The Altered Case (3 page)

‘I take your point.' Webster laid his notepad on the table. ‘But an accountant, with certified or chartered status is still deserving of respect.'

‘Our lives seem to have mirrored each other in many ways,' Allerton continued, ‘but it was only once we started to meet for a beer that we talked about childhood days . . . what happened to mutual friends . . . not all of whom are still with us; misadventure, natural causes . . . that's always worrying. We can cope with our old classmate Charlie Hopper getting killed in a car crash but hearing that Alex Ball, who was also in our form at Hoytown, had succumbed to cancer . . . well that made us stop talking for a few seconds.'

‘But it's only latterly that we got to talk about
that
day.' Middleton brought the conversation back on track. ‘It was myself who mentioned it initially but we both wanted to talk about it . . . and so we did . . . and then we both realized we had to report it, just in case it was what it appeared to be . . . even if we are thirty years late . . . and so here we are.'

‘And here you are,' Webster echoed, ‘here you are, but thirty years later is still not too late and that is the main thing.' He tapped his notepad with his ballpoint. ‘Can I ask you to wait here, please, just for a minute or two. I'll have to go and talk to my senior officer about this.'

‘They are not a pair of game-playing fantasists, I hope?' Hennessey replied after listening to what he thought was Webster's succinct delivery. It had been, he thought, very clear, his facts were given in logical order and very precisely.

‘I don't think so, sir.' Webster sat in the chair in front of Hennessey's desk. ‘I wondered if that might be the case, but they seem genuine. They are both professional men in their mid forties, both family men, so they claim, and in fact do have just that stamp about them, by their speech, their mannerisms and their dress. They really do seem to have too much to lose by playing silly games.' Webster paused. ‘They're the genuine article. I'm sure of it.'

‘Very well, I think you had better ask them to take you there. Take two constables.' George Hennessey ran his liver-spotted fingers through his silver hair. ‘Yes . . . two should be sufficient.'

‘Yes, sir.' Webster stood. ‘Two constables.'

‘And separately,' Hennessey added as an afterthought as Webster was leaving his office.

‘Sir?' Webster turned back to face Hennessey. ‘Separately?'

‘Yes,' Hennessey confirmed. ‘I mean separate the two gentlemen once you are near the location, and have each of them take you there independently, that is to say take you there in the absence of the other. It will strengthen the credibility of their story if they identify the same location.'

‘Yes, sir, understood.' Webster turned and walked out of Hennessey's office.

Independently, and with what Webster thought to be notable precision, and clarity and confidence, both Cyrus Middleton and Tony Allerton each placed their fingertip on the same part of the Ordnance Survey Map and indicated a location which was close to the village of Catton Hill on the A19 York to Selby Road, some two miles south of the city. It was, thought Webster, just the sort of distance that two fifteen-year-old boys would wander from their homes in Fulford, that being the catchment area of Hoytown Comprehensive School, during their last summer of innocence. It would have been a walk across flat meadows by two lads who were both buoyed up by their friendship and the recent school holiday in Scotland. Following the pinpointing of the location where the disturbed soil was observed both Middleton and Allerton were driven by Webster to the village of Catton Hill. They were followed there by two constables in a marked car.

Reginald Webster lived close to Selby and had thus often driven through Catton Hill on his way to and from Micklegate Bar police station, but he had never spared it a second glance nor even turned off the A19 to explore the village and its side streets. It had always been for him a settlement to drive through on his way to and from home and his place of employment. Upon reaching the village, he turned left and on to the road which was signposted towards Wheldrake and parked the car at the side of the kerb. Webster, glancing about him, saw that Catton Hill was a compact village with the buildings on either side of the road being conjoined. One or two of the buildings, unusually for the north of England, he noticed, had thatched roofs. It seemed to Webster to have changed little over the years and had not fully encompassed the twenty-first century. The telephone box, for example, was of the traditional red Gilbert Scott design. The shops were small and seemed to be independently owned, rather than belonging to a supermarket chain. There were two pubs which Webster could see from where he had parked the car, both almost directly opposite each other, and both had names which spoke of their rural location: one was called The Black Bull, and across the road from it, slightly further towards Wheldrake, was The Three Horseshoes. Webster turned to Tony Allerton who sat in the rear seat of the car. ‘If you could kindly remain here, please, sir.'

‘Inside the car?' Tony Allerton asked with a slight note of protest distinct in his voice. ‘The car is uncomfortably warm in this weather. I mean the inside is uncomfortably warm. May I stand on the pavement?'

‘Of course, sir.' Webster opened the driver's door and stepped out of the vehicle. ‘But if you would remain close to the car with one of the constables?'

‘Of course.' Allerton stepped out of the car and breathed deeply. Middleton also stepped out of the car and stood close to Allerton.

‘So . . .' Webster addressed Middleton, ‘if you could accompany me and one of the constables, or rather if you could show me and the constable where the area of recently dug soil was, as best you can recall?'

‘That's a better way of putting it.' Middleton grinned. ‘Because I rather think you'll be accompanying me.'

‘Yes.' Webster returned the grin. ‘I dare say that I have just become used to asking people to accompany me.'

‘It's down here.' Middleton pointed along the road, where the pavement was dotted with villagers, adults shopping, and children running or riding bicycles. The police presence attracted a few curious glances but not any hostility that Middleton could detect. ‘I'll do my best to get us there. It won't be a fool's errand but the memory does play its tricks over time, and thirty years . . . that's nearly half a lifetime.'

‘We'll allow for that, sir.' Webster felt the warm glow of the sun upon his head and face. ‘Summer is not giving in without a struggle.'

‘Suits me,' Middleton growled. ‘I care not for winter . . . those early dark nights.'

Webster beckoned one of the constables to join him and Middleton. ‘You really did do the right thing in coming to us,' he said as he waited for the constable to join them. ‘As I said in the police station, thirty years is not too late.' Webster's eye was then caught by a horse-drawn trap being driven along the road by a ruddy-faced young man with a cheery smile and large, farm-worker's hands, who doffed his flat cap as he and the chestnut pony passed, the hooves making a measured clop, clop, clop sound which echoed in the narrow funnel of the buildings on either side of the road. It could, thought Webster, have been an image from the nineteenth or even eighteenth century.

‘We didn't do it lightly.' Middleton was also drawn to the image and sound of the horse and trap as it passed. ‘I'll certainly show you the best I can, but I am now very pleased that we came forward, even if it does turn out that a farmer buried his dog, though if it was a dog it would have to be one of those horrible Japanese hunting dogs, the sort of dog that's as big as a donkey.'

‘Well,' Webster replied, ‘it's always as well to be safe rather than sorry, and you and Mr Allerton are clearly very well intentioned. We won't be prosecuting you for wasting police time even if your suspicions prove to be unfounded. Shall we go?'

‘Yes, of course.' Middleton walked along the pavement with Webster at his side and with the younger of the two constables walking a respectable distance behind them. Middleton and Webster, followed by the constable, walked on in silence until they came to the outskirts of the village and began to enter open country. Soon after leaving the village, Middleton stopped walking and pointed to a pathway which led off the north side of the road at ninety degrees. ‘Down there,' he said. The track, Webster noted, was still muddy in places from that morning's rain, but was, he saw, mainly dry. The two officers walked behind Middleton as he and they sidestepped the occasional pool of muddy water. Cyrus Middleton followed the path until he entered a small wood and found a second pathway within the trees.

‘Confess I don't remember this path,' Cyrus Middleton commented over the bird song, ‘but it's the right place. Yes . . . this is the wood we found . . . there is the stone gatepost.' Middleton pointed to what could forgivably be taken for a tree stump covered in ivy had it not been for its complete uniformity of width, flat top and square shape and the two rusted hinges protruding from one side. ‘There clearly was a road or a driveway here at some point in time. I can't remember seeing any sign of a derelict house at all, but this is the wood all right.' He pressed forward, and still following the path, he eventually emerged into a field from which the crop had recently been harvested. There he stopped as Webster and the constable joined him. ‘It's like going back in time –' Cyrus Middleton brushed a fly from his face – ‘same field and the same time of year. Astounding.'

‘Good.' Webster glanced to and fro across the field. It was, he saw, a wholly rural setting with another field adjoining the field in which they stood, although the steady and relentless hum of traffic on the A19 could be distinctly heard. ‘So where was the patch of soil, if you can remember?'

‘Over there.' Middleton pointed to his left. He turned and walked in that direction and stopped when he was about ten feet from the corner of the field. ‘About here . . . yes, yes . . . it was about here. Me and Tony came out of the wood about here.' He pointed to a dense stand of shrubs at the edge of the wood. ‘The path we followed just now wasn't there when we came here that day, but I remember we left the wood about here, just where the patch of soil was and I said, “Look, someone's been buried” and we both laughed, and then smoke from the stubble being burned in that field –' he pointed to his right – ‘came over here and we began to choke and then we moved hurriedly in that direction –' he pointed to his left – ‘looking for breathable air . . . but it was here . . . just about here. I'm sorry I can't be more accurate.'

‘No matter.' Webster looked at the ground though it told him nothing. He saw only stubble protruding from the rich brown soil. ‘In fact, too precise a location would suggest to us that you and Mr Allerton had contrived something.'

A blue tractor pulled an empty trailer along a hidden sunken lane to their right, the driver looking with undisguised curiosity at the three men in the field, one of whom being a police constable. Their presence in the field would doubtless, thought Webster, be the talk of The Black Bull and The Three Horseshoes that evening and throughout the weekend. He looked skywards and saw a silver jetliner crossing the blue and, by then, cloudless sky, leaving four vapour trails behind it. ‘Well,' he said, lowering his head and turning to Middleton, ‘if you and the constable would care to return to the car, I will remain here. The second constable can escort Mr Allerton and we'll see what part of the field he points at.'

It was Saturday, 12.35 hours.

George Hennessey focussed his mind on the situation in hand: the field near the village of Catton Hill, the constables in white shirts and serge trousers, Detective Constables Ventnor and Webster, Detective Sergeant Yellich, the ominous white inflatable tent that had been erected close to the corner of the field, from which two SOCOs were emerging looking grim-faced and carrying photographic equipment. The senior Scene of Crime Officer walked slowly up to where Hennessey and Yellich stood and said solemnly, ‘All finished, sir, both colour and black-and-white photographs have been taken.'

‘Thank you.' George Hennessey slowly nodded in appreciation. He then noticed a police constable emerge from the wooded area at the side of the field carrying a highly polished Gladstone bag and who was closely followed by Dr Louise D'Acre. Dr D'Acre was a slender woman, tall, and with a well-developed muscle tone which Hennessey knew was the result of her lifelong passion for horse riding. She wore her hair closely cropped and her only make-up was a trace of lightly shaded lipstick. Hennessey's heart leapt as he saw her and at the same moment his chest swelled with pride. Dr D'Acre turned upon emerging from the wood and walked across the stubble towards Hennessey with the constable still carrying her bag, but by then walking reverentially behind her.

‘Good afternoon, Chief Inspector.' Dr D'Acre had a soft speaking voice with an accent of received pronunciation. Her manner was polite but always professional; when working, the job, and only the job, mattered.

‘Good afternoon, ma'am.' George Hennessey doffed his Panama as he replied.

‘Thank you for the advance notice.' Dr D'Acre glanced at the tent. ‘It meant I was able to acquire an early lunch. I am always exhorting my two girls to eat and so I like it when I can set an example.'

‘Of course, ma'am.'

‘So,' Dr D'Acre said, ‘a mass burial I am told?'

‘Well.' Hennessey cleared his throat. ‘Hardly mass, ma'am, that is a bit of an overstatement. I'll tell you the story of how we came to be notified of it but the upshot is that we had to wait until this morning before we could get the G.P.R. down here.'

‘G.P.R.?' Dr D'Acre asked.

‘Ground Penetrating Radar.'