The Altered Case (11 page)

‘So good for digging graves,' Hennessey asked, ‘and also good for filling in of same?'

‘Ideal, in fact some of the larger local authorities have bought them for that purpose. They can do in less than an hour what a gravedigger would take a working day to do.'

‘We have an interest in a hole about three feet wide and up to six feet deep.'

‘So, a grave.' Bateman raised his eyebrows. ‘You were not joking?'

‘Nope.' Hennessey retained a serious expression. ‘Not joking at all. Police inquiries rarely are a laughing matter. You will shortly hear about it in the regional news bulletins and read about it in the press. I dare say it will be the talk of the local pubs this evening.'

‘I see. Well I live to the north of York so I won't hear anything in the pubs . . . but yes, three feet wide, six feet deep . . . that size hole is well within the capacity of that type of machine, the Bobcat 322.'

‘So what can you tell us about the other vehicles hired out about that time, particularly on that same day?'

Bateman leaned forward and read the ledger. ‘All larger types . . . scoopers, the ones used to lift grain into the back of bulk-carrying lorries, as I mentioned earlier . . . just the right time of year to hire those things out to the agricultural sector.'

‘So the cash hire stands out?'

‘Yes, yes, it does; not only is it the method of payment which makes it stand out but it is not the sort of machine we would hire to farmers in September.' Bateman leaned back in his chair. ‘It's a bit too close to harvest time for ditching.'

Hennessey sensed the beginning of a lead in the investigation. ‘And the hire charge is what you would expect, not unduly inexpensive or unduly expensive?'

‘No, it's about right.' Again Bateman consulted the ledger and turned the page back. ‘Look, here is a similar machine . . . a Bobcat 322, hired out in the previous March . . . that would be for clearing ditches . . . and the fee is the same, but . . . but you know there would be a huge cash deposit involved, so much more money would be involved than appears here in the ledger.'

‘There would?'

‘Oh yes, take it from me, gentlemen, take it from me.' Bateman smiled. ‘It is a necessary insurance against theft.'

‘Theft of plant?' Yellich confirmed.

‘Yes,' Bateman explained, ‘plant, you see, is in great demand and it is very expensive, with a long waiting list for new stuff, and about that time, just as we took over the business, there was a spate of plant thefts.'

‘Plant thefts as well . . .?'

‘As well.'

‘It's just that one of my officers interviewed a retired police officer who reported that thirty years ago there was a spate of car thefts, hence my comment of “as well”,' Hennessey explained. ‘I doubt they would have been linked.'

‘Doubt it too.' Bateman nodded. ‘Plant theft tends to involve organized crime, not teenagers looking for kicks. People . . . gangs would hire plant and just didn't return it, even when they left a deposit up to the value of a replacement machine because they could sell it for more than its value, even its value when brand new, because builders, especially overseas builders, will pay more than the list price of an earth mover if they can have it in a few days' time, rather than wait eighteen months for a new one.'

‘I see,' Hennessey replied quietly, ‘that explains a lot.'

‘Yes, and it helps the thieves that plant is very easy to conceal,' Bateman added. ‘Unlike stolen cars it is rarely driven on the public highway and when it is it is often only for a very short distance. Usually they are carried on roads on low loaders which are always street legal, or are kept on farms or building sites so they don't look out of place, or in the yard of a dodgy plant hire company . . . even less out of place. So anyway, we put a stop to that form of theft by charging a massive deposit, about twice what the vehicle would cost new, and when the word got round that we were doing that we got no more requests for cash hires.'

‘So we need to talk to Edward Evans. Where can we contact him?' Hennessey asked. ‘I assume he hasn't retired to Spain?'

‘No . . . no.' Bateman smiled. ‘He retired locally. He's a member of the York and Malton. They went early in life, just forty years old when they sold up and retired. He's a sprightly seventy now, very sprightly. I have found that people age at different rates. Mr Evans has retained much of his youth . . . even if only in his attitude.'

‘So, still
compos mentis
?'

‘Oh yes, he still has all his marbles.'

‘So,' Hennessey queried, ‘the York and Malton?'

‘Sounds like a building society, doesn't it?' Bateman mused. ‘In fact it's a golf club . . . very upmarket, him and his 1960s' Bentley. They are a right pair of characters, him and his old car.'

‘You sound like you belong to the same club,' Yellich commented.

‘I do . . . my family does.' Bateman shrugged. ‘So perhaps it's not so posh after all.'

Carmen Pharoah walked homewards and she did so slowly. She chose not to heed her colleagues' advice and ‘walk the walls' as the speediest way to transit the ancient city; rather, on that warm, September afternoon, she walked the pavements. Her route when she walked the pavements took her down Micklegate, over the Ouse Bridge, into Low Ousegate and left into busy commercialized Coney Street, thence on to Blake Street with its solid Victorian buildings, into the graceful curve of St Leonard's Place and finally to Bootham Bar and Bootham itself, perhaps a pleasant forty-five minute stroll, York being small as well as ancient. Yes . . . a car brought her North . . . not untrue, and she was pleased to have been able to explain to the warm and helpful Adrian Clough that her reply to his question was not facetious nor sarcastic. It was a car that had carried her husband's life away one night as he was crossing the road. He was late, the night was dark, the driver was drunk. Both she and her husband had been so very proud to be Afro-Caribbean employees of the Metropolitan Police. She a Detective Constable and he an accountant, both still in their twenties and both learning the great truth of her father-in-law's edict, ‘You're black, that means you've got to be ten times better to be just as good, ten times faster to remain level with the competition, ten times more intelligent to be just as brainy. ‘It is,' he had said, ‘just the way of it'.

It was little comfort to be told that he wouldn't have known anything, it was instantaneous, nor was it any comfort to know that the driver was to be prosecuted, ‘We'll throw the book at him'. It was not just that she had been robbed of the man she loved, and she knew him to be the only man she ever would love, but he had been robbed of his life . . . all that glittering future . . . his career, his fatherhood . . . all . . . all taken away so cruelly, the familial line which had come to an end, the children that will never be . . . and their children, and their children.

The guilt had come a few days later, the guilt of surviving, the sense of shame that she was alive and he was not, and with it the sense of a debt to be repaid, a penance to undertake and so she had transferred to the north, where it is cold in the winter, where the people are insular and do not like strangers. The sort of place where a stranger might get invited to take part in a game of darts, but only if they had been going to the pub every night for the last ten years. Here she had come, and here she will stay until she felt her debt had been fully repaid. She let herself into her small flat on Bootham and showered and changed into casual, comfortable clothes.

A car . . . a car, yes, it was that had brought her north to York.

It was Monday, 15.41 hours.

Tuesday, 11.10 hours – Wednesday, 01.10 hours

in which a jovial man in a time warp is encountered, Somerled Yellich makes a worrying connection and Thomson Ventnor is at home to the most urbane reader.

T
hird Georgian, thought Webster, as he and Ventnor slowly and purposefully approached the building, though he would stand corrected, fully conceding he was no architectural historian. It was, he thought, a proud and a confident-looking building, standing four square and solid with a protruding entrance way, the roof of which was supported by two large stone columns. The building was of three storeys, he noted, with a steeply angled roof. In front of the building was a wide expanse of pale pink gravel, which gleamed and glittered in the sunlight, and upon which were neatly parked motor cars of the ilk of Rolls Royce, Bentley, Porsche and Range Rover. Both officers saw what George Hennessey had meant when he had said, ‘Mind how you go, gentlemen, it's reportedly a posh golf club, very well-to-do'. It was thus with some tongue-in-cheek insolence, wholly approved of by a grinning Ventnor, that Webster parked the small two door police Ford between a Ferrari and Daimler. Leaving the car with one window wound partially down to allow the interior to ‘breathe', the two officers walked across the car park, noisily crunching the gravel surface, and entered the cool hotel-like interior of the clubhouse of the York and Malton Golf Club.

‘If you have identification, please, gentlemen?' The steward of the golf club wore a dark-coloured blazer with a military association badge on the breast pocket, a neatly pressed blue shirt and tightly knotted black tie, which was held to his shirt with a gold tiepin. He wore sharply creased grey flannel trousers and highly polished black shoes. His hair was close cropped and he was clean-shaven, smelling gently of aftershave. The steward was, guessed Ventnor, about fifty years of age, but he still enjoyed a trim and enviable athletic build. He inspected Ventnor's card closely but politely declined to look at Webster's saying that if one is genuine then so will be the other. Then he added, ‘Yes, gentlemen, Mr Edward Evans is indeed a member here,' speaking with a slight trace of a Welsh accent pronouncing ‘here' as ‘yur'.

‘Is he here at the moment?' Ventnor slid his warrant card back inside his jacket pocket and glanced around him at the highly polished wood surfaces of the furniture and the wall panels, and he savoured the scent of furniture polish.

‘I don't believe he is, sir,' the steward replied briskly. ‘He is expected, though. I do hope there is no trouble?'

‘Oh, always plenty of trouble.' Webster smiled, keeping eye contact with the serious-minded steward. ‘Enough to keep us gainfully employed, but we seek only to pick Mr Evans' brains. He is not under any suspicion, we can assure you.'

‘Yes,' Ventnor added, ‘you may rest easy on that score.'

‘I see.' the steward inclined his head. ‘I am relieved to hear that, for Mr Evans' sake as anyone else's. I have always found him to be a kindly gentleman, a little flamboyant and without the sense of reserve of the greater part of the membership, but kindly, and a gentleman of ethical steadfastness when it comes to the important things in life. I ask because the committee will not like the police coming to the clubhouse for any other reason than the reason you gentlemen have given.'

The police, thought Ventnor, can go anywhere we damn well please, and beside him he sensed Reginald Webster stiffen as he too contained his anger, but he said, ‘We seek only his advice on a matter, nothing more.'

The steward smiled. ‘Well, perhaps you two gentlemen would care to wait in the lounge? A tray of coffee or tea perhaps?'

‘Tea,' Ventnor replied, ‘tea for me, please.'

‘Same please,' Webster added. ‘Thank you.'

The steward showed the officers into the lounge of the clubhouse which they found looked out over the car park and the approach road beyond. The view being obtained through two rectangular sash windows which Ventnor estimated to be probably twelve feet high, reaching almost from floor to ceiling and each about three feet wide. The lounge was at that moment occupied by just six other members, all men, Webster noted, all reclining in leather armchairs, one or two of whom glanced at the officers once and then forgot them, but most of the members ignored Webster and Ventnor completely. In response to their icy reception, the two officers glanced at each other and smiled as they sat in a corner seat, near the door, in front of a highly polished low, circular, wooden table. A bar ran the length of the lounge opposite the windows and the elderly barman, in a white shirt, black tie and scarlet waistcoat, looked at the officers curiously. Ventnor and Webster sat in silence, growing to enjoy the library-like quiet which had developed in the room. It was, they felt, a silence of mutual respect rather than the highly stressed silence of things unsaid. It was, they found, a very relaxing atmosphere and both Webster and Ventnor saw then the attraction of spending a weekday afternoon at the golf club if one had the luxury of sufficient time to spare. A young woman in a long-skirted maid's outfit with a starched white apron approached Webster and Ventnor carrying a tray upon which was a large teapot, milk, two cups and saucers and a plate of biscuits. ‘With the compliments of the club, gentlemen,' she said as she lay the tray upon the circular table and then quietly withdrew.

Webster and Ventnor enjoyed the tea and biscuits whilst relaxing in the leather-bound armchairs looking out at the view the window offered.

‘Red Kite.' Webster indicated a bird wheeling above the field adjacent, to the right of the approach road, against a backdrop of blue sky.

‘I'll take your word for it.' Ventnor helped himself to another chocolate digestive biscuit, pleased that they were the darker, plain chocolate, variety. ‘It's a hawk of some sort though, that I can tell.'

‘It's the fan-shaped tail,' Webster advised, ‘that's how you can tell the Red Kite from other similar sized raptors.'

‘Didn't know you were a birdwatcher.' Ventnor reached for a copy of
Yorkshire Life
which lay on the wide window sill.

Webster also took a biscuit from the plate. ‘I'm not, not any more. I used to dabble when I was a teenager, so I still remember things, but I never got to see a Peregrine Falcon in flight. They're the fast jets of the avian world. They can fly at in excess of two hundred miles an hour. That's on the list of things to do before I sleep my final sleep . . . to see a Peregrine Falcon in flight.'