too fly.’ Driver grinned at Ventnor and withdrew his attention from Carmen Pharoah.
‘It has been said that you were quite free with your fists.’
Driver leered. His flesh seemed to the officers to be ingrained with dirt, he wore a baggy tee shirt which also seemed in need of a wash, as did his jeans which were sufficiently faded that they were nearer white in colour than their original blue. His feet were encased in torn red and yellow sports shoes. His nicotine-stained fingers spoke of heavy smoking and his missing front teeth and heavily scarred left jaw line spoke of street violence. ‘It was for her own good.’
‘And where have I heard that before?’ Carmen Pharoah said quietly and wearily.
Driver glared angrily at her once and then forgot her again. His attitude said that he was a man who did not like women in general and he particularly did not like Afro-Caribbean women, and very especially did not like them if they were police officers. ‘It was though, for her own good I mean.’ He gasped and Ventnor received a blast of alcohol laden breath mixed with halitosis.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that she had a problem.’
‘A problem?’
Driver flicked his index finger at the glass of lager so that the nail struck it causing a soft ‘ping’. ‘A problem with this.’ Driver shrugged. ‘All right, so I take a drink when I can afford it. . but with her it was a problem, a real problem.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, a very serious problem. You’ve visited her mother in Cemetery Road?’
‘Yes, of course, but she didn’t mention anything about a problem with the booze.’
‘She wouldn’t. I mean, she wouldn’t would she, even if it meant finding her killer? She. . Veronica. . she was her only daughter. In her eyes she was little Miss Perfect, even if she is just kidding herself on, just to keep the memory of Veronica that she wants to keep, not the memory of who she actually was. But take it from me, pal, she had a problem. She hid it quite well but she had a problem that she could not hide forever. You know, some of the people all of the time. . and all the people some of the time. . but she couldn’t hide it from all of the people all of the time, though she tried to.’
‘Secret drinking?’
Driver nodded. ‘Voddy. . she was one for the vodka. It suited her if she was hiding it from herself as much as other people.’
‘No hangover, you mean,’ Ventnor suggested. ‘Is that what you mean?’
‘That’s it. Spend the evening drinking red wine or stout and in the morning you feel like your head is being crushed by a steamroller, but spend the night on vodka, you wake up the following morning feeling like you had a dry night. She could get up for work each day you see, and, if she stayed in in the evening, she’d have a bottle in her room and hide the smell on her breath with toothpaste so her old mother never cottoned on, or if she did, she ignored it.’
‘I see.’
‘So I smacked her a few times. . gave her a slap, like where it wouldn’t show. I was trying to scare her into not drinking but it didn’t do no good. . all her money went on voddy. She hadn’t got hardly any left to buy my lager. . and that was more important.’
‘You think so?’
‘Well, I’m the man, she’s the woman. . she was the woman. . we need it, they don’t. It’s the way it is. Ask anyone in the pub. That’s why all the punters in here are men, it’s because the women are at home. . stands to reason. And anyway, she was working, I wasn’t, she had to buy me beer, but she couldn’t buy me beer because she spent her money on vodka so I slapped her around a bit. It was for her own good.’
‘Or for your beer, not her own welfare?’
‘Same difference. Alcoholics Anonymous was no help to her, no help at all.’
‘She went to AA meetings?’
‘Yes, but like I said, no good it was. She just didn’t want to stop, see? They all say the same thing; you’ve got to want to stop and Ronny. . she just didn’t want to stop. . not at all. She’d sooner go without food than go without vodka. I mean, she just didn’t know when to stop, did she?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ventnor replied icily, ‘didn’t she?’
‘No, she didn’t.’
A large man in an unironed white shirt and white summer trousers suddenly broke away from a group of men who had been standing at the far end of the bar and ambled slowly but purposefully over to where the officers and Piers Driver were sitting. ‘All right here are we, pal?’ he growled menacingly.
‘Yes, boss. These be the law.’
‘I know,’ again said with a menacing growl.
‘They want to know about Veronica Goodwin. . that lass I knew. . she was one of the women found in the grounds of that big house in the Wolds, been all over the news.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘All right then.’ The man turned and walked back to the bar, and as he approached, the group of men parted to allow him access. He reached out a meaty paw and wrapped it around his beer glass and was heard to say, ‘Seems all right, but watch him anyway.’
‘Yes, boss,’ two of the men answered simultaneously.
‘So we split up, me and her,’ Piers Driver continued, ‘and that was that. She went her own way and I went mine. Then I heard she had vanished into thin air. . about two years ago. Mind you, I had hooked up with another chick by then. . a real player.’ Driver grinned at Thomson Ventnor.
‘You mean she had plenty of money to buy you drink,’ Ventnor responded coldly.
‘Yeah. . she still does,’ Driver replied with a wink. ‘She still does.’
‘She was indeed a very pleasant, a most pleasant young woman.’ Megan Farthing revealed herself to be a warm, motherly sort of woman, or so found Carmen Pharoah who was relaxing very quickly in her presence. Megan Farthing was warm of manner, gentle of speech and seemed comfortable to be in her middle years, wearing a three-quarter length skirt and a ‘sensible’ pair of shoes and a richly embroidered blouse. She sat behind the desk in her office on the top floor of Gordon and Moxon’s Household Goods Store. ‘We were all saddened to hear of her disappearance and frankly, after a few days, we all expressed doubts that she would turn up alive. Young women like her don’t run away, so we began to think that she’d be at the bottom of the river. . now we know what happened to her, poor girl. So young, so much to live for. . it was all ahead of her.’
‘What was she like as a worker?’ Carmen Pharoah sat back in the chair which stood in front of Megan Farthing’s desk.
Megan Farthing smiled a tight-lipped smile, ‘Well. . she was an employee with an issue. .’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. . she was pleasant, well liked. . not a management problem but she had an issue with alcohol which surfaced eventually.’
‘She came to work drunk?’ Carmen Pharoah gasped.
‘No. . no. . she never did that. . but she left in that condition. She had a flask in her handbag.’
‘I see.’ Carmen Pharoah glanced round the office and thought it softly decorated and homely, with photographs of children and infants above a bookcase which stood against the wall of the office, a glass vase on the desk contained flowers in water, behind it on the wall were prints of Yorkshire landmarks, Robin Hood’s Bay, the Ribblehead Viaduct, York Minster, and a sweeping panorama of Swaledale.
‘You see, Veronica would bring a flask to work each day concealed in her handbag, as I said, and she would be a very efficient employee in the forenoon but she became more unsteady as the day wore on. By lunchtime she’d be taking sufficiently frequent trips to the ladies toilets to take a nip. . and by the early afternoon she’d be walking unsteadily on her heels and slurring her words. Now. . this is a good company to work for, it was founded in Victorian times and has resisted takeovers from larger chains which do not care for their workers as we care for ours. We have retained the Victorian attitude of paternalism to our workers. If you work for Gordon and Moxon’s it works for you. . you belong to the family. . it’s a very good employer. If an employee cannot work for an extended period through no fault of their own we will hold their position open for them. If they require money for things like
