Exit

by Belinda Bauer

  In the passenger seat Jackie Braddick’s eyes got rounder and rounder as she listened to Geoffrey Skeet systematically destroy Calvin Bridge. He even revealed that Calvin still met his brother Louis once a year to go camping on Exmoor; that he was therefore turning a blind eye to his brother’s flourishing network of crime. For a serving officer, it was a damning indictment.

  But even after that point, DCI King wanted more. She nodded eagerly in the rear-view mirror and encouraged Geoffrey Skeet to go on.

  And he did. It took him all the way to Torrington to finish spewing all the venom he had in him regarding Calvin Bridge. Finally he stopped, wincing with pain and queasy from all the blood he had swallowed in the telling.

  King raised her brows in the mirror, looking disappointed. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ he mumbled – because they all knew that it was. Enough to drum Calvin Bridge out of the police force. Possibly even enough for criminal charges.

  But Kirsty King only shrugged at him and said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  And then she and Jackie Braddick laughed so hard all the winding way back to Bideford that Geoffrey Skeet thought several times that they might crash.

  He sort of wished they would.

  Much later that day – after Geoffrey Skeet had been charged with a litany of crimes that included murder and extortion, with more to follow – a weary-looking DCI King called Calvin into the interview room, sat him down, and relayed what had taken place on the drive back from Exeter.

  Calvin was stunned. ‘You knew?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s my job to know who I can trust.’

  Calvin’s throat got tight. He could only nod.

  ‘I hope you’ll stay in plainclothes this time, Calvin. You’ve got a nose for it.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, and Calvin,’ she said, ‘if you want to keep a secret around here, for God’s sake don’t tell Tony Coral.’

  Part Three

  The Birds

  As he had every morning without fail since Old Greybeard had died, Calvin was going through the latest missing persons reports, when Jackie Braddick came in.

  ‘All right, DC Bridge?’

  ‘All right, PC Braddick? To what do I owe this interruption?’

  ‘Donald Moon’s here to see you.’

  ‘Oh!’ Calvin put down his pen and got up. ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘He’s not here to say thank you for saving his life.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not so nice,’ said Calvin and sat down again.

  Jackie laughed. ‘I know, right? Grumpy old bastard. Somebody broke his bird feeder and he’ll only talk to you.’

  Calvin grimaced. ‘PC Braddick, did you tell Mr Moon that I’m a detective now, and that bird feeders are beneath me?’

  ‘I did tell him that,’ she nodded. ‘I said, listen, Mr Moon, DC Bridge is a very important man now, who catches killers and clears tall buildings with a single bound, and he can’t be bothering with your crappy little sparrows. But he’s insisting, so . . .’

  In reception Mrs Moon gave Calvin a big hug, but Donald just nodded in silence under a flat cap. He was using a stick, but wasn’t moving badly, considering.

  In the interview room, he unpacked what looked like an entire CCTV system from a Morrisons bag – much of it covered in bird shit.

  Worst job ever, Calvin sighed to himself.

  But he didn’t hurry Mr Moon. He let him say his piece. And gleaned a certain satisfaction from the fact that the man was still alive to bore the tits off him.

  When all the hardware was on the table, Calvin explained to Donald Moon that all he really needed was the memory card, and once he’d found that and popped it into the office computer, it was the work of a minute to find the huge interruption to the near-stationary picture caused by a giant intruder.

  He reversed it a few seconds and started to watch.

  Calvin guessed the camera was mounted on a branch of the apple tree, because it pointed at a nesting box on the trunk. Everything in the apple tree was calm. Then there was a shaking and a pitching and a fuzzy pink ear and a tuft of grey hair and a seventeen-second shot of something big and beige moving across the screen, and then another bump and, after that, just leaves and sky.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Donald, in case Calvin had missed it.

  Calvin played it again. ‘So someone climbs along the branch . . . ?’

  Donald Moon nodded.

  ‘And hits the camera with his head . . . He passes through the frame, because that’s his jacket there . . .’

  ‘Broke the feeder,’ said Donald Moon, ‘and I missed the blue-tits fledge ’cos of him.’

  ‘Late for babies, in’t it?’

  ‘This were a few months back.’

  Calvin sighed. This crime wasn’t even recent. He was being asked to investigate a broken bird feeder that had been damaged how long ago?

  He checked the date on the screen and the hair on his forearms prickled upright.

  The footage was from May 4 – two days after Albert Cann had died.

  He played the clip again. But this time he reversed a bit further to thirty seconds before the camera was knocked askew.

  What was he looking at? The nesting box. The tree. And beyond that the house.

  The houses.

  He realized he could see part of the back of the Cann house! The back door and, above that, Reggie Cann’s bedroom window. Not Albert’s, annoyingly, but even so. The back door might be critical . . .

  ‘How far back does this recording go, Mr Moon?’

  Donald shrugged. Calvin hit reverse and started to pray. Not to God but to something, somebody, somewhere who held the purse strings to luck. Please let it go back two more days, he prayed. Please . . .

  He held his St Peter as he watched time run backwards . . .

  A flash of hi-vis.

  That was him! On Donald Moon’s birdcam – coming out of the back door and disappearing around the corner of the house.

  Then Felix Pink walked comically backwards up the garden to the house. He’d missed him by seconds. Felix must have been leaving the garden as he checked the back door.

  Calvin reversed the recording at x16 speed. Felix again. Frenetic pixels moving through one corner of the still picture. And then just the birdbox, the houses and occasionally a bird blurring by.

  ‘You going to watch it all backwards?’ said Donald.

  ‘Just give me a moment, Mr—’

  He stopped because there was somebody else moving across the screen.

  It took great willpower to reverse through the action at speed, but that’s what Calvin did next, so he could watch events unfold in real time.

  He stopped it again at 09.15.

  At 09.18 a window opened in the Cann house. Upstairs, but not Albert’s room. The bedroom next door. Reggie’s, he thought from memory. What time had Daz said Reggie got to work that morning? Eight thirty? Did this tell a different story?

  The footage showed nothing for several minutes. Birds flapping, squabbling, shitting in the tree.

  Then—!

  The cleaner came out of the back door.

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘What?’ said Marion Moon, who’d been sitting quietly alongside her husband all this time.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Calvin. ‘Would you mind waiting in reception while I watch this? I won’t be long.’

  The Moons shuffled out and Calvin hit play again.

  It was Hayley Pitt all right. Distant and grainy, but he was sure of it. She came out of the back door at 09.28, picked up a ladder at the edge of the overgrown lawn, and propped it against the back wall of the house, under the open window.

  ‘Shit shit shit!’

  Calvin paused the footage and went to find DCI King
and Pete Shapland. Brought them back with him. Reversed to 09.18 and they watched the footage together.

  The window opening. The ladder against the wall. Hayley went back inside.

  10.11 – they knew the Exiteers had arrived at the front door. ‘She’s still in the house!’ whispered King, as if Hayley might hear them and spook.

  10.20.

  ‘Here she comes.’

  Hayley climbed awkwardly out of the window and down the ladder. She let it drop down in the grass outside the back door, and hurried down the garden towards the camera, disappearing out of shot.

  ‘Must have gone over the fence,’ murmured Calvin.

  At 10.33, Felix Pink came out. The dog came out. Felix picked up the dog, put it inside, then came out again and hurried towards the camera, disappearing out of shot in almost the same place Hayley had nearly fifteen minutes before.

  At 10.35 Calvin appeared round the side of the house and tried the back door.

  He froze the picture.

  For a moment they all sat in stunned silence.

  ‘So they were set up,’ said King. ‘By a jealous rival.’

  ‘Oldest tea towel in the book,’ said Calvin.

  Pete Shapland crossed his arms. ‘I told you so,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s shagging somebody.’

  At first, when she was arrested and interviewed, Hayley Pitt seemed not to understand that what she’d done was really that wrong.

  She freely admitted giving Oxycodone to Skipper. Her mother worked at the hospice and always nicked a few around Christmas to sell for turkey and presents.

  ‘Albert gimme a tenner a pill,’ she said with impressed eyes. ‘Made Skip right woozy,’ she giggled.

  ‘You didn’t think it was wrong to give someone a powerful drug without them knowing it?’ asked DCI King.

  Hayley shrugged. ‘It’s only a sleeping pill, in’t it? My mum takes ’em all the time. And Skipper was going to kill himself anyway!’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Albert said. Weren’t a secret. Not to me, anyway. Albert had to pay for the gas online and he was shit with computers so I done it for him. But then—’

  ‘But what?’

  Hayley frowned angrily. ‘This is all Reggie’s fault. He told me the house was his, but when I read Skipper’s will I seen it’s not his. It’s Skipper’s!’

  ‘What difference does that make to you, Hayley?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t have shagged him otherwise, would I? And now I’ve got a baby coming, so I need a house. More than any of them! I can’t have a baby at my house! My mum’d go nuts. But I’m like, when Skipper goes, I’ll move in and no harm done. But then I seen in the will that Skipper’s not even leaving the house to Reggie, he’s leaving it to bloody Albert !’

  She looked outraged at the injustice of it all.

  ‘So what did you do about it?’ said King neutrally.

  Hayley shrugged. ‘Just switched things around a bit. Gave Oxy to Skipper and Albert and put the gas and the other bits in Albert’s room instead and moved his oxygen behind the door so they wouldn’t see it. Then I just shut all the doors apart from Albert’s and they walked straight in. They were so stupid, so it weren’t hard.’

  ‘You made the tip-off call?’

  Hayley nodded. ‘I wasn’t going to. Was just going to put it all back and go. But then I seen her through a crack in the bedroom door.’

  ‘Amanda?’

  ‘Whatever.’ Hayley pursed her lips. ‘I seen her picture before on Reggie’s phone. Texting him and stuff. But I’m the one having his baby, so she can fuck right off!’ She looked at DCI King defiantly.

  ‘And what about after Albert was dead?’ asked King. ‘Did you keep giving oxy to Skipper?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘And sawed through his walking stick?’

  ‘Reggie had tools in the shed, so . . .’ Hayley shrugged as if that were self-explanatory.

  King nodded sombrely. ‘And you did all this so that Reggie would inherit the house more quickly?’

  ‘Course.’ Hayley nodded sincerely. ‘I mean, Skipper’ll be dead soon anyway. But Albert could’ve lasted years.’

  Calvin Bridge Grows Up

  A month or so after Hayley Pitt was charged with murder, Calvin Bridge grew up.

  The change was so sudden that he could almost feel things ­rearranging themselves within him, like the mysterious transformation that takes place inside a chrysalis.

  He’d bought a new suit for work. Dark grey wool from Banbury’s and two hundred and sixty quid, which was nearly three times what he’d paid for the navy one. He’d also bought three pale blue shirts and two straight knitted wool ties. One black, one navy. He hadn’t needed the shirts and ties but he also hadn’t wanted to wear the same things any more. Hadn’t wanted to look the same way.

  Like a kid.

  Suddenly Calvin no longer wanted to behave like a kid, or be treated like one.

  But checking his cuffs in the mirror on the first morning he was officially in plainclothes, Calvin could still see the boy lurking inside.

  The suit was not going to be enough.

  The trouble was, Calvin didn’t know what else there could be. He was twenty-seven, so numerically a man. He had a manly job and had done several manly things. He’d very nearly married a woman. Technically, he was a man.

  It just felt like he was faking it.

  He toyed several times with calling Maria. Got as far as dialling her number, then didn’t press call. He didn’t know why. He wanted a girlfriend. A girlfriend would be great. Especially one as attractive as Maria. He missed sex. He missed sharing. And yet, he didn’t call.

  A man would have called.

  But Calvin didn’t, and over the next few days a restlessness built up inside him that left him anxious and frustrated, just when he needed to be shining.

  What was wrong with him?

  He didn’t know.

  Then one morning Calvin Bridge woke early and made coffee, and then sat at his kitchen table in just his shorts, and wrote a letter to Shirley.

  He wrote it several times. It started quite long and rambling and got shorter and shorter and shorter. Really he unwrote a letter to Shirley.

  Dear Shirley, it finally said, I hurt you and I’m truly sorry. We all do things we’re ashamed of. Calvin.

  He felt better for writing it.

  Much better.

  Next time he saw Shirley in town, he wouldn’t hide. Next time he saw her, he’d smile and say hello.

  He put on his new suit and Old Greybeard’s St Peter and walked to work.

  He’d never felt more like a man.

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ said Jackie Braddick at his suit.

  ‘The occasion of me asking you to dinner.’

  ‘You buying?’

  ‘Of course. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a date.’

  ‘A date?’ Jackie smiled uncertainly, waiting for the joke.

  ‘Yes,’ he said seriously. ‘Do you want to go on a date?’

  Jackie hesitated, but Calvin didn’t panic. If she said no, he’d take her out to dinner anyway, because they were good mates and she deserved it and they always had a laugh together.

  But she said yes.

  A New Start

  The window next to Skipper’s new bed looked out on a long back garden that was patrolled by a big ginger tomcat, and where Mabel and Toff chased each other like fat old puppies across a well-mown lawn.

  Felix did his best, and Skipper was grateful, but it wasn’t home.

  Nowhere was home now.

  The insurance wouldn’t pay up on Black Lane because its destruction had been ruled a criminal act. So they were suing Geoffrey Skeet, although Skipper doubted he’d live to see any payout. Sometimes he doubted he’d live to see breakfast.

&n
bsp; But he had lived to see Reggie engaged.

  You hardly know each other, he’d grumbled.

  But we’ve already been through a lot together, Reggie had replied, and Skipper knew that was true and secretly he thought they’d be happy.

  Amanda had sensible eyebrows.

  They were buying a cottage in Pilton. Mortgage free. God alone knew what had possessed Albert to stake silly money on a 50–1 shot in the Derby, but he’d finally given his son a worthy gift.

  Skipper had been a bit worried about Hayley, but then it turned out she’d had a fibroid instead of a baby, which was all for the best. Having a baby in prison would have been dreadful.

  And now he had nothing to look forward to except death.

  Death had never held any fears for Skipper, but now he had nothing to think about other than the sad ebbing of a once-powerful tide. Too much time to reflect on what he had lost.

  And whom.

  That was the trouble with living too long and dying in bed.

  ‘It’s your move,’ said Felix.

  Skipper looked down. Felix wasn’t a bad player but he’d left his queen wide open at the back. Two moves and he’d have her. He took a pawn with his bishop to manoeuvre into place.

  Felix moved his king and said, ‘We’re going on a trip.’

  ‘What kind of trip?’

  ‘A day trip.’

  Skipper wouldn’t go. He’d have to get dressed. It would be tiring. It would be to somewhere with flowers, or antiques, or a model village, and he’d have to pretend to be grateful they’d arranged it. Much easier to refuse to go now. Nip it in the bud.

  ‘I’m not going,’ he said, with a decisive move of his rook.

  ‘You’ll have fun,’ said Felix.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You will. We all will.’ Felix castled.

  Skipper banged a knight down firmly. ‘I’ll stay here with the dogs.’

  Felix sighed. The clock ticked. Toff ran in from the garden and jumped on the bed, all happy and lolling, and Skipper rubbed his silky little ears.

  ‘We can take the dogs.’