The Altered Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘The disturbed soil . . . a few boys saw it.’

  ‘You didn’t call the police?’

  ‘Why for? Someone might have buried a sick calf. No one in the village was missing so there was no reason to call the police. You’re not supposed to bury dead animals, there’s a law against it, but it goes on. Things happen in the country that don’t happen in the town, it’s the way of it.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘Farming is a hard way of life, Miss, you can’t afford to be sentimental. Sickly calves and sheepdogs that can’t stand up to the sheep get a spade over the head and a hole in the ground. It’s cheaper that way. Happens all the time.’

  ‘Well, we won’t go there.’ Carmen Pharoah sipped her tonic water and looked across the room from the corner seat where she and William Pargeter sat; a grey carpet, wooden circular tables with wooden chairs, a long bar on the further wall. It was light, spacious and airy in comparison to the snug of The Black Bull. ‘So who buried the bodies?’

  ‘Wasn’t the tenant who rents the field, he was away at the time; him and his family on holiday straight after harvesting. But the land itself is owned by Farrent. You should be more interested in him . . . in Farrent.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Shifty old family.’ Pargeter glanced to his left. ‘I worked for them over the years. I was working for them when they thought they were going to lose their land to a family in London.’

  ‘You know about that?’

  William Pargeter grinned. ‘You can’t keep a secret in a village, Miss. Word gets out, workers overhear things, especially when employers think their workers don’t have ears. The woman talking on the phone as the maid is dusting the room . . . the maid hears it, the word is out. But the Farrents were worried about losing their land, the old man was and so was the old woman, but they’re dead now, they’re in paradise. Thomas and the old man were talking one day when I was there, and I heard Thomas say to his dad that there’s someone he wants him to meet, someone that could help them but that it would cost. The old man replied, “But I am prepared to settle.”’

  ‘You heard that?’ Carmen Pharoah asked.

  ‘Yes . . . it could have meant anything of course, but I was forty then, a boy from the village. They talked like that in front of me and the housekeepers, like we were not there. Anyway, it was shortly after that that the hole was dug in the field and they never talked any more about losing their land.’

  ‘That’s very interesting.’ Carmen Pharoah glanced at a man who was staring at her. She raised her glass and smiled at him. ‘That’s very interesting indeed. Would you make a statement saying that?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I will.’ William Pargeter nodded briefly. ‘Yes, I will.’

  It was Thursday, 16.45 hours.

  SEVEN

  Friday, 09.15 hours – Saturday, 12.37 hours

  in which our tale concludes.

  Thomas Farrent smiled at George Hennessey. Hennessey in turn looked coldly at Farrent, irritated by his transparent smugness. George Hennessey glanced at Thomas Farrent’s solicitor who had introduced himself for the benefit of the audio tape as John Jacobs of Ellis, Burden, Woodland and Lake of St Leonard’s Place, York. Jacobs seemed to Hennessey to be anxious to avoid eye contact with both himself and Reginald Webster, who sat beside Hennessey, and kept his eyes downcast as if focussing his attention on the notepad he held in front of him, resting it at forty-five degrees on the edge of the small table which separated him and Farrent from the two police officers. Jacobs, noted Hennessey, was a middle-aged man, a little overweight perhaps, and smartly dressed in a dark blue suit with a gold hunter watch chain looped across his waistcoat. Hennessey’s eye was drawn by the red glow of the tape recorder which was set in the wall of the interview room within which the twin cassettes spooled round slowly. This silence had gone on too long, he thought, far, far too long, and he said, ‘All right, let’s cut to the chase.’

  ‘Suits me.’ Farrent relaxed back in the chair in which he sat. He was dressed casually in a yellow tee shirt and denim jeans.

  ‘Thirty years ago,’ Hennessey began, ‘your family and a family called Parr of London began a dispute, a legal dispute, over the issue of the ownership of a large amount of land near York. The issue was never resolved because the Parr family disappeared.’

  ‘Yes, I remember reading about it, strange case, very mysterious . . . a whole family.’

  ‘But the unofficial negotiation between your family and the Parrs had reached a state whereby your father was ready to relinquish half the land in question to the Parrs as an equitable solution if the analysis of the deeds held by your family were proven to have been altered fraudulently.’

  ‘Were they?’ Thomas Farrent replied softly. ‘That is news to me.’

  ‘We have a signed statement from Mr Pargeter to that effect.’

  ‘A hard-of-hearing old boy who overheard one side of a small part of a larger conversation.’

  ‘Point –’ Jacobs raised his gold plated pen – ‘that conversation could have been about anything.’

  ‘And it took place thirty years ago,’ Farrent added. ‘That sort of time lapse can play tricks on anyone’s memory.’

  ‘Again, a valid point,’ Jacobs remarked.

  Hennessey bulldozed forwards, regardless. ‘At that time, when you didn’t want to relinquish any of the land, you were approached by Nigel Parr who had been fostered by the Parrs and who had just found out he wasn’t going to inherit anything from their estate. Nigel Parr had a plan to get rid of the Parr family, but it was going to cost you. Nonetheless, you were interested enough to talk to Nigel Parr and visit him in London.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘We have a photograph of you and Nigel Parr in the same group.’ Hennessey placed the snapshot on the table. ‘For the benefit of the tape, Mr Farrent has been shown the photograph in question.’

  ‘The . . . copy . . . of the photograph in question . . .’ Jacobs argued slowly, ‘is . . . well, it is of questionable accuracy. It seems to have been taken on cheap film within an inexpensive camera. The background in the photograph is just vegetation. There is no landmark, but the main issue is that the image is sufficiently blurred that it is not possible to say that the two men in the group of young persons are my client and Mr Nigel Parr, not with sufficient proof to satisfy legal requirements. It will be my advice to my client to contest the validity of that photograph.’

  ‘It is sufficiently clear,’ Hennessey growled. ‘It links Mr Nigel Parr with your client.’

  ‘Even if the photograph was accepted as showing my client with Mr Parr, it is a tenuous link at best.’ Jacobs paused and, still refusing eye contact with Hennessey, he said, ‘The alleged crime here is multiple murder; you are going to need a very solid case to achieve a conviction.’

  ‘You and Parr hatched a plan,’ Hennessey continued, ignoring Jacobs’ argument. ‘You lured the Parrs to Yorkshire for peace talks with the proposal to divide the land and paid a man called Verity to act as the nearest relative—’

  ‘We did?’ Farrent smiled.

  ‘And the Parrs, being the naïve, trusting family that they were, were not only happy to meet with you, they actually agreed to meet you at your bungalow.’

  ‘So you believe.’ Farrent raised his eyebrows. ‘You have proof of nothing.’

  ‘It’s what happened within your father’s bungalow, now your bungalow, that we want to know about.’

  ‘That’s quite an admission of having no case against my client.’ Jacobs inclined his pen towards the tape recorder.

  Hennessey’s head sank forward. He had wrong-footed himself by his admission of ignorance. ‘It just needs one of you to turn Queen’s evidence.’ Hennessey clutched at the final straw. ‘That act will be reflected in any sentence.’

  ‘Nobody will turn Queen’s evidence.’ Farrent smiled. ‘There being no evidence to turn. And I want to know where my wife is.’

  ‘This is what happened.’ Yellich leaned forward.
‘You were angered that the Parrs were going to, or already had decided to leave you out of their will. You felt you deserved a share of their property in Camden, despite the fact that you were not related. So you made contact with the Farrents, particularly Thomas Farrent; he was of your age group . . . he still is, and also, like you, he stood to lose a substantial part of his inheritance . . . and the two of you hatched a plan.’

  ‘Over numerous visits north, and him visiting you in the south,’ Ventnor continued, ‘you conspired to murder the Parrs . . . but only for a price. You wanted the equivalent of what one third of the value of the Parrs’ house would have been upon their eventual passing, thus fully compensating you for the loss of what you believed to be your rightful inheritance. In return for your help, the Farrents held on to the vast area of land which, four hundred years earlier, their ancestors may have acquired fraudulently.’

  Nigel Parr sighed and looked around the interview room, taking in the hard-wearing Hessian carpet, the plaster walls painted a dark brown up to waist height, cream above that, and the Perspex shade over the filament bulb in the ceiling directly above the table at which he was currently being interrogated. ‘You brought me all the way from London, overnight, to listen to this fairy tale? What nonsense is this?’

  ‘It is fair comment, gentlemen.’ Christopher McGuire, also of the specialist criminal firm of Ellis, Burden, Woodland and Lake, spoke calmly and authoritatively. ‘This is an interview, please conduct it as such. Ask questions but do not put words into my client’s mouth. If you do, any confession obtained thereby would be invalid.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Webster sat back in his chair. ‘But you are not denying knowing Mr Thomas Farrent at the time the Parr family disappeared?’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’ McGuire held up his hand. ‘You are putting words into my client’s mouth. Ask questions. Please.’

  ‘Did you,’ Yellich asked slowly, ‘know Thomas Farrent socially at the time the Parrs disappeared?’

  ‘No,’ Parr said. ‘We never met.’

  ‘The photograph says otherwise.’

  ‘The photograph is too blurred,’ McGuire stated. ‘It shows a group of young people in a park, which could be anywhere, any park anywhere.’

  ‘We have a statement from Florence Nightingale that you and Thomas Farrent knew each other. She remembers him by the distinct birthmark on his right hand.’

  ‘Faggie Annie, the vodka queen? Yes, I knew her, but she’s hardly what you might call a creditable witness: a petty crook, one-woman vodka disposal unit.’

  ‘We believe you—’

  ‘No, no.’ McGuire held up his hand. ‘We are not going to respond to what you believe.’

  ‘If your client was to turn Queen’s evidence—’ Yellich began.

  ‘Enough!’ McGuire folded his notebook. ‘If you had any shred of evidence of my client’s involvement you would not have even thought of asking him to turn Queen’s evidence. All further responses from Mr Parr will be “no comment”, and having said that I think the only thing you can do now is to furnish my client with a rail travel warrant and allow him to return home.’

  ‘Mr Parr will be detained for the time being,’ Yellich answered coldly. ‘This interview is terminated at ten thirty-seven hours.’ He switched off the tape recorder. Yellich and Ventnor stood. ‘A constable will return Mr Parr to the cells.’

  The office was filled with silence. It was the sort of silence which falls upon a room after a heated argument has ensued. Hennessey was silent, Yellich was silent, Ventnor was silent and Webster was silent. Carmen Pharoah was silent. All looked downwards. None sought eye contact with any other. Eventually, the sixth person in the room spoke. ‘I don’t like it any more than you.’ Francis Fox of the Crown Prosecution Service was a smartly dressed man in his early thirties. ‘But if this is the sum of your evidence, and it is now time to charge or release . . . then we have to release.’

  Hennessey slowly reached for the telephone which stood on the desktop. He picked it up and angrily jabbed a four figure internal number. ‘Custody Sergeant . . . release the suspects in the Parr family and Michelle Lemmon murder inquiry. Yes . . . thank you.’

  It was Friday, 14.15 hours.

  Thomas Farrent prowled about his house, angrily striking out at any object he came into contact with. It was, he thought, the one loose end, the one unknown. Even his father had said that before he had died, ‘Watch her’. That’s all he had said. Now she was out there, out of his grasp and not contacting him, no contact at all. Thomas Farrent strode across the room to where a table lamp stood on a small chest of drawers and powerfully knocked it on to the floor, causing it to break into many pieces. No contact. That was the worrying thing, she was thinking for herself. Dangerous. Very dangerous.

  It was Friday, 22.10 hours.

  Saturday, 09.20 hours

  The woman walked out of the inexpensive boarding house and turned her collar up against the unexpected squall, which she thought was most likely to be heralding the arrival of autumn. She walked away from the seafront up the narrow street which rose out of the town to the railway station at the summit of the hill. She bought a return ticket to York and then patiently awaited the arrival of the train. Again she felt a most profound sense of liberation. Never before had she felt the complete correctness of what she intended to do. The train arrived, slowing into the terminus. She boarded it and considered herself fortunate to find a forward-facing seat, it being the weekend and the train being crowded. She passed the journey in silence and found herself only mildly irritated by the use of mobile phones by other passengers as the train progressed at a satisfactory speed across the flat rolling countryside that was the Vale of York. She left the train at York, just as the guard was announcing the details of the train’s onward journey to Leeds, Huddersfield, then ‘fast to Manchester Airport’. The woman, with head held high and a spring in her step, walked up the curved gradient of Queen Street, waited at the junction with Blossom Street until the traffic lights changed to permit the pedestrians to cross the road, and then walked into Micklegate Bar Police Station. At the enquiry desk she said to the white-shirted constable, ‘My name is Virginia Farrent. I would like to make a statement. I believe a detective called Hennessey and also a Mr Yellich are the interested officers in the situation in question.’

  A few moments later Virginia Farrent sat in an interview room across a highly polished wooden table from DCI Hennessey and DC Pharoah. She spoke under caution but had waived the right to be represented by a solicitor. ‘I am happy to tell you what happened.’ She glanced at the tape recorder, at the twin cassettes spooling slowly round and round. Everything said was being recorded and would, she knew, be kept for all time. ‘But it won’t be safe for me, my husband is a violent man, and very jealous. He is capable of extreme violence.’

  ‘We can protect you,’ Hennessey replied calmly. ‘In or outside prison, we can offer protection.’

  ‘I don’t want anything for myself,’ Virginia Farrent added quickly. ‘I just want the truth to come out; those people need justice.’

  ‘All right.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘Just tell us what happened. In your own words. In your own time.’

  ‘Well.’ Virginia Farrent paused. ‘It was all over before I knew what was happening. The day before, Nigel Parr had arrived at the house and slept in the guest bedroom. Nigel had visited a few times before then and my husband had visited him in London. They just seemed to have befriended each other. I was kept well out of it. We had been married for only about a year at this time, but I had already found out that I was not ever going to be party to my husband’s affairs. That day Nigel Parr and my husband kept themselves to themselves and seemed to be talking very earnestly.’

  ‘All right,’ Hennessey said, ‘this is good.’

  ‘The very next day the Parrs arrived, Mr and Mrs Parr and their daughters, and also another girl who I now know was called Michelle Lemmon. I wasn’t expecting them. When they arrived Nigel Parr was nowhere to be seen a
nd Michelle wanted to leave, but my husband persuaded her to stay with the promise of giving her a lift back to York.’ Virginia Farrent took a deep breath. ‘They said they were there to talk to Mr Farrent senior, my father-in-law, which I thought was odd because he was not at home; he had gone away on a pensioners’ holiday.’

  ‘That is important. You are saying that Mr Farrent senior was not involved.’

  ‘No. By then he was a widower and left the running of the estate to my husband, his son. The whole thing was cooked up by my husband and Nigel Parr.’ Virginia Farrent paused and glanced at Hennessey and Pharoah. ‘This is difficult,’ she said, ‘this is the difficult bit.’

  ‘In your own time,’ Carmen Pharoah replied. ‘Like Mr Hennessey has said . . . your own time . . . your own pace.’

  ‘Very well.’ Virginia Farrent collected herself. ‘So . . . when everyone was settled with welcoming cups of tea and a tray of buttered scones, my husband excused himself and then returned a few moments later and said, “My father is ready now, Mr Parr, shall we join him? His study is down the corridor at the other end of the house.”’ Virginia Farrent put her hand to her mouth, then removing it, she continued, ‘It was then that I knew something horrible was going to happen, but I just seemed to freeze . . . I just seemed to freeze. My father-in-law wasn’t at home, he didn’t have a study, but Mr and Mrs Parr just stood up and followed my husband as he led them out of the room. They . . . the Parr Family were so small, so short . . . and in less than a minute it seemed like, but not a long time at all, my husband, followed by Nigel Parr, burst back into the living room. My husband overpowered the Parrs’ daughters, punching one then the other. I was screaming, the girls were screaming . . . Michelle Lemmon made a run for the door and Nigel Parr tripped her up and said, “Oh no you don’t,” and called her a name, which sounded a bit like “Oranges”, then he punched her really hard, dazing her but not completely knocking her out. He really meant business.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Hennessey sat forward and leaned his forearms on the table.