A Dreadful Past (24 page)

‘Yes … he loved those shoes.' Anne Graham smiled briefly. ‘I remember him buying them. He'd sit in the chair holding them in his hands, running his fingers over the pointed front of them. They were very special to Gerald. He always kept them highly polished.'

‘Yes … now about that time, did he have a friend, maybe a girlfriend?' Carmen Pharoah asked. ‘She'd be quite short and perhaps wearing a blue jacket with the logo of an American football or baseball team on the back. Does that remind you of anyone?'

‘A logo?' Anne Graham looked questioningly at Carmen Pharoah.

‘Yes … like … the Green Bay Packers or the Washington Redskins,' Thompson Ventnor explained. ‘The San Francisco 49ers … names like that.'

‘Oh, yes, that was “Mad Molly” Silcock. I remember that jacket. She called from time to time. She was a very serious-minded girl; I never saw her smile. Not once did I see that girl smile. Not once.'

‘Molly Silcock,' Carmen Pharoah repeated as Thompson Ventnor wrote the name in his notebook.

‘She's another one who does silly things. That's why they called her “Mad Molly”. Well, she might have calmed down now but she was always up before the magistrates for something or other. She was a regular customer of theirs. Thieving mainly but never for violence … she wasn't a violent girl. So if you want to speak to her you'll have a record of her,' Anne Graham advised. ‘You'll know “Mad Molly” Silcock, all right.'

‘Thank you.' Carmen Pharoah stood, as did Thompson Ventnor. ‘We'll take you home.'

‘No.' Anne Graham struggled to her feet. ‘No, thank you; just take me out of the building, please. I want to walk around for a bit. I've got some thinking to do. I don't want to go home, not just yet, anyway.'

George Hennessey listened to the feedback from Yellich and Webster and also from Carmen Pharoah and Thompson Ventnor. He drummed his fingers on his desktop and said, ‘Right, I'm going to split you up. I'm going to split up the usual teams. Somerled, I want you to go and interview Mad Molly Silcock … and take Carmen with you – you'll need a female presence.'

‘Yes, sir,' Yellich replied attentively as he and Carmen Pharoah glanced at each other.

‘It seems like your past is catching up with you, Molly,' Yellich commented. ‘Or it has in fact fully caught up with you.'

‘Mad Molly' Silcock revealed herself to be a squat, square-shaped woman in the eyes of the two officers. She had small, cold-looking eyes set in a hard, almost masculine, humourless face.

‘My past is catching up with me?' she replied sourly. ‘What do you mean?' She looked up at the officers who stood while she sat.

‘The past, Molly, your past from twenty years ago,' Yellich explained. ‘It's certainly casting a long shadow in your life. A very long shadow.'

‘Twenty years, that's a long time ago.' The woman glanced nervously from Yellich to Carmen Pharoah and back to Yellich again. ‘A lifetime ago. It's a whole lifetime ago.'

‘Possibly a third or a quarter of a lifetime,' Carmen Pharoah stared at Molly Silcock, ‘but it's just yesterday so far as the law is concerned.'

‘About twenty years ago, Molly,' Yellich continued. ‘About twenty years ago you knew a man called Gerald Womack and you knew a man called Cornelius German and you knew a man called Keith … we don't know his surname but we'll find it out. You knew those three men.'

‘Yet,' Carmen Pharoah emphasized. ‘We don't know it yet but, as Mr Yellich has just said, we'll find out what it is. It's just a matter of time now.'

Silcock fell silent as a look of fear grew in her eyes. She scowled slightly and turned her head away from Yellich and Pharoah. The silence lasted for twenty full seconds, broken when Yellich turned to Carmen Pharoah, smiled and said, ‘You know, I do so like it when people remain silent.'

‘So do I.' Carmen Pharoah fixed her eyes on the scowling Silcock. ‘It always means that they have got a little something to hide; they've got a little guilty secret, a secret that they know the police will be very interested to find out about.'

‘So have you, Molly?' Yellich pressed as he looked at Molly Silcock's home and found it hard, threadbare, lacking in any warmth or comfort. ‘Have you got a little something you'd like to get off your chest? Some secret you've been carrying round for the last third or quarter of a lifetime? What awful truths are whirling around there inside your head, I wonder?'

Molly Silcock remained silent, stubbornly so. Her eyes remained downcast.

‘It might help you to say something, Molly.' Yellich detected a heavy, unpleasant odour in the house, the sort of smell which develops after months of an indifferent attitude to cleanliness. ‘If we were to tell you that Gerald Womack was killed yesterday … or the day before.'

‘He was killed?' Silcock gasped and looked up at Yellich. ‘Done in?'

‘Yes,' Carmen Pharoah replied in a cold, matter-of-fact manner. ‘Done in. His throat was cut, and the people who did it, two tall men, were prevented from burning his body, so they left it to be discovered, which it was, by a lady walking her dog.'

‘Two tall guys took him from his house … two big geezers,' Yellich spoke equally coldly. ‘Two guys he knew … two guys he went with quite calmly. He was apparently surprised to see them but he went with them willingly enough, or so his housemate told us.'

‘What happened?' Silcock's voice faltered.

‘It seems that they drove him out of York, took him into a field and slit his throat. I hesitate to use the word “professional” but they knew what they were about, that was plain. They were going to pour petrol over his body, so they were making sure all right, they weren't taking any chances,' Yellich explained. ‘But it seems they were disturbed by some merrymaking youths before they could do that so left his body to be found. But they had silenced him, and for them that was the main thing. He wasn't going to be grassing anybody up.'

‘No … I mean in life … what did he do? What became of him?' Silcock asked.

‘It's a strange question,' Yellich commented, ‘but we can tell you. The answer is not much. He didn't amount to anything in life. A bit like you in fact, Molly. He didn't amount to anything at all.'

Silcock glared at Yellich.

‘Well, come on, Molly,' Yellich raised his voice, ‘look at your drum, just look at it, will you? It's not much to show for your forty-plus years' existence on this planet, is it? One damp little council house, hardly any furnishings in it and no man to keep you warm at night.'

‘How do you know I don't have a man?' Silcock hissed with indignation. ‘Just how do you know that? I might have plenty of men. More than you know.'

‘There's no evidence of a man in this house, Molly. There has been no man in this house for a very long time,' Yellich said. ‘We are taught to read people's rooms, so we can tell in an instant that you're on your own.'

‘No one is here to protect you, Molly,' Carmen Pharoah added. ‘You're very vulnerable, all alone. The two tall men killed Gerald Womack to silence him and they'll be coming for you. They're not going to let you live, Molly. They're frightened that you'll talk to save your skin. We got here in the nick of time. You're in great danger.'

Silcock paled. ‘I am?'

‘Yes. One of the men we believed to have murdered Gerald Womack is called Cornelius German. He is now a probation officer.'

‘Yes, he is.' Silcock spoke softly. ‘I saw him when I was up before the magistrates a couple of years ago. He saw me and he recognized me but we pretended not to know each other. We passed in the corridor outside the courtroom. He walked into an office marked Probation Officers. So yes, he's a PO now, you've got that bit right.'

‘We're having another look at the Middleton family murders. We notified the press in the hope that it might panic someone into breaking cover and it seems it has had just that effect … and when we looked back at that time, about twenty years ago, we found there were a whole series of murders. About one every six months over a three-year period which were not connected by the police or the press at the time, and before that a whole series of assaults, about three months apart, which were also not connected at the time,' Yellich spoke softly, ‘but now we are connecting them. We believe that they are linked. We are re-interviewing witnesses and when we do that the people who talk to us tell us about a gang of four – two tall ones, and two short ones – and tell us that one of the short ones was a girl. We have identified Gerald Womack as the short male with his winkle-picker shoes; we have identified Cornelius German as one of the tall males. We believe the other tall male is a loudmouthed man called Keith, and he is known to be someone who speaks with a London accent, particularly East London.'

‘And we believe,' Carmen Pharoah added, ‘that you were the girl of the gang.'

‘We believe you all matured,' Yellich explained, ‘psychologically speaking.'

‘Matured?' Silcock blinked at him.

‘It's a word forensic psychologists use,' Yellich explained. ‘It means that when a psychopath stops killing it's because he or she has matured – what has been driving them to kill has left them, and we further believe that the four of you matured and then you went your own separate ways and just drifted apart. But you will have some knowledge of each other – you'll know how to contact each other or at least know where to find each other if need be, just like Cornelius German and Keith somebody found each other, and then they found Gerald Womack and then very efficiently killed him before he could talk to us.'

‘Just like they're going to kill you,' Carmen Pharoah added calmly. ‘And if Cornelius German is a probation officer and if you've been up before the magistrates he can access your record and can do so just as easily as a police officer can. They'll be knocking on your door this evening, any time after dark. Your record will have your home address on it. And when you hear that ever-so-soft tap, tap on your front door you have less than one hour to live.'

‘So what did happen to Keith-whatever?' Yellich detected the woman's fear. ‘What did he do once he matured? Become a used second-hand car dealer, “Honest Keith's Motors”? I can just imagine that, I can … I really can.'

Silcock remained silent for a few moments and then said, ‘No, he didn't get into used cars. His surname is Hayes and he's a vicar.'

Carmen Pharoah and Somerled Yellich looked at each other with their mouths agape and once again a silence fell on the room which again lasted twenty seconds, and once again it was broken by Somerled Yellich, who said, ‘A vicar! Did you say a vicar? A priest?'

‘Yes,' Silcock replied simply. ‘He became a vicar, a man of God. He has a church out by Bridlington, just inland from the coast.' She coughed and then cleared her throat. ‘Some years ago there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the area … it didn't spread.'

‘Yes, I remember the news,' Carmen Pharoah remarked, ‘I remember it clearly. The authorities managed to contain the outbreak. Just a small number of cattle were infected.'

‘Yes, well, I was watching the news,' Molly Silcock pointed to her old television set which stood in the corner of the room, ‘and the TV reporter interviewed the local vicar about the problems caused by the disease in the area, and who was the vicar but Keith Hayes? I tell you, I nearly fell off my chair … but it was him all right … it was Keith Hayes, as large as life.'

‘A probation officer
and
a vicar,' Yellich exhaled. ‘I still can't believe it. Wait till the boss hears this – he won't believe it either, neither will Reg or Thompson.'

‘And they're still murdering,' Carmen Pharoah replied softly. ‘If it was those two who murdered Gerald Womack they're still at it, still murdering people. A probation officer and a vicar, would you credit it? You realize we gave the clerical collar to the wrong suspect?'

‘Different motivation.' Yellich once again glanced round Silcock's spartan room. ‘Twenty years ago they did it for fun, for kicks, and now they're doing it to survive … But you're right – whatever the reason they are still doing it. They are still murdering without any hesitation.' He then turned to Silcock. ‘You've just saved your life, Molly.' He breathed deeply and then said, ‘Margaret Silcock, I am arresting you in connection with the murders of Mr and Mrs Middleton and their daughter, Sara Middleton. You are not obliged to say anything but it will harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, anything you may later rely on in court.' Again, he paused. ‘That will do for now. There will be other charges brought against you but that will do for now. Get your coat on, Molly, you're coming with myself and DC Pharoah. Remember, the more you tell us, the safer you will be.'

George Hennessey sat in the corner of Ye Olde Sunne Tavern on Stonegate, being ‘York's oldest pub', underneath a framed print of a map of ‘The West Rydinge of Yorkfhire, with the most famous and faire city York Defcribed'. Having enjoyed his lunch of Cumberland sausage and mashed potatoes in a rich onion gravy, Hennessey reached across for a copy of the local paper which had been discarded by the last occupants of the adjacent table and began to leaf through it as he digested his meal. It was with a strange mixture of sadness and amusement that he read that ‘Frank Jenny, a retired police officer of Fridaythorpe, has been arrested and released upon his own recognizance for causing unnecessary cruelty and suffering to an animal', the ‘animal' being a bird, specifically a magpie, which Jenny had allegedly despatched with a pellet fired from an air rifle.

Somerled Yellich and Carmen Pharoah stood in silence beside the coffee vending machine in the interview-room corridor in Micklegate Bar Police Station. It was at the point when they had both finished their coffee and were ready to place the white plastic mugs in the receptacle provided that the door of interview-room three opened and a tall man in a three-piece suit stepped into the corridor and said, ‘My client is willing to talk to you now.'