‘Yes. .’ Hennessey growled. ‘Webster.’
‘Sir?’
‘Go and talk to the gentleman who found the body.’
‘Sir.’
From a small stand of black trees in the middle distance a lone unseen rook cawed. Webster, for one, found himself deeply grateful for the sound.
‘I do the walk daily, that lovely old walk; have been doing it daily for the best part of five years now.’ Charles Cookridge spoke softly and did so with what Webster felt could fairly be described as undisguised pride. ‘Not bad for a sixty-six year old, five miles a day, rain or shine, leaving the house at eight a.m. fortified by a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich.’
‘And him never a sporty type in his youth,’ Mrs Cookridge chimed from the kitchen, inviting herself into the conversation despite being out of the line of sight. ‘And I should know.’
‘Childhood sweethearts, we were,’ Charles Cookridge explained with a wide grin. ‘We both used to truant each Wednesday afternoon, her from her school and me from mine, winter and summer, so when our classmates were heaving and grunting and exerting themselves trying to shave a second here or add an inch there, me and her were in the woods doing a bit of heaving and grunting and exerting of our own. That tended to be in the summertime though. In the winter we just went for long walks if it was dry. If it was wet or snowing we just sheltered somewhere.’
‘And then only latterly,’ again the chime came from the kitchen, ‘. . when our bodies were old enough.’
Webster smiled. ‘Good memories. . very good memories. You are lucky to have them.’
‘Better memories than throwing a javelin half an inch further than anyone else or jumping higher or running quicker,’ Charles Cookridge’s eyes gleamed. ‘Sporty types can damn well keep their playing fields. They are welcome to them.’
The Cookridge’s home was a small owner occupied house on an inter-war estate on the edge of the city of York. Webster found their home to have a warm and a cosy feel to it. The living room in which he and Charles Cookridge stood was pleasingly softened by books in a bookcase by the fireside, by plants in vases and by a neatness which stopped short, it seemed to Webster, of fastidiousness. One or two items had not been put away, some of the books on the shelves were on their sides rather than upright, the rug on the carpet had ridden up against the tiles of the hearth. Homely, in a word, he thought. It was made more and especially homely by a live fire in the grate burning faggots. Webster had been welcomed into the house upon production of his ID and had received an instant assurance that ‘wood is all right. . can’t burn coal, they get upset about coal smoke but wood is permitted. A smokeless zone means no coal fires — but wood is all right’ and from the kitchen his wife had added, ‘No complaints so far. . tea, sir?’
‘So you do the walk daily?’ Webster asked, finding himself rapidly relaxing in the Cookridge house.
‘As I said. .’ Cookridge sank into an armchair and indicated for Webster to do the same, adding ‘please’ as he did so. ‘Five miles from here to the road bridge over the canal and out along the towpath as far as Middle Walsham. . lovely village. . then get the bus to York and another bus out. . pensioner’s bus pass you see, doesn’t cost anything, not a single penny piece.’
‘So I understand,’ Webster replied with a smile. ‘Age has its compensations.’
‘Indeed it does. . so, out by eight a.m. each day. . that way I get to walk by myself, that’s pleasant and much less dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘There’s the real danger of being pushed into the canal. Not funny, especially in winter time. It has happened. Youths round here think it’s funny to push people into the canal if they’re vulnerable. . like elderly or a bit soft in the head. . or cyclists. Cyclists are another easy target but youths like that sleep late, real couch potatoes. So I think I am safe, and in fact I am safe, in the early mornings. Done the walk since I retired and never had a bad experience because I rise early to do it. Only taken to exercising late in life. . never really been one for it before.’
‘Yes, so you said. So, you saw nothing yesterday?’
‘No. . of the woman, you mean? No I didn’t. She could have been there for a couple of days in this weather without being found had it not been for me. No traffic on the canal in the winter, occasional tourist narrowboat in the summer and quite a few people walk the towpath then. So she was not there yesterday, at least not at about eight thirty a.m. which is when I get to that part of the towpath. It’s early on in my walk you see. The whole walk takes an hour and a half. I am one third into it when I get to where I found the lady.’
‘Rum do.’ Mrs Cookridge emerged calmly and confidently from the kitchen holding a tray of tea and two cups. She set the tray down on the coffee table and said, ‘I’ll let you do the honours, Charlie,’ and ambled back into the kitchen, leaving a trail of perfume behind her.
‘That’s useful to know, helps a lot.’
‘It does?’ Charles Cookridge carefully stirred the tea in the white porcelain flower patterned teapot.
‘Well, yes. . the freezing conditions and the remoteness mean that it is possible that she could have been there for a day or two, but your daily morning routine means she arrived there alive or dead, but we think alive, sometime after you did your walk yesterday. It narrows down the time frame very nicely, very nicely indeed.’
‘Well yes, I see what you mean. . and I often get the impression that I am the only person to walk the towpath during this time of the year. In fact I came across my own footprints last week. . it was quite strange. Just before this cold snap the towpath was muddy in places and I walked in the mud leaving about a dozen footprints, and the following morning I did the walk as normal and there were my footprints but no other footprints or bicycle tyre tracks over them. So not one person, not one single solitary person, had walked or cycled along the towpath in the twenty-four hours since I had left my footprints in the mud.’
‘That is hugely interesting. As you say, it clearly illustrates how much traffic uses the towpath at this time of the year.’
Cookridge handed Webster a cup of tea. ‘Yes it does. . not much used at all in the winter. In fact you have to live locally to even know it’s there. Sugar?’
‘No, thank you. Now, that point about local knowledge, that is very interesting indeed. It could be hugely significant.’
‘Well, by local I mean York and the surrounding area. . but it’s not a well advertised canal for tourists, in fact it isn’t advertised at all. You could stumble across it if you’re a stranger to the area but it’s not signposted or anything and you can’t see it from the road until you are going over the bridge, or you see a cyclist riding steadily over the fields and then you realize that he’s cycling along the towpath.’
‘I see, still very interesting though, very interesting indeed.’ Webster paused. ‘So you saw nothing or nobody of suspicion. . other than the deceased?’
‘No, I am sorry, nothing else at all. No person, no thing. . just the lady. . dare say that is suspicious enough.’
George Hennessey sat somewhat uncomfortably on a small swivel chair beside the desk in Louise D’Acre’s cramped office and, as he glanced quickly round the room, which was so small that it made him feel larger than he actually was, he noticed little alteration since his last visit. The cramped confines were made even more claustrophobic, he felt, by an absence of a source of natural light. Dr D’Acre’s desk with its small, ludicrously so, he believed, working surface, the photographs on the wall of her family, Daniel, Diana and Fiona, standing with Samson, the family’s magnificent black stallion. He also glanced once, very quickly, at Louise D’Acre herself, slender, short dark hair very close cropped, a soft face, yet a woman who, it seemed to Hennessey, carried authority as quietly and as naturally as she breathed and who wore no make-up at all save for a slight trace of a light shade of lipstick. He then looked at the piece of printed paper within the self-sealing cellophane sachet. ‘She knew she was going to die.’
‘So it seems,’ Louise D’Acre replied calmly, quietly. ‘The lady was leaving you a present and that showed some considerable presence of mind, if you ask me.’
‘Yes, I agree. . inside her shoe you say. .?’
‘Yes, we were removing the clothing prior to beginning the post-mortem, standard procedure for which the police presence is not required so long as we save and secure each item and of course anything else we find.’
‘Yes. . of course.’
‘Eric slipped off the shoes and did so with his characteristic gentleness. . he has a sincere reverence for the dead, a real respect. Didn’t pull off the shoes with a rough and ready “she’s-past-caring” attitude as many
