Bedfordshire Clanger Calamity

by steve higgs

  Albert listened to everything, absorbing information like a sponge. The infidelity grated against his beliefs, but he kept his mouth shut: he had no right to sit in judgement even if he did think it loathsome for a man to walk out on his wife and children when a younger woman showed some interest. ‘You were telling me Kate went to see Joel’s ex-wife,’ Albert prompted.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what she was thinking. It went badly as you can imagine, and Trisha hadn’t heard from Joel of course. She’s not a very nice person, truth be told. Nor are his children. She cleaned him out in the divorce, took everything but the shop and she wanted that too. He managed to keep hold of it by giving her everything else – you know what divorce lawyers are like.’

  He didn’t, actually. Albert married once and loved Petunia as deeply as a man could. It would never have occurred to him to leave her or mess her around. It wasn’t germane to the case though, and he shifted the conversation forward rather than comment. ‘What evidence against her might there be?’ he asked. ‘The police confirmed she has no alibi for the time of his disappearance and for the period when he is believed to have been killed.’

  ‘Wait,’ Victor frowned. ‘I didn’t hear them ask her about when he was killed.’

  That’s because they hadn’t. ‘She reported him missing, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Albert scrunched up his face, needing to deliver some bad news and wondering how best to do it. ‘You would not believe the number of times the person reporting a person as missing is the one responsible for the murder.’ Victor’s eyes flared in surprise and he sat more upright as he started to bristle. Albert held up a hand to calm the younger man. ‘I’m not saying that is the case here, but the police will not take the fact that she filed the report into account. They may even consider it a point against her. They asked her where she was at a specific time; that will be the time the coroner has estimated to be the time of death. She has no alibi; therefore, she could be Joel’s killer.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Victor spluttered. ‘She loved him. I have been waiting for her to announce their engagement.’ Albert had dealt with this so many times in the past. For family members and close friends, the idea that the person they knew could be guilty of such a heinous crime was unthinkable and nothing would shake their conviction.

  Albert asked. ‘What did she have to gain?’

  ‘To gain?’ echoed Victor.

  ‘The whole shop,’ said a loud voice from behind the counter. Both men turned their heads to see April glaring their way. ‘That’s right,’ she snapped. ‘He named her as a partner in the business.’ Her announcement got the attention of everyone in the café; customers and staff alike. ‘What? She didn’t tell you?’ asked April with mock surprise. ‘They didn’t tell anyone. I only know because I saw it on Companies House. She has an equal share of the business. Fifty percent is his, and fifty percent is hers. I told you she was a gold-digger!’ she made a point of reminding everyone. ‘It didn’t take her long to bump him off, did it? I bet the ink on her signature wasn’t even dry before she wrapped the rope around his neck.’

  One of the other women behind the counter cried out in revulsion at the mental image, but Victor was on his feet and his face looked like a volcano about to erupt. ‘You’d better shut your mouth, April. Or so help me …’

  ‘What?’ she laughed in his face. ‘You’ll bump me off? Like sister like brother. Some family, aren’t they?’ she shared her joke with the rest of the staff, not that any of them thought it funny. Cutting him off before he could say anymore, she spun around and started walking toward the door that led from the counter area to whatever lay beyond in the rear of the premises. ‘If you don’t mind, someone needs to do the books now that Miss Homewrecker isn’t here. Maybe we’ll be able to keep our jobs if someone steps up to manage this place properly now.’ It was quite clear from her comment that she was referring to herself in the role of manager, taking the post because there was no one to appoint her. The door swung shut behind her before anyone could do anything to argue.

  Albert tilted his head and thought about all that he had seen and heard in the last half an hour. It was a curious set of circumstances.

  Rex was curious too. Curious enough to try talking to the angry dachshund. ‘Hey, Weiner,’ he chuffed at the dog. Hans was back on the floor, unceremoniously dumped there when Victor sprang to his feet to fight with April.

  Hans turned his head slowly to look at the German Shepherd. He wasn’t a fan of large dogs. They all thought size was the only factor that mattered and this one looked like he’d been cross bred with a bear. ‘My name is Hans,’ he growled.

  ‘Okay, Hans. My human is what passes for clever among humans. He might be able to help with what is going on. Have you smelled anything new or unusual near your territory?’

  Hans tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you? A police dog?’

  ‘Yes, actually. I used to be anyway. My human was a police officer.’

  ‘Like those humans that took my human away?’ growled Hans. ‘You expect me to trust you? You look like a big dumb brute to me. Getting my human back is going to take brains not brawn. Leave the detective work to me, you don’t look qualified. I’ll let you know if I need someone to pee really high up on a lamppost.’

  Rex frowned at the small dog but wouldn’t let himself rise to the bait.

  Albert had run out of reasons to stay in the café. Most of the customers had already left, put off by the ugly display by April so soon after the unpleasant scenes with the police. A few had taken up Victor’s offer of a free clanger, but most just left, their hunger already sated and the desire to leave greater than the draw of free food.

  Only two men remained, the two Albert had to apologise to when Rex went under their table to get a flake of food. He didn’t feel his conversation with Victor had ended – he certainly had more questions he wanted answers to, but this wasn’t his investigation, he wasn’t a serving police officer, and it was very possible that they already had the right person in custody.

  With a quick shake of Rex’s lead, Albert got himself moving toward the door. Victor ran after him.

  ‘Mr Smith,’ he called.

  ‘Albert will do.’

  ‘Albert, I just wanted to thank you for your time. You came in for the class, didn’t you? I hope this hasn’t spoiled the experience. It’s always such a pleasure for us to share our craft with others. The clanger has such a fine tradition in these parts.’

  ‘It was what brought me all the way here, Victor. It’s getting late though; I think I’ll be off. I hope your sister is proven to be innocent.’ It was a throwaway statement, a thing to say as he went out the door.

  By his knee, Rex was sniffing the air near the two men sitting in the window. He had no reason to do so, but much like a human has to always be looking at something, so a dog must always be sniffing and sorting smells. He filed away the various scents, categorising and memorising as he always did without conscious thought about why or how.

  His lead went taut: his human was already outside on the pavement and looking to move away. A light drizzle had set in, which pleased Rex not one bit. Nor the sniggering that came from behind as Hans made a clever remark about moving along like a good boy. The dachshund said, ‘Good boy,’ with more emphasis than was necessary to drive his point home. Rex almost spun around to growl a reply but acted instead as if he hadn’t heard. If he got the chance, he was going to accidentally pee on the annoying dog’s head.

  Albert got about halfway to the pub before he changed his mind about interfering.

  In the Shadows

  The rain was picking up by the time Albert turned around. He’d been trying to convince himself that he would have a nice, quiet, and above all pleasant evening reading a book in the pub. He could relax in his room for a while and maybe get a bath. Rex didn’t need dinner because he’d just eaten an entire eighteen inch long clanger, but the dog would have forgotten about that by the time the
y arrived at the pub and stare at his bowl because Rex’s body clock would assure him it was dinner time.

  Keeping the dog away from his dinner bowl to avoid an hour or more of grumpy dog noises wasn’t what caused the u-turn. It wasn’t even the acknowledgement that the pub would be filled with young people making noise and playing the fruit machine and jukebox. Despite telling himself a quiet evening was what he desired, truthfully, he wanted to find out if the woman he met earlier really killed her lover.

  Because he didn’t believe she had.

  He’d seen her face when DS Craig arrested her. More importantly, he’d seen her eyes. She had no idea why the police would accuse her and that made her innocent: Albert was sure of it. A homewrecker she might be, but that wasn’t a crime in the eyes of the law. If April was right, and Kate had just inherited the entire café, the police would consider that to be a strong motive. They might take the stance that she seduced the older man as the first stage in a cold-hearted plan to murder him and take the café. There were many recorded cases of worse behaviour. However, if Albert’s instincts were right, the poor woman might be tried and found guilty of a crime she hadn’t committed while the true killer went free.

  It would keep him awake all night if he didn’t at least explore what might have happened.

  Arriving back at the café, he’d been forced to turn his collar up as the rain became persistent, but the door was now displaying a closed sign.

  Rex hated the rain. He hated the way it bounced off his ears and how his paws flicked it up onto his belly where his coat was so short, he was virtually bald. The rain was cold and unwelcome and though it wouldn’t penetrate his coat to reach his skin anywhere else, it would saturate the outer layer of fur and take hours to dry out. Generally, he was happy to go wherever his human chose to wander. The old man spent a lot of time going to different places, and there was always something to do, new smells to discover, and, quite often, something to eat.

  Today, however, they had been out for hours and he was quite looking forward to going home. They were back at the café, which was okay by him; the café had food inside and it was right about dinner time according to the clock in his head.

  Wondering why they were not going inside, he looked up at his human and got rewarded with a rain drop right on his nose, a portion of which whooshed right up his left nostril. He ducked his head again, using his left front leg to wipe at his face, and he sneezed, a spectacular explosion of dog snot and rainwater as his head spasmed.

  Pulling an odd face as he tried to decide if he needed to sneeze again, Rex sniffed, and that was when he caught the scent. He held it in his nose, deciphering it. His human was moving, turning to his left and about to walk away, but Rex dug his feet in and leaned his bodyweight in the opposite direction. The smell meant something. It lingered on the air despite the rain damping everything down.

  ‘Come along, Rex.’ His human tugged at the lead, trying to make him budge but with little effect. ‘What can you smell, boy?’ The question meant his human was paying attention at least. The answer was that he could smell the men from the café, the ones who were sitting by the door. The combination of scents coming from the pair blended together to give him an unquestionable result. They were not in the café, he could see that, using his eyes for once in favour of his nose. He got to his feet and looked around, lifting his nose higher as he sucked in air and tried to pinpoint where the scent was coming from. He wasn’t doing this for any particular reason, only because their scent was familiar and unexpected.

  Behind him, Albert had moved position so he could see through the window into the back of the café. Beyond the counter, he could see someone moving around. The business shut for the day, but someone was working, and he hoped it might be Victor. Peering through the glass façade, he spotted Victor’s face, which confirmed there was reason to knock on the window. The action startled the man inside, his surprised expression appearing in the round window of the kitchen door.

  Moments later, Victor came through it, a question on his brow as he came to see who might be there.

  The sound of the door locks clicking open distracted Rex before he could find the source of the scent he held. He would need to leave where he was to pursue the smell, but it looked like his human was going back inside the café.

  ‘Hello again, Albert,’ Victor held the door open with his left hand, clasping the frame with his right so he blocked the gap with his body as he leaned outside into the cool damp air. ‘Did you leave something behind?’ he glanced into the café. ‘I didn’t see anything.’

  Albert bit his lip, wondering only now how he might make his suggestion. ‘No, no, nothing like that. Actually, I wondered if I might be of assistance.’

  Victor’s eyebrows knitted together as he missed what the old man was saying. ‘In the kitchen?’ he tried to clarify.

  Shaking his head quickly at his ambiguous choice of words, Albert had another go at explaining. ‘No, I meant with your sister’s situation.’ He wasn’t making himself clear if Victor’s single raised eyebrow was anything to go by, so he stuffed his next sentence full of words. ‘I’m something of an amateur sleuth, one might say. I’ve had some success in uncovering what the police may fail to even look for. You see, I saw your sister’s face when they arrested her. I’m convinced that she is innocent, and I would like to help you prove it. Just in case the case against her holds water.’

  Victor’s expression was pained. He was trying to work out how to tell the old man to go home and stop wasting his time; he had enough on his plate without trying to solve the café owner’s murder in his spare time. The business had no owner, April was trying to forcibly take over running the place, his own job was in jeopardy, and his sister was under arrest. What good could an old man do?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he started to say, but just as he began to speak, the rain picked up, doubling in volume one second to the next. Rex decided enough was enough and barged his way past Victor’s legs to get into the dry. Doing so dragged Albert along with him, the dog’s strength easily enough to pull the old man off balance.

  Albert let the lead slip from his hand rather than collide with Victor, but his dog was in the café now and about to shake all the excess water from his fur. Seeing this, but unable to get to him, Albert shouted, ‘No, Rex!’

  Rex heard the shout but couldn’t imagine what it was his human didn’t want him to do. He would find out once he’d lightened his coat some.

  Victor watched in horror as a million droplets of muddy water showered the inside of his freshly cleaned café. Seat, tables, walls, the windows – they all got a coating as both he and Albert rushed to stop the dog.

  Enjoying the blissful sensation of shaking his body, Rex was in the throes of working down to his tail when hands grabbed him. The unexpectedness made him jump, springing around to face the danger with his teeth bared.

  Faced with a mouthful of giant teeth he didn’t expect, Victor’s instinctive reaction was to get away from them, but his sudden change in direction caused his feet to slip on the wet floor. He crashed to the tile, jarring his hip, but the dog wasn’t following up with an attack and the old man seemed to have him under control.

  Rex eyed the new human suspiciously. ‘You’re sitting in a puddle,’ he observed.

  As cold water soaked through the material of his trousers, Victor clambered back to his feet and looked about at the mess he would now have to clean up. Everyone else had gone home, even April, who argued with him about his plan to stay. She wanted him to hand over his key and claimed that someone was fiddling the books. When she said ‘Someone’ she made air quotes and made it quite clear the someone she meant was his sister Kate. Kate did the books, taking over from April at Joel’s instruction six months ago. April had been the bookkeeper as one of her duties since before Joel bought the shop more than a decade ago, but Kate was qualified as an accountant which meant he could shed an additional overhead paying an accountant to check the books before the tax assessment
was submitted. To Victor, it felt like there was a lot of unnecessary and unwelcome drama in his life. He ought to be going home to his wife and two small children, but instead he would have to clean the café now on top of the other jobs to which he needed to attend.

  Feeling the weight of responsibility pressing down on him, Victor let his shoulders sag. ‘Albert, I have to get this cleaned up. I still have tasks in the kitchen which I didn’t get to finish because of the palaver this afternoon, I think I have someone fiddling the books here to hide money being stolen and April wants the world to believe the thief is Kate. Furthermore, with Kate accused of murder, the café’s ownership has to be in question. How exactly is it that you think you can help me?’

  Albert was sorry about the mess Rex had made; he could see it wasn’t a five-minute job to clean up again. His apology wouldn’t achieve anything though, so he said, ‘I want to investigate what did happen to Joel Clement and make sure your sister goes free. That will give this place a new owner, won’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Victor conceded.

  ‘You said someone is fiddling the books? Can I take a look?’

  Mushy Peas

  In the rain outside, a shadow moved. Francis was watching the front of the café, waiting for the man inside to come out. The rain had given them exactly what they wanted – empty streets. Eugene was around the back in case their target – Francis liked to think of his victims as targets because it sounded cooler - left by that door instead. They hadn’t been afforded the time to study his routines to pick the perfect place to grab him. Much like Joel Clement, the earl sent them to get the person he wanted and gave them an unrealistic timeframe in which to complete the task.

  However, upon arrival, they discovered the owner had died without revealing the real name of the person they should take. He said Maddie Hayes, but no such person worked at the café and never had according to the waitress they spoke with earlier. Eugene asked her who the best baker was, which was how they came to be waiting for Victor Harris now.