A Dreadful Past (21 page)

‘Sensible of you.' Hennessey sipped his drink. ‘I must confess, your image … you know, it cuts quite a dash, and all from charity shops as usual, I assume?'

‘Mostly, although the jacket came from a lady friend, probably now an ex-lady friend. It's Harris Tweed. I hope you're impressed?' Shored-up drained his whisky and ginger.

‘She gave it to you?' Hennessey asked in a surprised tone of voice. ‘A Harris Tweed jacket?'

‘Well … not exactly.' Shored-up held eye contact with George Hennessey. ‘It belonged to her late husband, you see. I found it when I was rummaging through “his” wardrobe. She was gradually getting rid of his clothing at the time. It was on its way to a charity shop anyway so I helped myself to it. Then I also helped myself to a few items of his jewellery, including a very nice gents' wristwatch …' He extended his right arm and exposed the watch from beneath the cuff of his shirt. ‘Like it? A solid gold tiepin was another item I acquired, and I also found a few pounds in hard cash, quite enough to keep me in this stuff for a few weeks.' Shored-up tapped the side of his glass.

‘So why don't I arrest you?' Hennessey growled.

‘Because you don't know the victim – you don't know my ex-lady friend. She is highly unlikely to report the theft to the York police.'

‘Because she lives in Wales or some other distant location?' Once again Hennessey spoke with a distinct growl.

‘Yes,' Shored-up smiled briefly, ‘not Wales, but yes, some other distant location, a long, long way from York. You have that bit correct. I have learned not to soil my own nest. She also does not know my home is in York.'

‘The police will lift your fingerprints.' Hennessey sighed.

‘Ah …' Shored-up tapped the side of his nose with his index finger. ‘No, they won't. I had a terrible skin condition, you see, Mr Hennessey, affecting my hands dreadfully which obliged me to wear lightweight white gloves on a permanent basis. I was particularly fortunate because the lady in question told me that she herself once had suffered the same ailment and she too had worn gloves on an hour-by-hour permanent basis. She urged me to go to a herbalist, saying that it was herbal medicine rather than anything her doctor prescribed which had cured her of the condition. So I took her advice and I borrowed her car – an Audi, no less – and went to see a herbalist, taking some money and a few other items with me.'

‘And you never returned?' Hennessey ran his hand through his silver hair.

‘Of course not.' Shored-up smiled once again. ‘Of course not. I drove the car to York. I really enjoyed that drive, the car handling beautifully. Once I was back in York I sold the car to a gentleman I know who runs a so-called chop-shop. The car will be in bits now, being sold off through the dodgy end of the motor trade as replacement parts and sold for half the price you'd pay at an Audi dealers. Everybody wins … except the insurance company, who will have to pay the lady for the loss of her car. And except the lady, who lost her car. And except for the Audi dealers, who lose some customers. But everybody else wins. I'll be going up to Edinburgh later this summer, you might be interested to know, Mr Hennessey. I've heard that there are rich pickings to be had up there … I'll book into a hotel … attend recitals, attend church services for the coffee and chat afterwards, of course … join a bridge game if I can. Rich widows are always very easy to find.'

‘Well …' Hennessey reclined in his chair which stood against the small round table at which he and Shored-up sat. There were no other patrons in the snug of the Speculation Inn at the time. The landlord had walked away to service customers in the lounge and so Hennessey was able to talk freely and speak in his normal voice. ‘I can't wish you good luck, so I won't, but I'm not here to listen to your exploits.'

‘You need my help and you knew where to find me,' Shored-up inclined his head towards Hennessey, ‘and that answers your earlier question as to why you don't arrest me, because you know that if you do you'll lose a valuable source of information. I mean, the extent I have helped you over the years, Mr Hennessey – it knows no bounds, and all that potential help I can offer in the future. I'd have to confess to something pretty major to make you arrest me. I'm in quite a comfortable position really.'

‘Well, don't push your luck,' Hennessey snorted. ‘I might just do it anyway … but, yes, you are right, I need information. You've been on probation a few times, haven't you?'

‘Yes.' Shored-up shrugged. ‘A few times – that I cannot deny.'

‘And you have also served a prison sentence or two,' Hennessey confirmed, ‘and so you'll have been supervised upon your release from prison by a probation officer.'

‘Yes.' Again Shored-up shrugged. ‘I also cannot deny that I have had that pleasure – being a guest of Her Majesty, and the aftercare.'

‘So, just as ex-servicemen can tell each other, and just as Masons can tell each other, ex-cons can also tell each other,' Hennessey said. ‘It is the fact that like finds like. Kindred spirits will recognize each other.'

‘Yes …' Shored-up's reply was soft and guarded. ‘Yes, yes, you could say that.'

‘So let me ask you this question, Shored-up. Let me ask you … have you ever met a probation officer in the Vale who, when you were talking to him, gave you the impression that he might have once been on the wrong side of the fence?' Hennessey probed. ‘A probation officer who had the eyes of a man who could kill?'

Shored-up held eye contact with Hennessey and grinned broadly. ‘A bent probation officer; I really do like the sound of that. I like the sound of that very much indeed.'

‘He'd be in his forties now,' Hennessey continued. ‘When he was a young man he'd be considered handsome. He's probably very quietly spoken. But he would be more ex-bent than bent now – he would be a man who was wild in his youth but has calmed down and gone straight.'

‘But was once wild enough to kill?' Shored-up drained his glass and pushed it across the table towards Hennessey. ‘Make it a double, will you, please, Mr Hennessey, because you know what? Bells are beginning to ring in my little old head and a lovely double malt will make them sound even clearer.'

Hennessey stood, reluctantly, went to the small bar in the far corner of the snug and rang the small, highly polished hand bell to summon the landlord. When he returned to the table Shored-up eagerly took his whisky and said, ‘German.'

‘German,' Hennessey gasped. ‘Do you mean that we're looking for a German?'

‘No, he's English, but that's his name.' Shored-up sipped the whisky. ‘Mr German. Spelled just like someone from that country. Cornelius German. The description you gave fits Mr German to a T. It was the mention of a look in his eyes that made me think of Mr German.'

‘Cornelius,' Hennessey repeated, ‘like the Roman soldier who knelt before Christ.'

‘That's the only other Cornelius I know,' Shored-up replied, holding the glass up to his nose, savouring the aroma of the malt whisky. ‘This, Mr Hennessey, is the nectar of the gods.'

‘OK.' Hennessey stood. ‘Finish your drink – we can't hang around here all day. We're going for a ride, you and me … we're going on a journey.'

‘Where to?' Shored-up sounded alarmed.

‘Micklegate Bar Police Station.' Hennessey reached for his hat, which he had laid on an adjacent chair.

‘You're not arresting me, surely?' Shored-up protested.

‘No,' Hennessey explained, ‘I'm going to make a phone call and then I'm going to collect a camera from our stores.'

One hour later George Hennessey and Shored-up were sitting in Hennessey's car, which Hennessey had parked in the car park of the probation service offices in Pocklington.

‘Didn't know he works here,' Shored-up commented, looking at the low-build modern brick building with a flat roof. ‘When I knew Mr German he was in the York office.'

‘He does now, apparently,' Hennessey pulled the sun visor down to partly shield his face from view, ‘or so the person I phoned told me. There's nothing unusual about a police officer trying to contact a probation officer at his place of work so they were happy to tell me his work address. He's actually a senior probation officer – he moved from York when he was promoted. Anyway, he's in the building now. Tell me who he is when he comes out and I'll take his photograph. We might be here for a few hours, so enjoy the day.'

‘But I haven't eaten today, Mr Hennessey,' Shored-up whined.

But George Hennessey remained silent, staring intently at the building in which Cornelius German, senior probation officer, was at that moment working.

It was for George Hennessey that day, as it always seemed to be to him, the sudden and unexpected sight or sound of a motorcycle which triggered the awful memory. On this occasion it was a motorcycle rider with a pillion passenger, both in black leathers with matching silver crash helmets, who overtook at speed and did so when dangerously close to a blind corner. Hennessey watched the motorcycle as it vanished from his vision with the driver heeling over at what seemed to him to be an angle impossible to recover from. Yet when he rounded the corner the motorcycle rider and his passenger were travelling away from him at great speed along the narrow road with flat green fields on either side. It was then that Hennessey was suddenly transported back in his mind to his boyhood, helping his beloved elder brother clean and polish his brother's motorcycle each Sunday morning and being rewarded by being taken for a ride into central London, across Tower Bridge and back south of the river via Westminster Bridge and home to Greenwich.

Then there had come that terrible, awful, fateful night. He had lain in bed listening as Graham had driven away on his machine, listening to his brother as he roared down Trafalgar Road towards the Cutty Sark, climbing through the gears. Then the sound of the motorcycle faded to be replaced by other sounds of the night: the ships on the river and the Irish drunk staggering up Colomb Street, chanting his Hail Marys. Then, later that evening, the knock on the door – the classic policeman's knock which he would later in his life come to use …
tap, tap
…
tap
. The confused, hushed conversation, his mother's anguished wailing, his father coming to his room, fighting back tears as he told George Hennessey that Graham had ridden his bike to heaven, ‘to save a place for us'.

Then there had been the funeral. Graham had died during the summer months and George Hennessey saw for the first time how utterly incongruous a summer funeral was. As the coffin was being lowered bees and butterflies flew around and the distant sound of the chimes of an ice-cream van rang out ‘Greensleeves' from some unseen street.

Often George Hennessey's mind would turn to, and ponder, the question of what sort of man his elder brother would have become. Married? Certainly, and he would have been a good husband, an excellent father and a very good, popular uncle. Hennessey had also always believed that his brother would have made good in his ambition to become a photographer. He had alarmed his parents by announcing his plan to leave his safe job at the bank to pursue a career in professional photography, but not for him would have been the sleazy, life-destroying world of the paparazzi, nor the superficial world of fashion photography; rather, for Graham Hennessey his would have been the life-risking world of the photojournalist, producing shocking images which lead to changes in public opinion. That would have been Graham Hennessey's life had his motorbike been two inches further to the left or two inches further to the right as he took that corner. It was a small patch of oil, the police had said, really quite small, but it had been sufficient to cause Graham to lose control of the machine.

‘I have been up in Newcastle all week,' Charles Hennessey replied to his father's question as he stood beside him on the veranda of his father's house. Both men sipped tea from half-pint mugs. ‘We concluded early today for the weekend so I drove home rather than spending another night in the hotel. Pleasant and comfortable as it was, it can't beat home, your wife's cooking and your family, and it can't beat your own bed. I'll be back up there all next week as well, I expect, because my man is insisting on going not guilty despite a watertight prosecution case. Both myself and his solicitor have advised him to change his plea, to go guilty and to throw himself on the mercy of the court in return for a more lenient sentence … but will he listen? It's like talking to a brick wall, as the expression has it. So the rules of the game being the rules of the game, we are obliged to take his instruction and go NG.' Charles Hennessey paused as he took a sip of his tea. ‘Really, it's such a forlorn hope. He's just burying his head in the sand, if you ask me. If he was to take our advice he'll likely be out in ten years with good behaviour and with a genuine display of remorse.'