Free Deliver Us from Evil by Peter Turnbull Page B

poverty but I bet he has a pile tucked away somewhere. Anyway I knew you were cops so I didn’t interfere.’
    â€˜You knew?’ Webster asked.
    â€˜Yes. You looked confident, were a pair and calling during the hours of daylight. Also you are both in good physical shape. But I took a few photographs of you anyway,’ Tinsley smiled.
    â€˜You did?’
    â€˜Yes I did. Just in case. And I also made sure I got your car registration in one of the shots. I used a telephoto lens, you see, then I saw Beattie invite you into his house . . . so I relaxed.’
    â€˜Good for you.’
    â€˜I’ll send prints of them to you when I develop the film. Malton Police Station?’
    â€˜No. York. Micklegate Bar. But we’d still like to see them.’
    â€˜Really? York Police, I mean . . .’
    â€˜Yes, really.’
    â€˜All right. So, how can I help you?’ Tinsley sat back on the sofa, ‘I am intrigued.’
    â€˜Mr Beattie advised us that once a bearded man in a fur hat and tartan patterned jacket seemed to paying a lot of interest in his house. This was a couple of years ago, or so. He also said you may have got a look at him.’
    â€˜The Canadian? Yes . . . but that’s going back a good few months now, nearly two years, as you say . . . time flies so.’
    â€˜Tell us about him, if you would,’ Yellich asked. ‘All you can remember.’
    â€˜What is there to say?’ Tinsley sighed. ‘Little to tell,’ he paused as the clock in his hallway chimed the hour with the Westminster chimes. ‘I used to see him in the village, that is Stillington, closest village to here, I really knew him from there. He used to enjoy a beer in The Hunter’s Moon.’
    â€˜The Hunter’s Moon in Stillington?’ Webster wrote in his notebook.
    â€˜On the high street, you can’t miss it. It was Terry the publican who told me he was a Canadian; they had a chat now and again, you see. Terry’s good like that, he checks out strangers but does so in a friendly, chatty way. But yes, he was a Canadian. Tall, well built, beard, as you say, and yes, I saw him on the roadway just staring at Beattie’s ruin and also I saw as he drove past in his car. He was clearly hanging around the area. The building had some fascination for him, it really did. That house, Beattie could have bought an easily run, warm, comfortable house but they bought that . . . ruin . . . no wonder his wife didn’t last, but he seems to be sticking it out, stubborn old fool that he is. I tell you, if he were a plant he’d be moss which grows in the tundra, thriving in the cold. But the Canadian, he was a married man . . . I can tell you that.’
    â€˜Married?’
    â€˜Yes. High quality clothes, had a car . . . probably a hire car, it was the sort bought in large numbers by fleet operators. He hung around for a couple of weeks, so he must have stayed somewhere local and he didn’t look like the youth hostel type. He wasn’t frightened of being seen, that was something else about him, just standing there, as though he possibly even wanted to be seen.’
    â€˜Intimidating? Would you say it was an intimidating gesture on his part?’
    Tinsley pursed his lips, ‘Yes . . . yes, I dare say that you could say that. Intimidating.’
    â€˜But you never spoke to him?’
    â€˜No. Drove past him so got a closer look . . . then later I saw him in the village once or twice . . . heard about him from the boys in The Hunter’s Moon. I’d try there if I was you.’
    â€˜I think we will. Thank you . . . that’s very helpful.’
    â€˜You might have to knock on the door.’
    â€˜At this hour!’ Yellich grinned. ‘He’ll have been open since eleven a.m.’
    â€˜He would if he was in the centre of York, but