by Robert Innes
“Do you know how he died?” Peter asked.
“I spoke to the forensic examiner late last night,” Blake said. “She believes that Daryl suffered some form of cardiac arrest. Is there anything in either of your medical histories that could go some way to explaining how that happened?”
The two parents looked at each other, dumbfounded. “Neither of us have ever had any problems like that,” Peter snapped. “Both my father and my grandfather lived to be in their nineties.”
“And my mother is still very much alive and well!” Sarah added. “You’re saying he had a heart attack? That’s impossible. He was a healthy and active seventeen-year-old boy. He played football once a week. Now, stop trying to give us some sort of vague garbage and tell us. Do you think our son was murdered?”
Blake sighed. Dealing with grief stricken relatives was one of the worst aspects of his job, particularly when it involved people’s children. “We’re investigating every possibility, including murder. Due to the way in which Daryl’s body was discovered, we’re certainly treating it as suspicious.”
“Of course it’s suspicious!” Sarah cried, her voice breaking again. “He was found dead in a church! Is that seriously all you can tell us? We’ve not slept a wink since we’ve come back, how could we? We can’t arrange a funeral. We can’t do anything!”
She began sobbing into her husband’s shoulder, looking wretched. Blake closed his eyes and bowed his head, and Peter pulled his wife into him, holding her tightly.
“Sarah, I know how awful this must be for you, I really do. But we are doing everything we can, I promise you that. We are not going to stop looking until we find out what happened to your son.”
“It’s our fault, Peter, I know it is!” Sarah wailed. “We couldn’t just sort out our problems, we just didn’t think how it would affect him.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Sarah.” Blake replied gently.
“Isn’t there anything you can tell us?” Peter asked desperately.
Blake paused, trying to think of anything he could say to ease some of their pain, but aside from the, what felt like empty, promises at this stage, he couldn’t think of anything. “I know that you’ve probably already been asked all of this, but is there anything you can tell me about Daryl’s life, his friends, his time at college that you think may be of help to us? Even the smallest details might lead us to something?”
Sarah sat up, and wiped her eyes with a decrepit tissue from her pocket. Blake pulled out a fresh packet he always kept in his coat pocket and passed them to her. She pulled one out and went to pass him the packet back. “Keep them.” He said.
“He was spending a lot more time with his friends at college,” Sarah said. “Me and Peter – well, we’ve been arguing a lot the past few months. To be honest, I thought we were probably going to be divorced by the end of the year. Daryl hated listening to us argue.”
“What were the arguments about?” Blake asked.
“We’d been having some money problems,” Peter jumped in, resting a hand on his wife’s. “At one point, it was looking like we were going to have to re-mortgage the house. Business wasn’t what it should be.”
“We don’t have to go into that here, Pete,” Sarah said. “We’re past that now.”
“I know,” Peter said, smiling sadly at her. “But you did say anything might help you?”
Blake nodded. “Anything you can think of.”
“I had a bit of a gambling problem. That’s why we suddenly found ourselves so out of pocket. It started with just a few trips to the bookies and then –well- you can imagine.”
Blake nodded again. He had seen it many times.
“Anyway, when Sarah found out exactly how much trouble we were in financially, as you can imagine, she hit the roof. We had to all pull together as much as we could as a family and I think Daryl found that difficult. I mean, what seventeen year old really has a grasp on the importance of money?” He sighed, releasing his hand from his wife’s. He looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Anyway,” Peter continued. “The atmosphere in the house was strained to say the least. And Daryl started staying out at night. It wasn’t just me and Sarah arguing, you see.”
“I mean, you know what teenagers are like,” Sarah added, laughing sadly. “Leaving the lights on, the heating, the tap running. He just didn’t think. With us fighting with each other, and having a go at him all the time, he probably hated being at home most of the time.”
“So, he went out with his friends a lot?” Blake clarified.
“Some days we just wouldn’t see him at all,” Sarah said sadly. “There were weeks he’d go to college on the Monday and wouldn’t come home till the Wednesday. Though we heard from our own friends that he’d be out in Clackton quite a lot. In the pubs and the bars, I mean.”
Blake grimaced. The clubs and pubs in Clackton weren’t known for their stringent identification policies.
“We did find quite a high amount of alcohol in Daryl’s bloodstream,” he said.
The parents looked at each other cautiously.
“We did wonder,” ventured Sarah nervously. “Whether he’d been doing anything else.”
“Drugs? I can confirm there was absolutely no trace of anything like that in him,” Blake reassured her. “With it being a heart attack that would have been one of the first things they would have checked for.”
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God,” she said. “We don’t really know all that much about these friends of his.”
Blake leaned forward and crossed his hands together. “Do the names Imelda Atkins or Patricia Jenkins mean anything to you?”
Sarah raised her eyebrows. “Oh, we know Imelda Atkins. She lived across the road from us. Absolutely horrible woman. She tried to get a petition started for us to change our Christmas lights last year. Said they were horrible and garish, didn’t she Pete?”
“That’s right,” Peter replied, nodding. “She even managed to get a letter printed in the local paper. We totally ignored it, obviously. But yes, awful woman. Why do you ask?”
“She also died in the church, as did Patricia Jenkins.”
“What, and you think they’re somehow connected to Daryl?” Sarah asked, looking horrified.
“Like I say, we’re investigating all possibilities,” Blake said. “Did Daryl ever mention a Nigel Proctor?”
“Nigel? Yes, he was the caretaker at the college, wasn’t he?” Sarah said, rubbing her nose with one of the tissues. “Daryl quite liked him I think. We saw him around the village, nice enough man. Although, I think he got sacked, didn’t he? I remember Daryl mentioning that somebody had been laid off at the college for inappropriate conduct or something. A few days later, I saw him in the post office and he happened to say that he wasn’t working there anymore. I didn’t want to ask, you know how it is.”
“You don’t happen to know what this ‘inappropriate conduct’ might have been?” Blake asked.
“Daryl said that the rumour round the college was that whoever it was had been caught doing things they shouldn’t with one of the students,” Peter put in. “I expect he was going through some sort of midlife crisis, trying to recapture his youth, or something.”
Blake’s mind whirred dully with the still too few established facts. Despite talking to Daryl’s parents for a good few minutes, he still hadn’t managed to gather much new information other than the fact that Daryl was troubled at home, and had started drinking quite heavily. He did wonder whether Daryl had been depressed, but even if he had been, he couldn’t think how that could possibly connect with how he had died, or why.
“Thanks for your help, both of you,” Blake said, standing up. “I promise that as soon as I find out any new information, I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Are you still in regular touch with your family liaison officer?”
Sarah sighed sadly, standing up and wrapping a scarf round her neck. “Yes. Not that it particularly helps.
What will help us is for you to find out who took our son away from us.”
Blake nodded respectively, then opened the interview room door. The Stuarts’ thanked him, then walked towards the exit. They were just opening the station door when they were nearly sent flying by Gardiner, who seemed to be in a great hurry.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, letting them pass.
The Stuarts’ glanced at him, but didn’t say anything. Blake watched them leave, then turned to Gardiner.
“Sorry, I’m late,” Gardiner said stiffly.
“Are you only just getting in?” Blake asked, surprised.
“I –I had a family emergency to attend to,” Gardiner said, standing awkwardly, and trying with all his might not to look Blake in the eyes. “I’ll just get on,” he muttered.
He was just about to sidestep so that he could get past Blake when Blake stopped him, staring at Gardiner’s neck.
“Michael, what have you done to your neck?”
Gardiner froze, before pulling his collar up over the strange bruise coloured mark on the side of his neck. “Nothing, it’s really nothing.”
Blake raised his eyebrows in a mixture of disbelief and amusement. “Is that a love bite, Michael?”
“A what?” Gardiner said, standing up straight, attempting to look dignified.
“A love bite.” Blake grinned. “A hicky. A bit of one on one time with the hoover hose.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Gardiner, pulling his collar up even higher. “I obviously just caught in on something.”
“Something like a lady friend?” Blake asked innocently, enjoying watching Gardiner squirm.
“That is absolutely none of your business,” Gardiner replied pompously.
“Well, Michael Gardiner, you dark horse,” Blake said. “Get lucky did we?”
Gardiner shuffled uncomfortably, straightening his tie pointlessly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s alright, don’t panic. Your filthy little secret is safe with me,” Blake grinned, giving him a soft punch on the arm.
Before Gardiner could furiously reply, the door to the reception desk opened. Royale was standing there, clutching a newspaper.
“Blake, I’ve been looking for you,” Royale said, walking towards him.
“Yes, Sir – I’m sorry, I was just-”
“Have you seen this?” Royale snapped, pulling the paper open to show Blake the front page.
Blake stared at the paper. It was a copy of the Clackton times with the words ‘MYSTERIOUS CHURCH DEATHS ROCK HARMSCHAPEL!’ written in bold letters across the page.
“How have the media got a hold of this?” snapped Royale. “It’s got details of all the deaths! Including the fact that they all happened in that bloody confessions booth!” He opened the paper up and showed Blake the contents. “They’ve even done a bloody diagram with theories about how it was done!”
Blake took the paper from Royale and stared in disbelief at the diagram. The ideas they had come up with were nothing short of idiotic. Looking through them, Blake briefly decided that his favourite was the suggestion that a killer had somehow been lowered into the booth on a harness, and squeezed the life out of each of the victims.
“At least they’re inventive.”
Royale snatched the paper off him and opened it up again, reading aloud. “‘The strange and bizarre deaths of four residents of the sleepy village of Harmschapel have local police baffled. The Clackton Standard has learnt of four deaths, which are reported to be murders that seem to have taken place in impossible circumstances from inside a confessions booth at St Abra’s Church in the village. Local police declined to comment on the reports, - ‘They haven’t even been in touch! - ‘Local police declined to comment on the reports, but Clackton Standard understands from local sources that police are particularly interested in speaking to a female vicar at the church, who is reported to have gotten into physical altercations with both Imelda Atkins and Patricia Jenkins over claims about her sexuality making her an unsuitable person for the position of vicar in the catholic church.”
Royale closed the paper and stared at Blake, annoyed. “And then, they have somehow got a detailed profile on each of the victims! Nothing that we don’t know, but how? How has this happened?”
“Sir, I have no idea how they’ve found out about this, I swear,” Blake said hastily.
“You might not! But a case like this, especially with the way it’s been written, it’s not going to be long before we end up in the middle of a media storm! Why have they singled out Jennifer Greene? ‘Physical altercations’? Did you know about this?”
“Not the physical altercations part, no,” Blake said quietly.
“Well then, you better go and find her. Bring her in and find out!” Royale said sharply. “Now the whole village knows about these deaths, we’re going to need answers!”
Gardiner, who hadn’t said a word for a while, cleared his throat while pulling his collar so that Royale didn’t see anything on his neck. “I’ll go start the car, shall I?”
“Yeah,” Blake replied. “You better had. We need to get this case closed, as soon as possible.”
“So, what do you think?”
Harrison stared out at the view before him. “It’s incredible. I didn’t think Harmschapel could even look this good.”
Callum wrapped his arms around him, pointing out into the distance. “And that, over there, is Clackton. You must never go there, Simba.”
Harrison laughed at The Lion King reference and sighed, staring out over the view.
They were standing at the top of the church tower, looking out at the picturesque village below, but the higher view allowed them to see much further than the wall that Harrison frequented. He had happened to mention the wall to Callum, which had led him to bringing Harrison up to the top of the church tower, Callum’s own place of tranquillity. They stood in silence for a few moments before Harrison sighed.
“You alright?” Callum asked, loosening his affectionate grip around him.
“Yeah.” Harrison smiled. “Look over there, though.”
He pointed out to a more remote area, about a mile or so away from where they were. It was a desolate looking field, with a few tiny looking buildings scattered around it.
“What’s that?” Callum asked, straining his eyes to see where Harrison was pointing.
“That’s where I used to live. Halfmile Farm. That’s where it all went wrong, I guess.”
Callum nodded, then took a grip of Harrison’s hand. “Have you ever seen it from so far away before?”
“No.”
“Well, if you’ll allow me to be philosophical for a moment-”
“Oh, God.” Harrison chucked.
“No, no, let me finish,” Callum said, grinning from ear to ear. “Look at it. It’s so far away, and you’re above it. It’s out there in a really empty looking part of the landscape. That’s the past. And all of this, all the colourful and pretty looking stuff, that’s your present and future. That’s what I always think when I come up here. Because if you look over there, where Clackton is, and where the college is, right out there in the distance, is where my past is. And that’s where your past has got to stay. All the bad parts of it at least. As far away from you as possible, so that the only time you can see it is when you’re in a better place, looking at it from a better perspective. That’s what I think anyway.”
Harrison turned to look at him. “You’re quite deep really, aren’t you?”
Callum snorted with laughter. “Well, I have my moments.” He let go of Harrison’s hand and put his hands into his pockets. “Listen, these past few days have been amazing. I didn’t think it was all going to happen so quickly. I only started talking to you because I wanted somebody to talk to about my stuff, and I got the impression you did too.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?” Harrison said wryly.
Callum chuckled. “It was meant as a compliment, I promise. I was w
ondering if…” He paused, glancing up at Harrison, possibly to gauge his reaction.
“What?” Harrison asked.
“I was wondering if you wanted to make it, you know, a bit more official between us.”
Harrison turned his head, surprised. “What, you mean, me and you become official?”
“Well, yeah,” Callum said, looking nervous. “I’ll get it if you don’t. I know you’ve been through a lot, and that we’ve not known each other all that long, but I just think we’ve got so much in common, I really, really like you, and I just think that we’d be good together. What do you think?”
Harrison looked out at the village beneath them again. He didn’t know why he felt surprised at the question. It had been a mind-blowing few days, and he had never met anyone like Callum before. He glanced out at Halfmile Farm in the distance again. It looked gloomy and foreboding, not helped by the series of large ominous black clouds that had started to gather on the horizon. If that was his past, it didn’t look inviting or like anything he wanted to look back on. From where they were standing, Harrison could also see the police station. He realised that pining over something that was never going to happen for the rest of his life wasn’t something he wanted to do either. Blake was a great guy, one of the best that Harrison had ever known, but he realised he was kidding himself if he thought anything other than friendship was ever going to happen between him and the dashing enigmatic police officer he had met the day his life changed forever. The time had come to move and look forward.
“Yeah, alright,” he said simply, taking a firm grip of his new boyfriend’s hand again. “Let’s do it.”
Callum smiled, delighted and apparently surprised. “Yeah?”
Harrison nodded, returning the grin. “Yeah.”
They kissed and Harrison felt at peace and secure, more so than he had done in years.
Somebody clearing their throat behind them broke the moment. They turned to see Jennifer Greene standing behind them, looking stern.
“I thought I’d find you up here. You know you’re not allowed, especially with somebody who doesn’t even work here,” she said sharply. “The confirmation service is in ten minutes. You’re supposed to be ready by now, aren’t you?”
