Free Gift Wrapped by Peter Turnbull Page B

she would say and it doesn’t surprise me that she told you that.’ Tony Wenlock sighed heavily. ‘She’s a very difficult woman. She really is bad news. She might have presented well to the police but you can take it from me she is an attention-seeking, self-pitying game player and has probably built our resentment of her up into something which is a lot greater than it actually is. She continually holds herself up as though she is blamed for all the family ills, and yes, I do permit her only limited access to my children but not because I blame her for Father’s disappearance. She is a very unhealthy personality. She is not a good influence on the children. She is very manipulative.’
    â€˜I see,’ Reginald Webster growled.
    â€˜Their marriage wasn’t as bad as she will have had you believe,’ Tony Wenlock continued. ‘It worked and they never got anywhere near a divorce. It was never, ever as extreme or as desperate as that. We, that is, my brother and I, might have said something about her driving him away, but if we did say that it was said in the heat of the moment by two confused teenagers whose emotions were suddenly all over the place. We never really blamed her at all for his disappearance. We always assumed some form of misadventure had befallen him because we knew he’d never leave his family ... he just wouldn’t ... not Dad. Not the old dad we knew. We never assumed that he’d been murdered ... heavens, no. We always thought his body would be lying somewhere, hidden from view, waiting to be discovered by chance, as indeed such things do happen from time to time.’
    â€˜Indeed they do.’ Carmen Pharoah nodded her agreement.
    â€˜So ... you can say ... and we learn that it was not a blissfully happy home, but it was a more successful family, a more healthy family than Mrs Wenlock portrays and certainly far from murderous?’ Webster asked.
    â€˜Yes ... yes,’ Tony Wenlock nodded slightly, ‘you can say that, especially it being far from murderous. The culprit, whoever he or she is, is some person or persons unknown, wholly outside the family. You can definitely say that.’
    â€˜Very well, that helps.’ Reginald Webster sat forward. ‘So, if you can tell us what you can recall about your father at the time of his disappearance ... his mood, his attitude, any changes in his day-to-day life, anything of significance, even the slightest significance, that you might remember.’
    â€˜I remember the time very well – who wouldn’t?’ Tony Wenlock put his hand to his forehead. ‘He was working long hours and often came home quite tired, that I recall well. He didn’t normally work late, you see. He was a creature of habit. For many years he’d return at six p.m. and then go up to the Fleece.’
    â€˜The Fleece?’ Pharoah queried.
    â€˜The Golden Fleece pub in Selby, in the centre of the town. Dad had a penchant for a rum and coke or two each evening, to my – our – mother’s displeasure, but she accepted it. He’d return at about eight p.m., we’d eat as a family and then he’d amble off to bed at about ten p.m. for an early night. That was the established pattern for many, many years until about twelve months before he died, when he began to come home late each evening and noticeably without the smell of alcohol on his breath. He told us; or rather he told our mother, that he was suddenly under a lot of pressure with an important client to look after. Doing a good job of the account would help his career, so he said – well, so he apparently said. It was a large account, he told Mother, which was in a dreadful mess and with HM Inland Revenue looking for blood. He had to rescue what he could and save as much of the client’s scalp as he could. No tax reportedly had been paid for years, but equally, many claims against tax had been made. So he came home