Cold Wrath, page 8
‘I thought I heard you come in, boss.’ Yellich tapped the door frame of Hennessey’s office. ‘Here is something which you should see.’ He held up a computer printout.
‘Ah, Somerled.’ Hennessey leaned back and smiled warmly at Somerled Yellich. ‘Something I should see, you say?’
‘Yes, sir, it’s the results of the trace we asked criminal records to run of the deceased at The Grange. He is known, as was indicated to us by the gardener, Miles Law.’ Yellich strode forward and entered Hennessey’s office and handed him the sheet of paper.
‘Well, so let’s have a look.’ Hennessey reached out and took the sheet of paper from Yellich and began to read it. ‘Do sit down, Somerled.’ He indicated the half-circle of chairs which stood in front of his desk. ‘So …’ he continued. ‘What do we have?’
Yellich slid on to one of the chairs as invited by Hennessey. ‘He is quite well known, in fact. As you see, he has quite a few aliases.’
‘Anthony “Tony” Garrett …’ Hennessey read the names aloud, ‘a.k.a. Anthony “Tony” Guest, a.k.a. Anthony “Tony” Graham … a.k.a. Anthony “Tony” Glenn … so all with the same initials, A.G.,’ he observed, ‘and all fairly common names, all allowing him to answer to Anthony or Tony, and that is the aliases we know of … there’ll be others.’
‘Doubtless, sir,’ Yellich placed his hand on his knee, ‘doubtless others, as you say. It’s always very useful for a criminal to have a number of aliases.’
‘Oh, yes, it certainly is and it confirms his criminality being long term, a “career criminal”, so called.’ Hennessey continued to read the computer printout. ‘I mean, who but a career criminal would want a string of aliases like this. All different, but also all have a distinct similarity.’
‘Who indeed?’ Yellich glanced to his right and out of George Hennessey’s office window at a solitary man, amongst the crowds of tourists, who was wearing a yellow shirt with a camera slung over his shoulder, walking the walls towards Lendal Bridge and looking keenly and curiously to his left and right as he did so. ‘And quite a criminal, as you will see, sir,’ Yellich added as he turned once again towards Hennessey. ‘All white-collar stuff in the main.’
‘So what is he … a Mr Fix-it?’ Hennessey asked as he continued to scan the sheet of paper.
‘It does indeed seem that way, boss. It reads like he is the sort of bloke who will put a team together, plan a job, but let other people do the dirty work,’ Yellich advised. ‘Lots of conspiracy to steal, defraud and so on, but having said that, as you see … he was convicted of murder a few years ago.’
‘Yes, so I saw, that did leap out at me.’ Hennessey held the computer printout in both hands. ‘But … look at this … did you read this … he collected his nominal life sentence for murder, as he would, but, I mean, stone the crows, he was released on licence after just three years.’
‘Yes,’ Yellich sat back in the chair, ‘yes, I did notice that. I did. It’s not the sort of thing one could easily miss. He served just three years for murder. There’s a story there.’
‘Indeed,’ Hennessey sighed. ‘That really makes life seem quite cheap. In fact, it makes it seem very cheap indeed. Someone was denied justice there methinks, most unjustly denied it.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich then leaned forward in his chair, ‘that was my feeling when I saw that … a deprivation of justice. As you say, sir, I also feel that there is a story to be told there. A tale to unfold.’
‘But his age is confirmed as being sixty-two, that’s useful to know, as is his identity, the tattoos being the identifying features … being “Sylvia” which helps a little, and also “Pilot”, which helps muchly. It is the single word “Pilot” tattooed on his right forearm which pretty well confirms his ID. Not many “Pilots” about. We’ll have his DNA and his fingerprints on file so we’ll be able to double-check but “Pilot” seems to me to clinch his identity by itself. So I would have thought.’
‘Indeed, boss.’ Yellich shifted his position in the chair. ‘“Pilot” is unique.’
‘Yes. I see he started his sentence in Wormwood Scrubs in London.’ Hennessey glanced up at Yellich. ‘I do so love that name for a prison. That and “Strangeways” Prison in Manchester, you couldn’t invent those names for prisons.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ Yellich held eye contact with Hennessey, ‘and Leavenworth Prison in the USA. I always think that name sounds like it ought to be an English country house.’
‘It does rather, doesn’t it?’ Hennessey grinned. ‘Confess that has not occurred to me … but since you mention it. Anyway, let’s press on. So he was transferred to Full Sutton up here in Yorkshire to complete his sentence, but then he was released on licence, after three years … can we dig into that? We have to contact the Metropolitan Police, see what they can tell us.’
‘Oh … they’re coming here, sir,’ Yellich smiled. ‘They’re on their way up here as we speak.’
‘They are?’ Hennessey raised his left eyebrow. ‘We’re going to be visited by the Metropolitan Police?’
‘Yes, sir, it was one of the things that I was going to tell you. I contacted them. I anticipated you there, once I read that Garrett was a London con. I can tell you that they seemed delighted that we have found Garrett, a.k.a. whatever, because he had dropped off their radar, and they have been anxious to trace him for some time, so it appears.’
‘His discharge address can’t be false,’ Hennessey protested. ‘That has to be verified before he can be released.’
‘He is always on licence, of course, that will never alter unless he is recalled following any conviction, but his aftercare supervision lasted only twelve months.’
‘So then he was in the wind?’ Hennessey groaned and put his hand to his forehead. ‘I hear the old, old story … that same old song …’
‘It certainly seems that way, sir,’ Yellich replied. ‘Anyway, the Met are sending someone up from London with the, excuse me, rather odd request that he be permitted to photograph Garrett’s unique tattoo.’
‘Photograph!’ Hennessey gasped. ‘That’s a bit macabre, isn’t it? Don’t they trust DNA evidence or fingerprints?’
‘I am afraid that I do not know the answer to that question, sir.’ Yellich spoke with a defensive tone of voice. ‘That a tattoo is already photographed as part of his prison record. It must be perhaps that they just want a comparison.’
‘Well, I can’t see the harm in that request, macabre as it might seem, and we do need their cooperation.’ Hennessey glanced up at the ceiling of his office. ‘But I ask you, of all the weird requests … anyway, we don’t want to sour our relationship with the Metropolitan Police, and we need to know what they can tell us about Anthony Garrett, deceased.’ Hennessey paused. ‘You said you had other things to tell me? In fact, if I may say so, you look like the cat that got the cream. There is a certain smugness about you, Somerled. You have some good information, I think. That gleaming look in your eyes tells me so.’
‘Indeed I do, sir.’ Yellich then related to a dumbstruck Hennessey the information about the three identically dressed women who had called on the deceased late in the forenoon of the previous Saturday, and also of the fact that Miles Law appeared to have waited for some time, an hour at least, Yellich emphasized, before calling the police to report his finding of Anthony Garrett’s body.
‘Did he indeed?’ Hennessey frowned. ‘That is interesting. An hour, you say? That is very interesting indeed.’
‘Yes … confess I thought so too, sir,’ Yellich nodded, ‘all seen by an elderly lady who lives opposite The Grange, in the bungalow you asked that I call on, and whose mind is as sharp as a tack and whose eyesight is top-notch. She was a very credible witness, I thought. She was very calm and collected and she was very good on detail. It’s all in my report.’
‘So … progress. We are making progress.’ Hennessey clasped his meaty hands together. ‘So, tell me, when can we expect the Metropolitan Police to honour us with their illustrious presence?’
‘Any time now, sir,’ Yellich glanced at his watch, ‘any time now. They seemed to be most anxious to come up here. They said it would only take two hours to get to York once they’re on the A1. So, as I said, any time now. I phoned them as soon as I had the CR records check printout and noticed the London connection. You were witnessing the post-mortem at the time.’
‘Yes … I assumed that … and which I can tell you concluded with a finding of death by a single bullet fired at the forehead of the deceased. So, with the absence of a gun beside Garrett’s body, unless there is any trace of poison in Garrett’s bloodstream, which Dr D’Acre thought to be highly unlikely, we have a murder to solve. Dr D’Acre was very succinct, she hit the nail bang on the head, I thought, by saying that Garrett was not so much murdered, as he was assassinated.’
‘A very neat way of putting it,’ Yellich commented. ‘An assassination.’
‘But I have to say that I think she’s correct.’ Hennessey sighed. ‘A single shot, close up, but not as close as a suicide would be, nothing in the house was disturbed, nothing appears to have been stolen, and nothing seems to have been done in panic. Those three women you mention, who called on Saturday last, the time that they called seems to coincide with Dr D’Acre’s estimated, unofficially, that is, probable time of death. Dr D’Acre won’t be drawn on the time of death, as usual, she insists that that is for television dramas, but she will help us and she will give a nod and a wink off the record. But you know I feel that this is shaping up to be a gangland job. We’ll be lucky to get a conviction here methinks, but we’ll run with the ball as far as we can now that we’ve got it.’ Hennessey paused. ‘I’ll entertain the boys from the Met … when they arrive. Two hours they said … well, I think that is a little optimistic, so we’ll say three hours. I think I’ll send Carmen and Reginald to talk to Miles Law. I am curious to know why he waited so long to call 999, and yet nothing appears to have been disturbed in the house. As I said, I’d like you to go and chat with The Maids, remember, they are the contract-cleaning crew with the little yellow van.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich stood. ‘I know who you mean.’
‘Then if you’ll call on the other gardener … Millom by name, see what he can tell us,’ Hennessey added.
‘Millom?’ Yellich repeated. ‘Millom … like the town in Cumbria?’
‘Yes … same spelling,’ Hennessey confirmed. ‘He’s the head gardener. We were given his name when you were talking to the elderly lady, she of sharp eyesight and who is good on detail. I have added his name and address to the file,’ Hennessey advised. ‘Mr Millom is not a priority but he has to be interviewed for the sake of completeness … so when you can, please.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Yellich turned and left Hennessey’s office.
‘Well, you know, we did wonder what had happened at The Grange, of course we did. Who wouldn’t?’ Muriel Staples revealed herself to be a plump, middle-aged woman who sat behind a small, almost child-sized desk, and which caused Yellich to ponder that the desk made her look larger than she was. A much larger desk would, he reasoned, do much to improve her image, but it was not, he was fully aware, his place to comment. Behind Mrs Staples was a large coloured photograph mounted on the wall which showed a fleet of six highly polished yellow vans of Japanese manufacture with two broadly grinning women holding mops upright in front of each vehicle. The women’s grins were, thought Yellich, too broad to be sincere. There was, he further thought, a sense of ‘smile or you don’t work’ about the photograph. Mrs Staples’ office, as befitting the owner of a house-cleaning company, had an everything-in-its-place neatness about it and it smelled strongly of furniture polish and air freshener. ‘One of our vans drove past the house this morning after visiting another customer and the two ladies in the van noticed the police activity and the blue and white tape strung across the entrance to the drive with a constable standing there who they said was looking very serious indeed. Very solemn indeed, so they said,’ Mrs Staples explained. ‘So what has happened to Mr Garrett … can you say? It has to be something very serious for the police to visit and to remain in such numbers.’
‘He is no longer with us, I can tell you that.’ Yellich glanced out of the window at the industrial estate in which The Maids’ office and garage was situated. ‘He is, sadly, deceased.’ He turned back again to look at Muriel Staples, who he thought seemed to be crestfallen at the news. Almost, he thought, as if Anthony Garrett had been a relative or a close friend.
‘Oh, my …’ Muriel Staples gasped and placed her left palm against her chest revealing as she did so many rings upon her fingers and many bracelets around her wrist. ‘We thought it must be something like that. My girls said there was an awful lot of vehicles and uniform and plain-clothed men who were among the uniforms. She said there were about six cars parked at the foot of the drive and also a black van with no windows, apart from the driver’s cab, of course.’
‘Yes … that was the mortuary van,’ Yellich advised. ‘It and other vans like it are used to convey bodies from where they are found, back to the mortuary.’
‘But the police … and in such numbers … there must be something suspicious about his death?’ Muriel Staples sat back in her chair, heavily so. She seemed to Yellich to be a woman who was used to asking questions and used to receiving answers.
‘There is,’ Yellich nodded, ‘there is indeed, but I am afraid that I can’t say anything. I can’t tell you anything.’
‘Of course.’ Muriel Staples smiled, although Yellich thought she seemed to be disappointed by his answer. ‘I quite understand,’ she continued. ‘But this is something of a blow. I’m sorry … you must excuse me … I must compose myself. Oh dear … deceased. Well, I never …’
‘So, tell me,’ Yellich asked, ‘on which day of the week did you call on Mr Garrett? I presume you called weekly?’
‘Yes, we did. We usually, really most often, called on Friday; each Friday afternoon. He was, in fact, one of our last calls of the week. We have six vans, so we have six last calls and Mr Garrett was one of them. We’re there from 3.00 p.m. until about 4.00 p.m. That is unless we have a cancellation in which case we ask if we can call earlier such as on the Thursday or the Friday, but earlier than normal. If that happens, the girls can finish earlier in the week which they always appreciate doing and Mr Garrett is very obliging in that respect. So long as his house is done each week he is quite happy. Or was … I must get used to saying that now. Oh my …’
‘I see.’ Yellich took out his notepad. ‘But an hour, only an hour for a house the size of The Grange, that doesn’t seem very long to be there for just two cleaners. Is that all the time it takes?’
‘Ah …’ Mrs Staples lifted a heavily ringed finger causing bracelets to fall from her wrist down to her elbow, ‘that is because we don’t clean the whole house, you understand, just the parts of the house where he lives … or lived. That being his bedroom, the bathroom, the drawing room, the dining-kitchen, the hallway and the stairs, and we also iron his shirts, seven of them. He has more, of course, but we iron just seven, any seven, from his weekly wash, so he has a clean and ironed shirt to wear each day. All part of the service.’
‘I see.’ Yellich tapped his notepad with his ballpoint pen. ‘So you saw him … that is to say your employees called on him last Friday?’
‘Yes, we did. His regular cleaners called there at about two-thirty p.m. We were running early that day due to a cancellation of a planned cleaning that morning.’
‘All right,’ Yellich replied. ‘And all seemed well, I assume?’
‘Well, I assume so,’ Muriel Staples replied. ‘The girls got back here at four or four thirty, as I recall. They gave me his cheque for services rendered and they scooted away, being happy to get home early for the weekend. Usually they’d finish at five thirty p.m. All must have seemed normal. I am sure that they would have said something had that not been the case. I am sure of it. I know my girls. I have a very settled workforce. Yes, I am sure that they would have mentioned if anything was unusual about Mr Garrett or his house that day. So I think that you can rest assured that all was well with Mr Garrett on Friday last.’
‘What do you know about him?’ Yellich spoke in a calm, unhurried manner, as he wrote 3.30, Friday – all well on his notepad.
‘Very little, I’m afraid, really not very much at all. It is true that house cleaners tend to find out a lot about their clients, as one would expect, but Mr Garrett seemed to the girls to be a quiet sort of gentleman with a bit of a cold manner, though he always insisted that the girls help themselves to tea or coffee if they wished to do so. He was most appreciated by the girls because he would keep out of their way when they were there. He used to go out for a walk or he went up to the top of the house where he had a little den. It wasn’t what you’d call a study, so I am told. He wasn’t a very bookish person, apparently. It was just a little sitting room with a couple of armchairs and a radio. He’d sit there to stay out of their way.’ Muriel Sparks paused. ‘The girls quite liked him, I can tell you that. I mean, they liked working for him for that reason. He was a bit of a cold fish, as I said, but he’d give them space … he’d keep out of their way. Some of our clients, you see, well they insist on occupying the living room when the girls are there, even having guests when we call, chatting to their guests whilst we clean round them. That sort of attitude makes the girls feel invisible. But Mr Garrett was not like that, so they liked cleaning for him. Let’s see, what else can I tell you? He had a calm, self-assured telephone manner, quietly spoken with a southern accent … London, I would think. Once he phoned me to tell me that the girls had left some of their cleaning gear behind, and he said … “they’ve gone off without their cleaning gear”, and when I mimicked the account to my husband later that day I said, “they’ve gorn orf wiv aght der cleanin’ gear”.’ Muriel Sparks smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry, that was not a good imitation of his accent, but you might see what I mean about him being a southerner. He was definitely not local, not local to these parts anyway.’
