‘All right. . all right.’
‘Well, do sit down if you can find a space,’ Dave Prebble said with a sheepish smile, ‘it’s all clean. Untidy, yes, but clean. I scrub the bath and toilet and change the bed linen each week, and take clothes to the launderette each week, but things sort of stay where I drop them.’
Ventnor mumbled his thanks and sat on the settee next to a pile of railway enthusiast magazines.
‘So, she has been found,’ Prebble lowered himself on to a pile of clothing and settled as if perched on them, working his way into them until he was comfortable. ‘Her body has been found?’
‘Possibly. We still have to confirm the identity.’
‘I understand, but it’s going to be her. We were very close and I knew harm had come to her when she didn’t return home. She had no reason to run away. . she had no one to go to. She pined for the bairn but she hated Stornoway and she wouldn’t return there. I walked the streets looking for her. I knew I wouldn’t find her but I couldn’t stay at home. . those long nights, then they became weeks, then months. . then years, nearly ten years. I accepted the inevitable a long time ago and realized the only reason the police would call on me was if she had been found.’
‘Well, as I say, there is no definite match but a woman. . the remains of a woman, who was Angela’s height and age at the time of Angela’s disappearance is one of the remains you have heard about.’
‘Yes. . I did wonder, as I told you. How can I help you?’
‘With her positive identification. A full-face photograph, anything with her DNA on it. . failing that, anything with your DNA will do.’
‘DNA. Yes, I heard about that, better at eliminating than proving, I believe?’
‘Yes. British courts cannot convict on DNA evidence alone, but as you say, it’s useful for eliminating suspects and very useful for establishing identities, as in this case.’
‘I see. I don’t think I have a photograph you can use; we didn’t photograph each other as a married couple might. We holidayed separately which is when you’d likely take photographs of each other.’
‘All right, but we’ll need something of hers.’
‘I’ll see what’s in her room.’
‘So what can you tell me about your sister which you think might be relevant to her disappearance?’
‘Glad you added that bit at the end,’ Prebble grinned, ‘because I can tell you a lot about her.’
‘Yes, imagine you can,’ Ventnor smiled. ‘Did she have any enemies, for instance?’
Prebble teetered back on the pile of clothes. ‘No, I don’t think she did. I think it’s safe for me to say that. She had folk she didn’t like. . like all those petty minded Wee Free’s at home. She hated the social worker who persuaded her to give up the bairn for adoption when she should have supported her and encouraged her to keep it, and that was before it was born. . so he was taken from her immediately. She didn’t even get to hold him, not even for a few seconds, that “holier than thou” bitch, Angela hated her, but she wasn’t even sixteen at the time, she was little more than a child herself. He’ll be a man in his twenties now. We don’t even know what his Christian name is. So she had a lot of bad feelings for all that crew up there, but I know of no one who’d want to harm her.’
‘Fair enough. What did your sister do for a living?’
‘Nursery nurse, she worked in a nursery, next best thing to having her own child I suppose.’
‘Which nursery was that?’
‘St Urban’s “First Steps” nursery. . it’s still there, attached to St Urban’s Primary School in Escrick, all part of the St Urban’s experience. Start at eighteen months, or two years, or three years, go right through to eighteen and leave to attend university. Roman Catholic foundation, a very good school; leave full of Catholic guilt, so they say, but they get excellent results. . so they say.’
‘I see.’
‘Well, Angie was down the soft end before they start filling them with the notion of sin and eternal damnation. She was all cuddly toys and beginning of speech. . toilet training. Paid badly but she was content and we survived.’
‘Did she have any friends?’
‘A few. . colleagues mostly, but by and large we kept to ourselves.’
‘Understood. So what was she like as a person?’
‘Angie?’ Davy Prebble inclined his head to one side. ‘I’d describe her as quiet. She would go out occasionally but was always home by nine p.m.’
‘Did she meet up with her colleagues in the evening? That is on those evenings that she did go out?’
‘I can’t tell you, sir, I didn’t pry. She just said she had been with “friends”.’
‘OK. . but you wouldn’t know the names of any of her friends?’ Ventnor pressed Prebble.
‘Just one, as I recall, she mentioned him once or twice, a guy by the name of Ronald Malpass.’
Ventnor wrote ‘Malpass, Ronald’, in his notebook.
‘Aye, Ronald, our Angie seemed fair fond of him so she did, fair fond. . had a lot of time for him.’
‘Do you know of his address?’
‘Yes. .’ Davy Prebble’s eyes brightened and he held up his index finger. ‘Yes, I do. . excuse me.’ He slid off the pile of clothes and left the room returning a few moments later with a handful of letters. He held them up triumphantly. ‘This is the mail that Angie received after she went missing. I kept them all, not many, but I kept them all. After a while all that was addressed to her was junk mail, which I put in the bin, but these came for her. So, she disappeared in late November of that year and she got these Christmas cards and one of them,’ he looked on the reverse of each card, ‘one of them. . yes, this one. . has the sender’s address on the back of the envelope, in the continental style of doing things. Here you are. .’
Ronald Malpass
2 Portland Street
Hutton Cranswick
He handed the envelope to Ventnor who copied the address into his notebook.
‘That’s quite a journey, Hutton Cranswick, it’s out by Driffield. Quite a well to do little place by all accounts but I have never actually been there; it was Angie who told me it was a well to do wee place.’
Ventnor looked at the postmark and saw the envelope had been posted on the fifteenth of December that year. ‘Would you mind if I opened this envelope?’
Prebble looked uncomfortable. ‘Frankly, I would. Can you wait until her identity is confirmed? If it is then you can open and read all the letters.’
‘That’s fair. I’ll need something with her DNA or a swab of your DNA.’
‘Her hairbrush, how about that? It has some of her hair in the bristles.’
‘Ideal,’ Ventnor smiled. ‘Ideal.’
The man and woman sat side by side on the settee looking at the television and as they watched George Hennessey rise and leave the press conference the woman turned to the man and smiled. ‘You have made quite a splash, darling.’
‘We,’ the man squeezed her hand gently, ‘we have made quite a splash. It’s international news, apparently.’
‘Yes. . the yellow helicopter hovering over York. . it’s not the police helicopter. . it must belong to a television news company, taking footage of York and out to Bromyards. . especially Bromyards. It looks quaint from the air. . they both do.’
‘As you say. . quaint. But soon it will be time.’
‘Yes, darling. . I know.’
‘Gladys,’ the man sighed deeply. ‘It’s been six or seven years. . possibly more, I have lost count.’ He dropped the sponge into the red plastic bucket of warm soapy water and turned away from the car he was cleaning. ‘I’m not really supposed to do this,’ he nodded at the car, ‘water’s getting short.’
‘I know,’ Carmen Pharoah replied in a solemn tone of voice.
‘Well, there’s no hosepipe ban yet and, as you see, I use a bucket of water, but I need something to do. Even now I still need something to do, I get a bit lost without her. . but I use the bath water to water the garden, so I am economizing.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Well let’s talk inside. .’