by JL Merrow
“You know the thing about getting me to turn up on time for appointments? You’ve got to flippin’ tell me about them, that’s what.” I frowned through the windscreen, startling a motorist coming towards me into swerving and almost mounting the kerb. Maybe he’d seen me on the telly too. “How come they’re at my house anyhow? Usually it’s me being told to shift my arse down to the station. What’s with the softly, softly approach?”
“Yeah. Well.” Dave paused. “I may just have gone off on one at them for slapping your face all over the telly like that.”
“Dave, mate, I didn’t know you cared.”
“Bugger that. There’s kids watching at that hour. Don’t want them having nightmares from seeing your ugly mug before bedtime, do we?” He coughed. “Now are you going to get a shift on, or what?”
“I’m shifting right now, that quick enough for you?” I said, putting the van in gear.
“Well, put the bleedin’ phone down, then. Christ. You trying to get yourself arrested?”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. Got a mate on the force.” And then I hung up, before he could tell me not to be so bloody sure about that one.
I wellied it home for a nice little chin-wag with the boys in blue, who turned out to be neither. Not in blue, that was, and not boys, plural—they were Detective Sergeant Gemma Cooper, who was wearing top-to-toe black like a wannabe ninja, which didn’t do a lot for her British mouse colouring, and Detective Constable No-First-Name Patel, who was also wearing black and carrying it off far better.
I thought something was funny when the sarge introduced herself by her full name, instead of a curt bark of her rank and surname, and I was further thrown off-balance when she led with—get this—an apology. Not that the coppers I’ve been interviewed by in the past haven’t been polite, except when they’ve been Dave, but usually it’s a steely kind of politeness where calling you Sir is just how they bait their traps. This was more awkward and, if I wasn’t mistaken, resentful. Sergeant Cooper reminded me of nothing so much as a teenager who’d had a bollocking from mum and a threat of grounding.
Still, gift horses and all that. I—and Phil, when he got home half an hour after I did—answered a shedload of questions, not all of which seemed particularly relevant (what did Lilah’s porn career have to do with anything, for example?). The whole lot was recorded by Constable Patel as his one contribution to the interviews.
We were promised statements to sign in a day or so, and Detectives Cooper and Patel finally took their leave. About flippin’ time. My stomach reckoned my throat had been taken into custody. I glanced at the clock and groaned. I really didn’t want to have to start cooking now.
“Takeaway?” Phil suggested, sitting heavily on the sofa after seeing the plod out.
“Developing psychic talents of your own, are you? Yeah, why not? Chinese?”
“I was thinking Indian.”
We compromised on Thai. Phil volunteered to go pick up the food, so I rang Dave while I was waiting. “What exactly did you say to those two? Did you tell ’em I was royalty or something?”
There was a pause.
“Dave?”
“Ah. Well.” Dave coughed. “It’s not been officially announced, so don’t you go shoving it on Facebook or telling all your mates down the pub, but . . . I got my promotion.”
“Wait, what? You never even told me you were going for it. And congrats, mate. Seriously. So, what, you’re a chief inspector now?”
“Will be. Will be. DCI Southgate. Ain’t got a bad ring to it, has it? My Jen’s dead chuffed.”
With a bit of luck, it’d help stop her getting itchy feet this go around, although maybe I was getting cynical in my old age and she’d got over the midlife crisis, leaving-him-for-a-younger-fitter-model thing anyway. “Pleased for you, mate. I mean it. You’ve earned this.”
“Up for a commendation too,” Dave added in that trying-to-sound-modest voice people put on to excuse them blowing their own trumpet.
“Yeah? Congrats again. What’s that for? Bravery in the face of late-night nappy changes?”
“Up yours.” Then he laughed. “You’re going to piss yourself when I tell you.”
“Oi, I’m a plumber. We don’t get leaks. Come on, out with it.”
“LGBT relations.”
I didn’t actually piss myself, you’ll be relieved to hear, but I barked out a laugh so loud that Merlin spooked and shot out of the room and even Arthur quirked up an ear. “Bloody hell, they’ve found you out at last. Dave ‘Sensitivity Training’ Southgate. We’ll have you marching in Pride in no time.”
“With my feet? You’ll be lucky. But, oi, I’m a forward-thinking officer of the law, I am. Keen to take proactive measures to ensure that diversity in the force and the wider community is not only welcomed, but actively encouraged.”
“Well, it’s good to hear I’ve been rubbing off on you. Innuendo not intended.”
“‘Not intended’ my newly promoted arse. And we’ll have no dodgy comments about that, either.”
“Perish the thought,” I said politely. And very sincerely. “Mind you,” I went on, “the force part I get”—he’d actually asked, and even taken, my advice on how to handle a couple of issues concerning LGBT officers recently—“but how exactly do you . . . what was it? ‘Actively encourage diversity in the wider community’?”
“Buggered if I know, but that’s what it said in the letter.”
“Must be true, then. Well, good on you. Keep it up. Whatever it is.”
Once Phil had got back with the food, me and him toasted Dave’s promotion with a beer.
“Did you get anything out of the detectives before I got home? Cause of death, any leads?” Phil asked, nabbing half the satay chicken.
“Tried. No luck, though.”
He nodded, like that was what he’d expected. “They teach you that in Hendon.” Hendon being where baby police officers went to nursery school to learn their ABC, which I’m reliably informed these days no longer stands for Arrest, Beating, Confession. “Information is only supposed to flow one way.”
“Yeah, the sarge must’ve got top marks in that class. What about you?” I challenged, scooping up some monks’ veg in an attempt to convince myself this meal wasn’t totally unhealthy. “Don’t tell me you didn’t spend half of today digging around for the dirt on our Mr. Parrot.” I frowned at myself as I realised I’d echoed Dave’s way of describing him.
“Busy,” Phil said shortly. “Which is why I was planning to see what I could find out last night, until someone dragged me off to bed hours early.”
“Yeah, right. Kicking and screaming.” Well, to be fair, he had been by the end, not that I’m one to brag. “So what were you up to all day?”
“Client meetings all morning, and in court this afternoon.”
“Oh, yeah? What did they do you for?”
“Funny. Domestic violence case. Victim was a former client. The husband didn’t take too kindly to finding out she’d had him followed.”
Uh-oh. “Bad?” Phil had a complicated relationship with that sort of offence.
He took a deep breath. “I’ve seen worse. A lot worse.” The unspoken but hung in the air between us.
I put down my fork and gave his arm a squeeze. “Did they convict the bastard?”
“Yeah.”
“And she’s going to divorce him?”
“I bloody well hope so.”
“You should have told me it was coming up.” Because I knew he’d be feeling responsible for whatever that git had done to the wife.
Phil shrugged. “What were you going to do? Come and hold my hand?”
And all right, that stung, but sometimes you have to let these things go. “Might’ve made more of an effort to cook you dinner,” I said, giving him another squeeze.
He half smiled, giving me a warm feeling in my belly. Which rapidly cooled when the smile turned into a smirk. “Who says I don’t prefer takeaway?”
I glared at him and reminded myself that threatening
to shove one of the discarded chicken skewers where the sun didn’t shine would probably be in poor taste, coming straight on the heels of us talking about domestic abuse. “Well, if you want to do the cooking from now on, be my guest.”
The smirk got broader. “Touchy sod. Your cooking’s great. Why do you think I moved in?”
“And there were me and the cats thinking it was for the pleasure of our company.”
“The cats weren’t wrong.”
I stuck up the appropriate finger in his general direction. “Any more of that and you’ll be kipping down here with them tonight.”
Phil slung an arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Did I say the cooking was your only talent?”
And that should have been that about poor old Jonny-boy.
Except . . . I felt bad about it—finding the bloke and handing over the message from the missus. He’d looked so much happier behind that market stall than he had in all his photos.
And yeah, all right, technically he was what the Sun would call a love rat, running out on the wife to go live with the lover and not even having the decency to keep her informed as to whether he was alive or dead, but . . . Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I was wondering why I felt so flippin’ sorry for him, but sod it, if I hadn’t been to see him, maybe he’d never have gone back to Pluck’s End. And he’d still be alive today.
So later, after we’d cleared away the plates and the boxes from dinner, I might or might not have encouraged Phil to offer Lilah his services, professionally speaking. And maybe Phil had a bad taste in his mouth too from the way it had all gone down, because he didn’t take all that much encouraging.
I edged round to it. “Should we offer our condolences to the grieving widow?”
Phil gave me a cynical look. “Want to check how deep that grief really runs?”
“Maybe. You telling me you’re not a little bit curious yourself? After the way things panned out?”
“Maybe.” He stared at the telly for a mo.
I waited. Then I got fed up waiting. “Think she might have done it? Played us for a couple of mugs and got us to find him so she could lure the poor sod up here to off him?”
He didn’t answer my question. Well, technically speaking he didn’t. What he did do was turn to face me with a firm set to his jaw, and say, “Couldn’t hurt to pay a visit.” Then he half smiled. “If nothing else, it’ll save the cost of a stamp.”
“You what?”
“Like you told Dave, we haven’t sent her the invoice for finding the late Mr. Parrot yet, have we?”
We took the drive out to Pluck’s End to pay our respects to the grieving widow as soon as we could, which wasn’t as soon as we’d have liked. It’s a bugger, this having to pay the bills lark. I’d had a couple of customers booked in for the next day I hadn’t wanted to let down, and Phil had had a case to wrap up. Ironically, it was another missing-person job—one of his meetings from the other day had been about a runaway teenager, who he’d managed to track down in a shelter in Manchester. Cue tearful reunions and promises of better understanding all round. Well, if by all round you mean on the parents’ side. According to Phil, the teen herself had mostly looked pissed off at having been caught.
He reckoned, give it six weeks and she’d be off again. Still, as I reminded him, it’s always good to get repeat business.
Anyhow, we finally set off for Lilah’s house in Pluck’s End on a bright, mild Thursday morning. It was too early for daffs, but crocuses were starting to poke their heads out of the ground and magnolias in front gardens were getting ready to strut their spring stuff.
We were counting on the lady in question not going into work so soon after JP’s death, Phil not wanting to call ahead. Bit of a hangover from his police days, that, I suspected—never give the criminal a chance to make up a story and hide the body. As evidenced by the number of nippers out and about on the streets and playgrounds we passed on the way, it was school half-term holidays this week, which added to our chances of finding her at home with the kids. A calculated risk, but we wanted to take a nose at the crime scene too, so it wouldn’t be a wasted journey whatever.
The canal was out at the far end of Pluck’s End, one of those things you vaguely know are there but never pay much attention to. Unless, I guess, you’re in the market for a handy spot to commit murder. I seemed to remember Cherry saying they’d had a grant from the Lottery fund to tart it up a bit (not that she’d put it quite like that, obviously) but since I didn’t spend a right lot of time in Pluck’s End, I’d never actually seen it.
We parked in a newish-looking car park planted out with spindly trees in plastic tubes. Several other cars were already in occupation. Maybe we weren’t the only ones who fancied a butcher’s at a murder scene. Helpful signs pointed the way down to the canal, where we strolled along the path to the spot where JP had taken his terminal dip. Well, as near as we could get, at any rate. Around thirty feet of canal path each side of where, presumably, they’d dragged poor old Jonny-boy out of the water were still fenced off with police tape. They hadn’t bothered to leave some poor bastard in uniform to guard it, though, unless he’d just nipped behind a tree for a call of nature or a crafty fag, so the forensic team must have already been and done their stuff.
As places to get yourself offed go, Jonny-boy hadn’t chosen a bad one. The canal path had been made into a proper footpath, with benches every so often for the hard-of-standing and periodic notice boards either telling you which birds to look for flying over from the nature reserve on the other side, or reminding any medieval peasants that happened along that livestock could only be grazed on the common between Lammas and Candlemas.
“Candlemas I get—some kind of church candle fest, like the one with the oranges at Christmas—but what the hell’s Lammas?” I wondered idly.
“It’s when they used to slaughter all the spring lambs,” Phil said confidently.
“Oh.” Something about the way he said it made me send him a suspicious frown. “Oi, really?”
He laughed, the git. “God knows. Why don’t you ask Greg, if you’re that bothered?”
“Don’t think Cherry would thank me for ringing him up about work stuff in the middle of their honeymoon. And hey, I knew he was up for promotion, but I didn’t know he’d got the top job already.” I gave Phil a hard stare. “Be good if he had. I might get more respect round here if I was brother-in-law to Him Upstairs.”
“Yeah, but then you’d really have to mind your p’s and q’s when we go round for Sunday lunch.”
“Me? Nothing wrong with my manners. I was brung up proper, thank Greg.”
Phil gave me a look. “If you start screaming ‘Oh Greg’ in the middle of sex, we’re going to have a problem.”
I shuddered. “Cheers—way to give me a mental image of my sis doing just that. Can we change the subject?”
We walked on along the path. Everything was barren now, of course, and instead of grass and flowers, the predominant smell was damp earth with a whiff of diesel, but in a month or two’s time it’d be a lovely place for a stroll. Come summer, with the wild flowers blooming in the meadows and the birds flapping about overhead . . . Yeah, pretty idyllic, I reckoned.
Well, as long as they didn’t make a habit of finding dead bodies in the water, that was. I felt a momentary pang of regret that I’d turned down Cherry’s offer of her house in Pluck’s End at mates’ rates, now she was shacking up with Greg in the holiest of matrimony, but hey, we could still come here anytime. It wasn’t like it was a long drive out from St. Albans. Her daily commute from St. Leonards was going to be twice as far. Me and Phil had bets on as to how long she’d stick it out before chucking Ver Chambers for somewhere more local.
“Don’t suppose it’s worth asking you to give the place a once-over?” Phil asked in a low voice as we reached the tape barring our path.
I gave him a pitying look. “With a canal full of water rushing past?”
Phil raised an eyebrow
. “‘Rushing’?”
“All right, dawdling past, but it’s still water. It won’t just mess with the vibes, it’ll be the vibes. At least, the only ones I’ll be able to pick up. It’d be like trying to hear a pin drop at a heavy-metal festival.” I shrugged. “Anyhow, if whoever killed him left some evidence here, chances are it was lost, not hidden. You know, dropped hairs, bits of fluff from his T-shirt, stray chunks of DNA. That sort of thing, though God knows how they find it.” I was betting Phil knew how they did it too, but he didn’t enlighten me.
“Forgetting the murder weapon, aren’t you? You’d hide that.”
“Yeah, but would you hide it here? Where you know they’re going to be shipping in a vanload of lads and lasses in hazmat suits to comb over every inch of ground? What if it’s something that’d give you away?”
“What, like a pet rock with your name on it?”
“Don’t be daft. It wasn’t a rock. Too . . . jagged. Could have been a . . . I dunno, a walking stick? Nah, that wouldn’t fit, would it? Or would it?”
We’d discovered (from Dave, strictly on the QT) that Jonny-boy had suffered a blow to the head from that old classic, the blunt instrument, shortly before death. Trouble was, Dave couldn’t tell us whether JP had been hit on the head, then chucked in the canal, or fallen into the water (with or without a helping hand from person or persons unknown) and then hit his head. The most likely suspects in that case were bridges and canal boats, of which there were a few on this stretch, mostly moored down by the town, no doubt with coppers on board taking notes.
The bang on the bonce hadn’t killed our Mr. Parrot directly, but it had almost certainly contributed to his death by drowning—it being notoriously hard to swim whilst unconscious. And the water in the lungs had definitely come from the canal. I’d asked.
A woman strode by us, a matched pair of Westies straining at the lead like a couple of hyperactive cotton wool balls. “Gotta be popular with local dog owners, this place,” I said, nodding at her. “You’d think it’d be a bit risky for a murder.”
A bright-red dog-waste bin a few yards away bore witness to the fact I wasn’t simply letting my imagination run wild, harassing hypothetical sheep and cocking its leg on notional trees. They probably had a bye-law about that sort of thing, round here.
