The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori

by Robert Barnard

  “I suppose I have always been a loner,” admitted Charlie, “at least at work. I prefer to go at things on my own.”

  “How could you not be, with no people around you to bring you out of yourself.”

  “But you say that it was Declan who was always your favorite of your children?”

  “It’s a dreadful mother you’ll probably be thinking I am, to favor one over the rest like that. But Declan was such a nice-natured boy—no, I’ll not say that. They’re all very nice-natured children, even Patrick. . . . Well, Patrick has got too much of his father in him, but it’s not his fault, that, and when he and Declan were together, which they always were as much as they could be, Declan would be holding him back from wrongdoing, thank the Lord.”

  “They were very close?”

  “They were. That’s how it happens in large families, they sort of divide off. People called them the O’Hearn twins, and they were like twins, though their natures were so very different.”

  “You said Patrick was like his father,” hinted Charlie delicately.

  “I’d not want to speak ill of the dead,” said Mrs. O’Hearn, but it seemed more of a formality than anything deeply felt, for she went on: “But I’d not want to tell lies about him either, for fear you didn’t understand about Declan. My Jack was a big man with a bit of a temper, and he could be very rough with the children, or . . . or with anyone who got in his way when he was in the drink. And sometimes when he wasn’t too.”

  “And Patrick takes after him?”

  “Too much. Too ready with his fists an’ all. I’ve had to stand up to him since his father’s death, make it clear that I’m not going to be my own son’s punching bag. But Declan could always manage him. It looked as if it was Patrick in charge, but that wasn’t the case at all. His father always wanted to ‘make a man of him,’ but since Jack died I haven’t stood any nonsense from Patrick.”

  “And Declan, anyway, went in entirely the opposite direction, did he?”

  “Oh, he did. A lovely boy.” She brought out a little scrap of handkerchief with lace edging and dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t know how I can talk about him without crying, but you’re a good listener. . . . I wondered whether he would be a priest, but it wasn’t to be. There’s hardly a soul has the vocation these days, is there? How’s the Church to survive? Oh, Declan was always kind, and took endless trouble with the little ones, and stood up to his father when he was big enough—and that was brave, you’d say, if you could have seen the size of his fists.”

  “How did your husband die?”

  She turned to him, her eyes sharp now.

  “What are you implying? There was nothing like that!”

  Charlie backed off at once.

  “I wasn’t implying anything, Mrs. O’Hearn. We have to get the whole picture. And since by your own account your husband was a violent man, I wondered how he died.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s with you saying Declan was murdered. I can’t believe it, not Declan, not a sweet boy like that. . . . Jack was killed when scaffolding collapsed on a new building he was putting up in Rathdrum. There was few to mourn him. Even his brothers and sisters—and one or two of them are a bit too much like him to my way of thinking—even they could hardly weep for him. And I had to stop the children saying they were glad.”

  “Did he leave you well off financially?”

  “He did not. It all went over the bar. It’s been a struggle, but we’ve managed.”

  “It sounds as if your family has been a happier one since he died.”

  “It has. Life has been much better, I’d not deny it. There have been difficulties, no question, but there’s been no fear. Declan has been a rock, but of course he’s young—I can’t talk about him as if he’s dead—and being a young man he wanted to see a bit of the world before he settled down. If only he’d stayed in Donclody, maybe found work in Rathdrum. Finding work is a bit easier these days in Ireland, so they tell me. . . . If he had he’d still be with us!”

  She raised her handkerchief again and wept silently into it. Charlie was silent for a few minutes, as they drove through bleak Pennine landscapes. This, since the Moors murders, was landscape that was associated in the popular mind with sadistic killings. It was something that everyone tried to put out of their minds but nobody could.

  “Will you tell me about Declan’s decision to travel a bit?” he asked at last. Mrs. O’Hearn put her handkerchief away.

  “In a way I’d expected it. It’s what most young Irish people do when they’re twenty or so—the young girls maybe get jobs with children, and the boys make their ways around doing casual jobs. In the past it’s been either America or Britain, but now it’s often Europe. Anyway, Jack didn’t leave many contacts in America, not ones you’d want a young man to take up. The way Jack got through to people in America was breaking their noses in bars. So it was to England Declan came—not that he had any contacts here, not family contacts, but it would be easier to get home if he ran out of money. He was hoping to go to Europe later on, but that would depend on his making a bit of money.”

  “When did he leave home?”

  “End of July it was. The last time I saw him. If I’d known . . . But there, I didn’t have any fears for him, not more than normal. I’ve never known any young person from our area come to any harm, apart from those that were always heading full-speed for the rocks wherever they happened to be.”

  “So, how did he leave? Train?”

  “No, a friend took him to Dublin by car. Then he got a boat to Liverpool.”

  “Do you know what happened to him after that? Did he write?”

  “Oh, yes. Postcards first. One from Dublin, one from Liverpool, which he liked, but said it was desperately poor. Then cards from Manchester and Leeds.”

  “Was he singing in these places?”

  “Yes. And he did some washing up in cafés and restaurants, even a bit of waiting at table in the places where the singing didn’t bring in much money.”

  “Did he tell you about the job at Ashworth?”

  “Is that the place near Haworth? Yes, he did. Just a short letter saying he’d got a job looking after an old painter. Said he might stay a month or two, or maybe longer if he liked it. Said helping the old chap paint was interesting.”

  “And that was the last you heard?”

  “I had a postcard saying he was still enjoying himself. Patrick had a letter telling him more about the artist and the setup at the place—Ashworth, you say? Pat went and looked up the artist in the library in Rathdrum, and he said he was quite well known. I think Declan regarded it as an honor working for the man.”

  “And that was the last you heard?”

  “That was the last.”

  As they neared Leeds, Charlie said, “I have one more question, a very important one. Will you think about this before you answer?” She nodded, looking faintly scared. “Is there anything you know of, in Declan’s life in Ireland, maybe something in which he himself was entirely guiltless, that could mean that someone there could have a grudge against him?”

  She paid him the compliment of thinking hard for some moments before she shook her head.

  “No, there’s nothing, nothing at all. Everyone loved Declan, and that’s the truth, and he didn’t get involved with anything that wasn’t straightforward.”

  “He couldn’t have got himself caught up in anything political?”

  “Political? Is it terrorism you’re meaning? That’s quite impossible. Declan hated the bombers and killers, despised them, hated what they do to the minds of the young people who get caught up with them. Called it brainwashing. I tell you there’s not a chance. Declan’s whole life was spent in Donclody and Rathdrum. There’s no IRA cells in places like that. That kind of scum flourishes in the big towns.”

  “And are you quite sure there was nothing in the letters and cards he wrote you that might give a clue as to why someone on this side of the water might have it in for him?”

  Again she
thought hard and long.

  “There wasn’t. They were just short, do you see, and not very informative—the sort of letters a boy writes to his mother. I didn’t get the impression he felt at home with those people he took the job with, didn’t feel he understood their sort, but that’s about all. There may have been more in the ones he wrote to Patrick, because, like I said, they’re of an age, and very close.”

  “But Patrick didn’t tell you anything about them?”

  “No, he didn’t. And wouldn’t. Patrick’s still at the ‘wild boy’ stage, when all the adults he knows are enemies. Things between him and Declan would stay between the two of them. I doubt he’d even have told Mary.”

  They drew up outside the Millgarth Police headquarters in Leeds. Mrs. O’Hearn looked up at it as if it were the cause of all her grief. Charlie said nothing because he could think of nothing, and got out of the car, ushered her out, and led her inside.

  “Mike in?” he asked the sergeant, and, getting a nod, led her through to CID. Oddie saw them and got up from his desk. He was his usual concerned self, but his whole body seemed to say that he could no more think of words of encouragement or comfort than Charlie could.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” was all that came to his mind, and it sounded very lame.

  “No, thank you. Not yet. I’d like to get it over with, please. Talking to Mr.—Peace, is it? That’s a nice name—Mr. Peace here made me almost forget, and so did the airplane; I was that terrified. But losing Declan is the worst thing that could happen to me, to all of us, and I’d like to get it over with, say my prayers, and try to make sense of it, such a terrible thing.”

  Oddie nodded to Charlie, who took her arm, and silently they led her in the direction of the mortuary. They knew that everything that could be done had been to restore the boy’s face to normality, rid it of the hideous scream of anguish and apoplexy that had disfigured it when it had been found. The walk seemed endless. Mrs. O’Hearn said nothing, except that at one point Charlie thought he heard her murmur, “It’s worse than flying.”

  Eventually Mike Oddie pushed open a door, and they were in the mortuary, with its terrible chill, and its smell of chemicals and death.

  “The Haworth body,” said Mike to the mortuary attendant, who had it ready as instructed, not in the hideous impersonality of a drawer, but covered with a sheet on a table. As she approached it, Mrs. O’Hearn seemed to be saying a prayer, her eyes closed. Then she opened them and nodded that she was ready. The attendant drew the sheet back slowly, and she gazed at the dead face. After a second or two her eyes widened.

  “Praise be to God. It’s Patrick,” she said.

  14

  ART CRITIC

  “It’s incredible!” said Mike Oddie the next morning, throwing himself into a chair in the big CID office. “Hello, square one: I didn’t expect to be back on you so soon.”

  “We are not back on square one,” insisted Charlie, parking his backside on the neighboring desk.

  They had phoned the Irish Club in Leeds, nice and full on a Sunday evening, and had got in touch with a homely woman who would put Eileen O’Hearn up for the night and listen to her self-lacerating monologues. The reaction after her words of relief had been extreme: she was a wicked woman, she lamented, to be glad that one son was dead rather than another, a wicked woman to question God’s will; she was justly punished for taking against a son who followed in his father’s footsteps by losing him entirely. And so on, and so on. It was all totally understandable, but difficult to take when they wanted to settle down and reorientate entirely their ideas on the case. In the end they had hit on a way of making the woman feel as at home as she would ever be outside Ireland, with the chance of sorting out her emotions and calming her mind. But they had been glad to put her into a car, to be driven by a fresh-faced police constable to her temporary accommodations. A good night’s sleep, however, had not sorted out Oddie’s ideas for him.

  “Square one is where we are,” he insisted. “We have a body which has nothing whatsoever to connect it with Ashworth or with the people there.”

  “His brother Declan connects him, and the letter or letters he wrote him while he was there.”

  “He’d already left the place. The two could have arranged to meet in the Haworth area. They could have been sleeping rough on the moors. Come to that, Declan could have murdered him.”

  “You’re thrashing around. That last possibility is almost inconceivable from everything we know.”

  “OK, OK. But what we know comes from a doting mother. More likely, I’d agree, is that Patrick got into some kind of quarrel or brawl.”

  “How many brawls have you come across which ended with someone being garroted?” Charlie inquired.

  “You’re getting to be a real smarty-pants,” complained Oddie. “All right: let’s hear your guesses—because guesses are what we are reduced to.”

  Charlie had been stewing over the implications of the turnabout in the case in intervals of troubled sleep. But what he had were a mass of deductions and conjectures that needed time before they could be ordered into a string of causes and consequences.

  “Patrick takes off for the wider world outside Donclody, and naturally the first person he makes contact with in mainland Britain is his brother,” said Charlie, talking slowly as he thought through the implications of his conjectures. “Or—more guesswork—he gets a letter from his brother which makes him uneasy about what’s happening at Ashworth, and he comes over to see for himself. Their mother gave the impression that Patrick thought he was the leader and protector, the one in control, as the eldest always does, but that in fact it was Declan who was the one who generally reined in his brother, calmed him down, limited his impetuosity. That suggests that Patrick may have come over to offer protection to his brother, and found that the brother had already made his own decisions, had packed his bags and left.”

  “Just as the Ashworth people said.”

  “Just as they said.”

  “Nice. As a conjecture I like it. But not a scrap of evidence.”

  “I bet if the body was in that car, Forensics will find traces. And if the living Patrick was in that house, or any of the Ashworth cottages, they’ll find traces there too.”

  “And if they do the question will arise: why were they all so silent on the subject of Declan’s brother? They’ll hardly be able to shrug and say they didn’t think it relevant.”

  “No. . . . You don’t think he can have gone there without revealing he was Declan’s brother, do you?”

  “No,” said Oddie confidently. “The fact that he was so like him was what made people put us on to the wrong track from the first. Look, we’re getting ourselves boxed into a house of cards based entirely on guesswork. We should be asking ourselves what we should do in the new situation—apart from letting Forensics loose on Ashworth, and their work will take days, and then weeks before we have a definite report. What do we do in the meantime?”

  Charlie took refuge in his subordinate position.

  “You’re boss, Boss.”

  “Meaning you’ve run out of ideas.”

  Charlie grinned.

  “Not far off the mark. I’ve got one or two, but I’m not sure how you’ll take them.”

  “Try me.”

  “Right. In spite of what you say, to me everything about this murder takes us to Ashworth. And at Ashworth everything centers on Ranulph Byatt. Yet we know practically nothing about him—not his background, his career, tastes, reputation—nothing.”

  “And?”

  “I’d like to find out,” said Charlie simply. Oddie nodded.

  “Makes sense. How?”

  Charlie improvised.

  “I’ve got one or two contacts at the City Art Gallery. They had a problem last year with a persistent vandal when they put on that lavatory seat sculpture exhibition. They should have realized lavatories attract vandals like honey attracts flies. I could try them—they might be able to recommend some books, or may
be an expert.”

  Mike nodded slowly, having no better ideas, and Charlie went away to get started. It was one of the younger staff members at the gallery who, when Charlie rang, came up trumps.

  “I’ve read about the murder and the Ashworth connection,” she said when they had got over the usual courtesies. “Set me wondering about Ranulph Byatt.”

  “Good. With what result?”

  “It’s rather an old-fashioned setup there, or seems to be on the surface: the artistic community with shared ideals, and so on. Puts you in mind of Eric Gill and Ditchling.”1 It didn’t put Charlie in mind of anything of the sort, but he gave an intelligent grunt to show that he was keeping up. “But when you get down to it it’s not an artistic community at all. Everyone except Byatt is a rank amateur, mostly of a fairly dreary kind. It’s more of a glorified fan club, or one of those cult villages the Americans seem to go in for.”

  “Is Byatt important enough in your view to warrant that kind of admiration society?”

  “In a word, yes. At his best he’s a wonderful painter.”

  “Is there a lot written about him, stuff that I could look up?”

  There was silence at the other end of the line.

  “Hmmm. Not a lot, now you come to mention it. I could get the people in the art library to look up what there is, but I don’t think it will amount to much beyond newspaper reviews and articles. It’s a bit surprising, since it’s generally agreed he’s a major artist. I suppose the fact that he’s shut himself away in that little hamlet miles from anywhere hasn’t helped, or the fact that he’s surrounded himself with tenth-raters who probably write even worse than they paint and couldn’t begin to do justice to him if they went into print. That’s probably what has scared other possible writers and critics off. There was someone who meditated a book on him, but it didn’t get anywhere, I don’t think, because the last I heard he was working on the umpteenth book on Francis Bacon.”