After the Flood Read online

‘Writing up the burglary case. We nicked him yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘So that’s where you were.’

  ‘Yes, skip. Good result. I mean seriously good. As often happens, the house was full of stolen goods and when we were there someone called to pick up the “stuff from the garage”.’ Yellich smiled. ‘We were in plain clothes, you see. I mean very plain, because we had the house under surveillance, and we must have looked like crims, or the caller was assuming we were. He asked for the key to the garage, so Sid Bickerdyke said, “Help yourself, mate.” So the fella reaches for the key from a row of keys. He knew which one it was all right. Went outside, went to the garage and came out with a parcel. Sid identified himself and the fella went as white as a sheet. Sid put the cuffs on him then clocked the parcel.’

  ‘Cocaine?’

  ‘Right lines, boss. Ecstasy tablets, one thousand of them. There’s one rave that won’t be very raving this weekend. Anyway, the fella’s out of his depth, no previous, scared of jail and is plea-bargaining like his life depends on it, offering all sorts of information. We’re breaking open a whole distribution network, and all from a phone call on Monday telling us to keep a watch on a garage.’

  ‘Well, it sounds like you had more fun than I did. I was up to my ankles in mud in a field by the river.’

  ‘The skeleton? I heard the boys talking about it.’

  ‘The same. We have a possible ID here.’ Hennessey held up the missing persons report. ‘A lady, Amanda Dunney, went missing twelve years ago, right height, about five and a half feet, aged fifty-three years. I’d like you to go and talk to her brother, who reported her missing.

  ‘Her brother? Wasn’t she married then?’

  ‘No. I picked that up too. It doesn’t gel with what Dr D’Acre was able to tell us about the lady from her skeleton. But I won’t tell you what. I’d like you to go and pick up the trail of Amanda Dunney, spinster of this parish, and find out all you can about her. We’ll be releasing the story of the discovery of the skeleton to the press later today. I’d like her brother to be informed before he hears the news report.’

  ‘Very good, boss.’ Yellich stood. ‘Assuming he’s still alive.’

  ‘As you say. His age is given here as fifty-six, so now he’ll be sixty-eight…if he’s still with us. We need to know who his sister’s dentist was too.’

  ‘I’ll go and find what I find.’ Yellich reached for his overcoat and hat. He glanced out of the window of his office; the ancient walls of the city glistened in the slight but incessant rainfall. The sky was low, grey, threatening. ‘Fancy I’ll need these.’

  ‘Fancy you will. Her dentist, remember?’

  ‘You’re sure it’s our Amanda?’ Thomas Dunney gazed into the gas fire, which was turned down low, and didn’t quite take the edge off the chill in the room. It was colder inside than was the air temperature outside: a house suffering badly from damp. Thomas Dunney was a frail, slightly built man, who wrapped himself in cardigans against the cold, three that Yellich could see, then a shirt, then a thermal vest. He wore corduroy trousers and his feet were encased in hiking boots and thick hiking socks. The room was cluttered—chairs and the settee seemed to have become receptacles for books, clothing and household items—and the carpet was sticky underfoot. Yellich could only imagine the state of the kitchen and bathroom. He was pleased he didn’t have to search this house.

  ‘We believe so, sir…we’ll have to check the dental records, but the skeleton was aged at fifty-three years at the time of death, and my boss, who attended the crime scene, says the burial could be dated to the time that your sister disappeared.’

  ‘Skeleton?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. She was in the ground for a long time.’

  There was a short silence, then Thomas Dunney said, ‘That’s her.’ He nodded to the mantelpiece, to a photograph in an inexpensive frame. It showed a man and woman standing stiffly side by side. The man was short and slight, the woman was large. That’s me and her.’

  ‘I recognise you, sir. I assumed the lady to be your wife.’

  ‘I never married. Neither did she. That was taken here, in the back garden. She disappeared a few years after that. She didn’t like her photograph taken, she was self-conscious about her size. She was a big lady, she had to wear maternity smocks. She used to go shopping for them bang on nine o’clock in the morning, as soon as the shops opened, otherwise she’d be the only customer in the maternity-wear section who wasn’t pregnant. We only really had each other.’

  ‘Which dentist did she use?’

  ‘Mr Serle. I use the same one. On Gillygate.’

  Yellich scribbled the name on his pad.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who would want to harm her?’

  ‘Amanda? No. She was a nurse; no one would want to harm her.’

  ‘I see. Where did she work? Which hospital?’

  ‘She didn’t. She was a practice nurse at a health centre; she also used to call on patients at their homes and administer medication, or she’d take blood and do blood-pressure checks in the health centre. She was that sort of nurse.’

  ‘I read you gave her last address as Park Street, off The Mount.’

  ‘Aye.’

  Yellich continued to read the room. A print of the Madonna and child stood propped on the mantelpiece beside the photograph of Thomas and Amanda Dunney; above the print, a set of rosary beads and a crucifix hung from a hook which had been screwed into the plaster. ‘Was she a long time at that address?’

  ‘Well, that was Amanda, she could never settle, always moving house, two years here, three years there. Always in York, though, where we were born and brought up.’ The man sniffed and continued to gaze into the flames of the gas fire. ‘We weren’t that close really, me and her. She didn’t approve of how I lived.’ Thomas Dunney glanced round him. ‘I like things like this. Amanda, she was fussy, neat, everything in its place, and she was one for cleanliness.’

  ‘Nurses are like that. If they aren’t when they join the profession, then they are at the conclusion of their training. So I believe.’

  ‘Well, it was about this time of year, spring; I phoned her and her landlady said she hadn’t seen her for a week. Got me worried…I mean we weren’t close but she’s still my sister. Phoned the health centre and they said she hadn’t been at work for a fortnight. I went round to Park Street, her landlady told me again she hadn’t seen her for a week, so I reported her missing. So now she’s turned up—well, her skeleton has…foul play. Knew it, knew it… But Amanda had no enemies, a nurse doesn’t. She hadn’t much in the world. I took her clothes back here, kept them for six months, then gave them to a rag-and-bone man.’

  ‘Any possessions?’

  ‘Hardly any. A few books, a cassette/CD player, a few cassettes and CDs; not much to show for fifty-three years of life, thirty-five of which had been given to nursing. Who’d want to do that to our Amanda—kill her, then bury her body? Who, who’d want to do that? It’s going to be an awful funeral, there’ll be me and the priest and that’s all. Dig her out of one hole and put her in another. But who’d want to do that to Amanda?’

  ‘Plenty of folk would want to do that to “Big” Dunney. Plenty.’

  ‘I take it she was not a friend of yours?’

  ‘I rented a room to her—or did she rent it from me? I never know which is the correct way round. I rent rooms to professional ladies. Only women, no men; even gentlemen callers have to wait at the door, even in bad weather. The arrangement doesn’t appeal to every woman; some take rooms in liberal-minded houses which actually allow men to stay overnight’—the woman shuddered—‘but equally, there are other women who appreciate the strict “no-men” regime. I dare say you could call us “bluestockings”, although that phrase is a little out of fashion now.’

  The woman was slender and white-haired, in a yellow dress and matching yellow shoes. She received Yellich in the front room of her house, which he found to be a complete contrast to Thomas Dunney’s cramped and unti
dy home. This house was spacious, airy and neatly kept, smelling of furniture polish and air freshener. She was, thought Yellich, about sixty-five years of age.

  ‘Miss Dunney had a room in the attic. The attic is divided widthways—that is, parallel with the line of the roof. Miss Dunney had the front room of those two rooms. She was here for about a year and a half.’

  ‘She was a nurse, I understand?’

  ‘She was. She was also “Amanda”, until I found out a few things.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me anything, but one day, about a month before she disappeared, she stopped going to work. She continued to leave the house as if going to work, but she was a woman who wore her emotions on her sleeve. She couldn’t hide the fact that she was troubled. Never told me and I didn’t ask. But a friend of mine is registered with a doctor at the health centre where Miss Dunney worked and told me that the nurse had been suspended. These things can’t be hidden for ever, not in York. They may call it a city but it has the feel of a small town sometimes.’

  ‘Do you know why she was suspended?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not my place to tell you, young man, because all I can report is hearsay. But if you were to enquire at the health centre, get the information from the horse’s mouth as it were, then you’ll find out why plenty of people would like to murder her.’

  ‘You’ve given her three names so far; which one was she known by?’

  ‘All three…’ The woman paused and listened as the front door opened, smiled and said, ‘Good morning, Mary.’

  ‘Morning, Gwen,’ Mary called from the hall. ‘Just popped back for lunch.’

  ‘I know all my residents. They all turn their keys in slightly different ways—some will fight the lock, others are more skilful, but all have their own way of unlocking the door. Where was I?’

  ‘Three names you used for Amanda,’ Yellich reminded her as Mary was heard stepping lightly up the stairs.

  ‘All three. “Amanda” when she came, “Miss Dunney” when I heard the reason for her suspension, and the patients at the health centre began to refer to her as “Big Dunney” when the story emerged…and that was one of the mild names. I confess I was on the verge of asking her to leave when she disappeared. One day she didn’t return at five thirty as she usually did, and eventually it was her brother that reported her missing…he could perhaps help you?’

  ‘I’ve just come from his house.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Which health centre did she work at?’

  ‘Precentor’s Court. In the city centre.’

  ‘Did she have any friends?’

  ‘Not that she would speak of. She did join a reading group that met every first Wednesday of the month.’

  ‘A reading group?’

  ‘A group of people who read a book a month, meet at the home of one of the group to discuss it, and at the end of the evening the next month’s book is decided upon. They disperse, read it, meet to discuss it, and so on. That was her only social life that I was able to ascertain. And how popular she was within that group I don’t know; certainly no one from the group ever phoned here to contact her. No one phoned to ask after her after she went missing. She received only official-looking letters and only one card at Christmas, with a York postmark. I presume it was from her brother.’

  ‘Her brother cleared her room, I understand?’

  ‘He did. I hardly thought her brother would be like that, her so large yet scrubbed clean, he so small and…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve met him.’ Yellich smiled. ‘Hygiene isn’t high on his list of priorities.’ He paused. ‘The police would have visited after she was reported missing?’

  ‘Yes, they did. Looked at her room, didn’t take anything away.’

  ‘They would have asked you if you knew of her movements when she disappeared, or about the time of same?’

  ‘They did. I couldn’t tell them; there was just the invitation to the book-club dinner, which she stuck on her mirror with a bit of Blu-tak. It was there for a week before she disappeared. I took it that the book club had an annual dinner at the house of one of its members. Very spiky handwriting.’

  ‘Do you remember the address?’

  ‘

  ‘I don’t, not after this time, nor the name of the host.’

  ‘Do you know if the book club is still operating?’

  ‘I don’t. I don’t read, except the newspapers and the magazines, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You could try Pages, in town.’

  ‘Pages?’

  ‘The small independent bookshop, next to the health centre at Precentor’s Court. I saw a reading group advertised in the shop window there just the other day. I presume it’s the same club.’

  ‘Pages,’ Yellich repeated.

  Yellich drove back to the city centre and parked his car at the rear of the police station, crossed Micklegate Bar and walked up the steps on to the wall. A slight drizzle fell and the paving flags behind the battlements were glistening with water and tended to be slippery underfoot. A keen breeze blew and seemed to be cutting into his face as he walked the exposed length of the medieval wall to Lendal Bridge. But he knew York, and like all citizens of the famous and Faire he knew that the quickest way to walk from one part of the city centre to another is to ‘walk the walls’. Tourists do it for interest, the citizens do it for expediency. He left the walls at Lendal, for the walls are not, as in Chester, continuous, walked across Lendal Bridge, turned right into Lendal, walked past the imposing Judges’ Residence and turned left into the narrow confines of Stonegate and then to Precentor’s Court, containing two buildings which were both germane to the life of Amanda Dunney. He pondered why George Hennessey had dropped this task in his lap, but he knew Detective Chief Inspector Hennessey and he knew that, whatever the reason, it had to be valid. The bookshop or the health centre? He chose the bookshop.

  Inside, the shop was light and airy; brightly coloured displays and dumpbins of books by prominent and/or fashionable writers broke up the floor space like stumpy stalagmites. Posters advertising recently released novels adorned the walls, chamber music played softly in the background, and a spiral staircase beside the counter led, a sign promised, to the gallery and snack bar. Yet despite the colour and music, the bookshop still seemed to Yellich to possess that atmosphere of reverence and solemnity that is found in older, more traditional, bookshops. Books do that to a building or a room: they calm, soothe and soften. It occurred to him then that he had never been called to a ‘domestic’ involving a house that was full of books. Domestics of varying degrees of violence always occurred, in his experience, in households where video cassettes filled the shelves, or else trinkets from package-tour holiday resorts. He approached the counter and a young girl, a student he thought, working herself through her course, smiled at him. ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘Police.’ Yellich showed her his ID. ‘Can I speak to the manager?’

  ‘Umm…I can’t leave the counter.’

  ‘Just direct me.’

  ‘Upstairs, through the gallery, the doors ahead of you. I’ll let him know you’re on your way.’ She picked up a brown telephone receiver. Yellich liked the colour, which blended with the shop. He thanked the young girl and walked up the spiral staircase.

  ‘The book club? Or reading group?’

  ‘Ah, yes…’ The manager revealed himself to be a young man, with a beaming smile and large, proud, square-rimmed spectacles, smartly but casually dressed in an open-neck shirt and brown woollen trousers. Unlike the well-ordered shop, the manager’s office was a mess: books stacked haphazardly against the bare, undecorated walls, the phone on his desk covered by pieces of paper. The reading group.’ He knelt by the electric kettle on the floor of his office which, Yellich noted, afforded a view of a section of a snickelway. ‘Would you care for a coffee, or tea?’

  ‘No thanks, I’ve just had one.’ It was an untruth but Yellich thought the chaotic nature of
the office boded ill-washed mugs and ‘turning’ milk.

  ‘As you wish. Do take a pew, if you can find one.’

  Yellich couldn’t, and remained standing. Back behind his desk the manager, Bill France by the nameplate which peered at Yellich from under a pile of envelopes and letters, blew on his coffee and said, ‘Nothing to do with the shop, but we allow the organisers to advertise in here. In return, we ask the members to purchase their books from us. Which they don’t. This month they’re reading Dracula by Bram Stoker.’

  Yellich smiled.

  ‘Don’t dismiss it. It’s a complex, intelligent and multilayered piece, one discussion group I wouldn’t mind being part of. When the title was announced we sold one or two copies of the Penguin edition, but not the twelve we could have hoped for.’

  ‘It’s a group of twelve?’

  ‘Twelve maximum, I believe, though the numbers fluctuate. You really need to talk to the organiser.’

  ‘Only if they’ve been running the group for about fifteen years.’

  ‘I think she has, in fact. The group started when the shop started, and the shop is sixteen years old now.’ France clearly saw Yellich’s surprise because he added, ‘I’m the second manager. The proprietor is getting our second shop off the ground in Leeds.’

  ‘I see.’

  France leaned to one side, opened a drawer of his desk and took out a notebook. The person you want to speak to is one Mrs Ferguson, Cynthia. I’d prefer to give you her telephone number only, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Yellich could understand Bill France’s reticence but smiled inwardly, courtesy of reverse telephone directories, the police are easily able to match an address to any given telephone number. France recited the number and Yellich scribbled it down on his notepad. He thanked Bill France for his time and information and walked from his office, across a small gallery where modernist sculpture was being displayed and a framed photograph of the artist hung on the wall with a few hundred words of biography beneath the print, through the cafe, where only one of the six tables was at that moment occupied, down the spiral staircase and out into a drizzly and overcast day. He pulled his coat collar up against the rain and walked the short distance to the health centre.