Dance Floor Drowning

by Brian Sellars

  Hadfield squirmed with annoyance, but kept calm and pressed on with his point. 'But you interviewed him before the Man’s Head murder?'

  'Yes – yes.'

  'So you could hardly have warned him to stay away from it?'

  'No – yes – no - err - I meant that I wanted him to stay away from the swimming baths case, but then, a few days later the other one popped up right where he and his friends play.'

  Hadfield preened minimally, sensing that Flood was slightly rattled. 'The boy said you poked him in the chest? Did you? He also said you told him he'd go to jail for life?'

  Flood laughed, a little too heartily to be genuine, the doctor thought. 'Look Doctor, you know young Billy Perks, he's a bit of a scamp. I needed to make an impression on him, put the wind up him a bit, nothing more than that. However, if you're concerned, I'll speak to his parents. Frankly, I'd hoped to avoid formality.'

  Hadfield felt deflated. Apart from his one small slip, Flood's reasoning seemed valid, and although the rules about the interrogation of minors had been stretched a little, he could see why. 'OK, thank you, Chief Superintendent. I'll be speaking to Billy's parents myself. If you're happy to leave it with me, you needn't worry about visiting them. As you say, "avoid formality". However, I'm sure you will agree with me that the rules about minors are there for very good reason. You will no doubt understand my concern.'

  'Don't worry, Doctor – err - Heathfield ...'

  'Hadfield. It's Hadfield.'

  'I quite understand. And, if I may say so, I'm delighted that you take such a close interest in your patient's welfare.'

  The line went dead.

  *

  'Birch!' Flood yelled at his office wall. He slammed the telephone receiver onto its base on his desk, toppling an artillery shell case that served as a pencil holder. Its contents scattered across the floor. 'Birch! For God's sake where are you?'

  The office door opened. Miss Birch, his flustered civilian secretary, rushed in, crunching pencils beneath her tripping feet. Thin and gangly, with grey hair wrapped around her head like a turban, she bobbed and bowed as if kowtowing to a Chinese emperor. Muttering apologies, she dropped to her knees and began scooping up pencil debris, in the process spilling the contents of a folder of mail she was carrying.

  'Stop it! Stop it, woman!' cried Flood. 'For God's sake leave all that. Where's Lackey? '

  Miss Birch's spectacles slid down her nose as she swung her terrified gaze to her boss's reddening face. 'Sergeant Lackey is in the canteen, Sir.'

  'Get him!'

  Five minutes later, Miss Birch announced Sergeant Lackey, waving him into Flood's presence as if fanning dying embers.

  'That bloody kid's causing trouble already,' Flood said without ceremony. 'I've had his doctor on the 'phone. Hadfield, remember him? That meddling, posh bugger who teamed up with him last year. He as good as accused me of police brutality.'

  Sergeant Lackey picked his way to Flood's desk, carefully avoiding Miss Birch's fluttering fingers as she cleared a path through splintered pens and pencils. 'He's a brassy little devil that kid,' said the sergeant. 'He was cheeky to me when I picked him up the other day.'

  'Did he say much in the car?' Flood was polishing the artillery shell case on his sleeve

  'No, he just moaned about his bike or sommat. Oh, and a ration book.'

  'Do you know the family?' Flood said, half-heartedly tidying his desk.

  'The father's a steelworker, a big bloke. They're no trouble as far as I know.’

  Flood looked disappointed. 'No unpaid fines, or anything?' He moved to his office window.

  Lackey followed him with his eyes, his brow furrowed with concentration. 'It – err - it wouldn't be hard to get some sort of – err - hold on the lad. Keep him quiet, like,' he said craftily. 'Maybe even get him put away for a month or two.'

  Flood turned sharply. 'No! I wouldn't want him put away, no courts.' He turned back to the window and looked down at the traffic in the street below. 'Who's the local copper?'

  Lackey frowned. 'Oh, he's no bloody use. John Needham, ex-navy bloke. He wouldn't help us. He's too – err - too …' He shuffled his feet, leaving the sentence unfinished. 'Anyway, we don't need him. Leave it to me, Sir. I'll soon get a tight rein on the lad.'

  'No details,' instructed Flood. 'Just make sure he stays out of police business, nothing more than that.'

  0o0o0

  Chapter Five

  Kick Morley was playing keepy-uppy with a football against the gable end of Billy's house. Almost two weeks had passed since the dance floor drowning and the so-called headless corpse murder. Kick Morley, in the absence of more headless corpses, had reinstated football as his major obsession, despite it being the cricket season.

  Smothering her annoyance, Missis Perks approached him from her back door. 'He's not here, Michael,' she said stiffly. 'I've told you already, he went off on his bike.'

  'Yeah, burrill be back soon,' said Kick reasonably, rolling the ball off his head, around his neck, onto his shoulder and down onto a knee before catching it.

  'Yes, love, he will, but can't you wait somewhere else?'

  'But that'd be no good, Missis Perks. I have to wait somewhere where he's gonna be when he comes back. It's no good waiting somewhere where he's not gonna be …'

  Missis Perks pursed her lips, briefly rocked by the child's implacable logic. 'Yes, but you must stop banging that – B-B-BALL! Billy's dad's on nights. He's not well. He needs his sleep.'

  'Can I wait if I don't bounce the ball?'

  'Oh I suppose so, but don't do anything with the ball. Just be quiet – please. And anyway he has jobs waiting for him when he gets back. He's still got lavvie paper to tear up. I told him yesterday to do that.'

  At that moment, Billy returned on his bike, skidding to a dramatic stop and saving his mother further debate.

  Missis Perks glared at the pair. 'Just keep it down,' she said, through gritted teeth. 'And you,' she was pointing a stabbing finger at Billy, 'can get that lavvy paper done. I don't want your father going down the yard to find none on the nail.'

  Billy shrugged contritely. 'Sorry mam.'

  'And remember, Billy, your dad's on nights, and he's not well. Keep the noise down.'

  Billy dismounted, and cheekily drew his index finger across his lips. He began to tip toe theatrically towards the street. Kick followed in similar mode. They looked like a pair of pantomime clowns.

  'Don't go disappearing, Billy,' Missis Perks told him. 'Your dinner'll be ready soon.'

  The lads climbed onto the front gate and swung it gently back and forth. 'Thiv opened the big swimming bath at long last.'

  'About time an' all,' said Kick. 'It's two weeks sin' they found that floater.'

  Billy cocked his leg over the gate's top rail so that he could swing hands free. 'My dad says millions o' kids have been playing hell about it being shut in t'school holidays. He said, they had to open it or there would have been riots and commotions.'

  'Maybe they’ve solved who did it,' Kick said.

  'I don't think so. We still need to do some poking around. We should go for a swim.'

  'Errgh!' Kick's expression signalled disgust. 'Worrif thiv not changed watta. We'd be swimming in deeyad man's body juice.'

  Billy squinted up from fixing a kink in his wire-framed glasses. 'It'll mek a change from swimming in tha piddle. Tha'rt always piddlin in it.'

  Kick laughed, blushing slightly. 'I never!'

  Billy threaded his specs back on to his nose and around his ears. 'Thiv not even said who he were yet.' He climbed down from the gate and headed off towards his house door. 'I've gorra tear up some lav paper,' he said gloomily. 'Will tha call for us this affs?'

  Kick eyed him doubtfully. 'No, I'm not going swimming in no deeyad body juice.'

  'Okay then, we'll meet at t'greenhouse. We need to mek a plan, and tha needs to get thee MOM board sorted out. We aren't mekkin any progress on these murders.'

  The pair parted. Billy headed for
the garden shed where his dad's old newspapers were saved for a million jobs around the house and garden, not the least important of which was as toilet paper.

  'Make sure they're neat and tidy,' called his mother as she spotted him going into the shed. 'I don't want 'em all ragged and different sizes. It looks common.'

  Billy gave her a resentful nod. He closed the shed door behind him and stuck his tongue out, once he was sure she couldn't see him. Selecting several sheets of newsprint, he laid them out on his father's workbench and began tearing them neatly over the back of on old hacksaw blade. He divided each broadsheet into pieces roughly the size of a library book page. He was good at it, and made a nice neat job. It was a slow job, mainly because distracting stories he spotted in the old newspapers were hard to resist. That was how he learned the name of the Man’s Head murder victim. There, on a couple of sheets of lavvy paper, he saw the announcement of the poor man's funeral.

  Henry Darnley, professor of history and chairman of the Board of Trustee Curators of Sheffield Museum, who was brutally murdered at Man’s Head crag, will be buried at Crookes Cemetery on …

  Billy blew a long whistling sigh as he studied the details. Somehow, he had missed the announcement, even though he always scanned the newspapers when his dad had finished with them. He could not imagine how he had missed it. The newspaper was three days old. The funeral was to take place tomorrow afternoon. He should go, he told himself. We all should. He wondered briefly if he could convince his pals to join him. It would be a fine opportunity to see who turned up. They would learn who the victim's friends and family were. And, though they might never know it, one of them could even be the killer.

  He quickly sorted his sheets of toilet paper into a pad and punched a hole through one corner with an awl. He threaded string through the hole and tied a loop for a hanger. Admiring his handiwork, he set off to install it on the special nail at the back of the lavatory door.

  *

  Billy's house clung to a steep street of small, artisan dwellings, most built at the end of the nineteenth century. Though many had walls of similar grey sandstone and roofs of welsh slate, they were a curious mixture of shapes and sizes. Steps, low walls and stone terraces linked them, as if to prevent them sliding down onto Walkley's main shopping street where double-decker tramcars pounded between pavements crowded with shoppers. Few motor vehicles could make the steep climb up Billy's street without considerable drama and clouds of exhaust smoke. Once a week however, the greengrocer's horse and cart accomplished it without fuss.

  'Any headless corpses today?' This from Mister Leaper perched high on the driving seat of his mobile fruit-and-veg shop. Beattie, his heavy grey mare, snorted and shook her head, seeming to share the joke as she stopped at the curb where Billy stood, waiting with his mother's shopping list.

  'Very funny,' grumbled Billy, as he helpfully lifted down a wheel-chock from its hanger under the cart's tailboard and kicked it into place behind a wheel. 'Me mam says thee carrots are rubbery and thee runner beans are stringy.'

  Mister Leaper lifted an eyebrow. He had a weather beaten, russet face, that would better suit a trawler man than a greengrocer. An ancient cap, worn shiny at the neb by years of handling, covered his head. A leather belt, with the badge of the Royal Artillery on its buckle, held a brown warehouse coat firmly in place over his ample frontage. Wheezing and grunting, he climbed down to the pavement and stamped his feet, as if testing his safe arrival on terra firma. He set the cart's handbrake and expertly secured it with a mystical hitch. 'Oh does she now?' he said, nodding and bobbing his head as if acknowledging applause from around the street. 'She waint be wanting nowt then!'

  Billy rubbed Beattie's powerful neck and looked into her soft, brown eyes. 'Nay she does,' he said loftily. 'She wants carrots and runner beans, but not rubbery 'ens.'

  'Has thy heard owt else about them murders?' Mister Leaper asked, looping a nosebag over Beattie's head.

  'Only that thiv reopened t'swimming baths, but I've not heard nowt at all about t'other one at Man’s Head. Has tha?'

  'No, nowt. I know they're burying one of 'em at Crookes cemetery tomorrow afternoon. But I expect tha'll already know that, thee being a genius detective an' all.' Mister Leaper armed himself with a spirit level and a few well used slivers of plywood. He bent to levelling his set of large brass weighing scales. When he'd done he demonstrated their accuracy with a theatrical flourish of a cast iron test-weight.

  From neighbouring houses, women were gathering at the cart. They smiled and nodded, greeting each other, as, armed with baskets and shopping bags, they formed an orderly queue on the pavement. Mister Leaper smiled at each one as they joined the line. 'Good day, girls. Lovely day for it?' he said. 'I've got some smashing Savoys today – only threppenz a-piece.'

  'Threppenz!' one woman cried, seeming most alarmed. 'Who do you think I am, Lady chuffing Docker? I'm not made of money tha knows.'

  Billy's mind was not on cabbages, or diamond dripping millionairesses. He quickly completed his mother's shopping and ran back into the house with it. The funeral announcement in the newspaper had been the only information to emerge about either the so-called Man’s Head murder, or the drowning. The police remained tight-lipped on both. In particular, it was as if the "dance floor drowning" had never even happened. Billy and his pals had become increasingly concerned and had convinced themselves that if they didn't act, the killers might go free - perhaps to strike again.

  Since reading about the funeral, Billy had repeatedly turned over his thoughts and ideas about it, but he had not changed his mind. He was convinced they should attend, and reasoned that if they could discover who were the dead man's friends and relations, a reason for his death might begin to reveal itself. It might only be a short step from there to the identification of those with reason, or the desire, to kill him.

  *

  At noon on the day of the funeral, Billy and Kick reconnoitred the cemetery. They were looking for a good hiding place, close enough to see the mourners' faces without being spotted. They arrived to find the sexton putting the final touches to a new grave. They watched him, unseen, from a stand of rhododendron bushes. 'If that's where they're going to bury him,' Billy whispered, 'this'll be a great hiding place.'

  Kick agreed, though he seemed somewhat distracted. He was staring at the open grave, a puzzled frown on his face.

  'What's up?' Billy asked him.

  'Will they have a separate coffin for his eeyad?'

  Billy gaped at him astonished. 'Worra tha talking abaht? He's gorriz eeyad on his shoulders, tha wazzock!'

  Kick shuffled defensively. 'Well why are they all saying he were eeyadless then?'

  Billy could hardly believe his ears. 'I've told thee already. At first they thought he were eeyadless, burriz not. It's the papers' fault. They kept on saying it because of Man’s Head rock. It just gen ‘em better headlines, – more gory like. They like it gory, wi missing eeyads and stuff .'

  'Huh huh, headlines,' Kick sniggered at Billy's unintentional pun.

  Billy frowned. 'That copper I met said the head was sticking out from some bracken. He said that at first glance it looked like it were chopped off.'

  Kick sighed, disappointed. 'It would've been better chopped off.'

  Billy shook his head disdainfully. 'I've told thee all this once. I think th'art barmy.' He started towards the cemetery gates. 'Come on. I'm going for me dinner. I'll see thee later. Don't forget, they're burying him at three. We need to be hidden before anybody comes.'

  *

  It was raining when Yvonne, Kick and Billy crept into hiding in the rhododendron bushes. The funeral cortege was due to arrive shortly. Billy and Kick had fastened elderberry branches to themselves for extra camouflage. Yvonne said they looked stupid. She was wearing her dark green school raincoat, and smugly pointed out how it kept her dry as well as perfectly camouflaged, without having caterpillars and spiders crawling out of it.

  Billy wiped a finger across his rain-spatter
ed glasses and peered from the rhododendrons. Apart from his earlier reconnoitre, he had only visited the cemetery once before. That had been in the late summer of the previous year. His granny Smeggs had forced him to help her gather blackberries from the abundance of brambles growing around the graves. Since then he had often wondered about the blood red juice from his granny's blackberry pies, flowing like blood from berries grown in earth containing so many rotting corpses. He shuddered and swung his gaze around the wide expanse of gravestones.

  The cemetery ensured its corpses remained at rest by enclosing them within a six feet high stone wall. At its main entrance a pair of regal, cast iron gates swung between ornamental pillars. Nearby, a brass tap dribbled into a stone water trough. Beside it rose a mountainous heap of composting flowers where visitors, tidying up the graves of their loved ones, tossed dying wreaths and bouquets. Rows of gravestones, some bearing carved swags of acanthus leaves, angels and urns, lurched at each other across weed-grown paths. A few monuments had toppled over, and lay beneath veils of bramble, ivy and old man's beard; excellent habitat for wrens, grass snakes, hedgehogs and foxes. A small, gothic chapel overlooked all, its mullioned windows as dark and shiny as coal.

  A metallic squeal drew Billy's attention to the gates. A Daimler hearse, followed by two black limousines, slowly entered and began their stately progress up the drive. The hearse stopped at the chapel porch. The driver and three frock coated ushers climbed out and began offloading a coffin onto a folding bier. After carefully arranging floral wreaths on it, they wheeled it into the chapel porch.