‘We noticed from your arrest record.’
‘Well, York’s a small city; there are people I don’t want to know what I was. A lot of girls go out of York to work for that reason.’
‘Yes, so we believe.’
‘Jim Post,’ Ventnor growled. ‘How did you meet him?’
Furlong Freda nodded to the television set in the far corner of the room, on top of which was a half-full bottle of vodka. ‘I’m on top of it now.’ She flicked the ash from her cigarette into the fire grate. ‘Half a bottle between the two of us last night, just half a bottle, time was when I could sink two bottles a day by myself. Time was when that half-bottle would have been my breakfast. Time was, if it was booze it went down my neck. Never got as far as drinking brass polish but I was on my way there. I can’t. . I don’t want to think what my insides are like,’ she shook her head vigorously. ‘I carry a kidney donor card but when they lift my kidneys they’ll take one look at them and then show them to medical students as an example of what an alcoholic’s kidneys get to look like. Mind you, I suppose that is still some use, not the use I intended, but still use. Anyway, I woke up in the gutter once too often and thought that’s it, AA for me, darling girl.’
‘I thought you might say that,’ Webster spoke softly. ‘It’s a theme in this inquiry.’
‘About Jim Post?’
‘That and a wider inquiry. So you went to AA?’
‘Yes, and that’s where we met. We helped each other get dry and then he introduced me to a couple he knew, and I joined their breakaway group.’
‘Breakaway group?’
‘Jim Post introduced me. He took me along one night to a cafe in York and I met this really nice couple, Ronald and Sylvia. . really charming. They just were able to make me feel good about myself. They said that they had been part of AA and got tired of it. . same old same old. . folk talking about how much they used to drink, and clearly exaggerating, and meeting the same people who were just addicts. Once addicted to booze they had become addicted to AA and lived just to attend the meetings. I was beginning to feel the same about AA. They got me off the booze. . but those meetings. . and Ronald explained that his group was just an alternative, but instead of listening to guest speaker’s talk about their battle, we’d just sit in a cafe and chat, drinking coffee and killing the evening. So, I began to go along to that, met a few people.’
‘Remember any names?’
‘Helena and Roslyn. . just two names. . no surnames, sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Once, twice a week, different people, men as well as women, but then I fell out with little Jimmy Post and never went again. I also found out that they were not friends with Jim Post, they used him, he was their gofer. I didn’t want a boyfriend who was somebody’s gofer.’
‘I see.’
‘But there was something going on. Jim used to have me photograph him in remote places.’
‘How did you get there?’
‘He was Ronald and Sylvia’s gofer, he used their car. He’d got a driving licence when he was sober and never lost it. He just never drove; he never could afford a car, so never got done for drunken driving. So when he dried out he had a clean licence, very useful for someone who just runs errands.’
‘All right, that explains something we wondered about.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, we have acquired some photographs showing Post standing in rural locations, sometimes he is looking at the ground. Someone had to have taken them or he used a timer device, or both.’
‘Well probably both because I took some photographs of him. He was very insistent about the place, the place seemed more important than the photograph of himself somehow.’
‘Can you remember any of the locations?’
‘Just one with any certainty.’
‘One out of how many?’
Freda McQueen shrugged, ‘Twenty? He took me all over the Vale from here to the coast, up into North Yorkshire and down into Lincolnshire.’
‘We have some photographs of him but not that many.’
‘He took a lot. He did his own developing.’
‘Yes, we found his dark room.’
‘He will have stashed his negatives somewhere,’ she paused. ‘You know he said something once. We were driving back in their Lord and Ladyship’s car and he said, “This is my insurance”. . or-’
‘Insurance?’
‘Or protection. . he might have said protection. In fact I think he did say protection. Then he said, “If I go down, they come with me”.’
‘If I go down they come with me?’ Webster repeated.
‘Yes, word for word that’s what he said. I asked him what he meant and he said “nothing” or “never mind” or something like that.’
‘And you can only remember one of the twenty or so locations?’
‘Yes, he seemed to know where he was going, didn’t mess about, always took us right there. The booze had left some of his brain without damage.’
‘Can you show us?’
‘Yes,’ Freda McQueen smiled, ‘buy me a pub lunch and I’ll show you exactly where.’
‘You’re on,’ Ventnor replied. ‘It’s a deal.’
Freda McQueen stood. ‘Just let me claw my kit on. I can’t go out to a posh village dressed like this.’
Forty-five minutes later, Webster slowed to a stop in the car park of the Black Bull pub in the village of Temple Chitton, having followed Freda McQueen’s directions. They stepped out of the car into fierce sunlight.
‘See what I mean?’ Freda McQueen announced, ‘About this being a posh village?’
The two officers looked about them. Near at hand, the car park of the Black Bull contained Range Rovers, a Bentley, two BMWs and a large, very large Mercedes. Further afield the houses of the village seemed to be mainly conjoined, each painted in bright blue and yellow pastel shades and each with a sound roof; clearly very well maintained properties. Further afield there stood larger houses in their own grounds, the land clearly marked by black painted metal railings or generously varnished wooden fencing.
‘Yes,’ Ventnor felt a bead of sweat run down his forehead, ‘there’s money here all right. How do you know about this village, Freda?’
‘You mean, the likes of me should come here?’ Freda McQueen grinned. ‘You mean, I’m not posh enough, darling?’
She had changed into a long denim skirt with a red blouse and red shoes. Cheap clothing but she seemed to have done all she could to ‘look her best’.
‘I didn’t mean that, Freda. I didn’t know this village existed, it’s off the beaten track but it shouts of money.’
‘Old money, darling, they like to keep themselves to themselves. I know it because I used to visit the colonel here; he was one of my regulars. He lived in that house over there.’ Freda McQueen pointed to a well-appointed cottage painted in brilliant white, with the wooden beam and doors and window frames painted in equally bright gloss black paint. ‘He died some years ago.’
‘You visited him here?’ Webster could not hide his astonishment.
‘Yes, during the day as well,’ McQueen grinned then she tapped the side of her nose. ‘Didn’t dress like a working girl, see, though I was discreet. I dressed in a tracksuit and carried a bag. Arrived on the morning bus and actually did housework, washed down the door and the ground floor windows in me pinafore, walked to the shop for cleaning stuff and furniture polish, then went inside so no one thought anything else but that Mrs Mop was calling to “do” for the colonel. . once a week. Then I left on the afternoon bus back to York, but that’s why I remember this being one of the places that Jim Post took me to take a photo of him. He never knew that I knew this village and I never told him. He paid well. The colonel I mean, not Jim Post.’