Title Page
BLOOD & BREAKFAST
By
William Stafford
Publisher Information
Blood & Breakfast
Published in 2012 by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © William Stafford 2012
The right of William Stafford to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988
Dedication
For Jim, a hero and a friend.
Arrivals
“It’s Brough,” Detective Inspector David Brough sighed and shook his head. He was crabby from the long train journey from Southampton, which had been delayed and extended by more things on the line than prizes on a game show conveyor belt. The small woman in a beige raincoat holding the sign looked at it again. Her head bobbed as if held on by a spring.
“That’s what it says,” she smiled. She was holding the hand-written sign like a child showing a finger painting to the rest of the class.
D.I. Brough sighed again.
“It’s B R O U G H,” he snatched the sign from her and tore it in two before thrusting the pieces back into her hands. “Not B R U F F. And you are?”
“B R U F F N U R,” the woman repeated.
“Never mind.”
They stood looking at each other for a few moments.
“Let me guess: you’re from the station.”
“Well, not this station. The police station.” The woman laughed. D.I. Brough scowled. He was not in the mood.
“I’ve come to meet you,” the woman explained, as if he wasn’t a detective and couldn’t work that out for himself. “Take you back to base, as it were, and get you settled in.”
“How nice,” D.I. Brough was willing to gamble half of the contents of his scrotum his sarcasm would be lost on this already infuriating woman.
“This way, sir.” She turned her back and began to trot away along the platform and towards the stairs. Brough extended the handles on his bulky suitcases and, pulling one and pushing the other, hurried to keep up.
“You have a name, do you?” he asked the back of the woman’s neck. She turned and beamed proudly.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
D.I. Brough closed his eyes.
“For fuck’s sake,” he mouthed.
***
Cassidy Whitlow had less in the way of luggage than the newly arrived Detective Inspector but she had more reason to be tired and crotchety having travelled halfway around the world to get to the same railway station. She hitched her backpack onto her shoulder and moved her holdall from one hand to the other. She couldn’t decide if the sunglasses were a little too much for the dull English day but she kept them on. She rather liked the air of glamour they lent her. International Woman of Intrigue arrives in the West Midlands. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was papped at every corner, and dogged at every step.
Of course, no one paid any attention. Even the CCTV cameras appeared to have turned a blind eye. Things would be very different when her task was complete. Oh yeah. She’d have more fame and notoriety than a coach load of minor Royals, footballers’ wives and reality TV stars bursting into flame.
Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. Her tutor was constantly scrawling notes in the margin about her tendency towards hyperbole. It was something she was trying to rein in. But this piece - her last and most important - her thesis would blow everyone away. She would be proclaimed the new master in the field. They’d probably give her tenure on the spot.
Getting ahead of yourself, Cass. First things first.
She made her way to the taxi rank. No one checked her ticket and there appeared to be no cabs available. Rather there were cars but no drivers in evidence.
What the hell kind of half-assed place had she come to? Nobody ever hear of customer service in this dump?
***
By the time he had stashed his bags in the boot of her car, D.I. Brough had established that his meeter-and-greeter’s name was Miller. Melanie Miller. She had, inexplicably in his view, attained the rank of Detective Sergeant. He guesstimated she was in her early thirties and she told him flat out she had a cat called Jerry (after the cartoon and yes, she did realise that was the mouse’s name) and, all too explicable to D.I. Brough, she was single.
Perhaps he was being unfair. His bad mood, caused ostensibly by the tiresome train trip but due, when you got down to it, to his unwilling displacement to this backwater borough, was undoubtedly causing him to regard D.S. Miller through shit-tinted spectacles.
As she reversed from the parking space and took the speed bumps too quickly for comfort, Brough reappraised his new underling. She had a broad, pleasant face with even teeth she liked to show off in her constant smiling, like a child’s drawing of the sun. The smiling, he surmised, was from a keenness to please and the nervous wish to be liked. Her honey blonde hair was neatly bobbed and, he was pleased to note, she hadn’t overdone her make-up. There was no orange tide-mark beneath her jaw. When she spoke, her voice betrayed her status as a born and bred Black Country native, although her education and training had taken the corners off it.
Brough shuddered. The town would be crawling with people speaking in that ridiculous sing-song tone. He could bang them all up for torturing vowels.
That the town seemed so far from a railway station did not bode well. What other trappings of modern life was it lacking? Would there be indoor plumbing? Electricity? Votes for women?
“I’m sorry?” he was jolted out of his gloomy contemplations by another sleeping policeman.
“Conurbation,” D.I. Miller repeated the word carefully. “It’s not rude.”
“No -“
“Only all the places is joined up. You can’t tell where one place ends and another one begins. You think you’re in Wolverhampton but it might be Walsall. Or Birmingham. It don’t make no difference most of the time. You’ll get used to it. Get your bearings.”
“I know what a conurbation is, thank you.”
D.S. Miller was smiling, but her lips were thinner and tighter this time. She put her foot down with just a little more pressure as the front wheels approached another speed bump.
***
An apologetic man in polyester trousers and a patterned shirt rushed from the coffee kiosk. Nodding and grinning he opened the door of his taxi and indicated that she should get inside. Oh, no, thought Cassidy Whitlow. I’m not riding shotgun. Not with you, you weirdo.
She opened instead the rear door and got in there. The cab that had taken her from Heathrow to Euston had been a proper taxi. Black and puttering like you see in the movies. And a proper Cockney driver prepared to deliver a monologue on current events at the drop of a hat. When he’d learned she was from the States, he’d mentioned a relative in Texas but Cassidy had had to admit she didn’t know him. Then he’d rattled off a list of movie stars in various states of sobriety that had graced or disgraced that very same back seat on which her ‘arris’ was now seated. Cassidy hadn’t
known what her ‘arris’ was exactly but she had a good idea. How lovely, she’d thought as the cab took the most circuitous and expensive route possible, and gee, look, proper double-decker buses!
But, it was increasingly apparent to her, the further you got from the Queen’s residence, the less picturesque and clichéd Britain became. The red brick and concrete angularity of the railway station confirmed this. It could have been anywhere. And now this guy, whose car looked like any other, well, he could be anybody. The registration plaque on his dashboard did little to assuage her misgivings.
“Where to, Miss?” he leered at her via the rear-view mirror.
“My bags,” she jerked her head in the direction of her luggage.
“And where is that adjacent to?” the driver prompted.
“Right there,” she pointed at the sidewalk. “Aren’t you going to put them in the trunk or something?”
The driver cottoned on. Murmuring a thousand apologies, he got out and saw to her luggage.
The country of Hardy, Wordsworth and Shakespeare! Cassidy marvelled at the ineptitude of the man. But then, she reasoned, she could hardly expect Doctor Johnson to be driving a cab, could she?
When he had strapped himself back in and had turned the ignition key, Cassidy leaned forwards and showed him a leaflet. It was an advertisement for a guest house, a whaddyacallem “bed and breakfast” place.
“That is where you wish to go?” said the driver, unwilling to take the leaflet as if there might be some kind of catch.
“Please,” Cassidy flashed him her teeth. He flashed his in return.
“Belt up,” he told her. Then, reading her affronted expression correctly, he added, “Seat belt. It is the law in my country. Now, how much do you usually pay?”
Cassidy sat back and buckled herself in. She watched buildings passing by, a hodgepodge of architectural styles, most of them post-war. This was not the quaint, chocolate box England of Miss Marple and PG Wodehouse. She looked at the cover illustration of the leaflet yet again, and was heartened a little by the black beams in the white walls of her destination. Things might not be so...so ugly when she got there.
***
“Here we am,” D.S. Miller announced. She decided against making a fanfare sound. The new bloke didn’t seem the type for that kind of behaviour. He was probably just tired, bless him. And he was young! Bloody hell! Not a trace of grey in his brown hair. Nor no wedding ring on his finger neither. D.S. Miller was as observant as every woman in that respect. He was, what, early thirties? It was true, wasn’t it, what people say? The pigs is getting younger.
“Hmm,” he said, getting out.
“This is the car park,” Miller explained with an expansive gesture as she got out. She watched him across the roof of the car as he took it all in.
“I can see that,” said Brough. “And that’s the castle, I presume.”
Between some trees, the ruined keep of a Norman fortification was peeking from its hilltop perch, a dark grey blotch against a light grey sky.
“That’s right!” Miller seemed amazed. “I thought you’d never been here before.”
“Lucky guess,” Brough offered a humourless smile. He helped himself to his bags from the boot.
“They’ll give you a pass in no time,” Miller assured him as they made their way to the main building. “When you’ve sorted yourself out a motor. You do drive, don’t you?”
“Well, no, I mean, I can but I tend not to. More of a cyclist, me.”
“Rather you than me, mate - I mean, sir. Too many bloody hills around here. You won’t catch me on a bike.”
Brough nodded.
“In there, is it?” Miller pointed at the larger of his bags.
“What is?”
“Your wossname. Bike.”
“Um, no.”
“Oh?”
He felt like explaining he needed a new bike and was going to source one a.s.a.p. when he was settled in and all that sort of thing. But, he checked himself, it was none of her bastard business. She was holding the door for him, and smiling like a patient spaniel.
He glanced up at the main entrance to his new place of work. Carved figures, squat Victorian policemen, were on sentry duty above the portico. Some wag had draped a used condom over one of their truncheons. The other figure was worse off - his head was missing and the C word was scrawled in faded marker pen across his torso.
“Welcome to Dedley,” he thought. With a shiver, he nodded his thanks to the simpering spaniel as he crossed the threshold to begin his new job.
***
While the taxi driver retrieved her belongings from the trunk, Cassidy compared the frontage of the Ash Tree Bed & Breakfast to the illustration on the leaflet. She was pleased to see the mock Tudor beams were all present and accounted for but she hadn’t expected the building to be so near to the street. It was a former pub, converted and added to in a mish-mash of styles. Clearly, the photographer had caught its best side.
She paid the man with a handful of unfamiliar banknotes. He seemed overjoyed and sped away before she could ask for change. She made a mental note to remember the British aren’t crazy about tipping everyone for everything. They seemed to regard it as an insult, a slight. Imagine that: giving someone money, an insult!
She picked up her bags and shouldered her way through the main entrance, consoling herself with the idea that if she didn’t like it, she could find somewhere else in the morning.
The reception was an affront to good taste. Wow, thought Cassidy, taking in the fake wooden panelling, the dusty Artexed ceiling and the proliferation of tacky glass ornaments that covered every surface; I’m an American but even I can see this is bad.
She put her bags on the lime green carpet and leant her forearm on the counter, taking care not to dislodge a couple of glassware dolphins in the process. She waited. While she waited she looked around. There was a display unit crammed with faded brochures for local attractions: the zoo, a disused factory, a canal boat excursion... Cassidy hoped for their sake, the attractions were in a better state of repair than the advertisements.
The walls were cluttered with photographs in frames and curling posters. Fading autographs from forgotten celebrities. There was an inordinate number of seashells for somewhere so far inland.
Cassidy decided to be pro-active, if only to expedite her exit from this gaudy area. She raised her hand and was about to bring her palm down flat on the brass bell on the counter when her wrist was seized by a male hand.
“Hey!” she cried out and wriggled free. She turned to find herself facing a handsome young man in his twenties. His large, brown eyes were shining. He tossed his head to dislodge the floppy dark hair from his forehead. Cassidy was about to give him a piece of her mind when he raised a finger to his lips. With his other hand he pointed to a hand-written notice behind the counter.
Do NOT Ring The BELL After 8 O’Clock! PLEASE!!!!!
This took the wind from Cassidy’s sails somewhat. She rubbed her wrist even though it didn’t hurt. “Well. Hey. There’s no need to grab.”
The young man dipped his head and apologised. The smile now seemed like more of a smirk. “Someone will come,” he assured her.
“You’re a guest too, huh?” Cassidy decided he wasn’t half bad-looking. And his accent - he sounded like none of the Brits she had encountered so far on her journey up the country.
“Just hang tight,” was his response. “Someone will come.”
He went out through the front door. Rather abruptly, Cassidy thought.
“Hey, wait!” she called after him, but he was gone. Cassidy groaned in frustration. She was considering gathering up her belongings and going in search of somewhere else but then she noticed a shadowy figure looming beyond the opaque glass of a door marked PRIVATE.
“Hello?”
The door opened and a small woman, not quite elderly but well into middle age, emerged. She was just a head taller than the counter and brought to Cassidy’s mind visions of John the Baptist’s noodle served up on a platter.
“All right, dear?” said the woman, pleasantly but in the local accent that was so alien to Cassidy’s American ears. “You should’ve rung the bell, dear. That’s what it’s for.”
“Oh!” Cassidy gasped, once she’d worked out what the woman was saying. “But I - the - um - sign...” She pointed at the notice, which she guessed was in the woman’s handwriting.
“Well, I’m here now, dear, so no harm done.” The woman squinted at Cassidy then pursed her lips as though deciding something. “You’re the American.” She placed a battered, leatherette-bound book on the counter and held out a chewed-up Biro.
“Guilty as charged, heh,” Cassidy grinned. The woman was odd but then again, weren’t all Brits a bit odd?
“I’ve put you at the top of the house,” the woman announced as though granting some special favour. “Lovely room. Peaceful. You won’t be troubled there.”
“Good,” Cassidy handed back the pen. “I don’t want to be troubled. I just need peace and quiet so I can work on my thesis.”
“Just sign the book, dear. If you please.” The woman was staring blankly. People often took on a glazed expression when Cassidy mentioned her thesis. She would have to make sure it was accessible to the general public if it was to wind up on the bestsellers list.
She took the pen and signed the book with a flourish. She would have to develop a quicker, more distinctive autograph for all the fans that would soon be queuing up to meet her in bookshops around the world.
“You know, I forget, other people aren’t necessarily interested my thesis.”
“I’m sure it’s lovely,” the woman countered, although it was clear she would rather change the subject. Unfortunately for her, the American girl took this as an invitation to talk about it a bit more.
Blood & Breakfast, West Midlands Noir Page 1
