by Sam Short
“It will all be resolved soon enough,” said Sergeant Spencer. “And life will get back to normal. In the meantime, Judith asked if you’d mind heading over to the hospital to help her. She’s trying to take statements from the detectorists, but it’s turned into a bit of a circus over there. I’ll take a statement off the man from DEFRA, and then see if any information has come back about the owner of the campervan.”
“Of course I’ll help Judith,” said Millie, closing the cottage door. She walked towards her car, pausing for a moment as Sergeant Spencer called her name. “Yes?” she answered.
“Do you call them biscuits or cookies?” said the sergeant. “You know, the things you dip in your tea.”
“Erm, that was random,” said Millie, opening the car door. “It depends. I call the thick ones cookies, and the thin ones biscuits. Why do you ask?”
Sergeant Spencer shrugged. “No reason,” he said. “It was just a thought.”
Chapter 12
“Biscuit, dear?” said the old lady in the seat alongside the hospital bed, thrusting a Tupperware box towards Millie. “There’s a choice of chocolate chips or raisins. I had made a batch of raisins and chocolate chips, but these three fools dropped them all over the floor of that dusty shed when you two young ladies attempted to apprehend them.” She pressed her lips together and glared at the man in the bed. “Isn’t that right, Jack?”
“Yes, Pamela,” said Jack, his striped pyjama jacket buttoned all the way up to his throat. “I’m sorry, but it was Eric who dropped them, not me.”
“Whoa there, Jack,” said Eric, from a seat near the window, the sunlight bouncing off the portion of his scalp not covered by his comb-over. “We don’t tell tales on one another in The Spellbinder Sand Diggers! The youngsters call people like that dirty grasses.”
“Sorry, Eric,” said Jack, fiddling with the cannula inserted in the back of his hand. “It’s the painkillers. They’ve given me loose lips.”
“Stop saying sorry!” snapped Pamela, slapping Jack on the thigh, eliciting a grimace of pain from the injured man. “You’re a daft old sod who has broken his hip because he should have known better. Two of you are daft old sods who should have known better, and the other one is a silly young man who is easily led.” She fixed Andy with a fierce stare. “Isn’t that right, young man?”
Andy passed his red baseball cap nervously from one hand to the other and gave a meek nod. “Yes, Mrs Hopkins,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mrs Hopkins.”
“What will your mother say, Andrew?” continued Pamela Hopkins. “When she finds out about this?”
Andy stared at the tiled floor, running a hand through his curly black hair. “She won’t be happy?” he guessed.
“No! She won’t!” said Pamela. “She’ll be livid! I’m sure!” She smiled up at Millie and gave the box in her hand a seductive shake. “Go on, have one, my dear. You’ll like them! The other policewoman did, didn’t you, dear?”
“They were very nice,” said Judith from her seat on the other side of the bed, wiping crumbs from the open file in her lap, giving Millie a nervous sideways glance.
Pamela’s face blossomed with pride. “And the tubby sergeant really enjoyed them, didn’t he? He had three, the greedy blighter! I don’t mind, though. He could have had five if he’d liked. I do enjoy cooking for a man who tucks in!”
“Yes, he enjoyed them, too,” said Judith.
“I didn’t care much for his terminology, though,” said Pamela. “He was a little disrespectful, but it transpired that it was ignorance on his behalf. Nothing more. There was no malice intended. Or so he says.”
Plucking one of the biscuits from the box, Millie frowned. “Sergeant Spencer was disrespectful?” she said. “That doesn’t sound like him at all. What did he do?”
Pamela placed the box on the bedside table, next to a plastic jug filled with water, and crossed her arms. She stared at Judith. “He’s your father, my dear. You tell your colleague what he did.”
Judith sighed. “He called them cookies,” she said.
Pamela took a deep breath through her nose, and exhaled slowly. “Cookies!” she spat. “Cookies? Since when did we become so American? It’s no good. What happened to traditional British standards?” She narrowed her eyes as she lectured Judith. “You keep an eye on him. I saw it happen during the war, when the young American soldiers were stationed here. My mother almost pulled her hair out when she invited a few of them for tea, and they called her homemade plum jam fruit preserve.” She tapped Jack on the leg again. “My mother told you that story when she was still alive, didn’t she, Jack?”
Jack gave a soft moan. “Yes, Pamela. She did. The memory of it never left her. She was very upset by the whole thing.”
“Yes, she was,” said Pamela, aiming a wagging finger at Judith. “She was very upset indeed! You watch that father of yours, my dear. It might just be calling biscuits cookies for the moment, but before you know it he’ll be putting things in the trunk of his car, turning the faucet on when he wants to wash his hands and, God forbid, calling a nappy a diaper.”
“I’m sure it won’t get that far,” said Judith. “I’ll keep an eye on him. I promise.”
“Good,” said Pamela. She gazed around the room. “Now, where were we? Oh, yes! You were taking statements from these three idiots concerning the events surrounding the murder of Tom Temples! Then Sergeant Spencer suddenly remembered he had an appointment and needed to rush off. He promised he’d send another officer in his place, and finally, she’s arrived.” She selected a biscuit from the box and took a large bite. “Don’t let me interfere with your questioning. Please, carry on. I’ve said my piece.”
Millie grabbed a chair from the corner, and placed it next to Judith’s. Taking a bite of her biscuit, she sat down, nodding in approval at Pamela as she discovered a spicy hit of cinnamon lurking below the juicy sweetness of a raisin.
Pamela gave a contented smile and nibbled at her own biscuit, tutting as Jack gave another groan of pain. “Count yourself lucky,” she said. “It could have been both hips. Then you’d have had a reason to make those irritating sounds of discomfort.”
Millie looked at the sheet of paper in Judith’s lap. “Maybe you should update me?” she suggested.
“It’s a sordid story,” said Pamela. “Be warned.”
Judith cleared her throat. “I’ll start from when the three men attempted to escape from the allotments,” she said. “They didn’t get far. Jack almost covered a full three hundred metres before tripping on a kerb and breaking his hip. When he was brought to hospital he confessed he’d been running from the police, so one of the nurses called Sergeant Spencer.”
“Called your father, my dear,” said Pamela. “Don’t be so formal. We’re all friends, here.”
Judith gave an almost imperceptible sigh, and looked at Millie. “The nurse phoned my father while he and I were searching for the suspects, so we came straight here and —”
“Good heavens!” said Pamela. “The wheels of justice really do spin slowly, don’t they? Spit it out! Come on!” She took another bite of her biscuit. “In fact, allow me to tell your colleague what happened. When the hospital called me to inform me of my husband’s mishap, I fed the cat, watered the plants, ironed some of Jack’s pyjamas, waited for some oven-fresh biscuits to cool down, put them in a box and then rushed here in a blind panic. I was happy to find out that they’d put him in this lovely room on his own, and not some geriatric ward. That took the sting out of the shock of learning he’d hurt himself. I almost feel like I’m in a hotel room. I was even offered a coffee when I arrived. It’s all a lot of fun, I must say.”
“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 lo
sers. 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 been 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.”
