"Crosshill School?"
"Yes, sir. Can I help you?"
"Could you give me the address of the school?"
"I could. To whom am I speaking?"
"The police."
"Oh…"
The telephonist then gave an address in Selby.
"What sort of school is Crosshill?" he asked as he wrote the address down, at the same moment catching sight of the waif-like Sadie Ossler throwing a yellow ball for her dogs to run after.
"A comprehensive school."
"No residents then?"
"No, sir. It's not a boarding-school or anything like that."
"I see…so, if a telephone call was made from the school at seven thirty in the evening, who would have made it do you think?"
"It could only have been one of the teaching staff, they often work late rather than take their marking home. The caretaker would be around then, checking the building, but he has his own phone in his house, it's a different number to this one. Mr Eddons might be able to tell you who was here. That's the caretaker."
"Mr Eddons. He has accommodation in the grounds of the school?"
"Yes, sir. I'm looking at his house now, it's across the car park from the admin block where I am speaking from."
"Well thanks very much." Hennessey replaced the phone and then sat in the chair, reading the room. The room was neat, well ordered, everything in its place. Very, very functional, yet it had something "showy" about it, an office for the sake of appearances. The filing cabinet contained files with company names and also individuals' names, but mainly they were the names of companies. Small, one-man or family operations, it seemed, and the files themselves were balance sheets, mainly, it seemed to Hennessey, of money owed to Ossler. Mr Ten Per Cent indeed. He left the room undisturbed, closing the door behind him, but he knew intuitively that he'd return there.
He went up the spiral staircase to the master bedroom. Nathan Ossler's bedroom. Like the study, the room was neat and very functional. Not a room, Hennessey felt, that he could relax in. It contained a double bed, king-sized, sitting on a fitted carpet of dark blue. The bedroom had windows which looked out over both aspects of the property. From one window Hennessey saw the drive, the constable in his white shirt and blue trousers on duty at the gate, his car, a few houses. Turning the other way, he saw the green and yellow patchwork of the Vale of York stretching to a wide horizon under a blue sky. Again, the "everything in its place" aspect was what Hennessey absorbed most deeply. Ossler was a man who controlled all about him. The bedroom and the study also served to reinforce Yellich's notion that Ossler both knew and trusted his killer. Yet, there was also the emerging picture of a man with few friends.
"It doesn't add up," Hennessey said, speaking to himself.
"It just doesn't add up at all." But he found the address book and pocketed it.
During the journey back to York, with the dogs mute and curious in the rear seat of Hennessey's car, he said, "Did you call your husband at all over the weekend?"
"Yes," said Sadie Ossler.
Hennessey's heart sank. "You did?"
"On Sunday, just to confirm that I'd be arriving back home on…well today. That was about eight o'clock. Caught him in the pub."
"In the pub?"
"Yes. He strolled down to the White Hart on Sunday evening."
"He has a mobile?" Hennessey breathed more freely.
"Yes. He prefers it. Dead lazy if you ask me. Doesn't have to get up and answer the phone. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, no reason, no reason at all." He paused. "I've found the address book, it has Oliver Ossler's name and address. Would you like us to notify him of his father's death?"
"If you would. I'd like him to arrange the funeral. I don't feel up to it."
"I'm sure he would."
Hennessey drove Sadie Ossler to her brother's house on the Tang Hall Estate. She let herself and the dogs into the house. It was, thought Hennessey, a considerable fall from social grace to come from Strensall to Tang Hall, but he further observed that she seemed more at home in Tang Hall than at Thundercliffe Grange, and seemed eager to enter her brother's modest council house. Hennessey drove back to Micklegate Bar Police Station, wrote up his morning's work in the Nathan Ossler file and then walked the walls to Lendal Bridge and a late lunch in the fish restaurant.
After lunch he retraced his steps and enjoyed the cityscape with its sensitive blend of ancient and modern. An observer would see a tall, silver-haired man, of wise countenance, light stepping, with an expression of preoccupation and puzzlement.
Three
In which Sergeant Yellich meets an iron lady and Hennessey a fallen Scoutmaster.
"To be honest, I don't know why either of them puts up with him. Don't know why I did either, really." Sophie Asquith sat in a small upholstered chair beside the summer empty fire grate. At the further side of the hearth, a large pile of faded and musty-smelling newspapers had been allowed to accumulate. Sophie Asquith, so far as Yellich could tell, was not a smoker, no ashtray in evidence, her breath did not smell of stale cigarette smoke, yet the mirror above the hearth was nicotine stained, as was the ceiling of the room. It seemed strange to Yellich that a cleaning lady could live in such grubby surroundings. "He led both of them a dog's life."
"Tell me about him, or them."
"Always shouting, foul-tempered, foul-mouthed individual. She…his wife, had the worst of it, poor little thing, cowed like a rabbit she was most of the time. His secretary got a lot of stick too. His secretary could walk out more easily than his wife but she stayed just the same, despite all the rantings and ravings."
"How long did you work for him?"
"About a year…aye…it'll be a year this July. I wasn't planning on 'doing' for him for too much longer, people don't stay long with Ossler. I wasn't going to be an exception." She looked beyond Yellich at the garden of her cottage, outside the window. She had, noted Yellich, difficulty, apparently, in holding eye contact as she spoke, though her mind was clearly focused. "I didn't like the house. It had a bad atmosphere. I don't mean spirits or ghosts or such but I mean a bad feeling, like violence was about to erupt."
"Stressed? Tense?"
"That's a good way of putting it I think, I've been cleaning folks' houses all my days and you get the feel of good houses and bad houses. You get houses that are just warm. Even in winter they're warm. Stepping into them is like stepping out of a snow storm and into a summer's day, a day like today. Others are just cold. One house I did, cleaned for a gentleman who lived alone, had a key to let myself in and I was always pleased to leave it, it had a bad atmosphere. I could tell something awful had happened in that house…nothing to do with the man I cleaned for…but whatever had happened had left an atmosphere. Ossler's house though, there the bad is in the present, today, not hung over. Has to be, if only because the house is brand-new anyway. Only Ossler has ever lived there."
"Did you see anything unusual this morning?"
"Yes…yes…I did as a matter of fact."
"Oh?" Yellich sat forward from his seat in an upright chair.
"I saw Nathan Ossler slumped in a chair with his brains blown out. That's unusual enough, for one day anyway."
"Apart from that?" Yellich, chastened, reclined into the chair.
"Can't say that I did, young man." Sophie Asquith shrugged. "Dogs were a bit subdued, now we know why, I should think."
"You didn't notice anything out of place, apart from Mr Ossler's brains, I mean?"
"No…just the silence. It was as silent as a morgue, suppose it had become a morgue, hadn't it? I mean, in a way."
"He made it worth my while." Rosie Knott was a finely built young woman, but Yellich rapidly found that she was also a young woman who was made of steel. Her home had an "everything in its place" neatness which while on the one hand was a pleasant contrast to the mess of Sophie Asquith's home life, it also unnerved him for some reason. The photograph on the mantelpiece of a young man and a younger Rosie Knott, outside a church—h
e a bridegroom, she a bride—spoke clearly of a marriage, the house told of a, so far, childless union. That bit was either not wanted at all, or still to come, so thought Yellich, and he wondered how the Knotts would take to a child. Their home, like the Osslers', was really no place for sticky fingers and a thing which smells of warm milk and vomit and makes a noise totally out of proportion to its size.
"I had to disable him," she smiled.
"Disable him?"
"Make him dependent on me. You see, once, when I was quite young, I was with my mother and she was talking to another woman who said she'd left her job because her boss made her life impossible. Then she'd got a call from her boss asking her to return because he needed her, but this woman wouldn't. I thought then that I'd go back but he'd have to pay me, really pay. I reckon I was about ten. Then lo' and behold, there was me about ten years later in that same position, working for a tyrant that made life difficult for the world around him, but I just let it wash over me until I knew his business inside out and exactly how it worked, and all the while his attitude was getting more and more unpleasant. I mean, being called a 'stupid bitch' was nothing. I mean that was nothing."
"Pleasant fella?"
"But I had a plan, see. I just kept telling myself that each time he opened his mouth he was working himself deeper and deeper into a hole. Then, after about a year, I walked out…right in the middle of him dictating a letter. I just stood up and walked out. He was gobsmacked, said I can't do that. I said. 'Just watch me, sunshine, I've had enough of your attitude.' Came home, had a quiet fortnight waiting for the phone to ring and it did ring fourteen days later. In that time he'd had a string of secretaries, some of whom walked out after a few hours, just couldn't take his manner. The longest lasting one stayed for three days before she ran out of his house in tears, so his wife told me. Anyway, I said I'd return but it would cost him. I held out for a four-fold increase in pay." She smiled and looked pleased with herself. 'That was a sweet victory."
"I can imagine." Yellich momentarily pondered his lifestyle should his annual salary be quadrupled.
"A month's pay each week."
"Not bad."
"Helped our mortgage, it's a new mortgage, we're up to the hilt in debt. Paul works in a bank and he handled the transactions. He decided that we'd keep our spending power the same and pay the extra to the mortgage. He said it's always far cheaper to pay off your mortgage as speedily as possible. Take twenty-five years over paying off the loan and you end up paying three times the cost of your house. All this isn't as expensive as it looks, a lot is second-hand. We're striving to pay off the mortgage in ten years."
"Do you plan a family?"
"Eventually. Kill the mortgage first."
Yellich suddenly recalled speaking to a psychologist who worked with delinquent girls and who had said any time—any time—give me girls with shaven heads and swastikas tattooed on their hands, with studs in their nose and tongue, with their leather jackets and Doc Marten boots, because those girls are quaking with fear inside. It's the quiet girls who don't decorate themselves in any way and look comfortable in female clothing, it's those girls who are not frightened, it's those girls who can kill. And sitting here in the modestly spaced front room of a new build house on the edge of Strensall was a slender young woman with no decoration at all, save a wedding ring, and looking comfortable in a simple scarlet dress and sensible shoes, who spoke matter-of-factly about the premeditated disabling and extortion of a tyrant and about "killing" the mortgage, then, then Yellich knew what the psychologist had meant.
"Dare say it's back to normal pay now. But I was on good money for a year. That's equivalent to four years' income. It made a difference, brought the repayments down. You married?"
"Yes."
"Children?"
"One."
"Nice. How old?"
"Four or twelve, depending on how you look at it."
"Oh…I'm sorry."
"No need to be, but this isn't about me."
"No…it's about Nathan who went to hell this morning, or wherever."
"Wherever. Where were you yesterday evening by the way?"
"Here, at home, with Paul. Dreading going to work today. Why, a…suspect now?"
"No, no more than anybody else who knew him, but I don't think you'll be in the frame, in fact you have a motive for keeping him alive, I mean, four times the normal money."
"I wouldn't have been there much longer. Another six months, we thought."
"Tell me about Mr Ossler's business?"
"Businesses, either businesses or not at all. He seemed to have a lot of interests. I mean business interests. He had only one personal interest and that was money. And that was his business, if he had a single business, lending and then getting it back as soon as, at great interest rates. He put a lot of people out of work. Essentially, so far as I could tell, he'd lend money to people who couldn't secure a bank loan, but the rates would be steep, and he'd never lend more than the assets of the business he was extending to, so he'd force the debt and strip the assets. Get his money back, plus some, and put some small businessman out of work in the process. Not difficult to see why someone would want to shoot him, is it? He's not the most popular man in the Vale of York, but he seemed to thrive on being disliked."
"Always from home? I mean, did he always work from home?"
"Home and the airfield."
"The airfield?"
"An old wartime base, now it's a sort of industrial estate, Ossler has a building there."
"Do you know the address?"
She glanced at the ceiling. "Yes…give me a minute. I've typed up letters as though posted from there…Newlands, that's it. Newlands Industrial Estate, Elvington."
"Ah…I know it. Driven past it a few times. Do you know what he's got there?"
"I don't, to be honest. I only know he's got something there because I type letters as coming from that address. Fairly weird letters, no details, sort of menacing tone…'the payment is due shortly' sort of letter, but payment for what is not mentioned. He files all the copies of those letters at the airfield unit."
"Anything that we should know about, either at his house or the airfield?"
"Anything shady, you mean?"
"In a word, yes."
"Nothing that I ever came across, he seemed to do a lot of work on his mobile, often taking himself out of earshot…or he'd get a call and say 'hang on, I'd better take this upstairs' and off he'd go." She shrugged her shoulders. "So perhaps there were a few shady deals going down, I didn't see any details, though."
"I see." Yellich nodded. "Smoke but no identifiable source of fire. What was his relationship with his wife like?"
"Non-existent. When Himself was out of the house, me and Sadie would steal a natter over coffee. Poor thing, some life she had…always reminded me of that phrase used in nuclear power—what is it?—a 'half life'. She seemed to have a 'half life'. Not even that, but she put up with him, went to see her brother when she could. I think she was worried about him, getting in with a bad crowd…she'd give him money if she could, but Ossler was such a control freak, she had to account for every penny. But I've heard that, the wealthier you are, the less generous you are. But she and her brother are quite close. Grew up in a children's home, only ever had each other."
"I can understand that. Any idea how Ossler and his wife met?"
"Through a lonely hearts ad The Meeting Place' in the Yorkshire Post, I think. He placed the ad, she told me. Something along the lines of 'successful businessman seeks younger wife'. She saw his lifestyle and was swept off her feet. Married quickly, then she woke up to what she'd let herself into, that's how it seemed to me, but she never complained, not to me anyway. Just took one day at a time."
"Not unlike you in a sense, letting it all wash over you."
"Perhaps. Perhaps that's how she survived."
Hennessey walked the walls towards Micklegate Bar Police Station. It was, he had found, and as all citizens of York kn
ew, a much easier way of traversing the city centre than walking the pavement. He glanced to his left and pondered the building that was the original railway station, built "within the walls" as the local expression has it, and glanced further afield at the slate grey expanse of crowded housing, whose roads defined narrow and ancient streets. He left the walls at Micklegate Bar as a short-lived summer drizzle fell.
He entered the police station and walked down narrow corridors to his office, picked up the telephone as he sat at his desk. He tapped a four-figure internal number.
"Collator?"
"Yes, sir." The response was rapid, snappy, efficient.
"Hennessey here. I'm back in the office now, as you can tell. The Ossler file?"
"Yes, sir. Have it here."
"That's the file on Mrs Ossler's murder?"
"Yes, it is."
"Nathan Ossler, this morning's victim, he was also known to us apparently. He'll also have a file, probably cross-referred to his late wife."
"It is, sir. It has been extracted for your information."
"Good man." Hennessey replaced the phone and walked from his desk to the wall of his office where stood a small table and an electric kettle, a couple of mugs, some tea, some coffee, some powdered milk. His coffee was still too hot to drink when a cadet reverently tapped on his door holding the files.
"For me?" Hennessey asked.
"Yes, sir. The collator asked me to deliver them."
"Thanks, son." Hennessey took the files and leafed through them. Hers first, Olivia Ossler, hence perhaps the choice of Oliver for their first and subsequently only born, and which lady had been forty-two years old when she was shot and killed while she stood on the threshold of her Georgian townhouse home. The contents of her file were short, brief and to the point.
Victim: Olivia Ossler 42 yrs
Cause of death: Single gunshot to the chest area
Perpetrator(s) : Not known
Witnesses: None
Motive: None identified
And that, to Hennessey's astonishment, was it. Essentially the remainder of the report, compiled by the now long-retired Detective Sergeant Tend whom, Hennessey recalled, had been a sergeant in Her Majesty's Forces for much longer than he had been a sergeant in the City of York Police, was essentially a repetition of the item-by-item information given on the first page. Hennessey recalled Tend with clarity, a man of military bearing, of a non-commissioned officer type, perfectly turned out, clipped, abrupt way of speaking, a style which clearly extended to his report writing. Tend did, however, offer the theory that Olivia Ossler, who like the present Mrs Ossler, was weak and retiring by all accounts, had been shot in mistake for Nathan Ossler. She had, after all, been wearing his coat with the cowl up over her head. Hennessey, who strove for high-mindedness in all things and who hated sarcasm could not resist muttering "0h, very good, Sergeant Tend, very good." He read on but Ted Tend had offered no further information or insight. Hennessey leaned back and sipped his rapidly cooling coffee. The possibilities in respect of Olivia Ossler's murder reduced to:
Perils and Dangers Page 4