Fear of Drowning

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Someone will verify that you were at work on Monday of this week?’

  ‘Yes … my colleagues … why?’

  ‘No reason … just a routine question, no need to be worried.’

  ‘Oh…’ But Hennessey felt her relief was palpable. ‘Tell me about your father.’

  ‘He was a queer fish. He was two people in one, hale-fellow-well-met to the world, a tyrant at home. Poor Rufus … when he was growing up the only thing he could do without permission was to breathe, and he was lucky to do that. Mummy went along with him, she couldn’t stand up to him.’

  ‘And he squandered all the money? Doesn’t sound like a tyrant.’

  ‘Sounds like a hale-fellow-well-met, though, doesn’t it? I told you he was two personalities in one.’

  ‘Tell me about your uncle? The one who left your father all that money.’

  ‘Uncle Marcus?’ She looked nervously at Hennessey.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was my father’s younger brother.’

  ‘He died before his time then?’

  Nicola Williams nodded. She avoided eye contact and Hennessey sensed that he was rising a deer. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he scented a chase and a shiver ran down his spine. He knew the need for caution.

  ‘Well … yes…’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He drowned in the bath. Dozens of people do each year.’

  ‘The coroner returned an open verdict. Why do you think he did that?’

  Nicola Williams looked uncomfortable.

  A pause.

  ‘Miss Williams, if you’ve got something to tell me it’s really in your extreme best interest to do so.’

  ‘It’s nothing criminal.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It’s an awful skeleton in the family cupboard.’

  ‘So tell me; if it’s not relevant to the enquiry it won’t go beyond these four walls.’

  ‘It’s not relevant.’

  ‘That’s for me to decide.’

  ‘He was a cretin. He suffered cretinism. He was about three feet high.’

  ‘That’s not much of a skeleton as skeletons go.’

  ‘That’s not the skeleton.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘His mother, my grandmama tried to drown him. She was what in today’s politically correct times would be called a “lookist”.’

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘His condition began to become apparent when he was about ten or twelve, up to then he’d been normal if a little frail … when cretinism was diagnosed, she tried to drown him … she made a determined effort, locked him and her in the bathroom … he managed to scream and Grandfather kicked the door in and saved his life. He grew up with a fear of drowning, hence the showers. He also had a lake filled in.’

  ‘A lake?’

  ‘He bought a large house which had a lake in the grounds. The first thing he did was to have the lake filled in. That’s the skeleton. It didn’t come out at the inquest because the family don’t talk about it, let alone want it made public.’

  Hennessey had a sense of having made serious headway, but he was unsure as to the direction. ‘That’s a family secret?’

  ‘Well-kept. I only found out about it last year, or the year before, when Mummy and I were walking in the garden at the Grange.’

  ‘Does your brother know the story?’

  ‘I don’t think he does. That’s where Daddy gets his obsession with appearance from, his mother was such a lookist … if it didn’t look right it had to go. Poor Marcus couldn’t live up to the Williams image, nor to the Sieff image – Sieff being Grandmama’s maiden name – so he had to go.’

  ‘Where is your grandmother now?’

  ‘In a nursing home. Her mind has gone.’

  ‘Lucky her, in a sense.’

  ‘Part of me wishes they had involved the police and had her charged with attempted infanticide. Ten years in a women’s prison would have done wonders for her attitude.’

  Hennessey nodded. She had a sense of justice. He liked that about her as well.

  * * *

  That evening, Hennessey packed an overnight bag and drove from Easingwold to the village of Skelton with its tenth-century church. He parked on the road beside a rambling mock-Tudor detached house and crunched up the gravel drive. He was pleased for the owner that gravel had been laid, for his money gravel and a dog were still the best burglar deterrents by far. The garage which was built into the house, integral, he believed the word for such was, had both doors shut and padlocked. The family’s car was tucked up for the night. He rang the bell at the front door and was greeted warmly.

  In the house, cup of tea in hand, he sat at the long kitchen table and helped Daniel with his maths homework. It was pre-secondary school level and so Hennessey could cope with it. Just. Later he picked up a magazine for teenage girls and began to leaf through it.

  ‘You shouldn’t be reading that, George.’

  ‘Oh?’ Hennessey smiled at Dianne, fourteen, whose magazine he was reading. ‘Well, you see, that’s where you’re wrong, the quickest way to find out how someone’s mind works is to read their choice of magazine – not their choice of books, or their choice of newspaper but their choice of magazine, especially the ads at the back – and I want to know what makes the mind of a teenage girl tick. I want to know what your prejudices and conceits are … but if it upsets you?’

  ‘No…’ the girl replied warmly. Then she paused and said, ‘George, what happened to your wife?’

  ‘Dianne.’ Her mother turned from the kitchen work surface and glared at her.

  ‘I don’t mind.’ Hennessey put the magazine down. ‘She died,’ he said. ‘It was a long time ago now, thirty years, more in fact, she’d just given birth to our son Charles – he’s a barrister now – and was already talking about number two … she was walking in the centre of Easingwold, that’s where we lived, and where I still live … about this time of year … hot and sunny, and she just folded up … just collapsed … it was in the middle of the afternoon, folk rushed to her assistance assuming that she’d fainted. Fortunately, Charles wasn’t with her at the time … she’d left him with a neighbour … but she was dead. Life had just left her.’

  ‘What caused it?’

  Hennessey upturned the palm of his hand and raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘Who knows?’ Then he said, ‘You see, Dianne, as I have grown older I have come to believe that if the sum of human knowledge was represented as a tennis ball, then on the same scale, the sum of what we don’t know but is fact and awaiting discovery could be represented as a basketball. At the time of Jennifer’s death, and still today, the best the medics could come up with was “Sudden Death Syndrome”. It happens – rarely, but it happens. Often the person is a young adult in good health, they’re walking down the street or sitting at home and life just leaves them. It just goes, suddenly, without warning, as if the person has been switched off. But don’t fear it, there are many, many other things to fear before you need fear SDS. But that’s what took my wife. She was twenty-three.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you, but there’s no need to be … I still cherish her memory and I believe that she’s still in the garden she planned just before she died. I’ll never give up my house because of that. Sometimes I go into the garden and sit and talk to her. I’m mad … but I do it.’

  Later that evening, when Fiona had returned from the stables, and she and Dianne and Daniel had the upper floor to themselves and were ‘shifting’ themselves to bed, which involved running backwards and forwards along the landing many times, squabbling over the use of their bathroom (the house had two, one designated for adults, the other for children), Hennessey and the lady of the house sat quietly in the kitchen and Hennessey said, ‘Can I pick your brains?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  ‘It’s about work.’

  ‘I thought it might be.’

  ‘Cretinism. What is it?’

  ‘Um…’ The woman in
clined her head to one side, in the manner that Hennessey had found was the way of it when learned persons speak with authority … the pause which speaks of knowledge. He had rapidly learned to be cautious when dealing with people who profess to have knowledge at their fingertips. ‘Well, it’s not to be confused with dwarfism, though in the adult it appears much the same. Whereas dwarfism is congenital, cretinism sets in at the onset of puberty, and in essence it’s caused by an underactive thyroid gland. People who suffer from cretinism start out normally and then stop growing. The condition was for a long time associated with mental deficiency, but that was only because cretins were dismissed and not educated. Cretinism doesn’t affect brain functioning. There’s no reason why a cretin can’t become an intellectual wizard.’

  ‘Hence the use of the word as an insult or term of abuse.’

  ‘Yes … it has that same punchy quality as “spastic”, which is also a distinct medical condition. Spasticity, though, is still with us. Cretinism can be cured, we can stimulate the thyroid gland and enable the person to grow normally. Originally the treatment was at the expense of the person’s sex drive, but we’ve cracked that one now and normal growth in all areas is possible. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just a development in the Williams murder case. I spoke to Yellich, he’d been in Malton all day. He came back with some very interesting information which gelled with what I had found out during the day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes … it’s something that has crept in round the edge of the affair. It’s probably not central. Found a good pub today, by the way … out by Knaresborough way, the Dog and Duck, excellent ploughman’s, just ideal for our occasional lunchtime rendezvous.’

  ‘Well…’ She paused. ‘It’s gone quiet up there … shall we go up?’

  Hennessey took a mug from the kitchen to fill with water in the bathroom because he found that he invariably became thirsty in the night.

  ‘Funny,’ she whispered, plucking up her long and thinly cut skirt as she climbed the stairs.

  ‘What is?’ hissed Hennessey.

  ‘How once you were afraid of your parents, and no sooner you’ve stopped being afraid of them, you become frightened of your children,’ Louise D’Acre explained.

  9

  Saturday

  … in which Nicola Williams catches the last bus and Chief Inspector Hennessey comes across a date which has personal significance.

  ‘It’s not on, Hennessey, it’s just not on. It’s your neck, not mine. The Chief Constable wants a reply, so what do I tell him?’

  ‘Excuse me, sir.’ Hennessey stood in front of the man’s desk. ‘But I was not harassing him. Yellich went to his house and spoke to his wife.’

  ‘That’s not what Mr Richardson’s solicitor has told the CC. If you’re harassing anybody it weakens the case, you know that, apart from it being unlawful. What have you got on Richardson, anyway?’

  ‘Quite a lot. Motive, possible implication with an earlier murder with a similar MO. I’ve made a case with less.’

  ‘And he’s in the cells now?’

  ‘Yes, sir. As is Sheringham, who for my money is the prime suspect, but I’m not dismissing Richardson.’

  Commander Sharkey reclined in his seat. A framed photograph on the wall showed Sharkey in an army officer’s uniform, a second showed him in the uniform of an officer in the Royal Hong Kong Police, now he was a commander in the City of York Police. He’d done well for a man in his forties, younger than Hennessey, and Hennessey couldn’t take that from him. ‘Sheringham, you see, is a smug piece of work but frightened of his wife, and he has motivation to murder both Mr and Mrs Williams.’

  ‘He has?’

  ‘They were both going to blow a whistle on him. Max Williams was involved in a drug scam, he was funding a huge purchase of anabolic steroids and seemed to be getting cold feet and may have been about to turn Queen’s evidence against Sheringham. Mrs Williams was threatening to expose his marital infidelity. That’s motivation enough. The other point is that they are both known to each other, they work out at Sheringham’s Gym and are known to be drinking partners.’

  ‘A conspiracy, you think?’

  ‘I wouldn’t rule it out, sir. And apart from them both having a motivation to murder Max Williams, they are both very strong, very fit men, quite capable of digging the shallow grave within the hours of darkness. In fact, they’d make short shrift of it. Very short shrift, despite the fact that the soil is baked hard and would be as solid as if it were frozen.’

  ‘But you’re still lacking the vital link in the evidential chain, are you not?’

  ‘We’ve still to quiz both of them again, sir. But yes, the vital link is missing, which is why we haven’t charged them.’

  ‘Why the call on Mrs Richardson in the first place?’

  ‘Just to take a measure of the lady, and also following up a point made by Sergeant Yellich who felt that the sanitizing of the crime scene had a woman’s touch about it.’

  Sharkey raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Look, sir, we’re trying to solve a murder here. No, we’re not, we’re trying to solve a double murder and I for one have no time for political correctness at a time like this. Especially as there is such a thing as a woman’s touch, more care, more attention to detail, and, as Yellich said, Williams has ruined Mrs Richardson’s livelihood too.’

  ‘Alibi, for her?’

  ‘None. Neither she nor her husband nor Sheringham have an alibi for the time of the murder, nor for the time of the likely disposal of the bodies.’

  ‘All right, George, that gives me something to tell the CC.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘This is a high-profile case, George. The CC wants a result.’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘But a safe result. A secure conviction. So please proceed with caution.’

  * * *

  Hennessey knew he was getting old when constables looked young, but this was ridiculous. A schoolgirl, a child … still slight and frail of build, still awkward, yet she was a Mrs, a married woman. She had rings on her finger which said so and she was a solicitor. Monica Have. She announced herself to the room for the purposes of the tape recording as Monica Have of the firm Have and …

  Hold, thought Hennessey, or perhaps Have-not.

  But the woman said, ‘Scarborough, of York.’

  Hennessey wrote Have and Scarborough, solicitors, York’ on his pad.

  Yellich said, ‘I am Detective Sergeant Yellich, City of York Police.’

  ‘Mr Richardson…’ prompted Hennessey. ‘For the tape.’

  ‘Michael Richardson,’ he said resentfully.

  ‘Right, Mr Richardson, you knew Mr Max Williams?’ Hennessey asked the questions, Yellich observed acutely.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In what capacity?’

  ‘He engaged me to build a house for him.’

  ‘For which he couldn’t pay you?’

  ‘Yes. As I said.’

  ‘Just to get the story straight, you didn’t ask for money upfront, nor for an agreed sum to be lodged with a firm of solicitors to be released upon satisfactory completion of the work, because you believed that he had the money.’

  ‘Yes. Stupid, to be sure, but yes.’

  ‘He had a reputation in the Vale for being a soft touch for a lot of money, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes. He came on the scene recently, a year or two ago, but his reputation got round the business community.’ Richardson spoke freely but Hennessey was acutely aware that the man was not giving anything away.

  ‘He’s ruined your business?’

  ‘Looks like it. The housing market is depressed at the moment, couldn’t sell that house easily anyway, too fancy for North-country tastes at the best of times. If I sold it at all, I’d have to let it go cheap. Would recover the materials and labour costs. I’ve got crews to pay, the bank won’t lend enough to see me through.’

  ‘A lifetime’s work down the tubes.’


  ‘Aye…’

  ‘Make anyone want to kill, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Would it?’

  Monica Have didn’t give any emotion but, thought Hennessey, she was clearly, utterly focused, listening to every word.

  ‘Well, wouldn’t it? You have a motivation, a strong one.’

  ‘Yes…’ Richardson nodded. ‘Yes, I confess…’

  ‘Careful!’ Monica Have glanced at him.

  ‘I confess,’ repeated Richardson. ‘I confess that I felt like killing him, I confess that I am not unhappy that someone has done so, except that now I have no chance at all of recovering my debt.’

  ‘It weakens the motivation,’ Monica Have said to Hennessey. ‘I would point out that my client does not have the motivation you claim he has.’

  ‘Mrs Have.’ Hennessey leaned forward. ‘I would point out that your purpose is to ensure that the procedures as dictated by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act are observed. You are not here to advocate on the part of your client.’

  ‘Accepted.’ Monica Have inclined her head.

  ‘But she’s right,’ Richardson smiled. ‘I don’t have the motive you claim.’

  ‘Only once you’ve calmed down. Hot-headed, though, are you not? An Irishman with the traditional fiery Celtic blood. You were seen and heard to threaten to kill Max Williams whilst holding a two-foot-long length of scaffolding, which our forensic pathologist said could have caused the injuries.’

  ‘Could have?’ Monica Have looked at Hennessey. ‘It’s an important point. If you can say would have, you would be in a stronger legal position. So would or could?’

  ‘Could,’ Hennessey conceded.

  ‘You see’ – Monica Have spoke softly yet with an authority Hennessey found annoying in one so young – ‘for this interview to proceed, you have to be on stronger, firmer grounds. Motivation has evaporated, you haven’t got a murder weapon…’

  ‘And I have to say that once again you are straying into the area of advocacy, Mrs Have.’ Hennessey spoke equally softly.

  Monica Have made a slow, slicing movement through the air with an open palm. ‘Well, let’s see how far we get.’

  ‘We’ll leave the issue of the murder weapon on one side then. And frankly, as to the motivation, it isn’t really an issue if the perpetrator acts in a fit of rage, then tries to cover his misdeed.’