herself of the importance of maintaining her cooking skills and that she should be wary of laziness, for laziness, as her grandmother in St Kitts had always told her, ‘is one of the deadly sins, chile’. Later, irritated and unable to concentrate, even on the television programmes, she retired to bed too early and thus fell asleep only to wake up at three a.m. It was then, unable to sleep, alone at night, that the demons came, flying around the inside of her head, taunting and tormenting her. She thought of her blissful marriage and the advice given to her and her husband by her father-in-law, ‘You’re black, you’ve got to be ten times better to be just as good’, and how determined they were to be ten times better, she as one of the very few black women constables in the Metropolitan Police, and he a civilian employee of the same force, as an accountant. Then the dreadful knock on her door, her own inspector, ‘It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have known anything,’ and she was a widow after less than two years of marriage.
It was her fault. For some reason she was to blame and a penalty had to be paid, and so she applied for a transfer to the north of England where it is cold in the winter time, where the people are harder in their attitude and less giving, and are hostile to strangers. . or so she had been told. . and where the people can bear grudges for many, many years, and there she must live until the penalty for surviving, when her husband had not, had been paid in full.
She lay abed listening to the sounds of the night, the trains arriving and departing the railway station, the calm click, click, click of a woman’s high-heeled shoes below her window, which told her all was well, and later, the whine and rattle of the milk float which told her another day had begun.
George Hennessey similarly returned home at the end of that day. He drove to Easingwold with a sense of ‘something big’ being uncovered, that Veronica Goodwin’s and the other four skeletons were not going to be the sum. He drove through the village of Easingwold with the window of his car wound down and enjoyed the breeze playing about his face and right cheek, and as he passed the place he could not help but glance at the exact spot at which Jennifer had fallen all those years ago on a similar summer’s day. He drove out of Easingwold on the Thirsk Road and his heart leapt as he saw a silver BMW parked half-on, half-off the kerb beside his house. He turned into the driveway and heard a dog bark as the tyres of his car crunched the gravel. At the dog’s bark a man in his late twenties appeared at the bottom of the drive, behind a gate designed to keep the dog from wandering into the road. The two men grinned at each other. The younger man returned inside the house as the older man got out of his car and walked to where the first man had stood, so as to give loving attention to the brown mongrel that was turning in circles and wagging its tail.
Later, when father and son sat on the patio at the rear of Hennessey’s house, and watching Oscar crisscross the lawn, having clearly picked up an interesting scent, George Hennessey asked, ‘What are you doing. . where?’
‘Newcastle,’ Charles Hennessey replied, ‘representing a felon who definitely did not commit a series of burglaries during which not a few householders were injured, some seriously, despite leaving his DNA and fingerprints behind him in an easily followed trail. . he had a crack cocaine habit, you see.’
‘Ah. .’
‘The police couldn’t lift him because he was unknown to them, no previous convictions, so no record of his DNA or fingerprints.’
‘I see.’
‘So lucky. . but luck ran out in the form of him getting into a fight in a pub. . nothing to do with burglaries.’
‘But a recordable offence and the Northumbria Police had his DNA and fingerprints taken.’
‘Yes, so they raided his home and found a number of items taken from the burglaries which he had still to sell for money for crack cocaine. . and still he is insistent on his innocence. He’s trying to convince himself, of course, as much as anyone else.’
‘I know the type.’
‘I bet you do. . but will he listen to reason? So, I am instructed to fight his corner with nothing to fight it with. His story that he found the stuff in the street won’t wash and, even so, that is still an admission of theft by finding. . And you. . your work?’
‘Five murdered women?’
‘Five!’ Charles Hennessey glanced at his father.
‘Five. . and my old copper’s waters tell me that there will be more.’
‘What’s the story, so far?’
Hennessey told his son the details.
‘A big one.’
‘Yes. We have issued a press release, it’ll make this evening’s television news and tomorrow’s newspapers, the press will be all over this one.’
‘And your lady friend?’
George Hennessey smiled. ‘Very well, thank you. You’ll meet her soon.’
‘We hope so. . she sounds. . she sounds just right for you, father. You’ve been on your own quite long enough. I realize now how hard it was for you to be a single parent.’
‘I had help.’
‘Yes, I remember, but a housekeeper is not a parent and is not a partner.’
‘Jennifer was with me, I felt her presence. I still feel it.’
‘Yes, that is interesting, I don’t doubt you.’
George Hennessey smiled. ‘Oh, she’s here. . she’s here. . I can feel her presence. She loves her garden.’
‘Yes,’ Charles Hennessey looked out over the neatly cut lawn to the hedgerow, which crossed the lawn from left to right with a gateway in the middle, leading on to an orchard in the corner of which were two garden sheds, both heavily creosoted. Beyond the orchard was an area of waste ground dominated by grass, within which was a pond with thriving amphibious life. ‘Her garden built according to a design she drew up when heavily pregnant with me.’
‘Very heavily pregnant, you arrived a few days later.’
‘I remember her. I remember being on her lap and looking up at her. It’s my first memory. I have continuous memory from about the age of four, islands of memory before that.’
‘As is usual.’
‘So unfair, sudden death syndrome.’
‘Yes, just walking through Easingwold. . on a day like today and collapsing. Folk thought that she had fainted but there was no pulse and her skin was clammy to the touch. Dead on arrival, or Condition Purple in ambulance speak. . and you just three months old. As you say, so unfair.’ Hennessey paused. ‘So when do I see my grandchildren again?’
‘Quite soon, they’re clamouring to see Grandad Hennessey again. . tend to think it’s because you spoil them rotten.’
‘Which,’ Hennessey smiled, ‘is exactly what grand-parents are for.’
Later still, when Charles Hennessey had left to drive to his home and his family, George Hennessey made another cup of tea and carried it out to the orchard and stood where he had scattered one of the handfuls of his late wife’s ashes and told her of his day. . as he always did. . winter and summer, and then he told her again of the new love in his life and assured her that it did not mean that his love for her had diminished. If anything, he told her, over the years it had grown stronger, and once again he felt himself surrounded by a warmth which could not be explained by the rays of the sun alone.
After sunset, and after spending a pleasant two hours reading a recently acquired book about the Zulu wars, which was already a valued addition to his library of military history, and after eating his supper and feeding Oscar, Hennessey took the dog for a walk of fifteen minutes, out to a field where he let the animal explore for thirty minutes and then man and dog returned to Hennessey’s house. Hennessey then walked out again, alone, into Easingwold for a pint of brown and mild, at the Dove Inn, just one before last orders were called.
THREE
