Perils and Dangers

by Peter Turnbull

  "He was shot," said Hennessey. "Confess that rings bells."

  "Does, doesn't it? Second this week, and in the Vale of York. Getting more like Dodge City every day. The bullet was small calibre .22, I think. Nasty little guns I'm told. Penetrate a long way into the body. A long way into the brain in this case, into the back of the head and all the way to the front, but didn't exit. He wasn't shot at close range. The bullet's in one piece…I'll clean it up and send it to the forensic science laboratory…the gunshot killed him, the thermal injury is post mortem, no soot in the trachea. If he had been breathing when alight, there'd be soot deposits in his throat. But there are none."

  "So he was iced, then fired?"

  "That is not a very scientific but very succinct way of putting it."

  "So long as I grasp the nuts and bolts."

  "Simply no indication of prior injuries, or of his body being dragged to where it was found, so he walked knowing or unknowing to his death."

  "Lured there or marched there at gunpoint, you mean?"

  "Yes," Louise D'Acre nodded. "That's exactly what I mean. His teeth had been smashed—again, post mortem—little bleeding you see, possibly as an afterthought, after the fire had done its damage."

  "Time of death, you think?"

  "Yesterday, possibly yesterday afternoon."

  "That ties in with other evidence," Hennessey said. "The lady who found him walks in the wood each day with her dog and she was certain the corpse wasn't there yesterday lunchtime and she believes it may have been found by children playing in the wood that evening who were too scared to report what they had found."

  "I can understand that. Tough on them, though," Louise D'Acre grimaced. "The bullet seems to have travelled upwards as it passed through the brain, suggesting that the person who pulled the trigger was shorter than the deceased."

  "Shorter?" Hennessey echoed, as his thoughts began to turn towards a slightly built, almost anorexic young woman of his recent acquaintance.

  "The deceased was in his mid to late twenties. I'll divide a tooth in cross section, that'll provide his age to within twelve months. A beer drinker, his stomach was bloated by the ingestion of much carbohydrate, apart from that, the only thing in his stomach was a bit of bacon and bread."

  "Bacon sandwich?"

  "Would be my guess. My favourite snack in fact. Lovely. Not particularly healthy, but it goes well with the lifestyle of a man who consumes much beer. And that, Chief Inspector, will be my findings, and to be reported to you in much more scientific language, but that, as you say, is the nuts and bolts of it. I took a clearer photograph of the tattoo, as you saw. I'll get a copy to you a.s.a.p."

  "Thanks. That'll be one for the press release, BBC and ITV regional news and the Yorkshire Post tomorrow. Mind you, I think I know who the victim is and the .22 bullet pretty well clinches it, but I'd prefer someone to feed me a name. If no one does, I'll proceed on what our American cousins would call a 'hunch', but I prefer to do things a little more methodically, if I can."

  Jeremy Aitken missed the evening news. He was working the late shift. The following morning, the Thursday of that week, he left his modest three-bedroom house in Huntingdon and walked the short distance to the newsagent's and bought a copy of that day's edition of the Yorkshire Post. On the front page was the photograph of the tattoo observed on the arm of the partly incinerated corpse which had been found the previous day by Miss Burroughs. The "full story" was, it read, on page three. Jeremy Aitken said, involuntarily "oh…no…" and turned to the story before he had purchased the newspaper.

  "Trouble?" The stockily built, gruff spoken newsagent looked genuinely concerned. His shop smelled of sweets.

  "Not for me." Aitken fumbled in his pocket for loose change. "I know this lad. I recognise the tattoo."

  "He was murdered."

  "So I see." He handed the newsagent the correct money for the newspaper.

  "Shot in the head."

  "Poor lad. I'd better give the police a phone call."

  "You can do it from here."

  "No…I'll do it from home." Which he did immediately upon his return.

  George Hennessey knocked politely on his door three-quarters of an hour later.

  Hennessey found Aitken to be a gentle-mannered man, slight, balding, bespectacled, modest in manner and, thought Hennessey, utterly unsuitable to be working with demanding, delinquent adolescents, which, he was informed, was the nature of his occupation. Hennessey knew that such adolescents were children only in terms of their age, in name only, and he more than suspected that they knowingly exploit their protected status in the eyes of the law, to perpetrate murderous assaults and highly organised robberies. A gentle man like Aitken, Hennessey mused, could not have an easy working life.

  "It was the tattoo," said Aitken as he and Hennessey sat down opposite each other on inexpensive furniture in a room decorated with children's paintings.

  "I hoped that it would jog someone's memory. So it was Shane Widestreet. That's the second time this week a tattoo has provided an identification."

  "Really?" Aitken smiled warmly.

  "Yes, really, and there's a possible connection too. We can possibly confirm his ID by matching dental records. Some of his teeth were damaged, but not all, there may be sufficient to provide a match."

  "Well the tattoo was unique, 'Ark Royal'. He tattooed himself, as disturbed children do. A pin pushed through an ink-saturated ball of cotton wool. The ink stains the skin where it's punctured, it's pretty effective—crude, untidy, but effective. You can always tell adults who've been in care as children, they'll often have such tattoos on their arms or on the back of their hands. It's an expression of self-loathing, so we are told, during our all too infrequent in-service training. But Shane wanted to join the Royal Navy, hence the tattoo. He even put himself up for admission but failed the medical and was quite upset about it for a long time, one more rejection you see. He was a sensitive lad, he hurt easily and felt deeply. He developed into an overbearing macho man image and wore male jewellery for a while, but it was just to hide the timid little boy inside."

  "I'm surprised his sister hasn't come forward to identify him. We know she's in York."

  Aitken frowned. "He doesn't have a sister."

  Hennessey felt his mouth open slightly. "No sister?"

  "No. No, Shane was alone in the world. He was abandoned by his mother when he was young, never knew his father. A succession of social workers tried to place him with foster parents but for one reason or another he was deemed 'hard to place' and effectively grew up in care. If he had had a sister, we would have known about it. He left us for a supported tenancy in Tang Hall."

  "He's still there. Or at least he was until about lunchtime yesterday. A woman called Sadie…does that ring any bells? They claimed to be brother and sister."

  "Sadie…" Aitken repeated. "Slightly built, dark-haired girl?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, poor Shane…that must have been Sadie Kuppe."

  "Kuppe?"

  "K. u. p. p. e.," Aitken said. "She insisted it was pronounced Kuppa, as in 'cuppa' tea. I knew they picked up with each other, didn't think they continued it when they were discharged, but we heard that they got married."

  "Oh." Hennessey sat back and heard the inexpensive chair creak against his weight. "So they were husband and wife…not brother and sister at all. Well, well…that answers a few questions such as the sleeping arrangements in Shane's tiny, one-room tenancy. Tell me about Sadie Kuppe?"

  "Quite a different kettle of fish to Shane. She and he were opposites on pretty well every level. Shane was soft hearted and easily led, a bit touchy about his surname but really soft as putty, Sadie was cold and calculating and manipulative. Shane had feelings, Sadie was utterly detached. We knew where Shane came from, Sadie was of travelling stock, some travellers were moving south for the winter, they were passing through York and a group of them tried to steal a car, they were disturbed and bolted, but Sadie tripped and turned her ank
le, so she was collared. She would only give her name and age as fourteen, as it was then, and none of the travellers would claim her as their own and they left York a day or two later. We had no one to discharge her to and so we had to keep her. Can't fathom that sort of thinking, your kith and kin…" Aitken shook his head.

  "They probably thought she'd abscond and join up with them in due course."

  "Probably, but she seemed to take to the children's home—quite different from a traveller's life. But a hard girl—fought like a demon—the other children always gave her a wide berth, so I was worried for Shane when Sadie got her talons into him. She also gave the impression that something dreadful had happened to her…gave her a mean streak…maybe that's why she wasn't so keen to catch up with her family."

  "Maybe."

  "Sadie was quite dishonest, underhand as well. Some children were honest about their bad behaviour. I mean, for example, picking fights with the staff, being seen to vandalise things, there's something honest about that, but when Sadie came there began a series of incidents which could only be described as sabotage…damage done to things but the authorship of the damage was never identified. After a while we came to believe it was all down to Sadie Kuppe."

  "I am beginning to get the picture of her."

  "Are you? She'd never argue with a member of staff, but would put broken glass beneath the tyres of a car belonging to a member of staff who might have picked her up for something. In war she'd be a sniper, quite a good one too. That's how I recall her, but what she's like now, I can't tell you. People change, I wouldn't be in this line of work if I didn't believe that people can change. If people can't change there's just no hope for the world."

  "None at all," Hennessey smiled in agreement. "Though I'm less convinced that people do change very much than I was when I was younger. And some folk don't change at all. Of that I am certain."

  "Police work has made you cynical, Mr Hennessey."

  "It goes with the territory, Mr Aitken."

  "Her coping mechanisms were desperate," Aitken continued. "If you had some evidence of her wrongdoing, she'd still swear blind that it wasn't her, or else she'd just turn away and stare at the corner of the room or out of the window, knowing that eventually you'd go away, ostrich-like, except that ostriches don't do that, they don't stick their heads into holes in the ground if danger threatens."

  "Don't they?"

  "No. That's a myth. Ostriches take flight, by which I mean they run if danger threatens, and they can put on quite a turn of speed. If you think about it, every species has to have a valid survival mechanism. If ostriches really did stick their heads into holes to escape from danger, assuming such holes were always so conveniently placed, the species probably wouldn't survive predation."

  "It wouldn't, would it?" Hennessey grinned.

  "But that 'ostrich mentality' was Sadie Kuppe's coping mechanism. Staff would say, 'Come on Sadie, why did you do it, the answer's not out of the window…why did you do it?' But she'd just stand there, knowing that eventually the member of staff would give up and go away. She knew that if she stood there long enough, just staring out of the window she'd get away with it, whatever 'it' happened to be. But mostly, she did get away with it because whenever we found the damage, there was nothing to link it to Sadie."

  "But you knew it was she?"

  "Oh, yes. We got to know her paw print—never a lot of force, nothing prolonged, but whatever she did would be very efficient. A good return on the investment. If Shane was shot in the head like the Yorkshire Post reports, then that is classic Sadie, a bullet in the head, minimal effort, massive damage. You know, I shouldn't be saying this, but if Sadie did murder Shane, I'd rather like to be a fly on the wall when you interview her. She can stare at the corner of the room or out of the window all she likes, the police won't go away."

  Hennessey returned to Micklegate Bar Police Station and asked the collator to access the Police National Computer for information, if any, on one Kuppe, Sadie, aged twenties. "Won't be many Kuppes," he added. He replaced the phone and made a mug of coffee and stood by the window drinking it while looking out on the sun-baked street and the tourists and townsfolk alike in brightly coloured, summer clothing. A person glancing at him from the street might have thought him a man blessed with an easy life, but in fact George Hennessey was deep in thought. His thoughts were interrupted by the collator knocking on his door and breezing cheerfully into his office.

  "This is what you want, sir," he said, smiling and holding a computer printout in his hand.

  "Thanks." Hennessey took the printout and returned to his desk as the collator left the room.

  Sadie Kuppe had, it seemed, been committing offences since the age of sixteen when she was convicted of shoplifting, actually on her sixteenth birthday. The kindly magistrates bound her over in the sum of ten pounds, and doubtless, Hennessey thought, she had left the court smirking from ear to ear, given the picture Jeremy Aitken had painted of her. He was reminded of the observation made by criminologists that a severe, even custodial sentence for a first offence seems to prevent re-offending, whereas lenient sentencing seems to lead on to further and eventual habitual offending. Maybe if the beaks of the York bench had been less soft-hearted when slight and slender Sadie Kuppe, in care of the social services and living in a children's home, had been brought before them…perhaps…perhaps…

  He continued to read and found that a pattern of non-violent offences emerged, fraud in the main, though she had avoided custodial sentences. Hennessey found himself pondering the irony of Ossler blackmailing Hargrave or Humby for bigamy, when all the while…how rich, how rich. He read on and noted that she had once been the interest of the Greater Manchester Police, the interested constable being one Detective Sergeant Keith Stebbings of the Central Division. Hennessey phoned the Central Division on the off-chance that DS Stebbings might be available. He was.

  "Oh, her…" Stebbings spoke with a strong Lancashire accent. "Has she surfaced again? Rather fancy she would. So, she's gone back to using her maiden name."

  "You knew her by another name?"

  "Cloch," said Stebbings. "The Cloch, sportswear manufacturers. You might have seen the name on T-shirts and training shoes that joggers wear. There's a very attractive girl in our street and the name bounces past our house at about seven each evening."

  "That Cloch!" Hennessey grinned, allowing his smile to be heard down the phone.

  "That Cloch. Ivan Cloch by name. Though the business has folded now, she sold up after he was murdered."

  Hennessey groaned, he knew what was coming, but he asked to hear the story anyway.

  "Poor Ivan, devoted his life to building up his company, realised he had made it at the expense of remaining single and childless, so he advertised for a wife of childbearing age…didn't make any bones about it. Essentially he was looking for breeding stock. He wanted someone to carry the business on after him. Sadie Kuppe answered the ad. She told us that most of the respondents were at the very end of their childbearing years, so Ivan had told her. but she was twenty-something and not unattractive. There was no contest. They married quickly at a Manchester registry office."

  "And he was murdered shortly afterwards and she had a cast-iron alibi, possibly involving her brother?"

  A pause.

  "Yes…" Stebbings said cautiously. "Why? Does it sound familiar?"

  "Yes, in fact," Hennessey replied softly. "Mrs Cloch, nee Kuppe is now Ossler, a widowed lady whose wealthy and much older husband was shot late last Sunday evening, when Mrs Ossler was visiting Shane Widestreet, who is in fact her first husband. At least he was until he was found shot, partially incinerated and buried under a pile of rubble in a wood just outside York. That was this morning."

  "Well…we just assumed they were brother and sister…come to think of it, they didn't look like siblings—he so big and biddable, she so small and feisty. We just didn't check. I feel a bit awkward."

  "We had a break you didn't have." Hennessey m
oved the phone from one ear to the other. Shane Widestreet had a distinct tattoo, we used it as part of an appeal for information and we were contacted by a gentleman who knew both Shane and Sadie when they were in care. After that it all fell into place, for us anyway, for little Miss Kuppe it all fell apart.

  "She's in custody?"

  "Not yet. Saw you were involved. Thought I'd phone you. Pleased I did."

  "I'm pleased you did. I'd like to come and see her. We have a few questions for her as well."

  "I'm sure that can be arranged in the next day or two."

  "Greed."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Greed. That was her motivation. She pulled it off once, made herself a wealthy woman. Ivan Cloch left her everything, house, thriving business, assets, we were looking for culprits in the Manchester business community. She was visiting her brother in York at the time, her alibi seemed to check out, she was never in the frame."

  "How was her husband killed?"

  "Shot. A well-placed bullet in the back of his head."

  "Small calibre?"

  "Yes, .22 I recall. A real killer's gun if you know where to put the bullet. So she went back to York and kept up the poor girl image, couldn't flaunt that wealth without inviting suspicion, but she'll have close on a million quid tucked away somewhere. Then did one more by the sound of it, one more to make sure, then head for the sun."

  "But not before she got rid of husband number one, whose usefulness had expired."

  "All falls into place, as you say. Oh…you still there…?"

  "Yes?"

  "The bullet. I remember now. It exploded on impact. Dumdum I think they're called."

  Richard Hargrave or Humby, was released from custody having been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by laying false information before the registrar of births, marriages and deaths, but he didn't seem to be listening as he was being charged, he seemed away in a different world, or frightened of the world which waited for him outside the safety of the police station. Nigel West was charged with one specimen charge of obtaining money by dishonesty, namely his most recent salary cheque and was asked to return to the police station the following Monday "to be interviewed". He too, seemed to be thinking himself elsewhere as he was discharged from custody, but then glanced at the bemused custody sergeant and said, "You know the irony is that I was good at it…I really was good at the job. It may have been dishonest, but I really did earn it."