Deliver Us from Evil by Peter Turnbull Read Free Book Online Page B

just that – plastic, tinted plastic, not proper lenses. She had good eyesight did Edith . . . big glasses, they were more like a man’s frames rather than a woman’s choice of frame. She would also walk round York with a small British Airways rucksack, as though she was a tourist, not a resident. That’s when she did go out. Most of the time she stayed at home but I like to go out now and again. I mean it’s fair enough. I’m in the factory all day so at weekends I like to roam. Why not? Go into York, drive to the coast for a few lungfuls of good sea air . . . maybe find an old quiet pub for a beer or two, and our Edith, she’d drag her feet but eventually she’d agree to join me but only with the wig and dark glasses and her small British Airways knapsack that made her at least look like a tourist. When I asked her about it she just cut me short and said, “It’s my image”, really snappy, bite-my-head-off sort of reply, so I stopped asking but she was always clearly relieved to get back home and tear the wig off.’
    â€˜As if she was frightened of being seen?’
    â€˜Yes, but only in hindsight. Only after I’d thought about it for a while. At the time I thought it was no more than her just wanting to stay at home and not liking summer because she was a Canadian and more used to the cold, but now I understand Canada can be blisteringly hot during the summer so perhaps that was not it, perhaps that was not the reason. I just put it down to the words of my Uncle Maurice when I was a teenager. “You’ll never fathom a woman, Stanley,” he once said to me, God rest him, “you’ll never fathom a woman”, so I put it down to her being a woman and thereby a damn strange creature. I mean there seemed to be no point in going to war over the issue . . . and I did appreciate a peaceful house. She was just much happier in winter. I knew her for two winters and one summer. She seemed to be more relaxed in the winter, always as though the dark nights were hiding her, and the short, grey days also. Well . . . got a funeral to arrange now. I’ll ask for a simple graveside service, there will only be me there, me and the priest and the pall-bearers, can’t fill a church with friends and relatives I don’t have so I won’t try. So we’ll lay her down and follow the coffin with a sod or two of soil and that’ll be our Edith.’
    â€˜We’d like to take a look at your late wife’s possessions,’ Hennessey asked. ‘I hope you won’t object?’
    â€˜Of course,’ Hemmings glanced up at the ceiling. ‘All there is of them is just clothing and a few documents.’ He paused and looked at Hennessey. ‘Why? Do you think there’s something there?’ There was a slight note of alarm in his voice.
    â€˜We think nothing yet,’ Hennessey replied quietly, attempting to calm Hemmings, ‘nothing at all, but she was evidently kept against her will for two days, then she was left by the canal, as if her body was posed . . . that speaks of motive and premeditation and now you indicate that she seemed to be hiding from some person or persons as yet unknown. You seem to be saying that she was a woman in fear.’
    â€˜You think so?’ Hemmings looked at Hennessey with wide, appealing eyes, ‘Not just abducted by some sicko?’
    â€˜We think nothing yet, as I said, Mr Hemmings. All avenues are open, all are being explored.’
    The man walked purposefully up to the fountain and casually tossed a coin into the pool of water surrounding it. He then stood up and glanced around him, the solid buildings, the red double-decker buses, the black taxi cabs, the crowded street, too crowded for his taste. He was used to wide open spaces and few people. He turned back to the water. ‘Well, I did it,’ he said, ‘I didn’t do what I