‘Was.’
‘Is, then.’
‘But you said “was”.’
‘Don’t tie me up in knots.’
‘Don’t have to, Mr Sheringham, you’re doing a good job of it yourself.’
Sheringham flushed with anger and gripped the arms of the chair he was sitting on. ‘Don’t say anything you might regret.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Take it as you want to take it!’
‘Got a temper, have you? Bet all those steroids don’t help that.’
‘Nothing I can’t control.’
‘Fortunate for you.’
‘I want you out of my gym. I want you out now.’
‘All in good time.’
‘Now. Now!’ Sheringham leaned forwards. ‘I get what I want, when I want it and I want you two out of my gym now. I want you out. You have no choice.’
‘You’re right.’ Hennessey nodded.
‘So, go.’
‘But if we go, you come with us.’
‘And you come with us now,’ Yellich said, slowly. ‘Full gym or not.’
‘On what charge?’
‘Obstructing police enquiries. If we say you come with us, you come with us. You have no choice.’
A pause. Sheringham glared with anger.
‘So,’ Hennessey continued. ‘You took up with Mrs Williams?’
‘As I said.’
‘And you saw her regularly until recently?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you broke it off?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I was getting fed up, because I was frightened of my old lady…because, because.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘Like any mid-fifties dame would take it when her toy boy flies the coop. I won’t be easy to replace in her life and she knew it.’
‘Knew?’
‘Knew, know, what does it matter?’
‘Quite a lot. Were you bothered at all?’
‘Some. She was loaded, meals at fancy restaurants, had an amazing house once…huge thing…the Grange…we’d play serious games there before Vanessa came on the scene . huge old house…she’d hide me away in a room where he never went and visit me secretly…he’d be in the house kept me for a week once…that was fun.’
‘Enjoy being kept, did you?’
‘Yes. Anyway, they sold it, the Grange, and moved to the bungalow, easier to look after, she said. It was a bit of a comedown from the Grange but it was all right. I grew up in Tang Hall, so the bungalow was still good living. She said the sale of the Grange was a good move for her husband, released a lot of cash for his business ventures. So she said. But I wasn’t interested in that. She was bored, she had her needs. A woman does.’
‘And you helped out?’
‘Yes. On Wednesdays. Wednesdays and Sundays are women only days at the gym. They’re my days off. Wednesdays were his committee day at the golf club. We’d meet at her bungalow…we’d do it late afternoon, early evening, then she’d take me for a meal, a good, or less good, restaurant depending on how she felt I had performed. It was our little game. I didn’t always make it to the Mill. But occasionally I did. She set high standards. But that’s the way to do it, you know. Sex on an empty stomach and no alcohol, then your meal in a restaurant. Do it the other way round, then it’s not so good, too much food and wine dulls the sensation.’
‘In your book?’
‘It’s good advice. Try it. I mean if you ever have the opportunity.’
‘I’ll remember that. So where’s Mrs Williams?’
‘I don’t know. And I don’t care.’ between paths made up of slabs of Yorkshire stone, and beyond the orchard was an area of waste ground, where a pond had been dug and in which pond life thrived, venturing distances which surprised Hennessey. Once, one evening, he returned home from walking Oscar and he and Oscar had turned into his drive and walked slowly behind a frog which was also clearly returning home, and while he and Oscar entered the house, the frog had been observed to traverse the lawn and enter the orchard, making its way to the pond in what Hennessey referred to as the ‘going forth’. In the rear garden of his house, just he and Oscar, Hennessey knew tranquillity. Micklegate Bar Police Station might as well have been on another planet when he was in his back garden. That evening in June, after returning home, still feeling a little irritated by Tim Sheringham’s personality, he ate a simple but wholesome casserole, took Oscar for a walk and then strolled into Easingwold for a Guinness at the Dove Inn.
Hennessey drove home to Easingwold. He walked his garden with his dog, tail wagging, at his feet, happy to be out after a day-long confinement in the house. It was because of the garden that he had kept the house. His house itself was a modest three-bedroom detached property, set back from the Thirsk Road at the edge of the small town. A small lawn to the front, behind a high but neatly clipped hedge stood to the front of the house. It was at the rear of the house that Hennessey was most at ease, for here was a generous lawn, bounded by privet, and beyond, through a gap in the privet, was an orchard, with the trees planted in rows.
Wednesday morning
…in which a lush pasture gives up its dead, a witness is revisited, and murder is confirmed.
Colin Less was a countryman. A son of the soil in any man’s eyes. He had worked for the successive owners of Primrose Farm for thirty years. On the Wednesday of that week he went, spade in hand, as requested, in order to assess the state of the ditching. It was the first thing he did that morning, arriving there at about eight a.m. Yet by the time he arrived, the sun was high in the sky and the morning haze had long, long evaporated. He saw the mound of recently turned soil the instant he entered the five acre. He could not really have missed it. His immediate impression, drawing from his long years of experience on the land, was that whatever had been buried in the field had been buried very recently. His further impression was that whatever had been buried had only been buried shallowly: the mound of freshly tilled earth was too high, or ‘proud’ above the level of the field to be anything but a shallow burial. He would not know until he read the newspapers over the next few days, and then some months hence when he read the newspaper reports of a trial at York Crown Court, that his first impression was quite correct: it had been a recent burial. But he found out there and then that his second impression was also correct: it was a shallow burial. He had dug down only about one foot from the surface of the mound, to about six inches below the surface of the surrounding pasture when he struck an object. It was a human foot, still encased in a male shoe and sock and, so far as he could see, the leg to which it was still attached was encased in the trousers of an expensive-looking suit.
Colin Less covered up the small hole he had excavated and walked to the nearest village where he knew stood a phone box outside the post office. He didn’t rush the one-mile walk, but strolled, enjoying his fit, muscular body, enjoying a summer’s morning in rural England. For he had reached the age in life where he knew that he was time limited, and often the reminders of mortality were about him, more so, much more so than a town dweller who takes his meat from a supermarket shelf. His discovery of human remains served only to bring the message about, not just the inevitability of death, but also its inescapability, home to him all the more clearly. So he savoured his life, and the richness and lushness of life about him, the foliage, the birdsong, the history of it and the certain continuance of it after his time. There was, after all, no hurry. Whoever the man was, he thought, he had already arrived where he was going. And his corpse wasn’t going anywhere.
Hennessey followed the directions that he had been given and turned down a narrow lane between high hedgerows and reflected that in other circumstances he might have found the drive enjoyable. He came to a place where the lane ran between woodland and then the land opened out into flat fields, and it was there, where the woods gave way to the fields, that he saw the line of vehicles which marked his destination. There was an area car, still with its blue light revolving, a little unnecessarily, in Hennessey’s view, a mortuary van, black, sombre, windowless, and further beyond, he saw Yellich’s fawn-coloured Escort, and beyond that, to his delight, he saw a post-World War Two vintage Riley, white with red front mudguards and running boards. His son had once owned a die-cast toy model of such a vehicle, identical colour scheme as well. He halted his own car behind the mortuary van and walked to the entrance of the field, across which a blue and white police tape had been strung. Beyond the tape stood a group of people, one or two in uniform.