Fear of Drowning

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Confess I haven’t thought too much about it. I’ve a little in the bank. That’s a useful cushion, but it won’t last forever. Looks like civvy street for me, as I’ve said before. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, I’m not going anywhere in the navy.’

  ‘Confess, I thought you were a bit old for your rank.’

  Williams’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Always been in the navy?’

  ‘Since I was seventeen.’

  ‘Sea service?

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘But you don’t wear spectacles?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Well, meaning that I did my National Service in the Andrew.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, I did my tour, I saw the world as far as Portsmouth, but I came away with the impression that shore-based personnel are seen as second-raters by the sea service personnel.’

  ‘That attitude exists.’

  ‘It is also my experience that shore-based personnel had some medical problem that prevented them serving at sea, most wore spectacles, for example.’

  ‘I fail to see your point.’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t know what the point is myself … but something doesn’t add up.’

  ‘Will that be all, Chief Inspector? I’ve got responsibilities to attend to, both family and professional.’

  ‘Yes…’ Hennessey stood. ‘Sorry to have detained you.’

  * * *

  ‘Neither breakfast nor lunch.’ Hennessey swallowed the coffee in his mug.

  ‘Sorry, sir?’ Yellich sat opposite him.

  ‘The Williamses didn’t have anything to eat after their meal at the Mill. That was their last meal in life.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Yet they were seen on the Sunday afternoon, so they forewent breakfast and lunch.’

  ‘Not difficult to see why, boss. I mean, if they had pushed the boat out as much as the restaurateur said they had then they’d probably want nothing all day Sunday except coffee, endless mugs of same. Then maybe a cheese sandwich in the evening.’

  ‘Fair point, so we don’t go down that alley. The bug that Dr D’Acre found on Mrs Williams’s clothing, in amongst the soil, was it?’

  ‘Yes, sir, she said it could have been caught in a shovelful of flying soil as it fluttered by.’

  ‘It was a moth. So it means they were buried at night.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Specifically last night.’

  ‘Right. So we have the time window that Dr D’Acre proposes. From Sunday morning to this morning, specifically the hours of darkness of last night which is when she believes the Williamses were buried?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Hennessey paused. ‘Fifty-four cubic feet.’

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘A grave six feet long and three feet wide and three feet deep is fifty-four cubic feet. And that’s fifty-four cubic feet of clay. This is the Vale of York, remember. Even in my prime I couldn’t dig that sort of hole in six hours, which is the amount of darkness there was last night. So who’s on the scene with a physique that could enable him to shift fifty-four cubic feet of clay in six hours? Clay that’s been baked hard, to boot?’

  ‘Tim Sheringham, for one.’

  ‘And maybe Richardson, who Williams mentioned. Builders are not usually small guys. I think I’d like to meet Richardson. Particularly since Mr Thom, the neighbour, also mentions him.’

  ‘There’s another reason you’ll want to meet Richardson, boss.’

  ‘There is?’ Hennessey’s eyes widened.

  ‘The name rang bells with me, did a little digging.’

  ‘Digging,’ Hennessey echoed. ‘Apt in this case.’

  Yellich smiled. ‘Isn’t it? But two years ago, a man in a field, left with his brains sticking out as though his head had been fed into a meat grinder. Solemn business.’

  ‘Yes … now that you mention it. Fellow by the name of Kerr.’

  ‘That’s it, boss, Thomas “Toddy” Kerr, a large man, hence the nickname. A bit like calling a Great Dane “Tiny”. I have the file here.’ Yellich patted a file.

  ‘Just remind me.’

  ‘Well, it’s one of the great unsolved in the Famous and Faire. Toddy Kerr owed a lot of money to a lot of folk and we believed that one of them collected in kind rather than in cash, one of the debtors was…’

  ‘Michael Richardson.’ Hennessey beamed at Yellich. ‘And, if I recall, he was the only one who didn’t offer an alibi, left the burden of proof with us. A bit similar, don’t you think?’

  ‘Very similar, I’d say, boss. Solemnly so, in fact. And you say Mr Thom mentions him?’

  Hennessey told him of Thom’s information. Then he said, ‘Do you know why builders call scaffolding poles “twenty-ones”?’ Yellich confessed he didn’t, so Hennessey told him that as well.

  * * *

  A lizard.

  It was the only word that came to Hennessey as he sat opposite Michael ‘Galway Mick’ Richardson and pondered the over-wide mouth and bulging eyes and leathery skin, sitting with knees together beneath a huge frame and broad head and shoulders, so that his legs resembled a tail. It was not dissimilar to looking at children’s books in which animals inhabited human surroundings. Here a lizard sat in a swivel chair in a cramped office. Richardson’s tumbling, black curly hair and confident I-like-myself attitude also told Hennessey that here was a man who most probably enjoyed success with women.

  ‘Yes. I knew Williams. I don’t deny it. Why should I deny it? And now he’s deceased.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Lunchtime news.’ Richardson nodded to the small radio on his desk.

  Hennessey read the room. It was Richardson’s office in his house on the edge of Overton. Very strong, very substantial, very ordered. A portable TV on a shelf at eye level if sitting at the desk. A builder’s house.

  ‘What exactly was your relationship with Mr Williams?’

  ‘Didn’t have one. Not at the end.’

  ‘The reason I ask is that we have a very reliable witness who tells us that you threatened to kill him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  Hennessey paused. ‘You killed him?’

  ‘No. I threatened to.’ He had a soft-spoken manner.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Disappoint you?’ Richardson smiled.

  ‘No … no, I’ve been a policeman long enough to know that nothing is that easy.’ Hennessey relaxed in the easy chair at the side of Richardson’s desk. ‘Tell me about the argument you had with him at his front door, last week, I believe.’

  ‘He owes me money. He owes me a lot of money. An awful lot of money, so he does now. I’ve had to pay labourers, I’ve had to pay my skilled men. I need the money owed to me. It’s called cash flow.’

  ‘How much money are we talking about?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘How much is enough?’

  ‘Enough to finish me. Six figures. That’s enough. See, if I build a brick rabbit hutch and the fella doesn’t pay I can survive, if I build a garage and the fella doesn’t pay I may be able to survive. But if I build a house and the fella doesn’t pay then I have a problem. And I don’t just mean any house, I mean a four-bedroom detached house, bay windows, jacuzzi, double garage, fancy fittings in the bathroom … primed, papered, ready to move in. Even gave him the keys so he could start measuring up for carpets. He put the carpets in, paid for that. They’ve been living there to guard the place, there’s a double mattress in the upstairs room, a duvet, some food in a small fridge, a few plates, electric kettle … she mainly, the clothes in the bin liner are all female … so I build the house to the plans he has had drawn up and then I say … OK, now pay me. So he says, “When I’ve sold it I will.”’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I thought all along that it was for him to move into … he’s known in the Vale … he’s a man with money … a venture capitalist and he likes throwing it
around. So I thought I was safe. Any other guy I’d want money upfront, or lodged with a solicitor to be retained on satisfactory completion … my error … he paid twenty thousand upfront, but that still leaves me with a shortfall of six figures.’ Richardson’s voice hardened. ‘So, it’s a breach of contract or something. It’s unlawful.’

  ‘It’s not criminal,’ Hennessey replied softly.

  ‘There’s two things I can do. I can pursue him through the civil courts, but that won’t get me anywhere but a hefty legal bill because I built it on an assumption. So you built it on an assumption, so you’re wrong, it’s possibly not breach of contract. The other thing I can do is what I’m going to do, which is sell it. Technically speaking, it’s my house, so I can sell it. But the house market is depressed, nothing is moving. It’ll be at least eighteen months before anybody shows an interest. If I sell it quickly it’ll be only because I’ve reduced the price so much that I’ll be selling at a loss. He betrayed me. He was clearly hoping to sell it, pay me off and pocket the balance. But all along he let me believe he was going to move his family in.’

  ‘So you went round to his house and threatened to kill him and his wife with a scaffolding pole.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. That length of scaffolding, where is it?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘I’m sure He does, but do you?’

  ‘No. Maybe in the back of the truck.’

  ‘I’d like to take it with me.’

  ‘Help yourself, there’s about half a dozen bits of scaffolding. I don’t know which one I picked up.’

  ‘Handy length, though, about two feet.’

  ‘Handy?’

  ‘To batter someone’s head in.’

  ‘Suppose it is. I’ve never done it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This will finish you, you believe?’

  ‘It will. I’ve built the business up from scratch. I’ve got a couple of small jobs on the go, but the brickies will need paying … I’ve got no cash to pay them, the bank won’t advance me any … do you know what brickies do if they don’t get paid?’

  ‘Wreck the site?’

  ‘They don’t need to do that, they just take a sledgehammer and knock the bricks out of line six inches above the ground. Makes the whole structure invalid, won’t pass Building Control Inspection. Can’t sell it, have to demolish it. That’s worse because you have to pay for the demolition. You know, if they wrecked the site they’d actually be doing me a favour.’

  ‘Save the demolition cost?’

  ‘Yes. It’s the sort of thing that’d drive a saint mad, so it would.’

  ‘It’s the sort of thing that would make you want to kill someone.’

  ‘It is that.’

  ‘So did you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kill them.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘It isn’t. It isn’t funny at all. Where were you last Sunday?’

  ‘I don’t know. Here. All day. At home. I have Sunday at home.’

  ‘Anybody vouch for that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Live alone?’

  ‘Me and my wife. Our children are up and away.’

  ‘Your wife wasn’t here on Sunday?’

  ‘She was in Ireland. She came back this morning.’

  ‘So you were in all Sunday?’

  ‘I went to Mass at ten o’clock. I was in all Sunday after that.’

  ‘What about Monday night?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘All night.’

  ‘And Tuesday, last night?’

  ‘Same. Stayed in alone, watching the TV so I did.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing. How long have you been in the building trade?’

  ‘I’m forty-nine. I dug my first hole when I was fourteen. You work it out, I was never any good with numbers.’

  ‘A long time.’

  ‘Long enough. Never done anything else.’

  ‘Ever been in trouble with the police?’

  ‘Few times. I came over here as a labourer. When a bunch of labourers have had enough stout … you must have seen the results … being a copper, like.’

  ‘Convictions for violence, then.’

  ‘Yes. When I was a youngester. I calmed down once I got married. Calmed down more once I started out on my own.’

  ‘So we’ll have a record of you?’

  ‘Nothing you can use in court. They’re all spent now, my convictions, they’re all spent.’

  ‘But your fingerprints will be on file.’

  ‘Reckon they will.’

  ‘Tell me about Mr Kerr. Thomas “Toddy” Kerr.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Did you kill him too?’

  ‘I didn’t kill anybody.’ Said with controlled temper.

  ‘Look at it from our point of view, “Toddy” Kerr owed you money.’

  ‘He owed a lot of people, and he didn’t owe me anything like what Williams owed me.’

  ‘But he owed you, and his brains got beaten out of his skull with an instrument that would not be dissimilar to a short length of scaffolding.’ Hennessey paused, but Richardson didn’t react. ‘And you couldn’t offer an alibi.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, Williams owed you money, you were seen and heard to threaten him with a short length of scaffolding and shortly afterwards his brains were beaten out of his head, and you have no alibi for the time the murder is believed to have taken place.’

  ‘That’s because I don’t need one, for either murder.’

  ‘Can’t ignore the coincidence, though.’

  ‘Can’t convict on coincidence, though.’

  ‘And you know that. Puts you in the frame, puts you well in the frame. You’re always around when people get their brains removed forcibly from the inside of their head.’

  ‘Where else would you remove them from?’

  ‘Point to you.’ Hennessey inclined his head, but Richardson was talking, and in situations like this Hennessey had often found that people trip themselves up. ‘But you see our point?’

  ‘I see no point at all, Chief Inspector. Especially since you’re forgetting one thing. You’re forgetting that if you kill someone you’ll definitely not get your money back.’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t consider that when your temper was well up.’

  ‘I didn’t consider it because I didn’t kill them. I didn’t kill Williams and his wife and I didn’t kill Kerr. Felt like it, but that’s not a crime. Besides which, Kerr wasn’t buried, he was left out in the open, the Williamses were buried.’

  ‘A minor difference. The main point is that you have the motivation in both cases, you have the passion that was required in both cases, and you have the physical strength to carry out both murders, and you have the strength to dig the shallow grave.’

  ‘I didn’t kill them, or Kerr.’

  ‘Let me pick your brains.’

  ‘I didn’t know Englishmen believed the Irish had brains.’

  ‘People like Joyce and Yeats and one or two others I could name, you mean? A hole?’

  ‘They come in all shapes and sizes.’

  ‘In the ground.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘This time of year, local soil, six feet long, three feet wide, three feet deep.’

  ‘Yes … I can see that.’

  ‘How long would it take to dig?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On?’

  ‘On the person, or persons, on the equipment … a weak person with a trowel would take a week, a man with a mechanical digger would take ten minutes.’

  ‘Could it be dug in the hours of darkness at this time of year? Say six hours?’

  ‘Possibly. A grave digger takes a full day to dig one grave.�
��

  ‘Could you do it? The hole I described, I mean?’

  ‘Possibly. But I didn’t.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Will that be all? I’ve got a business that’s nose-diving.’

  ‘Yes. For now.’ Hennessey stood. ‘I’d like to take a length of scaffolding from the rear of your vehicle.’

  ‘So long as you bring it back.’

  * * *

  Hennessey drove to the Williamses’ bungalow. He saw Yellich’s fawn-coloured Escort, the other vehicles he didn’t recognize. He saw the media being kept at bay by a blue and white police tape, all anxious to get footage and photographs and to see the Williamses’ bungalow which was not unlike many thousands of similar bungalows in the United Kingdom. It was the interior of the building that mattered, yet here, for no reason that Hennessey could understand, was the media, anxious to see and to photograph a roof and a line of brickwork. He parked his car, pushed through the scrum of press and entered the house. Yellich stood in the hallway looking pleased with himself.

  ‘Anything, Yellich?’

  ‘Yes, boss. Something of great importance, something very solemn.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s a murder scene.’ Toby Partridge peered at Hennessey from around a corner. At first a small, bespectacled head, as if disembodied from the rest of him, said, ‘It’s a murder scene,’ and then he stepped round the corner from the bedroom into the hall and when, as if head and body were joined, he said, ‘Oh yes, most definitely, it’s a lovely, lovely murder scene.’

  ‘Mr Partridge.’ Hennessey raised his eyebrows at the short, slight figure of the man who he thought about twenty-four or -five.

  ‘Doctor.’ Partridge smiled. ‘I’ve been doctored, oh yes. And this is as fine a murder scene as ever you’ll find. Oh, yes.’

  ‘You see what first put me onto it was the smell of bleach, even now you can discern it, but a few days ago it must have been overpowering.’

  ‘It was,’ Hennessey said. ‘I thought it was a clean household.’

  ‘Oh, it’s more than that, oh yes.’ Partridge danced about excitedly. ‘I mean, what householders use bleach in this quantity? Few, I’ll be bound. The point is that here something has been cleaned up. This house is a sanitized crime scene, oh yes, very much so. Then it was ransacked, but before it was ransacked it was the scene of a dreadful crime. So we ask ourselves, what has been tidied up?’

  ‘A murder. Don’t tell me.’