‘The print in the bathroom, that belonged to Mr Sheringham. It puts you in the house after the murder of the woman with whom you had just broken off your relationship.’
‘No comment.’
‘Why did you ransack the house?’
‘No comment.’
‘What were you searching for?’
‘No comment.’
‘You didn’t take anything. Stopped burglarizing homes, have you?’
‘No comment.’
‘So what were you looking for?’
‘No comment.’
Hennessey opened the file which lay on the table in front of him and took out a photograph and placed it on the table in front of Sheringham. Sheringham’s jaw dropped, his eyes widened.
‘There are quite a few like that. Clearly taken over quite a long time period, at the bungalow, at the house … some out of doors. Only you and Amanda Williams … never a third person, so the photographs were taken with a time-delayed shutter.’
‘Yes … they were. She insisted. I knew it was a bad idea. She sent them away to be developed, there’s a company in London that will print anything. Pretty well, they draw the line at children.’
‘I’m relieved to hear it.’
‘Is this what you were looking for? This and the others? We found them in the garden shed, by the way.’
Sheringham gasped.
‘They were not in the house at all. So what was it? Blackmail?’
Sheringham nodded.
‘Could you speak for the benefit of the tape?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much did she want in return for the photographs?’
‘Nothing. She didn’t need money.’
‘What then?’
‘Me. She wanted me to agree to continue our affair, just carrying on as we had been doing, every Wednesday. You can understand it. How could a woman like that replace a man like me? She was going to send them to my wife. Look, I’m thirsty … how about…’
Hennessey reached for the off button and said, ‘The time is eleven-oh-five a.m. The interview is being suspended for refreshments to be taken.’ He switched off the tape recorder.
Sheringham and Nathan Samual remained in the interview room, sipping coffee out of white plastic beakers. Hennessey and Yellich stood in the corridor.
‘What do you think, boss?’ Yellich held his beaker of coffee in both hands.
‘He’s definitely in the frame for it, very definitely. He had something to fear from Mrs Williams. He’s arrogant enough to murder, he’s strong enough to dig the grave … he battered her over the head and he felled Mr Williams because he was there. He’s got more of a motivation than Richardson because with Richardson things couldn’t get worse. With Sheringham things could get an awful lot worse … Richardson isn’t out of the frame but if you ask me, Sheringham’s a stronger candidate. Fear, you see, Yellich, fear feeds the imagination, that leads to desperation and desperate men do desperate things. I can see him doing it. He’s full of himself, has a lot to lose, pops ’em both off as the only safe thing to do. Sanitizes the house, then collects the bodies a day or two later, drives them out to a field and buries them. Then he returns looking for the photographs of himself and her in happier times and, during the search, leaves a careless but very convenient fingerprint in the bathroom.’
Then Yellich said quietly, ‘Do you think they might be in it together, boss?’
Hennessey’s eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me more, Yellich.’
‘Well, I once came across an Arabic proverb: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
‘Go on.’ Hennessey sipped his coffee.
‘They’re both members of the business community in York. If they’re known to each other, they both have motivation to murder the Williamses … they’re both strong enough to dig the grave, but sharing the job would make it a cakewalk. Together, they’d make light of it. It’s also a big crime scene to sanitize, two guys would be better employed at it than one. Just thinking aloud, boss.’
Hennessey beamed at him. ‘Yellich, on occasions you please me greatly.’
‘I do, boss?’
‘Yes, Yellich. You do. Two heads are always better than one. Maybe for Richardson and Sheringham, as well as for you and me. I’ll continue here.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘You go and have a chat with Mrs Sheringham at the gym. Tease out what you can, but be discreet.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘York is a small city; you’re right, they may very well be known to each other, a link between them will be interesting. Very interesting indeed.’
Hennessey dropped his plastic mug into the waste bin beside the hot beverage vending machine and returned to the interview room. He switched the recording machine on as he sat down, the spools turned, the red light glowed. ‘The interview recommences at eleven-twenty a.m. in the absence of Detective Sergeant Yellich. I am Chief Inspector Hennessey. I am now going to ask the other people in the room to identify themselves.’
‘Nathan Samual.’
‘You know who I am,’ Sheringham growled.
‘Just state your name for the tape, please.’
‘Tim Sheringham. Happy now, old man?’
‘Thank you. So, Mr Sheringham, you don’t deny that Mrs Williams was a source of trouble for you?’
‘I don’t deny it.’
‘So you have benefited from her death?’
‘I’ve benefited from those photographs not being sent to my wife.’
‘But she did threaten to speak to your wife.’
‘No comment.’
‘It’s not unreasonable of me to assume that she did make such a threat.’
‘Assume what you like.’
‘So it’s not therefore unreasonable of me to assume that you have benefited from her death. She can’t talk to your wife from beyond the grave.’
‘She can’t.’
‘So a weight is off your mind?’
‘Yes … yes … if you like. But not fully, you know it’s possible that Vanessa will find out … your past has a way of catching up with you.’
‘As you well know.’ Hennessey took a sheet of paper from the file. ‘Your previous convictions.’
‘A lot of them are spent.’
‘A lot are … but there’s quite a pattern of violence, isn’t there? And burglary. Aggravated burglary. And you are, are you not, just the sort of person who’d batter the life out of someone and then ransack their house?’
‘I object to that question.’ Nathan Samual spoke softly, yet with no small measure of authority.
‘I’ve calmed down,’ Sheringham said coldly. ‘The gym’s seen to that. And marriage. My last spell inside I spent as much time as I could pushing weights, working on my body culture. A guy in there said I could earn big money if I could open a gym. I’m not making as much as he reckoned I would, but enough. I’m making more straight pennies than I ever made bent pennies.’
‘I’m gratified to hear it … but the potential’s there. Now, tell me about this offence, which is not spent. The conviction a few years ago for the misuse of a controlled substance.’
‘A few ounces of cannabis, for my own consumption, I hasten to add. I wasn’t selling it.’
‘Still known to Mr McCarty though.’
‘Of the Drug Squad?’
‘The one and the same.’
‘I’ve had the pleasure once or twice.’
‘But nothing current?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘But let’s return to your potential.’
‘Potential?’
‘For violence … that’s been your history. You have not hesitated to attack someone if they annoyed you.’
‘I’ve calmed down.’
‘To batter someone to death because they threatened to ruin you?’
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘So you did!’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘“Wouldn’t you”,
implies you did.’
‘It implies nothing,’ Nathan Samual said solemnly.
‘Even so,’ Hennessey pressed forward, ‘we have assault, grievous bodily harm, malicious damage … not the sort of person you’d want to meet in one of the snickelways on a dark night, are you?’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘Or on a dance-hall floor.’
‘I don’t dance.’
‘Or inside your home.’
‘I didn’t kill them.’
‘Where were you on Sunday afternoon?’
‘I went for a run by the river.’
‘Anybody see you?’
‘Plenty.’
‘Anybody that recognized you, that could offer an alibi? What about your wife?’
‘At the gym. Wednesdays and Sundays are ladies’ days, both are long days for her.’
‘Other days it’s mixed?’
‘Yes. The customers like it that way. A lot of relationships have started in the gym.’
‘I can imagine. Yourself and Amanda Williams being an example of same.’
‘You should come down, free session, I’ll take you round the circuit, maybe you’ll want to enrol. You’ll be the oldest there, but you never know your luck, some women go for the older man, they want a father figure.’
‘As some men go for the older woman, eh, Mr Sheringham?’
‘Only if they have dosh.’ Smiling, provoking, game playing. ‘What about it, fancy a trip round the circuit?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t make the offer. It’s no good at the end of your life saying, “I wonder what would have happened if…”’
‘Full of wisdom for one so young, aren’t you?’
‘I was born old, like Merlin the Magician. I get younger by the day.’
‘Where were you on Monday and Tuesday night?’
‘At home.’
‘Alone?’
‘With my wife.’
‘She’ll vouch for that?’
‘She may.’
‘May?’
‘She’s a heavy sleeper. She’ll sleep through an earthquake. Me, I suffer from insomnia from time to time. Not every night, but some nights. There’s been times when I’ve been unable to sleep, I’ve got up, gone out for a six-mile run, come back, showered, got back into bed, grabbed a couple of hours’ sleep and we’ve woken up together and she hasn’t realized I’ve been away.’
‘So you may not have an alibi for Monday and Tuesday night either?’
‘No. But I don’t need one. I didn’t kill anybody, see?’
‘No. Actually, I don’t see.
‘Can you drive a car?’
‘I have the ability, but no licence.’
‘Disqualified, part of the malicious damage incident, it says here.’
‘Guy cut me up at the lights. So I sorted his car. Thought I’d be less likely to get a prison sentence if I only damaged his metal, rather than him.’
‘Seemed to work. Heavy fine but you avoided the slammer. You have access to your car?’
‘Yes.’
‘So it’s not impossible for you to have gone to the Williamses’ bungalow to silence Amanda Williams who was threatening to expose your affair and silence her in the best way you could think of, and then to silence Max Williams because he was unfortunate enough to be there. And it’s not impossible for you to have slipped out of your house on Monday night to sanitize the crime scene, because there’d have been blood everywhere, and it’s not impossible to have slipped out of the house on Tuesday to bury the bodies.’
‘No.’ Sheringham smiled. ‘It’s not impossible but you’ll never prove it.’
‘Why, did you cover your tracks well enough?’
‘Because I didn’t do it.’
‘Double murder. Rotten thing to have on your conscience.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Did you have eye contact just before you killed them?’
‘Don’t answer that.’ Nathan Samual turned to Sheringham. Then to Hennessey he said, ‘That’s a leading question, Chief Inspector.’
‘Which one was first, Sheringham?’
‘Really, Chief Inspector, I protest at this line of questioning.’ Samual turned to Hennessey and, somewhat imperiously, Hennessey thought, said, ‘Chief Inspector, I really have to insist that at this point you must decide whether to charge my client or terminate this interview until you have more evidence.’
‘There is a fingerprint in the bathroom.’ Hennessey leaned back in his chair. ‘That is evidence of unlawful entry.’
‘Not when my client has been a regular visitor to the house.’
Hennessey reached for the off switch of the tape recorder. ‘This interview is terminated at eleven-forty a.m.’ He switched off the machine, the spools stopped turning, the red light faded. ‘Very well, your client is free to leave the police station. But this is not the end of the matter, please understand that.’
* * *
Liam McCarty was a well-set man in his forties, short hair, grey suit. He was a sergeant in the City of York Police Drug Squad. He and Hennessey knew each other just well enough to be on first-name terms. Hennessey tapped on the door of McCarty’s office and sat in the chair in front of McCarty’s desk.
‘Come in and sit down,’ said McCarty with a smile.
Hennessey returned the smile. ‘Tim Sheringham?’ he said.
‘Sheringham … Sheringham … bells ring, George, but I can’t place him.’
‘Sheringham’s Gym. He’s a suspect in a code four one. We put his details into the computer and, among other things, he came up as an alert to you and the good men and women of the DS.’
‘Yes … that Sheringham.’ McCarty stood and walked to a filing cabinet, opened it, and extracted a file and handed it to Hennessey.
‘Well, well…’ Hennessey looked at the grainy black and white photographs in the file which showed Tim Sheringham and Max Williams talking to each other, on a park bench, inside a café, walking in the centre of York, walking the walls. ‘So they knew each other? He’s in much more deeply than he’s letting on. What’s the story here?’
‘Incomplete as yet, but we believe that Williams was funding an anabolic steroids racket, and I mean big time, putting up money for large-scale purchase of the stuff which Sheringham was then knocking out to the gym customers. We have a couple of guys in the gym, posing as members. Not enough evidence for an arrest yet, but we were focusing on Williams, we had him in for a quiz session … he’s easy meat, no bottle at all … we just let him know that he was under suspicion … just to put the pressure on him, a slight turn of the screw … we floated the possibility of immunity from prosecution in return for information and a statement implicating Sheringham. He’s a rising drug baron in the Famous and Faire and we’re looking to nip him before he rises much further.’
‘Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.’
‘Well, you do know, we registered our interest, had it entered on the computer which is why he came up as an alert to us. Why, what’s happened?’
‘Just that the guy we believe Sheringham has filled in is none other than Max Williams.’
‘Well, there’s your motivation. If he thought Williams was going to blow the whistle on him, and Sheringham’s a nasty piece of work, he wouldn’t hesitate to off someone if he thought it would save him from a stretch as a guest of Her Majesty.’
‘It’s a far stronger motivation than we thought. Makes more sense – he was into Williams’s wife … playing away from home … he walked out on her and we believe Amanda Williams threatened to tell Mrs Sheringham of the affair she had had with her husband. We believe he killed her to stop that and her husband just got in the way somehow. Now it appears that he had a motivation to ice them both.’
‘Vanessa Sheringham’s a formidable woman. Have you met her?’ McCarty sat back in his chair. ‘She has some control over him, can’t work it out, but she’s the
major-domo in the relationship.’
‘My sergeant’s interviewing her right now. But you know this could well clinch the case against Sheringham, he had a motive to murder them both. She was going to inform on him to his wife and he was going to inform on him to the police. What better solution than to batter the life out of the both of them?’
‘What better? Is he in custody?’
‘No. Don’t want to bring him in too early, don’t want to start the clock ticking until I’m on sure footing.’
‘And he’s not going anywhere … I can understand your caution.’
‘Have him in for another chat, though. We’ll be doing that in the light of this. What have you got on Sheringham from your perspective?’
‘Not enough. We believe that anabolic steriods have been seeping out of Sheringham’s Gym for a while now. Then one of our informers, he told us that a larger than normal amount had been shifted and the money bags was a guy called Williams. He has, or I should say, had, a reputation in the Vale for being something of a good touch for finance.’
‘He had.’
‘Anyway, all that consignment had been moved when we heard that Sheringham was twisting Williams’s arm, wanting him to fund a much larger shipment. Usual deal, Williams got his investment back plus twenty per cent once the stuff had been sold, but Williams may well be a good touch but he’s scared of the law. I got the impression that he was desperate to recover some money and was flirting with crime as a consequence, silly man. Anyway, we had him in here, a little off-the-record chat, offered him a deal, asked him to fund Sheringham, we’ll keep Sheringham under close surveillance, and when he makes the purchase we’ll pounce: we’ll get Sheringham and his supplier and the steroids, Williams gets his money back plus immunity from prosecution.’
‘Not a bad deal.’
‘That’s what we thought. He said he’d think it over. That was just last week sometime.’
Hennessey stood. ‘Well, thanks, Liam. Owe you one. Time for a second chat with Sheringham.’
* * *
Yellich found Vanessa Sheringham a very attractive woman. She would, he thought, be attractive in any man’s eyes. He thought her perhaps five foot eight or nine inches tall, angular features, high cheekbones, a mane of dark, glowing hair, blue eyes. She sat in the office of Sheringham’s Gym wearing a blue leotard with silver tights and a pair of blue and white trainers that didn’t look as though they were ever worn out of doors. She wore an expensive-looking wristwatch and equally expensive-looking engagement and wedding rings. The watch and the rings were balanced by gold bracelets on the right wrist. By her smile, by the gleam in her eyes, Yellich knew that she was enjoying his eyes upon her. The woman knew she was beautiful. He disliked her intensely. It was Yellich’s experience that great beauty goes hand in hand with great cruelty and great selfishness. It had been his emotionally scarring experience to have once had an involvement with a photogenically beautiful woman, an actress, he remembered, and he had found her, and recalled her, as being self-obsessed and volatile, usually in public; making a meal out of issues other people would make light of. Yellich, looking back, if not at the time, saw her as a woman who would never know contentment, and would only approach happiness if she was on a pedestal, enjoying universal attention and approval, and getting her own way. She had been, in fact, the ugliest person to have crossed his life’s path. It had been a salutary lesson and while, since then, he had continued to enjoy the images of human female perfection, he did not yearn for any form of contact, physical or emotional, with a woman of this kind. And here in front of him was one such, enjoying his attention, and the annoying thing about it for Yellich was that she believed he was thinking exactly the opposite of what he was actually thinking.
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