‘There’s no investigating to be done. Quinlan did it. Left me for dead.’
‘Why did he attack you?’
‘To silence me.’
‘To silence you?’
‘Aye. I lied for him some years back. Ten years ago—no, more, more than ten years. I told the police he was with me all one evening. He gave me a couple of thousand pounds for the favour.’
‘But he wasn’t with you?’
‘No.’ Harris slowly shook his head.
‘Do you know why he wanted the alibi?’
‘No. He didn’t tell me, said it was better if I didn’t know.’
‘Probably as well for you, really. You may be prosecuted for that, Mr Harris, I have to tell you that.’
‘That doesn’t matter. So long as you nail him. I keep quiet all these years, then he does this, tries to kill me. He actually apologised. He said, “Sorry, but I can’t take the risk,” then he plunged the knife into my chest.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘Odd-jobbing. That’s how I make my money. Go from door to door asking if there’s any odd jobs to be done. Being doing it a long time, twenty years; got a few regular customers. Met Quinlan that way. He asked me to dig a hole for him in the back garden of his house.’
‘Did he say what for?’
‘No.’
‘Again, that’s probably just as well for you.’
‘Did a few things for him over the years. He kept in touch when he moved to York, then I didn’t see him for years, then he turns up on the doorstep. I was alone, the students were up the pub. He must have been watching the house.’
‘Must have been.’
The recording light glowed a soft red. The twin cassettes spun slowly.
‘The time is five fifteen p.m., Tuesday, the 12th of April. I am Detective Chief Inspector Hennessey; this interview is being conducted in the premises of Micklegate Bar Police Station in the city of York. I am now going to ask the other people in the room to identify themselves.’
‘Detective Sergeant Yellich.’
‘Terence Ward, duty solicitor of Rees, Dickens and Mason.’
‘Clement Drover.’
‘Have to get used to that name again, won’t you, Mr Drover?’
Ward cleared his throat and shot a disapproving look towards Hennessey.
‘Mr Drover,’ Hennessey continued, ‘the issue of obtaining money by deception, while serious, especially since you have been doing it for in excess of twenty years, is relatively minor in this case. Now tell us what you know about the murder of Andrew Quinlan.’
‘No comment.’ He was a well-built man, cleanshaven and expensively dressed, with light-coloured hair and piercing blue eyes, reeking of aftershave.
‘And the murder of Marian Cox, Andrew Quinlan’s sister?’
‘No comment.’
‘And the murder of Amanda Dunney? Done to attempt to conceal the identity of Marian Cox’s remains.’
‘No comment.’
‘And the murder of Mary Wright, doubtless silenced because she was suspecting that you were not who you claimed to be?’
‘No comment. I was cleared of that murder, anyway. I had an alibi. Can’t pin that one on me.’ He had a smooth, self-assured manner.
‘And the attempted murder of Norman Harris? Yes, Mr Drover, he’s alive. The Leeds police are on their way to interview you about that incident. But he told me and my sergeant here that it was you that stabbed him. If your fingerprints are in his room, and if the bloodstained clothing that we found in your house should prove to be stained with his blood, then that is a watertight case against you. Premeditated. Attempted murder. You cannot say “No comment” if you choose to go in the witness box. In the witness box you have to answer questions, and you can begin to help yourself by answering mine.’
‘No comment.’
‘Norman Harris informed us that he lied to the police. He told us that there was no truth in the claim that you were with him on the night that Mary Wright was murdered. He lied to the police in exchange for £2,000. A drop in the ocean for you, but a princely sum for the likes of Norman “Odd Job” Harris.’
Drover remained silent.
‘Your alibi is blown. Drover. Mary Wright was strangled. No accidental death, no lesser crime of manslaughter there. It’s murder. What did you do? Go to her flat when you knew she’d be alone, entice her into your car with endless apologies and an invitation to a nightclub?’
‘No comment.’
Hennessey paused, leaned back in his chair. ‘It’s going to be “No comment” from you throughout this interview, isn’t it?’
‘No comment.’
Six months later, on a warm October afternoon, Hennessey and Yellich walked out of the sombre buildings of York Crown Court. Hennessey glanced up at Clifton Tower where, centuries earlier, when the tower was made of timber, the Jews of the city had been herded in and burned alive. There’s a sense of unfairness.’
‘Isn’t there, boss? But ten years for deception, a life sentence for murder and another life sentence for attempted murder, it’s a good result—still the same porridge, as you said once. He’ll be in his seventies before he breathes fresh air again, boss. If ever.’
‘But Andrew Quinlan, murdered before his life began, didn’t get justice; neither did his sister who wanted only to meet her long-lost brother. And Amanda Dunney, unpleasant woman that she may have been, she still deserved justice.’
‘The jury was right not to convict him for those murders, boss. We had no evidence to offer. A partial result is better than no result at all. Let me buy you a beer.’
Hennessey smiled. ‘Yes, thank you, Yellich, I’d like that. I’d like that very much indeed.’
At the same time that Hennessey and Yellich walked out of York Crown Court, a man was proving Detective Sergeant Pippa Booth wrong. Having fortified himself with more than his usual amount of whisky, Sydney Lepping, who lived in squalor in Hedon, who never ate on Sundays because the chip shop was shut, who displayed aggression towards the police but who had quickly melted and had keenly accepted the cigarettes offered to him by Pippa Booth, waited until the tide started to ebb and walked into the ice-cold, dark brown waters of the Humber. He forced himself onwards until the water was chest height, until he felt its chill penetrate his body, and then he flung himself forwards and started to swim.
After the Flood Page 20
