On Eden Street

by Peter Grainger

  The man was seated at the piano but someone had joined him on the stage and now they were talking. No one was in a hurry. Waters could see the two women returning, Miriam holding Katherine’s arm, and they were still discussing something. Miriam took her seat on his left, and this time Katherine sat in the empty chair to his right – he was between them, present perhaps between the past and the future. Jason leaned across to say something to Miriam, and Katherine touched Waters on the arm and said, ‘How much did you tell her about us?’

  It was an unexpected question – Katherine didn’t do gossip or idle chat.

  Waters said, ‘Us? Nothing at all. Why?’

  Katherine didn’t do puzzled very often either, but she was frowning. After a moment, she said, ‘Just now, she asked me how long ago we were an item.’

  ‘I haven’t said anything about that. Maybe someone else…’

  They both looked around at the table but none of the people who made up their party had had that sort of conversation with Miriam. Katherine stared at the girl in question and then without looking at Waters, she said, ‘Interesting.’

  He’d brought Janey here a few times in the year they were together, and remembered Katherine’s verdict only too well – ‘She’s very sweet.’

  The man began to play. Jason said something to Miriam, continuing their conversation, but her face was turned towards the stage now – he looked back at Waters, and left her alone. She was sitting slightly in front of Waters, and he could see her profile as she listened intently, her eyes wide and fixed, apparently gazing at a point a little above the piano player. She was swaying very slightly, and when he looked down at the hands in her lap, he saw her fingers were moving, following the notes.

  He’d noticed her, the piano player, and several times over the next few minutes he glanced towards her. The piece began to slow towards the end, and as the final mellow chord died away, he said, ‘Thanks, everyone. Hopefully some of you even recognised that first tune…’

  In the space that followed, Miriam said quietly, ‘I Fall In Love Too Easily’ but the artist heard her, as did those around the table. There were smiles, and the piano man nodded his appreciation in her direction, but, of course, she couldn’t see him.

  Detective Chief Inspector Cara Freeman’s temporary office – and who were they kidding, this was where she’d end up – was no more comfortable than Interview One, but she wanted a change of scene in the time she was spending alone with Michael Wortley. Sometimes just altering the space can send conversation in a new direction.

  She had two chairs, standard station issue, in addition to the beaten-up, black, fake leather and chrome thing behind her desk, and she sat in one of them, on the same side of the desk as Wortley. The interview in the afternoon had been as thorough and as unthreatening as she could make it; DI Greene had made his notes and his usual interventions as dates, times and places were meticulously recorded. At five thirty she’d sent the rest of the team home, and then she organised some sandwiches and tea, which the two of them had consumed in her office. Sure enough, Wortley had gradually relaxed. She got him onto his time in the Army, and saw the change as he talked about life on the front line. He said at one point, ‘It’s the old story. You feel most alive when you could die at any moment. The bonds you make with other men when you’re under fire? You think they’re unbreakable. And they are, but…’

  She felt sorry for him, and she felt the irony; he was never going to find peace like that again.

  She said, ‘Ever thought of re-joining? My sergeant, the one who spoke to Major Fogarty, said they were very sorry to see you go.’

  Wortley said, ‘Too old. Too much water under the bridge. And I could end up with a record if your lot in Norwich decide to lean on me, couldn’t I? If they think I’m holding back?’

  It was a genuine question. Freeman said, ‘I very much doubt it. If you cooperate with them like you did with us today, you’ll walk away.’

  ‘But for how long? Getting my legs broke a few days later could be the least of my worries.’

  He didn’t look afraid but there was a resignation in Michael Wortley, that this would not end well for him. She said, ‘If they ask you to give evidence – they might but it’s not certain at all – you’ll get help. You don’t strike me as a man who scares easily, anyway.’

  The tea must be cold by now, but Wortley upended the mug and finished it. He said then, ‘So, when they’ve carted me off tonight, what happens to your investigation? Are you going to nail whoever stabbed Neville Murfitt?’

  He’d come back to this more than once – Freeman could see it was troubling him for some reason. The instructions from Harry Alexander had been clear: don’t show or tell Michael Wortley anything that might compromise our questioning of him. Imagine Wortley on the witness stand, revealing under questioning that the evidence he was giving concerning the activities of organised criminals in Norwich came in part from police sources in Kings Lake? Trials have collapsed for less than that. And so she and Tom Greene had discussed this and questioned him accordingly and carefully, and the detective inspector had his records proving they had done so. Of course, Greene wasn’t here now.

  She said, ‘It’s like I said, Michael. We know who murdered him. There’s CCTV, which, as I explained earlier, I can’t show you. Our investigation has become part of a much wider one, and I’m not in charge of it. So, basically, we’ve been parked for now.’

  Wortley sat in silence for a long time. Lake Central had also settled into an after-hours stillness. On the ground floor, uniform would be preparing to face the Friday night mayhem on the streets but up here, in their out of the way corridor, the only sound was the hum of the technology that never sleeps.

  Finally, Wortley said, ‘You say you know who murdered him. Do you have a name?’

  ‘No. Nor a face. We can come up with a decent description from what we do have, though.’

  He picked up the mug again, as if he’d forgotten it was empty, and then replaced it.

  ‘Telling me about the CCTV wouldn’t be the same as showing it to me, would it?’

  There are lines, and you cross them at your peril. But the closer one gets to them, the more wavy and broken those lines become, and the longer one does this job, the more the realisation dawns that every investigation is unique. Barely any of them fit the theories you’re taught in the lecture room. There was, Freeman knew, already something odd about the way Michael Wortley had reappeared in this investigation, but he was here now – a valuable witness and, she’d bet good money on it, a decent bloke. Unless things started to go decidedly pear-shaped, she wasn’t going to ask Christopher Waters and Serena Butler any more questions about him and the mysterious Mr Ritz.

  She described the vital moments in the video, the two men walking away from the camera and towards a murder. One of them was shaven-headed, stocky, broad like a weight-lifter, long arms swinging, as if he was looking forward to the job.

  Wortley’s face gave nothing away. Then he looked down at the desk to his right and her left, and Freeman followed his gaze. She must have given the impression she understood, because he said, ‘Is there another tea going?’

  It would mean going downstairs and breaking into Priti’s private stash, but she said yes, and would he like anything to eat from the vending machine? They still had an hour and a half to wait. Just another tea, he said. And when she came back in, Wortley was seated as he had been and she didn’t look at her desk at all.

  This time, he drank the tea quickly, as if he intended to leave, and she thought, I can’t stop him, he knows that. But what Wortley said next surprised her.

  ‘Where was it they killed him, exactly?’

  ‘On Eden Street.’

  He shook his head, and said, ‘Don’t think I ever went there. I was only in the town for a few days.’

  Freeman waited, wondering, and then he added, ‘I’d like to see the place.’

  She had taken him as far as the first corner of the corridor, and t
hen said she’d forgotten her phone – which was true, she’d left it on the desk, right next to the notepad. She went back alone, pocketed the phone and then turned over the pad. His handwriting was surprisingly neat in a school-boyish way, as if he had tried his best to make sure there could be no mistake, but it was just the two words, a first and a last name.

  She tore off the page, opened the bottom drawer of the desk, slipped the note in and relocked everything. On Monday, she’d find a safer place for it. Not the ace of trumps, but a very good card if Regional ever decided to bury the case for reasons of their own. Neville Murfitt might be a nobody, but he was their nobody and their first case.

  The drive had taken less than ten minutes. Freeman parked in the market square, avoiding the taxi rank, just a few yards away from the entrance to The Blue Note, whatever that was – it looked like a bit of a dive. They walked past the steps down into it, and turned right, taking the same route Freeman had on that first Monday morning. And it was still raining, as it had been seemingly throughout the entire investigation, but it was light and easing off tonight. The air was turning colder.

  At the corner of the walkway, where it joined Eden Street to the right, there was a roof over the entrance to the Kingsgate shopping centre. Beneath it, a man sat on a stool, wiping down a guitar with a cloth, a busker, the guitar’s case open in front of him on the pavement. He had all the gear – one of those small, battery-powered speakers, the miniature mike around his neck and a little stand with the self-recorded, self-produced CDs you can buy for a ten-pound note. He was wearing drainpipe jeans, a black jacket and a black Stetson-style cowboy hat, and he must be seventy years old if he was a day.

  Eden Street was just getting into its Friday night stride. There was a steady stream of people moving in both directions, heading into the town centre and out of it towards the cafés, pubs and fast-food eateries of Fairhills. Freeman pointed right and they walked down towards the Chinese Chow restaurant. It was open, brightly-lit and already busy, the windows steamed up on the inside. She stopped a few yards short and nodded towards the doorway. When Wortley stood at her side, she said, ‘That one. He must have bedded down late on the Sunday night, after they’d closed up. We have CCTV of him here, working the crowd the day before. That’s when they located him.’

  But she could have said, when they located you. It was why Wortley wanted to see the place – she understood that. Neville Murfitt hadn’t exactly died for Michael Wortley, that means something else, but he had certainly died instead of him. She could imagine the thoughts going through his mind now, and there was nothing appropriate to say. Except one thing, which had been bothering her since their more private conversation, after Tom Greene had left. She said now, ‘You’d think he would have recognised you – or not, if you see what I mean.’

  Wortley said, ‘Maybe. We’d never spoken. He was just around a few times. They all knew what he was, though. By the time he got here, he’d have been so pumped up, anyone would do.’

  Freeman looked away, and along the street. She remembered some of the shops, some of the people her team had interviewed, remembered the story of the blind girl coming out from somewhere and rescuing them from Murfitt’s mad dog – that was John Wilson’s version of it. Further down Eden Street she could see two youths and a girl standing close together in the alleyway that went behind the pub. Standing too close together and looking around a little too much before something changed hands and the group parted immediately as if they’d realised it was another case of mistaken identity and they really didn’t know each other at all.

  Then, further down towards Fairhills, explosions that could have been gunfire but Freeman recognised the sound of fireworks. The time of year for those was any time you fancied letting them off, nowadays. She looked up at Wortley but he didn’t flinch – he was still staring into the doorway, still thinking. Another couple of minutes, and then they’d have to head back to Central.

  The busker began to play, picking the strings pretty well, and it was a familiar sort of tune. She heard Wortley saying thank you, and realised he was now watching Eden Street as she had been. There were shouts and youths running, scattering a few people near the pub. There would be more fireworks soon.

  Wortley said, ‘It’s just another front line, isn’t it?’

  Now the old boy was singing. The voice was cracked but you could tell it had once been a good voice, and there was still something there. He was singing that all these places had their moments, singing about lovers and friends, singing that some are dead and some are living, and that in his life he had loved them all.

  Michael Wortley had noticed it too. The two of them exchanged a look that might have been one between friends, and then Freeman said it was time to go.

  © Peter Grainger 2020 All rights reserved

  This story is the second in the Kings Lake Investigation series, following on from “Songbird”, and the KLI series itself is a continuation of the eight books in the DC Smith Investigation series. Many of the characters you have been reading about we first meet in the earlier series. If you would like to know more, please visit my website, where all the stories are listed in order of publication: http://www.petergrainger.com/

  The Smith Investigations and “Songbird” are also available as audiobooks from Tantor Media and Amazon, read by the much praised Gildart Jackson. “On Eden Street” will be available as an audiobook later this year.

  If you have enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review at Amazon, where you first found it. As I rarely market or promote my writing in any way, it stands or falls entirely by the readers’ opinions of it.

  If you would like to know more, you could email to petergrainger01@gmail.com Alternatively, you might like to try this:

  https://www.facebook.com/petergraingerDCSmith?skip_nax_wizard=true

  As ever, thank you for reading or for listening,

  Peter Grainger

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven