Quick off the Mark

by Moody, Susan

  A soldier he might once have been, but he didn’t like bloodshed. He’d seen enough of both while on active service, as well as with poor Esther’s long-drawn-out submission to the Grim Reaper.

  He grabbed Marlowe’s collar, attached the lead, set off at a fair old pace back to Rattrays, in order to call the police. His son had given him one of those mobile things with a miniature screen, but he couldn’t be doing with it, and though the grandchildren were always urging him to get with the programme, Grandpa, babbling on about tweets and twitters and such like (‘sounds like a blasted aviary’), he’d never managed to come to terms with the Internet. Load of old cobblers, in the Major’s opinion. Who needed to be in constant twenty-four-a-day touch with their nearest and dearest? Certainly not him.

  Behind his house, the trees in the little copse which bordered the canal were tossing about in the rising wind, a few early leaves swirling off their branches to spin in the turbulent air. The skies were darkening, too.

  ‘Rain at last,’ the Major said to the nearest box-tree, as he passed it. ‘And it looks like it’s going to bloody pour.’

  Having called the police, he opened a tin of some revolting meaty mess (unwashed pigs’ bums, diseased cows’ lips, all ground up, ugh!) and turned it out into Marlowe’s dish. There were some boiled carrots left from last night’s supper and the Major mixed them in while Marlowe looked at him as if he were mad. Carrots? his expression said. Dogs don’t eat vegetables, you dick.

  Leaving Marlowe to his meal, the Major donned his best thorn-proof tweed jacket and marched smartly back down the lane to the field where he (or rather the dog, Marlowe) had found the body, narrowly avoiding being run down by a group of men bent over the handlebars of their racing bikes. Bloody cyclists! Looked like bloody wasps in those poncey yellow outfits.

  Though the rain was holding off, the lane was already clotted with police cars, burly men in hi-vis jackets, other people shuffling about in white coveralls that made them look like they’d just landed on the moon, some kind of white tent erected to hide the body from the elements and the gathering gawpers.

  ‘Stand back, if you please, sir,’ some police jobsworth ordered, and the Major said importantly, ‘Look here, sonny, it was me who found the body. I’m the one who called the police.’

  ‘Right.’ The cop walked over to a sandy sort of bloke in suit and tie, conferred with him and then came back. ‘Inspector Garside will be with you in a moment, if you wouldn’t mind waiting. Behind the barrier, if you please.’

  ‘Don’t want to contaminate the scene of the crime any further, eh?’ The Major tapped the side of his nose, feeling like something out of a gangster movie. Maybe tomorrow he’d break out the cherry waistcoat and the Tattersall-checked shirt (if the moths hadn’t got to it first), now there was no Esther around to pass remarks. The thought brought him up short. Over the years, she’d turned hypochondria into a fine art, although no doctor worthy of his salt was going to sympathize with her catalogue of illnesses, which were mainly of a sort that prevented her from doing anything useful round the house. She’d been a gifted self-diagnostician, suffering – if you believed her – from every ailment going, especially if she read about it in the Daily Mail, though until it was far too late, she’d failed to spot the stomach cancer which eventually took her off. But he missed her, missed her voice yacking on from the kitchen about her sciatica or her swollen ankles and her latest carcinogenic scare (‘I’m not being funny, Norm, but I’m sure I’ve got cancer of the fingernails’). Would he ever find another woman to love as he had loved her? Sadly, he thought not.

  The sandy man arrived. ‘So what can you tell us, Captain—’

  ‘Major,’ corrected the Major.

  ‘—Major … um … Horrocks?’

  The Major told his tale. Mentioned the possibility that there could have been two perps, pointed out the number of flies. ‘Body must have been there a while.’

  ‘And did you touch anything, Major Horrocks? Disturb the scene of crime?’

  ‘Not bloody likely.’

  ‘Recognize the victim?’

  ‘As you may have noticed, Inspector, not a lot of the face was left, so no, I didn’t. Though I can’t,’ he added, ‘speak for Marlowe.’

  ‘Marlowe?’

  ‘The dog, Marlowe. Named after some American Private Eye, I believe, Philip Marlowe, played on the silver screen by Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum, among others.’

  The Inspector didn’t think this was as interesting as the Major did. ‘Did the animal interfere with the scene in any way?’

  ‘He got there before I did, so I can’t say. But I don’t think so. All he interfered with was the flies, basically.’

  ‘I see.’

  Depressing sort of chap, the Major thought. Some people have no sense of humour. He’d learned from long experience that a little light-heartedness helped things along, especially in a situation as wretched as this one. Anyway, sad though it was, tragic for some poor soul, he certainly had something to keep his mates at the pub going when he got down there later.

  Nell would have been sorry to miss all this, she liked a nice murder, did Nell – house full of old crime novels, always watching stuff on the TV, especially those stern Nordic ones, not his cup of tea at all. He decided he would shortly walk into town, get his shopping done, stop in for half a pint at the Fox and Hounds on his way home, calm his nerves after the excitement of the morning.

  All in all, and bodies notwithstanding – we’ve all got to go sometime, one way or another – a good sort of day, really. Well, good was perhaps the wrong word given the corpse along the lane, but out of the ordinary, certainly.

  As he walked back to his cottage, it started to rain.

  TWO

  I was lingering over a cup of tea at the breakfast table. Contemplating my current unattached status. Wondering if I minded being on my own. Knowing that deep down, whatever I might pretend, I did.

  Over the years since my former husband, Jack the Love Rat, had left, I’d more or less recovered physically from the loss of my unborn child, though in my darkest moments the sheer emotional agony of the miscarriage, the sense of loss and terminal despair, flooded back as if it had occurred only that morning. I doubted if I would fully recover psychologically for years to come, if ever. Since those black days, there had been plenty of opportunity for new relationships, if that’s what you wanted to call them. Nothing serious, on either side. Nothing more than phantoms of possibilities, serving to remind me that at least I was in some measure still desirable. Or, at its lowest, still female. Some guys didn’t even make it to a first date, let alone anything else. For example, I’d encountered Michael McLellan, a visiting history prof, at a party up On The Hill, as we liked to call our higher education college.

  ‘So, pretty lady, what do you do for a living?’ he’d said. Definitely not my preferred pick-up line. Especially from someone who couldn’t care less what I did out of bed. He’d leaned an arm against the wall beside me, blocking my means of escape. I’d heard of him from a friend who worked in the college library: his easy ways, his film-star looks – brown hair flopping over his forehead, intensely grey eyes, a ready smile. His ways were a bit too easy, in my opinion, since I knew he had a wife and two small children at home.

  ‘Brainy, as well as beautiful,’ he commented, when I told him I was a picture anthologist. Condescending prick. Probably didn’t even know what that meant. And certainly wasn’t interested in finding out. ‘So how about meeting me for a drink tomorrow evening? Or dinner. Or … whatever?’ The final word loaded with cheap sexual significance, backed up by some active eyebrow work.

  ‘Lovely,’ I said, slipping out from under his arm. ‘Would this proposed meeting be before or after you’ve kissed your kids goodnight?’

  He stared at me, non, as the saying goes, plussed. ‘Bitch!’ he said finally. He tossed back his hair. Showing me what I was missing?

  I flipped him the finger. ‘Take a hike, Mike,’ I said, and
moved off, something I’m sure he wasn’t used to women doing.

  So much for Michael McLellan.

  Dr Milton Novak was a different story. Small, energetic, a serious man with a serious mission, seconded from his hospital in Charlottesville, USA, to spend a sabbatical in England. Not the philandering sort. Definitely not another McLellan. I had felt a real kinship with him, especially when I discovered that he knew everything there was to know about the films of the Coen brothers. He was divorced, he told me, and lonely. We had sat over food, or drink, or both, for hours discussing the merits of No Country for Old Men as against Fargo, Frances McDormand’s performance in Fargo against Raising Arizona. I went to bed with him and found his energy was as much sexual as intellectual.

  One cold midwinter morning we were in bed together in my flat when the phone rang. I reached out a sleepy hand and picked it up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Milt,’ a voice drawled in a Katherine Hepburn kind of accent. ‘It’s his wife.’

  Wordlessly, I handed him the phone, listened to the first two sentences of his conversation, got out of bed, poured the contents of a flower-vase over his clothes lying on the floor, then opened the window of my bedroom and threw them as far as I could. In the bathroom, I ran the cold tap, filled a tooth mug and tipped it over his chest.

  ‘C’mon, baby,’ he protested angrily, the phone call now over, still stark naked as he got out of bed and tried to wipe himself dry with one of my silk scarves which was lying across a chair. He glanced from the window to where his clothes lay scattered on the frosty grass below, calculating whether he had time to get to them from the front door of my block and clamber into his, by now (with any luck), stiffly frozen trousers before some startled citizen passed by.

  ‘You told me you were divorced, you bastard,’ I said, surprised at how calm I sounded.

  ‘So I am.’

  ‘You said you were lonely.’

  ‘I’m in England, honey, of course I’m lonely.’

  ‘Don’t call me honey,’ I said. ‘And how come you didn’t mention that you’d married again?’

  His voice hardened. ‘What did you think? I’m thirty-seven, I’m a doctor in the States, so apart from Donald Trump, one of the biggest catches on the planet, I was temporarily single … naturally the gals came flocking.’

  ‘Not this one,’ I spat. ‘Not any more. Now get out!’

  Opening my front door, I watched him start off down the passage towards the lift, butt-naked, buttocks jiggling together in a manner I had to admit was dead sexy, then screamed, at the top of my voice, ‘Help! Somebody help me! Help!’

  The sound of doors opening up and down the building, voices exclaiming – I could distinctly make out the fluting voice of Miss Gardiner from the ground floor – was almost satisfaction enough, though once I’d watched him through the window as he shivered into his ice-stiffened clothes, explained himself to an inquisitive policeman, then driven off in his BMW, I found myself in tears. I was an educated, independent, energetic woman of ideas. The world – so the careers mistress at school had told me several times – stood at my feet. If only I didn’t sometimes feel like I was falling off the edge of it.

  On the other hand … a friend, Charlotte Plimpton, who worked in the college library, had recently persuaded me to join a drama group up on the hill. ‘You need to get out more, Alex,’ she’d said. ‘Meet some new people. Take an interest in something different. They’re very nice – at least most of them are, though there are some sizeable egos as well. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.’

  She had been right. At first I did. Especially after coming across the fanciable dude who ran it. He was called Milo Stanton. Dark, brooding. The Heathcliff type. Very much on my wavelength, and a pretty good amateur actor. He taught Drama and Eng Lit and, at first sight, seemed to be a Good Thing. A bit too much up himself, if truth be told, but definitely promising.

  All at once, there was a frenzied banging at my door. A finger pressed to the doorbell. More banging. It didn’t take too much detective work to realize that someone wanted to speak to me. I stood up, went into the hall, opened my front door.

  ‘Dim!’ I exclaimed. ‘What’re you—’

  Dimsie Drayton pushed past me. ‘Oh God, Alex!’ She moved rapidly into my sitting room and collapsed on to the sofa. ‘Alex. Oh God!’ She bent her head into her hands and began sobbing.

  ‘What?’ I sat down beside her and put an arm across her shoulders, drawing her closer. Perhaps unkindly, I wondered what had set her off this time. A drama queen to the core, Dimsie was given to copious weeping over things like dead birds and squashed beetles. I wasn’t. Not that I didn’t feel vaguely sorry that they died, but at least it was quick and I certainly didn’t take it to heart. ‘What’s happened, Dim?’

  ‘It’s Tristan,’ she said.

  ‘Tristan?’ I could feel my heart drop inside my chest. This didn’t sound like dead birds. This sounded serious. Tristan was her brother. A man with whom I had dallied when we were both in our early twenties, though Dimsie didn’t know that. ‘What’s he done? Drink? Gambling? Gun-running? People-smuggling?’ I laughed. Nervously. I loved Tris dearly, but I could easily believe him capable of any, or all, of the misdemeanours I’d mentioned.

  ‘He’s dead.’ Dimsie clutched at my shirt. ‘Someone killed him, Alex.’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘My darling brother. Oh Alex …’

  ‘Tristan? Dead?’ Two words it was almost impossible to connect. I got up and poured her a glass of Armagnac. ‘Drink that,’ I ordered. ‘Then tell me what’s happened.’ I gave myself a nip, too, despite the early hour. Tristan murdered simply didn’t compute.

  She gulped at the brandy, tears pouring down her face, coughing as the spirit caught at her throat. Through sobs and hiccups, she managed to explain that a dog-walker had found Tristan’s body dumped in a field along a little-used lane on the outskirts of town. ‘He’d been … he’d been tortured, Alex. They’d smashed his knees, his chest. Cut … cut bits off him with knives. Castrated him! My poor brother. But why, Alex? What has he ever done?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I couldn’t think of an answer. On the surface, Tristan Huber really was the most harmless of men. I always thought of him as a Scarlet Pimpernel, a languorous fop on the surface, a man of steel beneath. Rosy cheeks. Hair slicked back. Languid in a particularly English way. The Bertie Wooster de nos jours. The sort of guy you see in the background of ads for waxed jackets or green wellies, carrying a broken gun in the crook of an arm. It was difficult to imagine him getting on the wrong side of somebody to the extent that they would use knives on him.

  ‘Oh, Tristan …’ Dimsie moaned. Her shoulders shook. I put my arms around her and held her close. She smelled of thrice-milled soap, something French and expensive.

  ‘Do you know who the dog-walker was?’

  ‘A man called Major Something. Hassock? Hollick? Some name like that.’ She bent over herself, tears dropping from her eyes.

  ‘Horrocks. I know him.’ Norman Horrocks ran the Poppy Day collections once a year for the British Legion, close to November Eleventh – the Royal British Legion, if you wanted to be pedantic about it, which the Major usually did – and I always volunteered, standing outside Sainsbury’s with my collecting tin and tray of papery poppies.

  ‘You used to be a policeman, Alex.’ She hiccupped. ‘A police officer.’

  ‘This is true.’ In fact, I’d been the youngest Detective Chief Inspector in the country, at one time. Passed out second highest in my class at Hendon Police College, then moved rapidly from uniform to plainclothes. (Just saying).

  ‘So you’d be able to talk to the local bobbies, find out what they know.’

  ‘I could try. Better still, I could go and talk to the Major myself. It might be more productive.’

  ‘And then you’ll tell me?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘Because, Alex, when I find who did it, I will personally kill them.’

  She spoke thro
ugh gritted teeth, sounding so like her ferocious mother that I involuntarily cringed. ‘Good idea, Dim.’

  ‘I mean it.’ She gazed at me with tear-flooded eyes. ‘Tristan never did anyone any harm. He was the sweetest, kindest …’ She pressed at her face with the sheet torn from the roll of kitchen towel I’d handed her.

  I wondered how well she really knew her brother. Sweet and kind, sure. But also a man with a deep well of hard ruthlessness into which he dipped when he needed to. I’d once watched him see off three shaven-headed yobs menacing a couple of Asian girls with nothing more lethal than his hands. Mind you, a properly executed karate chop could be as dangerous as a gun, I had thought, as two of them fell howling to the ground and were scooped up by the police, while the third legged it round the corner, only to be returned to join his mates by a cold-eyed Tristan.

  ‘Why do you want me involved?’ I asked. ‘Why not leave it up to the police? All I’d be able to do would be to duplicate what they’ll already have done.’

  ‘Yes, but to them, he’s just another c-corpse.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Whereas to you, it’s m-more personal. You know him. Besides, I just know they won’t k-keep me in the frame. Not like you will.’ Her chin trembled too. Her little hand clutched at my sleeve. A maiden truly in distress. ‘Alex, you can’t possibly refuse to help me.’

  Of course I couldn’t. It was blackmail of the crudest kind. But Dimsie was one of those women with lashings of what my uncle up in Scotland, Sir Aylward de Cuik, called Winning Ways. In other words, a quivering lip, a tear falling from one of those velvety purple eyes, a blush-mantled cheek. Most people gave up the fight and did whatever she asked them to. So I agreed to do my very best to find out what the cops knew and then to pass it on to her. It was another half hour before she left, refusing my offer to drive her home. I promised to get in touch as soon as I knew anything more. I walked her downstairs to the parking area. I watched her steer her racy little late-model Porsche 911 up the drive which led from my block of flats to the main road and across it, the promenade and the sea.