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“Let’s start at the beginning,” said Gardener, eager to maintain a better balance. “Tell me how you met, where you went from there. I need to build up a picture. Someone didn’t just kill him, they went to great lengths to make a public spectacle out of an extremely gruesome murder, which suggests an enemy, and a very personal one at that.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“Why?” Gardener asked.
“He was pompous. I’ve known people stop him in the street for an autograph, and he’d turn ’em down flat. Nothing and no one ever seemed good enough for him.”
That wasn’t the impression his father had given Gardener, but then again, he wasn’t married to the man. You had to be much closer than a friend to claim you really knew someone.
“It would take more than a disgruntled autograph hunter to do what was done to your husband.”
Val White finished her tea and poured another without offering Gardener or Reilly. If she had been a party to all the gruesome details, she was not letting on. “I dare say. He was born in Blackpool in 1940. He had three sisters and one brother. They’re all dead. He left school at sixteen and joined the RAF. After leaving the services, he landed a job in the theatre. A talent scout spotted him in 1959, and he went down to work London’s West End. He was there until 1964, then he landed a small part in a film.”
“All sounds very condensed.”
“It’s short and sweet because I don’t know a great deal about his life before we met.”
“Where and when did you two meet?”
“I think it were the late Sixties, because by then he’d settled into films at Hammer Studios. But he’d taken a part in a play back in the West End. The whole thing went on tour and we met here, in Leeds. I went to see the play with a friend. She had backstage passes, and Leonard and I met at the party thrown afterwards. It was the last night, you see.”
“What first attracted you to him?”
“He was very confident, knew what he wanted out of life, outspoken... and he had money.” As Val White had made her last comment, she smiled at Reilly. “Six months later we were married and bought our first home.”
“Where?”
“Horsforth, on the A65 going out towards Rawdon. You can’t miss it, big grey house set back from the road, black and gold wrought iron gates guard the arched entrance, grounds full of poplar trees.”
“My father mentioned that, but he couldn’t remember the name. Can you remember who you bought it from?”
“Not really, although the name Ashington rings a bell. I think that’s what it was called, Ashington Manor.”
“It’s not that important. I suppose I’m clutching at straws, trying to find a link where there isn’t one. What happened next?”
“We stayed up here in the house for a couple of years, but then the film bug got him again. He went back to Hammer sometime around 1966 to work with Christopher Lee in one of his Dracula films. And he stayed there for the next ten years. I hardly saw owt of him.”
“Any family?”
Val White took a sip of tea and lit a fresh cigarette. “No.” Her expression softened. “I would’ve liked a couple of kids.”
“Judging by the circumstances in which he died, he must have made an enemy for himself. You said it didn’t surprise you. Can you elaborate?”
“I’m not sure I can, cock. I’ve no idea who he saw and what he was up to in the ten years he was at Hammer. I’m basing my comments on his attitude.”
“Did your husband ever conduct any private business deals, either in or out of the film world?”
Val White was obviously thinking about the question as she inhaled deeply on her cigarette and blew out smoke rings.
“None that I’m aware of.”
“There’s nothing in his past that you can think would generate such a callous act of revenge?” pressed Gardener.
“We’ve all got skeletons, Mr Gardener. Just because I can’t think of anything doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
There really was very little to go on. Gardener had a conflicting picture. According to his father, Leonard White was an icon, a straight man whom you could trust with your life. He felt the same way about his father. Whatever the old man had told him, Gardener had no reason to distrust. But then, had he really known Leonard White?
As for his wife, she couldn’t abide to be in the same room. Why was that? What was she hiding? What had Leonard White done that had so turned her against him? He needed to find the root of the problem. “So, what happened after Hammer?”
