Perils and Dangers

by Peter Turnbull

  "You couldn't have done anything anyway. He had you cold by then."

  "He did, didn't he? Anyway, we made an appointment and he kept it, breezed in, cheerful, handshakes…sat down and said, 'Well, you've done all right for yourself.' I didn't recognise him. Then he said 'You don't recognise me, do you Compass?', that was my nickname at school—'Compass West, is best'. Going from true north to magnetic north."

  Hennessey nodded. "I was in the navy once."

  "Well that's the origin. I was 'Compass' or 'Compy' all through school. Then he said 'It's me, Ossie, you remember? We bunked off together one afternoon and had to bend over for Tiffy the next day—three stripes each.' It was then I knew the game was up for me. I was never a close pal of Ossler's but I remember him as being a schemer, always into moneymaking schemes, always avoiding fights as well, slithery, slippery sort of boy, that was Nathan Ossler." West paused. "I mean the coincidence, he'd settled in the Vale. I thought I'd left him behind in Bedford with all the others."

  "But there he was, in your study."

  "There he was in my study, large as life with two press cuttings, one recent, which showed a photograph of me when the local paper interviewed me about recent good results we'd had and gave my qualification as BA (Hons.) Cantab., and the other from a previous era when I'd helped pull a fellow student out of Lake Windermere after she got into difficulties and which clearly placed me at Derwent Teacher Training College. They were photocopies of course. I was there before him and said, 'How much do you want?'"

  "And?"

  "A lump sum twice my gross annual salary."

  "Possible to meet?"

  "Just, by means of a loan company, my house, the equity therein, my secure and well-paid position. Ossler…I can't tell you what that name does to me."

  "When did he call on you?"

  "About…about six months ago…yes…at the beginning of the Easter term…snow on the ground, as I recall. I just sat there feeling the bottom fall out of my world and he also sat there, smiling, crowing about his success. Do you know how he got started? Ossler. Do you know how it all started for him?"

  "Tell me."

  "A bag snatch. Theft. He snatched a bag. It was on one of the London stations. Waterloo, I think. A woman had sold her house and had collected the proceeds in cash from her solicitor and was hoarding the money. That's big money."

  "I'll say."

  "Ossler was a petty thief hoping for a few knick-knacks he could sell to buy an evening in a pub. Makes it at the station, gets back to Bedford, he was still living at home then, forces it open in his dad's tool shed and…oh my…enough hard cash to buy a house in a London suburb and he was still only twenty or twenty-two. But he was shrewd…he was shrewd as a boy…the money was new, sequenced, so he laundered it over time…buying a packet of cigarettes with large denomination notes for example. The change is clean money, can't be traced when you put it in your bank account."

  "Clever boy."

  "Patient as well. He told me it took him three years to launder it. It was then that he moved to York, bought property and began life as a crook, and eventually settled on blackmail. One good sting every year or two, he said, that's all it takes. Told me his wife and son never knew about it, said he told them he was just a Mr Ten Per Cent with a few legitimate interests as a smokescreen. Then he said he'd done better than me. 'Did better than you, didn't I? Same school same start, but I did better.'"

  "Up to a point," Hennessey said. "I mean, you're still alive, aren't you?"

  "The wages of sin, eh?"

  "If you like. But let's talk about your sin."

  "My sin, deception…and poverty. That's a sin…allowing yourself to be in poverty."

  "You're in poverty?"

  "The house may look impressive, but I've hardly eaten into the mortgage. At my age I should have more equity than I have. Ossler saw to that. The house in France is really only a converted pigeon loft, but it's cheaper than going to the Mediterranean for a fortnight and it's not really saleable, the market for holiday homes being what it is. Now my income has dried up. Poverty."

  "Do you own a gun?"

  Silence. West glanced at Hennessey. "No," he said.

  "Not the most truthful man in the Vale are you?"

  A look of anger flashed across West's eyes. "Am I under suspicion?"

  "Of course you are, Mr West. In fact you're now in the unenviable position of being prime suspect in the murder of Nathan Ossler."

  "I didn't kill Ossler!"

  "So you say. So anyone would. You see, Mr West, this murder was premeditated so no one's going to come stumbling into the police station in distress, full of confession and regret." Hennessey paused. "It's going to be up to us to find the murderer with sufficient proof that he did it. But you can help yourself or you can hinder yourself. A confession will be in your best interest."

  "No." West shook his head. "It'll be in the best interest of the murderer. I didn't kill Ossler." He gripped the table. Rage was in his eyes. "I didn't kill Ossler."

  "What did he do? Put the squeeze on for more money? Didn't keep his promise to go away once you'd paid up? Recognised you as a good touch and returned to really clean you out? So you shot him with the handgun you didn't surrender during the amnesty?"

  "Fantasy. Pure fantasy."

  "Is it? Look at if from our point of view for a second, will you? I have heard from people that if someone spends too long in the teaching profession, they have difficulty opening their minds to the point of view of others. But try, just try. Point one, you have motivation. Even if you had paid up and even if he wasn't putting extra squeeze on you, he was still alive, living in close proximity to you and holding information that could destroy you. It was worth the risk to go to his house and blow his brains out."

  "I did not kill Ossler."

  "Point two, we now find that you have a familiarity with firearms, you're a member of a gun club, no less."

  "Means nothing."

  "Means a lot. And you're certainly intelligent enough not to be caught in possession of the gun, so the absence of the gun when we search your house…"

  "You're going to search my house?"

  "Have to. Grounds here for a warrant to do said thing. Why, what are we going to find that you don't want us to find?"

  "Nothing."

  "But we won't find the gun because you dismantled it and dropped it in the Ouse, or in a stream or in a water trough in the middle of a field, the sort that cows drink from and the sort the farmers never let run dry." Hennessey paused. "And you have no alibi. No alibi at all. Walking round York because it was a pleasant evening…a headmaster who has to be up bright and early to take morning assembly. Come on. And you keep a dog. So you know dogs, so you'll know how to get past Ossler's Alsatians. And you've also got the personality for it, Mr West. I've been a police officer a long time, close to retiring now, and I've seen that look in your eyes, the eyes of other killers…there is a murderer personality and you've got it, a low flash point, an outrageous sense of your own importance. You can't get a university degree, so you'll invent one. That's ego mania. You're a 'control freak', so called, dominate the world around you, dominate the school, dominate your wife and children, and along comes Ossler and has you dancing on the end of his string like a puppet. That would not go down too well with a control freak, that alone would be enough to make you want to murder him, a control freak who's being controlled."

  Hennessey leaned forward. "Nigel West, I am arresting you in connection with the murder of Nathan Ossler. 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."

  Mr Crowther turned to West and said, "Say nothing."

  Hennessey paused, then said. "This interview is concluded at twelve fifteen p.m."

  Seven

  In which George Hennessey benefits from a startling revelation and the much misnamed Thundercliffe Grange is revisited.
<
br />   The body had been hidden. That was plain. It was very, very plain to Melita Burroughs when she found the body and tugged her Spaniel away from it, and it was plain to the white-shirted constables who attended the scene in response to Melita Burroughs' three nines call, and who then wound a blue and white police tape from one tree to the next to the next to the next until it had described a rough square around a natural hollow in the ground. It was also plain to George Hennessey who arrived in response to the call from the attending constables requesting CID attendance. It was also plain to Melita Burroughs, the two constables and to Chief Inspector Hennessey that whilst the body had been hidden, it had not been hidden very thoroughly. It was hidden as though by someone who didn't intend to remain in the vicinity but wanted only time to depart, so thought George Hennessey as he stood in the shade of the copse, brushing away the flies with his straw hat. A natural hollow, a corpse, male, going by the parts that protruded from the mound of rubble which covered it.

  Hennessey walked from the copse into the searing heat and the sunlight and blue sky, down the path between wide wheat fields to where Melita Burroughs waited by the police car on which the blue light revolved, as if lapping the parched countryside.

  "You found the body, I understand, madam?" Hennessey mopped the perspiration from his brow with his handkerchief. He spoke softly, seeing at first only a frail-looking, elderly lady holding a panting spaniel in a sitting position at the end of a yellow nylon leash. He glanced behind him at the island of green foliage in a sea of wheat that was the copse.

  "Aye," she said simply. "Stones had been disturbed, local lads, I reckon. Saw the skull and panicked. I came along, saw the same thing but didn't panic. Walked home to the village, phoned the police, walked back. Met them here, told them what to find and where to find it."

  "Doesn't seem to upset you, Mrs…?"

  "Miss. No, it doesn't bother me. I'm a retired nurse. I've seen it all, living and dead. And I'm a Christian—people die. It is the way of it."

  Hennessey mopped his brow again. This time it was he who said, "Aye".

  Frail and elderly, Miss Burroughs might be but he saw that she was clearly in full possession of her faculties and that her psyche was made of steel. He pulled the brim of his panama down against the glare of the sun.

  "I live in the village. Tess and I walked to the wood each day. It's a bit warm for her body but not too warm. She'll cope. I can, so she can."

  Hennessey glanced at the Springer Spaniel, tongue well out, panting, but the eyes were alert. He didn't think the animal seemed too distressed. "I've got a dark-coloured dog too," he told her. "In this weather, we walk in the evenings, it's more comfortable for him."

  Melita Burroughs snorted her disdain at Hennessey's attitude to his dog. Hennessey found a moment to ponder that nurses are like teachers: always right about everything, all the time.

  "So, you found the body?" He pressed forward.

  "Sara found it. Some of the rubble which wasn't there yesterday had become dislodged."

  "The rubble wasn't there yesterday?"

  "No. Anyway, I saw the skull, returned home, phoned the police. Told them an incinerated corpse had been partially hidden, that was to frustrate identification, I should think. Then the rubble was placed on top of it."

  "You think?"

  "Fairly obvious I'd say. And it was burnt there. Not burnt elsewhere and carried there."

  "Again, you think?"

  "Again fairly obviously, there is burning to the leaves and branches of the shrubs near the hollow. The flames have clearly scorched the vegetation."

  "I'd go along with that." Hennessey looked up as a red and white Riley circa 1947 approached the scene, being driven slowly, sedately even, one of the more comforting aspects of the branch of medicine known as forensic pathology, so observed Hennessey. Not for Louise D'Acre and others of her ilk the pressure of life-saving minutes of accident and emergency work.

  "Would have been done yesterday between noon and about five p.m." Melita Burroughs said sharply, bringing Hennessey's mind back to focus on the matter in hand. "I was in the wood yesterday, late morning, the children play there after school hours from five p.m. onwards, during term time, and all day out of term time and at weekends. It's term time at the moment, so he was burnt there yesterday afternoon, set alight and covered with rubble. There's plenty of rubble about—there used to be an old barn nearby, I well remember it from my girlhood. It was demolished some years ago but the site was never properly cleared. I've helped you all I can." She stood. "You won't need to detain me any longer. The constable has my address. Come on, Tess."

  Hennessey, both amused and flabbergasted, watched her go. He was disinclined to argue and was happy to let her go on her terms sensing that Melita Burroughs would probably be more difficult than the most delinquent youth. Further, and if—he thought—if he was to be at all honest, he relished more the prospect of the company of Louise D'Acre than he relished the continued presence of Melita Burroughs and he watched proudly as the former stepped out of the Riley, rotating her bottom, keeping both slender legs together as she opened the forward hinging door of the classic motor car. She stood and closed the door behind her, built like a willow wand, short haired, serious minded. She walked towards Hennessey. "Good day, Inspector."

  "Dr D'Acre," Hennessey responded formally. "One charred male corpse for your consideration."

  "Very well, lead on please."

  Hennessey led on and he and the forensic pathologist walked from the lane along the path between golden fields to the shade of the copse and to the charred corpse in a hollow in the ground.

  "Well." Dr D'Acre snapped on a pair of latex gloves. "You know, Inspector, I find it passing ironic that…well…lighten our darkness and preserve us from all perils and dangers of this night…what are perils and dangers for some are meat and drink to the likes of me…what peril and danger befell yon, I wonder?"

  "I have every confidence you'll be able to tell us, Dr D'Acre. I'll get a constable to remove the rubble."

  "Or even volunteer to do it yourself, Chief Inspector?" She smiled, holding eye contact. "Or even myself."

  She bent down and began to toss the lumps of rubble aside with seemingly minimal effort and Hennessey saw again how her slender build belied a muscular body and that far from complaining, even in good humour, that he had to compete for attention with her horse, it was her horse riding that had developed a body tone which had given so much to their sex life. He bent down and helped her remove the rubble. She glanced at him, their eyes met, his so warm and brown, as if to say "…love you". But then she froze him with a stare which said "remember what we agreed, work is work". Then she returned her attention to the removal of the rubble from the charred corpse.

  The body, fully exposed, revealed itself to be a heavily built, young-looking male. The corpse had been partially incinerated about the head, destroying the facial features, the lower body, the legs and arms had not been burned. All clothing remained intact.

  "Male, mid- to late-twenties." Louise D'Acre held a small battery-operated tape recorder close to her mouth and spoke in her soft, learned manner. "Significant thermal injuries to face and head…the teeth also seem to have been subject to trauma, possible in a further attempt to frustrate identification by matching with dental records. The corpse appears to be possibly about twenty-four hours post mortem, and has been burnt at the scene…there is thermal damage to vegetation beside and above the corpse." She paused.

  "Point to Miss Burroughs." Hennessey brushed at the swarm of flies above the corpse with his arm but made little impression on the determination of the insects.

  "Sorry?"

  "Nothing. Just that the lady who discovered the body made the same observation…about the burning to the foliage, I mean." He pondered her marching briskly back to the village, her and Tess, sun or no sun.

  "Oh…" Louise D'Acre viewed the corpse. "There's a significant tattoo on the left forearm, obviously a self-inflicted tattoo of
the sort that children give themselves in children's homes and this one clearly reads 'Ark Royal', that may help with the identification, Mr Hennessey." She replaced the tape recorder in her bag and took out a small electronic camera and photographed the tattoo. The sudden flash dazzled Hennessey. She took another, wider angled photograph of the corpse and then replaced the camera in her bag. "If you could help me turn him over, I'll be able to take a rectal temperature and then a ground temperature, it'll help me determine the time of death. Then we can get him to the laboratory." She too then waved her arm about the swarm of flies. "Have to hurry, won't be much left of him if we don't."

  "Of course." Hennessey took hold of the shoulders. "But I know him."

  "You do?" Louise D'Acre took the feet of the corpse. "Clockwise, one, two, three…"

  "Yes." Hennessey laid the corpse gently, face down. "I've seen him recently. I think I know who he is…the age…the build…the inexpensive clothing. You know there's a poignancy about realising that you are looking at a corpse which just a few hours earlier you saw as a living, breathing person, in this case, with his life ahead of him. Reminds you of your own mortality."

  "Certainly does, Mr Hennessey." Louise D'Acre stood. "Well, if you could get a couple of constables to put him in a body bag? As young and inexperienced as possible?"

  Hennessey glanced at her, questioningly.

  "Well," she said, "what I mean is, if they haven't handled a dead body before, it's as well to do it for the first time in a lovely setting like this, on a lovely day like this, under the supervision of experienced people like thee and me. Don't you think?"

  Three hours later, in the pathology laboratory of York District Hospital, Louise D'Acre switched off the overhead microphone and covered the corpse with a sheet and stepped back, allowing the mortuary attendants to lift the body on to a trolley and wheel it to the storage area. She approached Hennessey who had been observing the post-mortem for the City of York Police. "Did you get the gist of that?" she asked, as she peeled off the gloves.