‘But to return to Clement. He was a very difficult boy, really tested the family, but Father never raised a hand to him, which was another example of his contrary nature. He is remembered as a strict disciplinarian, but he’d let Clement get away with murder. He was abandoned.’
‘Clement?’
‘Yes. Terrible story. Just four years old and his mother just walked out on him, locked the door behind her and walked away. He was alone in that house for two days, so we later found out. Apparently a neighbour saw him standing at the window, and didn’t think much of it, but she saw him again six hours later, still standing at the window as if waiting for someone to return. She knocked on the door, couldn’t get an answer, called the police, and little Clement Boyce went into care.’
‘Horrible story.’
‘It is, isn’t it? He was two years in a succession of foster homes and children’s homes before we adopted him. I never knew why we adopted him—I don’t mean Clement particularly, but why Father would want to adopt at all.’ Carolyne Drover leaned forward again, this time to pick up the poker, with which she stirred the coals. ‘We never were offered an explanation for that. Anyway, Clement couldn’t bear being left alone, especially in the early years, and thought he was being abandoned when he wasn’t. By the time he was a teenager, we used to dread him coming home from school. He’d just suck out of the family, demand and demand and demand, break things, bully my younger brother, but complained like mad if my older brother thumped him. He wanted, and got, expensive things. My poor mother despaired but Father was adamant, he said you can’t unadopt once you’ve adopted—that was it, no going back. Mother eventually began to refer to Clement as “the Cuckoo”. We were walking one winter’s day, a clean, crisp day, by the river, and she said, “We’ve taken a cuckoo into our nest.” And I saw the image in my head, Clement pushing the natural children to one side, growing enormous, his beak permanently open, and Father just feeding him goodies. It’s an image that stays with me to this day.’
‘What became of him eventually?’
‘That I don’t know. Chief Inspector, and if you do locate him I would be interested to find out.’
‘But he left the family.’
‘It’s our skeleton in the closet.’ She fixed Hennessey with a stare, and held a silence. ‘It was Father’s policy to introduce the boys to the world of business, the family business. I was to marry and make my own way, doubtless with a generous dowry, but to marry out none the less.’ She paused again. ‘I did meet a man. We were soulmates, we could communicate by being quiet, you know, sitting in silence but still understanding each other… He was drowned. He went white-water rafting in Austria. He…well…’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘There was just never anyone else after that. Plenty of offers, some genuine, some nakedly greedy for Father’s money, but no one could replace Julian. I could not give myself fully in marriage to another man, I would just have resented him for not being Julian. I would have resented our children for not being Julian’s. I know myself well enough to know that I couldn’t commit to another man, and going into marriage holding something back is not the correct attitude.’
‘A brave decision, if I may say.’
‘Fortunately, I had the means to make that decision, financially speaking. Had I been born into poverty, and had I no qualifications, I might have had to accept a second-choice husband as a necessary means of survival. But that was not my lot, and so here I am, not unhappy, and with warm memories of a lovely man.’
Hennessey allowed a moment’s pause and then asked about the aforementioned skeleton in the closet.
‘Oh yes. Well, Clement, he had a tendency to steal, a sneak-thief, things would be noticed missing: bits of Mother’s jewellery, items of value. Eventually Clement was suspected and Mother complained to Father, but Father was adamant that Clement should remain in the family. Father took the boys into the company, and Clement, at his own request, was allowed a job in Accounts; this was really no more than a summer-vacation job before he went to university. In short, he embezzled money.’
‘Ah…’
‘In essence, it was quite a simple…scam, is that the word?’
‘It’ll do,’ Hennessey said softly.
‘What he did was to open a business account with a bank, called it…something, but not his real or adoptive name, something like Yorkshire Stationery or some such, and he would invoice the company for large quantities of paper which were nonexistent. Having a job in Accounts, he authorised cheques to his company. But he got greedy; our senior accountant made enquiries on his own and reported the matter to Father. That element of betrayal was the thing that reached Father. Clement was then eighteen years of age, so he was invited to leave the household.’
‘Invited?’
‘Told, then. He took it badly, saw it as yet another abandonment, but didn’t see how he had brought it on himself. He attempted to rationalise it, saying that he was doing the job of an accountant but paid peanuts, and he only took what he thought was fair, so as to increase his income to that of an accountant.’
‘I’ve come across that sort of thinking before,’ Hennessey said. ‘It’s not uncommon among criminals; it’s the sort of mentality that people subscribe to when they want to justify their actions—only burgling houses of people who have insurance, for example.’
‘How could they know who’s insured?’
‘Exactly, but the assumption is that a large house is an insured house, and therefore it’s all right to turn the windows.’
‘A dangerous attitude.’
‘Very. You can find justification for anything with that attitude.’
‘Clement might have learned good manners and social graces from us and from his school, but that “survive at all costs” attitude, that “me alone against the world”, that was in him when he came and it never left him. Adopting him was a disaster. With the benefit of hindsight and with all the advantage of middle age, I can see now that while we offered him acceptance, his attitude to the family was exploitative.’
‘And he left?’
‘Eventually, but not without pleading for another chance, and putting on an impressive show of remorse, which cut no ice with Mother and Father, but yes, he went. Last seen heading east, to Leeds and a place on the university’s accountancy course during which time he lived on a grant. From that point all contact was severed; we never heard from him again. And there was no sense of loss, no sense of a vacuum left behind in our family. He was part of our lives for twelve years and caused a lot of headaches, but he left nothing of himself behind. His engagement with our family was superficial, emotionally speaking. He came, he took, he went.’
‘Not a good experience?’
‘A sense of contamination, really, I suppose he left that behind.’
Driving back to York with Yellich at the wheel, Hennessey broke the silence.
‘The man known as Quinlan by the BMW dealership…’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘How was he described, appearance-wise?’
‘Tall, well built, light-coloured hair.’
‘Personality?’
‘Pukka, but he would chat to the crew, gave one mechanic some good advice about income for his later years. The mechanic spoke highly of him.’
‘That’s what I was afraid of.’ Hennessey glanced to his left and followed the flight of a heron across a field towards a stream. ‘Andrew Quinlan, you see, was short and dark-haired, without public-school manners because he had grown up in a children’s home.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘So…’
‘The last time Clement Drover and Andrew Quinlan were known to be together was when they stayed on for a few weeks in a terraced house in Leeds which they had shared with other undergraduates. The two others left after finals to return home, but Quinlan and Drover carried on living there. Then Quinlan got a job, and Drover seemed to disappear, having failed his degree. No one knew what
became of him.’
‘Solemn, boss. Very solemn.’
‘So if we assume that Drover is a missing person…’
‘Or Quinlan?’
‘Yes, or Quinlan; one or the other is missing. We don’t need to feed the information into H.O.L.M.E.S. to be told what to do.’
‘We don’t, do we, boss?’
‘What’s H.O.L.M.E.S.?’ Sarah Yellich nestled into her husband as they sat together on the settee watching mid-evening television and sharing a bottle of wine.
‘A computer program. It stands for Home Office Local Major Enquiry System. Feed in information about a crime and it will print out suggestions, the program being written on the basis of similar crimes that have been investigated. And the boss was right: we don’t need to be told to look under the floorboards of the last known address of a missing person.’
‘Is that what you’ll be doing?’
‘Yes, tomorrow. Courtesy call to the West Yorkshire Police—they’ll have to be present, it’s now their case as much as ours, joint-forces investigation. Our enquiries now point to a murder on their turf.’
Sarah shuddered. ‘Such a young man…and all those years ago.’
Yellich held her tightly. She was finely built with short, dark hair; he felt for her vulnerability. He felt very, very protective of her. And also of his son, presently upstairs, sleeping soundly.
George Hennessey sat at home in front of a glowing coke fire, Oscar at his feet, reading further the account of the Peninsular War as he let his dinner settle. At 9 p.m. he closed the book and said, ‘Walk?’, to which Oscar responded with a bark and a run in tight circles. He took Oscar for a mile up the Thirsk Road to a small copse, and let him explore the copse for approximately fifteen minutes while he eyed the night sky, with clouds scudding across the moor, and thought, albeit without the practised eye of a countryman, that the weather would hold, that there would be no rain that night. He walked the mile home with Oscar, who was a more reluctant walking partner than he had been on the outward leg.
Ensuring that the mongrel had sufficient food and water to sustain him overnight, that the rear door was locked but the dog flap open, Hennessey packed an overnight bag and drove to Skelton, north of York. He parked his car at the kerb outside a half-timbered, mock-Tudor detached house. He walked up the gravel drive and the front door was opened before he knocked on it.
‘You told me that gravel was the best burglar deterrent.’ The slender woman gave a warm smile of welcome. ‘And you were right.’ She stepped aside as Hennessey entered the house and walked into the kitchen, where Diane and Fiona looked up and said hello to him once before readdressing harnesses and stirrups, all of which had to be soaped and polished.
‘We’re entering Samson in an event on Saturday,’ Louise D’Acre explained, and turned to the sink, where the metal parts of the bridle were being washed. ‘Help yourself to tea.’
Hennessey made himself a cup of tea and carried it through to the lounge, where shortly afterwards a worried-looking Daniel found him. Daniel carried a school exercise book and sought help with his maths homework. By making much use of the printed example and applying logic, Hennessey surprised himself by finding his way through the maze, and between them he and Daniel completed the assigned tasks successfully. Presently the house calmed down, the polished and soaped bridles were stacked in the hall, and the children ran backwards and forwards along the landing from their bedrooms to their bathroom (the house having two, one for adults and the other designated for the children’s use), and then all was silent. Hennessey and Louise sat in the kitchen looking into each other’s eyes until Hennessey broke the silence by saying, ‘It’s quietened down now; shall we go up?’
FRIDAY, 8th APRIL
Hennessey and Yellich stood back and let the officers of the West Yorkshire Police lead. It was, after all, their case.
‘I don’t know…’ the smoothly dressed, bejewelled man of Leeds and Bradford Rents stammered. ‘I can’t give you permission. I’ll have to ask head office, and I’m sure they’ll demand a warrant to enter the property.’
The senior of the two West Yorkshire detectives, a man who had introduced himself as Inspector Tom Tony’ Shetland, reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out a folded piece of paper, which he dropped on to the young man’s desk. ‘Read and weep, sunshine,’ he said, ‘read and weep.’
‘Do you have keys for the property?’ asked Detective Sergeant Robert ‘Bob’ Sale, also of the West Yorkshire Police. ‘Or do we kick the door in?’ Sale had a cold, hard attitude, so Hennessey thought.
‘No…there’ll probably be students there to open the door for you, but we have spare keys.’ He stood, walked to a metal filing cabinet and opened the doors to reveal many keys on many hooks, all neatly labelled in rows.
‘Well, any resident in the house will have to find alternative accommodation, if we find what we think we are going to find. How many properties do you manage? Those keys…’
‘Yes.’ The man allowed his voice to fall away as a double-decker bus whined to a halt at the Hyde Park lights. This office, 150 properties, Bradford about the same, Sheffield and Hull about half that each, but we hope to expand in those cities.’ He groped for a key.
‘I bet you do,’ Sale snarled. ‘My eldest has just started at Manchester, and I’ve seen what she’s paying for what. An awful lot for very little. Student letting is a very nice little earner if you haven’t got a conscience.’
‘I…’ the young man stammered, but fell silent and handed the keys to Inspector Shetland.
In the car, Shetland said, ‘Both mine went to university, that they had reasonable accommodation for reasonable rent.’
‘Private landlord?’ Sale asked. He was tall and slender.
‘Yes.’ Shetland was a man of bulk, but Hennessey and Yellich also found him warm and humorous. Hennessey found it easy to see them playing good cop/bad cop with a suspect. ‘Fair rents for dry, safe houses.’
The car pulled up outside 278 Brudenell Road, and a van containing uniformed officers pulled up behind it. Shetland walked calmly and confidently up to the front door and knocked on it. He turned to Sale and then to Hennessey and Yellich. ‘Only 10 a.m., it’ll be a bit early for them, bless ‘em. Just wait until they get into the world of work: they won’t know what’s hit ‘em.’ He banged on the door with his fist.
‘Minute…’ The voice came from deep within the terraced house and sounded frail and weak. And, as if keeping a promise, about sixty seconds later the door was opened by a pale, somewhat sickly-looking youth. He was barefoot and wore jeans and a T-shirt; he blinked at the officers from deep-set eyes under a mop of black hair.
‘Police,’ said Shetland.
‘Oh, yes. What’s it about?’
‘We have a warrant to search this house.’
‘Search? We don’t do drugs, not in this house.’
‘Relieved to hear it, son, but we aren’t looking for drugs.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ Shetland pushed past the youth and the other officers, plain-clothed and uniformed, followed him in.
‘Please come in,’ said the youth sarcastically as the officers walked past him.
Shetland walked down the hallway to what was clearly a communal area with a kitchen off. It was carpeted and had an armchair, a settee, a TV set, posters on the wall, overflowing ashtrays and mugs half full of cold coffee. Shetland turned to Sale: ‘How’s this compared to your daughter’s lodgings?’
‘S’good, wouldn’t mind her in this.’ Sale called back to the youth who stood in the hall surrounded, consumed even, by large men in blue uniforms. ‘What do you pay for this, son?’ The youth told him. ‘That’s less than what my daughter pays for a damp hen coop.’ He looked round him. ‘First day I get off, I’m going over there; sort something out for her.’
‘Right. How many people in this house, son?’
‘Eight.’
‘All at home?’
‘Friday…yes, think
so. No, Clive would have stayed over at his girlfriend’s. Me and six others right now.’
‘Right. Well, go and wake the six others up, tell them to get their tails down here a.s.a.p.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The youth ran up the stairs and Hennessey heard a voice say, ‘What’s up, Brian?’
Brian replied, ‘The house is full of cops.’
‘Oh no, my stuff!’
‘Quiet,’ said Brian. ‘Help me wake the others.’
In the communal room Shetland said, ‘No drugs? Pulleth ye the other one, it jangles passing merrie.’
Presently all seven of those in residence stood in front of Tom Shetland, looking hungover and confused.
‘Now listen.’ Shetland spoke solemnly. ‘I’m going to say this once; listen, do as you’re told, do not ask a single question. Understand?’
The seven young people nodded.
‘All right. Now this house is a crime scene. We have a warrant to search it, and search it we will. It is being searched in respect of a crime suspected of occurring thirty years ago, so none of you are suspects.’
There was an audible sigh of relief.
‘What I want you to do is collect your belongings, as much as you can carry, and leave the house, because you won’t be coming back here, not for a while. If any of you is a friend of “Clive” then collect his stuff as well and take it with you. Where you go, I don’t care; you know your contacts, you know what the university accommodation people can do for you. You know what Leeds and Bradford Rents can do. It’s likely that we’ll be confining our search to the cellar, if this house has a cellar.’
‘It has.’ A tall youth pointed to the door behind Shetland.
‘I see. Beneath the floorboards, the attic and the garden or back yard of this house. But we may also go in the upstairs rooms, so if you do have an illicit substance then take it with you. And that is the police doing you a favour in anticipation of your instant and unquestioning co-operation.’
After the Flood Page 15
