Cold Wrath by Peter Turnbull

Author:Peter Turnbull [Peter Turnbull]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2018-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

FOUR

Thursday 22 June, 09.20 hours – midnight

In which information about the three women who called on Anthony Garrett is obtained, and George Hennessey is once more at home to the courteous reader who comes to learn about his host’s delights.

Thompson Ventnor stood fully square on to the man who he found to be short, overweight and who was both casually and untidily dressed. In fact, Ventnor found him to be the archetypal taxi driver, as the man professed himself to be. He said, ‘This is a little cloak and dagger, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’ The man spoke in a strongly sibilistic manner, pronouncing ‘what’ as ‘her-what’.

‘Well …’ Ventnor glanced around him. The side of the pub the Horse and Trumpet was to his right hand, to his left was a privet hedge which Ventnor noted was composed of an interesting mixture of yellow and green bushes which he estimated to be about four feet high. Beyond the hedge, clearly seen, were the decaying remains of a petrol filling station. On the fourth side of the car park in which he and the man stood facing each other was the B1246 Pocklington to Driffield road, and a road so light of traffic that it was clear to Ventnor why the petrol station had been forced to close down. At that time in the morning the road was in fact utterly free of traffic and only birdsong filled the air. The only vehicle in the pub car park was a motorcycle sidecar combination which Ventnor saw belonged to an earlier era. The man he stood talking to was in his forties, yet the motorcycle and the black-painted sidecar could, Ventnor thought, have belonged to the man’s father. It had an oily piece of sacking draped over the seat and the rear wheel, and as a machine it just looked to Ventnor to be ‘tired’. Very tired indeed. ‘Well,’ Ventnor repeated, and then he explained what he meant, ‘people who have information to give usually come into the police station and they usually ask about any reward. They do not, usually, want to meet in a pub car park, miles from anywhere, and they don’t usually insist on just one officer meeting them. So that is why I feel that this is all a bit “cloak and dagger”.’

‘You cannot be too careful.’ The man pronounced ‘cannot’ as ‘ha-not’ and ‘careful’ as ‘hare-full’. ‘You are alone? I hope you’re alone. I want you to be alone.’

‘Yes … all alone,’ Ventnor remained calm, ‘as you requested, there’s just me, all by myself. Just me alone.’

‘And,’ the man continued, pronouncing ‘and’ as ‘h-and’, ‘you have not got a mate hiding out of sight with a camera or with one of those long-range microphone things? I’ve seen them on television.’

‘No,’ Ventnor replied, ‘and I have not got a tape recorder hidden inside my jacket. So, enough games. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? You said that you have information about the murder of Anthony Garrett of The Grange, Millington.

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