Deliver Us from Evil hay-20

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘got it in one.’

  ‘Hardly a difficult question.’

  ‘So we’ll pay a call on his nearest surviving relative. I have phoned him, he is expecting us.’

  ‘OK, I’ll finish this first, if you don’t mind,’ Ventnor held up his mug of coffee, ‘can’t function without it.’

  The young woman knelt and picked up the book of matches. It had, she thought, an interesting cover. She resisted the impulse to throw it into the refuse bag. Given what her employer had told her about the recent police visit she wondered whether it might have some significance.

  The man parked his small van on the concrete apron and once again, being irresistibly drawn to the location, he looked over the blue and white police tape at the small workshop. He once again thrilled to the isolation of the vicinity; he savoured the location as he once again felt the power surge. He thought it was wrong, what he had read about why rapists most often let their victims live, because you cannot have a power disparity with a corpse. ‘Oh but you can’, he said to himself as the wind tugged at his coat collar, ‘you so, so can’.

  Kenneth Fisco lived in what Ventnor thought was a modest home in North Barrie, wholly brick built of light shaded material with a darker grey tiled roof. A Humvee stood solidly in the driveway and, being a fawn colour, blended sensitively, thought Ventnor, with the house bricks and the colour of the bricks of neighbouring houses. Kenneth Fisco showed himself to be a slightly built, clean shaven, warm of manner individual. His handshake Ventnor found to be light but not overly so, not a ‘wet lettuce’ shake, and his eye contact seemed to be genuine. It was, he thought, as if Marianne Auphan was introducing one of her friends to another. ‘Have you met Thomson? Thomson, this is Kenneth.’ It was, Ventnor felt, that sort of meeting. The interior of the house revealed itself to be similar to the outside: neat and clean and well ordered. A photograph of the Queen hung on the wall of the entrance hall: no Roman Catholic French Canadian he.

  ‘So, my father.’ Fisco settled back into an armchair after both Marianne Auphan and Ventnor had, at his invitation, taken a seat on the settee. ‘After all these years, finally there is some police interest. Has new evidence come to light?’

  ‘Probably,’ Marianne Auphan replied, ‘but more in the manner of a possible connection with other. . other incidents. We have in fact become very interested in Heather Ossetti.’

  ‘Oh,’ Fisco groaned and looked upwards at the ceiling, ‘that woman. . that. . female,’ pronouncing ‘female’ with a great and clear and distinct anger.

  ‘You didn’t like her?’

  ‘Oh. . it shows? No we didn’t. . not me, or my brother. . or my sisters. She was such a deeply unpleasant and dangerous woman and we were children then, we couldn’t defend ourselves and dad was always out of it with the drink.’

  ‘She was violent?’

  ‘More verbally than physically but we still had to learn how to duck.’

  ‘What happened?’ Marianne Auphan conducted the interview; Ventnor was content to remain silent.

  ‘Well, dad was a good man but only so far as his lights shone and unfortunately for his children they didn’t shine very far.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, he was an adequate provider, can’t fault him there, but he did take a good drink. He was also very needy, emotionally speaking. . I got that impression. I still have it really; I think that mother was a woman with five children, one of whom was her husband.’

  ‘I have come across similar, already.’ Marianne Auphan spoke with a low, knowledgeable tone. ‘It happens. . or husbands with wives who are more akin to daughters. . very stressful and causes dysfunction in the family.’

  ‘Yes, well mother died in a car wreck. She was a passenger, wholly the fault of the driver of the other car. After that dad lost the plot, really lost it, found it difficult to hold down a job. . really started drinking very heavily and began to bring all sorts of women home, one being Heather Ossetti. . but unlike the others she hung around, she stayed for months. For some reason our chaotic rundown old house was good enough for her to call home.’

  ‘Hiding, do you think?’

  Fisco paused. ‘No, no I wouldn’t say that. I think, looking back, that it was more in the manner of somebody taking the rough with the smooth.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning she put up with our messy household because it was a meal ticket. Father had a lot of money from mother’s life insurance payout. When Heather left, he had nothing. He, stupid man that he was, that needy little boy inside him, had allowed her to be a co-signatory on his checking account. There were weekly withdrawals, all made out to cash. It was also our inheritance. I admit it would not have gone far between the four of us. . what would have been left when father died, but it would have been something. She kept him well supplied with booze until his account was empty and it was then that he died in a house fire.’

  ‘What do you remember about the fire?’

  ‘Nothing at all about the fire itself, we were not there. We returned to a burnt out shell. It’s still there, the burnt timbers. . damn well planned though, the fire I mean.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ventnor sat forward. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You English?’ Fisco asked, pleasantly.

  ‘Yes. We’re interested in Heather Ossetti also. So. . what do you mean by well planned?’

  ‘It seems like it was, looking back, with the wonderful twenty-twenty nature of hindsight.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘It was summer. She had bought a whole load of camping gear and she drove us to the coast.’

  ‘The coast?’ Marianne Auphan queried. ‘From here?’

  ‘Lake shore. .’ Fisco turned to her. ‘I don’t mean the ocean, I mean down by Lake Simcoe at Safe Harbour, near here. It had some significance for her I think but she never explained what it was. So she bought a heap of camping gear, ran us down to Safe Harbour at the shore of Lake Simcoe and left us to fend for ourselves. We were in no danger. . except from the mosquitoes, it being summer, but you learn to cope with them. . keep a smoky fire going, the flying tigers don’t like smoke. There were other campers around and it was a lake so there were no tides to get caught out by. She said it was for our character development and our drunken old father just went along with it. . and we were children then. What we thought didn’t matter. We really had no say in anything once Heather moved in.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘That summer? Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen and twelve. Mother worked hard, harder than my wife. We, my wife and I, we plan to space our children. But. . that summer. . each weekend was always the same; piled the gear and the kids into the back of the station wagon, down to Safe Harbour area on Friday and dropped us off. Towards the end she didn’t even leave the car, just made sure we had everything we needed, that it was all out, and drove off. She’d collect us on the Sunday at about five p.m. Looking back, I now believe that she was getting us out of the way, not just once, on the weekend in question, but establishing a pattern. You see I reckon that she figured that if we kids were away only for the weekend when father died, it would look suspicious, but if we were away every weekend on a character building number then it wouldn’t look so suspicious.’

  ‘That’s a good point,’ Marianne Auphan said, ‘it goes to premeditation. . very calculating.’

  ‘That’s what I think. But what was. . what is still very suspicious, really very suspicious, is that the old man only ever used to drink beer, just Budweiser out of cans or bottles. . non-flammable no matter how much he spilled, but on that weekend the carpet was soaked with whisky, so it turned out when the police and the fire service investigated. Then there were all the empty whisky bottles in the garage, they appeared from nowhere that weekend. They were not there when we went camping on the Friday but were there when we came back on the Sunday, giving the authorities the impression that father was a long term whisky drinker. . which, of course, is flammable.’
r />   ‘I see,’ Auphan nodded. ‘You are correct, sir, that is very suspicious.’

  ‘She hung around for a while after the fire, playing the grieving widow, even though they were not married. We had no home. After a while in a church shelter we were taken in by relatives, which was when Heather left us, and then we entered adulthood, inheriting nothing.’

  ‘So what do you think happened?’

  ‘She milked him for all she could, emptied his account. . that is certain. . but why she murdered him, why she didn’t just leave him having taken all his money,’ Fisco shook his head, ‘that I will never know. That we will never know. Either he had woken up to the fact that Heather had bled him dry and was about to make things awkward for her. . or. . she saw an opportunity to do something she could get away with, even if that thing she saw was murder, just for the sake of doing it.’ He shrugged. ‘The house was fairly remote. It was already an inferno by the time the nearest neighbour called nine-one-one and by the time the fire department had arrived at the house it was a pile of ash. Then, like I said, after she hung around for a week or two Heather left. . once we were safely with relatives. She gave a statement about knowing nothing about how the fire started but overplayed dad’s drinking. The coroner recorded death by misadventure. There was smoke in dad’s throat you see. . I don’t know the proper name.’

  ‘Trachea,’ offered Ventnor.

  ‘Yes,’ Fisco smiled, ‘that’s the word. Smoke deposits in his trachea, so he was alive when the fire was burning and he breathed in the smoke. That apparently made it accidental.’

  ‘Apparently?’

  ‘Well, I don’t drink, I don’t drink at all. . children of heavy drinking parents usually don’t. . but I would have thought it would have taken more than beer to knock someone out and so heavily that they wouldn’t wake up in a fire.’

  ‘I would think the same,’ Marianne Auphan spoke softly.

  ‘But no examination for poison in the bloodstream was done and ironically, what was left of him was cremated soon after. The city finished the job the fire had started. But the point is they then could not dig him up and test for poison in his blood. The Coroner just accepted that he was drinking whisky and fell unconscious and dropped his cigarette on the carpet and ‘woosh’, and fortunately his children were at their usual character building camp by the lake an hour’s drive away and Heather was in town shopping. No one saw her leave the house, it being remote you see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What else did you find out about her private or her social life whilst she was living with you. . anything at all?’

  ‘Nothing. She had no friends that we knew of; I believe that she used to spend her time in McTeer’s Bar on Dunlop Street. . if you know it. You could ask in there. Been a long time now but she might be remembered by someone. . she’s the sort of woman who would make a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons. So it is highly likely that someone in McTeer’s will remember her and may be able to provide some information.’

  George Hennessey replaced the phone and stood and walked from his office down the CID corridor to the reception area. He stood beside the uniformed officer who indicated a young woman who sat on the highly polished hardwood bench on the opposite side of the room to the reception desk. Hennessey smiled at the woman. ‘You wish to see me, madam?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The woman stood and approached the reception desk, nervously opening her handbag as she did so. She extracted a clear plastic bag of the type used by banks to contain coins. She placed the bag on the desk. Within the bag was a book of matches. ‘Mrs Stand of the Broomfield Hotel asked me to drop this in, sir.’ The woman had a timid way of speaking and seemed to Hennessey to be working very hard to avoid eye contact. ‘I am to say that it has not been touched except by the chambermaid who picked it up, sir.’

  ‘Thank you. Appreciate the care and consideration.’ Hennessey picked up the bag and examined the book of matches. It read, ‘Sign of the Whale, Barrie, Ontario’.

  ‘It was found in the room occupied by the Canadian gentleman, sir. It had slipped down behind the bed and was missed during the first clean, sir. I am in York to buy bacon, sir.’

  ‘Bacon?’ Hennessey smiled.

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s cheaper in York.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So I am to hand it in to you when I am in York, buying the bacon, sir.’

  ‘Oh. . now I understand. Well, thank you for this Miss. .’

  ‘Lloyd, sir.’

  ‘Miss Lloyd, thank you, very much. Thank you very much indeed. And please thank Mrs Stand also.’

  Hennessey immediately ordered an email to be sent to DS Yellich, care of the Barrie City Police, advising him that the Canadian he is seeking is probably a customer of the Sign of the Whale bar on Bayfield Street. He added that latents are to be lifted from a book of matches and will be sent to him.

  That done he returned to his desk to complete the six month evaluation of DC Pharoah. He was enjoying writing it. It was a positive assessment, very positive. She was making no secret about her desire to return to London eventually, and he knew that when she did, she would leave a gap. A very noticeable gap indeed.

  It was an old house, Yellich thought; at least it was old for Canada. Wholly built of timber, it had turret rooms and a porch on the upper floor as well as on the ground floor. It stood isolated from many nearby houses by approximately one hundred feet on either side. The rear garden rose in a gentle slope to a thick stand of woodland. The house was in a rundown condition and so badly in need of paint or varnish weatherproofing that Yellich doubted that it could be saved. Rot, he believed, must be, in fact could not have failed to be, well established in all that exposed wood. Two large Alsatians appeared at the front door window as Yellich closed the car door behind him. An elderly woman opened the front door but kept the screen door shut. She stared intently at him, unafraid and hostile. She was dressed in black and had long, silver hair. Yellich walked up to the screen door and showed his ID.

  ‘That’s not a police badge,’ the woman snarled.

  ‘You can phone the Barrie Police for confirmation.’ Yellich spoke calmly.

  ‘I have my dogs.’

  ‘I can see.’ Yellich looked at the two Alsatians who growled and barked menacingly at him.

  ‘Well you look like a policeman, but the dogs will have your smart little ass if you try anything.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘Heather Ossetti.’

  The elderly woman groaned, ‘That name. . that woman. So long ago now, thirty years. . more. How did you know she lived here?’

  ‘St Saviours, they gave your home as her discharge address.’

  ‘I see. They were a bit free with that information.’

  ‘We assured them it was a murder inquiry. . so they relented. Your address was not freely given.’

  ‘A mu. . again!’

  ‘Again?’

  The woman ordered the dogs to be quiet and then having opened the screen door led Yellich into a dimly lit, cluttered sitting room. The dogs followed and sat at the woman’s feet, not once taking their eyes off Yellich.

  ‘You don’t seem to have a good memory of Heather Ossetti. It is Mrs Castle?’

  ‘Yes. Mary Castle. Well, would you have a good memory of her if she killed your husband. . or in your case, if she killed your wife?’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’ Yellich sat back in the chair. The pattern was, he thought, becoming well established, and as such he anticipated hearing of a murder which doubtless had looked like an accident.

  ‘She came here from the nuns. She was quiet, shy, reserved. . but that was an act.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I think so. The report about her was good, positive. . a quiet girl it said, hard working, but those nuns don’t stand any nonsense and it rapidly became clear to me that Heather Ossetti had realized that she couldn’t beat them and so she did the next best thing, she just didn
’t let the nuns at St Saviours get hold of her personality. You know the score; it was the old manipulation by obedience two step.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We were vetted by St Saviours. They don’t like discharging their girls just like that, that’s the quickest way to the red light district in Toronto.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So they employ halfway houses, hopefully to give them some experience of family life. Both the girls we had before went on to get married but Heather. . she was certainly frightened of the nuns but not of us. Pretty soon she was testing the limits, then pushing them, never enough for us to order her out but enough for my husband to say we’ve made a mistake with this one. We could have turned her out. . she was seventeen. . could have and we damn well should have.’

  ‘But you didn’t.’

  Mary Castle shook her head, sorrowfully. ‘No, it was the onset of winter so we decided to keep her until the spring. There is sometimes a false spring in Ontario, just when you think summer has arrived, and it’s then that the snow returns with a vengeance.’

  ‘Yes, it can be like that in the UK. So what happened?’

  ‘My husband died. Misadventure.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Just out there,’ she turned to her left, ‘out there at the rear of the house. Not out in the backwoods among the spruce, but just a few feet from safety.’

  ‘Tragic. . that really is. . very tragic.’

  ‘Yes. It makes it annoying as well as tragic. So close to home. Hell, he was at home, just outside the house and in his garden.’

  ‘So what was the story?’

  ‘It was the last of the winter. He went to work as usual that morning. . and just didn’t come home, or so we thought. He worked in Toronto and they still talk about the winter of 1944 in that city when thirty-eight people died in a snowstorm. It snowed hard that day like the winter of ’44. I was out that day visiting my sister. He wasn’t home when I returned but I wasn’t worried because Earl, that was my husband’s name, Earl Castle, Earl always said, “If the weather is bad don’t worry because I am a survivor. I’ll be holed up some place, so don’t worry.” I assumed he’d stayed in his office overnight. He’d done that before along with his co-workers. So the next morning I phoned the company he worked for and was told his car was in the car park all right but that was because he and a co-worker, who also lived in Barrie, had decided to share a car home. They had made it home in a blizzard. The co-worker dropped Earl off at the front gate and had driven on home to his house.’