‘She did?’
‘Yes. .’
‘How big a problem?’
‘I think it was quite serious. She hid a flask in her handbag and took nips to add to the drinks she bought, or would go to the toilets and return looking a bit glazed.’
‘I see.’
‘She was worried about her job. She had had a warning from her boss at work.’
‘Really?’
‘So she once told me, but that was a blurt out assisted by alcohol, as well. She wouldn’t have told me if she was sober. It still didn’t stop her going out at night, and especially each weekend, but she didn’t stay in during the week. So it was getting hold of her but the thought of getting the chop at work was a real scare for her. I mean, she was for the shredder if she didn’t get her act to together.’
‘Interesting.’
‘You think it’s relevant?’
‘It could be, it would certainly make her vulnerable. Where did she work?’
‘Gordon and Moxon’s.’
‘The department store?’
‘Yes. Well, it’s more of a household goods store, everything for the householder. Veronica worked in the city centre branch, the main one. It’s a chain organization and has many shops in the north of England.’
‘So I believe.’
‘I don’t know any details; I mean any details about what made her fear losing her job. What happened that they felt they had to give her a warning, she didn’t tell me, but it had to have been serious, affecting her performance.’
‘How long before she disappeared did she tell you that?’
Susan Boyd sank back in the inexpensive metal chair upon which she sat and once again glanced out of the kitchen window. ‘Well, I remember light nights, we were in the pub, we had been in there all evening and the curtains were open. I remember a lovely sunset. . so summertime, it would be the summer before she disappeared.’
‘So about two years ago?’
‘Yes,’ Susan Boyd nodded gently, ‘yes, it would be about two years ago. But she kept her job so she pulled herself back from the brink.’
Somerled Yellich thought that Jeff Sparrow could best be described as sinewy. Yellich saw a man who was slender yet muscular, with a leathery, weather-beaten, tanned complexion, a man who had spent his working life outdoors. Jeff Sparrow occupied a similar house to that of Penny Merryweather, small, council owned, on a small estate of similar houses in Milking Nook. It had not the softness of Penny Merryweather’s house, but rather Yellich found it to have the harder, more functional character of a single man’s house. The mantelpiece, though, contained framed photographs of a younger Jeff Sparrow with a wife and a son, and spoke of happier, more fulfilled times. Sparrow sat in an armchair and his legs were of such a length that they inclined steeply from his waist before his calves fell vertically into the carpet slippers that encased his feet. He wore an old blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of equally aged lightweight summer trousers. The interior of the house had a slight mustiness about it, so Yellich found, and thought that should she be so inclined, Penny Merryweather could do much for Jeff Sparrow in terms of housekeeping. The small garden of the house was neatly kept as, Yellich thought, fully befitted a head gardener (retired).
‘Lonely man,’ Sparrow had a soft but distinct accent of the Yorkshire Wolds.
‘Mr Housecarl?’
‘Yes. Who else? A lonely man. Lovely man but very lonely, very on his own. I got the impression that was what he had got used to rather than how he wanted it to be. But a lovely man just the same.’
‘Yes, Mrs Merryweather told me what he did for your son.’
‘For me and my son. . but yes. . what other man would pay for his gardener to go to Australia and collect his son from an institution and bring him home? Lovely man. We. . his staff, just couldn’t do enough for him when I told them what he had done, the village too. He was worshipped in this village. If ever a position became vacant at Bromyards, in Mr Housecarl’s employment, a queue would form.’
‘I see. How is your son now?’
‘Very ill, but thank you for asking, sir. He has something called “paranoid schizophrenia with complications”, so the consultant told me. He’s in a flat in a housing association tenancy in York. It has a controlled entry so that gives him some protection, and he gets an injection of his medication each week which keeps him. . level. . but that’s not the right word, that’s not the word the consultant uses.’
‘Stable?’ Yellich suggested.
Jeff Sparrow smiled. ‘Yes, that’s the word he used. And because he has his medication injected they know he takes it. I often think it’s like pruning or pollarding a fruit tree, or making sure a lawn is very closely cut, stopping the wild thing inside from growing. It keeps him acceptable, like a well-cut hedge. It’s just the way I think. I’ve never been anything but a gardener. . left school to become an under gardener at Bromyards. So it’s the way I think.’
‘Understandable.’
‘But he’ll always be ill, poor lad, he’ll always be a hedge that needs trimming, but he likes the nurse who visits and the other help that’s been linked in, someone to help him do his shopping. I call round but I know he’s embarrassed about his situation so I don’t visit too often. He had his breakdown in Australia and they put him in a hospital which was run like an army camp, where the patients had to address the nurses as “sir”, but we got him home. . me and Betty had him back. Betty is deceased now but she lived to see him home and settled in his flat, all thanks to Mr Housecarl.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Jeff Sparrow opened the palm of his right hand. ‘It can’t be helped, and she was the sort of woman who would have let Tom be a burden to her, even in her autumn years. It’s best that he’s as independent as he can be.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Yellich smiled. ‘I have a son who has special needs, he’ll always be vulnerable, never have a mental age of more than twelve years. He’ll always be dependent to some degree.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘Well, what can I say? We. . my wife and I, were disappointed of course, but he gives us so much. He’s so warm and generous and a whole new world has opened up to us, and for us, as we have met other parents with Down’s Syndrome children.’
‘I know what you mean, sir. You know I loved my son more when he became ill. I just don’t want him to be a future prime minister any more. . or an international sportsman.’
‘I feel the same. So, Bromyards. .’ Yellich brought the conversation back on track but he sensed he had developed a rapport with Jeff Sparrow. He sensed he had made an ally.
‘Aye, Bromyards. . the bodies. I saw the television news last night. . a rum do.’
‘You wouldn’t know anything about that?’
Jeff Sparrow smiled. ‘No, it’s ten years now since I left Bromyards. Mr Housecarl just shrank back into the house, lost interest in the garden. They tell me that he was living in just one room at the very end, poor old soul.’
‘He was,’ Yellich nodded and committed the ‘ten years’ to memory. It meant none of the remains could have been there for more than ten years.
‘I just don’t like that thought, the thought of him dying like that. Once he lived in the whole house and saw to it that the gardens and grounds were well tended. Then one by one the staff were let go, and he was generous, each man or woman got a year’s pay as a. . there’s a word. .’
‘Severance pay?’
‘Possibly that’s it. . but a whole year’s money. Generous. . I used my money to help Tom furnish his flat.’
‘Good of you.’
‘Well, there’s no pockets in a shroud.’
‘Indeed. So tell me about the kitchen garden.’
‘That was one of the last places to be abandoned. The lawn in front of the house was the last part of the garden to be tended to, the kitchen garden was the next last as I recall.’
‘Did it have a lock on the door?’