Dying to Read
Page 27
‘I haven’t changed my mind in not going if that’s what you’re after. They’re your world not mine.’
He nodded. ‘I didn’t expect you to. We could always go to Cracow for a break. Everyone’s going there nowadays. They rebuilt the old destroyed city just as it was before.’
‘We’ll see.’ She rose. ‘Want something to eat?’
He shook his head. ‘Later. I won’t go in at the usual time. They can get on without me, Pat and Hamish. It’s called letting go.’ He reached out and took her arm lightly. ‘Not something we need to do.’ He patted his knee invitingly with his other hand. ‘It’s a long time since.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Jerzy.’
‘Silliness is like salt. Cut it down, but it is still essential in small measures. We don’t always need to behave like an old married couple.’
‘Newly weds, eh?’
‘Or before, when you had other beaus then found me the best.’
‘The competition wasn’t great. They were either soppy or on the make.’ She eased herself onto his lap, put her arms round his neck and kissed him. ‘I want you all spruced up and giving a good account of yourself today,’ she said when she disengaged her lips from his.
‘Any other orders?’
‘Yes. That infuriating little song you used to half sing. Don’t worry, be happy. Sing it now.’
Jerzy felt nature take its course as he warbled the bit he remembered. Bettina felt it too. She kissed him again. ‘Bed before breakfast I think,’ he said softly, and this time she didn’t disagree.
*
Driving to Feltham most days had had its incidental pleasures, not least the sight of the miniature cows on top of what was once Job’s dairy glimpsed from the flyover. Now, though, for the last journey, Jerzy took the tube to Richmond then caught the Reading train. Today drinking was expected, and, in spite of not being a pub person, he did not intend to let the customs of the force down.
Not surprisingly there was no bunting heralding his approach from the railway station, nor was there a red carpet smooching its way to the nick door. Everything, thankfully, was its mundane self. Put out more flags, he thought, as he made his way into the inner depths. His recent chat with Norma seemed to be bringing random book titles to mind. Ones he knew of but had never read. Bettina, too, this morning mentioning Thomas Hardy was something unusual. Perhaps, after all, he would find himself part of the eccentric Bones set up. A once staunch copper defecting to the loopy and unorthodox was after all not such a dismal prospect. However, for the rest of the day, copper, whether staunch or not, was what he had to be.
‘Morning, guv,’ said Pat when he entered the CID room, now cleared of the Augustin Cox paraphernalia. ‘Good to see you on parade. No, don’t stop me. I’m going to out-guv myself till the Super rings the bell for happy hour. We won’t have a guv like you until all young offenders regret their crimes and hang up their Christmas pillowcases.’
‘Welcome, Jerzy.’ Hamish stood to attention. ‘We’ll miss you.’
Jerzy gave a mock half bow. ‘Seems old salutations and platitudes are on the menu so I’ll lob you a couple. Nobody’s indispensable, and you’ll do just fine when the new ma’am takes over.’
‘Finsbury Park to here might be a culture shock too far, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Before the leaving day ritual squad get their sticky paws on you I thought we would take a trip. Just us three.’
‘Keys to the classified drugs still in your keeping, Pat?’
‘No, guv. A little semi-mystery tour. I’ll drive. We promise not to gag and hood you like the good old days. Hamish’ll ride shotgun to keep all your now released convicted felons at bay.’
‘I won’t say I’m in your hands. I’m not that daft, but there’s time and well,’ Jerzy looked round the room, ‘nothing here to immediately detain us.’
Pat clapped her hands. ‘Good. Last one in the Panda buys the raspberry ruffles.’
Dutifully following her outside, Hamish said to Jerzy, ‘Geraldine asked me to give you her best wishes. You’ve made an impression on her. “Not the way I imagined an Inspector” was how she put it.’
‘Praise indeed. She could be the making of you if you let her. Do you know where we’re going?’
Hamish shook his head. ‘Destination unknown. After you.’ He stood back to let Jerzy in the front with Pat. ‘It’s only right I buy the sweets.’
Once on their way, it soon became apparent they were not on a carefully disguised route. Bedfont signs were followed to the letter. Pat whistled Somewhere Over the Rainbow rather out of pitch while winking at Hamish in the mirror. Taking Bettina’s advice, Jersy complimented it with a laid back chorus of Don’t Worry Be Happy. ‘Your turn Princess,’ said Pat. ‘You can pick up the ruffles on the way back.’
‘You know I can’t sing. I’m really tone deaf. Besides, we didn’t cover it at Hendon.’
Pat chuckled appreciatively. ‘You’re learning, Leia, my girl. He’s a Felthamite now. Don’t you think so, guv? Personally I’ve always wondered how things were in Glockamorra but was too shy to ask.’
‘Finian’s Rainbow.’ Jerzy’s knowledge of stage and film musicals was as extensive as his knowledge of alternative exits from Hammersmith boozers.
‘Exactly. If only there was a crock of fairy gold at the rainbow’s end instead of the usual defecation material.’ She slowed and turned right. ‘Here we are. Not fake rural Ireland or back in Kansas. Just downtown Bedfont and the scene of your triumph, guv. Ours too, if I may say so.’
The courtyard scene was little changed since their previous visits. The red motorcycle stood in its customary spot surrounded by a group of assorted hoodies, some, no doubt, released from magistrates courts on compassionate leave. Three storeys up the boards had been taken down from the windows of the murder victim’s flat. The sound of hammering and the buzz of electric drills issued forth. The council, presumably after final fumigation, were making good, ready for an eager or reluctant new tenant.
‘Well I’ll be!’ Pat gazed upwards as three figures emerged into the upper walkway. At their head was Oswald Dunphy fishing out a front door key. Behind came a leaning heavily on a stick oldster assisted by a rotund man in priestly garb. ‘Shiver his timbers! If I’m not mistaken, the old postage pirate’s returned.’ Hamish concurred that indeed it was Bert Hill. ‘This is too good an opportunity to miss. I’ll give him a broadside he won’t forget. Excuse me a mo, guv. Duty calls.’
‘He’ll soon wish he was back on the ward. There she goes, another world stair climbing record under threat,’ Jerzy murmured appreciatively.
‘At least there’s someone to give him the last rites in attendance.’
They both waved in admiration when a bustling Pat emerged somewhat out of breath but resolute in her ratatattat attack on the shipmates’ door. It opened a fraction. She was inside in less than one shake of a ferret’s tail.
‘Law’s everywhere,’ said one of the hoodies.
‘Surveillance society innit,’ posited another.
‘Like freedom’s a thing of the past,’ mourned a third, accompanying his elegy with a forceful trajectory of spit.
‘They nick you in advance. Thought police,’ Orwelled another, clearly still suffering from A-level syndrome.
‘Morning lads and lass,’ said Jerzy affably, noticing on closer inspection that their convocation included a female delegate. ‘Good to hear a debating society in full flow. Rest assured that if anyone of you was unfortunate enough to be murdered like the deceased up there, DC Ogden here would be relentless on the justice trail. Isn’t that so?’
Hamish nodded to the effect that such was his goal.
‘Probably banged up the wrong geezer,’ volunteered a prospective defence silk.
‘Statistics innit,’ averred the spittle gobber. ‘They juggle the figures like an’ the government puts more on the beat and raises their pensions.’
His incisive reasoning was met by general approval.
&nb
sp; ‘Ah, if only ‘twere so,’ sighed Jerzy. ‘Hold onto your youthful idealism as long as you can. Age, alas, sometimes sours the snakebite. Neat bike by the way, and before you leap to more conclusions, I don’t think you nicked it.’
A slammed door above halted any further apercus on the police state or motorcycle specifications as heads turned and eyes drifted upwards to see Pat holding her right arm aloft as jolly as a capering Nobby Stiles brandishing his World Cup winners medal. ‘That’s truly Deutsched his Gramophon,’ she yelled out before descending the stairs as rapidly as she had climbed them, while whistling as she went On the Street Where You Live from My Fair Lady. She had no sooner regained the level and made towards them, however, when the so far silent female of the Youth Against Police Brutality band shouted, ‘Look out! Above you.’
Pat stopped, turned, looked up and immediately stepped backwards as a hurtling TV set crashed into the paving where she had previously stood. The excited yapping of a small canine filled the ensuing silence. The face of Leonie Cesareau peered over the wall. Rudy, for indeed it was her dachshund making the noise, scrabbled the tips of his forepaws to its top. ‘We’ve got a digital,’ explained his mistress. ‘Don’t need that old cathode ray no more.’
A hoodie cheer rang out in acclimation of this good fortune, and they agreed to every man Jack and woman Jill that it had been a chucking over well done considering the weight of the object and the maturity of the hurler’s arms.
Pat regained her composure with a series of deep breaths. It would take more than flying TV sets to get the better of DS Kirkland as both Jerzy and Hamish knew. Casting aside reprises from American musicals, she stuck two fingers in her mouth and drew forth a piercing whistle followed by the affirmation that fly-tippers would get their just deserts when final orders were called down in the old Doom and Gloom. ‘Time to go, guv,’ she said looking at her watch ‘It hasn’t exactly been as I planned, but I wanted us to be together where our last case began and ended.’
‘You did right. Things are messy.’ Jerzy poked the disgorged electronics of the busted TV set with his toe. ‘We managed to clear some of them up though. It’s a fitting end.’
Pat bleeped the car open and started the engine. Hamish climbed in the back. Jerzy waited before getting in. ‘Fare well,’ he called out, pausing between words, to the onlooking younger generation. Unsurprisingly they did not reciprocate.
Chapter 28
Read Me
‘You’re not going to try and spank me or ask me to spank you are you?’ said Geraldine to Hamish when, after consistent probing, he had falteringly outlined his indiscretion with Celia at Milly Simpson’s party.
They were sat in the library drinking a bottle of Valpolicella Recioto, alone together apart from Lacenaire who, head lowered, was pecking vigorously at his lime-green breast plumage.
Hamish shook his head. ‘I couldn’t go through with it. There’s something childish about it, and, believe it or not, I want to be grown-up. But you, do you harbour some desires in that direction?’
‘I’ve already told you what I want and, come to that, some of the things I’d like us to do. Spanking’s not one of them.’
‘This wine’s terrific,’ said Hamish.
‘Yes I know. That’s why I chose it.’
‘Mine’s a large Krepkaya and a Queen Mum’s Dubonnet!’ squawked Lacenaire.
‘Somehow I feel a bit like the bottle on the three legged table down the rabbit hole in Alice In Wonderland only with Read Me on the label instead of Drink Me,’ said Hamish. ‘You can read me like any one of these books.’ His hand indicated the stacked shelves beyond them.
‘Ah, you’re learning fast. But so far I’ve only managed to skim through the first chapter.’
‘The writer did it. What’s the matter, chucky? Tiger got your murder suspect?’
‘Myself, I think I prefer the part towards the end after all the hubbub that produced the solution dies down. The whatyoumicallit?’ He glanced into his wine glass as if it might hold the answer.
‘Well, in that case, Detective Constable Ogden, as they say in certain mysteries, what I still don’t understand is why you came to Professor Donald’s lecture?’
‘Chance. Lucky lucky chance. Of course in hindsight there was a connection. Diogenes and the Diogenes Club. Your surname and the brother of Sherlock Holmes.’ Happy in that thought he swirled the Recioto and sniffed it appreciatively.
‘Cat suddenly got your tongue?’ asked Geraldine as she put his wine aside then leant over and kissed him.
‘Tiger got your?’ He stroked the nape of her neck and whispered in her ear.
‘Fat the chew. Fat the chew. That’s all you do,’ said Lacenaire indignantly.
Geraldine now received a tender look from Hamish which she’d always wanted to receive. Hamish in return received the tender look from Geraldine he, too, had always wanted.
‘Little do you know, Lacenaire,’ said Geraldine.
‘Little does he know,’ assented Hamish.
Lacenaire shut his beak and magnanimously let the moment pass.
About the Author
John Elliott was born Glasgow 1938. As well as ‘Scotland making him’, he has lived in Spain and Paris and worked as an Assistant Film Editor, a night telephonist and in the Unemployment Benefit Service.
A persistent jazz and improvised music listener, he now resides in Twickenham
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Table of Contents
1. A Naughty Deed in the Best of all Possible Worlds
2. Let’s Have Some Dialogue
3. The Bones Detective Agency
4. Self Expression
5. Antique Dogs and Shall We Dance
6. Is Love Like Music the Answer?
7. Alone But Not Unhappy
8. Norma In Bed
9. As the Judge Said, Anyone Can Enter the Ritz Hotel
10. Etiquette for Beginners (1)
11. Sleuthing Twosome
12. Etiquette for Beginners (2)
13. Geraldine in Spankerland
14. In Which Nothing Much Happens, or is it Simply In Between?
15. Playtime
16. A Lady Client Withdraws
17. The Path I Tread
18. Confessions of Norma
19. A Boy’s Best Friend
20. Synchronicity
21. Missing You in Montevideo
22. Afternoon Ices and a Tap on the Head
23. Busy Busy
24. Suspect Mourners
25. Baby Talk
26. A Good Deed in the Worst of all Possible Worlds
27. Fare Well
28. Read Me