‘Like I said, Mr Yellich, my husband would not even dare to look at another woman.’
‘Can you tell me how many members you have?’
‘Two hundred. About.’
‘As many as that?’
‘They don’t all come at once.’
‘So I see.’
‘Members book in for one-hour sessions. We can accommodate thirty at any one time, we’re open from eight a.m. to ten at night. So you see, we can accommodate more than twice our membership in one working day, but with about two hundred members, the gym doesn’t get crowded. They pay an annual subscription, plus an entrance fee each time they come. We also sell snacks and hot drinks and sportswear. We do all right. We…I have a nice, steady growth rate. My husband may give the impression that we’re struggling, but that’s Tang Hall man speaking. If you grow up in Tang Hall, you rapidly learn to keep quiet about your money, if you’ve got any.’
‘Can I have a look at the membership list?’
‘Do you have a warrant?’
‘No. I can get one, then we’ll search the gym, who knows what steroids we’ll find?’
‘You won’t find any.’ Vanessa Sheringham reached for a drawer in a filing cabinet. ‘But you can have a look at the list. Male or female?’
‘Male, for now.’
‘That relieves me.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’ Vanessa Sheringham handed Yellich a sheet of paper containing a list of names and addresses. ‘Well, if you’ve arrested my husband, or he’s at least helping you with your enquiries, and you wanted a list of my female members, then I’d start to get a little worried that I might have to divorce him. I mean, who knows what he’s been up to?’
‘Who indeed?’ Yellich scanned the list of names. ‘Or what indeed?’ He found the ‘Rs’. Michael Richardson’s name came between John Richards and Donald Rye. ‘May I keep this?’
‘Yes. We have other lists.’
‘What does your husband do in his free time?’
‘He doesn’t have any free time. The only two days of the week when he’s not here with me at the gym are Wednesdays and Sundays, they’re our ladies-only days. On those days he’s addressing a list of jobs I leave for him. I add on, he does and ticks off when done. In any order he likes, keeps him busy about the house or collecting things. That’s how we work it, that’s how I like it.’
Yellich stood and said he’d see himself out.
Louise D’Acre took the length of scaffolding and held it against the linear fracture on the top of Amanda Williams’s skull. She rotated it along its length over the skull. ‘It’s a little wide,’ she said. She wore a green smock, the laboratory smelled of formaldehyde. Behind her, the laboratory assistant, Mr Filey, dutifully arranged surgical instruments on a trolley.
‘It’s possible,’ she added. ‘It’s not impossible but I cannot say that it was this or any other length of scaffolding which killed her. I’ve a better chance of identifying the murder weapon by examining her skull than his, the single blow, you see, classic case of going out like a light, left a neat injury. His head was battered repeatedly. His death might have been prolonged.’
‘Prolonged?’ Hennessey asked.
‘By a few seconds, but a second is a long time, long enough to know what’s happening to you and if you’re conscious for four or five seconds, then it’s long enough to feel emotion.’
‘Such as fear?’
‘Such as terror, such as the certainty of death this instant…knowing you haven’t the time to prepare for it. He knew what was happening to him. She, on the other hand, either did or did not know what happened to her husband. His head was battered out of shape…there was real passion there. In fact, his skull reminded me of the Choctaw Indian skulls. They were apparently one of the east coast tribes of what is now the USA. One of the early victims of the Pilgrim Fathers either by way of execution or the measles. But they used to flatten their skulls with tight bindings, in much the same way that the Chinese used to bind the feet of their girl children. Max Williams’s skull reminded me of the Choctaw Indian skull I once saw in a museum of anthropology. It was battered out of shape, which may or may not have been instantaneous. But she, bless her, was despatched by means of a single blow. Probably with something thinner than a length of scaffolding.’
She handed the piece of metal back to Hennessey.
‘Thanks, Dr D’Acre.’ Hennessey slipped the scaffolding pipe back into the holdall he had used to carry it from his car into the hospital, to the department of pathology.
‘Why pick on a length of scaffolding as the murder weapon?’
‘Oh, just that one of our suspects was seen and heard threatening Mr Williams with just such an object.’
‘Fair enough, but the murder weapon, if you find it, will be covered with blood and hair and possibly slivers of bone from Mrs Williams. I was able to obtain some grit and oil from the back of the heads of both the Williamses.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Would have faxed you, still will, but I did note that they were laid face up on a cold surface soon after death, that accounts for the hypostasis on the posterior aspects of both bodies. If there is a garage adjoining their home, then that’s where they were laid.’
‘There is.’
‘Might be worth getting the Scene of Crime people to give it the once-over.’
‘Might well.’
‘So you’ve got a suspect already?’
‘Got two, in fact. Both have motives and Sergeant Yellich has had the inspired notion that if we can link the two together, then we can really build a case, at least we can begin to. The only problem is that they’re not going to cough and neither of them are alibi merchants. They know the value of leaving the burden of proof with the police.’
‘Hard life you have. If my customers don’t tell me what I need to know, I can always put them back on ice, and pick my colleagues’ brains, or just leave them until medical science advances and tells us…oh…I’m sorry…’
‘No problem.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
Thursday afternoon
…in which Sergeant Yellich feels he travels back in time and Chief Inspector Hennessey meets a pleasantly unpleasant individual.
‘A bit like Humpty Dumpty before the fall.’ Yellich swilled his coffee around in his mug. ‘Milady’s view of the world is a little askew, as is her view of her place in it.’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘When her eyes are opened, she’ll have a great fall and she just won’t get put together again no matter how many horses and men His Highness can offer.’
‘But there’s a link between Richardson and Sheringham. Your intuition is paying off, Sergeant. It’s paying off handsomely. Handsomely.’ Hennessey leaned forwards on his desk and beamed at Yellich. ‘We’re still a tad short of evidence though. I couldn’t hold Sheringham.’
‘Not even with the fingerprint in the bathroom?’
‘Not if he had been a regular visitor to the house. His solicitor jumped on that point, pounced, fell on it like a sparrow hawk.’
‘Fair enough, I suppose.’
‘Annoying though. But onwards and upwards - we’re getting there Yellich, we’re getting there. And the motivation is strong now, very strong, especially for Sheringham: he was scared that Max Williams was going to blow the whistle on him to the Drug Squad and he was scared that Amanda Williams was going to blow the whistle on him to his old lady. Makes him something of a Taipan in my mind.’
‘A what, sir?’
‘A Taipan, it’s an Australian snake. It’s just a nugget of information I stored away. You see, snake venom falls into two distinct categories, apparently. One that paralyses the nervous system, and one that coagulates the blood preventing it being pumped round the body.’
‘Blimey.’
‘As you say. The Taipan isn’t the most venomous snake in the world in terms of the strength of its poison, but it’s the only snake in the world whose venom is double acting. It both coagulates the blood of its victim, and paralyses the central nervous system and that makes it the most deadly snake in the world. Sheringham is like that, he’s got a double motivation.’