The Altered Case (16 page)

Wednesday, 09.30 hours

in which Somerled Yellich and Reginald Webster travel south, Thomson Ventnor meets a lady who is much befitted by means of upward social mobility and George Hennessey is at home to the too kind reader.

S
omerled Yellich and Reginald Webster took the East Coast Mainline service from York to London. Yellich, as the senior officer, sat facing the direction of travel with Webster sitting opposite him with his back to the southwards. They were, they felt, fortunate to be able to acquire seats on the east side of the train which, at any time after ten a.m. is the ‘shady side', thus their enjoyment of the view of passing landscape was not ruined by the glare of the sun. Upon arriving at King's Cross station, the officers, as all passengers, were amused by the jovial train manager announcing over the public address system, ‘Well, as you can see ladies and gentlemen, we have managed to find London', and continued expressing his hope that all customers had had a pleasant journey and urging people to ensure that they take all their belongings with them when they leave the train.

From King's Cross Yellich and Webster took the tube the short, two stop distance, to Camden. The distance in question they both accepted was walkable, easily so, but they both feared losing time by taking a wrong turn here and there, and were keen to keep their appointment. The officers duly arrived at 193A Delancey Street, NW1, a few minutes past midday, finding the address in question to be that of a Victorian era terraced property on four floors, set back from the pavement by just a matter of a few feet and which had, by its twin doorbells, been separated at some point into two independent properties.

Yellich pressed the doorbell above the name ‘Parr' which was displayed on a plastic tablet in black letters on a pearl-grey background. The front door of the house was opened within a matter of seconds by a middle-aged man. He was tall, almost as tall as the two officers and casually dressed in a blue tee shirt and denims, with his feet looking to be very comfortably encased in moccasins. His hair had greyed but was long and he wore it tied behind his head in a ponytail. He was, thought the officers, very Camden, very Camden, indeed. ‘Mr Yellich and Mr Webster?' He extended his right hand.

‘Yes, sir.' Yellich accepted the man's hand, finding Nigel Parr's handshake to be manly, firm, but not overly compressing. ‘I am DS Yellich. This is DC Webster.' Yellich showed Parr his ID as Parr and Webster engaged in a short shaking of hands.

‘You made good time, gentlemen.' Parr stepped to one side. ‘Please do come in.'

‘Yes, sir.' Yellich stepped over the threshold of the property. ‘It is an excellent service from York to London, just above two hours.'

‘Well, do come in, please, gentlemen. A nice day for September though rain is forecast, or “called” as my Canadian friends would say.'

Reginald Webster followed Yellich into the corridor which he found surprisingly narrow and where he noticed mail was left neatly piled on the floor. At the far end of the corridor was a door which was at the moment shut and had the number 193B attached to it. As if reading Webster's mind, Nigel Parr explained, ‘We'd like a table in the hall, even just a small one to place the post on, but as you see, there just isn't room. Even a small table would not allow an adult to squeeze past it, so the mail goes on the floor. All we can do is to undertake not to walk on each other's mail.'

‘I see,' Webster replied. ‘I dare say that's as good a reason as any for the post to be left on the floor.'

‘Yes.' Parr closed the front door. ‘I visited a house in Glasgow once; it was a conversion, like this house, but very upmarket and very spacious, very, very spacious. Sufficient space for a huge nineteenth-century dining table to be accommodated in the hallway upon which all mail could be laid to await collection.'

‘Nice,' Webster commented.

‘It was, but it had a downside. Apparently someone buzzed into one of the flats, so as to gain entry upon some subterfuge or other and the beautiful table was stolen. I recall it from a previous visit; large, beautifully made, highly polished. It could have been Georgian, but I thought Victorian. Anyway, a team of wide boys with a vehicle clearly found out that it was there and it vanished . . . in broad daylight. It was there when the residents went to work that morning and when they returned that evening the thing had vanished, just four lighter-coloured marks on the floor where the four legs had rested without being moved for the previous half century.'

‘Damn shame,' Webster lamented. ‘That sort of theft is always very annoying.'

‘Yes.' Parr shook his head in agreement. ‘Annoying, as you say. The residents didn't think the theft was worth reporting. Well, do come in gentlemen.'

Parr led Yellich and Webster into his part of the conversion, which was accessed by a door to the right of the door labelled 193B, his door being labelled 193A. The door accessed a small vestibule, beyond which was a sitting room at street level. Quite small, thought Yellich as he entered, but he found it tastefully decorated with comfortable-looking furniture and with books placed in neat order on shelves each side of the original sash window, and a Galileo thermometer on the mantelpiece about the fireplace. The room though was polluted with the sound of traffic on Delancey Street.

‘You get used to the noise from the road,' Parr said, again as if reading the thoughts of his visitors. ‘The fumes are worse than the noise. Can't open the basement door because carbon monoxide drifts in.'

‘That's dangerous,' Webster commented.

‘Yes.' Parr nodded. ‘especially since that is where I sleep. My bedroom is below this room . . . downstairs front, the street side. The house is all upside down, well my part is. I live above the bedroom and I go downstairs to bed each evening. In the summer it gets very hot down there but I can't open the door to let heat out because fumes get in. It's pretty well burglar proof, even cat proof, but fumes know no boundaries. On hot nights it can be difficult to breath in the front rooms of the house but fortunately I have a small back garden. I can leave the back door open an inch or two, sufficient to let air in but keep the gap narrow enough to keep the neighbour's cats out. I am able to ventilate the house by such means and thus can survive the summers. So . . . can I offer you gentlemen something? Tea? Coffee?'

‘Tea, please,' Yellich replied, ‘that would be most welcome.'

‘And most appreciated,' added Webster.

‘Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Jasmine, Lapsang?'

‘Whatever.' Yellich smiled. ‘We really don't know one tea from another.'

‘We're just used to canteen tea,' Webster explained.

‘English Breakfast, I think.' Nigel Parr looked out of the window to the sky above the roofs of the buildings on the opposite side of Delancey Street. ‘It is an English Breakfast tea sort of day methinks. Please –' he indicated the chairs with an upturned palm – ‘please do take a pew.' He then turned and walked softly out of the room.

Yellich sank deeply into the wide armchair beside the bookshelf to the right of the window. Webster sat on the settee which stood against the adjacent wall facing the window. Glancing at the titles of the books he gauged that Nigel Parr was not a learned man. There was, he noted, a very wide range of books indicated by their titles, but none seemed to him to have any depth, many were even relics of childhood days. Presently Parr returned with a tray of tea and a generous plate of bread rolls and pâté.

‘Oh my.' Yellich welcomed the unexpected food. ‘And we reproached ourselves for not getting some breakfast on the train.'

Parr grinned. ‘Well, tuck in, gentlemen, it's about lunchtime anyway.' He poured the tea from a large white teapot decorated with a floral pattern, and served it correctly, Yellich observed, unadulterated with either milk or sugar. He handed a steaming cup of tea first to Yellich and then a second cup to Webster. He took a third cup for himself and sat in the vacant armchair. ‘So –' he scented the tea before sipping it – ‘how can I help you, gentlemen? How can I be of assistance to the Vale of York Police?'

‘It is in respect of your late parents and their daughters, as I explained on the phone,' Yellich replied.

‘It could only be that.' Parr sighed. ‘That is the only connection this family ever had with York. The family who disappeared, the family who vanished without a trace. The press gave the story an awful lot of coverage, as they would do I suppose. Individuals who vanish are worrying enough, but an entire family at the same time, that was and still is newsworthy . . . and in the middle of the city, no less. I have agonized during many sleepless nights. It's the not knowing, you see, it is that which is difficult.'

‘Yes, sir.' Yellich held eye contact with Parr. ‘Yes, that I can so well imagine.' And then fell silent as a red double-decker bus whirred loudly past, causing the lightweight ornaments to rattle and shake.

‘You are not used to noise from the street?' Again, Nigel Parr seemed to read the officers' thoughts.

‘Not I.' Webster smiled. ‘We live in a small village adjacent to woodland.'

‘A home in the country.' Parr inclined his head. ‘Very nice.'

‘Well . . . no,' Webster explained, ‘it's actually a new-build housing estate which has been tacked on to a village, but it is still very quiet . . . wood pigeons during the day and an owl during the night.'

‘I too live in a quiet area,' Yellich advised.

‘I see.' Parr reached for a bread roll. ‘But, as I said, you get used to the noise and I like living in the city, so I choose to put up with it and other things besides. So . . . my parents . . . I read about skeletons being found in a field in the York area; are you putting two and two together?'

‘Let's just say we are moving in that direction,' Yellich replied.

‘Well I have always thought they were murdered.'

‘That's interesting.' Yellich sipped his tea. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘It's just that it is the most likely explanation, don't you think? If indeed the only explanation? Four adults, they vanish in the middle of a city. I mean, it isn't as though they were particularly adventurous and disappeared whilst rafting down the Blue Nile or whilst trekking in the Himalayas.' Parr paused. ‘They were . . . we were, Camden people, well into the Camden Town lifestyle, you see; café culture and live music in bars . . . small, local restaurants, walking along the canal towpath where folk live in houseboats, and we hunted for bargains in Camden Lock Market, so misadventure is unlikely. An accident? Well, if an accident had befallen them their bodies would have been found. So foul play, it has to be a question of foul play, by process of elimination. So I have concluded that murder is the cause of death and the motive for person or persons unknown making a thorough job of hiding the bodies is also unknown. It's really quite easy to make a human body disappear.'

‘You think?' Webster also helped himself to a bread roll.

Parr shrugged. ‘Well I wouldn't argue with two police officers but I do believe it isn't difficult . . . if you have privacy and time . . . two big “ifs”. I watch crime programmes on TV, fiction and non-fiction.'

‘I see,' Yellich growled. ‘I often think that such programmes put dangerous ideas into people's minds.'

Webster sipped his tea. ‘In fact it is actually very difficult to get away with murder. We throw all our resources into solving that crime above all the others, and people so often trip themselves up, or are caught out by a microscopic drop of blood.'

‘Or,' Yellich added, ‘somebody, a fellow conspirator, sees a chance for themselves and they turn Queen's Evidence.'

‘Always a sensible thing to do,' Webster agreed and held eye contact with Parr whilst he did so, noticing Parr to have become very serious-looking.

Yellich also noticed Parr's sudden serious demeanour and he told himself, Look at the in-laws before you look at the outlaws, and their visit to Nigel Parr of Camden Town took on a new, unforeseen significance. Nigel Parr had suddenly become very, very interesting.

‘But, yes,' Yellich continued, ‘you are in fact correct; we do believe that we have located your parents and sisters.'

‘Oh,' Parr groaned.

‘Yes, as you read, a grave in a field just outside York. We learned your name from the file. Seems lucky that you did not travel north with them.'

‘Yes. I was on holiday with friends at the time on the south coast, out of touch. It was my mother's brother who informed the police they were missing . . . collected their possessions.'

‘Mr Verity?'

‘Yes . . . Uncle George, sadly no longer with us.'

‘I see. The remains were found with the skeletal remains of a young woman who we have identified as being one Michelle Lemmon. Do you know anything about her?'

‘Oranges,' Nigel Parr gasped, ‘oh, not Oranges as well. She was going north, returning home. She asked for a lift when she found out that the family was going north, not just north but to York, no less, which is where she came from. She asked if she could go with them. I just assumed Oranges went home and rejoined her parents.'

‘Oranges?' Webster queried.

‘It was her nickname, from the nursery rhyme. You know the one . . . “gay go up and gay go down, to ring the bells of London town”?'

‘Of course.' Yellich beamed. ‘“Oranges and Lemons sing the bells of St Clements”.'

‘That's the one,' Parr confirmed.

‘“You owe me five farthings say the bells of St Martin's”,' Webster enjoined, sensing the need to introduce a slight sense of jocularity into the occasion, so as to gloss over the officers' sudden suspicion about Nigel Parr.

‘“When will you pay me? Say the bells of Old Bailey”. Yes,' Parr continued, ‘that is the reference . . . and when she came to live with us we called her “Oranges” after her surname of Lemmon . . . spelled differently than the fruit but pronounced the same. So her nickname was an obvious choice and she didn't mind at all. So the name stuck.'