George Hennessey, then a Detective Sergeant with the Vale of York Police, was asked to represent the CID at the incident, procedure dictating that a suicide has to be considered suspicious until foul play can be safely ruled out. By the time Hennessey had arrived at the scene, the body had been lifted from the track, a relief driver had taken the train on, and rail traffic was flowing normally.
“I always said if I had one under, that I’d look away.” The train driver, still clearly shaken, leaned against the police vehicle and pulled heavily on a cigarette. Judging by the number of butts screwed into the dry ground at his feet, it was one in a long line of cigarettes he had smoked between the time of the incident and Sergeant Hennessey’s arrival. “But you can’t, you see,” he appealed to Hennessey. “You can’t look away.” He was a small man, Hennessey recalled, and he remembered being amused to note that driving a locomotive capable of 125 m.p.h. clearly didn’t involve the use of great physical strength. Up to that point he had always thought of train drivers as being large, brawny types. Clearly, he found, that was not the case. “I rounded the bend, sixty miles an hour at this point, not fast as fast trains go, but no time to stop before the impact. I brought the speed down as fast as I could but there wasn’t enough track to stop. Reckon I hit him doing about forty.”
“Fast enough.”
“Oh, aye, fast enough all right, but we had eye contact, right till the end. I mean, he was looking right into my eyes and I was looking right into his. He just stood there. Other drivers say that their ‘one unders’ turn away before impact, or stand facing away from the train altogether, or attempt to jump to safety at the last minute.”
“But not this man?”
The driver took one last desperate drag of the cigarette and tossed it to the ground and he stamped it into the soil whereupon it lay, with the others. “Not this man, oh, no, not this man. Not a bit of it. Have you seen him?”
“Haven’t. Why, should I?”
“Only his appearance, not the normal ‘one under’, not shabbily dressed if dressed at all. One of my mates had a ‘one under’ who was totally naked, escaped from a psychiatric hospital, but this guy – well dressed, pinstripe suit, bowler hat – he looked like a bank manager or an accountant. And do you know what he did?”
“Tell me.”
“Just before impact, he raised his hat to me and mouthed ‘thank you’.”
Hennessey sipped his tonic water and glanced across at Olivia Stringer, who sat staring into space and was now, courtesy of the Planet Earth’s revolutions, bathed in a shaft of sunlight which streamed through the stained-glass window.
The “one under”, that particular “one under”, Hennessey had recalled as being very rapidly identified. What was his name? What was his name? It had an unusual ring to it, something… ordinary surname, but very unusual Christian name. Webster. That’s it… Webster. What was his Christian name? Something… Webster?
Darius. That was it. Darius Webster. A bank manager of the Gillygate branch of the Yorkshire and Lancashire Bank, one of the last of the family-owned banks, as it is still fond of announcing. At first Hennessey had assumed that it was a hyphenated surname.
“No,” Mrs Webster sitting in her very “just so” house had said. “No, it’s a real Christian name. Darius, his grandfather, was called by that name, and he was christened with that name too. He wanted our son to bear the name but I refused, of course.”
Hennessey sat ill at ease in the drawing room of the house which had a superficial “appearance is everything” feel about it. Even Mrs Webster’s distress had not seemed genuine, and with the passage of time still didn’t seem so. The French windows opened on to a manicured lawn on which two miniature poodles played and yapped at each other, so Hennessey had further recalled.
“I’m so pleased that Cyril was able to identify poor Darius, I’m sure I couldn’t.” Mrs Webster had sniffed and Hennessey couldn’t help thinking that “Cyril” had been short-changed in respect of his name. Given the choice, Hennessey would have preferred to be a “Darius” rather than a “Cyril”, especially if he had to grow up in the gritty north of England where “Cyrils” can have an uncomfortable time.
“Could you think of any reason why your husband should have committed suicide, Mrs Webster?”
“None. No reason.” She had sniffed into a delicately embroidered handkerchief. “He had everything. Me, two children, this house. What more could any man want?”
George Hennessey watched as Olivia Stringer drained the glass of port and staggered with the empty glass to the bar, fished out a small plastic bag from the pocket of her jeans and from it tipped coins on to the bar top. She counted out, in silver and bronze, enough for another large port. She carried the drink unsteadily back to the seat in the corner and began to sip it. She also began talking to herself, as Hennessey’s mind went back to the next stage in that inquiry.
The next stage had been to visit Mr Webster’s place of work. He had found the mood among the staff sombre and subdued.
“We would have called the police in now.” Mr Penge received the then Sergeant Hennessey in Darius Webster’s panelled office. “I’m a caretaker manager,” he explained, “here to look after the shop until things get sorted out.”
“Things?” Hennessey had asked. “Many things?”
“About half a million things.” Penge, a tall man with a serious attitude, sighed. “I confess, I never thought…a smallish family-owned bank… we enjoy a lot of staff loyalty…”
“Half a million things?” Hennessey had pressed.
“Half a million pounds.”
“Missing?”
“Well, yes. Not in the sense that we don’t know where it’s gone, but missing in the sense that it’s not where it should be. We don’t keep money like that in the vaults but rather it’s been drained out of a number of dormant accounts. Only found out when one account was activated and we traced the money to Darius Webster’s personal account, from where it has been taken out in the form of cash. I confess, for a banker he left a trail any idiot could follow.”
“When did you first notice something amiss?”
“About a week ago, which was when Mr Webster phoned to say he had ’flu and wouldn’t be coming in to work. We did an investigation and have concluded what we have concluded…that Darius Webster, loyal employee of the bank, not long to go before retiring, has ruined his life by embezzling half a million pounds of customers’ money. We were about to call the police but your timely arrival has saved a phone call. Suicide, you say?”
“Appears to be so. This morning on the railway line just south of York.”
“Poor Darius. I knew him, knew him well. I always found him to be a man of integrity. I can’t imagine what brainstorm he must have had to make him do that… then to kill himself… now that is the Darius Webster I knew, a man who’d rather take his life than live without integrity. But Darius Webster a thief… no… no way. He was a practising Christian. It must have been a period of insanity. If he had returned the money, it was something the bank would have managed… early retirement, I would have thought, something of that sort.” Penge leaned forward and rested his forehead in the palm of his left hand. “Oh, dear… then this morning we received this in the post.” He handed Hennessey a receipt. “It’s a left-luggage receipt from York station. It came with this.” He then handed Hennessey a second piece of paper which revealed itself to be a handwritten note. ‘It’s all there…so sorry…D. Webster’. “It’s Darius Webster’s handwriting.”