Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017
- Автор: Фузилли Джим, Харрис Шарлин
- Год: 2017
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017». Краткое содержание книги:
“Strangely dressed,” Hennessey replied. “How so?”
“All in black, long black coat, bright red lipstick.”
“A Goth,” Yellich advised. “Sounds like a Goth.”
“Well, whatever, but she knew about the bones. She knew what I would find... if I dug deep enough. I found two bones, then the skull. Then I stopped digging. I could not identify the bones as human, but the skull looked human enough. I teach mathematics. I’m no doctor, but the skull looks human.”
“I’ll go and check.” Yellich turned and walked to where Batty had told the officers the bones would be found.
“I must say you are transforming this house.” Hennessey smiled approvingly.
“You knew it as it was before we bought it?”
“I think all of York knew it.” Hennessey grinned. “It was a bit of a landmark. Who lived here?”
“Father and son by the name of Parkes... both deceased of natural causes.”
“I see, so we won’t be questioning them about the bones.”
Yellich returned and nodded to Hennessey. “Looks human to me, sir.”
“Very well.”
Yellich plunged his hand into his overcoat and took out his mobile phone. He requested the attendance of the Home Office pathologist, four constables, and Scene of Crime officers. “On their way, sir.”
“All we can do is wait.” Hennessey glanced around him. He saw a pleasant, well-set suburb under a blue, spring sky with a few white clouds at a medium altitude.
“Tea?” Batty asked. “I’m afraid we don’t have any sugar.”
“Ideal.” Hennessey smiled. “Thank you.”
Dr. Louise D’Acre, short-haired, slender, in her mid forties, exited the inflatable tent which had been placed over the area where the bones had been found. “Two cow bones,” she said. “I think the two bones are from a cow; they’re not human but the skull is... and it’s attached to a complete skeleton of a child of about ten years, a male child.”
“A child?” Hennessey sighed.
“Yes... sadly... but recent, late twentieth, early twenty-first dental work is evident,” Dr. D’Acre advised.
“Slater and Riddle,” Yellich announced, “those two ten-year-old boys who disappeared about ten years ago now... remember, sir...?”
“Yes.” Hennessey nodded. “Thomas Slater and his friend... Harry Riddle. Their bikes were found near their homes, but the two boys had vanished. I remember the search... we looked everywhere but there was not a trace... it was as if they were abducted by aliens.”
“On Bad Bargain Lane,” Yellich said. “Strange name for a road... there has to be a story... but that’s for another time.”
“Can you drive out to the boys’ parents, please,” Hennessey addressed Yellich. “Let them know that we have found the remains of a boy who is about the age that Thomas and Harry were when they disappeared. I’ll hang on here.”
Somerled Yellich drove slowly down Bad Bargain Lane. He stopped outside the address of Thomas Slater’s parents, which showed itself to be an interwar vintage house. He walked up the narrow path and knocked reverently on the door, using the highly polished brass knocker. It was opened rapidly upon his knock. Yellich showed his ID to Mr. Slater and explained the reason for his visit.
Inside the house, Yellich saw it to be neatly kept, smelling gently of wood polish. Mr. Maurice Slater was a tall man, with an angular face.
“We’ll be able to use his dental records to determine the identity,” Yellich advised.
“It will be Thomas or Harry. Those two boys were inseparable in life... I am sure they’ll be found close together.” Maurice Slater sat back in his chair. “Now we’ll have a grave to visit... ‘We’ as in my wife and I and also ‘we’ as in the Riddles. I will go and visit the Riddles; I think we will want the boys buried side by side... separate funerals but adjacent graves. Any idea who did it?”
“None.”
“It was the Beadales,” Maurice Slater said matter-of-factly, “... one or both.”
“The Beadales?”
“Bad family two doors down.” Maurice Slater indicated in the direction towards the Tang Hall Estate. The police had questioned them at the time.
“Why do you think it was them?” Yellich asked.
“Because the boys disappeared one summer’s evening, and a few days later, when it was certain some harm had come to them, I was out in my back garden and my wife was wailing in her grief in the bathroom and the sound carried out and across the gardens and Wayne Beadale... I think it was Wayne, was standing in their garden and he smirked at the sound my wife was making. He didn’t know I was there, you see.”
“Smirked?” Yellich queried.
“Yes, the sort of smirk that says I know something that you don’t know,” Slater explained.
“That’s interesting,” Yellich spoke softly. “That is very interesting. Did you report it?”
“Yes, the police were very good and they noted my observation but said that they needed more than my observation to arrest them. I didn’t mention it to the Riddles, though.” Slater spoke coldly. “Harry Riddle’s father Ronnie... he’s a man with a fiery temper. If he knew about that smirk, he’d go round and shoot them... he’s got a shotgun... fully licensed... he works as a gamekeeper, you see.”
“I see,” Yellich replied.
“He doesn’t keep the gun at home, it’s under lock and key in his gamekeeper’s hut, but he can access it. This has got to be done properly... but that’s a bad family,” Slater added, “a very bad family.”
“The Beadales?” Yellich clarified.
“Yes.” Maurice Slater drummed his fingers on the armchair in which he sat. “The boys’ father was a heavy-handed thug and the child-welfare people were always taking the children into care, the two twins Wayne and Shane... and then returning them and taking them away again. They grew up brutalised... a right pair of bandits. You know them well. Then the youngest boy was born and shortly afterwards, the old man was killed, he was found battered to death in the middle of the Tang Hall Estate. He trod on too many toes, if you ask me... and the mother brought the young boy up, just doted on him... turned him into a mother’s boy, she even gave him a girl’s name.”
“A girl’s name?” Yellich gasped.
“Francis,” Slater explained. “Francis with an ‘i’ is male, with an ‘e’ it’s female.”
“I see.” Yellich nodded. “Yes... I see what you mean.”
“My wife and I were always adamant that we would avoid those names, such as Lesley or Leslie... but Francis Beadale is a whiney, complaining boy of seventeen now who wants his own way and whose mother lets him have his own way... and he’s in trouble with the law now, he’s in the young offenders’ institution in Doncaster. He won’t be liking that. He won’t be liking that at all.”
“You seem to know the family well?” Yellich observed.
“We live just two doors apart, as I have just said,” Slater explained. “We don’t associate with them, but you see and hear things. You get to know a lot over the years.”
“I will go and call on Mr. and Mrs. Riddle.” Yellich stood. “They will have to be told about the discovery.”
“Yes,” Slater also stood, “but don’t tell him that I saw one of the Beadale twins smirking. That won’t be fair on him.”
“I won’t.” Yellich nodded. “As you say, this has to be done correctly.”
“It’s a positive match.” Louise D’Acre held up the dental records and once again examined the teeth in the skull. She glanced across the pathology laboratory of the York District Hospital to where D.C.I. George Hennessey stood. “It’s Harold Riddle... the remains of.”
“We’ll return to the house tomorrow,” Hennessey replied. “We’ll take sniffer dogs... see what else the garden is hiding.”