It was with no little reluctance that George Hennessey tapped on Commander Sharkey’s door, and it was with no little reluctance that he accepted the invitation to sit in the chair in front of the Commander’s desk.
‘Things all right for you, George?’ Sharkey asked warmly, but there was a nervousness in the warmth. ‘I mean, I have no complaints about you but I am still worried. Not overburdened?’
‘No, sir, thank you all the same.’
‘It’s just that Johnny Taighe won’t happen on my watch. It was a bad show. You know, I think about him more and more often. Our very able maths teacher left our school to advance himself and Johnny Taighe, who taught lower school maths, was told to teach final year maths to national certificate level. He just couldn’t do it. He once froze in front of the blackboard because he couldn’t understand the problem he’d put up, and he went and sat in a vacant seat next to a very able pupil and said, “What do you think we should do now?” That stays with me, George, a teacher leaving the front of the class to go and sit among the pupils because he couldn’t understand the subject he was supposed to teach.’
‘That is. . unfortunate. . yes, sir.’
‘And he had a beer belly and a large, red nose, so he was drinking heavily. . self-medicating with alcohol, and smoking too much. . and was full of false good humour, all the indicators, and none of his colleagues picked up on them. He went home one night, complained of feeling unwell and had a massive coronary. That is not going to happen on my watch, so if things are getting too much for you, then let me know.’
‘I am all right, sir,’ Hennessey held up his hand. ‘Thank you, but I am well on top of things now I have Pharoah, Webster and Ventnor to assist me, and Sergeant Yellich. I am more desk-bound than anything. I do miss front line policing though and go out when I can.’
‘Yes, I have noticed. . but you are sure you’re on top of things?’
‘Fully.’
‘Good. . well, like I said, I have no indications to the contrary but I want you to reach retirement. You don’t have long to go, unlike me.’ Sharkey smiled, he was fully ten years Hennessey’s junior. He was a short man, short for a police officer, and an observer would perhaps see him as being immaculately dressed. His desktop was, to Hennessey’s mind, always unhealthily neat and uncluttered, very precise and with everything ‘just so’. Sharkey would not, thought Hennessey, be an easy man to live with. Behind him, on the wall of his office, were two framed photographs, one showing a younger Sharkey in the uniform of an officer in the British Army, and the other showing a similar younger Sharkey in the uniform of an officer in the Royal Hong Kong Police. ‘The other thing, George. . it concerns me. . is what I was part of when I wore that uniform.’ He half turned and indicated the photograph of him in the Royal Hong Kong Police. ‘I keep it there as a kind of presence. . this photograph,’ he indicated the photograph of himself in the Army, ‘this I am proud of. . but the Hong Kong experience. I was and remain contaminated. It wasn’t what you might call active corruption, it was of a passive nature and I was only there for a brief period of time but. . I was told not to go into a certain area of the city on a specific night and I did not, I took my patrol elsewhere and the following morning there would be a brown paper envelope full of cash in my desk drawer. That’s just the way it was. If I had blown the whistle or taken my patrol where I was told not to take it, I would have had my throat cut, I’d disappear, be found floating in the harbour. I got out when I could but I couldn’t cope with anything like that here in Micklegate Bar. You must tell me if there is a whiff of anything like that.’
‘Yes, sir, I will. . you have my word.’
‘Thank you, George. Thank you.’
The man eyed Yellich with what seemed to Yellich to be an expression of approval and appreciation and also a degree of recognition of a kindred spirit. ‘You’re a hunter,’ he said.
Yellich smiled. ‘A hunter? Confess I have been called many things in my life but a hunter, that’s a new one. Why do you say that?’
‘It’s in your eyes. . looking, constantly looking. . left to right. . noticing but you stand still.’
Yellich pursed his lips. ‘I’ll be careful not to give myself away.’
‘You can’t hide it, not from someone that can recognize it.’
The man stood in his front garden, spade in hand. He was of a lean, sinewy build. He wore baggy gardening trousers and he had rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. His head was shielded from the sun with a white wide-brimmed canvas cricketer’s hat. Beyond the man’s garden was a field of ripening wheat and beyond that a small stand of trees, and then began the undulating grass covered hills of the Yorkshire Wolds, all beneath a vast canopy of blue, scarred at that moment with the vapour trail of an airliner flying high over England from Continental Europe to North America, within which, thought Yellich, the passengers in the window seats would be looking down on a panorama of England. ‘So, they told you where to find me at the pub?’ He glanced questioningly at his watch.
‘The publican told me. He was outside the pub stacking empty beer kegs. I assured him that I was making inquiries re the dead bodies found at Bromyards and I only wanted information about poaching on the estate. I told him I wouldn’t be getting anybody charged. We’re looking for a felon, or felons, who murdered nine women; we are not bothered about a pheasant or two being taken, especially if we haven’t received a complaint from the landowner.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘The publican said that you hadn’t done it for a long time and you might have given up the game, but he said that you’d be the man to ask.’
‘Charlie? Yes, he’s good like that but I haven’t retired. . no poacher ever retires, just stop when they have to but they never decide to stop. If their health fails they’ll stop. . if they get gaoled they’ll stop. So, anyway, how can I help you?’
‘Well, it’s simply this, Dick,’ Yellich said. ‘You don’t mind if I call you Dick?’
‘No. . Dick is fine,’ Dick Fallon replied, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. Yellich thought that he also had hunter’s eyes, searching, searching and missing little. He drove the spade into the soil and rested one hand upon the handle.
‘We have spoken to a few people and they told us that the poachers on the Bromyards estate kept an eye on Mr Housecarl.’