Never yet having met the man, though with growing awareness that such a meeting was inevitable, Hennessey thought the whole thing had ‘Quinlan’s’ pawmarks all over it. And ‘Quinlan’ had been interviewed, but all too briefly, and also too superficially for Hennessey’s liking. He was her lover at the time, that he didn’t deny, but he had no motive to kill her; in fact they were just short of that stage where they would have decided to marry and plan a future together: ‘We were engaged in everything but name, she was my future,’ he was recorded as saying. The interviewing officer had also recorded that he seemed to be in a state of shock, which looked genuine. There was no overt display of emotion, which would have caused suspicion. In a situation like that an Englishman, especially one of ‘Quinlan’s’ background, was expected to keep his upper one stiff, very stiff indeed. ‘Andrew Quinlan’ gave his whereabouts that night as with an old university mate in Leeds, which alibi was checked by phone, and then confirmed by written statement. And that seemed to be that. There was no apparent motive to explain the murder of the beautiful Mary Wright, nor any other suspect in the case, and the police investigation seemed to have faltered and then fizzled out for lack of momentum. Other crimes were committed, the attention of the police was distracted, their resources stretched, and the file on the murder of Mary Wright began to gather dust.
Hennessey turned back to the beginning of the file, feeling an annoyance with his predecessors and an embarrassment for the British police. Harry Hill, he read, was the ‘interested officer’ in the case. Hennessey remembered Hill well: a jovial man for a police officer, but whose joviality and false good humour were a smokescreen to conceal the fact that his feet were not touching the pedals of his job. Harry Hill, the back slapper who called everybody except the most senior officers ‘my good mate’, had retired to Spain shortly after Mary Wright had been murdered. Nothing was going to get in the way of good old Harry’s retirement, and if that meant a myopic approach to the murder of a young woman who had everything to live for, then that meant a myopic approach. Or tunnel vision. Or looking for a reason for not looking further, because there was, so far as Hennessey could see, a huge, huge motivation for the murder of Mary Wright, and which pointed to the bogus Andrew Quinlan as being her murderer.
She had discovered his secret.
And it was probably the reason why the bogus Quinlan had never married. His relationship with Mary Wright had taught him that you can’t get married and continue to live the lie that Hennessey now believed him to have been living.
‘He’s a serial killer.’ Hennessey spoke the words to himself before he realised he had done so. ‘He’s a serial killer.’ He walked down the corridor to Yellich’s office, entered without the usual polite tap on the door frame, sat—nay, Yellich would in later years recall Hennessey virtually collapsing—in the chair in front of Yellich’s desk and said, ‘He’s a serial killer.’
‘Sir?’
‘Quinlan. Or the man who calls himself Quinlan. Drover. He’s a serial killer. Not in the sense of random victims, nor, I suspect, not in the sense of qualifying for a single to Rampton, but in the sense of being a multiple murderer. This guy has gone through life leaving a trail of corpses behind him.’
‘Sir, you’re not making sense.’
Hennessey paused. He looked at the floor then looked up, held eye contact with a bemused-looking Yellich and said, ‘This is what happened. He’s damaged in early childhood, learns fear and survival instinct—’
‘Drover?’
‘Yes. Gets adopted by a family dripping with wealth. Their social conscience is pricking them, so they scratch the itch by adopting a damaged little street turk, rescue him to turn him into one of them.’
‘Except that you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.’
‘Well put.’ Hennessey pyramided two fingers in Yellich’s direction. ‘Good. Anyway, when living with the Drovers he gets spoiled rotten, gets to believe he can have what he wants. By some twisted logic, he feels he’s owed it. Anyway, he’s thrown out of the adoptive household because he’s caught with his fingers in the family business’s till, so he has to make his way in the world using his own devices. Sadly for him his devices are not up to much and he bombs his degree. At the time he’s living with Quinlan, who is also alone in the world but who hasn’t bombed his degree, so Drover pinches it, and the reference that the university wrote for Quinlan, and Quinlan’s National Insurance number. In fact he steals Quinlan’s life.’
‘Victim number one is the real Andrew Quinlan, buried under a lot of cement in the rear of the house in Leeds.’
‘Right. Any feedback on the DNA profiles yet?’
‘Not yet, boss, too early in the piece still; all keyed up, though. Mrs Cox’s son is giving a DNA sample at the medical centre of his university to a police doctor tomorrow, I think. We’ll get a result very soon after that.’
‘Good. Anyway, all goes well for Drover, now a.k.a. Quinlan. He doesn’t measure up to the expectations of a man with a first and struggles as an accountant, but survives and continues to survive.’
‘Though doubtless now worried, boss, since the discovery of the bodies made the press.’ Yellich leaned forward, an unusual posture for him when talking to Hennessey who, similarly unusually, sat in a reclined posture.
‘They haven’t been linked by the press, though, have they?’
‘No, boss.’
‘So, he’ll be hoping they remain unlinked. One grave in a field outside York, another in a back garden in Leeds. No reason for the press to speculate, and we’re keeping mum.’
‘Certainly are, boss.’
‘So, boyo continues living a lie, pretending to be Andrew Quinlan. Then he has two potentially disastrous happenings. The sister of the real Andrew Q turns up, and at the same time his girlfriend is murdered.’
‘He had a lady friend?’
‘About twelve years ago. I had lunch with his employer today. He declined his food and went home feeling sick.’
‘As you might expect.’
‘Drover was apparently very flustered but recovered quickly and invited Quinlan’s sister to come to his house that evening, promising to cook her a meal, which was surprising for his employer because Drover was apparently no dab hand in the kitchen. So Marian Cox, nee Quinlan, arrived at the house, “Cuckoo’s Nest”, self-parody there all right, expecting to meet her long-lost brother. She was a dead woman the moment she set foot in that house. She was the one person who could and would have exposed him. Can’t think what he did to her, I only hope it was quick. We haven’t met him yet, but as his personality begins to emerge from reports about him, I wouldn’t put it past him to have told her what he had done to her brother and explained why he had to do the same thing to her.’
‘Oh…’
‘But I doubt we’ll ever find out.’
‘So the loathsome Dunney, withholding morphine from her patients, why kill her?’
‘He needed her skull, as we suspected. She was a lonely woman who readily agreed to an invitation to dinner with the reading group at Quinlan’s house, except the reading group knew him as “Mr Preston”. Guy’s had more names than…than…well, whatever, has had a lot of name changes. Anyway, that evening the reading group consisted of Drover, a.k.a. Quinlan, a.k.a. Preston, and Amanda Dunney, who for the first and last time in her life found herself desired by a man. She was murdered before she ate, otherwise she would have grown suspicious about the lack of other people in the group—a plastic bag as soon as she stepped over the threshold, I would guess. So he has two bodies. He takes the body of Mrs Cox, Quinlan’s sister, and the skull of Dunney, puts them both in the same hole, perhaps hoping they’ll be found, hoping that we will assume the bones to be those of Amanda Dunney.’
‘Having matched the teeth with Miss Dunney’s dental records.’
‘Right. But he did not anticipate the eagle eye of Dr D’Acre, nor did he know the extent of medical knowledge, to wit pubic scarring only present on a woman
who had given birth, and you remember the rest…’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘That explains why he evidently disposed of one skull and one skeleton less skull, and did so successfully, yet placed the other skull and the other body in a shallow grave.’
‘Beats me why he didn’t simply dispose of Marian Cox’s body, leave it at that.’
‘The appeal of complexity to felons trying to conceal a crime, Yellich, occurs time after time and it only serves to trip them up, hoist by their own petard. In this case he was just pathologically obsessed with concealing his deception. So much so, that he achieved precisely the opposite effect. I’ve seen it time after time. They have made our job very easy on occasions. Or as you said, “There’s nowt so queer as folk”.’
‘So, his girlfriend?’
‘Also murdered at the same time. Heavens, he murders Andrew Quinlan, then for twenty years lives peacefully and quietly, so far as we know.’
‘So far as we know,’ Yellich echoed, with raised eyebrows.
‘Then in a period measured in days, he kills three women. Amanda Dunney and Marian Cox are reported missing within a few days of each other. Two days after Marian Cox is reported missing, Mary Wright’s body is found in a field, naked. She’s been strangled. Of the three female victims only one could at that time be linked to Drover, a.k.a. Quinlan, and he had an alibi for the time of her murder. He was “over in Leeds, visiting a friend from university days”.’
‘That’s no alibi, we know now. He couldn’t visit a friend from university days, not as Andrew Quinlan, anyway.’
‘Which is my thinking. We can blow that alibi; twelve years isn’t a long time ago. I can remember conversations I had twelve years ago, recall actual dialogue word for word, as you’ll be able to. Then he has another period of peace and tranquillity, then an incident of localised flooding, and a shallow grave is unearthed by a fast-flowing stream.’
‘And here we sit. Mary Wright must have seen something.’
‘Mary Wright’s murder was investigated by Harry “Happy” Hill.’
‘I remember him, boss.’ Yellich ran his fingers over his scalp. ‘Not the best role model for a young detective constable.’
‘Harry “Loose End” Hill is what I remember.’ Hennessey paused. ‘I like your notion of Mary Wright seeing something she shouldn’t have seen in respect of the murders: it’s too coincidental that she discovered his secret at the time Marian Cox presented in his life. A surprise visit, only to discover him chopping up human corpses in the garden of his house?’ He shuddered. ‘She was dead the instant she saw that. But her p.m. showed she’d eaten an Italian meal with much wine just before she died. That doesn’t fit with her chancing upon something; too, too many unanswered questions, Yellich.’
‘Shall we pull him for quizzing, pressure him a little, see how he stands up to questioning?’
Hennessey paused. ‘No, I don’t think so, not yet. You see, speaking as an old and jaded cop, I don’t think we’ll ever have enough to charge him with the murder of Andrew Quinlan. He could, for example, argue that Quinlan had died of natural causes, or had committed suicide, that he chanced across the body and saw the opportunity to assume Quinlan’s ID, thereby awarding himself a door-opening first. So he’s guilty of interfering with the Office of the Coroner, and obtaining money by deception. That vital evidential link which would convict him of the murder of Marian Cox and similarly the murder of Amanda Dunney is missing in both cases. After twelve years all trace evidence will have gone. Wherever the missing bones are, they won’t be in his garden.’
‘Don’t know, boss. Might be worth a look.’
‘We’ll do it anyway when the time comes, as it will, especially since shallow graves seem to be a speciality of his, but my waters tell me otherwise. No, the way into this case, is via the murder of Mary Wright. We’re going back into that case, Yellich.’
A stiff one. Very stiff. The man leaned against the billiard table in the basement of his house and gripped the cut-glass tumbler. They can, he said to himself, suspect what they like, it’s what they can prove that’s the worry. He drank the whisky. So now they’ve found Quinlan’s body, it had to happen. If it can be identified as his then that’s my cover shot. He turned and sank into a leather armchair. But I own all this, outright, and I’ve money in the bank. So I get sacked, I can survive. I’ve enough to see myself out.
He staggered upstairs to the living room. He thought of Quinlan’s sister. Why, he thought, why, why, why did she have to turn up? She had had to go. She would have exposed him. But inviting sad Amanda Dunney to the house was a mistake; he told himself that that was a mistake, should have kept it simple. It had been simple enough to burn her body in the garden, incinerate it down to the bare bones, chop the bones up, drop them one by one into the canal. He should have just done the same thing with Quinlan’s sister. ‘Should have kept it simple.’ He spoke aloud as he ran his toes through the pile of the carpet. Mary Wright, pushy Mary, asked one question too many, she could have exposed him. So what’s the weak link? Where is the danger? He glanced up at the ceiling, at the glass chandelier. The weakest link, he told himself, the weakest link is in Leeds. If the police start to link me to Quinlan’s murder, and Quinlan’s sister, they’ll look again at Mary Wright’s murder; and if they do that, if they put pressure on Harris the odd-job man…It was stupid, stupid, stupid to have concocted the alibi. Harris…he has to go, another mouth to be silenced. It is, he told himself, the only way.
NINE
In which an alibi is blown
TUESDAY, 12th APRIL
‘She would be nearly middle-aged by now. Twenty-seven plus twelve—thirty-nine.’ The woman looked frail—white-haired, arms from which flesh hung in folds—but her voice was strong and her mind was sharp. Her recollections would be accurate. ‘Mary was our only child, you know. She was everything to us.’
A saucepan clanged as it was dropped on the kitchen floor; the sound echoed through the house.
‘She’s a clumsy girl.’ The woman winced at the sound. ‘Clumsy and lazy. She only washes the top surface of the dinner plates, then she stacks them on top of each other, so the clean top surface comes into contact with the dirty undersurface of the plate on top of it. I’ve told her time without number, but will she listen?’
Hennessey relaxed in the deep armchair with a floral-patterned cover and glanced out of the lead-beaded window as the postman walked up the path to the front door, posted the delivery through the letterbox and retraced his steps to the road.
‘That’s the first post,’ Mrs Wright said. ‘It’s late because we’re the last house in the last street of his round. I wonder, would you be so good…?’
Hennessey levered himself out of the armchair and walked to the hallway to retrieve the mail. As he did so, he glanced along to the kitchen and saw the maid perfunctorily wiping a tureen. She didn’t seem even to have turned at the sound of the letterbox snapping shut. Two envelopes had been delivered, one from British Gas, the second from a private company. Hennessey returned to the sitting room and handed the envelopes to Mrs Wright. ‘Junk mail and your gas bill, I’m afraid.’
‘Junk mail is good mail. Don’t sneer at it, Mr Hennessey.’ She took the envelopes from him and opened the envelope from the private company. ‘You see, if it wasn’t for junk mail, your first-class stamp would cost four times what it costs you now, and junk mail keeps the postmen in work. I’m not bothered what they are selling but I do want…’ She sifted through the papers that the envelope had contained. ‘Ah, here it is, business reply envelope, so no stamp necessary.’ She licked the envelope and sealed it. ‘Now do me a favour.’ She handed the reply envelope to Hennessey. ‘Post that for me, will you? Because the company who sent me this unsolicited junk has to pay for those reply envelopes, and that further keeps down the cost of your first-class stamp, and all other postage.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ Hennessey slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket.
‘I
have a nephew who works for the Royal Mail. He told me that.’
‘So, Mary?’
‘I’m relieved that the police are looking into the case again. I feel we were ill served at the time. What was that man’s name?…Hill, a policeman called Hill. He’d a superficial attitude to his job, so both my husband and I felt. The whole thing came to a full stop and he didn’t seem to look for ways to push it forward. There was no motive to murder her, and her boyfriend was in Leeds at the time, so Mr Hill called it a day. A random attack, he said. “We’ll have to wait for the killer to surface.’”
‘He said that?’
‘He said that. And that was his day’s work. You see, that’s the problem with having only one police force: you can’t take your business elsewhere.’
‘You could have complained.’
‘To what end? Our daughter had been taken from us. We felt defeated. I still do. My husband didn’t last long after Mary’s death, less than a year. Life just left him. He was sitting in the chair you’re sitting in—I hope you’re not superstitious?’
‘No.’ Hennessey smiled.
‘Many people have sat there since and have seemed not to come to grief. It was one evening. I thought he was falling asleep. I said, “Come on, Henry, if you’re tired, we’ll go to bed.” I touched him but he was clammy…I said, “Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry.” He was only fifty-seven. We were the same age, my husband and I. The same vintage.’
‘Tell me about Mary’s boyfriend.’
‘Why? Is he under suspicion?’
‘Not really.’ Hennessey didn’t want to lead Mrs Wright. ‘I’m trying to get a picture of her lifestyle.’
‘I see. He was a man called Quinlan. Andrew Quinlan. He was a chartered accountant; she was a certified accountant, a lower status than chartered. I didn’t care for him. I don’t think Henry did either. Nothing we could put our finger on, we both felt that he just wasn’t for Mary. There was something insincere about him, too confident…he had a look in his eyes that I didn’t care for.’
After the Flood Page 18