[Eddie Collins 01.0] The Third Rule

by Andrew Barrett

  The man was a lower-class caricature, an ensemble of tramp-like qualities: scruffy, hair a mess, face a parody of eagerness, clothes un-ironed, and with a slack attitude and abysmal way of speaking to complainants that was appalling. Stuart detested Eddie Collins and all he embodied. Sure, the man brought in results, when he was here, but you could train a monkey to do that. He had no finesse and held the mystique of the job in scant regard, and Stuart found his unprofessionalism intolerable.

  And now he was an alcoholic. Oh, it wasn’t widely known, but Stuart knew; could see how pallid his face was, could read that absent look in his eyes, and this morning’s little speech cut no ice with him; all that teary nonsense about his kid being run over and his wife kicking him out – hmph, a separation, he’d called it. She kicked him out because he was a drunk – and West Yorkshire Police should follow her example. And the kid, sure, that was tragic, but come on, life goes on, the job goes on and it seemed Eddie couldn’t grasp that, and turning to the booze just displayed his inherent weakness and unsuitability for this work.

  It had all stemmed from last January, when he tried to be a superhero and save some woman’s handbag. Stuart couldn’t understand why he had bothered; after all, the robber was wearing gloves so there was no chance of a fingerprint ident; and low copy DNA was out too because the weather and type of contact between assailant and victim rendered it unsuitable. So why risk life and limb for no forensic yield, no statistical benefit?

  Stuart made sure the office was empty, and then he couldn’t resist the urge any longer to have a peek in Eddie’s desk drawer. The temptation of finding something juicy in there was just too strong. He put down the sandwich and slid his chair across the shiny carpet to the untidy part of the office, the Eddie Collins part of the office.

  The top drawer was full of pens and batteries and paperclips – none of them compartmentalised – and the bottom drawer, the one large enough to accommodate files, was full of minute sheets, and changes to working practices, statements and ident sheets, and all crammed in any old how. Stuart’s nostrils flared at the inefficiency.

  He was about to slam the drawer shut when he saw something shiny underneath the rack of suspended files. He glanced around again and then delved deeper. It was an unopened bottle of brandy, ready for the time when the stress got too much for Eddie. Stuart thought about how he could get this information back to supervision without declaring his method.

  The phone rang and he jumped, slamming the drawer shut and scooting away back to his own desk as though his chair was turbocharged. He turned the TV off and grabbed the receiver, heart hammering. “Stuart Tunstall, CSI.” It was control, and he slowly regained his composure, reaching for a pen as the controller talked about a scene that had just been shouted in. The scene they wanted examining was on the far boundary of their division, and it was a suicide, nothing special, nothing to get the circus out for; it probably just required a few photos. Stuart scribbled down the details. “I’ll get Collins to examine it this afternoon. Yes of course he’ll be okay with it,” he smiled, “it’s only a suicide.” And if anyone’s used to death in this office, it’s Eddie.

  – Two –

  Ros emptied her arms of equipment and folders of paperwork.

  “Had a good morning?” Stuart asked as Eddie fell into his chair.

  “Put the kettle on, Stuart, and don’t ask stupid questions.”

  “Job too hard for you now?”

  Eddie looked at him. “No,” he said, “but the people are still arseholes. Now don’t forget, I take my coffee white, point-two millilitres of milk, and 2.4 grams of coffee powder. Can you remember that?”

  “Lost none of your sarcasm, I see.”

  “Where you’re concerned, Stuart, I like to make an effort, and it’s not sarcasm. It’s contempt.”

  “Pack it in, you two. Christ, you’ve only been working half a day and already you’re at each other’s throats.”

  “Nonsense, Ros,” Eddie smiled, “just good old work chums getting reacquainted. Ain’t that right, Stu?”

  “After your lunch,” he looked between Ros and Eddie, “there’s a suicide for you. I thought about you straight away when it came in.”

  “Oh, why’s that?”

  “I thought it’d be a nice easy job to get you back into the swing of things. No stress.”

  “You’re all heart, Stu, do you know that?”

  Ros stepped in, “We’ll take it. It’ll keep us out of the way of Joe Public for a while.”

  “Oh?” Stuart grew interested. “Had some bother this morning?”

  Eddie’s face turned dark as images of McHue up against the wall came back into his mind, images of an elbow in the ribs. “Just an irate complainant, that’s all.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Have you polished your shoes this morning, Stu?”

  Stuart headed for the kitchen, “Some of us think image is still important.”

  “Damned right. Shine your head too?”

  Although her voice was angry, Ros couldn’t help smiling as Stuart disappeared. “Why do you have to do wind him up, you know what he’s like–”

  “I’m just having a little fun, that’s all.”

  “Well choose someone else to have fun with. He doesn’t have a sense of humour; and he can make life difficult for you right now. So just remember that. Fool.”

  28

  Monday 22nd June

  “Ignore the vomit. It’s mine. Not too good with dead things.”

  “How long have you been here, Mick?” Eddie unshouldered the camera bag and folded his arms. “Why have they kept you waiting around?”

  “I don’t know.” He drew on his cigarette. “I found the dead guy and I suppose they’re punishing me for ruining their day. Either that or they think I did it and are going to cuff me after they finish their coffee.” He shuffled from foot to foot. “How the hell do you do this job?” He looked at Eddie, his face screwed into a tangle of bemusement. “How do you play about with dead people?”

  “If you start thinking that it’s an old man who’s lived through the war, and has kids and grandkids, and that he was thinking about preparing chicken for his lunch when the urge to do away with himself took hold, then you’re in trouble. Forget it all, and just do your job.”

  “You’re a freak.”

  “Tell me something new.”

  Ros stopped dead in her tracks, forensic kit in one hand, slip of paper in the other. “What are you doing here?” She stared at Mick, eyes cold.

  He couldn’t even raise a smile. “I had nothing better to do, and I know how much you like my company.”

  “Why do you look so green?” Her eyes narrowed.

  Mick pointed to the vomit.

  “You’ve been in there?”

  “He found the body,” Eddie said. “Now let’s get on with it.”

  “How come you found the body?”

  “What makes you think it’s a suicide?” Eddie asked.

  “There’s a suicide note.”

  Ros asked, “What were you doing in there, Mick?”

  “I had a story to cover. He wrote a letter to my newspaper–”

  “Just cos you found a note, doesn’t make it suicide,” Eddie said.

  “What letter?”

  “I can’t–”

  “You can,” Ros said. “Have you got it with you?”

  “No!” Mick took a step back, holding his hands up. “You come near me,” he said, “and I’ll throw up on you, I promise.”

  “Leave him.” Eddie took off his jacket.

  “Said something about his son being in prison, and he was distressed at it all and hoped The Yorkshire Echo would broadcast his story. I was going to get his story and I wanted to know what he thought of The Rules, that’s all. Nothing wrong with that is there?”

  “No, go on. There’s nothing more we need you for, is there, Ros?” Eddie looked at her.

  “Ready to rock?”

  Eddie was smiling at her, but alread
y he was sweating. “Thirty minutes.”

  “Might have a bullet to dig out. I say fifty minutes.”

  “Pessimist.”

  “Is that the pot calling the kettle grimy arse!”

  Using a gloved knuckle, Eddie pushed the lounge door open. He peered around the corner and was hit in the face by a bluebottle. Ros laughed and almost fell over, and even when both saw the old man with half of his head running down the wallpaper, still they giggled. Neither thought it necessary to wear protective clothing, or a mask. It was only a suicide scene after all. The white suits and overshoes, the hoods and two pairs of latex examination gloves were reserved for scenes where contamination would be a worry; the only problem here was the flies.

  “Let’s take a look around,” Ros said.

  Blood. There was so much blood, and even the conversation he’d had on the doorstep with Mick about being detached, seemed ineffective in here. He was worried that the Old Professional had abandoned him, that he was back to being just a rookie, that he would follow Mick’s example and throw his lunch and the swig of brandy he’d had in the toilet earlier, right back up over the old man and his congealing brains.

  He felt woozy, he suspected, because sitting in that chair with his hands white and stiff in the shape of some bird’s claw, with the top of his head missing and a huge black stain down the front of his checked shirt, was Sam. The old man’s face, alive with black flies and white maggots, his eyes glazed, their lashes stuck together, was the face and the eyes of his dead son. This is how Sam was now; this is what he looked like after that car left him in the middle of the road. This was him as they sank him into the ground: lifeless.

  Eddie turned away quickly, taking gulps of stale air. His hands shook and he reached out for the table, careful not to move anything.

  “You okay, Eddie?”

  “Fine.”

  “Looks like he took care of himself, doesn’t it? I mean, it’s a lovely clean place he had here.”

  “It’s a fucking treat.” Eddie took the weight on his feet again and made himself stare at the old man, feeling his history, feeling his kids and his grandkids, feeling the war he lived through and the passing of his wife. And suddenly Eddie felt like crying, he felt hurt for the guy that his life should come down to this, to a fifty-minute exam before his old blown-away carcass was shipped off to the local morgue for a quick hacking and slashing session; and the only person in the world who probably gave a flying fuck about him was locked up in jail somewhere and probably didn’t even know his old man was dead yet.

  It was a shame.

  Eddie blinked but still he stared at the face, made himself do it, made himself care less and less, made the old man’s history dissolve into the smelly, fly-ridden air of the room. He was a corpse, a stiff, a body; something to fill in the day before going home and starting all over again tomorrow. This was his job, and if he wanted to keep it – and that glimmer of hope of keeping Jilly – then he’d better get a grip on himself right now.

  On the walls were pictures of the old days. Here was one with Lincoln in a smithy. Behind him the furnace burned bright, giving off a white glare in the black and white photo, smoke disappearing into the rafters somewhere, and Lincoln posed over an anvil, holding a hammer over a glowing piece of bent metal, sweat on his brow, but with a pleasant smile on his smooth face. Next to that was a colour photograph showing a graduation ceremony with his son collecting a rolled-up piece of paper wrapped in a red ribbon, from some be-gowned man on a stage. Below the picture, in neat calligraphic script, Stephen Farrier, BEng Hons, 1985.

  History.

  Eddie turned away from the wall. “I’ll set the camera up. I want to get the hell away from these bloody flies.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Fine.”

  They quartered the room, took pictures of the front door, inside and out, to prove there was no lock damage, and then they closed up on the body itself, taking images from all around, showing the position of the gun, proved safe after a quick visit from an authorised firearms officer who couldn’t cope with the smell. And they took another half dozen of the head and its debris on the wall behind.

  “Okay,” Ros said, “we’ll finish off with a quick one of the note, and then we can get back for a coffee. What d’ya say?”

  “Sounds good to me.” Eddie checked his watch. “Told you forty minutes.”

  “Hmm, do you think we ought to retrieve the bullet?”

  Eddie looked at the wall, dripping with black flaky old blood. “What’s the point?”

  Ros shrugged. “It proves the weapon on the floor killed him.”

  “You get the bullet. I’ll swab the weapon to prove he was the one holding it, and then I’ll package it.”

  “Low copy?”

  “From the grip. We’ll have the barrel superglued; might get some marks and an easy ident,” he smiled at her.

  “Christ, you sounded like Stuart then, keen as mustard to get an ident.”

  Eddie looked back at the old man, puzzled by the circumstances of this whole scene.

  “Can’t understand why he killed himself. It’s not as though he would never see his son again, was it?”

  Eddie looked at her.

  “Oh shit, Eddie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean–”

  “It’s okay. Don’t walk on eggshells around me, Ros.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And stop being sorry, woman. If you want to make yourself useful, start getting the bullet out the wall, eh? I’ll photo the note before I dick about with the gun.”

  He brought the camera up to his eye and peered at the last scribbling of an old guy with a broken heart. He squared the note up in the viewfinder, tried to capture the old fountain pen too, just in the right side of the frame. Then he let the autofocus bring the letters sharp, and then he stopped. Dead. He blinked, took the camera away and stood there motionless for a moment, thinking. He read the letter.

  To those who find me, I am sorry to cause you so much grief. I’m sick of my Steven being locked up for no good reason, and I can’t take it no more. Steven, I love you, please forgive me.

  Lincoln Farrier.

  Then he walked to the wall, the one with the photos on it, and specifically to the one where Lincoln Farrier’s boy was getting his degree. “Steven,” he whispered. He read the words below the picture of the young man wearing a black gown and mortarboard. “Stephen. Stephen? You’d think a father could spell his own son’s name right, wouldn’t you?” he whispered. And then he looked again at the other picture, the one where a younger Lincoln Farrier was beating the shit out of a glowing piece of metal using a hammer. A hammer, noted Eddie, that he held in his left hand. He turned and saw that the pen lay on the note’s right side as though the author had finished writing and automatically put down the pen to read his own work. And he looked at the gun, and saw where it had landed. By Lincoln’s right side. “Erm, Ros?”

  “What?”

  “Leave the bullet, dear.”

  “Why, what’s up?”

  “I don’t think this is a fifty-minute suicide. I think we have ourselves a little murder.”

  29

  Monday 22nd June

  – One –

  It was nearly midnight when Eddie closed the door to his flat and switched on the light. He wasn’t expected in at work tomorrow until ten o’clock under the late-off late-on rule. The first thing he did was chuck four slices of bread in the toaster and down a glass of brandy, and never had it tasted so good, and never – well, almost never – had it been so well deserved. He was exhausted, and it was the third glass that finally managed to take the edge off the day. After the fourth glass, his toast popped but by then he didn’t feel hungry anymore. Eddie saved his legs and sat down with the bottle, and only minutes passed before some inconsiderate bastard knocked on his door and disturbed his self-pity. “Go. Away.”

  “Eddie, it’s me, Mick.”

  “Go. Away. Mick.”

  “I have to tal
k to you.”

  Sighing, Eddie let him in, and returned to his chair and lit a cigarette. “Go on, I’m all ears.”

  Mick sniffed the air. “You had toast?”

  “Didn’t get the chance,” he smiled, tipped the bottle at him.

  “Good man. Mind if I have it?”

  “Fill yer boots.”

  “Ta.” He headed for the kitchen. “It was interesting, wouldn’t you say, that suicide today?” he shouted.

  “Oh yes, interesting is what it was alright.”

  Mick came back in munching hard toast. “It wasn’t a suicide, was it?”

  Eddie raised his eyebrows, drank brandy.

  “I did a little research while I was in the village. And though it pained me I talked to people in the pub,” he laughed, spitting crumbs across the settee. “And then I spoke to an old girl in the post office.”

  “I’m enthralled.”

  “She was devastated when I told her the news. Had to shut up shop.”

  “Still enthralled.”

  “Listen!” Mick sat down, put the plate of toast on the carpet, grabbed a glass, and lit a cigarette. “Lincoln Farrier was murdered. I know it.”

  “Bully for you, we’ll make you into a PI in no time. What should we call you? Mick the Dick? How’s that sound?”

  “The old lady, Mrs Walker, says he called in on his way home, and was on cloud nine when he left her because of a letter she gave him.”

  Eddie’s face crumpled, “I’m tired, mate, and I don’t really want to listen to a pile of bollocks about some old couple having it away in the back of the Post Office.”

  “Will you shut the fuck up and listen!” He glared at Eddie, and when Eddie waved an apology, he snatched the bottle off the table and helped himself. “Thank you. Now,” he continued, “Mrs Walker handed him a letter from his son; a letter that said the parole board had finally granted him release, and he was due out of prison in a couple of weeks.” He watched Eddie’s face, noted how it suddenly appeared slightly interested after all. “You tell me, my forensic friend, if you were so sad about your boy being kept under lock and key by an unfair system, and then, listen to that,” he pointed a finger, “and then you found out he was coming home, would you go and suck on a gun? Would you?”