Gift Wrapped, page 13
Shane Bond looked down at the floor, then he turned to Joyner and, quite unexpectedly for the officers who had anticipated a long and gruelling interview, he asked meekly, ‘So what can I do? What is the best thing to do?’
‘I’m afraid that there is not much you can do, Mr Bond,’ Joyner replied, and as he did so Hennessey believed that he detected a trace of Welsh in the man’s speaking voice. ‘We won’t be able to negotiate a reduction of the charge to manslaughter because of the strong element of premeditation ...’ Joyner looked at Hennessey for clarification.
‘No way,’ Hennessey confirmed. ‘The Crown Prosecution Service will be charging Mr Bond with murder. I can guarantee there won’t be a reduced charge in return for a guilty plea. Not in this case.’
‘Will you be charging Mrs Bond with conspiracy to murder?’
‘That decision is presently with CPS,’ Hennessey replied diplomatically, ‘but she is prepared to give evidence in court against her ex-husband. He was and is a violent man and he was violent towards her. She has much ill-feeling towards your client.’
‘Will she make a credible witness, do you think?’ Joyner probed. ‘Can she damage my client in the eyes of the jury?’
‘Yes,’ Hennessey replied, feeling a pang of guilt as he misled Joyner. Gloria Bond was an alcoholic, she was a recovered heroin addict, she was mentally challenged and she could not stand in the witness box for more than five minutes without having to be allowed to run to the ladies’ toilets. It was really up to Joyner to make his own assessment of Mrs Bond, Hennessey believed, but he also believed that the mild-mannered Henry Hall, council gardener, deserved justice. So he added, ‘Remember, she took us straight to the body – well, she didn’t take us but she gave us perfect directions. Henry Hall’s body was exactly where she said it would be and I feel sure that when we send divers down into the pond they’ll find the spade and the murder weapon where she said Mr Bond, your client, threw them.’
Joyner sighed and took off his glasses. He rested his forehead on the fingertips of his right hand as his elbow rested on the table top. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bond,’ he turned to Shane, ‘I can’t see a defence. I can’t see a way out for you. It does indeed seem open and shut.’
‘What is the best thing to do?’ Bond asked. ‘What can I do for the best?’
‘Plead guilty and throw yourself at the mercy of the court.’ Joyner looked at Bond as he spoke. ‘You’ll collect the nominal life sentence ... but if you work your ticket and you don’t rock the boat when you’re inside,’ Joyner advised. ‘Well, then ...’
‘Yes, I know the score.’ Bond nodded. ‘I know how that ball bounces.’
‘Don’t just work towards an early parole but also work towards being classified from Category A to Category B or C. It’s just the way of it,’ Joyner further advised, ‘because of their show of remorse and their total cooperation, murderers have in the past worked their way to open prisons which are ...’
‘Holiday camps,’ Bond snarled. ‘So I hear.’
‘So I hear also,’ Joyner replied. ‘With a bit of luck and the right attitude you’ll be out within ten years.’
Shane Bond buried his head in his hands and then after a pause he looked at Hennessey and said, ‘All right, I did it, you’ve got me for Henry Hall’s murder. It went down exactly like Gloria told you and also for that reason ... she was playing away. I slapped the details out of her and went looking for Hall, but I couldn’t find his house so I went back home and slapped her some more, and then I made her take me to his door. So show me ... where do I sign?’
‘You will note my client’s cooperation?’ Joyner insisted. ‘It must be taken into consideration at his parole hearings.’
‘Yes, yes, we’ll write the statement for your lawyer here to read and if he agrees, you’ll sign it,’ Hennessey advised. ‘And we will record your cooperation.’
‘Do I get bail?’ Bond asked. ‘I have things to tidy up.’
‘Not for murder, Shane, but look at it this way: your life sentence starts now, from the moment we charge you, not from the moment you are convicted at your trial, which could be eighteen months from now. It will be nearer six months most likely; it depends on the backlog of cases to be heard. So you’re already on your way to your first parole hearing, already on your way to the Category B prison. Now ...’ Hennessey paused, ‘one murder out of the way, let’s talk about the other.’
‘Other, what other? Murder?’ Bond turned to Joyner. ‘I didn’t do no other murder.’
‘The carbon copy, Shane,’ Hennessey advised him. ‘You murdered the lover of your first wife, one Henry Hall, and later, when your second wife was doing the same thing, carrying on with another man while you were at sea, you also murdered her lover, one James Wenlock.’
‘I did not!’
‘We can make a case that you did,’ Hennessey pressed.
‘Can you?’ Joyner sat up. ‘Can you really?’
‘The pattern of offending,’ Hennessey explained to Joyner, ‘the choice of murder weapon, the attack on the man in the car park of the Golden Fleece pub in Selby when Mr Bond mistook him for the man who was seeing his second wife. Your client’s statement, “I always kill my wife’s lovers” or whatever he said – the actual words are recorded and I can easily access them. The fact that Mr Wenlock disappeared shortly after you attacked the wrong man in the car park of the Fleece and the fact that Mr Wenlock’s body, like Mr Hall’s body, was similarly buried as a form of concealment.’
‘I did one ... not the other,’ Bond protested. ‘I told you, one but not the other.’
‘You’ll serve the sentences concurrently,’ Yellich added. ‘You won’t serve two actual sentences.’
‘Now you’re coercing my client,’ Joyner leaned back in his chair, ‘and quite frankly I can’t see any actual evidence of my client’s guilt in the second murder you speak of. I mean, where are your witnesses, for one thing? What forensic evidence have you got ... ?’
‘We’ll be putting it all before a jury; we’ll let them decide,’ Hennessey replied. ‘We’ll be taking Mr Bond to the charge bar now and we’ll be charging him with the murder of Henry Hall and with the murder of James Wenlock.’
‘When they charge you,’ Joyner turned to Bond, ‘don’t reply. Don’t say a word.’
‘All right.’ Bond nodded. ‘Understood. But I never did Wenlock. I never did that turn.’
George Hennessey drove home after he had supervised the charging of Shane Bond with the murders of James Wenlock and Henry Hall, and arranged his appearance before the York Magistrates the following morning, wherein, dear reader, bail requests would naturally be opposed, being Shane Bond’s second step towards his eventual appearance before York Crown Court in a few months. Hennessey found to his relief that he had missed the so-called ‘rush hour’ where traffic, in his experience, did anything but rush, and so he enjoyed a leisurely and peaceful drive out of York on the A19 to Easingwold and his home, on the other side of the market town in which he enjoyed living. He turned his car into the driveway of his detached house on the Thirsk Road and the subsequent crunching of the gravel alerted a dog within the house to his master’s return, which caused the animal to begin barking with excitement. Hennessey let himself into his house and was greeted by the barking, tail wagging, jumping Oscar, whom Hennessey stroked and patted. He walked through the house, let himself out of the rear door and was followed by Oscar (who had free access to the fenced-off rear garden courtesy of a dog flap) and then returned to the kitchen and made himself a homecoming pot of Yorkshire tea. After the tea had infused he poured a mug of same, added a drop of milk, and then carried the mug outside and stood on the patio as Oscar criss-crossed the lawn as if searching for an interesting scent.
‘We wrapped it up neatly in the end,’ George Hennessey said, in such a way that an observer would think he was talking to himself, or was addressing the garden, or a fantasy person whom only he could see. ‘One reported murder on Tuesday, as I told you, led to charges for two separate murders by the end of the week. Not a bad result. He’ll collect two life sentences; we won’t have any difficulty in getting convictions for both.’ He sipped his tea. ‘You know, I often wonder if the victims of murder know of the justice meted out on their behalf.’
The gentle and most gracious reader will, however, be saddened to learn that our hero speaking to, apparently, no one at all is not the symptom of a harmless eccentricity in a man in his late middle years; rather he is fully sane and his practice of telling the rear garden of his day is the consequence of a dreadful tragedy and the second significant loss in his life.
George Hennessey had been married for a just a few years when his wife Jennifer had collapsed in the centre of Easingwold one very hot summer’s afternoon, just three months after the birth of their son, Charles. Passers-by had rushed to her aid, assuming that she had fainted in the heat, but upon examination no pulse could be found and an ambulance was summoned. At the hospital she was found to be deceased upon arrival, or ‘Condition Purple’ in ambulance crew terminology. The cause of death was deemed to be ‘Sudden Death Syndrome’, which is the nearest the medical profession has been able to come to explaining why it is that the life force suddenly leaves a person, without warning, and usually affects those in their twenties who are in perfect health and who are often doing nothing more strenuous than walking along the pavement in the middle of the day, as indeed Jennifer Hennessey had been doing. When Jennifer had been heavily pregnant with Charles and was unable, indeed not permitted, to exert herself, she had sat down one evening and drawn up a new design for their rear garden to replace the unimaginative simple expanse of lawn which they had inherited upon buying their house. The lawn, she deemed, should be divided in two, widthways, about halfway between the house and the end of the garden, by a privet hedge in which there was to be set a gateway. To the left of the garden, just beyond the hedge, a wooden shed would be erected, and the bulk of the remainder of the garden beyond the hedge would be given over to apple trees, both eating and cooking varieties. She planned for twenty trees. The final ten feet of the garden, she had deemed, would be allowed to remain as a wilderness, left to its own devices, save for a pond which would be created and frogs introduced. Jennifer Hennessey had, George recalled with fondness, a fascination with the creatures. He had always preferred toads, finding them more colourful and more adventurous: frogs, he had argued with Jennifer, would never stray from their watercourse, but a toad will go walkabout.
After Jennifer’s funeral, incongruously a summer affair, he returned to their house and scattered her remains over their rear garden, walking from the house, across the lawn, casting her ashes by hand from side to side. It had then, he decided, been his task to create the garden Jennifer had designed, and it had also become his custom to stand on the patio upon his return from work and tell Jennifer of his day. One summer’s afternoon he told her of a new lady in his life, but assured her that his love for her had not and would not ever diminish, and upon his delivery he had felt himself embraced by a warmth which could not be explained by the sun’s rays alone.
Upon telling Jennifer of the arrest and charging of Shane Bond, Hennessey turned and went back inside his house, leaving Oscar to return via the dog flap when it pleased him to do so. He listened to the local radio as he prepared his evening meal of salad, lean meat and boiled potatoes, and heard on the news bulletin, with no small measure of satisfaction, of the arrest and charging of Shane Bond for two counts of murder. Later on as his supper settled he read a detailed account of the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940 and the subsequent evacuation. He had not realized, until reading the book, that it had been such a bloody, hard-fought battle and the newly acquired book was a most welcome addition to his collection of military history. Later still, when the sun had set and the day had cooled, he took Oscar for their customary walk to the fields beyond the line of houses and man and dog returned three-quarters of an hour later. And even later, George Hennessey strolled casually into Easingwold for a pint of Brown and Mild at the Dove Inn, just one before last orders were called. On the walk back from Easingwold he glanced up at the cloudless sky and the myriad stars. He identified the Plough and saw again how one of the ‘pointers’ to the Pole Star was flickering. The star was dying but he had no imminent fear for the sailors; he knew the star would still be flickering when his grandchildren were elderly and consequently all mariners in the northern hemisphere would still be able to find their way home for some years to come.
It was Friday, 23.40 hours.
Saturday, 3 June, 10.15 hours
George Hennessey sat at his desk and sipped a mug of tea whilst reading the report which had been compiled in respect of the case against Shane Bond, who had that morning at a special sitting of the York Magistrates been denied bail and remanded in custody pending his trial at York Crown Court. He also read a memo from the forensic laboratory at Wetherby confirming the identity, by DNA match, of James Wenlock. He closed the file and as he did so a worried-looking Carmen Pharoah entered his office unusually without tapping on his door and sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk, also unusually, without waiting to be invited to do so.
‘There’s no damage done, sir,’ she blurted out, ‘no damage has been done and the CPS would have seen it anyway ...’
Hennessey held up his hand. ‘Take a deep breath, Carmen ... just calm down and tell me what we have missed. It sounds to me as though we have missed something.’
Carmen Pharoah took a deep breath, nodding slowly as she did so; she then consulted a piece of paper she was holding in her hands. ‘It’ll have to be checked. We should have seen much sooner than this but at least we’ve seen it before we got egg all over our faces ...’
‘Seen what, Carmen?’ Hennessey spoke calmly. ‘Seen what?’
‘The dates, sir ... oh, this would have been just so embarrassing.’ Pharoah shook her head.
‘What dates?’ Hennessey’s voice hardened. ‘What have we missed?’
‘The date of Shane Bond’s attack on Roy Farrell.’
‘He was ... ?’ Hennessey queried.
‘The gentleman whom Shane Bond attacked in the car park of the Golden Fleece pub in Selby, having mistaken him for James Wenlock.’
‘Ah, yes ... whose identity is just confirmed, by the way.’ Hennessey held up the memo received from the forensic science laboratory. ‘No surprise there, but the confirmation is made. Sorry, do continue ...’
‘Well, sir, according to reports when Bond was arrested later that same night, he was charged with attempted murder, later to be allowed to plead to assault.’
‘He was lucky,’ Hennessey growled.
‘Yes, sir ... but he wasn’t bailed,’ Carmen Pharoah continued. ‘He was remanded in custody, just as he was remanded in custody this morning.’
Hennessey’s brows furrowed. ‘I think I can see where you are going with this ...’
‘Yes ... anyway ... as you can probably guess, as you say, James Wenlock was reported missing three days later, which means that Shane Bond was in custody when James Wenlock was last known to be alive.’
‘I’ll have a look at the files myself but as you say, no damage has been done. If you’re right we can amend the report to the CPS and they will drop the charge of murder in respect of James Wenlock ... but the charge of murder in respect of Henry Hall still stands.’
‘Yes, sir, that case is solid.’ Pharoah sat back in the chair. ‘At least that is solid.’
‘It could not be more solid. He is going “G” to it, as my son would say.’ Hennessey swept his liver-spotted hands through his silver grey hair. ‘But thank you, Carmen. As you say, we would have been made to look prize idiots if we had proceeded against Bond in respect of the murder of James Wenlock.’ He breathed deeply. ‘What idiots we would have looked.’
‘The CPS would have spotted it, sir,’ Pharoah replied encouragingly. ‘It wouldn’t have got as far as open court.’
‘You hope,’ Hennessey grinned, ‘but in my experience errors and oversights like that have a way of surviving against all the odds and make it from box to box to box, but at least we’ve stopped this one in its tracks ... so well done you.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Pharoah smiled at the compliment.
It was just then, as Hennessey would later recall, that the pale green phone on his desk warbled softly. He let it ring twice before he picked up the handset. ‘DCI Hennessey,’ he spoke efficiently, promptly, listened for a few moments and then he said, ‘is she now? All right, I’ll come down to the inquiry desk. Ask her to take a seat, please.’ He replaced the phone. ‘Well, well, well, that’s a turn up for the books; Mrs Bartlem has paid a call on us.’
‘The lady with the postcards?’ Carmen Pharoah asked. ‘That Mrs Bartlem?’
‘Yes,’ Hennessey stood, ‘the one and the same. Would you care to accompany me? Let’s you and I go down and see what she wants.’
What Mrs Bartlem wanted, it transpired, was to show Mr Hennessey a postcard. ‘It came in today’s post, to the drop-in centre,’ Mrs Bartlem explained as she handed the postcard to Hennessey. ‘We get an early delivery. We’re at the beginning of our postman’s walk.’ Hennessey took the card and considered it. Like the previous postcards it showed a photograph of the harbour at Scarborough. He turned it over and saw that it had been posted locally the previous day. ‘The report of Shane Bond’s arrest for the murder of James Wenlock was first broadcast on the six p.m. news ...’ He spoke as much to himself as to Pharoah. ‘The last collection is at seven-thirty p.m., so yes, there would have been time to do it. The person who sent it must have a number of these cards.’ Hennessey handed it to Pharoah. The message on the reverse was typewritten, as before. She read it aloud, ‘Wrong man for James Wenlock. Check Wenlock’s client list for right man.’
