After the Flood Read online

  ‘Public transport.’

  ‘Man after my own heart there, it’s my proud boast that I’ve never owned a motor car. Take the train to Wolverhampton, bus or taxi from there. The bus is a hell of a tedious journey, so I usually concede and take the taxi, even though I dislike cars.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Tomorrow, in the early p.m. Your address is still the same as it was when Mrs Cox disappeared?’

  ‘Yes. Marian’s still here, you see, in a sense.’

  ‘I understand that as well, Mr Cox. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Hennessey replaced the phone gently and said, ‘Oh yes, I understand that only too well.’

  Somerled Yellich had left Micklegate Bar Police Station early that day, a privilege of his rank. Often, most often, he was obliged to work long hours, longer that his contract stipulated, but very occasionally he was able to slip away earlier than anticipated. That rainy, sunny, rainy, sunny Monday was one such rare occasion. He drove out of York, across a flat landscape of rich fields to Huntingdon, to a newly-built estate of light-coloured brick, to a home standing on a corner of one of the narrow roads in the estate, with a small ‘postage-stamp’ lawn at the front and an equally small lawn at the rear, and fenced off from the neighbouring houses, as all the estate houses were, with a solid four-foot-high wooden fence, heavily treated with creosote.

  As he left his car Jeremy ran down the short path to greet him, colliding with him with such force that Yellich nearly lost his balance. Yellich threw his arm round his son and they walked side by side to the house. Yellich went to the kitchen, where Sarah stood against the work surface; she embraced her husband with powdery arms.

  ‘Jeremy’s looking pleased with himself.’ Yellich kissed his wife.

  ‘He’s been a good boy today, haven’t you, Jeremy?’

  Jeremy Yellich, aged twelve years, smiled.

  ‘I told him I’d tell you that he’d been good. Helped me in the kitchen, didn’t you, Jeremy? All that washing-up you did. And putting away too.’

  ‘Good boy, Jeremy.’ Yellich hugged his son. ‘Shall we do something?’

  ‘Walk.’ Jeremy smiled.

  ‘All right, since you’ve been such a good boy. Wrong time of the year to look for acorns though.’

  They walked to a wood and Yellich pointed out different species of tree. They saw a wood pigeon and heard a cuckoo. Mr and Mrs Yellich had been told that, with love, security and stimulation, their only child could achieve the mental age of eleven or twelve by the time he was twenty years of age, and that he could cope with semi-independent living in a staffed hostel, with his own room and access to the kitchen should he wish to prepare his own simple meals.

  Later that night, with Jeremy abed, Yellich and his wife sat side by side on the settee sharing a bottle of wine, each telling the other about their day.

  FIVE

  In which George Hennessey meets an eccentric

  TUESDAY, 5th APRIL

  Having glanced at the map, George Hennessey had expected to be routed through Sheffield and Birmingham to reach Wolverhampton, so he was not relishing the prospect of the journey. In fact, to his delight, the Northern Spirit service whisked him speedily and efficiently through Leeds and across the rugged ‘backbone of England’ to Manchester, where he made a good connection with the train for Birmingham. Settling in a forward-facing seat in a sparsely filled but comfortable coach, he enjoyed a journey through Staffordshire. It was a county he did not know and he found the landscape gentle and pleasing to his eye.

  At Wolverhampton Station, clearly recently rebuilt, with nothing later than the mid-twentieth century in evidence and with crowded, narrow platforms, Hennessey left the train, exited via the main concourse with the newsagents and stationers to his left and the coffee bar to his right, located the taxi rank and took a cab for the ten-mile journey to Bridgnorth. The taxi driver was clearly a man who didn’t travel well and, far from delighting in a drive of an interesting distance, he seemed to resent having to leave Wolverhampton and drove jerkily and aggressively, not speaking at all during the journey. After leaning out of the window and snarling a request for directions, the driver finally located the address given to him by George Hennessey. Hennessey got out of the taxi, having felt disinclined to tip the driver, who drove away with squealing tyres. He glanced at his watch: 1.30. He’d made good time and arrived approximately when he said he would.

  The address he’d been given was of a large house, double fronted, with bay windows on both levels. A skylight in the roof spoke of a converted loft—a study, a bedroom perhaps? It was white-painted, brilliantly so in the April sun, and a door painted gloss-black stood at the top of a steeply inclined flight of steps which drove up through a neatly and lovingly tended alpine garden. An ivy plant had been allowed to grow to the left of the door—probably manageable if kept down and well watered, Hennessey thought, otherwise it would draw all the moisture from the mortar and the building would eventually crumble. He had once visited a house where ivy had penetrated the wall and green leaves were seeking sunlight in the living room, beside the television set. As he was looking at this house, the front door opened, and a man in a blue shirt, heavy plus fours and brogues stood in the doorway. He had silver hair, neatly trimmed, and a handlebar moustache.

  ‘Mr Hennessey?’ the man called out, over the alpine garden.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Hennessey stepped forward, opened the gate and walked up the steps. ‘I was admiring your house.’

  ‘Not a bad pile.’ The man held out his hand. ‘You should have seen it when we bought it. It was a pile then.’

  ‘Really?’ Hennessey reached the threshold and took Cox’s hand.

  ‘Yes, really. It started life as a house, then became a warehouse, and a hole had been knocked in the side to allow goods to be craned in and out, and then it lay derelict—no floors, no roof, just a shell.’

  ‘You’ve done a marvellous job, Mr Cox.’ Hennessey turned. About twenty feet below him was the road where he and the taxi driver had parted company with no love lost between them, and beyond the road a green bank with trees and shrubs, and beyond that the river.

  ‘Need the height,’ Cox said. The Severn is prone to flooding.’

  ‘That’s the River Severn?’ Yellich turned to Cox.

  ‘That’s the Severn all right; gets quite big once it gets past Bristol and Cardiff. Prone to flooding. Lower-lying houses have had a bad time of it in the past, flooded cellars, ruined carpets and furnishings. The water has covered the road in times past and I dare say will cover the road in times to come. So far we have escaped, but only so far; the rise in water level which is predicted by global warming worries me.’

  ‘Worries me too, but I don’t think you and I will be around to see the worst of it.’

  ‘No, but my children and grandchildren might. This house represents their future. I wouldn’t like to see it washed away. It all started here, you know.’

  ‘Global warming?’

  ‘Yes, in Coalbrookdale, a few miles to the north of here, near Telford. You’ve heard of Ironbridge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The world’s first iron bridge, bolted together from iron castings like a huge Meccano set. Still stands, open to foot passengers only these days. But that was the takeoff of the Industrial Revolution. So global warming started here in this part of the green and pleasant. Strange to think that you can pinpoint the source of the melting icecaps to a place where the tourist buses still converge. But won’t you come in, Mr Hennessey? Let me take your coat. Have you eaten?’

  ‘Sandwich on the train, that’ll do me; I don’t eat much lunch.’ It was a diplomatic untruth. He was in fact quite hungry, but accepting a meal, even a snack, from Mr Cox would have been highly inappropriate. And anyway food wasn’t really offered, Hennessey knew that. It was expected of Cox to offer; it was expected of Hennessey to decline. He did, however, accept the offer of a cup of tea.

  He was directed to the living room of the house. It was decorated in la
te-Victorian or Edwardian style, with heavy, highly polished furnishings of dark wood, green plants in huge vases, but no flowers—that would be too twentieth-century—paintings in wide wooden frames that hung from grey cords attached to a rail three-quarters of the way up the wall. The seat Hennessey chose was an ancient Chesterfield, which smelled of leather and creaked when he sat in it. He avoided the only chair in the room, reasoning that that would belong to the master of the house. Cox entered the room a few moments later carrying a tray on which was a china tea service. He laid the tray on the low table in front of the settee and took the lid off the pot. Steam rose as he put a silver teaspoon inside and stirred the contents.

  ‘Let it infuse for a moment.’ Cox replaced the lid with a gentle click. In the background a clatter of cutlery was heard from the kitchen. ‘Mrs Finney,’ Cox explained. ‘My housekeeper.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Been with me a long time. Almost as soon as Marian disappeared.’ He leaned forward. ‘Milk, Mr Hennessey?’

  ‘Please.’

  Cox, in his glaringly, outrageously out-of-place blue shirt, poured a small amount of milk into the bottom of both cups, then poured the tea. ‘Help yourself to sugar.’ He handed Hennessey a cup and saucer.

  ‘Thank you. I don’t take sugar.’

  ‘So few people do, these health-conscious days.’ Cox sat back in the chair wisely left vacant by Hennessey. ‘So, you have found my dear wife?’

  ‘We may have.’

  ‘Skeletal remains, you said.’

  ‘I’m afraid so, sir.’

  ‘Forgive me, I’m a historian, I work as curator of a museum. I don’t wish to encroach on another man’s field of expertise, but clothing would decay; metal would not, nor plastic’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So she was naked?’ Cox eyed Hennessey. ‘Lack of plastic buttons, the small amount of jewellery she wore, even basic things like bra hooks.’

  ‘Your deduction would have to be correct, Mr Cox. In fact the same observation was made by our forensic pathologist. The skeleton was without any nonbiodegradable material in the vicinity.’

  ‘A shallow grave?’

  Hennessey nodded.

  Cox pointed to his mouth. ‘She had gold teeth—I mean, a couple of gold fillings. She was not a lady who liked to spoil herself, and practicality was more important to her than fashion, but she once said she liked to show a flash of gold when she talked. So her lower molars, both left and right, had gold fillings.’

  ‘Mr Cox.’ Hennessey put the cup and saucer down. ‘There is no easy way to tell you this, so I’ll just say it. We are having difficulty establishing the identity of the skeleton because we don’t have the skull.’

  Cox paled and spilled his tea slightly. In the hall a clock loudly chimed the fourteenth hour of the day. Hennessey waited for the chimes to recede before he continued, and when he did he looked down at the brown carpet, avoiding eye contact with Cox. ‘We have a skull, but it is not your wife’s skull; it was identified as belonging to a…another woman of about your wife’s age. The skull and the skeleton were in the same shallow grave, which was in a field and was unearthed when the Ouse flooded. You may have seen the photographs on the news?’

  ‘I did; it looked worse than the Severn flood waters.’

  ‘When the water subsided, the becks—’

  ‘Becks?’

  ‘Yorkshire for stream, also “breck” in some parts of the county.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Well the…streams still ran at full torrent.’

  ‘As they would.’

  ‘One such torrential stream appears to have shifted its course over the years, inching gradually to the left as you look downstream, and unearthed the grave from the side. A farmer noticed the bones protruding from the bank of the stream.’

  ‘I see…yes. I have heard that rivers will migrate if they are not encased in rock: the overall course remains the same but they will wander from side to side if they flow over soil. So there’s no reason to assume that a stream would not do the same, but on a smaller scale.’ Cox seemed to Hennessey to be wandering himself, evading the issue.

  ‘We think the skull was placed with the skeleton in a clumsy attempt to disguise its identity. We identified the owner of the skull from dental records, but that woman was a spinster, had never given birth, whereas the skeleton was that of a woman who had given birth. It exhibited something called “pubic scarring,” which our forensic pathologist advises is caused by not just one, but many births. You and your wife had four children, your said?’

  ‘Yes. All breech deliveries too. I can’t see Caesarean section causing the scarring you speak of, but I am no medical man.’

  ‘Nor I, but I think that’s a point worth making. All we know is that the skeleton is that of a female in her forties, who had given birth several times, and it is reasonable to assume that she died at the same time as the owner of the skull, being placed in the same grave. The owner of the skull was reported missing a little over twelve years ago; thirteen years this coming December, in fact.’

  ‘Which is when my wife went missing.’ Cox placed the cup of tea on the table.

  ‘Your wife’s name came up when we checked the national database for missing persons of the age, sex and date, but we didn’t connect her at first because her home address was given as—well, this house, but your phone call indicated that she had some connection with the York area.’

  ‘She was looking for her brother.’

  ‘Her brother?’ Hennessey leaned backwards, again causing the leather of the Chesterfield to creak. He reached into his jacket pocket for his notebook and took a ballpoint pen from the inside pocket of the garment. ‘I’ll jot down some notes while we talk, if you don’t mind?’

  ‘No, I expect you to. It’s the strange thing about television detectives, they never seem to do that.’

  ‘I’ve noticed.’ Hennessey smiled. ‘It’s quite a glaring omission. We can’t retain information like that, we don’t have screenwriters doing it for us.’ He flicked over the pages until he came to a clean page. ‘So it seems to me that we should pick up your wife’s trail. It should eventually lead to York.’

  ‘Never been there. Strange admission for a historian to make. Never been to Stonehenge, that’s an even stranger admission.’

  ‘Yes…Mr Cox.’

  ‘Sorry, I digress.’

  ‘Please tell me as much as you can.’

  ‘Well, my wife’s brother was separated from the family at an early age. She remembers him in constant conflict with his parents, and then one day he wasn’t in the house any more. He had gone to live in a home for disturbed children. My wife harboured much resentment towards her parents: being the dedicated parent she became, she believes her parents should have hung on—clung on to Andrew no matter what. Andrew Quinlan was his name.’

  Hennessey scribbled the name on his notepad.

  ‘Well, as the years went by, Andrew lost contact with his family. The visits to the home got fewer, and my wife said she sensed a feeling of relief in her parents that Andrew was no longer part of the family. That made her feel more angry. She was in her twenties by then. She married, she became a parent, she was fulfilled…but there was an emptiness in her life. She always said that when our youngest was sixteen, then she’d make time to find Andrew. So when Colin turned sixteen she said, “Right, that’s my duty done, I have a personal quest to address,” and she started to search for Andrew Quinlan. First port of call was his residential home.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Mmm…I went there with her…a bit of moral support. It was called Gyles Place, in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire. Not so far away. My wife came from Stevenage, so Potters Bar was relatively close. And it was a specialist unit, it specialised in accommodating highly intelligent children who had emotional difficulties that prevented them from functioning in the mainstream of life. Not one of the horror-story homes you read about from time to time.’

  ‘I see.’<
br />
  ‘I was not unimpressed with the staff, they seemed very enthusiastic, but the tension in the building was palpable. When we visited, one girl had a temper tantrum. I can still hear the screams, you’d think she was being murdered. The principal was clearly embarrassed. As we heard staff running to the scene, he explained that another child had probably used one of her crayons or some such, but that same girl was sixteen years of age and had an IQ that could take her to Oxford or Cambridge. It was a unit for that sort of child.

  ‘But Marian was convinced that her brother’s behaviour was caused by his being rejected by his parents; a “created crisis”, I think she once called it. With a different parental approach, Andrew wouldn’t have been a problem, so Marian believed. But to continue…Well, no member of staff actually recalled Andrew—he had left Gyles Place by then and all records had been centralised—but the principal did promise to have the archives searched to see if they had records of what had happened to young Andrew Quinlan.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, he made it to university.’

  ‘Don’t tell me—York University.’

  ‘Leeds. Near enough. So by then Marian had the bit in her teeth and travelled to the north country, alone this time. That was the last I saw of her. She stayed in an inexpensive hotel and phoned me to say she had contacted one of his old tutors. That was fortunate. Twenty years on, you see, the tutor had to be middle-aged by then, minimum.’

  ‘Didn’t mention his name?’

  ‘She did not, but she was shown a photograph. The tutor dug out a year-group photograph and showed it to her, and Marian described a handsome, fair-haired young man…she was thrilled, really thrilled. Two days later she said she had found out where her brother lived and that she was going to call on him, surprise him. “Be the best Christmas present we could both wish for” were effectively her last words to me.’

  ‘You didn’t know the faculty at Leeds University?’

  ‘I’m sorry. She never said.’ Cox paused.

  ‘You look worried, Mr Cox.’