‘Good point, boss.’ Yellich sipped his coffee. ‘So what’s for action?’
‘Deoxyribonucleic acid.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘Are you impressed? Took me a long time to learn how to pronounce it.’
‘DNA to oiks like me.’
‘And oiks like me too, Yellich, but yes, DNA. Can you contact the forensic science laboratory at Wetherby?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘They’ll have to liaise with Dr D’Acre here at York and with…’ he consulted the fax that he had received on Saturday, ‘with Dr Dunn, forensic pathologist at St James’s Hospital in Leeds. If they could obtain DNA samples from the headless skeleton examined by our own Dr D’Acre, and a sample from the skeleton which was examined by Dr Dunn and compare them. If they match, and I suspect they will, they’ll prove the skeletons to be brother and sister.’
Yellich glanced questioningly at Hennessey. ‘But how do we get a positive ID on the headless skeleton?’
Hennessey explained. ‘Marian Cox, nee Quinlan, travelled to this neck of the woods to find her estranged brother Andrew. She contacted her husband in Salop indicating that she had found her brother. Shortly afterwards she disappeared. At about the same time the loathsome Amanda Dunney also disappeared. Their disappearances, as we have said, have to be connected because bits of the two women may have been found in the same hole. I say ”may have been found”, because Amanda Dunney’s skull is still the only positive piece of evidence we have. But if we can use DNA profiling to link the two skeletons as brother and sister, then Mrs Cox, nee Quinlan, who was married with children—’
‘Ah, a DNA sample from one of her children!’
‘Good.’ Hennessey jabbed a finger in Yellich’s direction. ‘The first step is to link the two skeletons. If they don’t match, we’ve gone up a blind alley, but if they do match, we can ask a living descendant of either whose identity we are certain of.’
‘To wit, one of Mrs Cox’s children.’
‘The very same. And if that strand of DNA matches, then we have the skeletal remains of Andrew Quinlan, who was murdered about thirty years ago, and the skeletal remains of his sister Marian, who was reported missing about twelve years ago.’
‘I can tee that up, boss, no problem.’
‘Good. Leave it to you. Me, I’m going to have a chat with the senior partner of the chartered accountant who is calling himself Andrew Quinlan—see what he thinks about him, help me get the measure of the man. Don’t want to go to their premises, though, that’ll put our man too much on his guard.’
‘Invite him for a pub lunch, boss.’
‘Yes…I was thinking of inviting him to the station, but a pub lunch, yes, that sounds just the ticket.’
‘Couldn’t resist it.’ Bernard Vernon was a tall, broad, man, close to retirement but clearly enjoying good health. He had the smooth skin and the sparkle of life in his eyes that would be the envy of many a thirty-year-old. He served as a good example of the observation that age is a concept, and people age at different rates. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘I’ll buy these.’ Hennessey asked for a pint of Black Sheep best. Vernon said he’d have the same.
‘Shall we order now? I can recommend the chilli.’
‘Yes, two chillis, please.’ Hennessey placed the order with the white-shirted barman. ‘We’ll be sitting…’
‘In the comer?’ Vernon suggested. ‘It’ll be quiet over there.’
‘Very good. In the comer, please.’
Vernon and Hennessey carried their beer to the table in the comer of the room and sat under low beams, adjacent to a log fire, amid prints of hunting scenes from bygone times.
‘I often entertain clients here,’ Vernon explained. ‘That’s how I know it. Not the big clients; the really big names we take to the Crown Hotel for lunch.’
‘I see.’
‘So, explain the summons for a pub lunch by a police officer I have not met, and with not even a parking ticket on my conscience. A summons I couldn’t resist.’
‘Yes…I didn’t want to call at your offices and I also asked you not to tell anyone whom you were meeting, because I want to keep this as low-key and discreet as possible.’
‘Cloak and dagger! The like does not happen in Selby.’
‘Well, it’s probably in respect of incidents in York and Leeds; many, many years ago at that.’ Hennessey paused. ‘I want to ask you questions about Andrew Quinlan.’
‘Quinlan.’ Vernon groaned. The name clearly had uncomfortable implications for him. ‘Oafish, boorish…treats the secretaries like dirt, and the juniors too. And he’s not a particularly good accountant. He’s cost us business: clients have taken their work elsewhere because of Quinlan’s performance.’
‘He’s been with your firm a long time?’
‘Thirty years. My father is the Vernon in the company’s title. He started the firm with his mate “Big” Tom Scott over seventy years ago now, just the two of them in a room above a grocer’s shop. Now we are one of the largest firms in this part of Yorkshire. It was my father and Tom who interviewed Quinlan. I’m ten years older than he is and I well remember him coming to join us. He proved to be a disappointment almost from the beginning.’
‘Really?’
‘He came with a glowing reference from his university, a first-class honours degree. But it was his background that intrigued my father and Tom. He’d grown up in children’s homes, coming from that disinterested, unstable background to take a first from one of England’s most prestigious universities. Well, Dad and Tom thought that took courage; they told me at the time that Quinlan must have broken down the sort of barriers that most people can’t even imagine. So he came for an interview, interviewed well and was offered a job. He’s been with us ever since. He’s grown as we have grown, but more in the manner of a leech, rather than someone who has pulled his weight and made a contribution to the company. And his attitude: not the modest, unassuming, cap-in-hand manner you’d expect from one of his background, but an arrogance of the sort that gives public schools a bad name.’
‘I see. What’s his appearance like?’
‘His appearance?’ Vernon seemed surprised at the question, but answered it. ‘He’s a tall man, distinguished, dresses well, conservatively as we would want, and appropriate for a man of his age and occupation. Still has a good head of hair…light, sandy-coloured—drives a Mercedes Benz now, after many years of being a BMW man. Lives in York—well, near York. Other side of York from here.’
‘Do you have his address?’
‘I could get it for you.’
‘I’d appreciate it.’
Vernon dipped into his jacket pocket and retrieved a small mobile phone, tapped two buttons and then held it to his ear. ‘Nice thing about being sixty-three years of age is that you don’t have to worry about the long-term effects of these “brain fryers”, but I don’t like to see my grandchildren using them.’
‘Wouldn’t have one.’ Hennessey sipped his beer. ‘Don’t like the idea of being at people’s beck and call.’
‘You can switch them off, keep them switched off until you—oh, Penelope, yes, it’s Bernard here. Is Andrew Quinlan near you at the moment? No? Good. Can you put his address up on the screen and read it out to me? Thanks.’
He made a writing motion, and Hennessey handed him his notepad and ballpoint. Vernon listened and wrote on the pad at the same time. ‘Thanks, Penelope.’ He snapped the mobile phone shut and handed the notebook back to Hennessey. On it he had written: Cuckoo’s Nest, East Riding Way, Nether Poppleton, York.
‘What do you know about his private life?’ Hennessey pocketed the notebook.
‘Very little. Keeps himself to himself really, fairly bookish sort of bloke, told us he belonged to a reading group—that was some years ago though. He was less bombastic then. The more overbearing he got, it seemed, the less interested in books he became.’
‘Married?’
‘No…He had a fling with Mary Wright, one of our juniors.
That’s a sad incident in the firm. She died in suspicious circumstances, murdered in fact.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. In fact Andrew Quinlan was in the frame for that, as I believe the expression to be, but he had an alibi.’
‘Anybody done for it?’
‘No, nobody was, unsolved case. It’ll still be open, still “on your files”.’
Mary Wright, Hennessey wrote on his notepad.
‘Why? Are you going to investigate?’
‘Possibly, very possibly. Tell me, what checks do you make to determine that people are who say they are when they apply for a job?’
Vernon paled. ‘Are you saying…’
‘I’m not saying anything. What checks do you make?’
‘Well, heavens…When it comes down to it, I don’t think we do make thorough checks. The references would have been genuine, he would have to provide his true National Insurance number, that would be accurate.’
‘I’m sure it was.’
‘You’re not telling me that Quinlan isn’t Quinlan? You’re not saying he’s an impostor? Mr Hennessey, I have to insist that you tell me. If our company is being compromised in any way I want to know about it. I insist you tell me. I have helped you. You help me.’
Hennessey paused. ‘Very well, but on the strict understanding that you don’t breathe a word of it to anyone, and I mean anyone. If word leaks out it could jeopardise the whole operation.’
‘You have my word.’
‘And you must try to continue to behave towards Quinlan as if this conversation never happened.’
‘Again, you have my word.’
‘Well, the real Andrew Quinlan was short and dark-haired.’
‘Oh…’
‘He shared a house with three other accountancy students at Leeds. At the end of the course Quinlan and one other student stayed in the house. The other student was described as blond-haired, well built, and had been educated at a public school. Quinlan took a good degree; the blond-haired student failed his exams.’
Vernon sank forwards and put his hand to his forehead. ‘Not the body that was discovered in the back yard of a house in Leeds? I read it in the Post.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid so. No positive ID that it is the body of Andrew Quinlan—yet. We are hoping to match DNA from his nephew, but the height of the skeleton and its age at death fit the description of Andrew Quinlan.’
‘The blond-haired bloke murdered Quinlan and attended the job interview passing himself off as Quinlan, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Possibly.’
‘But how would he know Quinlan’s National Insurance number?’
‘Quinlan had a job, pulling pints in a local pub. If he left one of his pay advices lying around, that’s all it would take. Quinlan and this fellow were mates, they’d know a lot about each other.’
‘God in heaven…’
‘What? Have you remembered something, Mr Vernon?’
‘Quinlan’s seemed agitated over the last few days, but that’s not it. It’s the phone call from his sister…It must be ten years ago now, possibly more, it’s coming back now.’
‘What do you recall, Mr Vernon?’
‘Well, we were standing chatting in the open area of our office—each accountant has his own office accommodation, and there is also an open area where the secretaries and the word processors are. One afternoon a call was answered by one of the clerical staff, who held up the phone and said, ‘It’s your sister, Mr Quinlan,’ to which I said, ‘I didn’t know you had a sister, Andrew,’ to which he replied, ‘I didn’t know I had one either,’ then laughed and came out with some story about it being so long since they had seen each other…but it didn’t ring true. I never gave it much thought, but his comment about not knowing he had a sister sounded like a slip, something he regretted saying. You’ll have heard people say the like.’
‘Many times. Please go on.’
‘And his attempt to recover the slip seemed a little opaque. Now it seems downright transparent.’
‘I think you’re right, I think it was a slip. If the man who is calling himself Quinlan is who we think he is, then he has an adoptive older sister, but the real Andrew Quinlan probably wouldn’t have told him about his natural sister, and her presence must have come as quite a surprise to the bogus Andrew Quinlan.’
‘All these years…it explains a lot. Explains why he never left us—he wouldn’t get a job anywhere with the reference we’d give him—and if he failed his degree, it explains why he wasn’t on the ball as much as we would have expected.’
‘You never chopped him?’
‘Never was actually bad enough to chop; always the weakest member of staff, but never quite choppable. He’s clung on with his fingernails.’
‘Can we return to the phone call? Do you remember what he said?’
‘I remember he was nervous. I remember his voice was shaking. He said not to come to the office, which was reasonable, but to come to his house that evening.’ Vernon paused. ‘Then he asked if she was alone. I didn’t hear her reply but he seemed to be relieved by it. Then he said, “How does lasagne sound?” Which I also thought strange because he always says he’s no chef.’
‘Do you know when that was?’
‘When was it, when was it? Well, I distinctly remember that Dorothy Pugh took the call. She retired on the same day that my first grandson was born. I drove from her retirement party to the hospital to meet my grandson, and he’s now twelve years old. He was born in the November of that year. That call was made during the summer months: we stood in shirtsleeves in a hot office.’
‘So, about twelve years ago?’
‘Yes. I’m going to have to go home…I can’t go back to the office and act normally towards Quinlan.’ He took his mobile out of his jacket pocket, phoned ‘Penelope’, told her he wouldn’t be in for the remainder of the day and asked her to cancel his appointments. He snapped the mobile shut and put it back in his pocket. ‘Probably won’t be in tomorrow either.’
The waiter arrived with two long, thin plates, each of chilli on a bed of brown rice. ‘Chilli, gentlemen.’
‘Take mine away.’ Vernon waved the waiter away.
‘Sir?’ The young waiter was clearly surprised. Take it away?’
‘Yes, I can’t eat it, I feel…I feel unwell.’
‘I can’t refund your money, sir.’
‘That,’ Vernon stood, ‘that is the least of my worries. Good-day, Mr Hennessey.’ He turned and walked out of the pub.
George Hennessey on the other hand thought that it had been a most productive interview, and tucked into his lunch with relish. He found his mind turning to his son, about the age he was when he wanted to be an astronaut, and how then his favourite meal had been ‘stupid bird and brown lice’, which was boyspeak for ‘chicken and brown rice’. It all came flooding back and seemed like it had been yesterday, just the two of them, father and son, eating a meal together. He let his meal settle, drank the remains of his beer, strolled into Selby, admired the abbey—on that day encased in scaffolding—against a clear blue sky, then walked on to the station and took the train to York.
At his desk in Micklegate Bar Police Station Hennessey picked up the phone and pressed a two-figure number.
‘Collator.’
‘DCI Hennessey.’
‘Sir?’
‘File on the murder of one Mary Wright, please. My office, a.s.a.p.’
‘Do you have a date for the case, sir?’
‘No, but it’ll be within the last thirty years, and it is local.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Hennessey walked to the comer of his office, where stood an electric kettle, a bottle of instant coffee and a can of powdered milk. He made a mug of coffee and glanced out of his window at a group of tourists walking the walls, then returned to his desk carrying the mug of hot liquid. It was still too hot to drink when a cadet tapped on his office door holding a file and said, The collator asked me to give
you this, sir.’
‘Thanks.’ Hennessey took hold of the file, laid it on his desk and began to read.
Mary Wright was murdered when she was twenty-seven years of age. The photograph in the dusty file showed her to have been a vivacious-looking redhead with tumbling hair, and a figure that Hennessey thought would be the envy of many a fashion model, with a face that could sell cosmetics and a smile that could sell toothpaste. In the photograph she was leaning on a rock, wearing a very small orange bikini that matched her hair perfectly. The background of the photograph was that of a beach, of sea, of blue sky. He turned the photograph round and on the back he saw a neat, precise, female hand had written, Me, taken by Andrew, Kos (last day). Mary Wright in happy times; and a lot nearer to her actual last day than she could have thought. And Andrew? Andrew Quinlan? Or another, earlier involvement with a lucky man of the same name? Other photographs in the file were less pleasing to the eye and of interest only to a police officer, being of Mary Wright’s corpse, by then bereft of even a bikini, utterly naked, lying face-up in a field. Hennessey laid the photographs on one side.
Mary Wright had been strangled. The post-mortem report revealed a partially digested meal (possibly Italian), which in Hennessey’s view meant ‘certainly Italian’. He was well aware of the reluctance of the medical profession to commit to a certainty, and so a large quantity of pasta and minced beef richly flavoured with tomato and cheese was ‘possibly Italian’. So, she had had an Italian meal before she died. She had also consumed a large amount of vino on her last day. The p.m. report also noted an absence of defence wounds. She did not fight for her life and claw the face of her attacker, leaving a lot of lovely blood and skin tissue residue under her fingernails. No comment was made about this, but for Hennessey the inference was inescapable: she had been wined and dined and, when sleeping off the effects of the meal and alcohol, she had been strangled. Hennessey checked the front of the tile: the body had been found one Sunday morning. So a meal on Saturday evening, ‘Let’s go back to my place’ and death by strangulation at, say, 1 a.m. body taken out into the country and dumped with no little contempt for the victim and an attitude of you-can’t-catch-me arrogance towards the law.
After the Flood Page 17