‘Very leisurely attitude,’ Yellich added, ‘calmly walking about and separating from each other by that sort of distance. It clearly wasn’t a hurried job, no dashing up to the house, locking the victim to the chain and dashing away again, they hung around. . very cool. . very collected.’
‘Yes, nonetheless, unless we find something in the Malpass’s house it is still going to be an uphill struggle to secure a safe conviction but these photographs and particularly this one,’ he tapped the photograph showing Ronald Malpass walking out of the kitchen garden at Bromyards, ‘this one is enough to arrest them and have them remanded. Separate them; give them a taste of prison life. It depends on the quality of their marriage of course, but with luck, she might roll over on him when she sees this photograph. If she turns Queen’s evidence, well, we’ll see what we see. We’ll get the warrants tomorrow morning and bring them in. There’s no hurry, they are not going anywhere or about to murder someone else. They’re washed up.’
It was Tuesday, 17.03 hours.
Wednesday 10.15–10.40 Hours
Sylvia Malpass, tall, elegant, even in the blue and white tracksuit she always wore when doing housework, stood patiently in the back room of her house in Hutton Cranswick and felt a strange and unexpected sense of calm and contentment. She smiled gently as she looked out of the wide window to the rear of her home, to the large well-tended garden, where her husband was, at that moment, playing water from the hosepipe over the shrubs and the lawn, and doing so despite the recent rain and looming rain clouds. Yet, he always did that, always watered the garden before leaving the house for any length of time. That day, though, Sylvia Malpass thought that she observed a certain determination, and certain restlessness, about her husband’s actions. It was, she thought, as if the garden was parched, and baked dry and hard, after a prolonged drought. She pondered whether or not she should interfere. . normally she would not do so. . his was the garden, hers was the house, seemed to have been the unwritten rule which had evolved in their home-building, but the excess of water drenching the garden did, on this occasion, eventually reach her. There was also, she told herself, other things which had to be addressed. With that thinking, with that argument in her mind, she turned and walked to the kitchen and exited the house by the rear door. She walked calmly up to her husband, approaching from his left and side so that he had sufficient notice of her arrival. It did never do, she had learned early on in their marriage, to take him by surprise. His reaction in such circumstances could be at best dangerous, at worst deadly. He turned at her approach and welcomed her with a warm, very warm, smile.
‘You’ve been doing this for well over an hour, darling.’ She spoke softly, yet managed to project a note of protest.
‘Yes. . I know. .’ he replied equally softly, ‘but it makes me feel better. . and I always do this before we go away for a while. . you know that.’
‘Yes, darling. . but. . but. .’ she pressed the heel of her sports shoe into the lawn causing a deep indentation. ‘Look at that. . what my heel has done. . the garden is waterlogged. . you are drowning the garden.’
‘You can’t drown a plant.’ Malpass continued to spray the shrubbery. ‘They have a kind of shut off valve which activates when they have had sufficient to drink. . but I want the garden to be well-watered. . I don’t like fretting about the garden when I am away, or we are on holiday. It spoils everything for me.’
‘Yes, darling. . but even so. . enough is enough, and there’s other things to be done.’
‘Perhaps, but I still have the front garden to water.’
‘The front. .’ She rested her hand on his forearm. ‘What will the neighbours think when they see you watering the garden in this sort of weather? It rained last night and just look at these rain clouds approaching.’
Ronald Malpass glanced to his right and saw mountainous grey clouds menacing in the east. ‘No hosepipe ban yet. . so why shouldn’t a fella care for his plants. . and since when have I been worried about the opinion of the neighbours?’
‘But,’ she protested, ‘as I said. . still things to do. . we need to fill the car with petrol for one thing.’
‘Oh. . yes, all right. .’ He laid the hosepipe on the ground. ‘Confess I had forgotten that. .’
‘Well, we won’t get far on an empty tank.’ She smiled.
‘Certainly won’t.’
‘I’ll make us some coffee. . we both need a break.’
‘Yes. .’ Ronald Malpass smiled at his wife. ‘Yes,’ he said again as their eyes met. ‘Yes. Coffee. A coffee with you would be good. Very, very good. . just once more before we set off.’
Sylvia Malpass returned to the house with a spring in her step; her husband by contrast, walked with a powerful determined heavy footfall across the sodden lawn to where the hose was attached to a tap set in the wall. He turned the tap off, screwing it down firmly, and then entered the house, wiping his feet on the mat as he did so.
Some moments later, Ronald and Sylvia Malpass sat in identical armchairs facing each other in a living room, which had been tidied to perfection, and the air in which was heavy with the smell of furniture polish and freshener. They each sipped coffees from cups which, like the armchairs, were identical.
‘It tastes exquisite,’ Ronald Malpass commented. ‘You know that I often say that the first cup of coffee in the morning is the most enjoyable cup of the whole day. . the most enjoyable by far, but there is something refreshing about this cup of coffee. It is special somehow.’
‘I know what you mean, darling. I thought that the garden had a certain freshness about its fragrance as I walked out there just now. . something which I hadn’t noticed before.’
‘That is probably because I had watered it, doing that always releases the scents. .’
‘Yes, but even allowing for that. . there was a definite something other. . something now in the air.’
‘Perhaps.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Perhaps, but it’s possible because it is often like that before you go on a journey. . you seem to have a heightened sense of awareness of your surroundings. It’s a bit like saying goodbye to a house just before you shut the door behind you for the last time.’
‘My mother used to do that.’ Sylvia Malpass looked upwards as if recollecting memories. ‘I never have. . I dare say I was always looking forward. My old dad, he used to say that she must be soft in the head to talk to empty houses, but he was a hard case. I take more after him than her. . and I could never take to the other thing she always had us do — which was that before we left the house as a family, even if it was only for the day, we would sit and pause for a minute or two, and I mean just for sixty or one hundred and twenty seconds or some time in between, to collect ourselves as a family before going out. Even if there was a taxi waiting outside with the meter ticking, down we would sit. . in silence. . then we could leave the house as a family.’
Ronald Malpass pursed his lips. ‘You know, I quite like that. . and you never told me that. . not in all these years. .’
‘I didn’t, did I. . I just remembered it now for some reason. Probably because you never did that, paused before leaving the house, and I never wanted to do it anyway. I just left it behind in my childhood along with the dolls and tea sets.’
‘But as I said. . I quite like the sound of it. I could quite take to the practice.’
‘Well, we can do it today if you wish. Especially before this journey, when we don’t know where we are going.’
‘Yes. . just getting away from here. . away from Hutton Cranswick and the Vale of York altogether.’
‘How long do you think we have got?’
‘Time yet.’
‘But they’re coming?’
‘Oh yes. . yes. . they’re coming. So long as we are well away by then. That is the main thing.’
‘Yes. It’s all done upstairs. All neat and shipshape and Bristol fashion. . just as my Master commanded.’