Long Shadows

by DEREK THOMPSON

  Wild smiled. A suspicious death and an assistant. Things were looking up.

  Chapter 3

  Wild noted the state of Porter’s car beside the house — rust, scratched bodywork and faded stickers that likely belonged to the previous owners. A car that screamed spendthrift to the discerning eye, or tight bastard to everyone else. The key sat in the ignition, waiting forlornly for an owner that would never come.

  Olsen approached the vehicle cautiously, conscious that working with Wild could be a golden opportunity. She stalled, spotting what Wild already had. “It’s unlocked.” She took a glove from her pocket to lift the passenger door handle, but Wild intervened.

  “Don’t bother.” He gestured towards the house and checked the wheelie bin — empty — carefully positioning it up against the side door. If someone were still in the house he wasn’t chancing a one-on-one encounter. Heroics were for idiots. They’d go in together through the front door with Mr Wheelie as the element of surprise.

  The door had been forced — a muddy scuff mark suggesting it had been kicked in. Wild eased the door inward with a pencil, letting it run its full ratchet-squeal arc. He blinked in recognition at the yellowed floral wallpaper, like something one of his aunties would have had. A faint smell of stale milk and too many cigarettes gave the air a tang of despair.

  Losing patience, Olsen peered through one of the downstairs windows. Grimy net curtains filtered the view, an unintended kindness. “It doesn’t look like he’s had many visitors in a long while.”

  Wild growled. “Well, he had one anyway. Come on. Let’s go in.” They were welcomed by creaking floorboards and the slow ticking of a clock. Wild called out to the near silence, “It’s the police.” No takers. He shrugged and pointed down the hall, stepping past a mound of old newspapers.

  Someone had given the place a superficial going over. Kids would have taken the car, even if it was a shit heap, so Wild dismissed that possibility. A grudge then, or a decoy for whatever someone had actually been looking for. He considered that as he started the tour.

  The front room chaos hadn’t touched a whisky bottle standing sentinel on a coffee table. A glass tumbler beside it held the remnants of a dram. Wild looked up to attract Olsen’s attention, but she had already seen it.

  She nodded. “One for forensics.”

  They shared a half-smile. As if a burglar might have got thirsty, midway through ransacking Porter’s hovel. Olsen crossed the room and Wild covered the other half. He saw nothing except neglect. Books thick with dust, one worn slipper upended on the carpet, and a ceramic figurine with the legend ‘Skegness’ adrift on a windowsill. Strange to think that someone’s happy memory had been abandoned to a thick film of grime. Wild wasn’t even sure where Skegness was, but the little statue wasn’t much of an advert anyhow.

  The other downstairs rooms comprised a Sunday Best parlour — undisturbed and immaculate, apart from cobwebs and copious dead flies — and the kitchen. This seemed to be where Alexander Porter had done most of his living, when he still had that option. A thick woollen blanket slumped over a fireside chair suggested Porter might have slept there too. More newspapers and a spread of envelopes, mostly unopened, mostly brown and windowed, completed the picture. On one wall, marooned against the same floral wallpaper from long ago, a schoolboy looked out from a colour photograph — the face no longer quite a child’s and hinting at the man he would become. Wild put the boy’s age at thirteen, maybe fourteen, estimating a current age range from the late Mr Porter’s final tally. A second photograph on the mantelpiece showed Porter leaning on a stick, a small dog at his feet. Wild took pictures of both and added them to his mental list for bagging up on the way out. Another wall sported a black metal cross, stark and unforgiving.

  Wild struck gold at the back of one of the open drawers — two shotgun cartridges. He turned to Olsen. “There must be a cabinet for a shooter upstairs.” He saw the look on her face and instantly regretted his words, aware that he’d reduced himself to a caricature London copper.

  She led the way upstairs and Wild tried not to notice her backside. More debris at the top of the landing gave him a welcome distraction. She paused outside a bedroom door and glanced back. He waved a hand: ladies first. She extended her baton, yelled, “Police — I’m coming in!” and turned the handle.

  Wild followed, a step behind. The first thing that caught his eye was the ruptured firearms cabinet in one of the alcoves. Judging by the damage to the locks, someone had used tools to prise it open. The cabinet was bare. He reached for his notebook. “One thing’s for certain, Porter didn’t break into his own gun cabinet.”

  Olsen nodded tentatively. “And he didn’t break into his own house either.” She thought for a moment. “How do we know whether this was done before Porter died or afterwards?”

  Wild nodded. “Good question — we don’t. And without the weapon we can’t assume that Alexander Porter’s shotgun was the one that killed him.”

  Chapter 4

  In London they used to say, short of a mass murder, there were always parking spaces at the mortuary. In this case, out in the sticks, that amounted to precisely three spaces — with two occupied. Wild parked and walked the length of the car, drawn to a dull line along the rear panel. It looked like someone had keyed it. He thought back, came up with nothing, and entered the mortuary with what his mother used to call ‘a face like a smacked arse.’

  The door swung behind him with a satisfying thud. Loud enough to wake the dead. He grinned momentarily. It’d make collecting evidence a bloody sight easier. Another door creaked open along the hall and a disembodied voice called, “Is that you, Sergeant Wild?”

  He popped a cough sweet in his mouth. “Yeah.” As he resumed walking, a neon light flickered above him.

  The late Mr Porter lay on stainless steel, a plastic sheet draped tastefully over what remained of his head. Dr Bell stood back to admire his handiwork. “I had hoped to be finished by now, but I’ve still got the head to examine.” One look from Wild told him there was no need to rush on account of visitors. “Just the preliminaries, then.”

  An assistant entered from another door, her shiny green scrubs a sharp contrast to the greying cadaver. Dr Bell glanced over his shoulder. “Ah, Belinda, let me introduce Detective Sergeant Wild — he’s joined the local constabulary from London.”

  She looked distinctly unimpressed. Wild didn’t react — he’d seen a lot of that in the past few weeks. Belinda extended a hand and he noticed the coral nail varnish.

  “Belinda Scott, Anatomical Pathology Technologist.”

  Wild figured that she looked young and spent a lot of time and effort justifying her position. Or maybe social skills weren’t part of her training. He took the handshake and then circled back to Dr Bell.

  “Anything useful, Doctor?”

  “Cause of death, I think you’ve already ascertained — massive head trauma, caused by a firearm. In addition, the late Mr Porter had advanced cirrhosis of the liver, and a dodgy ticker as well. Not exactly a picture of health.”

  Wild gazed at the array of surgical instruments laid out for the feast.

  Dr Bell pointed to the cadaver. “I take it you noticed the bruising to the ribs.”

  “Yeah, and suicides don’t usually beat themselves up first.”

  “Quite. You may be interested to learn that his last supper was rabbit pie washed down with best bitter. Not a bad choice. Either he ate in a rush or he was intoxicated enough not to notice, because I also recovered lead shot from the stomach.”

  Wild conjured with the information. Judging by the state of Porter’s home, he’d not cooked a meal there for some time. Rabbit pie? Who was this guy, Elmer J. Fudd? His phone rang and he headed for the door. “Excuse me a moment.”

  “Hi, it’s Marnie, Marnie Olsen?”

  He cringed. Statements as questions. So last year.

  “I’m following up on family and next of kin, like you asked. There is a son, Nathan Porter, living in Kilmarn
ock. I thought you might want to ring him yourself, or get the local police there to notify him? Also, I was wondering about . . .”

  He cut across her. “Any idea where someone could get a rabbit pie, maybe as a takeaway?”

  “Not very likely. What about in a pub meal?” She paused, evidently answering her own question. “I’ll get on it and ask around, if that’s okay?”

  “Sure.” He tried not to sound needy. Local knowledge would take a long while to acquire, once the locals had thawed.

  After the call he let DI Marsh know that he’d asked Marnie Olsen to follow up on some enquiries. He took pains to explain it was only routine stuff to free up his time. “Once I find my feet with the local community . . .” He left the conversation hanging.

  DI Marsh picked up the silence. “I’ll square it for today. And then you’ll have to buddy up with Ben.”

  As Wild ventured back inside, he stopped at the inner door. The surgical saw was already humming away merrily. He eased the door open a few inches and spoke up. “I’ll be in my car. Come and get me when you’re done.” He’d seen three post-mortems in his career. Once as a bet, once as a favour, and once out of guilt. It was always the face that got to him. Well, that and the skull. He finished his cough sweet and sucked on another, inhaling menthol as he gazed up at the sky and wondered what the point was of weighing half a brain.

  As he’d expected, Belinda got the job of hostess, tapping on his car window to summon him. He put his notebook away and followed her.

  “Nasty scratch.” She pointed to his car’s side panel.

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  She led him back into the mortuary without further comment. He’d often wondered what kind of person chose a job like that, or what it did to them. As he entered the room he glanced over at the cadaver, relieved to see it was covered from head to toe.

  Dr Bell nudged a tap with his elbow and water stopped gushing into a stainless-steel sink. He turned to one side, water dripping off his hands. “You’ve already had the highlights and I’ll get the full report over to you some time tomorrow. Please give my best wishes to DI Marsh — what do you make of her?”

  “I get the impression she doesn’t take any prisoners.”

  Belinda’s face twitched and Wild closed his mouth, recognising an ambush.

  “That’s a fair assessment.” Dr Bell chuckled to himself. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. We’re a tightly knit professional community and we always like to test the incomers.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  Belinda cast Dr Bell a withering look and walked past him to a table on the far side of the room, lifting off a report and checking it against the one beneath it. Satisfied, she carried it over to Wild.

  Dr Bell finished drying his hands. “Thank you, Belinda. Well, DS Wild, no doubt we’ll be seeing you again in the future — vertically, of course.”

  Wild fashioned a smile and started walking. He got the impression that Belinda would have liked a private word, although his impressions weren’t always reliable. Back in the car he texted Marnie Olsen: Contact me if you find anything out — my phone is always on.

  He smiled at the screen. Because, hey, what else was there to do with his time?

  Chapter 5

  Wild’s shopping marked him out as a singleton — a curry for one that he’d probably split over a couple of days, a four-pack of lager to last the week, a TV mag to avoid flicking through the channels (but he would, anyway), some frozen chips, a large bar of chocolate and some healthy yoghurts to offset everything else. No need for veg as there was still some left in the freezer and something green lurking at the back of the fridge. The lad on the checkout for ten items or less judged him silently, moving the goods past the scanner with all the care and dedication of someone who thought the world owed him a better living than the one he’d attained. Wild unfolded his bag-for-life, carefully packed everything up and then paid the boy, indifferent to the people behind him who shuffled from foot to foot like a static conga.

  As soon as he got inside the front door he set the shopping down in the middle of the kitchen and switched Radio Four on — less about intellectual stimulation and more about the sound of human voices. Old habits died hard and he still hadn’t got used to an empty house. After putting the shopping away he took off his shoes and left them in the hall, changing into the slippers he’d brought back from Morocco. Steph had ribbed him for weeks about how they smelt of goat. He sometimes pictured her now, holding court in New Scotland Yard. A rising star, so the press said, and no rising star needs dead weight attached. Maybe she’d always seen it coming, which explained why she’d kept her own name after marriage. Clever Steph, always the better detective.

  Time check: six thirty. Thirty minutes to go. He’d eat afterwards and make do with a cup of tea in the meantime. No word yet from Marnie Olsen, which disappointed him. He had hoped she’d be able to cut corners and save him some time. Oh well, never trust a plod to do a detective’s job. First thing tomorrow, he’d regroup and get stuck in with Ben Galloway in tow. Solving Porter’s murder could get him onside with DI Marsh. It never hurt to try and impress a senior officer . . . well, unless you were married to her at the time.

  Radio Four called him back to the kitchen, two antagonists picking apart a political scandal like carrion crows. Wild filled in the blanks — he was good at that, deciphering the unsaid. A junior minister caught on camera making promises to a potential backer, the player being played. The two pundits chewed the carcass over until it was tenderised enough for public consumption.

  He boiled a kettle while the computer booted up and glanced in the full-length mirror, the one he still hadn’t fixed in the hall.

  Not bad. He sucked in his cheeks and straightened up to five foot eleven. Maybe it was time to start using the weights again. He angled his head to see where his hair was thinning at the back and blew out a breath.

  Now came the familiar tension. Would she be there? He took the tea over and logged in, automatically moving the mouse over the Skype icon. Two minutes to go. He blew on his tea and took a sip, running through a mental checklist — personal phone switched off and out of reach, no distractions. Last time, he’d got a sales text during the call and Jackie had been so upset that she didn’t show up the following week.

  Time. He clicked through and held his breath for the three-tone-squelch and swoosh. A black screen faced him. He heard her breathing softly, somewhere off-camera, and waited for her to speak first.

  “Craig, are you there?”

  He knew she could probably see him, but he also knew this exchange reassured her.

  “I’m here, Jackie. How have you been?”

  She took a sharp in-breath and moved out of the gloom, stopping when half her face was exposed. “I’m . . . okay.” The redness on her face suggested otherwise.

  “Why don’t you tell me about your week?”

  “Alright then.” Her voice brightened.

  He listened, barely moving, only smiling a little when he thought it was warranted. She spoke in generalities, keeping him at bay. Trips to the shops and some terrible television programme she’d mentioned before — he wished he’d checked his notes before the call.

  Top right of his screen, a clock marked the minutes. “Has Tony been in touch?”

  Her face tightened and she brushed at a hair he couldn’t see. “Not directly. Friends of friends . . .” She made the second friends into a parody of itself. “I was thinking of getting away for a couple of days . . .”

  The sentence lingered and he knew exactly when to catch it. “I can let you have a hundred, if you need it?”

  She sighed. “I feel terrible taking money from you like this.”

  “It’s fine, honestly. I’ll send it over by PayPal tonight.”

  “What would I do without you?’

  “There are people who can help you. I may not be in London now but I still have contacts.”

  “I’m fine as we are, as I am, I mean.
What’s it like in your new digs — gonna show me?”

  “Nah. Nothing much to see.” He glanced at the boxes still taking up space at the side of the room.

  “What you need is a woman’s touch!”

  She laughed, and he laughed too.

  “I think the new beard really suits you.”

  He stroked the three days of growth for effect and unconsciously tightened his stomach muscles.

  “Gives you character.” She edged into the light, stopping abruptly as his work mobile rang.

  “Two secs.” He cringed a little because he knew she’d throw a fit. Too late now. He glanced over his shoulder and held the phone close. “DS Wild.”

  “It’s Marnie Olsen?” She didn’t sound certain herself. “Listen, do you fancy a quick drink and some pub food? Maybe some rabbit pie?”

  He grinned. “You’re kidding? Well done! Where do you want to meet?”

  “I’ll be outside the George — do you know it? About two miles from Porter’s field — I’ll text you the details.”

  “I’m leaving now and I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He cut the call, stifled his glee and moved back into shot. “I’m sorry, Jackie, something’s come up from work — I really have to go.” He closed Skype down, quickly, trying not to catch the last glimpse of her face, open-mouthed and furious.

  Olsen’s text arrived, enabling him to look up the location online. Perfect. He changed back into work shoes, grabbed his wallet, warrant card and keys, and headed for the door. Behind him in the kitchen, Radio Four was still putting the world to rights.

  Chapter 6

  Wild felt a frisson of excitement as he threaded a final B-road to reach the George. It wasn’t exactly on the tourist trail. An imposing building, sitting at one end of a village. Wild judged it to be a coaching inn in its former life, back when the road had led to somewhere other than beyond the fields. The paintwork confirmed his suspicions that its glory days were long gone, even though the car park boasted several cars and a tractor.