Perils and Dangers

by Peter Turnbull

  "I'm going to have a chat with a couple of blokes if I can find them. Meet me back here at what time…? Four p.m.?"

  Yellich stood. "Four p.m., boss. Four p.m."

  Crosshill Comprehensive School revealed itself to be an angular, flat-roofed, new-build building, light-coloured brick, concrete, metal-framed windows. Hennessey parked his car on the driveway outside the school buildings and walked, not to the school itself, but to the detached house which stood in the grounds, opposite the school, yet clearly of the same age as the school and clearly belonging to it. Clearly, thought Hennessey, clearly it was the caretaker's house. Clearly so.

  "Best job I ever had." Bill Webster sat in the chair by the open hearth. The weather was too warm for a fire but the chair went with the hearth and Bill Webster went with the chair. He had a large, ruddy face, warm eyes, thought Hennessey. He seemed to smile a lot and sat with mottled hands clasped over a round stomach. A neat mantelpiece on which a framed sketch of a young soldier in tropical kit spoke of an existence before becoming the caretaker of Crosshill Comprehensive School. "It's a holiday, see, Mr Hennessey, a real holiday. You swap your jobs and then you drop on one you like and it's a permanent holiday. School caretaker, lovely job, lovely. Get a house, this house, well apart, no rough estate for I. After five o'clock, or early in the morning and at weekends, well you'd think you're in the country. Are in a sense, badgers and foxes about, woodpeckers in the trees…my dog has the playing fields to romp on…lovely, lovely job."

  "Lucky man."

  "Aye, and I appreciate it. But it hasn't always been this way…I down shifted to get this job. Bet you don't know what I was once?"

  "Tell me."

  "Sales Manager for a large supermarket chain. The Vale of York was my patch, twenty branches. I had to keep the level of sales up to a quota. I had it all, flash company car, smart suits, expense account, all the patter, all the trappings, but I was working seventy hours a week and I was driving home one night and I thought 'what am I doing it for?' We had our children early in life, they're up and away. So I had a chat with Joyce…we'd paid off our mortgage, and had enough to see us out, so I took this job. Have to live in this house, so there's a presence on the grounds at night. Doesn't stop them breaking in from time to time, though."

  "I'll bet."

  "The drop in income looked a lot on paper, but in fact it's not been so different, and the outgoings are less. A big income leads to an expensive lifestyle. If you've got it you only spend it. This has been a very good move. A very good move indeed."

  "Not bad." Hennessey was pleased for the man.

  "Aye…get up early, me and my dog, open up for the cleaners, report any damage, mostly it's leaking roofs. Flat roof you see. They shrink. Flat roofs never work. Lock up in the evening after the cleaners have left and that's the job…just the job, as my old dad would have said, God rest him."

  "So you'll see the early arrivals?"

  "Aye. From time to time."

  "And the late departures?" It suddenly occurred to Hennessey that apart from his facial muscles, Bill Webster hadn't moved at all since he and Hennessey began speaking, he had also avoided all eye contact. Odd trait, Hennessey thought, for a man who had been a manager in a large company, difficult to motivate people without eye contact, so Hennessey further thought, and had indeed found to be the case. "It's the late leavers I am particularly interested in."

  "Well how late is late? I don't exactly stand a guard duty on the place."

  "I appreciate that, but specifically Friday last at seven thirty p.m. about."

  "Mr West." Webster smiled. 'The Headmaster. I saw his car in the car park. Often do in fact. He tends to work late two or three evenings a week, doesn't like to take his work home. All the others get off a.s.a.p. with briefcases bulging with exercise books, marking for the purpose of, but Mr West once said to me 'home is home and work is work and the twain should never meet, if possible.' He's just not a home worker. I didn't use to be either, if I could help it but he has the advantage of his own office to work in. The other staff have to work in the staff room. To leave the school they have to pass through a set of fire doors, which are also alarmed. I have to lock those at six thirty each evening, so the staff have to leave by then, but Mr West and the deputy head have their own offices from which they can leave the school building via a side door, which isn't alarmed. There's nothing in his office or the deputy head's office or the secretary's office to attract burglars. All the computers and tape recorders in the language lab are on the first floor blocks and are wired up like the Bank of England. So I saw Mr West's car in the car park last Friday evening at about seven p.m. I took Jasper, my best friend, for a romp on the playing fields so as to walk round the buildings. Spent about an hour doing it and then returned to put my feet up for the evening, but when I passed the staff car park on my return it was empty. Mr West having gone home, I presume."

  "Is Mr West in the school at the moment, do you know?"

  "Well, he arrived this morning, looking spruce and snappy, all fine and dandy. If there's a blue Mercedes in the car park ..."

  "A Mercedes Benz?"

  "I thought that as well when I saw it…but he told me that it was purchased second-hand and once you found the money for one, they're about the only car that will retain their value. And he also enjoys lots of street cred from the pupils owning one. A few more days and you'd have missed him for six weeks. He has a house in Brittany."

  Hennessey raised an eyebrow. "A Mercedes Benz and a house in France—on a teacher's salary?"

  "Same excuse as the Mercedes. The house in France was a very inexpensive purchase, but image is impressive. So he told me. His house here in the Vale isn't to be sniffed at either, so I'm told. Tell you the truth, I think he won the lottery. That would make more sense than a magical ability to stretch a coin of the realm further than any other known teacher in the state sector, living or dead."

  Hennessey grinned. He enjoyed Webster's dry humour. But on a more serious note he, the police officer, began to feel his suspicions, honed by a life working among felons, becoming aroused. As Bill Webster said, a Mercedes Benz second-hand or not, plus two properties, isn't bad for a headmaster of a comprehensive school. Private means, Hennessey felt, were strongly starred. "And a six-week holiday each summer."

  "They all say they need it. Probably do as well. I couldn't teach. Couldn't teach at all, but do you know where the tradition of the long summer holiday comes from?"

  "I don't."

  "From the days when the children were needed at harvest time. All hands, no matter how small, were needed to garner in the wheat fields until all was safely gathered in."

  "Well," Hennessey stood. "You live and learn. I'll go and pay a call on Mr West."

  "Happy to be of service, but you'd better mind your 'p's and 'q's, he's a very proper gentleman, top public school and Cambridge University."

  "Very impressive."

  "If you think so. Don't get many of his ilk in the public sector, though, dare say his social conscience is pricking him."

  "It's been known." Hennessey said that he'd see himself out but Bill Webster still displayed no intention of moving any muscle, save those in his face.

  Enjoying the heat of the midday sun on his face, George Hennessey walked from one flat-roofed building to another, from the caretaker's house to the school building. He walked up the steps of the school and pulled open a metal-framed glass doorway and entered the school, brown corridor, yellow painted plaster walls. A large sign in chalk on a portable blackboard read silence exams. He walked along the silent corridor until he found an alcove in which was set a door labelled staff room. He stood for a moment in front of the door deciding how to knock and eventually chose to amuse himself, by knocking twice, timidly, at waist level. He waited for a moment and then the door was flung wide by a young teacher looking down, clearly, as Hennessey had hoped, expecting to be confronted by a quaking and quivering twelve-year-old. Hennessey enjoyed the look of surprise and
shock on the teacher's face as he towered above the member of staff and said, "Hello. Police."

  "Oh…yes?"

  "Mr West, please."

  "He'll be in his office. I'll show—"

  "Directions will be fine, thank you."

  Hennessey followed the directions given, which involved retracing his steps towards the main door of the school and walking beyond them, down a flight of steps to another alcove in which there were three doors, labelled secretary, deputy headmaster and headmaster. He tapped on the Headmaster's door. There was an imperious pause before a soft-spoken male voice said "Come".

  Hennessey in turn, waited a very long, very imperious two, perhaps three seconds before entering the room on his terms. "Hello," he said to a shocked-looking Headmaster. "Police."

  "Please," the smartly dressed man replied, "won't you sit down?"

  Hennessey sat reading the room as he did so: small, cramped, even, very neat. A framed aerial photograph of the Chapel of King's College, Cambridge hung on the wall behind the man.

  "Mr West?" Hennessey asked.

  "Yes."

  "Inspector Hennessey, City of York police."

  "Ah…"

  "Are you a King's man? He nodded to the photograph."

  "Gonville and Caius. It's just on the photograph, to the right of the chapel. A bit of it anyway."

  "Yes, I know."

  "Are you a Cambridge man?" West smiled.

  "No, I'm a Trafalgar man."

  "Sorry?"

  "Trafalgar Road School, Greenwich, London. I left when I was fifteen. The building doesn't exist any more, it was pulled down to make room for a block of flats. My son attended Cambridge, though, Downing."

  "Ah…"

  "I've strolled the Backs with him. He's a barrister now. I catch 'em and he acquits them. Different cogs, same system."

  "Yes. It makes you wonder how many people would be out of a job if other people didn't commit crime."

  "Hundreds."

  "Thousands, I'd say, to say nothing of all those dangerous crime writers who'd then have nothing to write about and would have to drive a bus for a living."

  "Do them good." Hennessey settled in the chair, settling into West's company. "You must have enjoyed Cambridge. I mean, to have a photograph of part of the institution in your office."

  "It does stimulate the pupils, transmits the message that such portals are accessible with a little application. But, yes, I did enjoy my years there."

  "Charles, my son, didn't. He told me later, years after he had left."

  "Oh?"

  "He found the ex-public school ethos of the university overbearing. He found little acceptance and only then if he acknowledged his place as the token 'workie' in the college. He survived by taking lodgings in Romsey Town."

  "Other side of the track."

  "Literally. In the evenings he would go for a beer in one or the other of the working-class pubs in the city, where he felt more at home. But he survived, came home a lot more polished than he was when he went away. Now he's quite pukka, it's really rubbed off on him. By the way he carries himself now, you'd think he'd gone to Eton instead of a comprehensive school in the Vale of York. But he's pulled himself up a notch and educates his own children at fee-paying grammar schools."

  "As our meritocracy allows."

  "Indeed."

  "I can understand his difficulty. I didn't at the time. I went to Taunton and felt quite at home at Cambridge but, since teaching in the public sector, I can fully understand just what formidable barriers are presented by the British class barriers."

  "You've given your working life to public sector education?"

  "Not as altruistic as it sounds, the service conditions in the public sector are excellent, the pension can't be bettered, the salary is very remunerative if you're high enough up the scale. The junior teachers with modest qualification, the timetable fodder, as they are known, scratch pennies, but with a few years' service, a move up the scale, a Head of Department and, yes, it's very attractive and also very rewarding."

  "Enough to buy a home in France?"

  West's eyes narrowed, a look of coldness shot across them. Hennessey saw then that West could become very unpleasant of personality and do so within a millisecond.

  "You've been checking up on me, Inspector?"

  "A question here and there."

  "I make no secret of my holiday home. A two-bedroom cottage purchased in a run-down condition some years ago when such property was all but being given away. But you didn't come here to talk about illustrious universities or cottages in France?"

  "No, I didn't. I came to ask for a bit of information."

  "About?"

  "Nathan Ossler."

  West paled at the mention of Ossler's name. He recovered quickly, but the name clearly meant something to him.

  "Do you know him, Mr West?" Hennessey pressed. He saw that the self-assured headmaster of just a few seconds ago was now uncomfortable in the extreme. Indeed, he seemed to Hennessey to be a very worried man. West paused, then said, "Yes. Yes, I do know him."

  "In what capacity?"

  "Is this about his murder? I read of it in the Yorkshire Post this morning."

  "Yes, it is. How did you know him?"

  "Fleetingly. Briefly."

  "But well enough to phone him from here, at seven thirty on Friday evening last? Just over forty-eight hours before he was murdered?"

  "How did you know that?"

  "I didn't really, not until you said that."

  West grimaced.

  "So, how do you know him?"

  "We met in a pub. I didn't like him. He latched on to me. A bit of a social climber, I thought. I phoned him on Friday to tell him that I couldn't go out for a beer with him this weekend. I have to make all the final preparations for our holiday in France. I said that I could possibly raise a glass with him in September. He's very pushy, doesn't take 'no' for an answer easily. I felt I had to offer him something. He's not a pleasant man."

  "I see." Hennessey spoke softly, eyeing West, fixing him with a gimlet eye. "Where were you on Sunday evening between ten and midnight?"

  "Sunday…?"

  "Two nights ago."

  "I'm aware of that," West replied snappily, nervously.

  "So, where were you?"

  "I went to the Oak for a beer, last hour before closing on Sunday. As is my wont."

  "The Oak?"

  "A pub."

  "So I gathered."

  "In the village where I live. Little Scotterly."

  "I don't know that village."

  "North and east of York."

  "Not too far from here then?"

  "No. In fact some of our pupils live in the Scotterlies."

  "How many Scotterlies are there?"

  "Three. Great, Little and Middle Scotterly."

  "I see. Who did you drink with?"

  "Nobody. That is nobody in particular. Stood at the bar. Chatted to the publican."

  "So, when did you last see Mr Ossler?"

  "See him? Months ago. We didn't have a close contact."

  "So you wouldn't know who would want to murder him?"

  "No. But I can imagine someone wanting to do so. I won't be attending his funeral. I found him difficult to like."

  "That's the impression I am getting of the man." Hennessey stood and noted a clear sign of relief on the part of West as he did so. "Not universally popular was our dear departed brother. When do you leave for France?"

  "This coming Saturday. Why?"

  "Never know when we'll have to speak to whom in an investigation like this, Mr West. Just never know. Good day."

  Yellich would look back on a pleasant day's work, a very pleasant day's work indeed, the sort of day wherein the work was easy, but yet rattled the inquiry along nicely, very nicely indeed. It was also a day of surprises. He did, for example, find that a wooden shed can be described as a warehouse.

  He left Micklegate Bar Police Station and drove to Tang Hall Estate t
o the house of Mrs Ossler's brother. Sadie Ossler answered the door. She looked to Yellich to be drawn, dishevelled, and sunken-eyed and he didn't doubt that, should she lift the sleeve of the black blouse she was wearing, she would reveal the telltale track marks of an intravenous drug habit. She blinked questioningly at Yellich, holding the door grudgingly ajar, in a posture which Yellich thought was defensive of her brother's tenancy. "I need to access your home, please," he explained.

  "Why?"

  "To obtain the key to the warehouse."

  "Oh…" She turned disinterestedly into the gloom of the small council house and returned a few moments later with a bunch of house keys on a key ring, the fob of which was metal and enamel and said "Florida" in large yellow letters on a white background.

  "Thanks." Yellich took the keys. "Where will I find the keys to the warehouse?"

  "Try the desk drawer in his office…not the workroom where he was shot, but the other room, his den." She shut the door on him without further comment.

  Yellich drove out to Strensall. He was not perturbed by Sadie Ossler's attitude, a young woman, bereaved, out of her depth by events which had overtaken her. He did hope for her sake that she wasn't turning to heroin to anaesthetise herself. If so, he thought, the fortune that she is likely to inherit will slip rapidly through her fingers. He reached Strensall after, he thought, too short a drive along a virtually, at that time of day, traffic-free road between flat green fields under a wide blue sky, and halted his car outside the newly built, inappropriately named Thundercliffe Grange. The blue and white police tape hung limply across the gateposts but the presence of a constable was no longer thought necessary. Yellich stepped over the tape and opened the gates, crunched a few feet along the gravel drive and then side-stepped on to the lawn and found it surprising that a path had not been worn across the lawn by a succession of folk avoiding the gravel, or at least along the side of the lawn if the direct route across the lawn might have been considered too great an act of trespass.

  He let himself into the property. It was, he felt, eerily quiet. He moved quietly as if the house demanded a certain respect, and yet also there was an atmosphere about the building, as if the stress and conflict which had gone on within the walls had still remained somehow, even though the people had left either permanently, in the case of Nathan Ossler, or temporarily, in the case of his waiflike wife.