Perils and Dangers

by Peter Turnbull

  "Hard-working me, there is graft about this, it isn't a question of shaking the tree to make the golden apples fall, but it's better than working. Dad loaned me the money to get started. I took it from there. So no, I do not have a motive for murdering my father. Even if I do stand to inherit the balance of his bank account, plus any other liquid assets he may have."

  Yellich raised his eyebrows.

  "I watch detective stories on TV. Never read them of course, but I love a good murder mystery on the box, a bottle of wine, a bit of female company, so I've gotten to know that anyone who is involved or connected with the deceased in any way is automatically 'in the frame'. Is that the expression?"

  "Yes, yes it is. But I've called to see you to request information as much as to eliminate you."

  "Information?"

  "We have found out that your mother was murdered a few years ago. Shot, just as your father was."

  "Oh…" Oliver Ossler grimaced. "Yes. I was close to my mother." But the sudden show of emotion rapidly vanished.

  "The similarity is obvious, we can't ignore the possibility that the two murders are connected despite the time gap."

  "I can understand that but you'll know that mother had put on father's duffle-coat just to nip out to buy something, she and dad were the same build, the hood was up…it must have been a case of mistaken identity. I think you're looking at coincidence, not connection."

  "Possibly. So you wouldn't know of anybody who'd want to murder your father?"

  "It's probably. Probably the murders of both my parents by the same manner is coincidence. But the answer to the question is no. No, I don't know of anyone who would want to murder my father. He was a businessman. Businessmen make enemies. The more successful you are, the more enemies you make. It comes with the territory."

  "What exactly was your father's line of business?"

  "Now you're asking. You've put your finger on something odd, something that I could never fathom."

  "Oh?"

  "Well, he advanced me money to get started. I paid him back with interest, most businessmen want their sons to take over their business, but dad just said 'too many fingers in too many pies', said it was best for me to start fresh, so there was capital to get me going, there was advice, encouragement, but nothing to take over."

  "I see. You do have an alibi for Sunday evening?"

  "Yes. I was away for the weekend. I have a new lady friend, she…well, we have just taken up with each other and she wanted to go away to start…to consummate our relationship. So we went to a hotel in Derbyshire, to the Peak District, got back to York late Sunday evening and having got off the ground as it were, I spent the remainder of Sunday/Monday night in her flat. I came to work on Monday, yesterday, and a constable came to the office to break the news. If I don't seem distraught it's my way of coping. I can't go to his house because it's not mine to inherit, and I was asked to refrain from entering it…what did the constable say? It's a 'crime scene'. So I've come to work to do something, better than moping at home. And no, I don't posses a gun. Besides which, I have no motive. Like I've just said, I may even be wealthier than my father, depending…well, we'll see what we shall see. I also don't think I'm capable of it."

  "It?"

  "Murder. The pulling of a trigger, the plunging of a knife. The most serious of all offences, it's the speediest to perpetrate, requires no apprenticeship in the criminal fraternity, little skill or strength. Most people have fantasised about doing it at some point, but so few do and I don't think it's the consequences that prevent folk from murdering someone, I think there's an immense psychological barrier to the act of deliberate taking of life. I couldn't get over that barrier, especially with respect to my old man."

  "I'm relieved to hear it."

  "No, your perpetrator is going to have a heart made out of granite. Me, I don't think I ever would give into that impulse, you know, the best revenge a man or woman can ever take."

  "Tell me."

  "Let yourself be seen to be enjoying life. Your enemies can't handle it. They just can't handle it."

  "She's out riding."

  The man had a bristlingly immaculate appearance: brown jacket, yellow waistcoat which surprisingly, to Hennessey's eyes, didn't clash; plus-fours, thick socks, even in this weather; brogues, pencil-thin moustache, smelled of aftershave and pipe tobacco.

  "How did you find us, anyway?"

  "Golf club secretary. And it's really you I want to see."

  "He shouldn't be so free with that sort of information. Members' addresses, indeed."

  "He wasn't free with it. He was very reluctant to part with it, in fairness to him. I told him it was in connection with a murder inquiry and advised him I could obtain a warrant if necessary."

  "Better." The man stepped back from the threshold of his house. "Come in, please, Chief Inspector."

  Inside the large house was cool which Hennessey felt explained the man's woollen clothing. It smelled of furniture polish and was well stocked with potted plants. Hennessey was invited to the drawing-room, Hargraves stood in front of the fire, hands behind his back. Behind him on the mantelpiece was a framed photograph of a man in an army officer's uniform and a woman in a long tartan skirt standing outside the registry office in Gretna Green.

  The lady was taller than the man and younger. A lot younger.

  "You're an army man?" Hennessey observed.

  "Was…was in the Regular Army. Yorks and Lanes…infantry…I didn't make staff college, retired as a major…have a pension and I run the local cadet corps."

  "I see."

  "Pay is modest in the extreme."

  "Really. You could have fooled me." Hennessey allowed his approving look of the house to be seen. "It's not often that a police officer enters a house like this, not on duty anyway."

  "My wife's family, they're moneyed."

  "I see."

  "I provided the genes." He said suddenly before Hennessey could move the conversation.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "They have money and background. I only have background, but that's important, don't you know?"

  "No, I didn't know, but I'll take your word for it."

  "It is." The man sniffed smugly.

  "You'll have heard of the murder of Nathan Ossler?"

  "I have. Can't say that I'm sorry. Can't say I'm sorry at all."

  "Oh?"

  "I believe that a more unpleasant man has not walked on the earth since Genghis Khan."

  "Yes…I can understand your emotion. I have heard about the altercation at the Golf Club."

  "Poured beer down my wife's front," said with controlled anger. "And I don't mean down the outside front of her dress, I mean down her front…"

  "I get the picture. It'd make any man angry."

  "Made me furious. And I don't mean furious. I mean furious. It's all very well for him. At least it was all very well for him being self-employed, he hasn't got a position to lose. I could lose my commission for criminal activity, well, for a conviction of a criminal act. But I controlled myself. He was expelled from the Golf Club and that hurt him, being a social climber, as he was. But money doesn't open every door, that's where background comes in and that's what irked him. I haven't anything like the income he could generate, but I can go places he couldn't go."

  "So you were not furious enough to kill him?"

  Hargrave flushed, a look of anger shot across his eyes. Hennessey saw it and here he saw a man who could kill. "That's not even remotely funny, Inspector."

  "I'll say it's not, in fact it's very close at hand in its seriousness. Hence my interest. So, you're not at work today?"

  "The cadet corps doesn't take up all my time. I'll be there this evening, every Tuesday evening, some drill, some unarmed combat, so I have time off in lieu during the day."

  "So where were you on Sunday evening last, after ten p.m.?"

  A pause. "Why? Am I under suspicion?"

  "You have a motive. I've known men murder for less, I mean ho
nour is quite important, is it not? I mean among people with…er…background?"

  "Yes. Yes it is…but affront to my honour and my wife's honour is not sufficient to make me turn criminal. Have to retain occupancy of the moral high ground, you see. Besides, he was blackballed from the Golf Club. That was enough for me and Lucille."

  "Lucille being your wife?"

  "Yes. Lucille Hargrave, of the Scarborough Hargraves. You'll know the family."

  "I confess I don't."

  "Mm. Fishing and agriculture in the main. That sort of thing."

  "The Squirearchy?"

  "In a word."

  "So you are Major Hargrave?"

  "I am."

  "You took your wife's name upon marriage?"

  "As you see. It's only convention that a woman takes her husband's name. It's not the law."

  "I never knew that. But anyway, back to the question of your whereabouts on Sunday evening."

  "Here."

  "Alone?"

  "Yes."

  "All evening?"

  "From six p.m. until midnight, or a little after. Half past midnight maybe. My wife was out with her girlfriends."

  "So you have no alibi for the time of Nathan Ossler's murder?"

  "If that's when he was murdered, no I haven't."

  "And you have a motive, despite what you say."

  "I dare say I do. I'm not sorry he's no longer with us."

  "Do you own a gun, Major?"

  "A couple of shotguns."

  "A handgun?"

  "No."

  "Plenty of access to them, though?"

  "A whole armoury."

  "What are the calibres of the guns?"

  "The handguns are .22. We use them for target practice."

  "That's interesting."

  "Why? Was he shot with a .22?"

  "Probably. Would you know how to make a dumdum bullet."

  "Yes. Every soldier learns that one. You take a sharp knife and cut a cross on the head of the bullet. It makes the bullet explode on impact with its target. They make a right mess of a human being."

  "Well, thanks, Major Hargrave. Just called to check a few things. It may be that we'll call back."

  "We?"

  "The police."

  Leaving Oliver Ossler's cramped office space, Yellich walked back through the city centre, picked up his car from the car park at Micklegate Bar Police Station and drove out to Strensall. He criss-crossed the village until he was satisfied that, not at all to his surprise, it didn't contain an Indian restaurant and then began to drive slowly back towards York. While on Malton Road entering Heworth, he saw a restaurant called "Fariq's", small, modest in appearance, but definitely Indian. He parked his car and walked up to it. It was shut. He knocked on the door anyway. It was opened rapidly. A young Asian man held the door wide and said in a solid Yorkshire accent, "We're closed, mate."

  "It's all right, mate." Yellich showed his ID. "I'm not hungry, yet."

  The manager, Mr Fariq himself, was middle-aged and overweight and his office was, Yellich thought, even more cramped than was Oliver Ossler's office. Mr Fariq, though, was very helpful and searched his invoices of the work done the previous Sunday. He found the receipt for the delivery to "Ozzler", Thundercliffe Grange, Strensall, timed as ten thirty p.m.

  "That's when he phoned it in," said Mr Fariq, who spoke with an Asian accent, but was, Yellich found, word perfect with his English. "Allowing time to prepare it and deliver it, he would have received it by about eleven fifteen that evening."

  "Eleven fifteen approx.," said Yellich as he wrote the time in his notebook.

  "Briefly," Hennessey said, "just make it brief, the nuts and bolts. I want us to sleep on this more than address it."

  He sat forwards, leaning his elbows on his desk top and ran his mottled hands and fingers through his silver hair.

  "Well, briefly." Yellich sat in the chair in front of Hennessey's desk, his lightweight summer jacket folded across his knees. He consulted his notebook. "Dr D'Acre was right about the meal, it was Indian. I found the restaurant, it confirms a delivery of a meal late on Sunday which would narrow the time of death down nicely. They reckon a delivery time of about eleven fifteen p.m. He ate the meal, there was no unfinished meal at the crime scene. That would put the time of death close to midnight. Narrows it down, like I said. Had no luck with Oliver Ossler, a bit hard bitten but clean as a new pin regarding his father's murder. Had some luck at the warehouse which is a large wooden hut."

  He dropped two files on Hennessey's desk.

  "I brought these for you to read, one's clear, the Hargrave file, as clear a case of bigamy as I have seen. So I would assume."

  Hennessey opened the Hargrave file. He held the copies of the two marriage certificates. In the absence of a death certificate in respect of wife number one, or a decree nisi, it would make Hargrave or Humby a bigamist.

  "It would make him a bigamist." Hennessey leaned back in his chair. "I've just visited him, he's very well set up but makes no bones about it being his wife's family's money. He married for money, big mistake. It's a useful adage you know, Sergeant, 'go where money is, but never marry for it'."

  "But he married for it?"

  "Makes no bones about it, as I said. Puts him well in the frame, a definite revisit."

  "Did he have an alibi?"

  "No, just said he was home alone all evening." Hennessey sighed. "Pity that. No alibi. Give me an alibi merchant each time, every time, it's the ones that know the value of leaving the burden of proof with the police that annoy me, especially since they're invariably as guilty as sin itself."

  "In the frame you say, boss?"

  "Ossler was a blackmailer, remember, he boasted to the Scoutmaster that he was a professional blackmailer, the trick being…what was it he said? The trick being that you can't put the screws on people who can go to the police. He read the Scoutmaster wrong and collected a term as a guest of Her Majesty. He clearly was disinclined to repeat that mistake and what a lovely victim Major Hargrave makes. One word to his wife and he's cut off without a penny and will lose his job in the cadet force. Station in life is very important to the good major. He made that plain, and Ossler had him by the short and curlies. He's probably been milking him for years, got greedy, made Hargrave ponder dangerous thoughts about the cadet force's armoury and the .22 target pistols it contains. He knows how to make a dumdum bullet, as any soldier does in fairness, but he also knows a fragmenting bullet can't be matched to the barrel of a specific gun. It would be a very easy matter to 'borrow' a gun from the armoury and a few rounds of ammunition."

  "Solemn," said Yellich. "Solemn, very, very solemn."

  "A definite revisit."

  "The other file doesn't mean much in itself, at least not so far as I can see."

  "Tell me about it."

  "It's about a fella called West. It's a photocopy of an article that appeared in a Bedford newspaper, entitled 'Local Hero'. The article's about twenty years old. Apparently, a local lad called West saved another youngster from drowning in a lake in the Lake District when they were both students at a college for trainee gym teachers in Carlisle. So, if the fella West is still alive, he'll be a forty something gym teacher now."

  "Well he's alive all right," Hennessey took the file from Yellich, "except he's not a gym teacher, he's a youthful headmaster of a large comprehensive school and he isn't of humble origins in Bedford, he went to Taunton Public School and the University of Cambridge. Or so he'd have you believe."

  "Well, solemn…oh, so solemn. Another lovely target for blackmail, another poor guy who can't go to the law."

  "Less of the 'poor guy', Yellich. If he didn't go to Cambridge University, every salary cheque he has received from the local authority has been an act of obtaining money by false pretences."

  "How on earth can you do it, boss? You can't fabricate qualifications and you'll need references from your university to get a job."

  "That we'll probably find out, Yellich. But her
e we have two people with a very strong motive to murder Nathan Ossler and, if nothing else, we have two felons who'll help improve our clear-up rate. And that is it for today. We've both got homes to go to."

  Yellich returned home to his modest modern semi-detached house in Huntingdon. He kissed his wife and went to the front room to seek his son, whom he knew had been tiring his wife all day, though unintentionally. As often happened, as soon as he was home his wife went upstairs to lie down for an hour. His son, slender, like his parents, looked smart in his short trousers and shiny shoes and bow tie, like many twelve-year-olds. He kissed Yellich and held his arm and said "time?"

  "All right." Yellich sat on the settee and his son went to the corner of the room, stepping over scattered toys as he did so and picked up a model clock with moveable hands. He returned to the settee and sat next to Yellich. He held the toy clock on his lap and looked eagerly at his father who said, "Three o'clock" and the twelve-year-old moved the hands to the three o'clock position. Yellich hugged him and said "Good boy…seven o'clock." And so the game progressed for half an hour with Yellich requesting increasingly complicated times, "twenty-three minutes past nine…six forty-five…", doing really what the medical people had asked of him and his wife. With stimulation and love and encouragement, they had said, Sam should be able to function as a twelve-year-old by the time he is twenty or twenty-five when he'll be able to live at least semi-independently. A place in a hostel, his own room, access to a kitchen for self-catered snacks, but with staff on hand to supervise, to prepare the main meals and so forth. Yellich found that he enjoyed his parenting. His son's condition had been like a new world opening up to him and he and his wife had made very good friends of people whose children also had learning difficulties. And the magical years had been prolonged. While parents of other twelve-year-olds had begun to experience problems with their child's behaviour, he and his wife had enjoyed the magical, endlessly trusting period which for them had seemed to continue far longer than the allotted four or five years. Yet there was also a gnawing sadness, a guilt, which had increased and decreased but was always there. Heightened especially when he realised his wife had been hanging on until he came home so that she could go upstairs and collapse on her bed for an hour. But that Sam was not at all distressed when he returned, meant that Hilary had not given in to ill-tempered frustration. And if she had ever done so he could understand because being with a twelve-year-old three-year-old all day is not easy, not easy at all. For, as his father had once said to her "men in war get medals for less". But she just never had given in, and mainly because of her, not him, Sam was well on his way to semi-independent living, that Yellich knew and knew well.