She stopped laughing and said, “That was Mr Bo’s favourite band. He taught us to dance to Blondie numbers.”
I was struck dumb. How could I have forgotten?
“Don’t worry about it, sis,” Skye said cheerfully. “On evidence like that, if you never qualify, and you never get to hang out your shingle, you can comfort yourself by knowing you’d have made a lousy psychotherapist. Oh, and Happy Holidays.” She hung up.
Eventually I dried my eyes and went to the kitchen for a glass of wine. I sipped it slowly while I opened my books and turned on the computer. I will be a great psychotherapist — I can learn from the past.
Lastly I put my new CD on the hi-fi. It still made me want to dance. Mr Bo can’t spoil everything I love.
Foxed
Peter Turnbull
Monday
The man was about thirty years old, the woman, thought George Hennessey, was approximately the same age, perhaps a little younger. Both were slender, both athletic looking and they lay fully clothed side by side in the meadow, among the buttercups. Hennessey pondered their clothing, both wore good quality designer wear: she has a blouse and skirt and crocodile-skin shoes; he wore a safari jacket over a blue T-shirt and white trousers. Both had expensive wrist watches. She wore a wedding ring and an engagement ring; he wore a wedding ring only. And they both looked like each other, both in their feminine and masculine way, they looked similar, same balanced face, and Hennessey could see the basis for mutual attraction: if they looked at each other they’d see the opposite sex version of themselves. He took off his straw hat and brushed a troublesome fly from his face. He glanced around him, meadows, woods and fields in every direction and above a vast near cloudless sky, scarred it seemed to him by the condensation trail of a high flying airliner, KLM or Lufthansa probably, flying westwards from continental Europe to North America. Then, nearer at hand the blue and white police tape suspended from four metal posts which had been driven into the rock hard soil, for this was mid June and the Vale of York baked under a relentless sun.
Dr Louise D’Acre stood and glanced at Hennessey. “Well, all I can do is confirm Dr Mann’s finding. Life is extinct. There is no obvious cause of death, not that I can see. They look as though they are sleeping, no putrefaction, just the hint of rigor, but they are definitely sleeping their final sleep. If you have done here, they can be removed to the York City Hospital for the post-mortem.” Dr D’Acre was a slim woman in her forties, close-cropped hair, a trace of lipstick, but very, very feminine. She held a brief momentary eye contact with George Hennessey and then turned away.
“Yellich.” Hennessey turned to his sergeant. “Have we finished here? Photographs, fingerprints?”
“Yes, all done and dusted. Still to sweep the field though.”
“Of course.” Hennessey turned to Louise D’Acre. “All done.”
“Good. I’ll have the bodies removed then.” She placed a rectal thermometer inside her black bag. “Just as soon as they’ve been identified, then I’ll see what I find.”
“Identification won’t be a problem.”
“You think so?”
“Two people, young, wealthy, both married, probably to each other... they’ll be socially integrated and easily missed. It’s the down and outs estranged from any kin that take a while to be identified.”
“I can imagine.”
“Nothing so useful as a handbag or a wallet to point us in the right direction. Strange really, if they had been robbed, their watches would have gone.”
“There’s definitely the hand of another here though,” Louise D’Acre spoke quietly. “What I can tell you is that they died at the same time, at the same instant, possibly within a few seconds of each other, as if in a suicide pact, but with such a pact, we would expect to see some evidence of suicide, a bottle of pills, a firearm. Death came from without, most definitely, by which I mean they didn’t die of natural causes; two people, especially in the prime of life, do not die from natural causes at the same time in the same immediate, side by side proximity of each other. They just don’t. But I’ll get there.” She smiled and nodded and walked away across the meadow, of green grass, ankle-high buttercups, and of the occasional fluttering blue butterfly, to the road where her distinctive motorcar was parked beside a black, windowless mortuary van.
Wealth. It was the one word which spoke loudly to Hennessey. He’d used it in talking to Dr D’Acre earlier that morning and now examining the clothes he used it again. “There’s money here, Yellich. Real wealth.”
“There is isn’t there?” Yellich examined the clothing; all seemed new, very little worn, even the hidden-from-view underclothing had a newness about them. His offhand comment about there being nothing useful like a name stitched to the collars earned him a disapproving glance from the Chief Inspector. “Well I don’t know about the female garments,” Yellich struggled to regain credibility, “but you know, sir, there’s only one shop in the Vale of York that would sell gents clothing at this quality and price and that’s ‘Phillips and Tapely’s’ near the Minster.”
“Ah... I’m a Marks and Spencer man myself.”
“So am I, sir, police officer’s salary being what it is, but you can’t help the old envious eye glancing into their window as you walk past. Only the seriously wealthy folk go there, only the ‘Yorkshire Life’ set. So I believe.”
“Be out of my pocket as well then. Right, Yellich, you’ve talked yourself into a job. You’ll have to take photographs of the clothing, especially the designer label, and take the photographs to the shop...”
“Phillips and Tapely’s?”
“Yes... the actual clothing will have to go to the Forensic Science lab at Wetherby to be put under the microscope.”
“Of course.”
“Every contact leaves a trace, and often said trace is microscopic. I’ll ask the advice of the female officers about the female garments, they might suggest a likely outlet.”
Yellich being a native of York knew the value of walking the medieval walls when in the city centre, quicker and more convenient than the twentieth-century pavements below. That day the walls were crowded with tourists, but it didn’t stop his enjoyment of the walk, the railway station, the ancient roofs, the newer buildings blending sensitively and the Minster there, solid, dependable, a truly magnificent building in his view. Without it there just wouldn’t be a city. He stepped off the wall, as he had to at Lendal Bridge, walked up Museum Street and on into Drummond Place, and right at the Minster where stood the half-timbered medieval building that was the premises of Phillips and Tapely’s, Gentlemen’s Outfitters since 1810. Yellich pulled open the door, a bell jangled, and he stepped into the cool, dark silence and, he found, somewhat sleepy atmosphere of the shop; with dullcoloured rather than light-coloured clothing on display, of wooden counters and drawers constructed with painstaking carpentry. A young man, sharply dressed, near snapped to attention as Yellich entered the shop. “Yes, sir, how can I help you?”
“Police.” Yellich showed his ID, and was amused by the crestfallen look on the assistant’s face as he realized he wasn’t going to sell anything, that this caller was not a customer. “I wonder if you can help me?”
“If I can, sir.”
“I have some photographs here...” Yellich took the recently produced black-and-white and colour prints from a brown envelope, and placed them on the counter, “...of clothing, as you see...”
“Yes... we do sell clothing like this. I presume that’s what you’d like to know?” said with a smile, and Yellich began to warm to the young man. “The jacket particularly, and the shoes... the label ‘Giovanni’, an Italian manufacturer, very stylish, favoured by the younger gentleman... We are the only outlet for the ‘Giovanni’ range in the north of England.”