‘DCs Pharoah and Markov. In case you should want to contact us – you may need a contact person – we’re working the six a.m. until two p.m. shift this week.’
‘Overtime, then.’ Winner glanced at the grandfather clock. It was two-thirty p.m.
‘Par for the course,’ Markov said, smiling.
Pharoah and Markov drove back to York, through the city centre and out to Tang Halclass="underline" low-rise, unkempt gardens, houses with boarded-up windows, motorcycles fastened to lamp posts with massive chains and padlocks, cars in driveways being ‘done up’ prior to resale for a modest profit. Number 2 Cheviot Avenue fitted into the surrounding area, an overgrown garden and a pile of uncollected domestic refuse by the side door. The cops knocked at the front door. The sound of the knocker echoed within.
‘I don’t know why we are here,’ said Pharoah.
‘Because we are,’ Markov replied. ‘We’re here to find what we shall find, if anything.’
The door was flung open and a woman with ginger hair and glazed blue eyes stood on the threshold. ‘Yes?’
‘Julia Patton?’
‘Aye.’ At close hand she did indeed look older than she did from a distance.
‘Police.’
An intake of breath. ‘Yes?’
‘We understand that you know Mr Winner? Mr Max Winner?’
‘Aye.’ She smiled. The name clearly triggered something and she said, ‘Winner by name, winner by nature.’
“You know him well?’
‘Very. Very well indeed.’
‘Where were you last night?’
‘Here,’ she said. ‘At home.’
‘All night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’ She adopted a more aggressive stance. ‘You can ask my neighbours. They’ll tell you my light was on all night, go and ask them.’
‘You’ll know Mrs Winner?’
‘The cow. Of course I know her. She tried to stop me and Max…but she couldn’t. True love will find a way.’
‘You and Mr Winner are in a relationship?’
‘Yes…for years now.’
‘Do you hike?’
‘What?’
‘Walking…long walks in the country, do you do it?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t have any hiking socks, then?’
Julia Patton blushed a deep red but recovered quickly and said, ‘No.’
‘Do you mind if we come in?’
‘Why? There’s nothing to see.’
‘Nothing to hide then, have you?’ The cops stepped outside.
Julia Patton’s house was threadbare and basic. Very basic. Worn-out chairs, no floor covering, and even at that time of the year, it had a chill about it. In the hallway Markov noted a pair of boots. Not hiking boots, but working boots, the sort that would have to be worn with thick socks over ordinary socks. He said, ‘I’ve got a pair of boots like that. Use them for gardening.’
‘Oh.’
‘Have to wear hiking socks with them.’
‘I do, too. They wore out. I threw them out.’
‘They’ll be in the refuse by the door.’
‘No. Threw them out a long time ago.’
Markov picked up one of the boots and examined the sole. The soil trapped on the side was slightly damp. ‘They’ve been worn recently?’
‘Just in the garden. Don’t need thick socks to go into the garden. Will that be all?’
Markov replaced the boot. ‘Yes. For now.’
‘Good. I’ve got plans to make.’
‘For?’
‘My marriage. Max and I are getting married. Nothing to stop us now she’s dead. Heard it on the lunchtime news. Haven’t felt better for years.’
That evening went as planned for Carmen Pharoah and Simon Markov; one recently arrived in York, the other settled but recently divorced, and now having found each other. They met outside the Minster and went on a Ghost Walk to satisfy Carmen Pharoah’s curiosity, she having often seen such walks advertised. They joined a crowd of about fifty who were led around the city by an actor in Victorian dress who took them down the narrow, one-person-at-a-time snickleways, a street pattern within a street pattern, and who showed them the tall house where a hundred years previously a little girl had fallen to her death within, down the stairwell from the upper floor to the cellar, and who can sometimes be seen as she ascends the stairs for the last time. And they were shown the window where the most recently seen ghost in all England – about twenty sightings a year – is to be viewed; a little girl sobbing at the window. The story being that during the Black Death her parents noticed she had the symptoms of the plague and so locked her in her room and fled, not just the house, which they locked and left with the sign of the plague on the door, but York itself. Leaving their daughter to succumb to thirst, or starvation, or the plague. And they viewed the house where once a man had seen a column of Roman soldiers who were marching, as if on their knees, along the hallway of the house. Excavation revealed the house had been built on the site of a Roman road, the surface of which was two feet beneath the floor of the house.
‘Lost something by doing the walk in summer,’ Markov said as he glanced at the menu in the Green Jade restaurant.
‘We could do it again,’ replied Carmen, whose eye was caught by the chicken chow mein. ‘A blustery winter’s night, or Halloween. That would be fun.’
They spent the night at her house, where she was still living largely out of bin liners and cardboard boxes. She had bought ‘within the walls’, having been told that she would never have a problem selling her house if she bought ‘within the walls’ and that night they lay together listening to the Minster bells chime midnight.
Max Winner woke early the next morning, as he did during the summer months, but he remained long in bed, still feeling a sense of whirring confusion in his head. The sense of weight having been lifted from his life was tangible…but yet, strangely, there was a loss, too. He was now finally alone in his house. She was no longer in her room. He didn’t miss her, not at all, but there was a space, a hole where previously there was no hole. He didn’t think her loss would have had such an effect on him, and it surprised him that it did.
He heard the doorbell ring. He levered himself out of bed, wound into his dressing gown, and went down the ancient creaking staircase and answered the door. He gasped in surprise and astonishment.
‘Morning, Max,’ beamed Julia Patton. ‘Did you miss me?’ She stood with two suitcases at her feet. ‘Nothing to stop us now, is there, Max?’
‘No – no -’ He said ‘no’ because he didn’t know what else to say. ‘Won’t you come in?’
They sat in the sitting room where the day previously he had received Carmen Pharoah and Simon Markov. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said.
‘I knew you’d be pleased. I used to watch the house almost every evening…got to know her movements… Waited for her on the bridge. I knew she’d stop and give me a mouthful…and she did. Then when she turned away to go back to her car, I hit her over the head. I had a rock inside a sock. She went down slowly. I tried to lift her over the parapet, but I couldn’t, so I dragged her down some steps and put her in the water, face down, dropped her handbag in after her and chucked the rock and sock in the water as well. So we can be together now, Max, I can be lady of this house.’
‘Yes…’ He smiled. ‘Yes…have you breakfasted yet?’
‘No. I came straight here. The police called yesterday but I got rid of them, they won’t be back. Just you and me now, Max.’
Max Winner stood. ‘Well, look, why don’t you make yourself at home.’
‘At home,’ she echoed.
‘I’ll go and get my clothes on and I’ll make us both something to eat.’ He left the room and walked back up the stairs to his bedroom. He closed the door behind him and picked up the telephone by his bed. ‘DC Pharoah or Markov,’ he said when his call was answered. ‘Either will do.’