. I remember now that you mention it.’ Moffatt glanced down at the busy pattern of his carpet. ‘He and I didn’t speak very much at all but I got the impression that he was not a dedicated or keen allotment holder … In fact, I got the impression that he seemed to resent the plot. His attitude seemed to be one of “I’m here because I’ve got to be here”. It was the way he would attack the soil … like he resented it.’
‘That is quite significant,’ Swannell commented. ‘Probably quite significant.’
‘It certainly seemed unusual to me,’ Moffatt continued. ‘In my experience, all allotment holders are enthusiastic at the outset. Some remain enthusiastic while others lose
their enthusiasm, but all are enthusiastic when they step on their little plot of land for the first time.’
‘But not Patrick Hill?’ Swannell interrupted.
‘No. Not Patrick Hill,’ Moffatt confirmed. ‘From the outset he seemed to resent being there … like he was a pressed man. Never showed any sign of eagerness, not from day one, and so it didn’t come as a surprise to me when he gave it up.’
‘How long did he rent the allotment for?’ Swannell asked, taking his notebook from his jacket pocket.
‘Well, Tony Vere, the reeve, he’ll be able to give you the start date and finish date, but I think it was a few weeks early in the year … March, April.’ Moffatt paused. ‘There was certainly plenty of rain to soften up the ground and make the digging easier. I remember because I said as much – I said to him that the rain will make the soil heavier because it will all become waterlogged, but that he would find it easier to dig than if it was baked hard like it will be now.’
‘All right …’ Swannell took a ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket.
‘I remember him as a very distant sort of individual. He was not keen to talk but he’d reply to you if you spoke to him. He tended to keep himself to himself, which is another strange thing about Hill. I never saw him around here.’ Moffatt glanced out of the window of his flat. ‘You see, I would often bump into people who also had allotments, in the post office, in the pub, or I’d notice them in the street – not necessarily to speak to, but Hill … he’d arrive in a little red car, do something to his allotment … weeding, turning a little soil, and then he’d leave as if he lived some distance away, but I believe you have to be living close to your allotments to be able to rent one. So it was a bit strange that I never saw him in the locality.’
‘That’s also interesting.’ Swannell adjusted his position in the chair in which the late Sara Moffatt had slept her final sleep. ‘Can you describe Patrick Hill’s appearance?’
‘Thin … but he seemed muscular,’ Moffatt began. ‘He had short, dark hair, as I recall …’
‘Eye colour?’ Swannell pressed.
‘Good heavens, I couldn’t tell you that.’ Moffatt grinned. ‘I never got close enough to him. In any way you can mean.’
‘Fair enough.’ Swannell returned the smile. ‘It was a bit of a long shot. Was he clean-shaven?’
‘Yes … yes, he was.’ Moffatt looked upwards, as if searching his memory. ‘I do recall a five o’clock shadow or even a full day’s growth, but yes, I’d say that he was mostly clean-shaven.’
‘All right.’ Swannell wrote in his notebook. ‘How did he dress … anything distinctive there?’
‘Not that I can recall … jeans rather than trousers, sports shoes rather than the heavy footwear that gardeners prefer. You can injure yourself with a fork or a spade if you don’t have the correct footwear.’
‘I can imagine.’ Swannell tapped the notebook with his ballpoint pen. He paused for a moment so as not to give Edward Moffatt the impression that he was being interrogated. Then, in a gentle, soft voice, he asked Moffatt how tall Patrick Hill was.
‘Five foot seven.’ Moffatt grinned.
‘You seem confident, sir,’ Swannell smiled.
‘I am confident. I am that height myself and we could look at each other without one or the other of us having to look up or down. So he was about five foot seven inches tall. Of that I am certain.’
‘Good enough.’ Swannell wrote the details in his notebook. ‘And then he just gave up the plot after digging up the bottom half of the allotment?’
‘Yes. He just handed the gate key in to the reeve and drove away, never to return.’
‘Did he have any distinguishing features?’ Swannell asked.
‘Two that I can recall,’ Moffatt replied. ‘A broken nose – a boxer’s nose. He’d been in a fight or fights and he’d stopped some geezer’s fist with his nose … probably more than once. He had the traditional boxer’s nose, which you don’t often see these days because they can straighten out flattened and bent noses.’
‘Yes,’ Swannell grunted.
‘He probably thought it made him look tough,’ Moffatt commented. ‘He probably thought his nose made him look like a hard man, but me … I just thought it made him look like of one of life’s losers.’
‘He probably was proud of his nose,’ Swannell agreed. ‘I’ve come across that attitude.’
‘The other noticeable feature was a spider,’ Moffatt advised.
‘A spider?’ Swannell glanced at Moffatt.
‘A tattoo … a black spider on the back of his left hand.’ Moffatt tapped the back of his own left hand. ‘Just there.’
‘That’s very useful. Thank you.’ Swannell stood. ‘It’s all very useful.’
Later, after returning to New Scotland Yard and recording the interview with Edward Moffatt in the file of the as-yet-unidentified murder victim whose buried remains had been uncovered in the Malpas Road allotments, Victor Swannell drove home to his house on Warren Road, Neasden, NW2 and parked his car on the area in front of his house which had, by the previous owner, been cemented over to provide off-street parking, as with many other houses in the area. He got out of his car and was met by the endless hum of traffic on the nearby North Circular Road, the noise from which he and his neighbours had learned to live with. He let himself into his house and walked into the lounge where his wife and two daughters were sitting, engrossed in an Australian TV soap opera. As he entered the room all three glanced up at him once and then returned their gaze to the TV set. Victor Swannell turned and went up to the front bedroom he and his wife shared. There he changed into white slacks, a yellow T-shirt and a pair of sandals. He left the house and walked down towards the golf club links so as to take in the early evening peace and calm.
It is often remarked that one of the drawbacks of being a police officer is that it prevents one from feeling sorry for oneself when, as a police officer, one meets the victims of often dreadful crimes, and one also meets the lowlifes who perpetrate them, often motivated by some fearful addiction to heroin or crack cocaine. It was a view shared by Victor Swannell, but occasionally in his capacity as a police officer he met someone who did not make him think in that manner, and, that evening, as he walked through suburbia to an area of closely cropped green sward, he could not but help compare the emptiness and the emotional aridity of his marriage and his home life to the richness of Edward Moffatt’s marriage to his beloved Sara, who had gone before him, leaving Edward Moffatt with little to show for a long life in terms of possessions, but with a head full of golden memories.
Once again, the man huddled into the corner of the room in the empty house and, once again, he looked around the room at the faded flower-patterned wallpaper and the bare floorboards upon which he forlornly tried to find comfort. It was a still, quiet evening, at the close of what had been a very warm, dry day, a day devoid of all sounds except for the incessant cries of the herring gulls. Once again he levered himself up and looked out of the window at the small cottage which lay half a mile distant, keeping himself well back from the window as he did so. He did not want to be seen. The man saw no signs of activity around the cottage, no sign of any strangers paying attention to the cottage, and he saw no strange motor vehicles, foreign to the area. The man sank back out of sight. He would stay where he was, periodically looking at the cottage until sunset, then he’d walk over the fields to it. He thought they still did not know where he was. But he also knew that nothing stays a secret forever.
Tom Ainsclough sat in the armchair of his house on Hargwyne Road, Clapham, and watched as the evening slowly gave way to dusk, sipping a cold lager as he did so. He had returned home earlier that day and had entered the front door of the house, then unlocked the door which opened on to the stairs and led to the upper conversion which he shared with his wife. He had arrived just in time to spend thirty minutes in the company of his wife before she had to leave to get to her work as a staff nurse at Lambeth Hospital.
; He often thought that passing each other at the door as they did kept their marriage alive and healthy. He thought it kept them intrigued with each other. If there was no such fantasy, he doubted their marriage would survive.
It was Wednesday, 22.15 hours.
THREE
Thursday, 10.10 hours – 12.33 hours
‘I freely, freely confess that I hate the man.’ John Shaftoe reached up and pulled the anglepoise arm with the microphone attached to the end of it downwards so that it was level with his mouth and also hung directly over the dissecting table. ‘I freely own that I hate the ground he stands on.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Harry Vicary replied for want of something to say. He knew very well what Shaftoe was going to say, having heard it many times over.
‘Dykk, the good professor of pathology at this illustrious hospital, the same man that yesterday would, in this very room, have been telling students to prepare for life on the third level of the “pecking order” … him … he hates me and I hate him … him and his super-privileged background, attending the most impressive of private fee-paying schools, father and grandfather both in the medical Profession … He believes that only people from that background should enter our profession … and also enter the law … with their traditions and hallowed halls, but not miner’s sons from South Yorkshire … It matters not to the great Professor Dykk if you have the qualifications and the application to stay the course of study which will lead to said qualifications … Oh, no … no … if you come from Barnsley and your old man’s a miner, then according to Dykk there is only one place for you and that is down the pit with your dad, and the breeding of racing pigeons is your only permitted leisure pursuit. This is one of his little games, pushing the microphone up nearly out of my reach. Petty-minded is just not the expression but I can still reach it, all five foot six inches of me.’ Shaftoe paused. ‘All right,’ he growled, ‘rant over … no more about Dykk, the supercilious prat that he is. So today, we need a case number and today’s date please, Felicity.’ Shaftoe now addressed the microphone, speaking clearly for the benefit of the audio typist who would shortly be word processing his findings as he reported them. ‘We have the skeletal remains of a female. The skull is fully knitted, so she was in excess of twenty-five years of age when she died. She had had the soup of the day, she had glimpsed the main course and the dessert, but they have been taken from her.’ Shaftoe paused. ‘She was short in terms of her statue. Can you pass me the tape measure, please, Billy?’
In Vino Veritas Page 5
