‘You mean she had plenty of money to buy you drink,’ Ventnor responded coldly.
‘Yeah. . she still does,’ Driver replied with a wink. ‘She still does.’
‘She was indeed a very pleasant, a most pleasant young woman.’ Megan Farthing revealed herself to be a warm, motherly sort of woman, or so found Carmen Pharoah who was relaxing very quickly in her presence. Megan Farthing was warm of manner, gentle of speech and seemed comfortable to be in her middle years, wearing a three-quarter length skirt and a ‘sensible’ pair of shoes and a richly embroidered blouse. She sat behind the desk in her office on the top floor of Gordon and Moxon’s Household Goods Store. ‘We were all saddened to hear of her disappearance and frankly, after a few days, we all expressed doubts that she would turn up alive. Young women like her don’t run away, so we began to think that she’d be at the bottom of the river. . now we know what happened to her, poor girl. So young, so much to live for. . it was all ahead of her.’
‘What was she like as a worker?’ Carmen Pharoah sat back in the chair which stood in front of Megan Farthing’s desk.
Megan Farthing smiled a tight-lipped smile, ‘Well. . she was an employee with an issue. .’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. . she was pleasant, well liked. . not a management problem but she had an issue with alcohol which surfaced eventually.’
‘She came to work drunk?’ Carmen Pharoah gasped.
‘No. . no. . she never did that. . but she left in that condition. She had a flask in her handbag.’
‘I see.’ Carmen Pharoah glanced round the office and thought it softly decorated and homely, with photographs of children and infants above a bookcase which stood against the wall of the office, a glass vase on the desk contained flowers in water, behind it on the wall were prints of Yorkshire landmarks, Robin Hood’s Bay, the Ribblehead Viaduct, York Minster, and a sweeping panorama of Swaledale.
‘You see, Veronica would bring a flask to work each day concealed in her handbag, as I said, and she would be a very efficient employee in the forenoon but she became more unsteady as the day wore on. By lunchtime she’d be taking sufficiently frequent trips to the ladies toilets to take a nip. . and by the early afternoon she’d be walking unsteadily on her heels and slurring her words. Now. . this is a good company to work for, it was founded in Victorian times and has resisted takeovers from larger chains which do not care for their workers as we care for ours. We have retained the Victorian attitude of paternalism to our workers. If you work for Gordon and Moxon’s it works for you. . you belong to the family. . it’s a very good employer. If an employee cannot work for an extended period through no fault of their own we will hold their position open for them. If they require money for things like school uniforms we will issue an interest-free loan and take the money back a little bit each week or month, and in such small repayment amounts that the employee won’t feel it. . financially speaking.’
‘Not bad.’
‘Not bad at all. . and we do other similar things for our own, but at the end of the day we have to make money and so we have to have workers, not passengers. Veronica was one of the telephonists and as such she was in direct contact with the public. . paying customers. . voice only but that is still direct contact.’
‘Of course, it’s vital for the telephonists to have a pleasant speaking voice.’
‘Yes. . Veronica had, in the forenoon, and only in the forenoon. In the afternoon her voice was slurred and she became short-tempered. So. . verbal warning at first, given by me in my capacity as Personnel Manager, and then when she didn’t alter her ways. . or when she could not. . because I understand alcoholism. . I have had personal experience of it.’
‘I see. . I’m sorry.’
‘Long time ago now but it gave me insight into the illness.’ Farthing paused. ‘Well, anyway, she received a second written warning and strong advice that she seek help from her doctor or by joining Alcoholics Anonymous. She was then taken from the switchboard, for everybody’s sake, and given a job in the stores on a reduced income. . and that was a real comedown for her. The stores have invited some very cruel names from the workforce. “The bat cave” being one of the kinder ones. It’s where the disadvantaged people work. Again, it’s Gordon and Moxon’s policy to engage people who would, for one reason or another, find it difficult to get a job but we can’t put them on the sales floors.’
‘Appreciate that.’
‘So our senior store clerk is a man who is in a wheelchair because he was born without legs, and damned efficient he is too. Another employee has a glandular problem and rapidly starts to smell of sweat. He has to bring a change of clothing with him each day and take a shower at lunchtime. He’s also a very good worker. And so taking Veronica from the switchboard, where the telephonists regard themselves as a bit of an elite in the company, and sending her to the stores, was a massive comedown for her but it was the only thing I could do, short of dismissing her, and I also thought it might be the jolt, just the sort of wake-up call she needed.’
‘I was thinking the same thing.’
‘And if she sobered up, we’d have her back on the switchboard. . and I told her that. But it was just about then that she disappeared. She’d been in the stores for less than a month. . and the tragedy of it was that she seemed to be getting on top of her drink problem. . she was on her way back to the switchboard, so no reason to run away.’
The agent’s room in HM Prison Langley Vale was square in terms of floor area, about eight foot by eight foot, guessed Thomson Ventnor, who sat at a metal table. It smelled strongly of bleach. The walls were tiled with glazed white and blue tiles, which had been laid alternating with each other laterally, and which had been offset like bricks in a wall. A filament bulb behind a Perspex screen in the ceiling illuminated the room. An opaque glass brick at the top of the outside wall opposite the door allowed in ultraviolet light. Ventnor heard the jangling of keys and the opening and shutting of a large, heavy door, then the agent’s room door was unlocked and opened.
Liz Calderwood was dressed in a blue tee shirt, faded blue denims and white sports shoes. She grinned at Ventnor as she entered the agent’s room and, unbidden, sat down opposite him. She was small, frail, innocent-looking and, thought Ventnor, she could pass for a fourteen-year-old. He saw at once how her charm and innocent-looking appearance would help her defraud gullible people, which she had done, and for which she had collected three years’ imprisonment.
‘Yeah. . I heard,’ she replied in a soft voice after Ventnor had explained his reason for visiting. ‘We get the television news to watch and the newspapers to read and so, yeah, I heard about her being found. . one of a number of women. Nine bodies it is now. Nine. I saw the latest press release. I did wonder what she was doing. Now I know.’
‘We understand that you were the last person to see her alive?’
‘No,’ Liz Calderwood smiled and showed that her eyes had a most un-criminal like sparkle about them. ‘No, that was the person who murdered her. Point to me I think.’
‘Point to you, agreed,’ Ventnor inclined his head in acknowledgement, ‘but of her friends and acquaintances, you were the last known person to see her alive. You left the nightclub together, we understand?’
‘Yes. . that is true. . I remember it well. I didn’t drink as much as she did so I can remember things that happened and I can remember that night all right. . like it was yesterday. She was a mess. . Veronica was a mess. She was drunk and she had vomited in the washbasin in the ladies toilets, it was in her hair. . it was on her clothes. . everywhere. . her tights were torn. She was mumbling about having to get home and rinse her hair but she didn’t want her mother to see her. So we walked. Well, she stumbled and I held her up, even though she was taller than me, and we got to the railway station to try to use the toilets in there to clean her up but by then they had been locked up for the night. . so we hung around. Her old mum would go to bed at midnight she said and it was well after that by this time. So she planned to sneak in quietly, wash her hair and get some sleep. She was tired and that, plus the booze. . well you can imagine what a handful she was. . and she still kept taking nips from her flask. There were no cabs but eventually a car stopped. . I don’t know whether it was a cab or not but I got the impression the driver knew her.’