‘Good,’ she smiled, ‘so welcome to Barrie, Ontario province.’

  Later, before returning to the police station, Auphan and Ventnor walked side by side along the shore of the bay, not talking, but occasionally their shoulders would rub gently.

  Sally Brompton revealed herself to be a short woman, well presented in terms of her own dress sense, wearing ‘office smart’ clothing and large spectacles. She had a round face, close cropped hair. She had painted her fingernails in loud red paint and wore ‘sensible’ shoes, feminine but with a small heel. She talked with Yellich in one of the interview rooms in the realtor’s office in which she worked. Yellich had been unsure exactly what a ‘realtor’ was and had been afraid to ask but from the photographs of properties for sale on the wall of the foyer of the building in which Ms Brompton worked he surmised that ‘realtor’ was Canadian for estate agent. It was in much the same way that he was disappointed to find that Canadians have ‘tires’, not ‘tyres’, but he was equally relieved to find that a lawyer is a barrister or a solicitor and not an ‘attorney’ and that a cheque is a cheque, not a ‘check’.

  ‘Oh my . . . oh my,’ she repeated as she sank further back into the yellow armchair, ‘oh my.’

  ‘Bit of a shock. I am sorry.’ Yellich spoke softly.

  ‘You could say so, though I haven’t heard about her in a while. Losing her life in the snow . . . it happens a lot in Canada . . . but now you tell me there is more to it . . . something sinister.’

  ‘At this stage it is only a possibility.’

  ‘We thought it was an accident but now you tell me someone stole her identity and went to England with it. What sort of theft is that?’

  ‘Callous,’ Yellich suggested. ‘Perhaps callous is the word.’

  ‘Yes, callous . . . callous . . . so callous. So, how can I help you?’

  ‘By telling me all you can about Edith Lecointe, as you recall her, and anything she told you about herself. We have spoken to Blanche, her half-sister, but Blanche told us that Edith was a private person and told her little of herself.’

  ‘Yes, she was very quiet like that.’ Sally Brompton paused and looked to her left and out of the interview room window as a white single-decker Barrie Transit bus arrived at the small bus terminal and ‘knelt’ on its suspension to allow the egress and ingress of passengers with walking difficulties. ‘We became friends when she arrived here to work. We were both of the same age . . . we are . . . we were lucky to have an employer who doesn’t discriminate. I still am. If you are a clerical worker you have a distinct advantage in the job market if you are young and pretty. Most employers like an attractive typist or two to set their office off but Mr Neill, he seeks efficiency above anything else, so we got a position here. I think . . . no, I know, Edith felt her lack of advancement in life more than I did. She had no family as you probably know . . . no husband . . . no children . . . but I am fulfilled in that sense, soon to be a first time grandparent. So I don’t mind a lowly old job but Edith, all she had was a lowly old job. She wanted more out of life than life had given her. But Edith, she got asked out by older men . . . or men of her age but she seemed unable to settle, unable to commit. She was wounded, I think.’

  ‘Wounded?’

  ‘In here,’ Sally Brompton tapped the side of her head, ‘or maybe here,’ she pointed to her chest. ‘She wasn’t insane, nothing like that, but just damaged emotionally. She had difficult years, a bad start in life.’

  ‘Yes, she was fostered, was that a bad experience for her? Did she ever tell you about that?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t talk about it or about the time with the nuns and that’s always a sign of something bad . . . you must assume what you must assume.’

  Yellich nodded. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘So that really was Edith’s life, many dates with divorced or widowed men in their middle years. She wasn’t a cougar though.’

  ‘A cougar?’

  Sally Brompton smiled. ‘You’ll have them in England but you’ll know them by a different name. In Canada “cougars” are middle-aged women who seek younger men.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Yellich smiled, ‘sugar mummies.’

  ‘There is a bar here in Barrie where a lot of that sort of thing goes on. The young men sit alone and the “cougars” approach and offer to buy the drinks . . . all upside down . . . all reversed . . . back to front . . . but Edith wasn’t like that, her dates were of her generation, the sort of men that need to pop a little blue pill if they are going to satisfy their date.’

  ‘I see,’ Yellich smiled.

  ‘But nothing for her ever got beyond one or two dates with the same man.’

  ‘So there was no one special in her life when she disappeared?’

  ‘No one, and I am sure I would know if there was. We went out socially from time to time as well as talked in here. I am sure I would have known if there was someone special, as would her sister in Midhurst, but you’ve seen her, you say.’

  ‘Yes. Now the other question . . .’ Yellich paused, ‘the other question is, did she seem frightened at all?’

  ‘Frightened?’

  ‘Yes . . . of someone . . . of something?’

  ‘Not that I recall but as you said and as I also said, she was a private person, she probably wouldn’t have told me if she was frightened but I got no sense of her being in a state of fear . . . but her emotional hunger took her to some worrying places.’

  ‘Worrying places?’

  ‘Dark bars on Dunlop Street.’

  ‘Oh, our hotel is on that street, seems quiet.’

  ‘Oh it is, during the day . . . during the day it’s a very quiet street . . . but at night . . .’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘The bars stay open until two a.m. and Edith would occasionally come to work with bloodshot eyes. It never seemed that it affected her work though; Mr Neill never had any complaints about her. She was very efficient, very good at her job. When we went out together we were always home early, but she went out alone occasionally.’

  ‘Did she ever mention a woman called Ossetti . . . Heather Ossetti?’

  ‘Heather Ossetti? No, no she never mentioned that name to me.’

  ‘I see. Where was the foster home in which she grew up?’

  ‘Out on the coast at Safe Harbour, in Aldersea, by the side of Lake Simcoe.’

  ‘Safe Harbour?’

  ‘Yes, she said it was anything but safe and harbour-like, it was on a road . . . called . . . she mentioned it, an English name, an English place name famous in history . . . where the Normans landed . . .’

  ‘Hastings?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sally Brompton smiled, ‘Hastings Road, Safe Harbour, Aldersea. Not a happy time for her.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Yellich stood. ‘I’ll pay a visit, see if anything is still there, or anybody.’

  George Hennessey slowly and sensitively opened the door and smiled at Matilda Pakenham who sat propped up in the bed. He saw how extensively bruised about the face she was. Her body was covered in a hospital gown and the bed covers and Hennessey doubted that the bruising would be confined to her face and head. She forced a smile and said, ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘Well I did say you could phone me.’ Hennessey sat on the chair beside the bed and placed a box of chocolates on the bedside cabinet. ‘Bad for the figure I know . . .’ he tapped the chocolates, ‘but I think you can make an exception under the circumstances.’

  ‘Yes . . . thank you . . . I think I will enjoy them, and thank you again for coming, you were the only person I could think of to call. They put me in a private ward as you see . . . well, it’s not really a private ward . . . it’s a little room off the main ward. They exist because some patients need isolation . . . what’s the term? Barrier nursing . . . if they have a contagion.’

  ‘Yes, that’s the term, “barrier nursing”.’

  ‘And the rooms are also useful so battered women like me don’t get stared at by the other patients, so they shove us in here. I prefer it really. I am just not in the right frame of mind to spend the day chatting to other women.’

  Hennessey thought the room was best described as ‘cosy’. It had room for just the one single bed, and the cabinet and the visitor’s chair. Windows on each wall above waist height ensured that it was well lit by natural light. A small radio with headphones was mounted on the wall behind Tilly Pakenham’s head.

  ‘So what happened?’ Hennessey asked. ‘I mean apart from the obvious. Perhaps I should ask, “how did it happen?”’

  ‘I told you he was in the town . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I told you that I sensed him being here in York. Was I right or was I right? So he found me last night . . . he followed me home, followed me back to my little drum and jumped me just as I opened the door, pulled me back and shoved me into the alley beside the house . . . but I scratched him good. I have never done that before but I have read about DNA so I knew what to do.’

  ‘They scraped your nails?’

  ‘Yes . . . it was a bit uncomfortable.’

  Hennessey nodded. ‘Yes, it can hurt a bit but our officers are taught to be as gentle as possible . . . we need the evidence.’

  ‘I understand. Thank you again for coming.’

  ‘My pleasure. So now he’ll be arrested, we now have the evidence to put him away for this . . . he won’t like that at all.’

  ‘Yes. This time I am going to stand up to him.’

  ‘Good . . .’ Hennessey smiled, ‘good for you. So where now? I mean after you are discharged.’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘Nowhere?’

  ‘I mean I have nowhere else to go . . . I want nowhere else to go. It’s time for me to stop running.’

  Hennessey smiled warmly at her. ‘York is a good city to live in, although I always find it too small. I am a Londoner myself. You can’t hide in York like you can hide in London; you can really lose yourself in the smoke.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed your London accent. I’ll settle here . . . and no more of that.’ She indicated her tin whistle which lay atop the bedside cabinet close to where Hennessey had placed the box of chocolates. ‘I’ll keep it though . . . it’ll remind me of the gutter.’

  ‘What will you do? Do you have any plans?’

  ‘Get educated. Just lying here or sitting here you cannot do anything else but plan. So I’ll get an education.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘I’ll build on what I already have and I have quite a bit I’ll have you know, George.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I have university entrance level qualifications and I can operate a word processor. So I can work to pay my way if I have to.’

  ‘And you ended up sitting in a doorway wrapped up against the cold playing a tin whistle?’

  Matilda Pakenham closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’ She opened them again. ‘Yes. Quite a fall from grace wouldn’t you say? But it’s a question of self worth. If you are battered often enough and told that you are no good often enough you come to believe it. After a while all you think that you are worth is a doorway and a tin whistle and a plastic coffee cup for folk to drop their kindness or their pity into. But it was you that began the turn round for me.’

  ‘I did? I only met you once.’

  ‘But what a once . . . took me to lunch instead of dropping a coin into my plastic cup. I went straight home after that, and that night I combed my hair for the first time in many days . . . I mean properly combed it. I even tidied up my little flat. So, thanks, George, I really owe you one . . . and you also gave me the confidence to stand up to him. I’ll give evidence this time.’ She paused and looked down at the bed sheets. ‘I imagine you have a lady in your life?’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I do.’

  ‘She’s very lucky.’

  ‘I am very lucky. I know how fortunate I am.’

  ‘You should marry her.’

  ‘Perhaps . . . one day . . . but that’s a joint decision.’

  ‘Yes, don’t I know it? So you’ll arrest him?’

  ‘We will. I won’t . . . our officers from the Female and Child Abuse Unit will do that.’

  ‘I see,’ again she paused and looked at the bed sheets, ‘so, my future . . . ?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s a university here, isn’t there? In York I mean?’

  ‘Yes, a very good one.’

  ‘I’ll apply there. I’ll be a mature student, thirty-seven now, forty or forty-one before I get a degree, which I should have had at twenty or twenty-one, but I fell for the charms of Noel Sigsworth. Imagine swapping a classy sounding name like Pakenham to become Mrs Sigsworth . . . what a silly sounding name, but I did it. We made such a handsome couple but I came back from my honeymoon with a bruise the size of a football on my back.’

  ‘And you remained with him?’

  ‘Yes, women do . . . the apology, the promise it will never happen again . . . the remorse . . . the charm, and with that comes the feeling that it was somehow my fault all along.’

  A silence descended. It was broken by Hennessey who said, ‘Well, we’ll arrest him and this is the first day in the rest of your life.’

  Matilda Pakenham smiled. ‘The first day in the rest of my life . . . I like that, and you’re right George, it starts fresh from here.’ She bit her lip and looked thoughtful. ‘George, can I ask you something and tell you something?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Have you ever come across a guy, and I mean a criminal, called Malpass? He and his wife, Mr and Mrs Malpass?’

  ‘The name rings no bells . . . criminal or otherwise. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because you didn’t meet me when I was at my worst . . . I’ve been lower. I once had a bad drink problem.’

  ‘Oh . . . but quite understandable.’

  ‘The reason I ask is that I met someone at the AA meeting and they invited me to join their private alcoholics club, meeting in cafes just to pass the time to keep each other off the booze. So I went one evening, the Malpasses were there, sort of like Lord and Lady among the alcohol lowlifers with no money. The Malpasses always paid for the coffee and nibbles to eat. They were suave, charming, just like hubby was suave and charming and so I was on my guard with them.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Hennessey leaned forward slightly.

  ‘So I went to their meetings a few times . . . claimed to be dried out alcoholics but I don’t think they were. They said, “Look at us, we’ve cleaned our act up, so can you.”’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘But as I just said, I was suspicious because of my marriage. Anyway, one day they invited me to go with them for a day trip to the coast and when I declined they looked crestfallen . . . I mean more than disappointed . . . and also they looked angry. Maybe I am being paranoid or maybe it’s women’s intuition but I got the feeling that if I had accepted their offer of a trip to the coast I wouldn’t have come back.’

  ‘That is interesting,’ Hennessey replied with a serious tone to his voice.

  ‘I wouldn’t have been missed. I was socially isolated and there was another woman who used to attend and suddenly didn’t any more.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘And when I asked about her they said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about her, she’ll have moved on . . . it happens.’

  ‘Malpass, you say?’

  ‘Yes. Ronald and Sylvia Malpass.’

  Thomson Ventnor glanced in an interested manner to his left and right as Marianne Auphan drove slowly along Scott Drive, Letitia Heights. He saw small detached houses built with brick up to a height of approximately two feet and thereafter the walls seemed to be made of aluminium sheeting, as were the roofs, and all painted a uniform dull green colour. Each house had a small porch in front of the front door and each porch seemed to him to have a white plastic chair upon it. Any car that was parked in the short driveway of the houses or at the kerb appeared to Ventnor to be elderly and of indifferent value. Again, he noticed that no one was seen in the area, no pedestrian upon the sidewalk, no one addressing garden or home maintenance for example. It seemed the norm to him that no one was ever seen in suburban Barrie, unless they were driving a car or were a bus passenger. ‘Frost . . . Kipling . . .’ he observed.

  ‘Yes, the streets round here are all named after poets, not throughout Letitia Heights, just this particular area.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Well, this is about as bad as Barrie gets,’ Marianne Auphan turned to Ventnor and smiled.

  ‘Listen, this is not bad at all, you should see parts of York, the places the tourists don’t get to see.’

  ‘Yeah, I’d like that,’ she turned her head again to look at the road, ‘that would be good.’

  ‘Same in every town,’ Ventnor observed dryly, ‘always an underbelly.’

  ‘Dare say. I have ancestors from near London, is that close to York?’

  Ventnor smiled. ‘Well, I dare say it’s quite close if you’re in Ontario but Londoners don’t consider themselves close to York and vice versa. It’s about two and a half to three hours by fast train.’

  ‘Oh . . . OK, but that’s close, believe me, that’s close. Here guys do that drive to work and then back again and think nothing of it. Kingston Female Penitentiary, which serves Ontario province, that’s five hundred miles return from Barrie. I can do that journey in a single day.’

  Ventnor gasped, ‘That’s not much short of the distance from the north coast of Scotland to the south coast of England . . . astounding.’

  ‘Different world, but we have freeways and drive cars that are built for distance working.’ Marianne Auphan slowed the car to a halt outside a small house with an untidy garden, which was separated from the nearest house by a thick stand of spruce. It was similar to the nearby houses, with a brick built base and thereafter the outside wall and roof were the same sort of dull green painted aluminium sheeting. Marianne Auphan opened the car door and invited Ventnor to accompany her. They walked side by side and in close proximity up the short drive and on to the wooden porch which creaked under their combined weight as soon as they stepped on to it. ‘You’d better let me do the talking.’ Marianne Auphan pressed the electric door buzzer. ‘The English accent could be a barrier, a lot of Irish descendants, a lot of French Canadians, they don’t like the English, already.’

 

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