Inspector Yarrow

Chapter 2

DI Yarrow lived in a stone-built bow-fronted Victorian semi-detached house in Carling Green, to the west side of West Garside on the upper slopes of Monksbane Hills, the rolling bank of hills stepping up from the River Gar around which West Garside had grown and expanded.

Nobody seems to know why the town was called West Garside when there is no North or East or South Garside, but ever since the founding of the town in the mid-18th century as an offshoot of Sheffield’s steel and cutlery business, it has been called West Garside.

The hills continue westwards through a series of valleys and ridges before rising up into the Pennines themselves, the stretching vistas of heather-clad moorland and deep shrouded valleys with villages untouched by time since before the war, a harsh country of rugged farms and equally rugged farmers, whilst to the northeast coal mines provide another major source of employment.

To the side of Yarrow’s house stood a lean-to wooden garage in need of painting and every morning when he comes to get into his car, Yarrow tells himself he would do the painting on his next free weekend. But somehow that never seemed to happen, and Yarrow knew that since the death of his beloved wife Marie-Hélène, he had allowed the house to deteriorate.

The garden was unkempt and overrun with weeds and although he cut the lawns when the grass got too long, the rose beds, once his wife’s pride and joy, had not been pruned or weeded and he chided himself, as he did every morning, for allowing her memory to be diminished by his apathy.

‘This weekend for sure, Marie-Hélène,’ he promised. ‘For sure.’

By contrast, his car, a creamy white 4 door 2.5 litre 1952 Riley RME saloon was immaculate. He regularly washed and polished the bodywork, the chrome bumpers, door handles, headlight and side lights all glinting and sparkling in the sharp morning light. The interior leather of the seats was redolent with the tang of lemon scented leather polish, the burred walnut dashboard wax polished to a mirror gleam and he knew that the time he lavished on his car was at the expense of his house and garden.

He slowly backed out of his garage and drove down the hill towards the town centre and Endeavour House, the home of West Garside police and CID.

Parking the Riley in the yard behind the red brick police station, a building so ugly that someone had once remarked that a brick shithouse would look prettier. Constructed in 1928, it was a brick and stone purpose-built police station on four stories and basement with cast-iron columns and beams, small casement windows, slow elevators, poor ventilation and insufficient toilet facilities, toilets which always smelled of sewage no matter how often the cleaners put bleach down the sinks and urinals.

Almost as soon it was built, it had proved inadequate for purpose, with cramped quarters, limited parking and insufficient storage for the mountain of paperwork that a police investigation generates.

As Yarrow walked into the station he stopped by the front desk to have a chat with the duty Sergeant, Dave Armitage, whom Yarrow had known for many years. When Yarrow had first joined the force, it had been Armitage who had looked out for him, as he did all new green coppers. Armitage brought Yarrow up to date on the nights events, although there was nothing of any great consequence and then he turned away to answer the telephone as Yarrow made his way upstairs to the CID department.

It was 7.35 in the morning. As usual he was the first in, he did not sleep well and had been awake since long before dawn, disturbed as usual by the ferocity of his nightmare. Because his sleep pattern was so regularly broken, he had got into the habit of getting to work early, finding that the half hour or so before the other officers arrived helped clear his mind for the business of the day.

Christopher Yarrow, aged 36, the widower and partially blinded ex Battle of Britain fighter pilot and now Detective Inspector with the West Yorkshire Constabulary, was of medium height and build, with rugged good looks, looks seemingly enhanced by the web of faint white scars around his damaged eye and more than one female admirer had remarked that he looked a lot like Richard Todd, the popular film actor best known for his role as Robin Hood in the 1952 film ‘The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men.’ And like Todd, Christopher Yarrow had also been born in India, the son of a missionary in Peshawar, in the north-west of India, now in the recently created country of Pakistan.

The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men.’ .But despite attention from several woman, mainly widows, Yarrow remained faithful to the memory of his beloved wife Marie-Hélène.