Perils and Dangers

by Peter Turnbull

  "You could go to Benidorm, I know. But it was immoral money. You may still yet be prosecuted."

  Then Liz Humby showed a sign of a spark. She looked directly at Hennessey and said "Look at me. Look at me. What have I got to fear from prosecution? I'd be better off in gaol, company, free food, no bills…if they fine me I'll not pay it, to make them send me to gaol." Then she seemed to "click" back into her hypnotic trance and stare at a fixed point about three feet in front of her eyes. "That's my little honey pot all dried up. You know that's the high point of my life. Double money for about eighteen months."

  "Does, or did, your husband own a gun?"

  "He didn't need to. He was a soldier, well…"

  "But he'd know how to use a gun?"

  "I should think so. Do you think he shot Ossler?"

  "We're open-minded about it. Do you think he's capable of that sort of action?"

  "Well, he's capable of walking out on me…that takes something. Oh yes."

  Hennessey thought that there was a look of resignation about the man. Yellich thought the man had a look about him as though he had woken up to find that he wasn't dreaming, which he further thought was probably not too far from the truth. The fourth man in the room was a well-built, pot-bellied, bearded man whose appearance both Hennessey and Yellich thought most un-lawyer-like, but who had presented at the inquiry desk and introduced himself to the constable as "Crowther, duty solicitor". The red recording light glowed warmly and the twin cassettes rotated silently.

  "Nothing to say," said Hargrave. "Except…except the one thing you want me to do, which is to confess."

  "Confess?" Hennessey raised his eyebrows. He didn't expect it to be as easy as this. "You shot Ossler?"

  "No." Hargrave smiled and shook his head. "No…I didn't do that…the thought did cross my mind, that happened…but I didn't do that. I can well imagine that you wished you had a tenner for every felon who said that to you, but in this case, it's true. I didn't do it. Glad somebody did though. Ossler got what was coming to him. Blew my cover, though. I was well dug in and then Ossler came, held on to an impossible position, someone 'offed' him and there I was on dead ground. What else can I do but confess I'm a bigamist?"

  "So, Ossler was blackmailing you?"

  "Yes…The Vale is a small place really. If you belong to the right set, there's only so many hunts or golf clubs you can belong to. I left the army…"

  "The Territorials?"

  Hargrave gave Hennessey a pained look. "Polished your kit, haven't you?"

  "It's my job, uncovering the truth. Over the years I've gotten to be quite good at it."

  "Well, I've nothing to lose anyway. No strategic retreat for me from here. Yes, I'd finished with the Territorials, resigned in a temper but they didn't want me so I couldn't go back. Only held a temporary commission. I wanted a Queen's Commission but I never got one. I've no skills, no bits of paper…survived by jobbing. Put up a fence for Ossler round his house Thundercliffe Grange, would you believe. It wasn't even a 'grange' it was a new build bungalow with a little bit of a garden."

  "Quite a lot of garden, but hardly a grange, I'll grant you."

  "At least he didn't call it the Taj Mahal, and that I can tell you would not have been beyond Ossler. He was a swine of a man. I saw the way he spoke to his wife and secretary…I tell you, the dogs had a better life than they did."

  "Got to know the dogs, did you, Mr Hargrave?"

  "Well enough…no…now wait a minute, if someone got past the dogs to reach Ossler and you think…oh…no…sorry, you're way, way off…"

  "It would explain it, though, wouldn't it?" Hennessey spoke softly. "Because, you see, someone did get past the dogs, and being a dog owner myself, I know how difficult that can be, especially when these dogs are Alsatians. I wouldn't mess with one, let alone two."

  Hargrave smiled. "Neither would I."

  "You wouldn't have to. If they knew you."

  "But I didn't."

  "We'll come back to that."

  "There's nothing to come back to."

  "The blackmail. Tell me about that?"

  "Well, I jobbed for Ossler, donkey work really, each night I went back to my little council flat and that brain-dead lump I'd married…me…I'd been a major in the British Army, the high point of my life…well, one day I just said I'm off. I said that. I just walked out to start fresh somewhere else…but I wouldn't leave York. It's my home town. I wouldn't be happier anywhere else…I like the history of the place, things like that. It makes me feel good that tourists come to visit my town."

  "Yes…yes."

  "Well, I'd let my appearance go just before I walked out on 'the lump' and so I cleaned myself up and bought a sports jacket from the Oxfam shop just in case 'the lump' should see me in the city centre, but I needn't have bothered really, you know she'd trip over the Minster and she wouldn't notice it. I bet I could go up to her now and ask directions and she wouldn't recognise me. But I didn't go to my old haunts, I went where the money drinks. By then I'd wangled a position in the cadet force, not back in the Terriers but close enough, and I was calling myself 'Major' again. Met Mrs Hargraves. She was a widowed lady and there was a spark between us. I told her I was single…once I had told her that lie, there was no return and I wouldn't have been in this mess."

  "So what happened?"

  "We got married. Simple as that. There's no record linkage you see, all I had to do was sign a form declaring that I was free to marry and Bob's your uncle. I did that because I wanted her money, and she has money all right, pots of it. If only…I imagine you could do with a tenner for everyone who said that to you as well."

  "I wouldn't go hungry, that's for sure."

  "Anyway, we got married. Simple civil ceremony but we turned convention on its head and I took her name. It helped me separate from 'the lump' and she wanted it that way anyway. You see, there was some needle between her and her in-laws. I don't know the story but I think she wasn't as 'top drawer' as her in-laws would have wanted for their son but you wouldn't think that now. She's really let those shire county mannerisms rub off on her. Anyway, her father was a deckhand on the trawlers, her in-laws owned part of the trawler fleet as well as a lot of land round Scarborough. You get the idea?"

  "Aye."

  "Anyway, twenty years of marriage, no children and her better half falls off his horse when he's chasing a fox much to the mirth of the hunt saboteurs who witnessed the accident. But even they stopped laughing when it was discovered he'd broken his neck. So she was a widow, lotta money, lotta ownership of the Hargrave fortune…their only son had married an 'oik', no heirs, so said 'oik' was set to inherit the lot. It was really the end of the Hargraves. Anyway, when they heard she was getting married again they thought 'well at least our name's ours again even if she has got half the rest of it'. Everything that wasn't their son's they bequeathed to very distant relatives you see, but she had a surprise up her sleeve."

  "She kept the name?"

  "In one. So me, another 'oik' from the council estate, who teaches children to drill on Saturdays, also became a Hargrave. Not just any Hargrave, but one of the Scarborough Hargraves whose lands had been held by the same family since the dissolution of the monasteries. Didn't put me on their Christmas card list though," he added with a smile.

  Hennessey said nothing but retained eye contact.

  "For a while living was good, big house, plenty of money, position in society, what more could a man want? It all began to fall apart when Ossler, with his pushy nature and new money, started banging on the door of the Vale's social life. Joined the golf club, recognised me in the bar, came over and said "Hello…what are you doing here…like I was the dirt, not him. Then a week later he phoned me at home, he didn't waste time…he told me to meet him."

  "He told you?"

  "He told me. Told me to come to his house so I borrowed my wife's second car and drove to his house. His wife and secretary were there so he took me into a little office next to the room where his se
cretary works and he sat down. I stood. He said, 'Right Hargrave, or do I call you Humby?' Then he went on about him being a professional blackmailer…"

  "And he told you that he never put the squeeze on people who could go to the police and never asked for more than they could afford?"

  Hargrave's jaw slackened. "Yes…why? Have you spoken to other victims of his?"

  "Well, let's just say we've grasped the gist of his operation. But do go on."

  "Well, then he dropped a photograph of me and 'the lump' on our wedding day…you know all that day…all that day of my wedding there was a little voice in my head saying 'don't do it…don't do it'…but I went ahead and did it. Then I'd said the words and signed the papers and the little voice said, 'Nice one, squirrel, that's you well and truly stuffed now isn't it, Sunshine? And you can't say you weren't warned.' Then I stuck it out until I couldn't take it any more, her…that voice…that nothing to come home to to…and so I walked out, saying I was going to the pub, but when I came to the pub I just kept on walking and that same little voice spoke to me again and this time it said, 'Nice one, son, nice one, now just keep walking.' And after a few weeks in dingy lodgings, I met and married and all was very well until I bumped into Ossler at the golf club. Then all was suddenly very not well. Very not well at all."

  "Then what?"

  "Wanted money, didn't he? Came straight to the point. Admitted it was a dangerous game. Told me he'd lost his first wife to an 'angry client', called his victims his 'clients', in a case of mistaken identity, something to do with a duffel coat. That was what the new house and the dogs and the fence were all about, apparently. She had stopped a bullet that was meant for him, so he said. Anyway, he said all he had to do was send copies of my first marriage certificate, conveniently supplied by our mutual friend 'the lump', no doubt, for some modest percentage or a one-off payment, to the Cadet Corps Commission and to my wife, Mrs Hargrave. Then that was me shot, no job, no pension, no marriage."

  "Meaning no big house and no use of the second car, rather than no marriage?"

  "If you like."

  "Well I'm London born, Mr Hargrave, but to take an expression that you have just used, the culture of this county has rubbed off on me and I have learned to call a spade a spade."

  "If not a bloody shovel, that's even more Yorkshire."

  "If you like. But please…"

  "Well, I told him I hadn't got a lot…my wife has it all. It was hers before our marriage and it was hers after our marriage. I'm really there to fill up the vacant chair next to her in the golf club cocktail bar…we…well, we have separate bedrooms you see."

  "I see."

  "Oh, it's better. Me and 'the lump' had to share a bed. Can you imagine what that was like?"

  "Just carry on, please."

  "Eventually he said that he'd take my salary. All of it. I'd do the job but survive by living off my wife. It was that…"

  "Or the open ground?"

  "As you say, and we all know what happens to a soldier who finds himself on open ground? So that's how it was for about…nearly two years. So it's over…'thy sins will seek thee out'. I've finished now…nothing to live for…so what can I do?"

  "You can confess to blowing his brains out…the worm turned, as they say. After two years of working for nothing, two years of wondering if he'd plant you on the open ground you fear so much, just out of spite…any man can take just so much…that constant fear of exposure. You knew his house…its weak points…the gravel drive was pretty well useless when there was a lawn to walk on, the dogs would welcome you with wagging tails…the cadet corp's armoury…and it would be a simple matter to make a couple of dumdum bullets which would disintegrate on impact, and which couldn't then be matched to a particular gun barrel, so you could bob the gun back into the armoury and no one would be any the wiser. And you don't have an alibi. All that motivation, that clear, obstacle-free road, and no alibi. You know non-alibis can be broken as well as alibis."

  Hargrave's eyes narrowed. His complexion paled. Hennessey saw it and said, "If we can place you somewhere on the Sunday evening, with a car and in striking distance of Ossler's house, then you've got some explaining to do, having already told us that you were at home all Sunday evening."

  "I didn't kill Ossler," said in a slow but very controlled voice

  "Things are looking bad for you, Mr Hargrave. Very bad."

  "You can believe what you want to believe, and you can float any theory under the sun." Hargrave spoke in the same controlled voice, but also revealed a hard, menacing edge to his personality. "But both you and I know that the Crown Prosecution Service will only run with what it thinks it can run with. And that means what it can prove. So, if you think I killed Ossler, fine…all you've got to do now is convince a jury and I'll collect a life sentence."

  Hennessey paused. "You've danced this dance before haven't you, Mr Hargrave? Or perhaps I should call you Humby. Do you have any other aliases? I've notices aliases are like that, once a person gives himself one alias he or she tends to like the idea. It has been my experience that if a person has one alias, he's likely got five or six."

  "Or she."

  "Or she."

  "Well, that's for me to know and for you to find out."

  "Don't be too cocksure. I've known the CPS to run with less than that beginning to stick to you. Haven't you, Sergeant?"

  "Oh, much less," nodded Yellich. "Much less."

  "That's too near to intimidation for me to be comfortable with," Crowther said, speaking for the first time since the interview commenced, when he had spoken only to give his name as being present in the room—as dictated by the procedures of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

  "Very well." Hennessey leaned forward. "Mr Hargrave, aka Humby, you can make it hard for yourself or you can make it easy for yourself. One or the other. Your choice."

  "I didn't kill Ossler."

  "Plead guilty. It'll be reflected in the length of your sentence."

  "Coercion," Crowther said, flatly.

  Silence.

  "This is not going anywhere." Crowther spoke with quiet authority. "We have had no break for refreshment, though I concede none was requested, but now I have to request that you either charge Mr Hargrave aka Humby, or release him pending further inquiries."

  "Do you have an address to be released to, Mr Hargrave?" Hennessey asked.

  "I really don't know." Hennessey shook his head slowly. "I've got two wives, but I can't live with either. Not now. No friends. No relatives."

  "So, you are of no fixed abode?"

  "I suppose I am. About an hour ago my home was one of the most prestigious houses in the Vale."

  "Very well. William Hargrave, or Humby, I arrest you in connection with the murder of Nathan Ossler on Sunday last. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

  In Hennessey's pigeon hole was a fax from the forensic science laboratory in Wetherby. The firearms section regretted it could be of little use in respect of the samples of bullet pieces sent for analysis, other than to confirm that it was of a .22 calibre and clearly fragmented on impact suggesting that it had been "doctored" into a "dumdum" bullet. It would not be possible to match it to the barrel from which it was fired.

  Hennessey filed the report pondering the strangely unscientific use of the word "doctored", especially in an official communication. He thought that the weekend was probably arriving a little early for one stressed-out government scientist.

  Hennessey and Yellich drove out to the Hargrave house at Bishop Wilton, pleasantly well set in the Yorkshire Wolds. Yellich drove. Hennessey in the front passenger seat, found time to reflect upon the beauty of the area he was privileged to work in, gentle, rolling countryside, wide, distant skyline, fields under crops or given to grazing, with the landscape broken up here and there with stands of woodland. The Hargrave house was on the edge of the v
illage, a solid, four square building, probably, Hennessey thought, dating from the mid-eighteenth century. It was covered in Virginia creeper and stood in well-tended grounds. Although Hennessey would never leave his house in Easingwold because that would involve leaving Jennifer, he did on occasion and only in his fantasy, find himself coveting other people's property and this was one such occasion. The Hargrave house, he decided, was a very serious pile of stone, very serious indeed.

  Clarissa Hargrave "received" the police officers in her drawing-room, she lay in a silk and richly embroidered trouser suit on a chaise-longue and smoked cigarettes, held in a long cigarette holder. Hennessey saw then why she could find William Humby or Hargrave attractive. He was, after all, slim, muscular, and at least twenty years her junior.

  "Police?" She spoke in a harsh voice which both officers assumed to have been created by years of cigarette smoking. The room, heavily decorated and furnished to the point of "clutter", yet expensively so, gold candlesticks on carved oak tables, smelled heavily of stale tobacco smoke. The ornate ceiling was stained yellow.

  "Detective Chief Inspector Hennessey. Detective Sergeant Yellich. I'm Hennessey."

  "Please," she waved an imperious arm in a wide silk sleeve, "do take a seat and tell me to what I owe the pleasure of your company."

  She may, reflected Hennessey, have been a trawler deckhand's daughter, but she had clearly absorbed all the mannerisms of her in-laws. He and Yellich sat in deep armchairs which Hennessey thought dated from the inter-war period. He had seen the like in junk shops and had watched as they eventually became valuable antiques.