Sat at the table, Parsons’ pupils are like black stones as thin lips spit out the words, “We tried. For hours. Straight to voice mail. Mobile and land line. Even sent a car but they could not get past your gate and no response to the bell.”
I do not explain I was likely asleep, with Amy or sat outside without my mobile.
Her words become violent accusation. “You are heading up Major Crime - not that this is a major crime - supposed to be on call. Do you ever check your voice mail?”
She is right. I seldom check, am out of the habit. I who have nothing, no one, have had few calls I actually wanted for years. My phone is either not set to record or had given up on telling me I have voice mail or I do not bother. At Intelligence, Amy used to check my calls there each day and pass on the few that were official, from my mother or not abusive.
Parsons ends, prosaically calm now, “Mr Aystrup woke up, early hours, switched lights on, scared them away but they had disarmed the burglar alarm and were opening the door by then.”
“And he rang the police?” I ask, keeping the note of disbelief out of my voice.
“No, a neighbour saw the two burglars - ‘one a tall ‘un, t’other small,’ she mimics Ena - cross the back field and work the side door. ‘I neaver sleeps,’ that woman says and I believe her.”
Parsons continues dour voiced, “Mr Aystrup says you are not to worry. We, he has left it to you to tell your mother.”
I nod without being aware. Why would anyone want to burgle my mother’s house? Sheer coincidence or part of an overall strategy? The questions keep coming. Sadly, without the glimmer of an answer. Yet.
The Sergeant is all business then, briefing me about the squad’s duties this coming weekend on Ancaster Christmas Market duty, helping police the half million visitors expected. She already knows she is to lead, that I am not to be involved.
She asks if I will be away overnight and I confirm I shall be in London on Saturday night while interviewing the two Professors and the silver Bentley’s chauffeur. I hate myself for the lie to a former friend even as I hear Jerry’s words, ‘Scope and lure, baby.’
She nods and is all forced calm now, “I called here this early as I wanted this said before the squad meets.”
Her bleak face and words marry, “Not going to work. For me. Being on your squad, need to leave. Soonest.”
I nod, offering her the small carton of cream that my mother still orders ‘as a little treat‘ for my weekly delivery; despite my not having used it for seven years at least myself.
Parsons smacks the carton away as she stands and says very loudly, “Well, nothing to say, do you not want to know why?”
Cream trickles down my shirt sleeve, and across the table. I dab it with a tea cloth and shake my head. I don’t want to know. I do not care. She will be a loss. Perhaps the first of many that will see the squad sink into oblivion and me with it. So be it. I only need to be in the police long enough to find out what happened to my family, to use whatever resources and help they can give me or, rather, that I can take without them knowing. Who cares about anything else?
I catch myself. I do care. About the fate of the dead woman in the ditch and all the victims of crime, and their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives.
For now, I concentrate on enjoying my coffee, a new Italian dark roast my mother thought I should try; a touch smooth for my taste. Silence just goads the Sergeant even more and she is suddenly striding around the room, almost shouting, that she will tell me anyway.
“Two reasons. First, you should not be leading a squad, should not even be on the force - you are not well. Just look at the state of you. A gaping open wound.”
I swirl my coffee in the cup and finish it in a gulp, pouring myself a fresh one as she details her accusations: my almost swilling the coffee over myself just now, my losing concentration, stumbling in word and deed, and how I am clearly dizzy and erratic at other times. I do not agree but it is all true.
“Second, you are after all a murderer.”
The final word, she repeats almost in wonder as a poisonous hiss, ‘murderer.’ The dregs of coffee, black, pitted as pitch, are no comfort. ‘A scream passes through nature’ when it is assailed, so it is written. By whom? Ah, Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter, whose famous “Scream’ I often think I resemble now; a phantasmagorical image of a man on a bridge with his skull almost crushed by the elements and life. Such a scream pierces me now, silently. If people who were once my friends think this, what is there to say?
Parsons sits and quietens, “Ok, innocent until proven guilty. But I simply cannot work with, take orders from someone I believe has killed people, his nearest and dearest, people I cared about.”
She drowns her coffee with cream, lips still tautly bitter from the bile flowing out at me. Mundane, I know, but I can only wonder why she risks coming into a house to be alone with a killer?
I drift, knowing silence will give her further ammunition for my being unfit for duty, but I do not care. I cannot block memory’s flood. It ruthlessly returns as always to events that fateful black night seven years ago when I arrived home from Wales and my life changed forever.
***
The outward-bound course had been a five-day bonding exercise for my team, the then Major Crime Team 2; a management technique all the rage at the time if much disparaged by all who actually endured them.
“Verboten phone,” the craggy Sergeant Major had said in his Monday morning welcome while confiscating our mobiles. One of the rules, no contact with the world, fending for ourselves as a group in the rugged landscape of the Brecon Beacons after much preliminary reading and just one day of training in survival skills. I had not phoned on my way home that Friday, wanting to surprise Bess and Grace with an early arrival before my daughter was asleep.
I had not even turned the mobile on to avoid the countless calls, demands and distractions that would have built up in a week from police work. I was determined. Nothing would disturb what was going to be a magical weekend with no other thoughts than simply being together as a family in the final run up to Christmas.
Driving through various high streets ablaze with the colour of Christmas decorations, I can still physically taste the happiness I felt. I was already enjoying giving Grace and Bess the small presents I had stopped to buy in a small Welsh town on the Monday. I was giddy at the thought of seeing Grace, playing with her toys around her mother’s feet in the kitchen and our gentle talk as Bess and I prepared the welcome home dinner, something I liked no doubt with a bottle of one of our favourite wines. I was already rehearsing tales of my week on the wild side. Acting out how I had hidden in a hole at one point to avoid pursuers, only to discover this ditch meant you would sink to your knees in mud. I would not mention how it actually spewed up around my chest and I feared drowning.
Christmas comes but once a year, your first meaningful one once in a lifetime. I was already enjoying Grace understanding a little of what was going on with the wonders of Christmas for that very first unique time. What did the poet call parent's feelings for their children? ‘Love so pure it overwhelms?’ Already enjoying Bess’ joyful reaction to my conclusion on our big debate of the last few months. I agreed with her, it was right for all of us, as she had known all along, wise woman. And wanting to know if science would agree with the legendary ring test and Bess’ joy to be unconfined on two fronts..
Even if I felt guilty that I had manipulated my team, especially giving the then DC Parsons a big responsibility. I had actually played the dictatorial chief for once so that I could be alone for thirty-six long lonely hours to finally sit and think our big family debate through. I had even been tempted to cheat, to go to a pub for a drink and a meal that Thursday lunchtime. If only I had.
As with animals under threat humans too react through ‘Fight or Flight.’ The adrenalin levels in the body increase rapidly in amount and effects; body and mind are vibrantly alert to colours, sounds, smells, incidents, feelings, thoughts
. ‘Fight or flight’ carves things major and minor into your very being.
I knew things were badly wrong somehow five miles before I reached home that Friday evening. I know not how or why but I knew. Terror overwhelming me, I chose ‘Fight’, I drove faster in the dull December darkness.
The full panoply, the official badge of disaster was there in the distant darkness as I hurtled through our ancient village, scene of many a human drama over the centuries. But please God I prayed, let mine not be one of them. Blue lights flashed against the night sky. There was crime scene tape near the house and a PC sat in a car pulled to one side. A Forensics van was in my drive and I could see the light blue suited figures of a full team working under arc lights. In my home.
The huge steel gates came months later so I skidded to a halt in a welter of gravel by my door, tore out of the car and rushed past the police officer’s ruddy red face before the man could even utter a word as he came sympathetically towards me. I hurtled into and then through the house, crying ‘Bess, Grace.’
From the very first second, I knew. It was no use, all to no avail. They were not there. They were not going to be there ever again. I knew.
How many times had I passed on bad news to loved ones, tolled the worst day of their lives, sympathised even while my mind was elsewhere on practicalities, on the case, observing the bereft nearest and dearest as the likeliest suspects. Now I was they. In that same situation.
Ignoring the officers, wild eyed I found all the beds pristine as they would be. The mark of my daughter’s head still lightly imprinted on the pillow from her afternoon nap and the tiny duvet thrown back as though she had arisen normally. ‘Tom Ted,’ Grace’s favourite little teddy bear from birth lay on the floor. She ate, slept, bathed, walked, played, existed with him. I held that teddy bear for hours, perhaps days, wrapped in an evidence bag as it was. My mother took it off me eventually but refused to allow anyone else to have it lest they lost it. She had even gone to Scientific Services with it when the toy was tested. All to ensure it came to no harm.
That first night was a daze. My mother came for me, took me to our old family home in Lilburne-by-Spital twenty odd miles distant, only to have to go back to my cottage when I remembered Ovid. The dog was not there; he had gone missing too. A week later he turned up tired and dishevelled; where he had been nobody ever knew and the dog could not tell us. Few in the police were as loyal.
44
I do not want any more talk in the kitchen for bugs and possible listeners. Jerry had persuaded me the eavesdroppers were potentially more use ‘live’ than broken and no doubt to be replaced if we destroyed what was there. “Scope and lure,’ he had stressed.
I confuse Parsons by insisting we go outside in the cool air if she has other things she wants to discuss. Just in case the listeners are not Odling and Creel, just in case Parsons is not their snitch, I want nothing about the dead woman’s case or the burglaries overheard.
We walk across my meadow, our footsteps crunching a trail in the fresh frozen snow, the dawn chorus gently swelling around us. Oddly I think how committed and alive Parsons is with her anger tinged with cold, her skin aglow, eyes flashing. I pull my old duffel coat around me as the wind buffets us.
A gesture of peace, “I’m so sorry, I could not help you, respond to your kindness, I was not capable after Wales, Jean.”
Her reaction is visceral as she stops, face close to me and hisses, “Never, ever, call me Jean, never, ever.”
I almost taste her breath, can smell, what, is it brandy, surely not, a mint or her perfume covering it. The taste of hatred oozing from her very soul. For me.
I expect her to storm away, am offering to open the gates for her, when she suddenly becomes all calm reason.
“What really sticks in my craw, do you know?”
I concentrate on walking without slipping, just wishing her to leave so I can be alone here with nature and even my memories rather than endure her or anyone’s presence.
She goes on without respite, “I stuck up for you, argued your case, longer than anyone else did, ruined my own prospects, Creel and Odling took against me over it, dumped me in Juvenile, ‘Cade’s poodle’, a standing joke.”
I nod, trying to betray neither sympathy nor sorrow to set her anger off once more, even as she spits out, “And you, you, said nothing in your own defence, buried yourself in Intelligence. Not a word to me.”
My eyes turn to meet her flashing look as she draws level, “Why not answer the evidence? I have looked at it, overwhelming if circumstantial. I presume you have answers. Silence just brands you.”
“Unless you are guilty, as charged?” she says ominously, eyes fixed on the side of my face.
“What the hell,” I mutter, surprising myself. “Ask.”
***
Snow falls gently again, the wind squalls all around us as my eyes search the horizon. What is the use? She walks briskly on and I follow. Ten minutes later we stand by the far woodland of my meadow, beneath trees that strut like swaying sentries on guard duty. Meticulous as ever, the points pour forth.
The professional standard forensic clean up in my lounge, hall, stairs over the fateful Thursday night, she asks? I do not know. I did not do it. She snorts in derision but what more can I say.
My car, or a car with my number plate save for two obscured digits, being seen on CCTV travelling from north Wales to my village of Malvingham late on the Wednesday night and leaving in the early hours of Friday. Explain that? I cannot. Another snort. I left my car in the park at the Welsh training camp, next to hers, and picked it up from the same spot when we all left. She saw me. If, if it was my car on CCTV I was not driving it, and the nearest CCTV images at either end were twenty miles away, not at the actual end points. I pre-empt her: I did not notice the mileage or know if it had been driven without my knowledge. There was no CCTV on the Welsh car park, no witness remembers my car being missing, nor present as there were over thirty there at all times with mine surrounded by those of the other participants on the course. GPS did not have location finding capability in those days either.
The car is strong evidence she says, especially when linked to my knowledge of forensics. I agree but say nothing.
The lack of alibi? During the exercise I had insisted, in fact ordered my squad, over their objections, to go off as a group while I alone led our pursuers astray and tried to disrupt the competing teams also. It gave me a thirty-six-hour window alone, Wednesday eight p.m. to Friday eight a.m.
“Time enough to get home, do whatever and drive back,” says Parsons brutally. This is my family she is dismissing with police talk but I bite back my anger.
It would be time enough I agree calmly, but I did disrupt and lead astray. I do not say that I sat and thought most of the time, working for my team for only a few hours.
“And my motive?” I ask, more loudly than I intend as my temper begins to rise.
I know the answers Creel and Odling concocted, which duly come pouring forth. Bess and I had been arguing over issues major and minor though nobody knows the detail. She hesitates as my face is stony, but presses on, her eyes boring into mine. Bess was spending two days a week in London ‘for work’ and I did not like that. I bridle at the innuendo of ‘at work.’ It was my wife’s career, she had opportunities in Cambridge in actual fact and took them, with my support, while remaining a committed GP in Merian. Still Parsons does not give up.
She asks about my showing signs of unrest: being increasingly irritated, close to violence with suspects at times, as witness the beating up of the Rudd boy in my own lane? I am studying the bare trees, seeking out the birds that are gently singing their songs, and shake my head; none of it is true, all mere interpretation and wrong at that. More points against you though, Parsons concludes, all adding up.
“No, no, no,” I say, exasperated. “You knew us, Bess, Grace, what they meant to me, how we were? Surely you cannot believe I would ever harm them?”
Her face is a deliberat
e blank. What else would you say, her look asks? Perhaps it is what I would be thinking if faced with the same facts unless it were a friend, Jerry or Val or Sam, or her.
Something new now though, rumours of fresh and damning evidence, she says. What is it, she asks? I have no idea, perhaps an outlandish creation similar to the one against Sam Aystrup? She does not reply.
***
We return to my cottage and Parsons goes off into my ragwort ridden garden for a smoke and think, before formally tendering her transfer request to the ACC at headquarters, perhaps even her resignation from the police, who knows?
Amy still gently purrs in sleep beneath the duvet as I sneak a look at her through the door of the main bedroom, pulling the door tightly closed behind me. Jerry is asleep, fully clothed, in Grace’s room. In the bathroom, as we did on many a morning those last few months, I talk out loud to Grace as though she is still there. I play out the complete scene of our much-loved ritual with words and action as it always happened: her checking I have shaved well, making me do a missed spot again, right up to her playfully and painfully smacking aftershave on my face. Coming out with only a towel around me, I see Parsons at the foot of the stairs, listening intently.
“I thought I heard you talking to someone,” the Sergeant says, accusingly. I shake my head and go into our third bedroom to dress. I have not had this many people in the house for seven years. Bedroom three is where my mother hangs my freshly laundered clothes when she brings them; the room that holds the least memories for me even though it is where Bess often practiced her flute.
Shrugging into a fresh suit and then my black overcoat and gloves. I remember how it once was, a music stand and small spotlight, flute case laid on the small table, a scattering of music sheets on and around the bed. All reminders hidden away by my mother now.
Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County. Page 27
