Foot Soldiers

by Neil Williams

  Ned’s smirk sank faster than the Titanic. “Not really, you?”

  Matilda shook her head, “God, no.”

  She wanted to ask him if he’d thought any more about what she’d suggested they do to get noticed, but before she could, the door into the briefing room swung open and Sommers rushed inside, waving a pale brown forensic file above her head like a flag bearer, and motored towards Monroe, who’d stepped out of a small office at the back of the room to greet her.

  “Forensic report back on the metal splinters found in the sternum,” she yelled. “Looks like we were right about the murder weapon...“

  Matilda looked at the forensic file clutched in Sommers’ fingers and quickly saw her chance. She looked sheepishly at Ned. “Sorry!”

  Before he could muster up any kind of a reaction, Matilda shoved him off the desk he’d perched his bum on and watched as he toppled into Sommers, racing full pelt towards Monroe, and knocked her to the ground with a bone-crunching thud.

  As the contents of the forensic file showered down and littered the floor with crime scene photographs, statements and case notes, Sommers suddenly found herself sandwiched tightly between the cold wooden tiles and Ned. “You bloody idiot!”

  “Oh God,” he grimaced, trying to get off her as quickly as he could. “I am so, so sorry. I,” He stopped and shot Matilda, now trying desperately to muffle her giggle with her hands, a dirty look. “Fell over.”

  Sommers had no time for sorry and muttered incoherent profanities at Ned as she hurried to gather up the scattering of crime scene photographs and report notes and slot them back into the forensic file.

  The last time Ned had felt this embarrassed was when he’d peed himself during Cub Scouts. He felt rotten and tried to help Sommers gather up her things. “Here, let me help you with those –“

  Grabbing a crime scene photograph off the floor, Ned was about to hand it back to her, but stalled when he saw something that sparked up his curiosity. It was a photograph of the murder weapon. It looked like a rusty old knife, all splintered and...

  “Give me that!” Sommers snatched the photograph out of Ned’s hand and stuffed it back into the file before he could take a proper gander.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just trying to help.”

  She silenced him with a look that could kill a small child and got back onto her feet. She looked down at him and snarled, “Idiot”, then stormed off with Monroe into the small back office before her own embarrassment kicked in. The hard slam of the door made the walls shudder.

  Ned stood up and looked at Matilda. He’d wanted to sneer at her, but now all he could think about was what he’d seen in the forensic file and couldn’t shake the curiosity from his eyes.

  “What is it?” she quizzed. “What did you see?”

  “Murder,” he whispered. “Cold blooded murder.”

  It was then Matilda realised that Ned Hope watched way too many films and clearly needed to get a life.

  6

  Ned’s pilot light had been fired and his mind was blazing with ideas, theories and thoughts… along with the theme tune to ‘Inspector Morse’: its eerie, macabre melody the perfect soundtrack to the murder mystery he was trying to solve inside his head.

  The wind and rain had returned with a vengeance; clearly working the same shift pattern as Ned and Matilda, now back up at the wall, soaked, cold and miserable, and losing all feeling in their toes.

  But today there was no talk of Nigella’s Nutella cheese cake or Salami… only murder, and Matilda couldn’t have been more pleased.

  “Liam Roberts was stabbed with a Pugio.” said Ned with a twang of confidence he’d not had since... well, ever.

  “A what?” she asked.

  “A Pugio! It’s a Roman sidearm... a long knife, like a dagger.” He shot Matilda an assured look. “Liam, he found a dagger.”

  “And they killed him for it?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, but he wasn’t convinced. He kept thinking about the photograph of the rusty old Pugio. “But if they did kill him for the knife, then why use it?”

  Matilda still looked a little lost, so he tried to explain his thinking. “The blade, it splintered, right?

  “Yeah,” she nodded, “So?”

  “The murder weapon, it’s a rusty old relic that’s been in the muck for centuries, so...”

  “So,” she twigged, “the last thing the killer would want to do is use it as a weapon?!”

  “Unless,” he barked excitedly, “they didn’t care about its worth.”

  He fell silent for a moment trying to make sense of the things rattling around inside his head. “I think the knife, it was just a coincidence. It was just... handy.” He looked at Matilda. “That even if Liam hadn’t found it –“

  “He’d still be dead?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded with a glint of sadness in his eyes.

  “Well,” she whispered. “Word around the camp fire is that this Liam bloke was a bit of a ‘ladies man’. He liked playing the field.”

  Ned’s eyes lit up, “Really?”

  “That’s what I heard Cagney saying to whatsit...”

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, eh?”

  Matilda smirked. “Or a man whose wife is playing away from home.”

  Looking back over his shoulder at the forensic tent, Ned felt a little bit more like dirty vest Bruce again. “Nah,” he said. “I think something else happened up here... something that’s got naff all to do with a Pugio.”

  Matilda couldn’t hide her giddy delight and fist pumped. “And they’re off!” She whipped her big brown eyes at Ned and said, “So, now all we’ve got to do is find out who did it and why, yeah?”

  She waited for Ned to agree, but he suddenly fell quiet. She could see that ‘Die Hard’ buzz slipping away from his eyes. She was losing him.

  She quickly took his hand. “You’re a good bloke, Ned.”

  He looked at her. Jesus, was she being serious?

  “A good copper...”

  ‘Hold on’, he thought, ‘Maybe not’.

  But still she stoked the embers of his confidence, “Too good to be standing in a muddy field, getting wet.”

  Ned didn’t know what to say. What to think. He tried to come up with an excuse, a valid reason not to go down the iffy road Matilda was trying to steer him, but he couldn’t think of anything other than, ‘She’s right’.

  Then, he did think of something to say, but it was the last thing he thought he ever would. “Okay, you win,” he sighed. “I’ll ask him.”

  Matilda’s big browns lit up like a Christmas tree and she did a little jump. But Ned hadn’t quite finished. Squeezing her hand to grab back her attention, he looked her in the eyes and said, “But you’re coming with.”

  At that very moment, Ned knew that if he looked up the definition of ‘excitement’ in the dictionary, he would find a photograph of Matilda Jones with a big fat grin on her face.

  He smiled, happy she was happy, but suddenly, there in the back of his mind, was a nagging doubt.

  Why was she so eager for him to ‘get noticed’? Why did she volunteer so readily for ‘scarecrow’ duty? It had been niggling at him since she’d first suggested they ask his dad for help; was she really doing all this to help him, or was she ‘playing’ him like Johnny Depp ‘played’ Al Pacino in ‘Donnie Brasco’?

  At that very moment, Ned couldn’t help but think it was the latter.

  7

  At first she thought Ned had a little crush on her. He kept glancing at her, but turning away before she could catch his eye; like Colin Firth in ‘Love Actually’, when he’s driving the Portuguese cleaner he’s fallen in love with home after they’d jumped in the lake to rescue his ‘crim’ novel.

  Maybe he fancied ‘her’ out of that telly show with ‘thingy’ in it, she thought. She’d been told by her pals that she looked a little like her... well, if you squinted. Maybe it was that?

  But then his fleeting glances turned into a c
old, hard stare that would have made Paddington Bear proud and Matilda started to feel a little uncomfortable.

  “Have I got something on my face?” she said, trying to break the deathly silence, but Ned didn’t answer.

  Jesus, maybe he was dead! He did look a little pale. But then, he blinked. Then, he looked away.

  She wanted to ask him what was wrong, but had a sneaky suspicion she already knew, so figured it was best to keep stum.

  Thankfully, the ‘below zero’ atmosphere thawed quicker than an ice cube in a microwave when the ride to Ralph’s farm took a sudden turn for the worse.

  “Jesus!” yelled Ned, as the wheels of the Police jeep plunged into a scattering of potholes and shook him like an etch-a-sketch.

  “Sorry!” shouted Matilda, spinning the wheel every which way to try and dodge the minefield of craters in the so-called road.

  The jeep jiggered and bounced, tossing them both around the cab like pants in a tumble drier.

  “This is fun!” said Ned; the relentless rattle of the jeep making him sound like Larry the Lamb.

  Matilda laughed, but then groaned when the jeep rocked violently from side to side and she knocked her head against the door window.

  Ned grabbed her arm. “Are you all right?”

  She could see he was concerned and that made her feel better. She nodded. She smiled. He smiled back at her and gently squeezed her arm. And with that, she knew... when it came to Ned, she would, nine times out of ten, get away with murder.

  Before the jeep completely fell to pieces, Matilda hit the brakes and killed the engine. Ned looked out of the window and sighed. At the top of the ridge was Ralph’s battered old farmhouse. Just seeing it gave Ned palpitations, but he somehow managed to keep them hidden from Matilda, as they stepped out of the jeep, into pattering rain.

  As they scraped through the muck towards the farm, Ned started shooting ‘Colin Firth’ glances at Matilda again, but this time around she caught his eye. There was nowhere to hide. He had to say something, so figured it may as well be the truth.

  “I’ve figured it out, you know?”

  Matilda clearly knew what he knew, but decided to play dumb. “Figured what out?”

  “Why you’re so eager for me to ask my father for help... to get me noticed.” He shot her a colder look. “You don’t want me to get noticed at all, do you? You want YOU get noticed. You’ve known all along he was my dad.”

  Matilda nodded sheepishly.

  Ned sighed to suppress his welling anger and said, “I bet you haven’t even got a sister.”

  “Okay, you’ve got me!” she confessed, holding out her wrists for cuffing. “I’m bang to rights.”

  Ned shook his head. He felt like a total dufus for ever trusting her. “How could you play me like that?”

  She took a moment to try and find the right words, but couldn’t think of any, so said, “Because you and your old man, you’re my best shot – OUR best shot at getting on the ladder.”

  Ned tried to storm off in a huff, but just slid around in the squelch and almost toppled over.

  Matilda grabbed his arm and caught his eye. “Let me ask you something. How long have you been a copper for?”

  He peeled her fingers off his arm. “I dunno – four, five years. Why?”

  “And me... give or take. And in those four, five years, what have we got to show for it, other than wet feet and earache?”

  Ned couldn’t think of a ruddy thing, other than, “Wet feet and earache?”

  “Exactly,” Matilda then gave him that look of hers again. “We’re better than that, Ned, and you know it.”

  He totally agreed with her, but wasn’t going to tell her she was right, so replied with a childish grunt and walked on ahead of her towards the farmhouse. Matilda gritted her teeth and hurried to catch him before he reached the porch.

  As he stepped towards the door, Ned suddenly felt queasy. He could feel dapples of sweat on his forehead. Every fibre in his body shouted ‘Leg it!’, but before he could, Matilda plonked her hand on his shoulder.

  “Back in the day, our dads were... I dunno... the ‘Morse and Lewis’ of Northumbria.”

  Ned didn’t want to listen, he just wanted to run, but Matilda wouldn’t let him. She looked him in the eyes and, trying to make him understand her motives, said, “Crime and murder – mystery... it’s in OUR blood, Ned. Why can’t we be a ‘dynamic duo’ like our old men were?”

  He smiled at the absurdity of it all and said severely, “Because we’re crap?”

  She then said something that had a deeply unexpected and profound effect on him. The kind of ‘wise words’ Rocky Balboa would spout before he got into the ring and beat ten bells of shit out of his opponent. “Just because crap things happen to you, doesn’t mean that you’re crap.”

  Ned didn’t know whether to hug her or kick her in the shins, so he did the last thing he really wanted to do and knocked on the door.

  “Remember,” he warned her. “What happens next is all your fault.”

  “Cheers” she said, trying not to gulp.

  Ned was about to say something else, but before he could, the door swung open and he and Matilda staggered back as, out of the shadows, stepped a pair of fluffy ‘Bagpuss’ slippers.

  Confused, bemused and mentally bruised by the ungodly sight of a fully grown man wearing cats on his feet, Ned and Matilda could do nothing to wipe the ‘what the fuck’ expressions from their faces, no matter how hard they tried.

  Finally, after what must have felt like a week, they somehow managed to peel their wide eyes away from the novelty slippers and crawl up a shabby pair of patchwork pyjamas to look at Ralph, looming in the doorway, touting a double-barrel shotgun.

  As Ned and Ralph’s eyes met, the entire world seemed to fall silent and numb. Ned had so many mixed feelings about his father, but right there and then, stood in front of him on his doorstep, all he could feel was nothing.

  Ralph just stared back at him with his dark green eyes; never blinking or hinting at what kind of emotion he was feeling at that very moment.

  Ever so slowly, the shotgun lowered and Ralph gasped like a swimmer coming up for air. Matilda almost jumped with fright at the sudden burst of sound.

  “Ruddy hell,” barked Ralph. “What are you doing here?” Ned’s glare rapidly turned into a sheepish glance as his dad quizzed him further with a sarcastic, “What, are you lost?”

  Ned quickly threw up his defences. “No, I’m not lost. I just popped by to say hello and see how you’re keeping.”

  “Why, is it Christmas?” Ralph quipped, before playing that emotional blackmail card all parents do. “No, wait – you don’t visit me then either, do you lad?”

  Ned shook his head and looked at Matilda. “I knew coming here was a bad idea,” but she just smiled back at him.

  “Who’s this then?” asked Ralph, pointing at Matilda.

  “Huh?”

  Ralph rolled his eyes and pointed at her again. “Who’s your friend?”

  “Oh, sorry, this is PC –“

  “Matilda,” she interrupted, offering her hand to Ralph.

  Gently taking her hand and shaking it, Ralph did a very rare thing... he smiled. “After the Roald Dahl book?”

  Matilda felt a little weak at the knees and babbled like a pop-star groupie. “My mum was a big fan. ‘Matilda’ was her favourite book.”

  “I liked Willy Wonka, but we could hardly have called him that now, could we?” he said glancing at Ned.

  Ned wanted the ground to swallow him. He’d not felt this embarrassed since his trousers fell down in his school’s production of ‘Bugsy Malone’.

  Matilda giggled, she clearly liked Ralph. “You could’ve called him Charlie.”

  “Oh, I did, often,” he smiled, before shooting his son a withered look. “Or words similar.”

  Matilda laughed loudly in Ned’s face. Ralph could see his discomfort, but despite himself, couldn’t help but smirk. “Oh, I like her. She’s cheeky and m
eddlesome.” He looked at Matilda and smiled. “Meddling Matilda, that’s what I’ll call you,” before joking, “Can you Waltz?”

  Ned rolled his eyes and glanced at her. “Please, forgive him. He swallowed a box of Christmas crackers when he was a kid and has been coughing up bad jokes ever since.”

  “No, it’s totally fine,” she smiled, before glancing back at Ralph. “I like him. And he’s right. I am meddlesome. And I can Waltz.”

  Ralph smiled. He clearly liked her too.

  Ned shook his head and whispered in her ear, “’Schoolgirl crush’ much?”

  She was about to answer, but Ralph cast his curious eye over Ned and stole her thunder. “So, what you really up here to see me about?”

  “I told you. To see how you’re keeping.”

  Ralph wasn’t having any of it. “No, you’re not. You know what I think? I think you’ve forgotten what I USED to be, son –“

  “No” snarled Ned. “I’ve not forgotten. I’ve not forgotten a damn thing.”

  Matilda didn’t want the bad blood between them to blow her chances, so quickly dived in with, “Who you USED to be –“

  Ralph shot her a curious look.

  She continued. “That’s why we’re here. We want your help.”

  “Help?” He turned to Ned. “Help with what?”

  Ned took a deep breath and looked sternly at his father. “Murder!”

  Ralph’s eyes lit up like a rocket. He pushed the door wide open and waved his guests inside. Matilda bounded in like Tigger on Red Bull, but Ned was more reluctant. He stalled for a moment and then walked tentatively past his dad, trying not to look at him.

  Ralph pressed his hand against the door, blocking Ned’s path; forcing him to look him in the eye. But when he did, Ralph didn’t know what to say. He wanted to say “I’ve missed you,” but couldn’t get the words out. Slowly and reluctantly, he lowered his arm and allowed Ned to enter.

  Alone on the doorstep, Ralph cursed himself for being such a moron. Then he felt a little buzz of happiness. Sure, his son clearly hated his guts, but at least he was there. ‘Who knows,’ he thought, ‘Maybe a little murder is exactly what we need to fix things?’