Perils and Dangers

by Peter Turnbull

  (1) The shooting was indiscriminate, a lone gunman with a grudge against the world seeking a victim. There was no premeditation and no personal motive. Olivia Ossler had just opened the door at the wrong time.

  (2) That Ted Tend was correct; the shooting had been a deliberate attempt to murder Nathan Ossler. Either way, Olivia Ossler had just opened the door at the wrong time.

  (3) If (2) is assumed, the murder was either connected to the murder of Nathan Ossler eight years later, or it wasn't.

  Hennessey decided that for the present he would assume option (2). He'd keep an open mind about any connection between the two murders. It isn't easy to murder somebody. It is, in fact, very difficult. Many have fantasised about it, but fortunately only a few people have the necessary psychological make-up to carry through the act, so had observed George Hennessey, who had spent almost his entire working life as a police officer. And of those who do commit murder, the great majority become consumed with guilt. Eight years, Hennessey pondered, was a long time over which to connect two murders and he felt in his waters that the murder of Olivia Ossler would remain unsolved. What had probably happened is that the murderer of Mrs Ossler had terrified himself or herself, had become eaten up with guilt about not just taking a life, but the wrong life, and had disappeared into the ether, had managed to keep their own counsel, speaking only to a priest, if at all. But time, Hennessey had learned, is on the side of the police, there being no such thing as a statute of limitations in the UK. Things may yet be resolved about the murder of Olivia Ossler.

  He laid the file on Mrs Ossler's murder on his desk and picked up the file on Nathan Ossler. Here, he found, was a man whose track record further reinforced Hennessey's growing conviction that he would have found it difficult to like Nathan Ossler had they met in life. Ossler had been in trouble with the law since he was fourteen when the Juvenile Bench of Newbury Magistrates Court had deemed him to have been "in need of care and control" and sentenced him to six months at a detention centre, in Newbury, Berkshire. Hennessey pondered, so Ossler was not a man of this shire. He was also a man who had moved around the United Kingdom. He acquired a further conviction for "malicious damage" when he was sixteen and still at Newbury, for which he was fined ten pounds. A sentence which spoke of a crime of great malice, but little actual damage. He paid a further fine following a conviction for drunk and disorderly and then his track record developed its true flavour, or its "hum".

  In Ossler's case, the "hum" of his track was filthy lucre, specifically dishonest means of acquiring same: non payment of tax, fraud, receiving stolen goods, that whilst living in London and for the last offence he received his first prison sentence of twelve months, of which he served nine months at Wormwood Scrubs. By which time he was twenty-five years old. There then occurred a quiet period during which he either was a reformed character or more likely, thought Hennessey, he avoided detection, until the age of thirty-three when he served three years at Full Sutton for insurance fraud. Hennessey stroked his chin. Three years for IF—that spoke of a large, a very large scam, which began to explain the prestigious Georgian townhouse and later the ludicrously named "Thundercliffe Grange" and the BMW. There occurred a second quiet period, or a period of non-detection, interrupted by a five-year stretch again in Full Sutton, this time for blackmail.

  "Interesting." Hennessey spoke aloud. "That could be very interesting." If, Hennessey thought, Ossler had been playing games like that, it would explain why one person would want to shoot him but shoot his first wife by mistake, and why a second person would also want to shoot him, but this time get it right. If the two murders were connected, they were connected only in that two separate murderers were possessed of the same motivation. If that was the case, then, Hennessey mused, the first murderer disappears even further into the ether and into his or her own self-consuming guilt. Hennessey made a second mug of instant coffee and then settled back in his chair and read the account of the blackmail which earned the deceased a five-year prison sentence, of which he served three years. A Scoutmaster had allowed himself to be photographed while naked amid a group of Scouts, also naked, in a wooded area by a lake.

  The photographs, still in the file, had a vague, poorly-defined quality about them which, to Hennessey's untrained eye, spoke of a series of pictures taken with a telephoto lens. There was indication of different weather conditions, varying amounts of cloud cover for example, and different amounts of daylight which further spoke of the photographs being obtained with planning and premeditation over a period of time, not in a single opportunist manner. That, plus the massive blackmail demand of fifty thousand pounds probably explained the length of the prison sentence collected by Nathan Ossler.

  The Scoutmaster had, according to the report, done the sensible thing and gone straight to the police who had set up a "sting" and Ossler was arrested when he collected a brown paper parcel from the arranged drop site, the parcel containing nothing but bits of newspaper. The Scoutmaster was a man called Parrott, Jeremy, who then had an address in Tollerton, conveniently a short detour off the route of Hennessey's journey home. He made a note of the address. He would pay a call there later that day.

  There was a brief, reverential tap on his door. Hennessey looked up, a beaming Sergeant Yellich stood in the door frame.

  "You look pleased with yourself, Yellich."

  "Aye, boss, got a result from the fingerprints of the corpse, it's Ossler all right. Never any doubt really, but now it's confirmed."

  "I'll let Mrs Ossler know, that's two things for me to do this afternoon."

  "Two?"

  "Yes, I want to pay a call on a Scoutmaster. Did you manage to see the secretary and the cleaning lady?"

  "Yes, boss. Both paint the same picture of Ossler—ill-tempered, foul-mouthed—both wondered at his wife's ability to stick with him. They didn't even sleep together, apparently a marriage of appearance rather than actuality. He kept her on a tight rein, his wife I mean, had an allowance and had to account for every penny. Allowed her a certain number of visits to see her brother in York, that sort of thing, a real control freak, but she accepted it. I get the impression that there is something quite juvenile about Sadie Ossler."

  "There is." Hennessey laid the file down. "She's not the run-of-the mill businessman's wife, if there is a good woman behind the successful Nathan Ossler, it ain't Sadie. She couldn't stand up to him, more's the pity, because all bullies are the same, if you do stand up to them they lie on their backs wanting you to tickle their tummies. Any solid Yorkshire lass would have had Nathan Ossler jumping through hoops in no time…I believe he knew that, hence his choice of wife. He didn't need a good woman behind him because he wasn't a successful businessman, he was a successful criminal."

  "Oh?

  "Fraud, blackmail…"

  "Blackmail!"

  "Yes, I picked up on that too, Yellich, being blackmailed is a very good reason to want to terminate someone's life with extreme prejudice. But anyway, what's for action? Now we have proof of ID we can proceed with the PM, I'll tee that up with Dr D'Acre."

  "Right, boss."

  "We don't have to do this, but Sadie Ossler being the limited person she appears to be, we will do it. I also said we would. Can you get a constable to visit the deceased's son, Oliver Ossler, and inform him of the death of his father?"

  "Right, boss."

  "It's getting on four p.m., we're both put in overtime but I want to ask you to do something else before you get off home. Can you check Sadie Ossler's alibi? She reckons she was drinking in the Brown Bear with her brother's friends on Sunday evening. Find out if she was, and find the brother's surname if you can. I doubt if he's registered to vote, otherwise we could look it up on the Voter's Roll."

  "Will do. Are they in the frame?"

  "No more than anyone else at the moment, but it's a wide frame. Too wide, I'd like to narrow it down."

  Yellich drove the short distance from Micklegate Bar Police Station to the Tang Hall Estate on the south-
eastern edge of York. He drove slowly through streets in which tough little street turks whiled away the long summer. He halted outside the address he'd been given as that of Sadie Ossler's brother. It was a small terraced house, recently built, of a one bedroom design, allocated to single people or childless couples. He left his car and walked up the narrow path between two patches of litter-strewn lawn and knocked on the front door, causing dogs to bark from within the small house. The door was flung open, aggressively, by a well-set, perhaps overweight, youth, dressed in a studded denim jacket and a T-shirt with a grinning skull on the front. His hands were heavily tattooed in a rough and ready manner—a pin with a ball of ink-soaked cotton wool on the tip—in that manner.

  "What!" The youth thrust his face directly at Yellich's face. The two Alsatians leaped and twisted behind him.

  "Police. Detective Sergeant Yellich. Is Sadie Ossler in, please?"

  "She's asleep in the bedroom." He held both dogs by their collars.

  "In your room?"

  "Yes…yes. Just lying on my bed. Better for her than the couch."

  "You're her brother? Shane…?"

  "Shane Widestreet."

  "Widestreet?" Yellich fought hard to hide his amusement.

  "Something wrong with that name?"

  "Nothing. Nothing at all."

  "I've got to like it. I'd rather be called Widestreet than Smith."

  "Tell you the truth, I think I would too. I've really called to let your sister know that we've identified her husband, so it won't be necessary to ask her to make a visual identification."

  "She'll be grateful for that."

  "You were with her last night?"

  "All yesterday. Spent the day drinking. In the Brown Bear, lunchtime session, came back for food and then out again for the evening."

  "The Brown Bear? I don't think I know that one."

  "It's on the estate. End of the road, turn left."

  "I see. Well, thanks anyway."

  Yellich turned and walked away. As he did so the door was shut with a firmness, a finality, which said the occupant of the house didn't like the police. That suited Yellich down to the ground. He got in his car and drove off to the end of the street and then left.

  The Brown Bear revealed itself to be a new, brick built pub, set back from the road amid a sea of concrete upon which few cars stood, this being Tang Hall. Yellich thought the name of the pub odd, it didn't gel with the building, as if plucked out of thin air and stuck on the pile of bricks, rather than speaking for the history of the pub, or of the surrounding area. Inside it was superficial, inexpensive and tacky, to Yellich's eye. The landlord was a grey-haired man with hard eyes and similar tattoos on his hands and arms to the tattoos worn by Shane Widestreet. An ex-biker, thought Yellich, and one able to command the respect of young bloods.

  "Widestreet, yeah. He's a regular in here. Him and his mates. They were in Sunday—yesterday afternoon—early. Came back for a drink in the evening, a game of darts, left when the pub shut at ten thirty."

  "Anything special about them yesterday?"

  "Nothing at all. Just the same Shane and Sadie. Him so big and her so small, wouldn't think they were brother and sister, but they are. Grew up in a children's home he told me, looked out for each other and got quite close because of it. She married a big nob but didn't turn her back on her roots. I can respect that. Liked her lager and game of darts."

  Hennessey drove north out of York on the A19 and turned off at the first sign towards Tollerton. Captain's Garth in Tollerton proved itself to be a cul-de-sac of modest semi-detached houses. Quietly suburban, yet in a rural setting, shops close by, yet fresh country air and a flat landscape providing skies. Hennessey pulled up outside number fourteen, walked up the drive and pressed the doorbell which rang the Westminster chimes.

  "Police?" said the bald-headed man who opened the door wide.

  "How can you tell?"

  "You have that stamp about you. I hope there is no trouble?"

  "I don't think there is, nothing that you need be worried about. I'm really here to pick your brains, Mr Parrott. I take it that you are Mr Parrott?"

  "I am he. Please come in."

  The Parrott house was kept neatly, except for a computer and a word-processor, which sat on a table in the middle of the living-room, from which flex seemed to run in all directions.

  "Please take a seat." Parrott indicated a chair and he and Hennessey sat. "How can I help you?"

  "It's Nathan Ossler."

  Parrott's jaw set firm. "Not my favourite person."

  "Well, he's not anyone's favourite person now—he was murdered last night."

  "Murdered!"

  "Shot. We didn't really doubt his identity, but it was confirmed just before I left the police station to come here. It'll be on the early evening news now, we're certain."

  "Well…" Parrott sat back on the settee. "How the mighty fall."

  "Where were you yesterday evening, Mr Parrott?"

  "Here, all evening. Me and my lady wife and our friend there." He pointed to the television.

  "She'll confirm that?"

  "If she has to. Why, am I a suspect? Confess if I am, it's taken me a long time to get round to doing what I've spent the last few years fantasising about doing. That man ruined my life."

  "Rather ruined your own life I'd say. I've seen the photographs. They're still in his file."

  "Well." Parrott sat forwards. "You know I'd say to you that there's more to those images than meets the eye. I still maintain that I did nothing wrong."

  "Cavorting naked with a group of naked boys in a wood by a lake, that's a hard act to justify in this political climate."

  "It's not exactly flavour of the month, I'll grant you, but I still didn't do anything wrong. You see, Mr…"

  "Hennessey."

  "Mr Hennessey, you see, Scouting was my life, I was a Scout, became a Scoutmaster, I lived for the Scouting movement…and there may well be a small amount of sexuality in the movement. The initiation of young Scouts fully into the movement at this first camp has its sexual overtones, but that's the way it is. That's the way it's always been, it's an important part of the bonding process. My wife, she was a Girl Guide. Her father wasn't a rich man, she attended a tough comprehensive school, while most of the other Guides in her company were daughters of professionals. Yet she tells me that it was in the Guides that she really learned to drink and smoke and swear."

  "I don't doubt it, but…"

  "But what I want to tell you…well I want to tell you for my own sake, those photographs…it made me so angry. You see, I have no sexual interest in children whatsoever, my wife and I have a good sex life, but we're both naturists."

  "Ah…"

  "You see that's what I did wrong, if anything. I allowed the boundaries of the movement to merge with my own values. I didn't like this prissy covering up of 'private parts' so called. There's nothing wrong with the human form. Anyway, one day at a camp in the Lake District, a blistering, hot day, I peeled off my kit and dived into the water. The lads looked at each other and then they all did the same. I was so proud of them, maybe we were blundering into the sexuality of it, and maybe on that weekend I was a naturist instead of being a Scoutmaster, but nothing overtly sexual happened at all. I didn't touch them and they didn't touch me or each other, at least not that I was aware of."

  "It happened only once?"

  "No…no, it didn't. That very hot summer, it became a feature of the troop to go 'skinny dipping' at its own request. And boys talk. Rumour spread and I was eventually shown a series of photographs, a bit blurred, telephoto lens, must have been a real elephant gun. I later went and believe I found the vantage point used by the photographer; a quarter of a mile away across the lake and accessed by a steep slope, no track at all. It was a deliberate and determined ambush. Never did find out who took the photographs."

  "Not Ossler?"

  "No. He's too lazy." Parrott pulled a hand down over his face. tk What happened is that so
meone had possession or access to an elephant gun of a lens and took the photographs. There were week by week changes in the photographs. So someone knew when we were going where…you know the weekend we tried to build a raft, the only weekend that a particular boy came…someone watched us each weekend that we went away that summer. About four or five weekends all told. But whoever it was hadn't the bottle to go ahead with the blackmail and, so I suspect, sold the photographs and negatives to someone who was callous enough to blackmail."

  "That person being Nathan Ossler."

  "The one and the same. Ossler had a reputation. Long before I met him I had heard of him. The local villain, York and its region, the Vale…not a large population. It's not so easy to hide here, either yourself or your reputation."

  "No anonymity?"

  "Is a succinct way of putting it, Mr Hennessey." Parrott smiled. "I knew of Ossler by reputation, but the first time I met him was when he came here, walked in as though he owned my house, dropped the prints of the photographs on the table there and told me the negatives would cost…well, about the market value of my house. I mean, he and I may as well have been playing Monopoly. He then told me he was a professional blackmailer."