‘Yes.’ Hennessey looked at the interior of the metal shed. There was, he noted, with no small amount of dismay, no source of heating nor any form of comfort. The woman had just the cold concrete floor to lie or stand or sit on. The floor area was large enough to accommodate, he guessed, perhaps five or six average size cars, and the length of chain he further guessed would have permitted her to access approximately half that area. The shed itself was one of five similar sheds, and occupied a remote location on the eastern edge of the city of York, some two or three miles from the nearest occupied dwelling, or so it appeared to Hennessey.
‘All the other units are empty, sir,’ Yellich spoke quietly. ‘That is to say, they are not in current use. They are all solidly padlocked up. It seems to have been a small-scale industrial estate, now abandoned. This particular shed had been broken into, someone had forced entry.’
‘I see. .’ Hennessey murmured and then said, ‘It explains the electricity bill.’
‘Yes, sir, she had quite a presence of mind, as you say.’
‘Yes. . she was kept here for two days or at least not fed for the last two days she was here. . not allowed water either.’
‘Two days?’
‘Yes, so Dr D’Acre estimates by the absence of food in the stomach and the shrunken kidneys. . no food or water for forty-eight hours. She would have been very cold and much weakened by the absence of sustenance. She would not have had the strength to shout, no one would hear her if she did and who would wander up here? It is too remote to be of interest to teenage vandals, and it is the wrong time of year anyway. Vandalism tends to be a summer and autumn activity, as we know, and the criminal fraternity would know the sheds had been stripped bare, that is assuming that the others are as empty as this one.’
‘We still have to check them, sir.’
‘Yes, better make sure none of the others contain any bad news. Is SOCO on its way?’
‘Yes, sir, hopefully they won’t get lost this time,’ Yellich added with a smile.
‘Good. She died of exposure by the way, froze to death as we first thought.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘But strangled prior to that and then taken out of doors and left for dead.’ Hennessey pointed to a length of electricity cable which lay snake-like on the floor. ‘Have you touched that?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Don’t. The person who kept her here didn’t pick up after himself. . the chain, the padlocks, it’s all here and that cable was probably used to strangle her. It’s all still here. It’ll be much too much to hope that the murderer left his dabs on the chain or the locks or the cable, but ask SOCO to check them anyway, and then get them off to Wetherby. The scientists might get DNA traces. . they’ll certainly get hers but maybe someone else’s also. Do that as soon as you can.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Yellich replied briskly.
‘I’m going back to the station. Who’s there? Do you know?’
‘Webster, sir. Webster’s holding the fort.’
‘Webster? All right, he’ll do. . I’ll phone him from here on my mobile.’
Reginald Webster gently tapped on the highly polished wooden frame of the doorway to George Hennessey’s office and entered. Hennessey, sitting in the chair behind his desk, looked up and smiled as Reginald Webster entered. Webster always found Hennessey’s office to be much on the small side for one of Detective Chief Inspector’s rank and he noticed again how spartan Hennessey kept it, with just a Police Mutual calendar on the wall as the only form of softening or decoration. A small table stood in the corner by the office window upon which sat an electric kettle, a box of fair trade teabags, powdered milk and half a dozen half pint drinking mugs. The window itself offered a view across Micklegate Bar of the walls of the city, at that moment glistening with rapidly evaporating frost.
‘You were quite correct, sir.’ Webster slid unbidden on to the chair which stood in front of Hennessey’s desk. He handed Hennessey a manila folder. ‘Seems to be the deceased, sir, one Mrs Edith Hemmings, forty-seven years, and with a home address here in York.’
‘It’s her,’ Hennessey spoke matter-of-factly as he considered the photograph which was attached to the missing person’s file. ‘It’s a match. “Dringhouses”,’ he read the address on the file, ‘modest address, self-respecting people, privately owned homes but by her clothing. . you know. . I thought she’d be much more. . more. .’
‘Monied?’ Webster suggested.
‘Yes, that’s the word I was looking for, more monied.’ He paused. ‘Well, there is an unpleasant job to be done now.’
‘But the post-mortem has been done, sir.’
‘Yes, and Dr D’Acre had no need to disturb the face.’
‘I see. . useful.’
‘Yes. Phone York District Hospital and ask them to prepare the body for viewing, then do the necessary, please. I see that it was her husband who reported her missing?’
‘Yes, sir. . two days ago.’
‘Next of kin. He’ll be the one to take.’ Hennessey handed the folder back to Webster. ‘Talk to him afterwards. . see where you get but don’t put him on his guard.’
‘You’ve found her and you want me to identify the body?’ Stanley Hemmings revealed himself to be a short, slightly built man with closely trimmed, slicked down hair which was parted in the centre as in the fashion of the Victorians, so Webster understood it to have been. It was certainly, he thought, an unusual hairstyle for the early twenty-first century. Most unusual indeed. Hemmings wore dark clothing as if he was prematurely in mourning, black trousers, a brown woollen pullover, black shoes, grey shirt, black tie.
‘Possibly,’ Webster replied. ‘But yes, we need confirmation of the identity of a body which may be that of Mrs Hemmings.’
‘My neighbour told me that that would be the way of it.’
‘Really?’ Webster stood outside the front door of the Hemmingses’ house in Dringhouses and found it to be just as Hennessey had described: modest, yet self-respecting. A three bedroom semi-detached inter-war house with a small neatly kept garden to the front, on a matured estate of identical houses.
‘Yes. He told me that if two officers call, they will want information, but if one calls it is to collect you to view Edith’s body, or a body which might be Edith. He said it was the first indication you’ll get. . two call, the police have questions, but if one calls it’s because they have found her body.’
‘Or a body,’ Webster replied. ‘But yes, your neighbour is essentially correct.’
‘I’ll get my coat. . just a minute, please.’ Hemmings turned and went back inside his house.
In the car, driving to York District Hospital, Webster broke the uncomfortable silence by saying, ‘It won’t be like you might have seen in the films. .’
‘No?’ Hemmings turned to Webster.
‘No, they won’t pull a sheet back and reveal her head and face, it will be done quite cleverly, you’ll see her through a glass window, a pane of glass, heavy velvet curtains will be pulled back and you’ll see her. She will be lying on a trolley with her head and face tightly bandaged with the sheets tucked in tightly round her body. You will see nothing else. It will look like she is floating in space, in complete blackness. If it is your lady wife, it will be the final image you will have of her. It’s a better image to keep in your mind than one of her being in a metal drawer.’
‘Yes, thank you. Thank you for telling me that. I appreciate it and you are right, it will be a much better last memory, because it will be her. I know it. In my bones I know it will be her.’
Later in an interview suite at Micklegate Bar Police Station and comforted with a hot mug of sweetened tea, Stanley Hemmings said, ‘She was a Canadian, you know.’
‘Canadian?’
‘Yes,’ Hemmings nodded. Webster again saw him as small, like his late wife, but now also noticed that he was barrel-chested with strong-looking arms and legs.
‘Yes. . specifically Canadienne.’ Hemmings saw the puzzled look cross Reginald Webster’s eyes and so he spelled the word for him. ‘It means, among other things, a French Canadian female, or so she explained to me. “Je suis Canadienne,” she said when we first met. I remembered from school what “Je suis” meant, it’s the sum of my French, and so she had to explain the rest. She apparently spoke French as they speak it in Quebec province, that is to say with a very distinct accent, in fact I found out that in Quebec they speak French like they speak English in Glasgow, not just a distinct accent but unique in terms of phrase and strange use of words. Just as the Scots will use “how” to mean “why”, so the French Canadians have their own variation of the French language. But she and I always talked in English anyway. We had to, for heaven’s sake.’