After the Flood

by Peter Turnbull

  ‘A look?’

  ‘The eyes are the windows of the soul, chief inspector. His soul was cold, ruthless. There was a coldness in his eyes despite the generosity of his speech. I think that’s what I meant by insincere. He talked in a free and friendly way, he showered Mary with gifts, but his eyes were not the eyes of a generous man. I think he had a short fuse, I think he could turn nasty in an instant. I never saw anything like that myself, it’s just a feeling I had: a man with a very low threshold of tolerance. He and Mary weren’t together for very long before she was murdered so it never developed into anything serious, but I did worry. She was twenty-seven years old, she wanted marriage and a family and I thought. Oh yes, Mary, but not with Andrew Quinlan.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I think Mary sensed it too. She seemed quieter in the week before her death, withdrawn. Preoccupied.’

  ‘Did she say what about?’

  ‘She didn’t, but she did say, “If you find something out about someone, they become a different person, don’t they?” She didn’t say anything else, just that.’

  ‘Did she live at home at the time?’

  ‘No, she had a flat in York. She had a flatmate, Sylvia something.’

  ‘Could you possibly remember her name? It could be very important.’

  ‘Yes, give me a second. Stand…something. Standing, Standup, Standalone…Stand…Stanton. That’s it, Sylvia Stanton. Doubtless she’ll be Sylvia something else by now, and possibly living in Canada.’

  ‘Do you know what she did for a living?’

  ‘Oh, same as Mary. She was also an accountant.’

  ‘Employed by? Do you know?’

  ‘A building society rather than a firm of accountants. Now which one?…A small one, not one of the big ones. Had a name which sounded more like a railway company from the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Harrogate, York and Ripon?’

  ‘That’s the one. The Harrogate, York and Ripon Building Society.’

  ‘The Harrogate, York and Ripoff, if you ask me.’ Hennessey had found Sylvia Stanton to be very easily traceable: a phone call to the Daveygate branch of the building society and a mention of her name, the line clicked and an efficient-sounding voice said, “Sylvia Stanton speaking.” One hour later he was sitting in her office. It was a room without natural light, furnished with modem office furniture, blue swivel chairs in front of her desk, and a large framed photograph of mountain scenery on the wall. Her engagement and wedding ring and photograph of two children on her desk spoke to Hennessey of a woman who had married but who, in the fashion of many modern women, in Hennessey’s observation, had refused to give up her maiden name upon marriage. The pay’s dreadful. I could get nearly double what I’m paid here with one of the big societies.’

  ‘No opportunity to move?’

  ‘Oh, I wish, I wish. The jobs are disappearing in the finance sector, the banks and building societies are closing branches. I’m lucky to have a job at all. The salary’s been frozen and the pressure is being piled on. I think it’s a way of getting rid of staff, make the job unbearable. I confess I’m tempted but my husband is on a temporary contract and I have these two treasures to think about. So I stay at the saltmine. You must be close to retiring, Mr Hennessey, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I don’t, and yes I am.’

  ‘I envy you. Must all be behind you. So, you want to ask me about Mary?’

  ‘She was your flatmate, I understand?’

  ‘Yes. And a good friend. I visit her grave when I can, talk to the headstone…I must be mad. And each Christmas I buy a miniature bottle of gin and pour it over the grave. That was her tipple, you see, gin, “Mother’s ruin”.’

  ‘She drank a lot?’

  ‘Oh, hardly at all. But she drank gin at Christmas time.’

  ‘And wine with a meal?’

  ‘Just a glass. Not more, but that night was an exception.’ Sylvia Stanton swept a hand through her dark hair. She wore many rings and bracelets, far too many for Hennessey to find tasteful. Her dress too, a loud yellow, didn’t seem to be from a high-street department store, and Hennessey reflected that her financial complaints might be due more to her spending pattern than to her employers’ parsimony.

  ‘What do you remember about her murder?’

  ‘The murder? Well, nothing. Of the act itself, all I know was what I read in the Yorkshire Post’

  ‘About Mary, then, at the time of the murder?’

  Sylvia Stanton chewed the end of her pen. ‘Well, I think she and Quinlan were going through a difficult patch; the euphoria of a new relationship was well past. It was as if she was finding things out about him, things he would rather have kept hidden.’

  ‘Do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t, not in the sense of details; but the impression I had was that question marks were popping up all over the place. Mary grew up in Wolverhampton, spent the first ten or eleven years of her life there, then her family moved to York. If you live in York and you want to get out for a day, where would you go?’

  ‘Me, the coast, an hour to Scarborough, or the Dales perhaps.’

  ‘As folk do. In Sheffield, where my husband grew up, well, folk there go into the Derbyshire Peak District for a day.’

  ‘And? I mean, the point being?’

  ‘Well, the point is that she told me she once mentioned to him a day trip to Ironbridge. Wolverhampton folk, you see, tend to take the Upper Severn Valley in Shropshire for their days out and Ironbridge, to visit the bridge, is a popular destination.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So Mary mentioned having visited Ironbridge and Quinlan said, “Where’s that?” And he is supposed to have spent his early years in Bridgnorth, the next town down the valley from Ironbridge. Even though he left at an early age, he would have known where Ironbridge was. So Mary would have thought. Small things like that, but things which have huge implications.’

  ‘Not who he said he was?’ Hennessey inclined his head to one side.

  ‘Not said in so many words, but I think that notion had entered her head and was gnawing away at her. And he wasn’t very good at his job, she said. That was a disappointment to her, yet he boasted of his good degree, which is a breach of the rules. You don’t ask people what class of degree they’ve got, nor do you volunteer that information about yourself unless it has some relevance, such as in a job interview, for example. So it was a bit of a surprise when he told her what a good degree he had got, and it was a greater surprise that a man with a good degree should struggle in his job as he clearly was doing. Then there was the age gap. He was a lot older than she was.’

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  ‘Once or twice. He came to our flat on occasion. Well built, a “smoothie”, but he was an accountant, not many beards and denim jackets amongst accountants; they dress up for work, and dress up to go out in the evening.’ She paused. ‘He became inconsiderate and I think a little untruthful.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, the day she died, it was a weekend, a Friday or Saturday night, I can’t recall.’

  ‘A Saturday. Her body was found on Sunday morning.’

  ‘Well, that evening, she was due to go out with Andrew Quinlan and he cancelled at the last minute. I mean, when she was dressed, no time to find something else to do, no time to fix up another date—with a girlfriend I mean. He had to visit a friend in Leeds, he said. Some mate from university days of whom Mary had not previously heard, suddenly popped up out of the blue in a state of crisis. I was going out that night with my boyfriend, who became my husband. We asked if she wanted to come out with us but she declined, she’d feel in the way. So she kicked off her shoes and opened a bottle of wine—not like her, but she was angry and upset, and gave us the impression she was going to demolish it. She’d starved all day in readiness for the meal in the evening, but she microwaved up some pasta.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘Yes, when we came back there was an empty bottle of wine, and
the dirty plate from the pasta meal, one of those ready-to-cook numbers that don’t taste anything like Italian food. And no Mary, so I thought she’d gone with Quinlan.’

  ‘But he was in Leeds.’

  ‘He came back. I saw him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘That evening.’

  ‘In York?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘About…oh, I don’t know, say 10 p.m. We had gone to the cinema, left it looking for an eatery, and saw Quinlan in his car.’

  ‘Definitely?’

  ‘No, not definitely, but a well-built man with light-coloured hair, wearing the same fawn-coloured leather jacket Quinlan always wore, driving the same top-of-the-range BMW Quinlan drove at the time. No eye contact with him, nothing particularly distinctive about his car to set it apart from other top-of-the-range BMW, not enough to count as a positive identity in the eyes of the law I wouldn’t have thought, but it is enough for me. It was Quinlan all right, driving in the centre of York.’

  ‘Enough to make us have a closer look at his alibi,’ Hennessey growled.

  ‘Really? You think it was Quinlan after all?’

  ‘Can’t say. What time did you get back to the flat?’

  ‘About midnight as I recall. I’ve been over that day so often in my mind that I can still recall details after twelve years.’

  ‘You told the police about seeing Quinlan in York at 10 p.m.?’

  ‘Yes. They were anxious that I make a positive identification and when I told them that it wasn’t possible—a fleeting glimpse, at night, driving away from me—well, they didn’t pursue it once I made it clear I wasn’t prepared to say it was definitely Andrew Quinlan that I saw. The guy, a fairly old policeman, mumbled something about not liking witness identification anyway and wanting something stronger. And that was that. Well, then her parents removed her things from the flat, and I left and rented somewhere else. I couldn’t stay in there…Then it was all over. I just got on with my life thereafter. I think about her a lot though, and each Christmas I visit her grave and pour a measure of gin over it.’

  Later that day Hennessey sat in his office. He was wondering if ever in his career he had unravelled not just one, but as in this case four murders, and got so deeply into the case still without having set eyes on the prime suspect. He decided that this case was a personal first for him in that respect when Yellich appeared at the door of his office, tapped on it and entered.

  ‘Thought you’d be interested in this, boss.’ He held a sheet of paper in his hand.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Fax from Wetherby, boss.’

  ‘Forensic science laboratory?’ Hennessey sat forward.

  ‘The very same, boss.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, sir, the DNA tests in respect of Marian Cox, nee Quinlan, have been done and the results have been sent to us.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘It’s as you suspected, sir. Mrs Cox’s son’s DNA matches that of the DNA taken from the shallow grave.’

  ‘So the skull was that of the loathsome Dunney female, and the body was that of the non-loathsome Marian Cox, who came to these parts searching for her brother?’

  ‘Yes, boss, and the DNA taken from the body in the field, Mrs Cox’s remains, matches the DNA taken from the bones buried in the back garden of the house in Leeds.’

  ‘Proving the said bones to be those of Andrew Quinlan.’

  ‘Yes, boss. Brother and sister. Time to bring in that guy, whoever he is, the one that’s calling himself Quinlan. Now we know the identity of the human remains in the garden in Leeds, we can arrest him and charge him with obtaining money by deception. He’s not Andrew Quinlan, he has no degree at all, let alone a first. Make him sweat, quiz him.’

  ‘And with what do we link him to the murders? It has to be something that will impress the Crown Prosecution Service, whose standards are impossibly high. Remember, it’s not for nothing that the canteen culture in this police station refers to the CPS as the Criminals’ Protection Service. Take a seat, let’s kick it around,’ said Hennessey.

  Yellich sat, looking a little dejected. ‘You know, we haven’t even seen this guy Drover yet.’

  ‘I was thinking just that when you arrived just now.’ Hennessey paused. ‘First he cools the real Andrew Quinlan, but what proof do we have?’

  ‘He was the only other person in the house at the time and he had the motive: he wanted his qualification.’

  ‘So he came back to the house, found Quinlan dead, realised there had been a break-in, surmised that Quinlan had startled an intruder and the phantom intruder had murdered Quinlan. He then saw the opportunity of stealing Quinlan’s identity and the future that he could carve for himself with a good degree. So, he buries the body and assumes Quinlan’s ID. All he’ll cough to is interfering with the Office of the Coroner. Four years max.’

  ‘Marian Cox? Drover was heard to invite her to his house—I read your recording in the file. And the Dunney woman, only one to get an invitation to dinner at Drover’s house. Both disappeared at the same time, both ended up in the same grave, both had links with Drover.’

  Hennessey pursed his lips. That might, just might, be acceptable, but the concrete coupling, the mechanical link, is still absent. It puts me in mind of that country doctor, married three times, each of his wives disappeared. We know what happened, of course we know, but he was never prosecuted.’

  ‘But we’ve got bodies, boss. They had no bodies in that case.’

  ‘Good point. The facts weigh heavily against him.’

  ‘And now we have the murder of Mary Wright, who just happened to be Drover’s girlfriend at the time of her death.’

  ‘And it appears that she was beginning to find a few things out about him.’

  Yellich looked questioningly at Hennessey.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to her mother and her flatmate. The flatmate particularly spoke of Mary’s growing suspicions. She also made an almost positive identification of Drover in York when he was supposed to be in Leeds. Told the police at the time but because it wasn’t a one hundred per cent positive sighting they went with his alibi, that he was with a man called…’ Hennessey consulted the file on Mary Wright’s murder, ‘Harris, Norman Harris of…St Michael’s Crescent, number 18, Leeds 6.’

  ‘Leeds 6 again, student-bedsit-land. If that guy Harris was there twelve years ago, he won’t be there now.’

  ‘It’s worth checking. You see, Yellich, if that alibi was, as I suspect, concocted, it Drover and Harris entered into a conspiracy to mislead the police, and if we can break that alibi, even twelve years later, then we can charge him for the murder of Mary Wright. That will be sufficient to impress the CPS. A broken alibi means guilt.’

  ‘And once inside he might cough to the others?’ If he has any conscience he will, but I doubt he has. We’ve never met him, as you pointed out, but I don’t think he’ll have a conscience. No, I was thinking that a life sentence was still a life sentence, whether for four murders or one; it’s still the same porridge. The parole board is unlikely to be lenient when they review his file.’

  ‘Still, I’d like some justice for his other victims.’

  ‘So would I, Yellich, but softly, softly, catchee monkey. Let’s pay a call on Harris, see what he can tell us, if he’s still at his last known address. If we can break the alibi, then we’ll huckle Drover.’

  ‘Now, boss?’ Hennessey glanced at his watch. ‘Three p.m. Now.’

  Harris, Norman, of 18 St Michael’s Crescent wasn’t at home.

  ‘He’s in hospital.’ The wide-eyed girl was new in the world, thought Hennessey, straight from home, straight from boarding school, into Leeds 6. That’s some impact. ‘Blood…blood was every where. He was lying there…’ She pointed to the kitchen, further down the narrow corridor. ‘I’ve cleaned some up, but…’

  ‘Which hospital?’

  ‘Leeds General. Such a quiet man…He�
�s lived in the house a long time, that’s his room, ground-floor front; the police have sealed it, as you see.’

  ‘When was he attacked?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘Anyone arrested?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I found him, thought he was dead, but the ambulance crew found a pulse.’

  • • • •

  ‘We transfused fifteen pints of blood until he stabilised.’ The doctor was a young woman, softly spoken but very confident. ‘He was a very lucky man. Very lucky.’

  ‘Where was he stabbed?’

  ‘In the chest. Four times. One wound missed his heart by a fraction of an inch.’

  ‘Can we speak to him?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t tire him. He was sedated to help him cope with the shock, which could have been just as fatal as the knifing was nearly fatal, so he’ll be a little dull. Shall we say ten minutes? No more.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Hennessey smiled. ‘Ten minutes will probably be sufficient.’

  ‘Third bed on the left.’

  Hennessey and Yellich walked slowly but purposefully into Nightingale Ward, with beds lining either side of the rectangular room, and large windows allowing a generous amount of daylight. It smelled strongly of disinfectant, and nurses in white coats busied themselves quietly and efficiently. The third bed on the left was, Hennessey and Yellich saw, occupied by a gaunt-looking man in his sixties.

  ‘Mr Harris?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Police.’ Hennessey showed Harris his ID. ‘Can we ask you a few questions?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Hennessey drew up a chair by the bed, while Yellich remained standing at its foot.

  ‘You going to nail him?’ Harris addressed Hennessey.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Quinlan.’

  ‘Did he do this to you?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Hennessey turned to Yellich and smiled.

  ‘Have you made a statement to that effect?’

  ‘Not yet. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not exactly. We’re from York. The Leeds police will be investigating the attack on you.’