Aftermath. Part 4

*Yes . . . go on . . .'

*The bodies, they were chained together . . . and the other victims were completely skeletal.'

*Oh,' Philippa Goodwin put her hand up to her mouth, *you mean she was left chained up next to a corpse . . .' tears welled in Philippa Goodwin's eyes, *and clothing . . . any sign of clothing?'

*None, I'm afraid, but please see that as something merciful.'

*Merciful? How?'

*There was no injury to Veronica's body . . . none detected . . . and if she was left naked in the winter time, being when she was abducted, then death would have come quickly.'

*Can I see her body?'

*I am afraid that will not be possible, her remains are in an advanced state of decomposition and it is not the last impression that anyone would want of their loved one, not an image to hold in your head.'

*And speaking of which, you will have removed the head anyway to send to a facial reconstruction expert.'

Again, Ventnor and Pharoah turned and glanced at each other.

*I told you, I work in A and E, when there is a large-scale disaster the police remove the hands from victims because it's easier to take the fingerprints that way than trying to remove fingerprints from a hand which is still attached to the body. I did a stint in the mortuary of the hospital as part of my A and E induction course. It's very necessary. A and E is not for everyone but I like the crisis management, I like the life saving bit. I wouldn't be any good on a ward, the long term getting them better and fit for discharge nursing, that's not for me, but if you cannot handle death and corpses you are no good in A and E, and so a stint in the mortuary is an essential part of A and E induction. So I know what happens. I have a.s.sisted when a head had to be sawn from a skeleton to permit facial reconstruction. So you can tell me.'

*Well, since you know,' Carmen Pharoah replied softly, *yes that has happened. It was before we found the missing person's report, which so neatly fitted the details obtained from the remains: s.e.x, height, matching date of disappearance, along with the state of decomposition. We probably did jump the gun there but the head and face were badly decomposed. The same will be true of all known victims; all will have their heads removed.'

*All known? You mean there may be more?'

*Yes. We have to make a thorough search, the house, the grounds; all will have to be searched. So far we have five known victims and we have to a.s.sume that there will be others until we know otherwise.'

*Fair enough.'

*We still have to make a definite identification.'

*It will be her.'

*We will use dental records or DNA for that.'

*What do you need?'

*The name of her dentist and/or a sample of her hair if you have kept her hairbrush . . . failing that . . . a sample of your DNA.'

*You can have all three . . . our dentist is Mr Pick,' Philippa Goodwin smiled, *appropriate name for a dentist don't you think? He has a surgery in Gillygate . . . and yes, I have kept Veronica's hairbrush. It has strands of her hair within the bristles.'

*If we could take the hairbrush with us, that will suffice.'

*You'll return it?'

*Yes, I will personally see that it is returned to you.'

*I'll let you have it before you go.'

*Appreciated. Are you happy for us to proceed on the a.s.sumption that the deceased is Veronica?'

*Yes,' Philippa Goodwin nodded slowly, *I am.'

*The missing person's report on Veronica states that she didn't return from a night out with friends. Can you elaborate on that statement?'

*Elaborate? Well, I recall the last time I saw her, I remember that day like yesterday. The last time you see someone you love, you never forget it.'

Carmen Pharoah smiled in response. *You don't, do you?'

*Well . . . that day she came home from work . . . she was a telephonist . . . and she came home from work . . . it was a Friday. She looked a picture, even in her frumpy winter clothing she was still radiant. She had little to eat, she didn't eat enough especially in the winter when we need more food than in the summer, but like all young women she was figure conscious, continually weighing herself, but she was not anorexic, I saw to that. That is something else you see in A and E, young women, girls even, who have collapsed in the street or at work or at school and when you peel off their clothes for the initial examination, you find that they are nothing but a skeleton covered in skin, but Veronica was not even close to that stage. I can be a bit ferocious when I have to be and if she didn't eat at least one substantial meal and two snacks each twenty-four hours, I would get ferocious with her . . . and she knew it. So that day she ate, changed into her finery and went out with her friends.'

*Do you know the names of her friends?'

*Susan Kent.'

Carmen Pharoah wrote the name in her notebook.

*Veronica and Susan were very close, as close as sisters . . . they were school pals.'

*What is her address? We'll have to speak to her.'

*Her mother lives at the end of the street . . . that way.' Philippa Goodwin pointed to the left-hand side of her house, as viewed from the outside. *You know, I don't know the number but it has a loud . . . a very attractive red door.'

*Loud?' Carmen Pharoah queried.

*As in colour, a "loud" colour, a colour which leaps out at you is a "loud" colour . . . apparently. That's something I learned from my husband, Veronica's father, he was an art teacher but only in his sober moments. So the Kent house has a "loud" red door . . . scarlet, fire engine red. You can't miss it.' Philippa Goodwin forced a smile. *The colour caused comments but they still repaint it every five years. Anyway, Susan said that she last saw Veronica waiting for a cab at the rank in the station. It's a very short journey, walkable, but for a young woman alone on a dark night a taxi is very sensible, and so Susan didn't worry about her.'

*Understandable.'

*But she didn't return home. I started to worry by about ten a.m the next morning. If she was going to stop out overnight she would have phoned me, but by ten a.m. I had received no phone call so I phoned the police. They were very sympathetic but they told me that they could not take a missing person report until the person concerned had been missing for twenty-four hours.'

*Yes, that's the procedure unless it's a child or young person under the age of sixteen.'

*They said that as well. So I went to the police station at one a.m., just after midnight, by which time she had been missing for twenty-four hours . . . gave all the details, a recent photograph and gave them Sue Kent's name and address. They agreed to visit Susan.'

*And they did. The visit was recorded but Susan Kent didn't, or couldn't, tell the officer anything that she didn't tell you . . . Veronica was last seen getting into a car, which apparently drew up at the taxi rank as though she and the driver knew each other . . . but no details . . . dark night, and the other girl Veronica was with was full of booze and couldn't tell one car from another anyway.'

*Then nothing until now, but at least I know what happened to her. She was always so sensible, such a sober minded girl, always let me know where she was. So now I know . . .'

*Yes . . . we are very sorry. Do you know of anyone who would want to harm her?'

*I don't, I'm sorry but Susan Kent might. She's married now, she's moved away from home but still in York, though.'

*We will ask her, we'll find her easily enough.'

*Veronica didn't seem troubled by anything or anyone, just a happy young woman in her early twenties, just watching her weight and bemoaning her height and the scarcity of tall men in York . . . that was my Veronica.'

Carmen Pharoah recorded her and Thomson Ventnor's visit to Philippa Goodwin and added it to the *Bromyards Inquiry' file, and then walked slowly home on the walls, savouring the summer weather, to her new-build flat on Bootham. She changed into casual clothes and, it being too early and too summery to remain indoors, she walked out of the city for one hour and reached the village of Shipton to which she had not travelled before. She found a small village beside the A19 surrounded by rich, flat farmland. Being disinclined to walk back to York, she returned by bus.

She showered upon returning home and ate a ready cooked meal, castigating herself for doing so, and telling herself of the importance of maintaining her cooking skills and that she should be wary of laziness, for laziness, as her grandmother in St Kitts had always told her, *is one of the deadly sins, chile'. Later, irritated and unable to concentrate, even on the television programmes, she retired to bed too early and thus fell asleep only to wake up at three a.m. It was then, unable to sleep, alone at night, that the demons came, flying around the inside of her head, taunting and tormenting her. She thought of her blissful marriage and the advice given to her and her husband by her father-in-law, *You're black, you've got to be ten times better to be just as good', and how determined they were to be ten times better, she as one of the very few black women constables in the Metropolitan Police, and he a civilian employee of the same force, as an accountant. Then the dreadful knock on her door, her own inspector, *It wasn't his fault. He couldn't have known anything,' and she was a widow after less than two years of marriage.

It was her fault. For some reason she was to blame and a penalty had to be paid, and so she applied for a transfer to the north of England where it is cold in the winter time, where the people are harder in their att.i.tude and less giving, and are hostile to strangers . . . or so she had been told . . . and where the people can bear grudges for many, many years, and there she must live until the penalty for surviving, when her husband had not, had been paid in full.

She lay abed listening to the sounds of the night, the trains arriving and departing the railway station, the calm click, click, click of a woman's high-heeled shoes below her window, which told her all was well, and later, the whine and rattle of the milk float which told her another day had begun.

George Hennessey similarly returned home at the end of that day. He drove to Easingwold with a sense of *something big' being uncovered, that Veronica Goodwin's and the other four skeletons were not going to be the sum. He drove through the village of Easingwold with the window of his car wound down and enjoyed the breeze playing about his face and right cheek, and as he pa.s.sed the place he could not help but glance at the exact spot at which Jennifer had fallen all those years ago on a similar summer's day. He drove out of Easingwold on the Thirsk Road and his heart leapt as he saw a silver BMW parked half-on, half-off the kerb beside his house. He turned into the driveway and heard a dog bark as the tyres of his car crunched the gravel. At the dog's bark a man in his late twenties appeared at the bottom of the drive, behind a gate designed to keep the dog from wandering into the road. The two men grinned at each other. The younger man returned inside the house as the older man got out of his car and walked to where the first man had stood, so as to give loving attention to the brown mongrel that was turning in circles and wagging its tail.

Later, when father and son sat on the patio at the rear of Hennessey's house, and watching Oscar crisscross the lawn, having clearly picked up an interesting scent, George Hennessey asked, *What are you doing . . . where?'

*Newcastle,' Charles Hennessey replied, *representing a felon who definitely did not commit a series of burglaries during which not a few householders were injured, some seriously, despite leaving his DNA and fingerprints behind him in an easily followed trail . . . he had a crack cocaine habit, you see.'

*Ah . . .'

*The police couldn't lift him because he was unknown to them, no previous convictions, so no record of his DNA or fingerprints.'

*I see.'

*So lucky . . . but luck ran out in the form of him getting into a fight in a pub . . . nothing to do with burglaries.'

*But a recordable offence and the Northumbria Police had his DNA and fingerprints taken.'

*Yes, so they raided his home and found a number of items taken from the burglaries which he had still to sell for money for crack cocaine . . . and still he is insistent on his innocence. He's trying to convince himself, of course, as much as anyone else.'

*I know the type.'

*I bet you do . . . but will he listen to reason? So, I am instructed to fight his corner with nothing to fight it with. His story that he found the stuff in the street won't wash and, even so, that is still an admission of theft by finding . . . And you . . . your work?'

*Five murdered women?'

*Five!' Charles Hennessey glanced at his father.

*Five . . . and my old copper's waters tell me that there will be more.'

*What's the story, so far?'

Hennessey told his son the details.

*A big one.'

*Yes. We have issued a press release, it'll make this evening's television news and tomorrow's newspapers, the press will be all over this one.'

*And your lady friend?'

George Hennessey smiled. *Very well, thank you. You'll meet her soon.'

*We hope so . . . she sounds . . . she sounds just right for you, father. You've been on your own quite long enough. I realize now how hard it was for you to be a single parent.'

*I had help.'

*Yes, I remember, but a housekeeper is not a parent and is not a partner.'

*Jennifer was with me, I felt her presence. I still feel it.'

*Yes, that is interesting, I don't doubt you.'

George Hennessey smiled. *Oh, she's here . . . she's here . . . I can feel her presence. She loves her garden.'

*Yes,' Charles Hennessey looked out over the neatly cut lawn to the hedgerow, which crossed the lawn from left to right with a gateway in the middle, leading on to an orchard in the corner of which were two garden sheds, both heavily creosoted. Beyond the orchard was an area of waste ground dominated by gra.s.s, within which was a pond with thriving amphibious life. *Her garden built according to a design she drew up when heavily pregnant with me.'

*Very heavily pregnant, you arrived a few days later.'

*I remember her. I remember being on her lap and looking up at her. It's my first memory. I have continuous memory from about the age of four, islands of memory before that.'

*As is usual.'

*So unfair, sudden death syndrome.'

*Yes, just walking through Easingwold . . . on a day like today and collapsing. Folk thought that she had fainted but there was no pulse and her skin was clammy to the touch. Dead on arrival, or Condition Purple in ambulance speak . . . and you just three months old. As you say, so unfair.' Hennessey paused. *So when do I see my grandchildren again?'

*Quite soon, they're clamouring to see Grandad Hennessey again . . . tend to think it's because you spoil them rotten.'

*Which,' Hennessey smiled, *is exactly what grand-parents are for.'

Later still, when Charles Hennessey had left to drive to his home and his family, George Hennessey made another cup of tea and carried it out to the orchard and stood where he had scattered one of the handfuls of his late wife's ashes and told her of his day . . . as he always did . . . winter and summer, and then he told her again of the new love in his life and a.s.sured her that it did not mean that his love for her had diminished. If anything, he told her, over the years it had grown stronger, and once again he felt himself surrounded by a warmth which could not be explained by the rays of the sun alone.

After sunset, and after spending a pleasant two hours reading a recently acquired book about the Zulu wars, which was already a valued addition to his library of military history, and after eating his supper and feeding Oscar, Hennessey took the dog for a walk of fifteen minutes, out to a field where he let the animal explore for thirty minutes and then man and dog returned to Hennessey's house. Hennessey then walked out again, alone, into Easingwold for a pint of brown and mild, at the Dove Inn, just one before last orders were called.

THREE.

Friday, 12th June a 10.15 hours a Sat.u.r.day 04.10 hours

in which more is learned about the final victim and the gentle reader is privy to George Hennessey's demons.