Where There’s A Will

by Coles, Linda

  Last time he’d pulled into a parking space, it hadn’t ended well, and he didn’t want to mess up any further discussion opportunities with the detective. The return journey back to police headquarters was an added bonus. From his spot on the narrow street, he kept an eye open for a dreaded parking attendant ready to move him on.

  Twenty minutes later, he could see her walking towards his car again, so he pulled forward to meet up with her. “Back to base or somewhere else, ma’am?”

  The overly polite term raised a slight smile. “You make me sound like Patricia Carmichael in Line of Duty,” she said, getting in. “It’ll be a while before I’m a ‘ma’am’. Always a ‘boss’, though. Is it all right if we make a detour first? I need a sandwich before I head back.”

  “That I can do. Anywhere in particular? Only there’s a sandwich van I frequent quite a bit, it’s run by the Refresh Centre and so the proceeds go back to it. They make the best rolls in town in my opinion, but then I am biased.”

  “That’s fine,” she said before resting her head back and closing her eyes. When he pulled up by the food van and she didn’t open her eyes or stir, he made an educated guess what someone obviously tired, and perhaps feeling a bit under the weather, would like for lunch. He left her napping while he ordered a cheese and salad roll and a packet of ready salted. He added a bottle of water for good measure and grabbed a Twix for himself. With lunch packed away in a paper bag, and still no sign of her waking, Will retraced their journey back up to Wootton Hall Park and the police HQ. It seemed his luck, in terms of conversation about the case, had run out. He pulled up by the huge porchway and called out to her gently. It seemed a shame to wake her, but he couldn’t drive around all afternoon with her sleeping in the back. Stanley Kipper, his regular twice-weekly 2 pm ride wouldn’t be happy about that, he hated the police with a passion.

  “Rochelle, we’re here.” Nothing. He didn’t want to touch her and so tapped firmly on the headrest to make enough noise to bring her to. It worked. Sleepy eyes opened slowly and then, realising she’d been asleep, she gathered herself in a hurry and sat up straight. She groaned at the realisation she’d drifted off. “I won’t tell a living soul,” he said kindly and handed her the paper bag containing her lunch. “I went with plain cheese salad in case you felt rough. I hope I did right?” The smallest of smiles appeared on her mouth before she alighted from his car. Once out, she leaned in through the open passenger window and looked him straight in the eyes. “You’re a perceptive individual, thank you. Cheese is about all I fancy,” she added, before heading off.

  Will wondered about her treatment and the effect it was undoubtedly having on her. He hoped his sandwich offering had helped a little.

  Fifteen

  He must have a trusting face, Will mused as he opened his Twix and bit into the chocolatey stick. A takeaway coffee sat in the cup holder, steam drifting upwards through the small hole in the lid, and he fought to retrieve a flake of chocolate that had fallen into his lap. A small brown mark on his trousers he could do without, so he stepped out of the car and brushed himself down. With the offending piece on the breeze, he climbed back in to finish his drink. What a morning he’d had. First identifying Clyde’s thin body, and then ferrying the DI back to the hospital and her own treatment. He knew from his wife’s work what went on in the oncology unit. Chemotherapy could take a while to drip into the veins of its recipient, but radiotherapy was over in only a handful of minutes. Louise had joked it took longer to put the gown on then get changed back into regular clothes again than it did to actually administer the radiation itself. Will figured that was what the DI had been doing for those twenty minutes, it made perfect sense. Where in her body the treatment was targeted, he’d never know, and Louise would never tell him and he wasn’t sure it even mattered. He just hoped her prognosis was a positive one. Perhaps he’d drive her again, for further treatment. If only he’d thought to give her his card.

  He finished the last of his Twix and turned his mind to the fact that Clyde had likely been strangled. That felt personal to him. A stabbing he could understand, perhaps in the course of a robbery gone wrong, though for what reward? His old coat? No, that couldn’t be it. A random killing, maybe: did Clyde get into a fight, was it accidental? Strangulation seemed odd, a bit too organised perhaps, as if someone had planned to take Clyde’s life. A random stabbing in the street was more commonplace, though would thugs move a body to the country park? Surely they’d leave him where he fell. He grabbed his phone, googled ‘strangulation’ and read the articles that caught his attention. Most were to do with either strangulation and its part in domestic abuse, or with a sexual angle – erotic asphyxiation. He couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think Clyde’s death was anything to do with the latter. Domestic abuse didn’t fit either. Strangulation took about three minutes to achieve said a Wiki page. That meant someone was willing to hold on, hard, for that length of time. Someone who felt passionately enough that Clyde should die. For what reason? Was it more satisfying for the killer? There was no blood with a strangulation, unless piano wire was used, but that was garrotted. He wondered about the post-mortem; would it show the killer was in front of Clyde, someone watching life drain from his body and extremely personal, or behind him? He’d no idea how he was going to be able to find out, but he’d try. DI Mason was his only hope.

  He checked the time – 1.30 pm, almost time to pick Stanley Kipper up. He was one person that certainly wouldn’t contemplate courting the police.

  Sixteen

  The Crescent was a mixture of three-storey-plus-basement Victorian properties and an array of generally huge houses. A handful of smaller red-brick houses belonging to the not-quite-so-rich peppered the street in between. Stanley Kipper lived in one of the smaller houses and, like Birdie’s, it was more than ample for an elderly person living on their own. While Birdie kept her place immaculate, the same couldn’t be said for Stanley. Will regularly had the unfortunate experience of helping him in with his grocery shopping and had had his eyes well and truly opened. Stanley, it seemed, liked to keep each and every newspaper he’d ever read, and they were piled high in every room, like paper pillars holding the house up. Since the downstairs was almost entirely full, Will had wondered about the first floor and if it was the same. Perhaps the loft matched the rest of the house, in which case capacity would soon be reached. Will pulled up outside and waited for his elderly passenger. The front door opened immediately, and Stanley, a couple of books and magazines tucked neatly under his arm, slowly made his way down the front path, one slippered foot in front of the other. Will groaned and left his seat; the man had forgotten his shoes again. When he was close enough, he called out to him, “No shoes today, Stanley?” He pointed down at the man’s feet as a hint and waited for realisation to dawn.

  “Couldn’t be arsed,” he said firmly. “These’ll do. No one will notice.”

  Will doubted that very much but let him be. If Stanley wanted to wear his underpants on the outside of his trousers, he wasn’t going to risk the man’s wrath by suggesting he shouldn’t. The same with his slippers. “Right you are,” he said and walked alongside him to the car. He opened the rear passenger door and Stanley took his time getting settled, books and magazines beside him. “Today’s reading material?” Will enquired.

  “Well, they’re not for toilet paper,” he grumbled at Will’s question. “Of course they’re for reading, I didn’t think they needed fresh air.”

  That told him. Will returned to the driver’s seat and set off back towards town and the hospital campus yet again. This time it was the orthopaedic wing where Stanley read to some of the longer-term patients, who lay flat on their backs for days on end, a couple of afternoons per week. Will had mused to Louise that he wouldn’t know which was worse, Stanley’s literature choice or sheer boredom itself.

  “What’s today’s entertainment you’ve picked?” Will watched as Stanley found the correct book to show him first, though he already knew the topic.
He held it up so Will could see the front cover in his rear-view mirror. Will smiled. Someone was going to be fed up later on. It was a book by an ex Labour leader.

  “Michael Foot’s The Pen and the Sword, 1957. One of my favourites,” Stanley said, smiling. “I never get bored of reading it. None of his books, to be fair, a remarkable man in my opinion, not to mention one of the best journalistic writers of our time. The envy of many politicians I believe.”

  Will watched two-day grey stubble bob up and down on the man’s chin. Louise would have wanted to shave it off.

  “Your hero.”

  “The working man’s man. When I was on the picket line at Wapping…” Will had heard it all before and tuned out while the elderly man recalled stories from his time on strike at the famous printworks. Wapping was as famous for its workers’ dispute history as Greenham Common’s women’s peace camp was for its nuclear missile protest history. Around 6,000 printworkers had gone on strike and it had lasted for fifty-four weeks in total, three weeks longer than the miners’ strike that had only finished the previous year. With over 1,200 arrests and 400 police officers injured, the dispute had made history for being a particularly violent one. Stanley himself had been arrested and had spent time in a police cell on more than one occasion. He told his stories of those weeks of combat, as he termed them, as if he were a local hero. While Will could understand fighting for something you believed in, he drew the line at actual violence. The police had come off badly, being accused of heavy-handedness and Stanley had his scar to prove it. There wouldn’t be many people he hadn’t shown it to, and Stanley had already reserved a spot in Golders Green crematorium, where his hero was now. It was safe to say Stanley Kipper was a diehard Labour supporter. Will was grateful the journey into town was a quick one, traffic being light, since Stanley was on top form. The unfortunate, confined patients he’d be reading to later on would not be so lucky.

  “Bloody Margaret Thatcher,” Stanley grumbled. The words penetrated Will’s ears and he resurfaced back into the one-sided conversation.

  “Has anyone ever told you to get lost?” Will asked. “Conservative supporters, perhaps?” He was intrigued to know. Maybe a nurse had turfed him off a ward.

  “Some, yes. Doesn’t bother me.” The man had skin like a rhino.

  “Is that why you dislike the police, then? The strike, I mean.”

  “Useless, all of them.”

  “Haven’t you ever needed them, maybe had something stolen, or reported a crime happening? I bet you’ve seen all sorts of things during your life.”

  “Not with my own experience of them. I stay well clear now. They can all do one for all I care.”

  Will pulled up outside the correct unit and opened the rear door for Stanley. When his passenger had finally shuffled out of the car, Will watched him gather his books and magazines, and noted one was in fact a western. Maybe someone would get lucky, the subject matter somewhat more palatable than politics. “I’ll be back to pick you up in two hours then,” Will called as Stanley made his way inside without another word, leaving him standing there shaking his head at the man.

  Seventeen

  By the time Will had returned Stanley back to his house, it was almost time for his shift at Refresh. With another thirty minutes before his official start time, he was about to call Louise at home when his phone rang. It was Birdie. Did she need a ride? Because if she did, there wasn’t much time to do so and be in his apron in the kitchen on time. He accepted the call. “Hello Birdie, what can I do for you?”

  “I thought I’d see how you’re getting on finding out who the boy in the woods is. What have you discovered?” He’d forgotten all about telling her it, that he knew it was Clyde Mollineau.

  “Unfortunately, Birdie, Hazel and I identified Clyde’s body earlier this morning. Sadly, it was someone known to us at the centre.”

  “Oh Will, I am so sorry to hear that. Do the police have much to go on?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, though I think he’s been strangled.” The line stayed silent. Had she heard him? “Birdie?”

  “Just thinking. From the front or behind, do you know?”

  “No clue. I’m guessing you’re also wondering about the killer’s mindset?”

  “Certainly am. From the front is much more personal, a real enemy. Not that someone strangling your friend from the rear isn’t also an enemy, but you understand my meaning.”

  “The post-mortem was this afternoon sometime, I guess they’ll know a little more by now. Maybe the killer left some DNA or Clyde fought and scratched them. We can only hope he took something from his attacker, something for them to work with.”

  “Have you found a contact at the police yet? That’s the only real way you’ll learn much, get one on your side somehow. Eventually they’ll let something slip, that’s what reporters rely on happening, for their stories.”

  “Working on it, early stages.” He thought back to DI Mason and DC Flint. He needed to work on them more, build some sort of relationship and get them talking.

  “I don’t suppose you know what pub they drink in?” she asked.

  “No idea. We’re certainly not on drinking terms that’s for sure.”

  “I’d start at the Old Bank,” she said, “at least it’s near a local station, of sorts.” It was only a local desk, but hey, it was town centre and a start. “Maybe you’ll get lucky?”

  Will thought about his plans. He could call in for a pint after his shift, but he’d better let Louise know he’d be home a bit later than normal.

  “I’ll give it a go later. I’ve a shift to do now and I won’t finish until nine, so they could be long gone by then.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In town, I’m heading to the Refresh Centre a bit earlier. Why?”

  “Come and pick me up, and I’ll babysit a spot at the bar for you, just in case. My ears can flap just as much as yours can. I can get a ride back from someone else.” Will calculated the timings quickly in his head. It would work. He was about to say he was on his way when he realised the line was empty. She’d gone and he smiled at her style. He turned the car in the direction of Timken Way North and marvelled at the older woman’s spirit. Most her age would be contemplating a night in with a hot cocoa and their slippers, not eavesdropping off-duty police officers in a town centre bar for an hour or two.

  He hoped she would be ready when he arrived outside, he hated getting anywhere late, volunteer or not. He needn’t have worried; Birdie was pulling the door closed behind her as he stopped out the front. She gave him a light wave as usual, and he held the rear door open for her.

  “Better step on the gas back if you’re to be on time,” she said as they moved off, bright red lips catching his eye in the mirror. The car slowly filled with the scent of roses as they sped towards St Giles Street and the relevant pub, and Will dropped her off with a few moments to spare.

  “Good luck, enjoy yourself,” he said, smiling.

  “You can count on it,” she said, followed by a finger wave that told him she was a grown woman and could take care of herself. He watched her casually enter the bar before pulling away.

  Once inside Refresh, he headed for the kitchen and Hazel, hoping she was still there. She often worked longer hours than was required of her and had already done the early shift before they’d gone to the mortuary. He needn’t have worried; her short dark hair was clearly visible at the back of the kitchen and he could see she wasn’t alone. As he made his way over, he could tell from her body language that the conversation was a serious one. Standing with her was one of the regulars, an older man called George, which was odd because Refresh’s users didn’t generally enter the kitchen itself. The whole situation seemed out of kilter. Will bided his time and waited until they’d finished, nodding in greeting to George as he passed him by. Hazel wore a look of concern and Will enquired if everything was okay.

  “George was telling me he hasn’t seen Jonesy for more than twenty-four hours. With al
l the kerfuffle that has gone on with Clyde, I hadn’t noticed. George is a bit worried, he’s his buddy-up and has taken the youngster under his wing.” It wasn’t hard to detect what Hazel was thinking – was Jonesy missing?

  “Shall I inform the police, do you think? How long since George last saw him, any idea?”

  “Yesterday morning. At breakfast. He’s not heard from him since and the lad’s not as streetwise as some of the others. I’m starting to worry, Will. What should we do?”

  “In light of Clyde, I say we err on the side of caution and report him as missing. At least the police will be aware, and if he comes strolling in for dinner later, then great, no harm done. Any idea what he was wearing?” Will knew it was a pointless question, the homeless all wore the same dark and often dirty clothes, it came with the territory. Clyde’s red jacket had been an anomaly, an identifying feature almost.

  “Dark clothes, like…”

  “Yeah, I know, everyone else on the street,” he finished.

  “Shall I go and report it now?” he said, looking at his watch. It was gone 5 pm, the local desk closed. He thought of Birdie sat in a bar not far away and wondered if she’d even seen an officer to eavesdrop on as yet.

  “Would you? I’ll stay on here and cover. You’ll need a photo,” she said. “I’ll grab one from the office.” The admin team took a snapshot of their users so they had a record of who frequented the facilities. It came in handy in situations like this one, and with often no family members to fall back on, it made sense. A moment later she was back, George by her side. “I thought George might be able to supply more info, take him with you,” she instructed. Rich dark eyes, filled with sadness, fixed on Will’s own and he nodded his agreement.