Webster made the supper that evening, as was usual in the winter months, while his wife ran her fingers over the Braille book she was currently reading. She longed to cook for her husband but he was adamant, it was just far, far too dangerous for her to work with heat and boiling water. In the summer a well prepared salad was most welcome for him to come home to but in the winter, when hot food was needed, then he did the cooking, and did so at his insistence.
That evening he took Terry for his walk. The long-haired Alsatian was a happy dog, as are all dogs who have jobs to do, but guiding Joyce throughout the day was no substitute for exercise, and he needed his ‘off duty’ time to wander and explore the dense woodland close to where the Websters lived. Reginald Webster watched the lithe and placid dog as he wound his way in and out of the frost-covered landscape and again marvelled at his wife’s courage, facing her blindness with such stoicism. All the worse because at the time of the accident she had been studying fine art at university. She thought herself fortunate because, of the four people in the car that night, it was only she who had survived.
Humble.
Again, his wife made him feel very, very humble.
Thomson Ventnor drove home and changed into a lightweight Italian suit and a white overcoat. He took a bus to the outskirts of York and walked slowly up a long driveway to a large nineteenth century house and opened the front door. He was met with a blast of excessively warm air which he always thought could not possibly be healthy. He signed in the visitor book and climbed a wide, deeply carpeted stairway and entered a room in which a number of people sat, all still and quiet, apparently not interacting with each other at all. In one corner of the room a young woman gently moved an electric razor over the face of an elderly man. She and Ventnor nodded and smiled at each other. Another elderly man, seated in the opposite corner, grinned in recognition of Ventnor, but by the time Ventnor reached him, the man had retreated somewhere within his mind and all Ventnor could do was to sit beside him and say, ‘Hello, dad.’
Having stayed at the home for half an hour and talked to the staff about his father’s wellbeing, Ventnor left the building and took a bus into York. He wandered from pub to pub having a pint of beer in each and eventually fetched up at Caesar’s Night Club. He got into conversation with a woman who had forced herself into a dress that was too small and too short for her and had a trying-hard-to-be-nice smile. He thought she had the worn look of a retired lady of the night, or perhaps of someone trying to put something unpleasant behind her, but it was at least female company and she seemed interested in him. When the closing lights came on she said, ‘See you around?’
‘Yes,’ Ventnor replied, holding eye contact with her. ‘Don’t know when. I’m going to Canada tomorrow, don’t know when I’ll be back. . it’s an open-ended trip.’
‘Well, that’s a new one,’ she snorted as she grabbed her handbag and twisted off the bar stool to begin, on unsteady legs, to walk across the floor towards the exit sign.
‘It happens to be true’, he said to himself. ‘Only found out myself a few hours ago’.
It was Friday, 02.00 hours.
FOUR
Saturday, 17.30 hours in which Yellich and Ventnor travel overseas and the gentle reader is privy to the demons which haunt Carmen Pharoah and also to those which haunt George Hennessey.
Yellich thought that Aiden McLeer did indeed look like a Canadian, whatever Canadians are supposed to look like. McLeer was well built, broad chested, muscular, neatly dressed in a grey suit with a red tie over a white shirt. He was short-haired, but not crew cut, and was clean shaven. He had an air of affability about him, Yellich found, which mixed wholesomely with an attitude of politeness, humility and gentleness. He had a slow but very masculine way of moving and Yellich thought that had he not been an officer in the Barrie Police Homicide Unit, he would have been clad in fur, trapping for beaver in the vast, snow covered wilderness. McLeer, Yellich and Ventnor sat in McLeer’s office in the Barrie Police headquarters on Sperling Drive, Cundles East, Barrie, which had transpired to be a newly built building of brick walls with vast window areas, under a pale green painted roof of metal sheeting. The flagpoles stood in a small traffic island in front of the building; the one to the left had a flag flying the red maple leaf of Canada, the second, the emblem of the Barrie Police. McLeer’s office, air-conditioned, at the front of the building, looked out over the rear of a large Zehrs shopping mall that Yellich and Ventnor were to find was pronounced ‘z-hears’. The rest of the police station was bounded by Highway 400 from which came the constant hum of car tyres rotating at speed over the road surface.
‘I read over the report your boss faxed to us yesterday. It made very interesting reading. Our chief has asked me to head up at our end.’ McLeer had a soft speaking voice with a distinct Canadian accent. He was not a migrant, definitely first, second or even third generation Canadian, possibly more. He was, Yellich immediately found, a man who seemed to be at peace in his own country.
‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich responded quickly. He felt a little on edge, he felt eager and keen to make a good, and also a lastingly good, impression amongst the Canadians.
‘Aiden, please,’ McLeer smiled at him. His eyes were warm, sincere, blue.
‘Thank you. I am Somerled,’ Yellich replied, ‘S.O.M.E.R.L.E.D., pronounced “Sorley”. It’s Celtic, quite old I believe.’
‘I was going to ask,’ McLeer grinned. ‘It’s a name I have never come across before.’
Thomson Ventnor added, ‘Dare say you’ll find that I have another strange name.’
‘I do.’ Again a warm smile.
‘It’s also unusual, but it’s only a north of England variation of Thomas. I am the third Thomson Ventnor.’
‘Interesting.’
‘You grow up with an unusual name,’ Yellich explained, ‘and after a short while it just becomes. . well, ordinary. You do learn to live with it getting remarked upon each time you meet someone new, but that’s easily coped with.’
‘I can imagine.’ McLeer clawed his mug of coffee in a meaty paw and added, ‘I thought Aiden was a little unusual, but as you say, after a while. . Well, the report. . we can talk about unusual names later.’
‘Yes,’ Yellich sat forward, ‘dare say we’d better get down to business.’
‘Indeed, well the report seems clear enough.’ Aiden McLeer held the fax in his left hand. ‘A lady who is. . who was not who she claimed to be and who was murdered, possibly by a Canadian male who travelled to England for the express purpose of said murder. She further seems to have taken the identity of a Canadian lady who once lived in the city. Seems about it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The Canadian link, the Canadian connection is clear. . the Barrie connection is clear. . and you have no local suspects?’
‘None, sir. . sorry, Aiden. None, Aiden. She didn’t seem to be particularly integrated in the legitimate community apart from her socially isolated marriage, but our boss, Mr Hennessey, has unearthed information that she was well submerged in the criminal milieu of York.’
‘Yes, he said so. . to the complete ignorance of her husband.’
‘Yes, sir, she is, she was, a lady who led multiple lives. She seemed to be trying to disprove the notion that you “can’t be all things to all men”.’ Yellich sipped his coffee but yearned for tea. ‘Her husband knew her only as a suburban housewife, keeping house for him. Yet when she did leave the house alone, she went out to engage in crime. . and she became known to the York underworld as “Becky”.’
‘How did her husband react to that news?’
‘He didn’t,’ Yellich replied flatly. ‘Or he hasn’t yet.’
‘You mean he doesn’t know. . yet?’
‘Yes, sir. . Aiden. “Yet” being the operative word. He’ll learn of her true nature eventually but, at the moment, Mr Hennessey is leaving him alone with his grief and his mourning, an important process for him to go through. He needs time and space to go through it.’