by John Eider
The squad car tore past the point at which the unmarked car had been positioned the night before, and then around the corner into Mansard Lane, moving as fast as they dared without lights flashing and siren blaring.
‘We’re not undercover any more?’ asked Grey of the driver of the fully-marked car.
‘We’re well past that, sir,’ he answered, as Grey discovered as they found the Mars house with door flung open and emergency service vehicles all over the drive and on the verge out front. All around were uniformed staff in purposeful motion. How different from the stillness of the night before.
Grey was clocked the moment he got out of the car,
‘Ah, here he is, my opposite number, the man with the answers.’ Inspector Glass looked wired, weird. Grey didn’t relish dealing with him.
Gesturing for him to join him in the entrance hall, Grey approached to see another figure slumped in the shadows and being tended to by medics.
‘Do you know this man?’ asked Glass.
‘Yes, that’s Derek Waldron,’ answered Grey in shock.
Whether Waldron was genuinely semi-conscious or merely looking to the floor out of shame, Grey couldn’t say; but he looked a mess, blood over the same shirt and cardigan he had been wearing the previous night.
‘We need to have him in the ambulance soon,’ said a bright-coated medic.
‘You can keep him,’ spat Glass. ‘Have one of ours go with you though, we don’t want him getting away.’
Looking at the shape collapsed against the wall, Grey considered there was little risk of that.
Glass continued, ‘Yes, one of our men thought they recognised him from sentry duty at the Cedars. Is he one you interviewed?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were there last night, I hear.’
‘Yes.’ The answer was a painful one in ways Grey hadn’t even worked out yet.
‘Then I don’t suppose you can tell us what he was doing barging in here this morning, disrupting our whole operation and sending Mars scarpering?’ Glass spoke with barely contained disgust; Grey realising suddenly that Mars was nowhere around,
‘Scarpering? Where? How’d he get away?’
‘Come with me.’ Glass led through the body of the house, unconcerned for the effect of his boots on plush carpets, to emerge at a patio beyond the kitchen door. From there they could see a Constable obviously up a ladder, only his top half visible, calling over from the other side of the fence at the end of the garden,
‘He definitely came this way, sir. The side gate’s been pushed through and there’s drops of blood on the slabs.’
‘Look at that,’ said Glass turning away. ‘Look at the man we’ve loosed upon the public: injured from his attack, and he still managed to scale a seven-foot fence and break a gate down to get clean away.’
‘Attacked?’
Glass led back through to the scene in the hall,
‘Show him.’
Another of his uniformed men, loving the excitement, held a transparent evidence bag containing a long and partially blooded screwdriver.
‘See this? This was your friend Derek’s weapon of choice when he sprung on Mars this morning. You’ll notice the blood. It isn’t his,’ Glass jabbed a dismissive finger downward at the figure being readied for removal. ‘None of his injuries fit, which means Chummy here got at least one blow in with this,’ he shook the evidence bag, ‘before Mars struck back to defend himself.’
Grey imagined the scuffle they must have had in this narrow hall, Waldron fortunate that Mars apparently hadn't wanted to hang around. He must have known he was being watched, perhaps had been up all night knowing it, just waiting for something as bizarre and unexpected as Derek Waldron armed and dangerous to come and trigger his growing urge to flee.
But Glass wasn’t finished,
‘Oh, and there’s the little matter of how our interloper here got into the house.’ Glass turned his gaze to the front door itself, where in its high old-fashioned lock remained a key, from which swung a keyfob in the shape of a stylised ‘L’ cast in silver metal and encrusted with ersatz rubies,
‘I wonder where that might have come from?’
Grey groaned inwardly – Waldron must have taken it last night from the bag of the sleeping Ludmila.
‘And that’s not all. Shall I take you to the garden shed where we’ve found a walking stick flung on the floor, covered in what the man who first found it thought was spilt creosote? Or to the utility room with a laundry basket full of a week’s worth of dirtied men’s clothes?’ The inference was obvious: had they taken a risk on bringing Mars in the previous evening, then they’d have found the evidence to charge him.
Glass, far from done with this, almost seemed to splutter, ‘Just what were you up last night? And where the hell were you this morning..?’
‘In here, the pair of you.’
Superintendent Rose, his arrival unnoticed, as good as pushed them into a downstairs room and slammed the door behind them,
‘Not in front of the troops. Never in front of the troops.’
‘Sir, I…’
‘Two senior officers bickering over a crime scene, as a victim’s taken away to an ambulance…’
‘Well, I’m not sure we can call Waldron that…’ Glass was attempting to defend himself like a bridled child, while Grey was still in a light form of shock.
Rose’s shook head said it all, ‘Now Glass, you tell me what happened.’
‘Well, all hell’s broken loose, that’s what happened. Some madman from the Cedars got hold of the house keys from the woman Grey was meant to be looking after, and came here to settle some score on Mars.’
‘And Mars?’
‘He escaped over the garden fence, sir. He’s injured though, can’t be moving quickly. We’ve cars out looking for him.’
‘So, this man. Did he know Mars? Did he know where he lived?’
‘Ask Grey, he was at the Cedars last night.’
‘Were you?’
‘I had to put Ludmila Mars up somewhere.’
‘She had a hotel.’
‘She didn’t want it.’
‘You couldn’t find her another one?’
‘She wanted a guard.’
‘And how is she?’
‘Slept through everything.’
‘And what about this man?’
‘I swear, I told him nothing.’
‘Well,’ sniped Glass, ‘for someone who didn’t know we were here, he played it cool enough, strolling right past our men in their cars.’
‘Do you remember him leaving, Grey?’ asked Rose.
‘No, no; I was out cold.’
‘He was sleeping!’
‘I wasn’t sleeping, he drugged me.’
‘Drugged?’
‘Slipped me a sedative I reckon, the Duty Manager too.’
‘Why?’
‘To not be noticed slipping away? To not be missed by the Manager at breakfast? To be absolutely sure he’d have time to do this?’
‘What about the Constable outside?’
‘He’s there to stop people getting in, not the residents leaving. Waldron told him he had an early start.’
Now it was Rose’s turn to take a moment out in confusion; but Glass just pushed this imagined advantage,
‘Rase here must have told him what was going on.’
The Superintendent spun on him, ‘You stop right there! If you’ve a case to make you make it at the station and in private, you hear?’
‘Well sir, please count on me doing just that.’
Rose’s head was still shaking, ‘Right now I’m not sure what to think about how any of you have behaved.’
‘Me?’ asked Glass incredulously. ‘What have I done?’
‘You can ask me that… after you let a suspect get away from under your nose, with men crawling all over him? And you’re laying down judgement on others?’
‘But, sir.’
‘”But, sir” nothing.’
‘Then I would just li
ke it put on record that I was in favour of bringing Mars in for questioning last night.’
‘Noted. That was my call, you all witnessed it. Lord, will you look at us here: what a mess. What state’s Mars in?’
‘He’ll be injured, bleeding; might have hurt himself more getting over the fence.’
‘Then a six foot-plus man in such a state is hardly inconspicuous. Get everyone out there and get him found.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Glass left the room in as calm a manner as he had answered that last question, but Grey knew that inside he’d be seething. It had been the kind of meeting that you witnessed only rarely over the span of a career, and which you were lucky to get out of with everyone involved keeping their jobs. In this case the focus was obviously Glass’s anger, and Grey couldn’t see the fall-out of it meaning any less than a resignation: either Glass’s own, or his forcing someone else’s.
‘And what about you, Grey?’ asked Rose after he’d gone. ‘Are you fit?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good, because whatever’s gone on here we need you working it all out.’
‘But I couldn’t have guessed at this…’
‘It’s our job to guess, isn’t it? Isn’t that what Glass’s lot are always being told? To stick to pounding the beat and to leave the deducing to CID? Take a minute, then I need you out searching.’
Left alone in the room, Grey had his first proper look at any part of the Mars house: at the dark furniture Ludmila had mentioned; and above the unused fireplace a picture that, even had he not already heard of it, could not have failed to catch the attention.
In dark shades of grey and brown were rendered jagged mountains reaching up into the sky; and in front of them, so small you had to get up close to see, a bear, it’s fur almost black, up on its hind legs, its front claws outstretched. Beneath it were two men almost off their feet, one turning and scrambling away, as the other tried hopelessly in vain to get a round off from his shotgun before the raging beast was upon them.
What was the name painted in the bottom right hand corner: “Bellow”, “Barrow”? The inscription in the gilded frame read, “Bear Rearing at Hunters”.
Avoiding the crowded hall, he found a connecting door through to an equally austere dining room – where only one chair was not pushed neatly back beneath the table – and from there another door led through to the kitchen. This final room was generally spick and span: among the cups and cereal bowls in the sink were only three large plates, the same number of dirty knives and forks. It was an obvious deduction for Grey that the cleaners had been sent away these past three days; this was Mars back in bachelor-mode, keeping his cleaning to a minimum.
Chapter 24 – Social Services II
