Even then, I know I am much smaller than they and my planned reaction is difficult to pull off. It cannot move to violence, much as I would like it to. It did, for a while, often enough when we were kids. ‘Project your meaning, your threat, always,’ I have been told all these years. ‘Stop people in their tracks, make them think that anything, anything is possible if not likely.’ A more civilised version of my friend Jerry’s, ‘Scorch and burn ‘em baby, no mercy.’
I move quietly to within a foot of Marshall, noting his gut threatening to bust through the buttons of his stretched coat, and softly say a few words to him, while staring upwards with intent. He reacts as though punched, stepping back almost with shock. ‘Big tub of lard almost wet himself,’ the watching Sam tells me later with a laugh.
I dismiss Marshall with a contemptuous wave and the words ‘Roly Poly’ and ‘Donkey’ are perhaps muffled but deliberately made distinguishable to the rest of the squad. To be picked up, picked over and the insulting words spread. The line of avid listeners sense rather than see Marshall as he returns to the ranks and comes ram rod straight instantly. His nearest colleagues peer sideways to see his ashen white face, mouth pinched with a line of perspiration that drops off his upper lip and which he dares not wipe away.
I move again while the attention of the line, and the Sergeant, is on Marshall. Nobody sees me circling around Smith’s huge girth, nor my malicious smile up into his face tinged with the glow of too much red wine laced just beneath his skin. He becomes more and more nervous as his eyes follow me and then cannot when I stop immediately behind his stood to attention smirk. I wait and then speak softly once more before he too rapidly returns to the ranks. Without anyone seeing or hearing anything happen beyond the word ‘Cyclops’ repeated twice that some must have caught.
Smith is red of face and neck, a small stream of sweat on his cheeks. I am already walking on to Odling as Marshall shakes his head sullenly to the inquiring looks of those he made laugh only moments earlier.
Smith says nothing beyond a single softly murmured utterance of, “I’m not scaired of him, naever, I’m not.”
None of the PCs dare ask what the words they heard, presumably nicknames or insults mean and why they affected the two men so.
“Yon scrub Smith were shitten his sen,” Sam tells me with relish later.
Funny to think I have never heard him even remotely use bad language or show anger before today.
“Shitten even as he checked to see you could not hear when he tried to act tough. So scaired he like as not started talking local Ancaster I bet like his old man, not la di dah like he thinks he is now what with big house in Ister and all.”
Sam is amused even more as I explain how Smith and Marshall still feared the nicknames they gained at primary school becoming public knowledge. After two years of being bullied by them, Val, Bess and I finally stood up for ourselves, fought and beat them as a circle of kids screamed ‘Fight, fight’ around us.
It was our Head Teacher Ms Loam who warned the next day’s assembly off fighting at any time. Adding that each of us could turn into a gigantic one eyed monster called ‘Cyclops’ or a bruised, wounded ‘donkey’ only able to walk slowly ‘roly-poly’ style. She did not name names but all knew the former was Smith with only one staring eye open that day, the latter Marshall, who had been left the worse for wear. Thirty years on the humiliation and the memory still festered, along with any mention of the nicknames.
9
George Odling, Detective Chief Inspector, leader of Major Crime Team 1 of Ancaster County Police C.I.D., stands with every ounce of his arrogant being in sneer mode as I approach.
Reputedly a sergeant in the army who saw service in various Middle Eastern war zones he is a tall thickset man of fifty, easy with his bulk, wearing his usual blue double-breasted pin stripe suit. You might take him as slow, mentally and physically. He isn’t. Sharp dark eyes are slits above a strong nose once broken and never properly healed. He has a cold, wheezes deep in his chest as though he has just laboured up steep stairs or finished one of his forty a day cigarettes. Ostentatiously he makes me wait while he finishes a phone call, concentrating as he gets orders from our joint superior, the hallowed Chief Superintendent Creel.
The story goes that fifteen years ago as a Police Sergeant in his native Liverpool, he was warned by his own colleagues that life would be better elsewhere, ‘his life.’ Last stop east before the North Sea was Ister, the town on the north Ancaster coast and now in my squad’s area. There he got off the train, drank and mooched, applied to Ancaster Police, was interviewed by the then DCI Creel, who recognised a fellow traveller in focussing only on himself, and took him under his wing. Thrice married, according to rumour, Odling never talks of his home city, has never returned, nor seen his reputed parents, brother and sister, or children from that day to this. So, the story goes. Given the man’s cold anger at the world, it might even be true.
I resolve again to control myself and say little, even as I wait, enjoying the pure air and the misty hills nearby. Even as what the psychologist would call my succubus partially rears, malignant red, a demon within me which demands satisfaction immediately through the pleasure of punching Odling’s pudgy lights out and more, far more. The official psychologist I had to see, before being allowed to return to active duty seven years ago, suggested visualising techniques to fight such urges - if I had them, which I did not admit to. She knew though, clever woman. She does not know that I do apply her suggested techniques. I visualise but not in the way she intended. I see, feel the one blow that will mean Odling’s pristine white shirt, tie and suit is spattered with blood, as he lays on the ground with paramedics tending him. That visualisation actually helps; the actual act would too but I demur from that. For now.
“The Fat Fudge,’ as he is universally known has actually slimmed down significantly of late, perhaps through the influence of a rumoured new lady in his life. Once he was way overweight, the shape of two pyramids on top of one another with the bottoms meeting in the middle. Many also use a further epithet beginning with F before his nickname. I calm and smile at these insulting thoughts which only seems to infuriate him more as he says a servile goodbye to Creel.
“Thanks for keeping me waiting Cade,’ his Scouse accent barks to my back as I stare north towards D'Eynscourte Hall, a shrouded glitter of tiny lights, framed by trees, clustered high and imposing at the far head of the valley a few miles distant.
Never be drawn by idiots.
“My pleasure. Detective Chief Inspector,” I reply affably.
He murmurs something inaudible and then smiles as I turn to face him, “God, you look crap.”
“You too, sneaked through your medical again I see. Influence in high places?”
I turn away to the left, looking west to the Merlin Hills a mile or so away, enjoying the feather touch of a meagre sunlight on them now. A pattern of light paints the leaves on the hedges still rimed with frost in striking white sculptures. Things of beauty and peace, yet beneath these mystical landscapes has always lain greed, deceit, corruption, violence. Seven years in Intelligence and I have hardly seen any verbal let alone physical clashes. Three hours back in the detecting field and I am immediately in potential conflicts, one physical in the cafe, one verbal with my favourite PCs. And now, no doubt a row with this fine figure of a senior police officer.
I know he sees my being appointed to Head the new squad as an insult. Leader of the single Major Crime team for the whole county until today, from tomorrow his Crime Team 1 will have Ancaster City itself and the richer middle and southern swathe of the county only. He will also have a smaller squad too as a result. Ironic then that the splitting of the county into two Major Crime teams came about through his constant complaints that his old team was stretched way too thinly over too large an area.
***
A young woman DC hovers out of my vision then as Odling feels the need to crisply spell out what I already assume. That the dead woman is in my new Major
Crime Team 2’s geographical area but the case would stay with his Team 1 now they had begun it. An initial slap in the face to show his authority.
My own team officially comes into being at eight tomorrow morning, Tuesday. The same question: why should Odling be so keen to have such a minor case as this? Strictly it is within procedure if you are being pedantic, but why so keen?
“Don’t appreciate you being here first and taking my key witness away,” Odling says reasonably in his broad Liverpool brogue, while he sallies an insult with a sarcastic, “Detective, Chief, Inspector.”
“Guv? DCI Cade?” a soft nervous voice intervenes. I turn and face Odling now as we both look at the speaker come between us. I find a pair of green eyes fixed hopefully on me as I am taken aback by a young woman with raven black hair framing a face of silky coffee coloured skin and a nervous smile.
To Odling’s amusement she starts as she sees me up close; slow to mask the shock that flits across her face. Staring in the bathroom mirror, talking to myself and my imagined young daughter as I once did every morning while shaving, I do not see what others do: the harrowed face of a lost tortured soul hurtling to madness. Thirty-seven years, a man of dark complexion, violent blue eyes when irritated as now, yet face as haggard and lifeless as a crone’s. A face transparent of skin, almost a ghost with my eyes often the only spark of life. Justice catches up with the guilty in the end, people say about me I know. Perhaps, undoubtedly this young DC has heard that line too and sees horrors from within ravaging my face.
Clad in a neat grey business suit, white roll neck jumper and long grey overcoat with matching gloves, this is my first sight of DC Marcia Whittle, high flying graduate recruit to Ancaster’s ‘HPDS’ scheme which looks to attract talented people and enable them to reach the higher ranks more quickly. ‘Fast Track Graduate’ to anyone normal, but ‘High Potential Development Scheme’ to the police establishment who busy their schedules with meetings thinking up such vital acronyms.
I know her history, have read her file, seen her image. Physically she reminds me of the young Mavis Staples, once a key part of the musical soundscape of my life. An American rhythm and blues and gospel singer of renowned songs of the civil rights battles in the USA. One of my father’s favourite singers I am told, one my mother played endlessly when I was growing up. ‘Eyes on the Prize,’ ‘We’ll Never Turn Back’ and the gloriously uplifting ‘Oh Happy Day’ are etched in me forever. I was going to ask if anyone had ever remarked on her resemblance to the American diva when I met her, but not here, not now. It would demean the singer and her songs of courage to do so with Odling present.
Whittle is on my team from tomorrow, time enough to mention it. But why is she working for her old team and Odling today? The paperwork says she asked for a transfer, no reason given, and Odling had readily agreed.
“Finishing up, owed us some hours, our pretty Marcia,” Odling snorts, sensing the obvious question. “So, we stuck her on this non-case as our farewell …”
The words ‘and good riddance’ hang in the air even as he stops and almost leers at me in shared male intimacy. Almost, not quite crossing the line, never one to readily invite official reprimand our George though ‘pretty’ must be close. Never one to let consideration or political correctness or decency get in the way of petty actions either. Little I can do and he knows it.
Instead to cover the young DC’s’ embarrassment I say quietly, “There is a young woman dead here DCI Odling.”
DC Whittle is stony faced at all this, eyes forward, seeing nothing, her voice brittle as she gives the smug Odling her report while he stares at her face without a blink, “Fingerprints taken electronically, checked, not on record. No wallet, no purse, no watch, jewellery, no bag, no mobile phone, no car or door keys. Pockets empty. Nobody in the few big houses here that we canvassed within ten miles knows her. No parked car within five miles that we cannot explain.
“Provisional forensics. Possible traces of paint and glass on woman’s clothes, in hair and on damaged parts of her face. Others gathered now at impact point.”
She goes on like an automated voice, “Declared dead at scene by doctor at seven forty-two a.m., pathologist been and gone, post mortem tomorrow. Time of death. After one a.m. this morning, before three. Post Mortem will tell us more. No obvious signs of violence or sexual activity, no obvious defence wounds.
“Broken neck likely cause of death, and face battered down one side, likely by the car that hit her and / or blow to the head with blunt instrument. Body found by workman, Mr Sam Aystrup, clearing up road kill, waiting in the DCI’s car if you want a word. Sir. I will take a statement if not.”
Everything is by the training manual, even to the order in which this young woman checks off the points. Yet the fact that she stares emptily at a point above Odling’s head as his contemptuous look mocks her is revealing. But of what, I do not know. Yet.
***
I hardly listen to the rest, watching the line of police working their way closer to us, only vaguely listening.
Until Odling barks dismissively, “Homeless person, will probably never know who she is. Hit and Run. Self-evident. End of story. Sad but it happens. Yes, do we all agree?”
I start visibly. Such buffoonery cannot be true, can it? Even for him. You only have to look at the dead woman to know she is not homeless. This is deliberate. Odling’s father reputedly left his wife and son in Liverpool, moving to South Yorkshire where as a Police Sergeant in the 1980’s, he was proud of his involvement in the now disgraced attack on the miners at Orgreave and the sick events of Hillsborough when ninety-six people died through police ineptitude. In both events, the police became a law unto themselves and then spun events for decades to protect their own interests and trash people’s grief further. Systemic corruption and evil. His son was spawned of that fabric, still often tells his father’s tales apparently with relish and has clearly adopted the family mantle.
Odling’s piggy gaze is on me. I cannot speak out without revealing my own investigation of the body earlier. I do not even shake my head. Saying nothing as I need to find out how my mother is involved before I share what I know, if I do at all with Odling. I will sort things officially somehow later when I can and will honour the dead woman with the truth no matter what. Odling shrugs as his narrowed eyes dismiss first me and then Whittle. My case, my call, is his unspoken message. Some hope Fudge. Not if it affects me or mine.
Whittle clearly steels herself to fight such nonsense whenever she hears it and coughs. The first rule of detecting naturally has a fancy name, ‘victimology,’ basically that once you know the identity and life story of the dead or injured person then finding the criminal flows from that knowledge. To brand someone as ‘homeless’ is instantly to render them hardly worth identifying and thus the case essentially closed.
Odling gives her a look that would stop most but Whittle ploughs on dutifully, “Very expensive clothes Sir, very well groomed, surely not a homeless …”
She stops as Odling turns his gaze brazenly towards her breasts then slowly upwards to her face as she continues, “… not a homeless person, look for yourself.”
The ‘Sir’ is belated, almost wrung out of her. Good for you. But what a state the force is in if this is any example of the way senior officers conduct themselves with female subordinates, especially on a case of what must be, at the very least, ‘a suspicious death’ until proven otherwise.
You cannot just assume until you know the victim’s identity and their story. Or perhaps that is the point. That is why he wants the case: to bury it.
10
A raucous shout from the forensics officers, the experienced Andrew Miller and a young trainee. Their excitement is palpable even twenty yards away from us, fifty yards from the body, over a hundred yards away from the Albion Gates where the police squad are enjoying a brew of tea brought by a small green van carrying the golden crest of the D'Eynscourte estate on its side. Odling waddles away, taking Whittle with him. She smi
les weakly at me as she goes.
My mobile phone rings loudly. I reach for it in relief that my mother is finally in touch, even while knowing that it is not the distinctive ring tone I have allotted her.
The name identity is starkly disappointing. Detective Chief Superintendent Creel, Head of Ancaster C.I.D., religious zealot and erstwhile dedicated bureaucrat, arch political manipulator and committee man, detective without equal in my experience as the worst of the worst, and my immediate superior.
Creel has a tense baritone. Unless he feels he is being crossed, disagreed with or slighted in any way, which he does often. In such cases, his voice rises to a vibrating falsetto. It does so quickly now and I have to concentrate to know what he is saying. I listen without response as he upbraids me for attending this crime scene in the first place, for not calling it in without attending, and for taking the finder of the body away for ‘a crucial time period.’ I am ordered to concentrate on my own Team’s cases which are waiting for me in our squad room in Merian Police Station as of tomorrow.
His falsetto sinks back to a febrile whitter as he moves to practical matters of concern - to him at least.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 6
