The Altered Case

by Peter Turnbull

  After a pause, Webster said, ‘Florence, we hope you can help us.’

  ‘If I can.’ Florence Nightingale exhaled through her nostrils. ‘If I can, darlin’.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide from the old plod.’ She took another deep drag on the cigarette. ‘I still do a little shoplifting, a little pilfering . . . I think it’s called street-level crime. I can’t run any more so I don’t do bag snatching. Yes, I’ve been inside; it’s OK, a cot and three and some company. I’ll probably get myself lifted near Christmas. I hate Christmas Day in this room; just me by myself, a few cans of lager, when the rest of the world is celebrating, that’s what it feels like anyway. You know, I am going to really have something of a funeral, just me and the priest. So go ahead, pick my brains; the vodka hasn’t left much for you to pick at but you are welcome to what the voddy has left.’

  ‘OK.’ Webster lifted up his right foot and was not surprised when he found that it had adhered to the carpet and he had to tear it loose. ‘So what can you tell us about Nigel Parr, of Camden, thirty years ago.’

  ‘Oh him . . . a name from my past? I can’t remember what happened yesterday but I can remember Nigel Parr. He was part of my youth, when it was all before me. I was a bit of a looker then, I don’t mind admitting it; quite slim with the old ding dong of church wedding bells echoing in my future. So, he has surfaced. You know, I thought he might be known to the old plod. He was dodgy, with a mega chip on both shoulders.’

  ‘Tell us about him,’ Ventnor pressed. ‘Anything you think we might be interested in.’

  ‘Well, where to start.’ Florence Nightingale took another deep drag on the thin roll-up and then flicked the ash on to her denim jeans and worked the ash into the weave with a slow, circular movement of the tip of her middle finger. ‘I remember a young guy burning up with resentment towards the family who fostered him. I mean, what did they do to harm him? They took him out of the children’s home, where he had been labelled “difficult”, and gave him a proper home . . . and he was resentful. I reckon he’d be resentful if he went to live in a stately home and was given a Ferrari for his eighteenth birthday.’

  ‘He told you he had been labelled “difficult”?’ Webster tore the sole of his right foot from the carpet and put it down in a different location.

  ‘Yes, after his foster parents had told him that in a sort of look-what-we-did-for-you sort of way. They were apparently pleased with themselves, pleased that they had rescued him in time and set him on the right path. Sent him to a good school and all that, but he saw it like he’d been taken in like a stray dog so that they could feel good about themselves. Me, I would have cared less about their reasons. I grew up in a children’s home, you see. I didn’t get rescued.’

  ‘I see.’ Ventnor scanned the room, discreetly so, and saw nothing to raise his suspicions.

  ‘I mean, so long as I was rescued I wouldn’t care about the reasons.’ Florence Nightingale screwed the butt of the cigarette into a small plastic ashtray, which had clearly been stolen from a pub going by the brewery logo on the rim. ‘Anyway, Nigel didn’t see it that way, like I said. He seemed to turn on Mr and Mrs Parr and find ways of doing them harm; like he’d steal things from their house and sell them, even though he didn’t need the money, or sometimes he’d take items from the house and throw them away just to be spiteful, and he seemed to gloat when family members were going round the house hunting for whatever item he had thrown away. He used to laugh at Mr Parr’s innocence in not realizing what was happening. How Mr Parr would sit on the sofa in the living room and say, “It’s a mystery where whatever it was has gone, it’s a real mystery.” No mystery at all, the boy he fostered and had brought into his home had thrown it in Regent’s Park Canal.’

  ‘Thanks . . . illuminating,’ Webster said softly, ‘very illuminating.’

  Florence Nightingale ran stubby nicotine-stained fingers through her greasy, black hair. ‘Well, that’s the Nigel Parr I knew. It’s what he could be like. Maybe he still can. He was like my old bath taps, he ran hot and cold. One day he’d be fuming, burning up with anger or resentment, then the next he’d come over all Mr Nice Bloke, ever so helpful and friendly, but I got to learn that that was just on the surface.’

  ‘Again . . . interesting.’ Webster let his feet sink into the carpet pile; he had come to realize that picking them up and putting them down again was a futile exercise, utterly pointless.

  ‘Then one day he really was about to explode like Mount Etna, really blew his top. I remember it so well. I was frightened he’d turn on me, and he was a big bloke. Apparently he’d been told that he wasn’t going to inherit anything. He’d been told that Mr and Mrs Parr were going to leave everything to their two daughters. All along he had let himself think that because he was fostered he was going to get a third of whatever they left behind them. As it was, he was not going to get a penny, but in the event he came into money and bought himself a nice two bedroomed flat in a conversion near Regent’s Park, which was just round the corner from the Parrs’ old house where he had grown up.’ Florence Nightingale took a deep breath. ‘And me . . . just then I got the push – “Time for you to go girl.”’

  ‘You and he were an item I assume?’ Ventnor asked.

  ‘Yes, I was his bit on the side. I was his old lady and he was my fella, until he got wealthy all at once.’

  ‘Did he tell you where he got the money from?’ Ventnor coughed slightly.

  ‘Sorry, the smoke bother you, darlin’?’ Florence Nightingale glanced up at Ventnor.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Ventnor smiled. ‘I’m just not used to it.’

  ‘Wish I could say that.’ Florence Nightingale sighed. ‘But, no, he didn’t tell me where the dosh suddenly came from, but it came like a win on the lottery. One minute he was looking at a life to be spent in rented bedsits . . . in dumps like this . . . and the next he was owning his own home outright in fancy NW1. Iffy, I always thought.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to the Parrs?’ Webster too felt the smoke from Florence Nightingale’s cigarette tickling the back of his throat.

  ‘They disappeared . . . abducted by aliens . . . the family who vanished. It was soon after they vanished that Nigel moved into his house.’ Florence Nightingale reached for her tobacco tin, then, having second thoughts, retracted her hand. ‘Yeah, they vanished. I read about it when I was in Holloway doing another short stretch for shoplifting.’

  Webster and Ventnor glanced at each other. Then Ventnor said, ‘Just repeat that.’

  ‘What?’ Florence Nightingale looked puzzled. ‘Repeat what?’

  ‘What you just said. You were in Holloway when you heard about the Parrs’ disappearance.’

  ‘Yeah . . . I mean, yes, I was doing bird. The Horseferry Road beaks sent me down for two months. I had shoplifted a woollen pullover so the magistrates sent me down for a two-and-a-half stretch; two months . . . for a cardigan. That morning, in the same court, was a youth who had caused death by dangerous driving and he walked with a fine to pay . . . that’s justice, I don’t think.’

  ‘It can seem a bit unfair,’ Webster offered. ‘But how long after you went down did you hear about the Parrs disappearing?’

  Nightingale shrugged. ‘Now you’re asking . . . thirty years ago. You can check, they’ll keep records.’

  ‘We will, but just for us, now, can you remember how long you had been inside when you heard about the Parrs?’

  ‘Probably about a month, it wasn’t right at the beginning and it wasn’t just before the end.’

  ‘I see,’ Webster said. ‘Now this is important, Florence . . . You were not with Nigel Parr on the south coast when the Parrs disappeared?’

  ‘No, I was doing bird in Holloway, working towards an early parole.’

  ‘Do you know if Nigel Parr had another girlfriend?’

  ‘She’d be blind if he had ’cos I would have clawed her eyes out.’ Florence Nightingale grasped the air with her right hand.

  ‘What a
bout after you were sent down?’ Ventnor asked.

  ‘My girlfriends in the gang visited me. If Nigel was playing away from home they would have told me, I’m certain they would.’ Florence Nightingale looked smug. ‘Yeah, they would have told me.’

  ‘So you met his mates?’ Webster pressed.

  ‘Yeah, we ran in a gang, his pub mates, the girls and a geezer from up your way, posh sort of geezer.’

  ‘Do you remember his name or anything about him, the posh geezer, I mean?’ Ventnor asked.

  ‘Name . . . Tarrant . . . Farrent, something like that. He had a big red birthmark on his right hand –’ Florence Nightingale tapped the back of her right hand – ‘just here. I’ve seen similar on people’s faces but his was on his hand. You know, I can dig out a photograph of Tarrant, or Farrent. I think I can, anyway. Would you like me to find it?’

  ‘That would be excellent.’ Webster smiled. ‘If you can . . . we’d love to see it.’

  Florence Nightingale levered herself upright and uncrossed her legs so that her calves hung over the side of the bed. She then began to rock herself backwards and forwards, and on the third forward tilt she stood and walked across the room to a chest of drawers and pulled the top drawer open. From the drawer she extracted a large, circular tin, which had once contained biscuits by its pattern and design, and holding it in both hands, she turned and walked unsteadily back to the bed. Once again seated on the bed she pulled the lid off the tin and began to sift through the photographs which comprised the contents. ‘All my little old life is in here,’ she mumbled as she tossed one photograph after another on to the bed beside her. Then she triumphantly held up a small colour photograph and handed it to Ventnor. ‘Here,’ she said proudly. ‘I knew I had one of him.’

  Ventnor looked at the photograph and handed it to Webster, who, looking at it, saw that it showed a group of young people sitting on the grass in a park one summer’s day. ‘That was taken in Regent’s Park,’ Florence Nightingale advised. ‘The guy in the middle is Nigel Parr. I took that about a week before I got sent down. I remember that because we talked about what sentence I could expect. If we hadn’t had that conversation I couldn’t have remembered so well when it was taken.’

  Webster smiled. ‘Useful; that’s a very useful statement, helps us a lot.’

  ‘The guy on the left is the posh geezer . . . Tarrant or Farrent . . . with the red birthmark on his hand. They didn’t like me taking the photograph. They said they didn’t want their photographs taken, not when they were together. They got really angry and told me not ever to take another one.’

  ‘That’s also very interesting,’ Ventnor said still looking at the photograph. ‘Did you?’ he asked. ‘Did you take another?’

  ‘No.’ Florence Nightingale shook her head. ‘Parr smashed my camera later that same day, spiteful young rat that he was. Years afterwards I realized he was trying to destroy the film, not the camera, but I had changed the film by then. He didn’t know that; he never knew that photograph ever existed ’cos I never showed it to him, or to the posh northern geezer either.’

  ‘Can we keep this photograph?’ Webster asked.

  ‘I can sell it to you,’ Florence Nightingale offered. ‘Look, gents, I don’t like asking but I’m short . . . no food . . . and I don’t want to do crime, not until nearer Christmas . . .’

  Webster and Ventnor both took out their wallets and each gave Florence Nightingale twenty pounds.

  ‘Keep the photograph,’ she said, holding the money tightly in her hands. ‘And thanks.’

  ‘Buy food with it,’ Webster said, ‘not vodka.’

  ‘I will. Promise. I’ll use it all for food. Promise. Promise. Promise.’

  ‘OK –’ Ventnor held up his hand – ‘we believe you. So, do you know how Nigel Parr and Thomas Farrent met? Did one approach the other?’

  Florence Nightingale smiled. ‘Yes, Nigel Parr went north. You see, I don’t know the full yarn but it seems that the Parrs were claiming some land in Yorkshire belonged to them and they were talking to lawyers about it, and it was right about that same time that Parr found he wasn’t going to inherit anything. He was well upset about that, he was; he got well drunk one night and said that being done out of a third of the value of a house in Camden is bad enough, but being done out of a third of a big chunk of Yorkshire was “criminal”. He kept putting away the whisky and muttering about them not getting away with it. It was about that time he went north and came back looking like the cat that got the cream. He took me for a drink that night and said that he’d “worked something out”; it didn’t matter that he wasn’t going to inherit anything from Mr and Mrs Parr because he’d “done a deal” that would see him “all right”. I never knew what.’

  ‘He was still living with the Parrs at that time?’

  ‘Oh, yes, still at home in his early twenties and Mr and Mrs Parr were not pushing him out or anything; they were still happy for him to be there. Most foster parents would have kicked out at sixteen when the local authority stopped paying the fostering allowance, but the Parrs let him continue to live with them, even though he was an idler . . . no job. He went to art college but that was later. At the time he was just loafing about; he was a complete waster but that was the Parr family, even their daughters used to walk about with no clothes on in the middle of the day and they’d bring in stray dogs and homeless people. That’s how Oranges arrived; the girls found her sleeping rough in Regent’s Park and brought her home like she was another stray dog. It was that attitude that annoyed Nigel, really got his back up. He felt insulted by it.’

  ‘Patronized?’ Webster suggested.

  ‘If that’s the word, but like I said, it wouldn’t have bothered me, wouldn’t have bothered me one bit. Any reason to live with a family was better than a children’s home. But thanks for Adam Smiths.’ Florence Nightingale held the two twenty pound notes tightly and looked up at the two officers. ‘It’ll all go on food. Promise.’

  ‘Hope so. So, have you got a coat? Do you need one?’

  ‘Why, where am I going?’

  ‘The police station.’

  Florence Nightingale paled. ‘You’re arresting me? I’ve helped you and I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘We are not arresting you, don’t worry,’ Webster replied calmly. ‘We need to get everything you’ve told us down in a written statement and for you to sign it.’

  ‘I’ll be giving evidence?’

  ‘Probably . . . possibly,’ Webster said. ‘But we can’t take a statement here, we need to use the interview room in the nearest police station.’

  Florence Nightingale nodded. ‘I’ll get a jacket.’ She stood. ‘The police station is a short walk, just past the mini market. I can buy some food on the way home.’

  It was to prove to be an experience that Carmen Pharoah would recall with pleasure. Never before had she silenced a pub just by walking into it off the street, but that was what happened when she walked into the snug of The Black Bull in Catton Hill, having first enquired of the postmistress where she might find William Pargeter. ‘An old boy,’ she explained, and added, ‘he’s not in any trouble,’ and she was directed to The Black Bull. She stepped into the taproom of the pub and found it a small room, as taprooms are wont to be, no more than ten feet by ten feet with a small bar adjacent to the door. It was full of men, mostly elderly, and the hubbub of conversation halted abruptly as she entered the door and stood there. Not only did all conversation stop but all movement also, save for the heads of the men sitting with their backs to the door, or side on to the door, who turned to look at her. Even the barman, who was wiping the bar with a towel, froze in mid motion. Carmen Pharoah stood there relishing the silence, relishing the impact she had made, a woman in the snug of The Black Bull, and a black woman at that. It had to be a first in the history of Catton Hill, it just had to be. ‘I was told I could find a gentleman called William Pargeter in here,’ she said at length after she felt she could not hold the silence any longer.
r />   ‘Who are you?’ A middle-aged man in a crumpled suit asked with hostility more than with curiosity.

  ‘Vale of York Police,’ Carmen Pharoah replied calmly. ‘Mr Pargeter is not in any trouble, I just need to ask him a couple of questions. Just a little local history.’

  ‘Be it about the bodies in the field?’ another man asked.

  ‘Possibly.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled and glanced around the snug; low oak beams, panelled walls, a small window looking out on to Catton Hill Main Street. Polished horse brasses and Great War artillery shell casings being the only decoration. A sign above the bar read, ‘The clock ticks but we don’t’.

  ‘Nothing else it could be about.’ An elderly man stood, and took his weight on his walking stick. ‘I be William Pargeter, I’ll tell thee what I can.’ He edged out of the corner where he sat. ‘Can we go across to the other pub?’

  ‘Of course.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled. ‘We can go anywhere you like.’

  ‘They’re a queer lot in The Shoes, but we’ll get peace.’

  William Pargeter’s comment was greeted with laughter by the men in the snug. Carmen Pharoah turned and stepped out of the pub, hearing the conversation pick up again as she did so.

  William Pargeter walked slowly and unsteadily across the road to the other pub, which Carmen Pharoah noted was called The Three Horseshoes, hence, she realized, The Shoes for short. She bought the old man a half pint of beer, as he requested, and a tonic water for herself. The Shoes was less crowded than the snug of The Black Bull, but nonetheless she and William Pargeter attracted stares and caused conversations to enter a lull before they picked up again.

  ‘So, the bodies?’ Pargeter lifted the glass of beer towards his bewhiskered chin.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Always thought there was something in that field.’

  ‘Oh?’