by Sam Short
“They knew the police would be coming to question him,” said Judith. “That’s why he’s in this room. It’s for his privacy.”
“And they say crime doesn’t pay,” said Pamela. “Had Jack broken his hip while gardening, and not while on the run from the police, he’d have been thrown into a mixed ward — along with the other elderly losers. Drinking prune juice and gossiping about who takes the most medication.”
“Shall we move this along?” suggested Millie. “What happened next?”
Judith wiped a biscuit crumb from the corner of her mouth. “Me and Dad found —”
“Dad and I,” corrected Pamela. “Must we lose our beautiful language?”
Judith closed her eyes for a moment, her fingertips whitening on the pen in her hand. “Dad and I found Eric and Andy where Jack had suggested we would, in —”
Eric stood up, his seat rocking as he rammed it backwards. “Dirty grass, Jack!”
“Sit down, Eric,” snapped Pamela. “I’d have told the police they could have found you and Andy in the snooker hall, if Jack hadn’t! How dare you act like this. A man has been murdered, and it seems that you three idiots were the last people to see him alive, apart from the person who murdered him, of course. Show the police, and poor Tom Temples some respect!”
“Sorry, Pammy,” said Eric, lowering himself into his seat. “I was forgetting myself. It must be the stress of the situation.”
“Eric,” hissed Jack, as his wife’s eyes darkened.
“Pamela, I mean!” Eric said. “I’m sorry, Pamela. God forgive me.”
“Never. Let. Me. Hear. You. Call. Me. That. Again, Eric,” warned Pamela. “Only the milkman, my rheumatologist, the lovely Indian man in the corner shop and Jack – on the third Friday night of every month, may call me by my pet name!”
“Sorry,” said Eric, lowering his gaze. “I won’t do it again.”
Pamela studied Eric for a moment, and then nodded in Judith’s direction. “Carry on, young lady, but please hurry up and get to the meat and bones. I’m dying to find out whose idea it was, and when I do, that person had better watch out!”
Jack pulled the white bed-sheet up to his chin, and Eric made a squeaking sound as he bowed his head, his face losing colour as quickly as Millie was losing her patience. She shook her head in frustration, and snatched the piece of paper from Judith’s lap, scanning the notes quickly. “Eric and Andy were brought here instead of the police station when they told Sergeant Spencer what had happened,” she murmured. She read the next few lines and looked up. “The crime we heard Andy confessing to was not murder, it was… tampering with another man’s metal detector?” She raised an eyebrow in Andy’s direction. “That’s what you did? That’s the crime you were talking about in the shed?”
Andy gave a worried nod. “Yes. And I’m sorry. I hope you’ll be lenient with me. It’s my first offence!”
“I have a recording on my phone of you three laughing about leaving Tom in the sand dunes,” said Millie. “You said you’d never get caught because he couldn’t possibly give evidence, and you even mentioned the look on his face when you left him there. If you hadn’t hurt him, what was all that about? What exactly did you do, and what on earth happened in the sand dunes?”
Pamela reached across the bed and pointed at the sheet of paper. “That’s all written on that paper, my dear. Your colleague wrote it down before you arrived. I’m only interested in whose idea it was.”
Millie tossed the piece of paper onto the bed. “I’d like to hear it for myself, Pamela. If you don’t mind, that is?” she said, staring the older woman in the eyes. “I happened to like Tom, and I’d like to know what these three men did to him. From their own mouths.”
Pamela sat back in her seat and took another biscuit from the box. “Of course,” she said. She pointed a bony finger at Andy. “Tell her what you did!”
Andy’s face crumpled, and he made a soft sobbing sound. “I went in Tom’s car and fiddled with his metal detector! I’m sorry. Eric made me do it! It was his idea!”
“I’m surrounded by grasses,” muttered Eric.
“You’ll be six-feet under the grass, by the time I’ve finished with you, Eric!” snapped Pamela.
“Eric found out which part of the beach Tom was finding the gold coins on,” said Judith. “That’s how it began.”
“Mrs Jordan told me,” said Eric. “She’d been walking her dog on the beach and had seen a lot of activity in the dunes. I saw her in town. She knows I’m a metal detectorist and assumed I’d like to know what another detectorist had been up to. She said Tom had found some bones in the dunes, and the area was being cordoned off.”
“Go on,” said Millie.
“Well, I assumed that Tom had found the bones in the same place he was looking for gold, so I went to have a look,” said Eric, “but when I got to the nature reserve carpark, I found Tom in his car. He was about to leave, but when he saw me, he got out of his car to speak to me.”
“What did he say?” asked Millie.
“I thought he wanted an argument,” said Eric. “After what had happened in the pub the night before, you know? I even tried to roll my sleeves up – in case there were fisticuffs, but my forearms are too wide. It’s all those years of swinging a detector. It really works the old muscles.”
Massaging her temple with a finger, Millie took a breath. “Did he want an argument?”
“No,” said Eric. “He wanted a truce. He told me that there was still gold in the dunes, but that the dinosaur bones he’d found were of an unknown species. They were of great importance, he told me. He said that the fossil hunters would keep on digging in the dunes, looking for more remains.”
“And they’d find the gold,” said Jack. “Instead of him.”
“Quiet, Jack,” snapped Pamela. “Speak when you’re spoken to!”
“Jack is right,” said Eric. “And not only that. Tom was only able to find those coins because that storm had shifted a lot of sand. The sand will soon shift back, though. Another week or two and a few gusts of heavy wind, and those coins would have been lost again – buried under too much sand. A detector can only find metal up to a certain depth, you see?”
“I see,” said Millie. “Carry on, Eric. What sort of truce did Tom want?”
The seat creaked under Eric as he leaned forward. “He suggested that we sneak onto the dunes under the cover of darkness and find as many coins as we could. All of us. Him and The Spellbinder Sand Diggers working as a team. Four detectors would be better than one, he said, and rather than lose a lot of those coins, he suggested we find as many as we could between us, and then split them four ways.”
“And you said yes?” asked Millie.
“Oh yes!” said Eric. “But I was angry at Tom. He’d dissed the Spellbinder Sand Diggers in front —”
“He did what?” said Pamela. “How old are you, Eric?”
“Sorry,” said Eric. “He’d disrespected the club in front of all the other customers in The Fur and Fangs. You heard him! He embarrassed me!”
“You were both as bad as each other,” said Millie, recalling the argument. “Anyway, what did you do?”
“I wanted to get him back,” said Eric. “I wanted revenge.”
“How petty,” said Pamela. “You men and your pride.”
“What sort of revenge?” said Millie.
“I didn’t know,” said Eric. “I couldn’t think of anything. I’ve never had to wreak my revenge before, you see? I didn’t know where to start, it was complicated if I’m honest, but then I had an idea! A good idea!”
“It wasn’t a good idea,” said Judith. She looked at Millie. “Wait until you hear this.”
“It worked,” said Eric. “That makes it a good idea. Before Tom left the carpark, he suggested we meet there again at eleven o’clock last night. When it would be really dark. We didn’t want to get in trouble, you see. If we’d been caught using our detectors in an area we shouldn’t have been in, the police would be
en entitled to confiscate our equipment, and none of us wanted that to happen. Especially Tom, with his fancy machine. Only a show off would need an expensive machine like that, anyway!”
“Don’t speak ill of the dead, Eric,” said Pamela. “It’s rude.”
“Sorry,” said Eric. “Where was I? Oh yes. Before Tom left the carpark, he told me he was taking his car to be fixed before he went home. To the garage that I knew Andy works in.”
“I didn’t want to do it!” said Andy. “Eric told me it was my duty as a member of The Spellbinder Sand Diggers!”
“What did he ask you to do, Andy?” said Millie.
“He wanted me to change the batteries in Tom’s metal detector,” said Andy. “It was easy. Tom left the keys with Shirley on reception, and I offered to do the work on his car. While I was doing it, I switched the batteries in his metal detector with the ones in mine. Most detectors use the same alkaline batteries, and the ones in my machine were on their last legs. They’d started giving up the last time I’d gone detecting. I’d been meaning to change them.”
“You just happened to have your metal detector with you at work?” asked Judith.
“It’s always in my car,” said Andy. “You never know when the urge to swing a detector will strike.”
“My plan worked,” said Eric. “Tom was new to the hobby of metal detecting. He thought he was clever — finding all that gold, but he had a lot to learn. One of those things being to always carry spare batteries. When we met Tom last night, and went onto the dunes, his batteries only lasted for a few minutes before they gave out. He was devastated, and while we found all the gold coins, he could only watch with a look of disappointment on his face.”
“I felt guilty,” said Jack. “He asked if we were still going to split the gold with him, but Eric just laughed in his face.”
“Don’t try and make Eric look worse than you are, Jack,” said Pamela. “You’re just as bad! And you lied to me — you told me you were going to Eric’s house to play poker last night. Not infiltrating cordoned off areas looking for lost treasure! You’re not Indiana Jones, Jack. You’re a silly old man!”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “I feel awful, about everything.”
Eric looked at the floor. “Me, too. If I’d known he was going to die, I wouldn’t have laughed at him, but how could I have known? The three of us stayed for an hour, until we couldn’t find any more coins. We left Tom digging in the sand with his shovel, desperate to find gold. We had no idea what was going to happen to him. We wouldn’t have left him there alone if we had.”
“Why did you run?” said Millie. “When we came to your shed today?”
“Because we’d broken the law,” said Eric. “We’d been nighthawking.”
“And I’d have lost my job if the garage had found out what I’d done to a customer while his car was in our care,” said Andy. “And what I did was stealing — I took the good batteries out of his detector and changed them for old ones. That’s stealing! I’ve never broken the law in my life. That’s why I ran!”
“I ran because Eric told us to,” said Jack. “It was exciting, until I tripped and hurt myself.”
“Would you jump off a cliff if Eric told you to, Jack?” said Pamela.
Jack shrugged. “I dunno,” he muttered. “Maybe. How high is the cliff?”
“Okay. Let’s get back on track,” said Millie, wondering if the hospital room she’d wandered into was in a different dimension — a dimension populated by village idiots. “Did you see anybody else in the sand dunes before you left Tom behind? Or hear anything unusual?”
“No,” said Eric. “Nothing.”
“Were any of you shining a torch around?” asked Judith. “Torchlight was seen in the dunes just before Tom was killed. Was that one of you?”
“No chance,” said Eric. “None of us brought a torch, neither us three or Tom. I brought a little headlamp along, but that uses red light which can’t be seen from a distance. I hardly used it anyway — the moon gave us enough light to find the coins in the holes we’d dug. We wouldn’t have been stupid enough to shine a torch around — we shouldn’t have been there. We were nighthawking. We’d have been asking for trouble. That’s what we meant when you heard us saying that Jack couldn’t report us — he’d been nighthawking, too. He’d have dropped himself in trouble along with us.”
Pamela cast a stern glance at each of the men. “You’ve been very silly,” she said. “The three of you!” She bit into a biscuit and smiled at Millie. “Are they in trouble? Will they get criminal records? Or go to prison? I hope not, because I’m not sure I could wait for Jack if he had to do time. I’m not sure I could be married to an old lag.”
“I doubt it,” said Millie. “They’ve been foolish, but there are still bigger fish to fry.”
“You mean finding the person who did kill Tom?” said Jack.
Or demon, thought Millie. “Yes,” she said. “I mean finding the person who killed Tom.”
Chapter 13
Placing the turkey in an oven tray, and staring at the pile of unpeeled potatoes, Millie glanced at the wall clock. “I haven’t got time,” she said. “They’ll be here soon. I meant to prepare it earlier, but I got side-tracked by Mister Anon and the man from DEFRA, and then all that nonsense in the hospital.”
“You know you can do it, Millie,” said Reuben, perched on the top-rail of a kitchen chair. “You could have it prepared in minutes — if you’d just give in to temptation.”
Placing a whole head of cauliflower on a chopping board, Millie shook her head. “No. That’s cheating. I promised George and Judith a home cooked meal.”
Sergeant Spencer looked up from his notebook, and placed his empty mug on the table. “Don’t worry about what Judith thinks,” he said. “She uses magic in the kitchen all the time. She thinks I don’t know, but I’ve seen her.”
Millie rubbed butter into the turkey, the warm glow of magic rising in her chest as she considered utilising her powers for such a trivial task. She looked at Sergeant Spencer. “You won’t tell them I cheated?” she said.
“You know me better than that, Millie,” he said. “I hope so, anyway. Of course I won’t… if you let me watch, that is. I enjoy watching magic being performed.”
“I’ll do better than that,” said Millie. “Why don’t you join us for dinner?”
“Oh no. I wouldn’t do that to you,” said Sergeant Spencer. “Judith told me you have a crush on George. I realise Judith will be eating with you and George, but that’s a little different than a middle-aged policeman joining you. I’d cramp your style.”
Heat burst from Millie’s chest, wending a route over her shoulders, along her arms, and into her hands — where magic sparked at her fingertips. She focused on the turkey in the oven tray and allowed the magic to leave her in a frustrated burst of energy, the skin of the bird beginning to brown almost immediately as it was wrapped in coiling tendrils of purple light. She turned her head to face the policeman. “I do not have a crush on George,” she said, magic still spewing from her fingertips. “How dare you!”
“Okay!” said Sergeant Spencer. “I got the wrong end of the stick! Judith told me you had a crush on him. I’m sorry. I spoke out of turn, but calm down, and save some of that energy for the roast potatoes. You’re going to cremate that poor bird if you’re not careful.”
“Yeah. Calm the hell down, Millie,” squawked Reuben. “Don’t be so sensitive. We all know you like George, and we all know he is fond of you.”
The salty aroma of crispy turkey skin rising to her nostrils, Millie took a calming breath and regained control of her powers, the sparks at her fingertips flickering as they died. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’m too sensitive when it comes to George.”
“That’s okay,” said Sergeant Spencer. “We’re all guilty of being a little sensitive when it comes to matters of the heart.”
Her cheeks burning, Millie sat down next to the policeman. “I don’t know what to do,” s
he admitted. “I’ve only ever had one real boyfriend. I mean a boyfriend who I actually cared for, and he cheated on me. With my so-called best friend. I’m scared of that happening again, and I’m scared that maybe George doesn’t like me. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”
“He likes you,” said Reuben. “Believe me. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
“So how do you explain the fact that he’s been seeing another girl?” said Millie. “A blonde bombshell, as Judith called her. A nurse. He went for a drink with her, and we saw him riding around on his motorbike with her this morning! Is that what George would do if he liked me?”
Sergeant Spencer reached into his pocket and withdrew a white handkerchief. “It’s clean,” he said. “I never use it. It’s a habit my grandmother installed in me. ‘Always carry a clean handkerchief, David,’ she used to say. I put a clean one in my pocket every morning. It’s about time one of them got some use.”
Millie laughed as she wiped her eyes with soft cotton. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s nice to be able to let it out.”
“Would you take some advice from a slightly overweight, middle-aged man, whose own dating history has not exactly been perfect?” asked Sergeant Spencer, his brow furrowed with concern.
Would she? Of course she would! The last time an older man had offered her advice, it had been her Uncle James. He cared about Millie, and her for him, but speaking to Millie about personal things — things a father would talk to a daughter about, had never come naturally to him. It had always been an uncomfortable experience for Millie, and she suspected it had been the same for her uncle, too.
Sergeant Spencer, on the other hand, seemed to be drawing on his experience of bringing up his adopted daughter as a single father. He offered a genuine smile, and his eyes showed a kind sparkle which put Millie at ease. She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’d like some advice.”
