Sentence

Barry Guinard was 56 years old when he died in August 2022.

Everyone in Winberm, Nottingham knew him. He had been homeless for the last 21 years, spending virtually every day of that time in the park opposite the police station. He always wore the same clothes - a checked shirt and denim jacket, denim jeans, heavy leather boots and a grey mackintosh. He kept them fairly clean, even though, as far as anyone could tell, he slept in them. Strands of his long grey hair wafted about his tanned, heavily-lined features – a beaked nose, deep-set grey eyes and yellowed teeth behind thin lips and a beard he cut back to stubble each spring.

He used the old brick toilet block beside the park to wash himself and his clothes. In 2010 he had been the main reason the council had decided not to pull it down. Instead they gave him a small lockable metal cupboard in which he kept a mop and bucket, bleach and liquid soap. Locals said the toilets had never been so clean and they were much happier to use them.

He spoke with a Lancashire accent. Had arrived in Winberm in the spring of 2001. A victim of the dotcom crash, he said. Most of the time he just sat in the park and stared across the road. For a while the police ignored him. Homeless people had arrived in the town in the past and would move on after a few days of unrewarding begging. The police let them sleep in a cell for a day or two and gave them a bit of food, as long as they didn’t extend the town’s generosity too far.

Barry though slept on one of the park’s benches and refused all offers of assistance. If it rained he lay in the centre of the small bandstand where the least rain fell. Twice, during big storms, he had spent the night in the toilets.

People offered rooms, even a self-contained unit, but he politely declined and said he preferred the open air. For a while local ladies had a roster to bring him meals, but their enthusiasm waned when it became clear he had no intention of leaving.

Sometimes, in summer, when the sun was high in the south and the park was in deep shade under the plane trees and cedars planted in the 1920s, when the park was donated by Lord Hanscombe of Hanscombe Manor, Barry would step across the street and sit in the sun on the pavement outside the police station. He would stare at the ground, occasionally looking up, when someone passed, to nod hello.

There were complaints to the local council, so they placed a bench outside the station and from then on he sat in the bench. “I don’t want to embarrass anyone,” he said.

Barry always seemed to have a few coins. The local bank employees were happy to tell people that a small amount came into his account every month and he withdrew it all the next day. He had no savings, and the money came from a London account but they couldn’t say more.

Once a group of ne’er-do-wells from Derby had been passing through and held him up at knifepoint. He handed over everything he had on him, but they thumped him anyway and left, laughing. Mavis Johnson from the general store had seen them and passed the numberplate of their Ford Sierra on to the police but as far as anyone knew nothing had come of it.

“He did nothing to protect himself,” Mavis told Mrs Harrison from 12 The Lane. “You’d have thought he’d at least lift a hand to protect his face but he just stood there and they knocked him over. It was almost like he wanted them to.”

Winberm rarely makes the news. Even the Burton Mail, back when local newspapers were still viable, found little to report. There were 40-50 houses, mostly 1920s stock built for ex-servicemen by Lord Hanscombe before he lost everything in the Depression and his manor crumbled into ruin. A few houses in the centre of town, around the green and the duck pond, were built in the 1600s when blacksmiths did good business from carts travelling the trade routes between Nottingham and Birmingham and Leicester and Stoke, before the canals bypassed Winberm and no-one else needed to go there.

Some people might remember the name Winberm from the disappearance of 16-year-old Maisie Clanshaw in 1982 which briefly made national headlines but as quickly faded from media interest. Long-forgotten were the Winberm crowd-ball matches from the 1800s when the last blacksmiths led teams of local farmhands in wild and brutal struggles to get a pig’s bladder from the village green into one of the two lakes that had once been bends in the Trent River north and south of the town. The last match, in 1875, had seen the Northers win decisively, but the deaths of three of the Southers rather soured the victory and forced the constabulary to ban any attempts to revive the custom.

In December 2018 Barry was found slumped on the bench outside the police station and taken to hospital. He had had a minor stroke and was released after a week. His face slouched to one side and his right eye watered continually. He limped and his right arm hung at his side,

August 16, 2022. Low cloud had collected in the vales and hills around Winberm overnight and then the cloud had thickened and a thin rain started drifting down, settling into a steady drizzle. There was a knock on the police station door.

“Come in!” Sergeant Derridon called from the desk. He could see a figure struggling to open the heavy door so he walked out and pulled it open. “What the…?” He stepped back as Barry Guinard fell through onto the paved floor.

Barry gurgled and writhed, tried to make noises but could only moan. Derridon helped him up and over to a chair. He seemed to be trying to say something.

“Rock me…”

“Rock you?”

“Rock me…up.”

He slumped off the plastic chair onto the floor. Derridon called out to his assistant, Paula Jones, and got her to call an ambulance. It arrived within minutes, having luckily just left the nearby care home. Barry was gurgling, still trying to speak. They urged him to be quiet and rest. The Sergeant told the ambulance crew what he knew of the patient’s history.

Barry struggled to reach into his coat, but they held his hands down so they could strap him to the stretcher.

“Thanks guys,” the Sergeant waved to the ambulance duo as they wheeled Barry out and went to put on a cuppa. A few minutes later the ambulance driver pushed the front door open and handed Derridon a tattered envelope.

“I think this is for you.”

“Why?”

“Check the address.” He put the envelope on the desk. “He was trying to get it out of his jacket. Seemed important to him.” 

Derridon picked it up as the driver left. It was addressed to Winberm Police, Winberm, Nottinghamshire. It was ragged, almost worn through at the edges. The ink had run in a few places from damp. He shrugged and opened the letter.

“Hey Paula!” he called into the office.

“What?”

“Come and look at this. They found a letter in Barry’s jacket, addressed to us – date is 2001. 21 years ago for chrissakes.”

“Isn’t that about when he first arrived here?”

“March 18, 2001,” Derridon read. “Dear Winberm police. I am handing myself in today. I am admitting to the murder 18 years ago of Maisie Clanshaw.”

“Bloody hell,” Paula said.

“I drove through Winberm and she was walking alongside the road outside of town. I offered her a lift and she jumped in. We got along fine. I turned down a lane to have a cigarette. She flirted. I tried to kiss her but she slapped me and I, well, I just snapped. I never liked people hitting me. People always used to hit me when I was a boy and, well, I just didn’t like it. I hit her back. She went to scream but I couldn’t have that so, you see, it didn’t end well and then I had a dead girl on my hands. I drove way down the lane which came to a dead-end. I put her in a deep dry ditch and covered her with dirt and then leaves and branches. I am sorry but I can’t remember the name of the lane. There was a long brick barn nearby and a field of rapeseed.

“I have come back to Winberm to hand myself in after 18 years of self-torture. I have sat in the park here for two weeks now and I will bring this letter to you as soon as I can get up the nerve.

“Yours sincerely, Barry Guinard.”

Sergeant Derridon put the letter down, shaking his head. He looked up at the day-to-a-page calendar on the wall.

“21 years? Seriously?”

Paula picked up the letter and read it again.

Derridon picked up the phone and pressed a speed dial. “Hospital? Do you have a Barry Guinard? Should have just come in on an ambulance. Yes? No, really? Dead on arrival?” He paused. “Damn. OK, thanks.”

He hung up and pressed another speed dial. “Can I speak to D.I. Prince please. Hal? Derridon here, Winberm. Glad I got you before you retired. Yeah, all right, just kidding mate. Look, you worked on the Maisie Clanshaw case didn’t you? Well, I think it has been solved, though maybe not in the way you might expect…”