by Gary Weston
'It was an innocent gift. That was all.'
'Yeah, right.'
'It was, I tell you. Except...'
'What?'
'I took the painting with me the following Saturday, too.'
Morris got up off the hard concrete and stretched his back. 'Have you any idea how creepy this is sounding to me right now, Bishop?'
'Not to me, it isn't.'
'Well I'll tell you how I would feel if some strange bloke gave my wife presents, especially a painting he'd done of her. Man, were you sending out all the wrong signals.'
'I thought he seemed okay about it. Sort of.'
'Who did?'
'Her husband. Mr Moretti. I was sitting on the bench again, and they all came along together down the path. Maddena, her husband and daughter. They stopped to say hello. I met Enrico.'
'And?'
'He was okay. I decided I wasn't going to give her the painting.'
'Because her husband was there?'
'I guess. But Seraphina saw the package and asked what it was. I said it was just a painting. Maddena asked if she could see it. I tried to get out of it, but she insisted. So I gave it to her.'
'I bet that went down well.'
'She loved it. Him not so much.'
'I told you so.'
'He didn't say anything other than it was a good picture, but I saw a look in his eyes, between them and between us.'
'You had lit a fuse.'
'I suppose so.'
'Maybe a stereotype but aren't Italians supposed to be fiery?'
Bishop looked down at the mass of concrete. 'You reckon?'
'She accepted the painting?'
'Eventually. Then they went their way, I went mine.'
'Keep talking.'
'Hold on a bit.' A strange expression passed over Bishop's face. 'Boy, I needed that.'
'You just had a pee?'
'I couldn't hold it any longer. I'm just glad it was pee.'
'The digger should be here soon.'
'To be honest, I'm more worried about Dobbin. I never leave her this long.'
'Is she inside your house?'
'Yes. She has a flap in the back door to go in and out, and there's a few biscuits down, and her water bowl, but...'
'Then she'll be just fine. Just another couple of hours. What happened next?'
'Nothing much. I carried on working, I changed my time in the park to stop torturing myself, and I just carried on as normal.'
'And then Moretti came after you.'
'It had been a couple of months, almost. I even thought I was getting over her.'
'He'd been fixating about that painting you think?'
'He must have been reading things into it. Festering. Last night, around eleven o'clock, he came knocking on my front door. When I opened it, he was there with a pistol in his hand. He had a crazy kind of look in his eyes. He told me to go over to his car and get in the drivers seat. I wasn't about to argue with a crazy man with a gun.'
'And he got you to drive him here?'
'Yes. He must have seen the construction site and seen a good way of getting rid of me.'
Morris looked all around him. The by pass road under the railway bridge had been planned for years. He had often glanced over as he had driven by, watching the steady progress. For the by pass to work, the foundations of the bridge had to be extensively strengthened. To that end, two vast craters had been dug out, one side first, and filled with reinforced concrete, and once that had set, the second crater had been dug out. He remembered reading about it, in the local paper. The final pouring was to be done at night to minimise disruption to traffic and additives were to be added to speed up the setting times. It was quite conceivable that Moretti, his anger and jealousy growing daily, saw the opportunity to dispose of Bishop.
'Talk me through it.'
'When we arrived, the concrete truck was still pouring. We waited well out of the way until it had finished, the concrete levelled off and they all went home. The road had been closed off to traffic, so nobody saw us. We got out of the car, me with my hands in the air, him with a gun in my back. He walked me to the edge of the works.'
'And then what? He made you walk in it?'
'No.'
'Well, he didn't shoot you, and he didn't hit you on the head. I can see that much.'
'It was some kind of chloroform, I think. I felt a wet cloth on my face, then nothing. I woke up like this.'
Morris knelt down to look closely at Bishop's head. 'How come your face is so clean, Bishop? If you went under, even if you floated up again, you would have had more concrete on your face than that. Your arms are stuck down there, so you didn't wipe it off yourself. Okay, some in your hair, but not a whole lot of it.'
Bishop tried to come up with a reason for that. 'How the hell would I know what happened? I was out like a light. This is exactly how I was when I came to. Maybe he panicked once I was in here and took off, thinking I'd keep sinking.'
Morris rubbed his chin. 'That's possible. Hey. The concrete breaker is here.'
The driver of the concrete breaker jumped out of the cab and crossed over to take a look at Bishop.
'Shit! Got yourself a bit stuck, mate.'
'Really?' said Bishop, with a snarl. 'I never noticed. You took your sweet bloody time.'
'That thing ain't no racing car. How is your body lying?'
'What?'
'Straight down? All twisted up, out to the side, back or the front?' He knelt down. 'You don't want me cutting you into little pieces now, do you mate?'
'Right. Gotya. I think I'm more or less straight down, but my legs are out to the front a bit.'
'And your arms?'
'Straight down and to the front a little way.'
'Okay.' The driver put ear defenders, a hard hat and safety goggles on Bishop. 'It'll still make your bloody teeth rattle, mate.'
'How long?' asked Morris.
'A couple of hours. This shit ain't fully hardened, otherwise the poor bastard would be there for a week.'
'Will you please get me out of here?' Bishop pleaded.
The driver lit up a cigarette. 'You know,' he said, blowing smoke. 'My old man told me once. People are just like concrete, son. All mixed up and permanently set. Looking at you, I guess he was right.' He turned to Morris. 'Best clear the site, mate.' With that said, he went back to his machine and the mighty diesel engine belched black smoke and moved forwards, Morris jumping clear. The pneumatic concrete breaker hung above Bishop's head like the sword of Damocles. As the driver manoeuvred it within two feet of Bishop's head, the trapped man closed his eyes and muttered prayers, soon to be lost in the monstrous noise of the digger.
From the side lines, kept at a reasonable distance by the uniformed cops, the press scrambled for the best positions, elbowing each other out of the way. Morris ignored them, relieved at least that the noise made it impossible to answer any of their questions. He made a beeline to Farrow, the foreman.
'This has completely stuffed up my bloody schedules,' said Farrow.
'Can't be helped. You know about concrete?'
'Yeah, why?'
'How fast does this shit take to go off?'
'It has additives in it. Calcium chloride, mostly. Within an hour or so, it's hard enough to walk on. To harden all the way through, it would probably take about three days.'
'But it would be hard enough after an hour to keep somebody trapped in it?'
'Shit, yeah.'
Morris looked back at where the machine was pounding the concrete, glad it was Bishop in there, and not him. 'Look. I'm just a cop, but isn't there normally reinforcing rods placed inside the wet concrete?'
'Correct. In this case, because of the thickness, the lower half has the reinforcement. Above that is concrete only to allow for any roads repairs, later on. That and the fact there's a new sewer pipe running through it.'
'Ah, right. I was wondering why he'd sunk as low as he did. Now I understand. Thanks.'
'No worri
es.'
Morris went over to the waiting paramedics, who were sitting in the back of the ambulance.
'He's all yours in a couple of hours, lads. Look. I'm off to the station for an hour. I should be back before he's out, but in case things go faster than anticipated, can you call this number and let me know, please?'
'Yeah, okay,' said one man, putting the card in his top pocket.
Morris managed to get around the back of the media scramble without being seen, found his car and drove off.
Chapter 6
Morris found Vince Crowe at the water cooler.
'I just heard he's being cut free,' said Crowe.
'Finally. How are you getting on with Mrs Moretti?'
'Okay, I think. She's been telling me that it all started going wrong when Bishop gave her a painting.'
'Yeah. A portrait of her by him. It put ideas in her husbands head, Bishop reckons.'
'Anything in it?'
'Hard to say. Bishop admits to being in love with her. Claims he did nothing about it, because she was married. His own wife dumped him, so he knows what it's like.'
'Do you believe him?'
Morris helped himself to water. 'I'm keeping an open mind at this stage. Where is she?'
'Number two. A neighbour is looking after her daughter.'
'What's her story?'
'Not much to it, really. She bumped into Bishop a few times in the park, got talking about dogs. They had only just moved here, so Seraphina had only just started the school where Bishop teaches. Next thing she knows, Bishop is waiting in the park with a painting of her. He gave it her as a present. Is it me, or does that sound creepy?'
'I got the same feeling when Bishop told me. I told him it smacked of stalking. He reckons he kept away from her and then last night, about two months later, Enrico Moretti turns up with a gun, gets him to drive them to the site, chloroforms him, and he wakes up the way he was found.'
'Mrs Moretti says the same and that she didn't see Bishop since the day he gave her the painting. But things went sour from when she accepted the painting. He out and out accused her of sleeping with Bishop. He's a jealous sort. He even accused her of getting pregnant with Seraphina by another man. In the end, she agreed to have some tests done and they confirmed Enrico was the father.'
'A bit of history, there. Have you done backgrounds yet?'
'I got Ducket doing it. He should have something by now.'
Morris thought about that for a moment. 'Let's see what Ducket's come up with before I see Mrs Moretti.'
Detective Constable Fred Ducket was generally regarded as a strange individual. He looked odd for one thing. Tall and thin as if strong winds would be hazardous to his health. He never had a good hair day with his lank blond locks. A long thin neck stuck out of too large shirt collars, and his cheap suits never seemed to fit him anywhere. Morris liked Ducket. He called the young man 'Ferret'. Not out of disrespect. Quite the opposite. He was a genius on the computer, and tenacious in finding out information. If it was in cyberspace, Ducket could usually find it. So accomplished was Ducket at this, he even had his own office. Unheard of for a lowly constable. “Office” was glorifying the converted storage cupboard quite a lot, but it was a second home to Ducket. Morris rapped on the door and entered without being invited in.
'How's it going, Ferret?'
'I'm still at it, Sir. Here's what I have so far.' Ducket passed the A 4 sheets to Morris. There were at least thirty of them. They were a mixture of word documents and photographs. Most sheets had coloured tags with handwriting on them.
'Not much on Bishop,' said Morris.
'That's because there isn't much, Sir. He got himself arrested, once.'
'Oh?' He scanned the page. 'Fifteen years ago. A student protest rally. Protesting about the fees going up. Bishop was arrested for obstructing a police vehicle.'
'He was fined one hundred and fifty dollars, Sir. Also two parking tickets and one speeding ticket, nothing within the last three years.'
'In other words,' said Crowe, 'the bloke's a human being.'
'There's a hell of a lot on Enrico Moretti, Ferret.'
'Mostly his business. He's a major importer of Italian produce.'
'Successful?' asked Crowe.
'I wouldn't call him poor. That's a photo of the house he's just bought.'
'Bugger. He wouldn't have much change out of a couple of million for that.'
'Fifteen acres and a colonial style eight bedroom pile. It was featured in Top Property.'
Morris turned to the pages of Maddena Morreti. 'She was a beauty queen?'
'She was nineteen in that picture. Runner up in her region.'
'Wow,' said Crowe. 'If she was runner up, the winner must have been fantastic.'
'She was,' said Ducket. 'Went on to win the national title. Maddena went on to do modelling for a few years until she married Enrico, then she packed it in.'
Crowe said, 'He probably couldn't stand her being stared at by other men.'
'Any convictions for Enrico?' Morris asked.
'He was on trial when he was twenty five for fraud. That was two years before he was married. Nothing was proven, so he was found not guilty. One for assault, not long after he got married. He broke a man's jaw for making a play for his wife. He would have served time, but money exchanged hands for the victim and he got a suspended sentence.'
Morris shared a look with Crowe. 'Interesting. Well done, Ferret. Good job. Right, Vince. Time we both had a few words with Mrs Moretti.' As they were about to step out of Ducket's “office”, Morris's phone went off. 'Bishop's free.' He placed the papers back on Ducket's desk. 'Keep on it, and we'll come back for these later. Come on, Vince.'
Chapter 7
'That was probably the worst experience of my entire life,' said Bishop. He was wrapped up in a blanket, sitting in the ambulance being checked over by a paramedic. All his clothes were in a filthy pile on the floor outside.
'How is he?' asked Morris.
The paramedic was applying a solution to an angry burn on Bishop's side. 'He was lucky his clothes saved most of him from concrete burns. A few burns, mostly superficial. I'm taking him to the hospital for a check over.'
'I just want to go home,' said Bishop.
'Better let them do their job, Bishop. Detective Crowe will go with you and then bring you to the station for a statement.'
'But I've already told you everything.'
'I'm just following procedure.'
'Where is Maddena?'
'She's at the station. I'm going back now to interview her myself.'
Bishop nodded. 'Okay. Tell her...tell her I'm fine, will you?'
'I'll do that.' To the paramedic, he said, 'Right. Take him away.'
The ambulance drove off, and Morris turned to face the media.
Patrick O'Leary asked, 'Anything you can tell us, Detective Morris?'
'Not much at this stage, Paddy. You know how it works. You know we are wanting to talk to Enrico Moretti regarding this incident and we are about to take a statement from Mrs Maddena Moretti. As you have seen, Mr Martin Bishop has apparently escaped with minor injuries. I'd appreciate it if you all report that fact as a priority, because Enrico Moretti will be more inclined to come forward, if he knows he isn't facing a murder charge. I'll be releasing more information to you all as and when it is appropriate to do so. Thank you for your cooperation.'
As he made his way past them, Farrow, the site foreman stopped him.
'Look, detective. Now we got the bugger out, can I get the hole filled up again?'
'When would you be doing that, Mr Farrow?'
'Tonight, if we can.'
'Right. I'll send in a scene of crime team to check the hole out before you do that. You can order the concrete, but just be aware, if the team find anything significant, I'll have to stop the hole being filled up.'
Farrow nodded. 'Fair enough.'
Back at the police station, Morris made his way to Fred Ducket's office.
> 'Anything new, Ferret?'
'No, Sir, not really. It's all here.'
Morris picked up the pile of paper. 'Thanks.'
He took the papers to interview room two. A female police officer was with Maddena Moretti and Morris sat next to her across the table from Moretti. He could understand Bishop's fixation with the woman. She had the looks that would turn heads and set men's pulses racing.
'Mrs Moretti. I'm Detective Senior Sergeant Stanley Morris. Have you been looked after?'
'Yes, thank you. I've had coffee.'
Morris grinned. 'I apologise for that. We are famous in this place for brewing the worst coffee ever. You'll no doubt be pleased to know Martin Bishop is free of the concrete and suffered only superficial injuries. He should be in the hospital by now, being checked out.'
'I'm pleased Mr Bishop is unharmed.'
'As I hope will be your husband. I'm hoping he'll turn himself in. Of course he will be charged when we do catch him, which we will, but at least it won't be for murder.'
'What he did was wrong. Wrong and stupid.'
'I must advise you, this interview is being recorded.' Morris shuffled the papers and selected one. 'It isn't the first time your husband has been in trouble, Mrs Moretti.'
'He has a temper, at least when it comes to me. Oh, he never hits me or anything like that, but he can be very jealous and react if I have men admiring me.'
'He must love you a lot.'
'Yes, but I am more of a possession to him. Like what you might call a trophy wife. He is also paranoid that I will leave him one day for another man.'
'This man he attacked. He broke his jaw. Tell me about that, please.'
'It was in a bar. In Rome. We were living there, before moving here. We were celebrating the news I was pregnant with Seraphina. Enrico was celebrating a little too heavily, drinking my share of the wine. I went to the wash-room and on my way back, a man nearly bumped into me. He too had been drinking, and he started talking to me. I tried to get away from him, but he stood in my way. Enrico came to me, and pushed the man out of the way. There was a scuffle, Enrico hit him hard, breaking his jaw.'
'Enrico only got a suspended sentence, according to this.'
'He was lucky. Also, his lawyer got the man to accept a substantial payout and this was taken into consideration.'
'Have there been any other incidents before Mr Bishop?'
'Nothing major. A few arguments with men he thought were trying to pick me up, but no more fighting.'
'I see,' said Morris. 'I suppose the legal action taught him a lesson not to get carried away. Why do you think he got so worked up about Martin Bishop?'