Foot Soldiers

by Neil Williams

  Ned didn’t want to listen. He just wanted to grab his jacket and get the hell away from her, but Matilda was like a dog with a bone. “She’s just like you.”

  “What,” he snapped, “a man?”

  “No,” she said, “well,” she added, “No – she’s one of those ‘climb the ladder’ types, just like you. She wants to be noticed.”

  Ned couldn’t believe how wrong Matilda had gotten him. “I don’t want to be noticed.”

  “Yeah, you do,” she smiled. “Sure you do. How else are you going to work undercover with a bunch of bank robbing surfers?”

  ‘Shit!’ he thought. Did Matilda have a point? Ned wasn’t sure. He’d give anything to be like Keanu in Point Break. Hell, he’d give his left arm to wear ripped jeans and grow scraggy, floppy hair, but how was he supposed to get and do those things without getting noticed? Ned had to admit it, it was a stumper; “I... dunno.”

  “By getting,” Matilda suddenly stalled as Larry, a fellow officer, walked by whistling the theme tune to Dallas. ‘Bugger’ thought Ned. ‘That’s going to be stuck in my head for days now!’

  Matilda waited for Larry to bugger off out of earshot before she continued to reveal her cunning little plan. “By getting noticed, that’s how. “

  She stepped up closer to Ned, almost pressing her forehead into his, and whispered softly in his ear. “By solving this murder before... ‘Batman and Robin’ do. That’ll get you noticed.”

  Ned guffawed, “Or sacked!”

  Matilda rocked her head from side to side, “That too.” She plonked her hand on his shoulder and flashed him a cheeky smile. “Then again, being a copper is a risky job, Ned. Time to start taking some risks, I reckon.”

  Ned wasn’t sure. “Matilda, I...”

  “And I know just the fella to help give you a foot up the ladder.”

  Oh no. Ned had a horrible feeling he knew exactly who this ‘fella’ she was talking about was and it made him feel queasy. He shook his head, pleading with her not to prove him right. “Please, don’t say his name.”

  “What,” she frowned; oblivious to why she shouldn’t say it. “Ralph Kramer?”

  Ned sank. “I told you not to say his name.”

  Matilda was confused; “Why not? He’s just the help you need to get on the radar.”

  Ned couldn’t agree any less. “Believe me, he’s not.”

  “What are you talking about?” she barked. “Detective Inspector Ralph Kramer..! He was a legend back in the day.” She was clearly a big fan. “My dad worked with him for a few years before he,” her smile tumbled down her face, “died.”

  Ned could see the ‘little girl’ Matilda used to be in her sunken eyes. He wanted to say ‘sorry’, but she quickly shook off the sadness and soldiered on before he could draw the words. “Kramer, he’s retired now. He lives on a farm up near the Fort, but I reckon he can help. When he was at the Met, he had a nickname –“

  “The knack,” they both said. Matilda was curious. How did he..?

  “I know,” he sighed. “They called him that because he had a knack for solving any case that landed on his desk.”

  “So you know him?”

  “Yeah,” he groaned. “I know him. Only I don’t call him ‘the knack’.”

  “Then what do you call him?”

  Ned growled; clearly there was no love lost. “Dad!”

  Matilda spluttered a chortle of amazement and widened her big brown eyes. “He’s your dad?” He nodded, but she still couldn’t get her head around it and had to ask him again. “Ralph Kramer is your father?”

  He nodded again, clearly ashamed, but Matilda was still a tad confused. “Yeah, but - hang on! You’re Ned Hope, not Kramer.” Then, she twigged. “You took your mother’s name?”

  “Aye,” Ned grabbed his jacket and slammed the locker door. He stalled and looked at Matilda with a serious glint in his eyes. “Look, can we drop this ‘getting noticed’ malarkey and go for a bacon bap and hot mug of coffee, please? If I don’t eat soon, I’m gonna –“

  “Okay, sure,” she said backing away. “Whatever you say.” Then, she folded her arms and gave him that look of hers again. “Then again, NO!”

  “Matilda, please - let it go. There’s no way on earth I’m asking my dad for help – on this or... on anything.”

  “And why not?” she ordered.

  Ned’s shoulders sagged as he exhaled a mighty sigh, “Because I’ve met him.”

  3

  Ralph Kramer loved the great outdoors. Not the John Candy film, but the real McCoy.

  After spending the best part of his sixty-seven years cooped up in stale police interview rooms, wedged behind cluttered desks in smoky cop shops and getting sticky sat in cars with no air conditioning and drinking coffee that could raise the dead, the endless sea of sky and rolling hills filled him with an enormous sense of freedom and life that he’d not felt since he was a kid.

  Back then, he lived on a farm with his parents, Morgan and Joan, in West Yorkshire, and things were sweet for a while. Then a dark cloud rolled over their lives and Ralph’s innocence was lost forever.

  When his mum was murdered, Ralph was nine. It was the first time he’d ever seen a dead body... seen so much blood; seen that look of dread and sadness in the eyes of a victim.

  He’d found her in bed. At first, he’d figured she was still fast asleep. Life on a farm was tough, and even though Jack, the farmhand, helped his father work the fields, the hours were long, so Ralph understood that compulsion to throw the alarm clock against the wall and get some much needed shut eye. But his dad had told him to wake his mum, and he knew, only too well, what would happen to him if he didn’t do what his father had told him.

  He reached out and pressed his fingers into the thin bed sheet that sat on his mum’s shoulder and shook her gently. “Mum.” But then he felt something sticky on the tips of his fingers. It was warm and wet, like syrup.

  Curious, Ralph tried to peel his fingers off the bed sheet, but as he lifted his hand, it slipped off his mum’s shoulder and rolled her pale, lifeless face towards him.

  Ralph staggered back and looked down at her. Her once rich blue eyes were now as black as coal. Her lips; drained of blood and chalk white.

  “Mum?”

  He could already feel the tears welling in the rim of his eyes, getting heavy and blurring his sight. He could feel the churn of his stomach, as the sick rose up into his throat. Then, he lifted his hand and saw the blood trickling down his fingers.

  Ralph would never forget watching two faceless ‘uniforms’ lead his father away from the farm; his wrists cuffed behind his back, the steel glinting in the dying sunlight. He would forget so many things as he grew older, but never that look on his father’s face, before his head was pressed down and pushed into the back of a Panda car. He would never forget the last thing his father would ever say to him. “I didn’t do it, son. You have to believe me. It wasn’t me.”

  He would never find out who really murdered his mother. His father died in prison not long after the hearing, and the only other suspect in the case – Jack the farmhand – was never seen or heard from again.

  Back then, Ralph had no idea that that would be the last time he would see his father alive. He was quickly filed into the care system and passed from one foster family to the next.

  Maybe that look on his dad’s face and his mum’s blood on his own fingers were what drove him to join the police in the first place. Maybe never solving her murder was what pushed him to crack every case that landed on his desk, no matter what the cost to his own life, family and marriage, as he rapidly climbed the promotions ladder and earned the nickname, THE KNACK.

  Ralph Kramer loved the great outdoors, but, just like his estranged son, he hated the rain. Not because it flooded into his boots, but because when the wet touched his fingers, all he could see and feel was her blood.

  Thankfully that morning, the sun had put its hat on and the air was crisp.

  Ralph buzzed arou
nd the roller coasting hills on his quad bike, kicking up muck and spitting smoke as it tore over a steep ridge towards home.

  Perched on Ralph’s lap was Dixon, his wonderfully loyal and dippy Springer. She was a creamy white with splashes of Galaxy bar brown spots on her back, face and ears. She looked like she’d been attacked by a blind man with a paint brush. Her ears flapped in the breeze.

  Ralph skid the quad to a halt and took a quiet moment to soak in the majestic wonder of Hadrian’s Wall, running as far as the eye could see, until it vanished into the creeping sparkle of sunlight on the horizon. He looked down the ridge towards home and kicked the quad bike back into thunderous life.

  Ironically, Ralph now lived with Dixon in a battered old farmhouse a short woodland walk away from Housesteads Fort. He’d planned to move overseas when he retired, but that uncontrollable urge to go home, or at least, touch something like it, was overwhelming and Ralph always followed his heart. He’d also wanted to stay close to Ned and try to fix their tattered relationship, but he was his own worst enemy and solving crime wasn’t the only knack he had. He was also very good at screwing up his family.

  The porch door creaked open and Ralph stepped into the dank light, his dirty wellington boots stamping muck all over the welcome mat. “C’mon, Dix, lass – in you pop, there’s a good girl.”

  Dixon squeezed past him and scurried across the tiles into the living room, leaping straight onto the sofa and curling up into a ball.

  Ralph shut the door, then looked down to see something poking out from under his boot. He lifted his foot. There on the welcome mat was the local rag; THE HARBRIDGE POST, caked in sheep shit.

  Picking it up and scraping away the muck, he unfolded the paper and saw the headline; SKELETON FOUND NEAR HADRIAN’S WALL

  The kitchen wasn’t a kitchen, but a junk yard of ditched hobbies and retirement plans. Incomplete Air-fix models, kites, fishing and skiing equipment, crossword puzzle books and Russell’s cardboard boxes littered the unkempt units. Piles of newspapers, corn flake crumbs and dirty plates and mugs scattered the floor.

  Dumping the rag on the kitchen table, Ralph scraped up a seat and took a sharp slurp of piping hot tea from a chipped STAR WARS novelty mug Ned had bought him for Christmas when he was eleven, and studied the newspaper article with eager eyes. He may have retired from active duty, but mystery and murder would never leave his bones. Ralph was a detective, no matter how hard he tried not to be.

  Feeling Dixon settling down on his feet, he leant under the table and ruffled her hair. Taking another sharp slurp of tea, he bellowed a sigh. He suddenly felt very lonely... bored; Christ, was he bored.

  He glanced again at the newspaper headline and wished he was in charge of the murder investigation; anything but another day of ‘Cash in the Attic’.

  4

  Ned lived in a three storey town house of flats that had a communal bathroom and kitchen. It wasn’t ideal, but needs must as the devil drives, and at that moment in his life it had driven him into the murky world of shared accommodation with a tight arsed traffic warden called Barry Hobbs, who had a nasty habit of stealing his milk and filling the carton back up with tap water, and Aaron Brinkley, a twenty-three year old loafer who’d modelled himself on ‘Jesse Pinkman’ out of Breaking Bad, but couldn’t break wind without crapping himself. Brinkley had a big heart and loved ‘Bake Off’ with an undying passion. That show, and baking, was his life.

  Clambering up the steps and onto the landing, Ned rushed over to the door of his flat and hurried to root out his keys and get inside before anyone knew he was there. If Barry caught him, he’d be stuck on the landing for hours, rapidly losing the will to live while the wild-eyed traffic warden droned on about some crap in his crappy life, or moaned about the mysterious nests of pubic hair he kept finding and scooping out of the bath tub plug hole.

  Finally finding his keys, Ned hit the lock and was almost home and dry, when – “Yo, Ned!”

  He closed his eyes for a second and sighed, then turned around to see Brinkley, stepping out of the communal kitchen, dragging his baggy jeans back up over his arse. “Oh, all right, Brinkley?”

  “Better than you, pal,” he said. “You’re getting skinny. When was the last time you ate?”

  Ned wasn’t sure. He’d hoped to have popped into Mel’s Cafe to buy one of her juicy bacon butties, but Matilda’s insistence that he solve Liam Roberts’ murder had made it slip his mind. “Erm...” he said, suddenly wishing he hadn’t.

  Brinkley grabbed his arm and dragged him towards the kitchen. “C’mon – I’ve got some buns in the oven.”

  Brinkley had clearly been having a ‘baking day’ and the kitchen now looked more like a fete than a place to make toast, as freshly baked bread, sticky Chelsea buns and a variety of sponge cakes littered the units and table.

  Ned gazed at the delicious looking slice of fruit cake Brinkley slid under his nose, and was almost about to take a bite, when he remembered what else his housemate did to make ends meet. “You haven’t put anything ‘funny’ in this, have you?”

  Brinkley shot up his hands in defence. “Would I?”

  But Ned knew Brinkley only too well and replied with a withered look. Brinkley lowered his hands. “Okay, it’s a fair cop, you’ve got me... I have.”

  Ned really didn’t want to know, but asked him all the same. “What?”

  His face vanished behind a cheeky smile. “Cinnamon!”

  Ned sighed, and then smiled at Brinkley, who urged him to take a bite of his fruit cake. He slotted a large chunk into his mouth and had a good chew. The look on his face was that of utter delight.

  “So,” pleaded Brinkley. “What do you think, Mary?”

  “Why have I always got to be Mary?” he balked, spitting crumbs.

  “Cos you’re no ‘Paul’, mate – that be why. You’re not even ‘Prue’.”

  Ned didn’t want to be Mary. “What about Noel or the other one?”

  “OK, you can be Sandi... but just this once.” Then Brinkley widened his eyes, pointed at the fruit cake and demanded, “So?”

  Ned took a moment before he realised what exactly Brinkley was asking him and widened his eyes to suggest pleasure. “Oh – yeah, delicious! Seriously, Brink, it’s yummy. You’ve really got to go on Bake Off, mate.”

  Brinkley smirked smugly. “That’s the dream, pal. Next time they do regionals, I’ll be there. No question.”

  Ned took another mouthful of cake, as Brinkley scraped up a seat at the table next to him and started to roll a wafer-thin ciggie. “Well, that’s me done,” he sighed, sparking up the cigarette. “What about you?”

  Ned didn’t know how to answer, so Brinkley tried to help him along. “Catch any bad guys or solve any murders last night?”

  He looked down at his damp and mucky boots, and groaned, “I stood in a field and got wet.”

  Brinkley laughed. “Living the dream, eh?”

  Ned deflated like a leaky balloon, “Yeah.” He was clearly not living any kind of a dream.

  Ned slumped down on the edge of his single bed and struggled to peel off his boot. It was tight and damp, oozing slushy muck. Finally, the boot broke loose from his ankle and slipped onto the floor. He picked at his sock, still squelchy, and pulled at it like a string of melted cheese on a slice of pizza until it snapped off his toes. “Jesus!”

  Brown water with bits in pooled around his feet as he rung out the sock. Ned sighed, tossing the sock across the room. He dropped like a sack of rocks onto the mattress and groaned.

  He gazed up at the ceiling for what felt like hours, then glanced around his dingy little flat. It was in desperate need of a vac.

  Ned’s so-called home was a shrine to the classic movies he’d loved as a kid, and had shaped him as an adult.

  Giant film posters decorated the cracked magnolia walls; DIE HARD, LETHAL WEAPON, INVASION U.S.A, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE LAST BOY SCOUT, POINT BREAK, and tatty labelled VHS tapes and DVD box-sets cluttered the book shelf and floo
r.

  Looking at the DIE HARD poster, Ned didn’t feel much like dirty vest Bruce any more. In fact, he felt rubbish... pointless... worthless.

  At that very moment in time, he felt exactly like what he was, a lowly Police Constable with permanently damp feet, who looked more like Mel Giedroyc than Gibson, and that pissed him off. He knew he should’ve been so much more, but that would have meant making an effort.

  Closing his eyes, Ned suddenly felt very tired and, as he quickly drifted into sleep, he muttered a deeply gutted, “Yippee ki yay!”

  5

  The following morning, Ned was back at the station, quietly readying himself for another day of ‘scarecrow’ duty up at the wall and force feeding his body with as much caffeine as it could handle, before that bitter taste of black coffee turned sour and gave him a hangover.

  He’d skipped breakfast again and could already feel the air bubbles in his stomach growling angrily at him for being so stupid. He wanted to burp, but managed to suppress it with a throat-burning gulp. The sudden, searing pain in his chest made him wince.

  Matilda stood beside him, also nursing a plastic cup of bastard strong coffee, which Ned thought was a little odd because she already seemed sprightly and wired. Her big brown eyes looked even bigger. Ned couldn’t help but think she looked like a cross between Tigger and something out of ‘Close Encounters’. It made him giggle.

  Matilda shot him a curious frown – what was he looking so ruddy cheerful about? “All right, Ned?” she asked with a yawn.

  “Aye,” he said, trying his best to wipe the grin from his chops. “Not too bad.”

  Matilda sucked the dregs of coffee out of the cup, scrunched it up and tossed it into the waste basket in front of Ned. “All set for another day of doing naff all?”