by Oliver Tidy
‘Evening, Dr Puchta,’ he said. He waited to be introduced to her companion.
‘Hello, Inspector Romney. Allow me to introduce my partner, Dr Mills.’ It was very formal.
For something to say, Romney said, ‘I thought you worked alone?’
‘I do. I didn’t mean that kind of partner.’ To sweep away any doubts regarding what exactly she did mean, she leant across the table and covered Dr Mills’ hand with her own.
‘Ah. My mistake. Never assume, eh?’ Then realising that this could be interpreted as a comment about Dr Puchta’s sexuality, he quickly said, ‘Did you get over to the prison today?’
‘I did.’
‘And how was he? Can you help him?’
She raised a mockingly playful eyebrow at him. ‘Surely, Inspector, you remember that the ethics of doctor-client-confidentiality dictate I can’t discuss it with you.’
‘Even though I’m paying for it?’ said Romney.
‘Afraid so. And anyway, bumping into you here has saved me a phone call. I’ve decided to make Jez Ray’s treatment complimentary. I’ve decided to give something back. As you probably worked out for yourself, I did very nicely out of Edy Vitriol and the NHS. In fact, the sense of irony is so strong that I can’t not oblige the poor young man for as long as he’ll put up with me. But seriously, I think I can help him to deal with his demons and, if I’m honest, I often wondered through Edy’s period of treatment whether the NHS’s money was being spent on the right person.’
Before Romney could say something suitably appreciative, Dr Mills said, ‘Well, I’m familiar with complementary medicine but this is the first instance of complimentary medicine I can recall hearing about.’ Dr Mills and Dr Puchta dissolved into stifled hysterical laughter at something Romney didn’t think was that funny and that made him feel a little foolish and stupid. Eventually, he was able to bid them good evening and leave them to their lesbianism.
The food was, if anything, better than on any of the three previous occasions he’d dined there. Diane Hodge was proving to be an alluring and engaging dinner partner. She had even rubbed his leg under the table in an archaic display of flirtatiousness that had done something to his pulse rate.
They were through the main course waiting for their plates to be cleared, when the front door was opened and in blustered Hugo Crawford with Susan Sharp from White Cliffs FM on his arm.
The director was regaling her with some obviously witty anecdote and the noise they made with their laughter attracted a good deal of the subdued clientele’s attention. Romney suspected they’d been drinking.
Romney did his best to ignore them keeping his head turned away. He really didn’t want a scene with Crayfish to spoil his evening, or his chances of seeing what Diane Hodge had decided to put on under her frock, as he felt with growing conviction he might, if he could just continue to play the game right. But it was inevitable he would be discovered. The couple’s reserved table was only two away from his own. He felt the muscles in his neck tighten as Crayfish and the Ladies Hour host took their places.
Spying him Susan Sharp waved. Crayfish idly sought out the target of the gesture and Romney caught the look of drunken surprise on the man’s face when he worked it out. Romney was explaining to Diane Hodge who they were when Crawford’s shadow dimmed their table.
‘Well, well. We meet again, Inspector,’ said Crawford.
‘We don’t have to,’ said Romney. ‘You could just sit down and we can pretend we don’t know each other.’
But Crawford was not to be deterred. ‘Oh come, come, Inspector. Let’s be a little more civilised, shall we? I’ve got my film back; you’ve solved your crimes. All’s well that ends well. We’ve had our differences. We’ve both been in the wrong wouldn’t you say?’
Romney stared at him for a short while and then said, ‘I suppose we have. So what do you want to do about it?’
‘Allow me to take care of your bill for dinner. Call it an olive branch in The Olive Tree.’ And he began to laugh at his wit. ‘I say, that’s rather good, don’t you think?’ Everyone, it seemed was a comedian tonight.
‘Hysterical,’ said Romney. His ruffled feathers were not to be so easily smoothed. ‘Thanks for the offer, but as your uncle will no doubt confirm, the police can’t accept any sort of gift from members of the public. It would look bad.’
Crawford pulled a face. ‘Not even a drink? Look, ultimately, you did recover my film and I’m most grateful. In the end.’
‘Tell you what then,’ said Romney, ‘get your uncle to give my superintendent a call telling him how wonderful we are.’
‘Consider it done,’ said the director, and he bowed low and left.
‘He seems nice,’ said Diane.
‘He’s a knob,’ said Romney.
Romney was disappointed to discover that The Olive Tree did not sell contraceptives in the toilets. But then the way that Diane Hodge was coming on to him by the time they had finished their desserts, he could well imagine that she’d probably have some all laid out ready on her dressing table.
As he washed his hands, he remembered something that had stuck with him from one of Dibdin’s Zen novels and that he’d had cause to reflect on more than once as a gauge of how times and attitudes had changed in only a few short years. “Three weeks flirting, three months loving, three years squabbling and thirty years making do,” was the suggested chronology for a relationship. It seemed a dated and out-of-date perspective to Romney. It was his overwhelming experience of women these days that the whole process had been significantly speeded up and altered beyond recognition. Three hours flirting could often see him get three weeks of his leg over, which could be followed by three months of muddling along and then three days of cooling off and from then total avoidance. Years, let alone decades just no longer came into it. Everyone, it seemed, himself included, was in such a rush to disappoint each other.
Alexis had not waited on them. The restaurant was busy throughout the evening. Other staff worked the tables, while she played at maitre de. He’d caught her looking over in his direction a couple of times and he’d wanted to find the right moment to talk to her, to let her know that he’d set wheels of enquiry in motion, but the opening hadn’t materialised.
They’d finished their coffee and Romney was waiting to pay the bill. Diane Hodge was powdering her nose. He’d watched her move across the restaurant towards the toilets with a solid longing in his groin area. As he waited, he allowed his gaze to wander around the room. The front door opened. Three big well-dressed men entered. Romney’s eye drifted across to Alexis. She glanced up at the newcomers and her face froze. Her scared eyes darted across to Romney and he knew instantly that the extortionists were back to claim their protection money.
They breezed through the restaurant and pushed through the swing doors into the kitchen area at the far end of the establishment as though they owned the place. Alexis stood rooted to the spot in fear. She looked again at Romney and her eyes were pleading. Diane Hodge came back to the table.
‘Can you do me a favour?’ said Romney.
‘Anything you like, Tom,’ she purred.
‘Dial nine, nine, nine, and ask for the police. Tell them that Inspector Romney needs plenty of uniform back-up quickly at The Olive Tree restaurant.’
She laughed a little uncertain laugh, confused, but believing that he must be joking. But when he stood, she saw the look on his face and she realised that something must be very wrong. A loud crash from the kitchen area prompted him to begin walking towards it and only then did she reach for her handbag and her mobile phone.
Romney pushed through the kitchen doors to be confronted by a freeze-frame tableau of the moment of hesitation and indecision that so often characterised the prelude to some serious action. The three men stood with their backs to Romney and facing a man in chef’s clothes. There were, perhaps, fifteen feet between them. The three men all had their hands in the air. As Romney moved for a better angle of view, he saw why. The chef
, presumably Alexis’ husband, was pointing a double-barrelled shotgun at them. The man moved the gun to point at Romney’s midriff. Romney put his hands in the air too.
‘I’m a police officer. Detective Inspector Romney. Put that gun down, now.’ Behind him the door opened and closed. Alexis was standing next to him.
‘How do I know you are police?’ said the man. ‘How do I know you are not thieving scum like these pigs?’
‘Ask your wife,’ said Romney.
‘It’s true, Giorgos. He knows what they want. He can help us deal with them.’
The man shifted the gun back around to the three men. None of them had uttered a sound.
‘I don’t know what’s going on here,’ said the middle one. ‘I don’t know who he thinks we are or why we’re here. I think the old boy must be a bit confused. We’ve just come to compliment him on his cooking, haven’t we boys?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said one of them. ‘Then he pulls a gun on us. He’s fucking mad.’
The middle one said, ‘Well? Shouldn’t you arrest him or something, Mr Policeman? I don’t mind telling you, he’s making me nervous.’
‘You lying bastards,’ said Giorgos. ‘You here to take my money and if I not pay you, you ruin my business.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Giorgos,’ said the one in the middle. ‘Look, I’m sorry if you’ve got the wrong idea about us. How about we just leave and come back and see you another day, eh?’
‘You three aren’t going anywhere,’ said Romney. One frumpy female doctor could scare the man out of Romney just by sitting behind a desk, but three big men, all younger than him and probably experienced fighters didn’t faze him at all.
The middle man risked turning to look at Romney over his shoulder. ‘Says who?’
‘Giorgos,’ said Romney, ignoring the question, ‘put the gun down. Don’t make this worse for yourself than it already is. Let the police deal with them. They’re on the way.’
‘And what? Talk with them. Let them go so that they can come back here and destroy my business, rape my wife, break me up?’
‘He’s fucking crazy,’ said the second man. ‘No one said anything about rape?’
‘Giorgos, you need some professional help, my friend,’ said the man in the middle. Then he lowered his arms, feeling that the threat was over and said. ‘We’ll be seeing you, Giorgos.’ He was clearly used to being in charge and getting away with whatever took his fancy. He made a gun of his finger and thumb, pointed at the chef and fired.
Romney’s immediate thought was how did he make so much noise with just his finger and thumb? It was amazing. It was deafening.
The explosion pressurised the air in the confined space to press in on Romney’s eardrums so that he could no longer hear anything other than a high-pitched ringing. And then Romney noticed that the middle man, the big talker who had taken a step sideways to come directly between Romney and Giorgos, was no longer there. Or rather bits of him weren’t. And the man who had been standing to his right had lost an arm and was screaming through his distorted and bloodied face, but no sound was coming out of his mouth. As Romney stood galvanised to the spot the third man, who had begun running for the door was thrown in comical ringing silence by some invisible force off his feet to land in a bloody heap on the tiled floor some feet further on.
When Romney’s senses finally caught up with the horror he’d just witnessed he felt a spreading dampness creep across his shirt front. He looked down to see that his favourite and most expensive light blue striped shirt was now a mass of uninterrupted red, flecked with the white of shattered bone and pulped cartilage.
After he had collapsed on to the cool tiled flooring, but before the darkness had claimed him, Romney experienced a clear recollection. It was of something Grimes had said to him about his reasons for being involved in the filming at the castle, “We’re all going to die. Most of us will leave no mark of our existence behind what-so-ever. Not a stain or a smudge or a smear on the face of history. I think that’s sad.” It made Romney horribly regretful to think that the fat man was right.
***
Author’s note: Although, as per the standard wording on the title page of this book, all persons mentioned here are entirely fictitious, it is, I think, worth mentioning that I have utilised a real event from history as part of the storyline.
Readers of a certain age will undoubtedly remember that in 1987 there was a tragic capsizing off the Belgian coast of a roll-on-roll-off ferry. The ship was called the Herald of Free Enterprise. I have used some details of this event here. Obviously, I changed the name of the ship for my story. If you have read it, you will understand one of the reasons why.
I was living on Romney Marsh when the terrible maritime disaster occurred. I knew people who lost people in it. The area and the country felt the loss of life keenly.
It is my sincere hope that no one who reads this story feels that, in using such tragic events of the past, I have sought to make light of anything to do with it. I have simply done what authors do: taken an event and woven my own style of fiction around it. If anyone is offended, I apologise.
The startling coincidence is not lost on me that I got the idea for, then wrote this book and (almost) published it in the year of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disaster. That does strike me as strange.
For those who would like more information, for whatever reason, regarding the capsizing of the Herald of Free Enterprise I am including a weblink here that I found detailed and useful. I cannot vouch for its accuracy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Herald_of_Free_Enterprise
Oliver Tidy.
***
Hello,
Firstly, I’d like to say thank you for taking a chance on downloading this book whether you have paid for it or not. I hope you found something in it to enjoy.
Secondly, I would like to invite you to visit me at http://olivertidy.wordpress.com/ where you can find out more about other titles in this series and other books I’ve written.
Thirdly, I would be genuinely most grateful to receive any comments, corrections and suggestions regarding any aspect of this book and my writing at the web address above where I have made a page available for feedback.
Finally, if you have noticed any mistakes of an editorial nature, please accept my apologies. If you let me know what they are, I can rectify them. I am a self-published author and, in this case, except for the cover art, that means I’ve done everything myself towards creating the book. That includes the proof-reading. Not being a professional in any aspect of the book creation business, I’m afraid that, despite my best efforts, there are bound to be mistakes. I can only hope that any that turned up did not spoil your enjoyment of the read.
Best wishes
Oliver Tidy
PS This is a revised copy made after Joint Enterprise had been available to download for a year.
While I have received plenty of encouraging feedback regarding the Romney and Marsh Files, I have also had comments about proofreading and editing. Not uncomfortably negative comments, rather constructively helpful.
I feel that I have developed quite a bit as a writer since I wrote this book. I could have changed a lot in my updated version but, for sentimental reasons, I haven’t. What I have done is correct the errors of spelling, punctuation and grammar that readers who have read the book have very kindly taken the time and trouble to point out to me. I am grateful to each and every one of them.
E-book titles available in my Romney and Marsh Files series:
#1 Rope Enough http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enough-Romney-Marsh-Files-ebook/dp/
#2 Making a Killing http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Killing-Romney-Marsh-ebook/dp/
#3 Joint Enterprise http://www.amazon.co.uk/Joint-Enterprise-Romney-Marsh-ebook/dp/
#4 Matters of Life and Death. This is a provisional title for the fourth in the series that will be available in ebook form in the first half of 2014. Please see my website, menti
oned above, for details.
E-book titles available in my Acer Sansom series:
#1 Dirty Business http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dirty-Business-Acer-Sansom-Novels-ebook/dp/
#2 Loose Ends http://www.amazon.co.uk/Loose-Ends-Acer-Sansom-Novels-ebook/dp/
E-book titles in my Book and Cash series:
#1 Bad Sons. This book will be available in ebook form in the first half of 2014. Please see my website, mentioned above, for details.
