Melody of Murder

by Stella Cameron

‘Bogie?’

  She had slipped backward off the saddle but gradually extricated herself from the buckled bike, awkwardly working her lower leg free, and wormed her way forward to reach the basket.

  It was empty. Bogie’s restraining belt had broken in two. ‘Oh, no,’ she muttered, her words hoarse in her own ears. ‘Bogie.’ And she did scream his name. ‘Bogie!’

  With shaky, cold hands, she pulled the torch from its clips under the handlebars, the one hit by the vehicle bent up at a sharp angle, and turned the light on. Choosing a powerful one had been a good idea although the worst she had imagined needing it for was putting more air in a tire.

  Her heart pumped hard against her ribs. What she’d thought was slime and probably filled with rocks, was long damp grass and weeds that had flattened under the weight of bike and rider.

  A whimper was the best sound she remembered hearing. She swept the torch beam back and forth. ‘Come here, Bogie. Come on, sweetie. You’re okay, I’m here.’

  She saw him, scrambled to bend over him, pulled him into her arms.

  The whimper turned to yelps, then screeches and Alex set him on his feet. He held the front right one curled beneath him and even if she couldn’t see it, she could feel his reproachful look. He whimpered steadily.

  ‘I’m a horrible mother,’ she moaned. ‘I’ve broken your leg and look where we are. Tony will probably call the RSPCA.’ Hysterical laughter bubbled into her throat and she shielded him while she located her mobile in her back pocket and punched a number.

  Five rings and Tony picked up, ‘Alex? Hey. Where are you, love?’

  ‘I don’t think you want to know.’

  NINETEEN

  ‘You’re the best thing I’ve ever seen,’ Alex said, leaning on a tree twenty or so yards downhill from the road. ‘You’re wonderful, that’s what you are. Isn’t he, Bogie?’

  Tony slithered and slid his way down to her. He cupped his hands over his mouth and blew into them. Then he took a deep breath. ‘I’m trying to stay wonderful,’ he said. ‘Are you injured? You must be.’

  ‘I’m not. A bit sore but not injured. I slid all the way down on the bike. Not very comfortable but the wet grass made a kind of cushion. I tell you, Tony, if I was going to slide off the road, I couldn’t have picked a better—’

  ‘Alex. Stop jabbering.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Bit unnerved, I expect. Bogie wasn’t so lucky. His restraining strap broke and he flew out of the basket.’

  He used his torch to scout the area.

  ‘I couldn’t quite manage to get all three of us up the hill again.’

  ‘Three?’ He did his best not to sound menacing.

  ‘Bogie, Sam and me.’

  With the torch aimed above her head but illuminating her face, he said, ‘Who is Sam, please?’

  She smiled, but her eyes darted back and forth. ‘My bicycle. It wasn’t her fault. Now she’ll have to be fixed up.’

  Tony moved closer and attempted to check her pupils. ‘Did you hit your head?’

  ‘No. And I had my helmet on.’ She scowled but managed to keep her lips pressed shut.

  ‘Bogie,’ Tony said. ‘I’m going to take you up to the Range Rover and get a look at you. If he needs it, I can give him something for pain.’ He took him gently and draped him over his left forearm. Bogie yelped.

  ‘He’s hurting,’ Alex said.

  ‘I noticed. Now, hold my right hand and I’ll get us all up. I’ll come back for the bike later.’

  ‘If we leave it here it might get stolen.’

  I can only hope. ‘It won’t be seen in the dark.’

  Alex refused to wait in the vehicle. Probably just as well since another car might come too fast to see them. Once on the road, he kept his warning lights flashing and put his own flashlight on the roof, pointing downhill.

  He didn’t have to give Bogie more than a cursory glance to know he’d broken his right ulna but not, it seemed, the radius. The leg would have to be immobilized but it shouldn’t need any pins and without setbacks, healing would be rapid.

  ‘I’m giving him a shot. Then we’ll run him down to the surgery. What caused you to slide off the road, did you say?’

  She glanced down and away. ‘I missed the edge somehow and just went down. The handlebar jarred out of my hands when the right one bumped on something.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ He got what he needed from his bag, prepared a shot and gave it to Bogie. ‘Put your hand on him while I open a crate.’

  He routinely kept two crates in the back. Katie was already in hers and keeping very quiet as she took in that something was wrong. She didn’t squeak until he put Bogie, already slipping out of consciousness, through the wire door and latched it.

  ‘Okay, girl. Okay, Katie. Your buddy is going to be fine.’ To Alex he said, ‘He’ll be out for a while.’

  ‘Ew,’ Alex muttered. ‘The law is coming up the hill.’

  He closed the rear of the Range Rover and turned in time to see blues and twos come on only yards away from them. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘Oh, well, I guess it’s for safety.’

  O’Reilly leaped from his vehicle and ran toward them.

  ‘Overreaction,’ Alex said under her breath. ‘We’re fine, Dan. Just a little spill and I had to call for help.’

  Bill Lamb hurriedly joined his boss. ‘Where’s your bike?’

  ‘Down there.’ She hooked a thumb in Sam’s direction and grimaced. ‘She’ll have to be mended. Front wheel hit a tree.’

  ‘And you’re not hurt?’ Dan said.

  ‘Got lucky. There’s no other explanation. And the long grass gave me a softer landing. Not my dog, though. We’ve got to get him to Tony’s surgery and fix up his leg.’

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Tony said. Alex was making him question whether she was telling the whole story. ‘Alex’s handlebar grip may have saved her, too. Slowed her down when it hit.’

  ‘We were hoping to have another chat with you two,’ Dan said. The look he gave Alex was worried and, not for the first time, Tony’s possessive buttons got pushed. DCI O’Reilly found her appealing, maybe more than appealing, damn him.

  ‘We could start with Alex,’ Bill said, his expression hard to see outside the circle of lights. ‘Take her up to her place and have you call us when you’re through with the dog, Tony.’

  ‘I have to stay with Bogie,’ Alex said so rapidly the words ran into one long, urgent plea. ‘He’s had bad stuff happen to him. I couldn’t have him go without me.’

  ‘Come to the parish hall when you’re done, then,’ O’Reilly said, pulling a puff of irritation from his sergeant. ‘We’d like a chance to … we’ve got the post-mortem results on Laura Quillam but you probably already guessed that.’

  ‘Right,’ Alex said. ‘Will that work for you, Tony?’

  ‘We’ll get there as soon as we can,’ Tony said. It was probably good he couldn’t race right after them. He didn’t need to seem too anxious to find out what they would say, but he was more than anxious. His skin felt fashioned from flayed nerves.

  Bill ducked over to pick up something too dark to see. He turned it over in his hand then held it out to Alex and dropped it in her palm. ‘That’s probably yours, not that it’ll be of any use now.’

  TWENTY

  ‘You won’t try that again, will you?’

  Alex kept her eyes on Bogie who lay on the steel table in Tony’s surgery room. She concentrated on stroking the dog and moving some cast packing closer to Tony.

  ‘Alex?’

  ‘I intend to keep on riding the bike,’ she said, still not looking up. ‘I was doing well on the hill until I fell. I have to get better and that means more practice.’

  He applied the packing around Bogie’s lower leg and secured it with tape. ‘Please open the cast material and hand it to me.’ He had gone over the procedure before starting.

  Even through her gloves, the roll of fiberglass felt damp. She pulled it from its package and put it into his waiting and gloved hand. Quickly,
Tony wound the material on top of the packing and immediately went to work molding and smoothing it into a cast on Bogie’s lower, right front leg.

  ‘This doesn’t give much time before it starts to set up,’ he said, fashioning like a hand potter. Finally satisfied, he pulled away any loose pieces and stood holding Bogie’s leg up. ‘This takes about twenty minutes to be absolutely dry.’ The dog slept peacefully on his side.

  ‘Looking good,’ Alex told him, but she didn’t feel the way she sounded. She was anything but breezy.

  ‘You’d be doing fine until a bus ran you over. Is that what you meant just now? Of course you were doing fine until you fell. What did Bill Lamb give you?’

  All the way here she had feared Tony would ask that question, and when he didn’t, she hoped the exchange with Bill had made no impression on him.

  ‘Alex, for God’s sake stop hedging.’

  ‘Bill gave me a piece that must have fallen off the bike,’ she said, starting to feel more defensive than was good for either of them.

  He pulled down his mask. ‘Which piece would that be?’

  She swallowed and glanced around the sparkling room that his assistant, Radhika, kept so perfectly. ‘A rubber piece,’ she said at last.

  ‘Let’s have a look. You put it in your jeans’ pocket.’

  It was no longer an option to stonewall Tony on obvious things. And she was finally learning that losing her temper and announcing her independence, what was and wasn’t her private business, sounded petulant.

  She wore a green apron he’d given her and she reached beneath to get to her right pocket. ‘Just this,’ she said, holding out what was obviously the end of a bicycle handlebar grip, probably two inches long and ripped from the rest.

  ‘From the handlebar,’ Tony said, wiping sweat from his brow and leaning over to see. He looked directly into her eyes. ‘This is the handlebar that hit the ground when you were sliding down the hill?’

  Mute, she looked at the scuffed lump of rubber in her hands. ‘I think so.’

  ‘But it was up on the road. Did it take wing and fly up there?’

  ‘It could have bounced,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Something else happened, didn’t it?’ He took his eyes slowly from hers and checked Bogie’s cast. ‘Don’t hide things from me. We’re closer than that, or I thought we were.’

  She felt cold and a little sick.

  ‘Whatever bumped the handlebar happened before you went downhill, didn’t it? It caused you to slide off the road?’

  ‘I don’t want any of this to be true, Tony. If nothing else happens we can assume it was an accident and the driver never knew. I don’t think he did.’

  His jaw hardened. ‘Were you sideswiped by a vehicle?’

  Nodding, she closed her eyes. ‘It was getting really dark. I was at fault for riding up there at that time. The road was slippery.’

  ‘All true to a degree, but you don’t think it was an accident, do you.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Misery was horrible company. ‘It could be he didn’t see me.’

  ‘I’ve seen the lights you got on that thing. At least you did that right. Hold that piece where I can see it.’

  She walked around to stand beside him and put the rubber on her palm, then rolled it back and forth. ‘That grip had been new so it was hit hard – and split at the end. What shape is the handlebar in?’

  ‘Okay! The handlebar is bent way up. Ruined. I don’t think they can just mend that.’

  ‘Okay, let’s dial it back. Take a plastic bag and put it inside. There won’t be any fingerprints but yours and Bill Lamb’s but there could be paint from the vehicle. What was it?’

  ‘Range Rover, I think. Dark green or dark blue, or black. I didn’t realize it came so close. I’d moved all the way to the edge so I wouldn’t be in the way. That’s probably why I went off the road so easily.’

  ‘When this is totally dry, I’m putting Bogie in a cage and we’ll take that to O’Reilly and Lamb. It should have occurred to them that it might not have been an accident.’

  Stupid tears filled her eyes and she swiped at them. ‘Weak,’ she muttered. ‘I hate being weak. If they’d wanted to kill me they could easily have hit me and that would have been it. We’re making too much of it.’

  ‘They didn’t want to kill you,’ Tony said, and slid Bogie onto a dry towel. ‘They wanted to scare the hell out of you. And if they didn’t manage that with you, they most certainly did with me. Someone wants you to stop poking around Laura’s death. You haven’t done all that much, but you do show up whenever something’s happening.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Dan O’Reilly rocked back and forth in his office chair, an improvement over what he’d used in the parish hall a few months earlier. He propped his feet on the trestle table that served as his desk and felt the familiar quiet night in the country settle around him.

  One constable manned the silent phones, drinking coffee and reading a copy of Twisted Dark with the concentration Dan doubted he ever gave to his work. One day he’d have to look into why so many members of the force were hooked on all-but-banned comics.

  Bill poured more muddy coffee. They were almost at the bottom of the latest urn from the Black Dog.

  ‘How long does it take to set one mutt’s leg?’ Bill called. He piled stale doughnuts on a plate and walked slowly back with two Styrofoam cups gripped by conjoined lips.

  ‘As long as it takes,’ Dan responded, yawning. ‘It’s not as late as you think.’

  ‘Did you know you’re always more Irish when you’re tired?’ Bill asked. ‘I’ll need a translator shortly.’

  Dan ignored him.

  ‘We need to keep this one quiet,’ Bill said, hooking his head in the direction of the engrossed constable.

  ‘I’ll make sure we do,’ Dan said. ‘Best you don’t join us unless I give you the nod.’

  Bill’s irritation wasn’t masked. ‘Didn’t I do a good job with your lady friend this morning?’

  ‘I’ll let that comment pass, or the first part of it. You didn’t do badly except you gave her the rubbish about her solicitor. That was inappropriate and didn’t work out so well.’

  Never one to give away the last word, Bill said, ‘Yeah, well, it was worth a try and it didn’t do any harm.’

  Dan declined the doughnuts but Bill bit into a sugar-covered jelly one with evident pleasure. ‘My bed is calling me.’

  ‘You mean your current bed. How are you and the missus these days?’

  ‘Great,’ Bill said with too much gusto. ‘We went our separate ways months ago.’

  Dan frowned. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I like Charlene.’

  ‘I like her, too, but a copper’s wife needs a special set of coping skills and she’s worn them out. Or I’ve worn them out for her. Divorce will be final in a few weeks.’

  ‘Christ!’ Dan swung his feet to the floor. ‘You’ve kept all this pretty close to your chest. How’s young Simon taking it?’

  ‘I’ll get him some weekends – if I’m home. He’s adjusting.’

  ‘And you’re fine with all this?’

  Bill looked at him with the pale blue, unblinking eyes Dan had never quite got used to. ‘I don’t have a choice. Where the hell are those two?’

  As if he’d summoned them up, the front door to the parish hall scraped open and Alex Duggins preceded Tony Harrison into the big room. She wore the T-shirt and jeans they’d seen her in on the hill; Harrison wore a green scrub shirt over his trousers and a navy-blue jumper over the top. They were not happy people.

  ‘Evening,’ Dan called. ‘Come and sit over here.’ He checked the constable who continued to read. Given the nature of the case, they were getting very few calls at any time, least of all at night.

  It didn’t upset Dan to see the couple walking toward him with several feet between them. He cleared his throat. ‘Get a couple of chairs, Bill.’

  Harrison picked up two folded chairs himself and opened them in front of the trest
le table. He and Alex sat down heavily.

  ‘You’ll want to see this,’ she said, pushing a plastic bag across the table. ‘It’s the end of my hand grip from my bike. It got broken off when a Range Rover drove too close to me on the hill when I was going home. That’s why I slid down the hill. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not.’

  Harrison patted her hand but she gave no sign of noticing.

  ‘You’re bloody kidding,’ Dan said. ‘Why didn’t you say that up there?’

  ‘I didn’t want to. I wanted it all to go away. I’ve had about enough of people trying to scare me. What did I do to … Oh, forget it.’

  ‘She told you what happened,’ Tony said, leaning aggressively forward. He indicated Lamb. ‘This one picked up the evidence – on the road – and gave it to Alex without forming a question in his mind. If she supposedly hit the handlebar going down the hill, how would the grip be on the hill.’

  ‘She lied.’ Bill didn’t raise his voice. No muscles appeared to move in his face. ‘She should have said at once that a vehicle was involved. What vehicle? Did you get the license plate number?’

  ‘While I was shooting downhill on my side, mixed up with my bike?’

  ‘Range Rover,’ Dan said, breathing through his mouth. ‘Description.’

  Alex reeled off what she remembered.

  ‘Right,’ Dan said. ‘See what can be found, Bill. Give me that.’ He took the piece of rubber and peered at it through the plastic bag. ‘Not that fingerprints will be useful unless we’re looking for you, Bill, or Alex. Damn, this is the kind of thing that drives me over the edge with you people. Half-truths and flat-out lies.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ Alex said, rising to her feet. ‘I was shocked up there. Bogie’s got a broken leg. I admit I couldn’t be sure if the vehicle deliberately got too close but I don’t like accusing people of things. Once you do, other people get in their faces and it’s hard to get them out.’

  ‘Right,’ Bill said, sneering. ‘Let’s keep all the sympathy for the perps. This was probably a hit-and-run driver. He knew what he was doing and intended to kill you.’