The Altered Case

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘Yes . . .’ Hennessey replied.

  ‘Farrent owns a lot of land round here, we rent it, me and tenant farmers like me. We rent it and we work it. Prices for produce are going down and Farrent still puts up the rent. You’ll have been to his house?’

  ‘Yes, we have, yesterday.’

  ‘Aye well, I haven’t ever been there but they say it’s a nice bit of brickwork . . . so that’s what you live in if you own the land and sit back while others work it.’ Francis Bowler raised a finger and indicated the interior of his house. ‘I’d invite you in but you’re safer out here. You can see better out here as well; it’s a bit dark in there.’

  ‘So I see,’ Hennessey replied as he noted the dim and gloomy interior of the house, and as he and Yellich both detected the strong smell of questionable hygiene mixed with the unmistakable odour of damp. ‘Thank you anyway.’ Hennessey paused. ‘We have information which suggests that the body or bodies were buried about thirty years ago. In fact we can be more precise and say that they were buried thirty years ago this month. Were you the tenant of Blue Jay Farm then, thirty years ago?’

  ‘Aye . . . we took over the tenancy ten years before he were born.’ Francis Bowler made a slovenly indication to the youth who still stood some distance behind Hennessey and Yellich. ‘Don’t mind him, gentlemen, he’s harmless. The doctor said something about oxygen starvation when he was born, but if you give him a job he’ll do it; can’t drive the tractor though, or any vehicle but he carries his weight. He’s my son, he’s part of the farm . . . he’s twenty-two years old now . . . so yes . . . we came here thirty-two years ago.’

  ‘I see,’ Hennessey nodded.

  ‘He’s our last born, mother and I had two before him. Both left home now but he’s all the help I need. I contract out the harvesting, that really eats into any profit I make, but it’s all we can do . . . we being me and the other tenant farmers round here. We don’t have a lot of money coming in and we have to pay for the harvest.’

  ‘Still cheaper than buying a combine harvester and having it stand idle for fifty weeks of the year,’ Yellich commented.

  ‘Aye . . . possibly,’ Bowler growled.

  ‘So . . .’ Hennessey asked, ‘were you aware of any activity in the five acre field thirty years ago this month? It is a long time ago, but a large hole was dug. It would seem to me to be an obvious thing and would not have gone unnoticed.’

  ‘Aye . . . you’d think so, I’ll grant you that and it could only have been done at one of two times of the year, that is just after the winter wheat has been harvested and before the summer wheat is sowed, and just after the summer wheat has been harvested before the winter wheat goes in. We have two wheat crops a year, you see, so any hole like that would be dug after harvest and before the next ploughing and sowing. September, after the summer wheat is harvested, is when I used to take my family on holiday; low season you see, cheaper rates, much cheaper. We went to a holiday camp in Skegness.’

  ‘I see.’ Hennessey felt the damp from within the house grip his chest, making it difficult to breath even outside the building. ‘So you would not have been here then?’

  ‘Unlikely, chief, not very likely at all in fact, and I wouldn’t have noticed anything when I returned from Skeggie because the five acre is a wet field, like I just said, and any disturbance would not be seen after a day or two. I mean by that that it wouldn’t seem to be seen . . . might be a gap in the stubble but that would be all and then it would be ploughed over and you know, quite honestly, when a farmer ploughs his old field, you don’t look forwards all the time like when you’re driving a car, you look backwards at the plough. That’s the only way to make sure that you’re ploughing a straight furrow, just glance forwards once every few seconds or so but mostly you look backwards, keeping the plough level with the edge of the field or level with the previous furrow. Every old farmer likes his straight furrow, take it from me.’

  ‘So,’ Hennessey said, ‘you’d likely drive over the disturbed soil and not see it because you’d be looking backwards?’

  ‘Yes.’ Francis Bowler sucked on his empty pipe. ‘That’s exactly what I am saying, chief, exactly what I am saying.’

  ‘And once the plough has gone over the disturbed soil,’ Hennessey continued, ‘it is then indistinct from the rest of the field?’

  ‘Indistinct?’ Bowler raised his eyebrows. ‘You have a good way with words, sir, I like that word . . . indistinct . . . but yes, it would be indistinct from the rest of the field. You put it very well, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Hennessey inclined his head at Francis Bowler’s compliment, ‘Your information is very useful. The grave was about four feet down . . . deeper in fact . . . the topmost bodies were four feet below the surface. There were others beneath them.’

  ‘Deep,’ Bowler growled, ‘a proper grave . . . proper depth.’

  ‘Yes, it seems so,’ Hennessey replied. ‘We thought the same. Not a shallow grave . . .’

  ‘Proper grave,’ Bowler repeated, ‘a final resting place. We all get one.’

  ‘Probably not as final as the person who dug it might have hoped.’ Hennessey smiled wryly. ‘So, tell us, how long do you think it would take to dig a hole as deep as that?’

  Francis Bowler shrugged. ‘Well . . . wet field . . . even in the late summer and the early autumn it’s a wet old field . . . heavy soil. My wife’s father was a gravedigger for the council in York all his days. He dug graves in Fulford cemetery and used to dig graves in churchyards also, because he was a Christian and helped out the vicar when there was a funeral and a burial to be done. Anyway, he once told me that a grave is a day’s work for a good gravedigger. From peeling back the turf to getting six feet down, keeping the sides vertical and the bottom level . . . very important to do that . . . so you “sink” a grave, do you see? You work it down into the ground, down into the soil, so one grave is one day’s work. Now the five acre, heavy, wet soil, there’s a lot of work there I would think.’

  ‘So nine a.m. to five p.m. with an hour for lunch, seven hours actual labour?’ Hennessey suggested.

  ‘That sort of time, but it would be sunk at night, you can be sure of that, gentlemen.’ Bowler tapped his pipe stem against his teeth which appeared blackened with decay.

  ‘You think so?’ Hennessey asked.

  ‘Certain,’ Bowler replied. ‘No thinking about it in actual fact . . . certain as certain can be, there’s eyes about at night, just the same, but not as many.’

  ‘The fields have eyes,’ Hennessey said, ‘as you just mentioned.’

  ‘Yes . . . so you’d need to be finished by dawn. It would take all night.’ Bowler fumbled some tobacco from an old leather pouch into the bowl of his pipe and then lit the tobacco with a match. He then blew strong-smelling smoke towards, but not at, Hennessey and Yellich. ‘Dark at nine these nights, but a fit man with willing hands would have done the job in a single night, including the filling in.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hennessey murmured, ‘I was thinking of the filling in, that would take time. Not as much as the digging, but still it would take some time.’

  ‘That’s an hour’s job at least.’ Bowler drew lovingly on his pipe. ‘And a very good hour. It would tire a man well out.’

  ‘Just one man with a spade, you think?’ Hennessey queried.

  ‘Could be done . . . be better with a team of men, but if it were me, I’d use a digger, a mechanical digger.’

  ‘Really?’ Hennessey sensed a possible lead.

  ‘Aye.’ Bowler once again drew on his pipe and glanced upward. ‘This is a lovely old time of the year, September . . . lovely.’

  ‘I am inclined to agree.’ Hennessey too enjoyed the blue sky and the lush green foliage.

  ‘So,’ Bowler continued, ‘if I wanted to get six feet down and six feet long and two or three feet wide into the five acre, dump the body or bodies, then fill in and be away before dawn I’d use a mechanical digger, that I would. The five acre is not too far from Catton Hill.
Farming, even thirty years ago, was almost fully mechanized and so sounds in the night wouldn’t seem too unusual, but there’s the risk that someone might chance on you . . . a poacher . . . that still goes on, or an old boy walking home across the fields. So you’d not want to waste time and hang around any longer than you had to.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Hennessey nodded. ‘Very interesting and a good point you make, sir.’ He paused and then asked, ‘So who owned a mechanical digger in these parts about thirty years ago?’

  ‘No one,’ Bowler grinned, ‘no one . . . no . . . you rented them, you still do . . . you rent the things.’

  ‘Really?’ Yellich asked.

  ‘Really, chief, and they are not cheap. I can tell you no one, no tenant farmer could afford to buy one, even renting is expensive.’ Bowler re-lit his pipe.

  ‘Who would rent out in this area?’ Hennessey asked.

  ‘Marshall and Evans Plant Hire, they’re in Catton Hill village. They’re the people to talk to.’ Bowler pulled strongly on his pipe. ‘They’ve been in the plant hire business for years now. Whether they keep records going back thirty years, well, that I don’t know, but it’s a slim chance that they might.’

  Hennessey sighed. ‘Slim or not, it’s a chance we have to take. Thank you for your time, sir.’

  Carmen Pharoah carefully and methodically trawled the missing person files held at Micklegate Bar police station which were between twenty-eight and thirty-two years old. She was searching for a report of a missing family, comprising parents plus two and still possibly three daughters. She had reasoned that if such a report did exist then it would not be hard to find. Not hard at all, pretty well unique, in fact, so she had told herself. Carmen Pharoah knew that it was most often the case that missing persons turn up alive and well within twenty-four hours of being reported as missing. Very few missing persons actually remain missing, usually if the person in question is not found alive, then their body is, but for an entire family to be reported as missing and to remain missing is, she believed, most newsworthy and pretty well unheard of. The file, when she very easily found it, contained just one sheet and had been sent to the Vale of York Police for their information by the Metropolitan Police, the family having been reported as missing by the mother’s brother in London, where the family home was. The missing family was investigated because of the unusual nature of the case and because evidence indicated that the family had vanished when visiting York. One Detective Constable Clough was recorded as being the ‘interested officer’ but his investigation had come to nought and the inquiry was suspended after just ten days.

  Carmen Pharoah found herself to be more than a little disappointed that a case of a missing family was allowed to go ‘cold’ after such a remarkably short period of time. The family, she read, were given as being Gerald and Elizabeth Parr and their two daughters, Isabella and Alexandra, of the Camden area of London, and who had disappeared when visiting York on ‘business’, rather than as tourists, though the exact nature of said ‘business’ was not disclosed. Just two daughters. Carmen Pharoah sat back in her chair and glanced out of the window of her office, along the backs of the houses along Blossom Street, being a ribbon of nineteenth century terrace development. So, she thought, Dr D’Acre was correct, two daughters and a third non-related female of the age group of the daughters of Gerald and Elizabeth Parr. That meant more searching to be done. Somewhere in the pile of missing person files was a file in respect of a young woman who had been reported missing at approximately the same time as the Parrs.

  Carmen Pharoah returned her attention to her desktop and the pile of dusty manila folders. ‘So this is how it was before the days of the microchip,’ she said to herself, ‘all written up in copperplate long hand.’ It was, for her, like touching history. ‘But ten days,’ she whispered, ‘surely there must be something within those days? It’s in there somewhere, girl, it’s in there somewhere, so look for it. Then . . . then,’ she said, ‘a visit to DC Clough, if he is still with us. Human memory is often better than dry details in an old file.’

  ‘There was just nothing, nothing at all, and so nothing else I could do. I wasn’t best pleased about closing the case after just ten days but the order to do—’

  ‘Close . . . close the case?’ Carmen Pharoah questioned. ‘Close it?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Adrian Clough smiled. ‘A slip of the tongue; of course it wasn’t closed but it was left to go cold. The order to let it go cold came from the top floor, pressure of work; it was just a very busy time.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I wasn’t happy, none of us were. With the suspicion . . . no . . . no . . . the real certainty of foul play we felt we should keep the case in the media, but with a lot of work to do . . . and . . . well, you’re a copper and you know you can’t act on just nothing, and that’s all we had . . . nothing. So I dare say the top floor was correct. They took the hard decision, and the case of the missing Parr family was consigned to the vaults, “to await developments”, was the official line.’ Ex-Detective Constable Clough, by then just plain Adrian Clough, was a gentleman in his seventies. He sat in an old, deep leather-bound armchair in the living room of his modest three bedroom, semi-detached house in Bishopsthorpe. He had, as Carmen Pharoah noted, reached the stage in life where he had begun to smell old, as some elderly people are wont to do, some earlier than others. Adrian Clough, she saw, had heavily liver spotted hands and a gaunt, drawn face as if, she sensed, he was fighting an internal growth. He also seemed to her to have some difficulties in his breathing and to have lost much weight, being in her view much too slight to be taken for the police officer he had once been. Carmen Pharoah discreetly read the room with a series of glances and saw the room was very neatly kept. She thought that she detected a woman’s touch, as in that of a dutiful daughter, or a kindly granddaughter. There certainly was no evidence of the presence of a Mrs Clough.

  ‘Is there a Mrs Clough?’ Carmen Pharoah braved to ask the question.

  ‘No . . . sadly, not any more, our Mabel went before, she’s passed on, our lass. She saw me get my promotion to Detective Sergeant and she saw me collect my pension, and we had a couple of years together in my retirement before she went in her sleep. She was still only in her fifties, no age at all. These days it’s no age at all. God rest her.’

  ‘I am so very sorry.’ Carmen Pharoah found herself beginning to warm to Adrian Clough, Detective Sergeant (retired).

  ‘Thank you, miss, but I have come to get used to being alone and I wouldn’t want to share my house . . . not now.’ Adrian Clough glanced adoringly at an alcove beside the chair in which he sat and in which were many framed photographs of many men and women and children of varying ages. ‘That’s my rogues’ gallery,’ he said proudly, ‘more in the pipeline. They keep a good eye on the old man and it helped me that I grew up in a large family, and so I learned from an early age that I am not the centre of anyone’s world and that has helped me cope with solitary living.’

  ‘Good . . . good.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled approvingly. ‘I am pleased you are coping.’

  ‘Well, you know, I had a good life. I dare say that I never amounted to much as a police officer. I got worried about my lack of advancement for a few years and eventually settled into the routine of being a low-ranking CID officer and stopped worrying about the young, thrusting high-fliers shooting past me. I just settled into my post and consolidated. I had my family and I began to look forward to my retirement. I never got to be part of the team investigating the million pound jewellery raids, or the large-scale fraud, but someone has got to look into the theft of tools from the old lady’s garden shed and the lifting of Yorkshire stone paving slabs which occurs during the hours of darkness, and I made a respectable number of arrests which led to a respectable number of convictions. I pulled my weight. I did my duty.’

  ‘Good for you, sir.’

  ‘Oh . . . don’t call me, sir. You know, I was very pleased to receive your phone call, very pleased indeed. The only
calls I get these days are from my family checking up on me, which I don’t mind, or from double-glazing companies, which I do mind, so a phone call from my old station, good old Micklegate Bar nick . . . or Mickie Bar as we used to call it.’

  ‘Mickie Bar?’ Carmen Pharoah grinned. ‘I have never heard it called that before. mind you, I am fairly new.’

  ‘It used to be the nickname until a new station commander arrived and he put a stop to it. Sent an angry memo round to all hands; it was unprofessional he said, so after a while it fell into disuse. I dare say he was correct in his attitude.’

  ‘I confess I quite like the sound of it,’ Carmen Pharoah replied. ‘I think it has quite a homely ring to it. It speaks for a police station which had a good level of morale among the officers. I seem to have noticed that when a place of work is known by a nickname among the people who work there, then it has a happy working atmosphere.’

  ‘You are probably right, miss, in fact I know what you mean.’ Adrian Clough struggled with a difficult breath and then continued. ‘We used to feel that way about it, homely, as you say, but I wouldn’t reintroduce the nickname if I were you; dare say it was unprofessional, dare say we did have the wrong attitude.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Carmen Pharoah replied, ‘but I do like the name, I really do. So, the missing family?’

  ‘Yes, the Parrs, very, very strange, a real mystery, like the missing Roman legion. What was it?’

  ‘The Ninth.’ Carmen Pharoah glanced out of the window and noted a small but neatly kept garden. ‘I think it was the Ninth Legion. I read about it before I came up here.’

  ‘Yes, it was the Ninth, an entire Roman legion, some five thousand men; they just vanished without a trace. They left Eboracum, the place of yew trees, which was the name of the original settlement which became York.’

  ‘I see how you have been using your retirement, sir.’ Carmen Pharoah smiled.