The Altered Case (2 page)

‘And dig the latrines,' Middleton added, ‘and we had to fill them in at the end, sloshed paraffin all over the stuff and then set it on fire . . . talking about fire and holes in fields . . . then filled them up again.'

‘Yes, that was the year all right. We returned; we had two or three weeks before the start of the final academic year at Hoytown.'

‘So.' Middleton refocussed the conversation. ‘So, we go now? To the police, I mean?'

‘No . . . no.' Allerton spoke softly but firmly. ‘If we go there now we'll be with them all night. How about tomorrow? Are you free tomorrow in the forenoon?'

‘I can be.' Middleton's eye was caught by two svelte girls in ankle length skirts who swayed elegantly by on their way to the bar. ‘Susan and I go out shopping together on Saturday mornings, rain or shine . . . it's become our routine, and she hates her routine, any routine, being derailed or interrupted in the slightest, but I reckon I could get a pass out . . . especially for this reason.'

‘I'm pretty much in the same boat with Adele; her routines lead to an efficient house, so I can't complain, but I can also get out of it, especially for this, as you say, especially for this,' Allerton replied. ‘So we'll do that, agreed?'

‘Agreed.' Middleton pursed his lips and nodded slightly. ‘Agreed.'

That particular Saturday, so Cyrus Middleton would later recall, dawned bright and sunny over the ancient city and its flat, green environs. A little rain had fallen at eight a.m. and it had continued to rain steadily for about an hour and a half, so that when Middleton and Allerton met shortly after ten a.m. in the narrow alley leading from Stonegate to the Starre Inne, as arranged, the sun was shining down from a clear blue sky with sufficient strength to cause the moisture on the pavement following the rainfall to evaporate in a light, misty haze.

‘So.' Allerton raised his eyebrows. ‘Can we . . . shall we have a coffee first? I freely confess I very much feel the need of caffeine. I need something else in me other than the slice of toast I had for breakfast in order to go through with this.'

‘Likewise,' Middleton replied softly, ‘even though it will probably turn out that a farm worker had buried his beloved Labrador. It will psyche us up; help us muster the courage to go through with this.'

‘It was too large an area for a dog,' Allerton muttered. ‘Come on. Coffee.'

The two men wound their way in and out of the other foot passengers who were, as predicted, of plentiful number, until they reached the Paragon Hotel on Lendal, close to the post office and opposite the imposing Judge's Residence Hotel where, upon Allerton's recommendation, they both ordered a large latte. They sat in silence as they betook of the beverage, both admiring the slender form of the waitress who had, they both thought, the mannerisms of a university undergraduate who was working to help her pay her way to a good degree, and the doors that would then open for her.

‘Damn lucky, we were,' Middleton commented drily. ‘We had grants.'

‘I know –' Allerton glanced out of the window assessing the weather – ‘tuition fees paid and a grant to live on, money intended to pay rent and to buy food which all seemed to be spent on beer, strangely enough.'

The two men lapsed into a further silence which lasted until both had finished their coffee, upon which Allerton said, ‘All right. Let's do it.'

Allerton and Middleton then stood and put on their identical green waterproof coats with tartan patterned lining and walked out of the coffee lounge of the hotel, and, dear reader, after, it may and must be said, leaving a more than generous tip for the young and most fey waitress, walked in single file out of the hotel entrance and on to Lendal. They turned and faced each other.

‘Well.' Tony Allerton smiled and, affecting a comic rustic accent, said, ‘Well, boy, by Lendal Bridge be quicker it be but by Ouse Bridge be prettier . . .'

‘The quicker.' Middleton smiled. ‘Let's just get it done; let's just get it over with.'

Cyrus Middleton and Tony Allerton walked side by side on to Museum Street and crossed Lendal Bridge with the wide, smooth, cold-looking water of the River Ouse sliding silently beneath it. Both being native to the city of York, and both having lived in the ancient city all their lives, they knew, as all locals knew, that by far the speediest way to cross the city is to walk the walls, which after years of neglect and dereliction, had been lovingly reconstituted by the City Fathers in Victorian times and so they thusly, without speaking, stepped on to said walls. They then followed the walls from Station Road to Micklegate Bar.

Middleton and Allerton stepped gingerly down the stone steps as they left the walls at Micklegate Bar, being acutely aware that the morning's rain had left the walkway of the walls in a greasy condition in the areas where the stone lay in the shade. Once upon the pavement they turned right and obediently waited at the crossroads until the ‘green man' traffic light glowed, thus giving priority to foot passengers. As they crossed the road Cyrus Middleton found himself suddenly pondering the folly of his youth, particularly the time when he and a number of his friends had attempted the ‘Micklegate crawl', the challenge being to have a small glass of beer, just one half pint, in each pub on the street and still remain standing. No one had, or still has, so far as he knew, ever succeeded in the venture and it was, he thought, so very, very foolish of them to even have attempted it. But he, like those who attempt it today, was just eighteen years old and so very, very immature and so very, very foolish. Without any further words being exchanged, Middleton and Allerton, upon crossing Nunnery Lane, walked solemnly up the steps and through the narrow stone entrance of Micklegate Bar police station.

Reginald Webster was the duty CID officer on that Saturday morning. When the phone on his desk rang he let it warble three times before he slowly picked up the handset in a controlled and very leisurely manner. ‘CID,' he answered, ‘DC Webster speaking.'

‘There are two gentlemen here at the enquiry desk, sir.' The voice of the desk constable on the other end of the phone was equally calm and assured, and yet also clearly very deferential. ‘They say that they wish to report a possible murder.'

Webster smiled and glanced up from his August statistical returns. ‘You know, I thought it was too quiet to last.'

‘Yes, sir,' the constable replied with a soft chuckle.

‘All right . . . all right.' Webster reached for his notebook. ‘I'll be there directly.' He stood, uncomplaining, because in all honesty he would rather receive a report of a possible murder than spend his time placing figures in columns, and then submit the forms on time for onward conveyance to the Home Office where, he doubted, not much notice would be taken of them anyway.

‘Very good, sir,' the desk officer replied and then added, ‘the two gentlemen say that there is no hurry. If there was a murder it happened a long time ago.'

‘Less than seventy though?' Webster clarified.

‘Oh, yes, sir,' the desk officer answered with evident good humour, ‘going by the appearance of these two gentlemen, well within seventy years.'

‘For a brief moment I knew hope,' Webster continued, smiling, ‘but yes . . . right-oh . . . I'll be down there directly.' He replaced the handset of the phone.

‘Business?' Thomson Ventnor glanced up curiously from his own August returns.

‘It does seem so.' Webster reached out and picked up a ballpoint pen which lay at the far corner of his desk and put on his loud chequered sports jacket with a flourish. He grinned at Ventnor. ‘Murder no less. It happened a few years ago . . . if it happened at all, but murder is murder. Code Four-one takes priority over pretty much all else.' He glanced out of the office window at the view of the skyline, being in that part of York a harsh blend of old and new buildings. ‘It is brightening up nicely,' he commented. ‘So . . . let's see what we see.'

Some twenty-five minutes later Webster reclined in the slightly upholstered low-slung chair in the interview suite and glanced over the notes he had taken when talking to Cyrus Middleton and Tony Allerton, both of whom now similarly reclined in identical chairs. ‘So this was thirty years ago, you say?'

‘Yes, sir,' Middleton replied. ‘We are both forty-five years old now and the summer in question that we came across the disturbed soil made us fifteen years of age at the time. We can pin down the year in question with complete . . . total . . . one hundred per cent certainty.'

‘Fair enough.' Webster spoke quietly.

‘We can be certain of which summer it was,' Allerton insisted, ‘because we had, just a few weeks earlier, returned from a school holiday in Scotland and we had by then just a week or so left before we returned to school for the autumn term. So it was early September. Autumn term commenced in the second week of September; it still does, in fact.'

‘Fair enough,' Webster repeated, ‘as I said that can, and in fact it probably will, be very useful.' Webster looked at the notes he had taken. ‘Very useful indeed.'

Cyrus Middleton glanced quickly around the room in which he and Tony Allerton and DC Webster sat. He had been pleasantly surprised to find that, instead of the harsh, hard, uncomfortable, unnerving interrogation room he had expected, the interview suite where non-suspects were escorted to was gently decorated with varying shades of orange, a dark, hard-wearing carpet, lighter-coloured orange chairs and walls painted with a pastel shade of the same colour. A highly polished coffee table with black metal legs and a brown surface stood on the floor between the four chairs in the room. The room had no source of natural light but was illuminated by a single light bulb within an orange-coloured shade. Middleton detected the scent of air freshener which hung delicately in the room. It was, he thought, quite sensitive and clever of the police to bring witnesses or victims of crime into a room like this, so as to put them at ease; some very distressing information often had to be coaxed from such persons.

‘But we emphasize . . . again . . . we emphasize,' Allerton continued, ‘that we saw nothing which in itself was untoward, we saw only the small area of disturbed soil, close to the corner of a field which had recently been harvested of its crop. It must have been a very hot summer come to think of it . . . last week in August or first in the September . . . that's quite an early harvest. It was only in hindsight that it became to seem suspicious, but we both very clearly remember it. Definitely remember it.'

‘That I can fully understand,' Webster reassured Allerton. ‘It is quite often just the way of it, sometimes it is only in hindsight that things become significant or events are remembered years after they have happened. You know, quite a few people have sat in this room because they have recovered a memory of some violent incident which their consciousness has kept buried. They often report that for a while, a short while – as in a few days – they wonder if they are remembering a dream then realize and come to accept that it is a memory of something that did actually happen, and then they do what you two gentlemen have done. They present at the enquiry desk and give information. It happens quite a lot, quite often. It is, as I said, just the way of it.'

Middleton sighed. ‘Well, I confess that makes me feel a little better. I was feeling guilty about the time lapse . . . thirty years . . . but I feel better in myself now.'

‘Me too.' Allerton smiled gently. ‘Thank you for saying that, sir.'

‘Pleasure,' Webster offered. ‘As I said, at least you came forward. It might yet be a dead dog down there but at least you came forward.'

‘I think we both did that,' Cyrus Middleton continued, glancing to his left at Allerton who nodded in agreement. ‘I think we both buried it and moved on with our lives. It's only recently that we have begun to meet up again for a beer. We were good friends at school but drifted apart and it was in February of this year as I was walking through York that I bumped into Tony here . . . after all these years . . . and we went into a pub and agreed to meet up on Friday evenings for a drink once a month.'

‘We each get a pass out,' Tony Allerton joked. ‘We found out that we both had a lot in common in respect of the way our lives have evolved. For one thing, we both married strong-willed women and so the phrase “Getting a pass out” has a ring of truth to it. We're allowed out one Friday evening a month, but that is all we need really.'

‘If we met more often we'd run out of conversation,' Middleton explained.

‘I see.' Webster was content to let the conversation wander, seeing it as an opportunity to further take the measure of Cyrus Middleton and Tony Allerton. He thought them probably genuine, but still only probably.

‘We both have daughters who have made a poor choice of boyfriend, in our opinion, and we both have sons who are doing well in life.'

‘Yes,' Middleton said, ‘my daughter turned down a place at Cambridge University to go and live in a new town in Scotland with a man who once worked in a shoe shop and is now unemployed.' He sighed and glanced up at the ceiling. ‘I mean, what can you do? What can you say? She's an adult, and so all you can do is worry.'

‘And my daughter gave up her place reading medicine at Manchester University to keep house for a male nurse, nice boy in himself, but with limited prospects compared to my daughter's prospects had she continued her studies.'

‘We both entered the world of finance,' Middleton explained. ‘I am in insurance . . . a claims investigator, and Tony is an accountant.'

‘Very good.' Webster inclined his head; both were professional men with much to lose should they prove to be trifling with the police. Their credibility increased in his perception of them.

‘Quite modest really,' Allerton explained. ‘I am only a certified accountant, not a chartered accountant . . . that would be something to be impressed with. It's akin to a small town solicitor and a High Court judge. They can both be described as lawyers but the difference between them is huge.'