Dead Unlucky

by Andrew Derham

  Unfortunately, though, he had not apprised all of those persons who, perhaps, should have been told about his television appearance. True, his wife knew. And the Chief Constable, of course. He had also phoned his brother up in Rochdale and his sister in Basingstoke to make sure they turned on the news. However, he had neglected to notify the solitary constable and two contracted civilians who manned a hotline that was boiling over within a minute of his appearance. They managed to get some technical help and stick a tape on asking callers to leave details of what they knew, and their phone numbers, so they could be contacted later.

  There had been some interesting calls. A very nice lady rang to say that, yes, her son had come home with some bloodstained clothing. He had said it was a nosebleed, but she thought he had got himself into some sort of fight. This had been a month or so back, but she thought she should mention it just in case.

  Then there was Mr McFadden, who stated quite clearly that there had indeed been lots of cars parked near that alley during the evening in question. One of them belonged to Mr Danforth, who actually lived in Green Drive and always parked it there. Mr McFadden didn’t like Mr Danforth because he kept nagging him about his dog, he said he let it foul the footpath. And that wasn’t true, he always took it to the park to do its business. The police should keep an eye on Mr Danforth.

  A woman had seen a neighbour go in and out of the alley along her street from morning till night. He was carrying a very large hammer indeed, ostensibly to mend the fence from the other side of the garden, and he was certainly still banging away boisterously as it was getting dark. The noise had driven her mad all day. Even though the alley in question was in Manchester, she thought the police ought to know, as the policeman on the telly had said that every bit of information might help.

  It was going to take weeks to sift through this lot.

  *****

  Not everybody was impressed with the policeman’s performance. Hiba Massaoud lolled on a sofa in one of the sitting rooms in her family’s apartment wearing grey sweatpants and a pink top while she watched the news on TV. The guy was like a politician, she thought. He said loads of words, but when you turned them over in your mind you realised he hadn’t communicated anything at all. And he was vain and puffed up. He reminded Hiba of her headteacher.

  It was difficult for Hiba to feel any sympathy for Sebastian Emmer. Sure, she hoped his death had been quick, she wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer. But he really had been the most unpleasant little rat. The way he treated Nicola, with his spiteful comments and sending those ridiculous notes, was just plain nasty. And there was another thing about him that irked her – he was so absurdly childish, like some sort of dim-witted little kid. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? He had plenty of friends, although goodness knows why, so why couldn’t he annoy them instead?

  Nicola had always told her that the jibes didn’t bother her, and she laughed at the notes. But they would have bothered Hiba if they had been directed her way. Surely, they would have bothered anyone?

  Despite the banality of most of his presentation, there was one thing about the policeman’s appearance on TV which had got Hiba thinking. When he was asked whether Nicola’s suicide was connected to Sebastian’s murder, he returned a policeman-politician reply which didn’t answer the question at all. Did he actually think that the death of her friend was related to the killing of her friend’s tormentor, and was just being cagey by not saying so? Perhaps those comments of Sebastian had got to Nicola after all. If his malice really had caused Nicola to commit suicide, then she wasn’t sorry he was dead. Not sorry at all. And she wouldn’t have cared if he had suffered dreadfully. That would be just what he deserved.

  Nicola had been Hiba’s best friend by a mile. These past few weeks she had tried to shut out her death from her mind, tried to get on with her life. But it had been impossible. And, now she thought about it yet again, it had to have been Sebastian’s bullying which caused her to kill herself. If not, what did?

  *****

  Just as Harry Hart stood pressing the doorbell of Ibrahim Massaoud’s apartment and polishing the words of his introduction, Sergeant Darren Redpath was also preparing his mind for an important encounter.

  Taking a woman out for the first time was always an adventure. You never knew exactly what you were getting and you never knew how the evening would end up. That was the fun of it all: the mystery, the excitement of the unknown, the lure of the as yet unconquered.

  Choosing what to wear had always come easily to him, and he considered he had got it right again. He was a tall man, so fairly tight trousers would help to emphasise his height; he wasn’t skinny, so there was no danger of looking like a drainpipe. He added a single top, a thin black belt with a metal clasp which wasn’t too gaudy, and a navy jacket in deference to the winter weather. Smart, but casual and simple. If there was a second meeting then he could always dress up or down as the occasion demanded. And dark colours, of course. A mate of his had once dropped a ravioli wedge onto a pair of cream trousers. The guy’s date wasn’t too impressed to be escorted around town by a bloke sporting an orange splodge painted just underneath his belt.

  Redpath stood in front of the mirror and knew he was the business, and at his age he was at the height of his considerable powers. He was old enough to know a lot more about what runs through their minds than he had ten years ago, but not so old that he had to shower gifts on them and turn them into tarts to get them where he wanted. Admittedly, you didn’t succeed every time, but he had a better track record than most. And some of them had turned out to be pretty skanky, but you could always ditch them if they didn’t come up to scratch. It had even happened to him occasionally. But that was okay; if you were going to win the game absolutely every time then there wasn’t so much fun in playing it, the element of suspense induced by waiting for an uncertain outcome was gone. Tonight, though, he was pretty confident. She was certainly a good looker but, more than that, pantingly desirable, and the vibes she gave off made it clear she was interested in him as well.

  There was only one thing that wasn’t quite right. If his boss found out who he was taking out tonight, he would go spare. Absolutely ballistic. Still, what business was it of his anyway?

  20

  Even the trivial act of looking up the whereabouts of Nicola Brown’s parents’ house on the large map of Lockingham that papered Hart’s office wall would have driven the Chief into a moustache-twitching fury. If Rodgers had known that he was actually intending to knock on the couple’s door, his hairy lip would have been chafed raw.

  Hart was surprised to see that they lived only a few hundred yards away from Green Drive, near the other end of what was now known by the local kids as Murder Alley. This was hardly an exclusive part of town, certainly not the sort of area where many private-school students would hail from. It was more the locality where the generations which comprised the future populations of the nation’s jails were cyclically being nurtured. As he got out of his car, Hart wouldn’t have been exactly stunned to see a few acquaintances with very shady pasts come up to him and utter what would have to pass for a greeting.

  Mr and Mrs Brown lived in one of the middle houses of a terrace of eight, the peeling whitewashed stone facade comprising the standard trappings for every dwelling on the estate. There was no recognition of Christmas in their shaggy front garden, no decorated fir tree nodding in the cold breeze which had got up late this Saturday morning, and certainly no little wreath of holly adorning the front door.

  The Browns had been expecting the police to call. They had agreed that someone was bound to want to talk to them following the murder of a boy at Nicola’s school. When they opened the front door they were pleased to see Harry Hart standing on the step, a single copper almost their own age, and not a posse of pushy young lads out to make a name for themselves.

  The front room was tiny, Clive Emmer would have struggled to squeeze his Jag into a space that size, and the furniture seemed designed to match.
It was like being inside a dolls’ house, thought Hart.

  ‘Please sit yourself down,’ Daisy Brown invited him. ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

  To enter the police force, candidates have to pass tests to ascertain their physical prowess and sharpness of eye, and score reasonable marks in fancy exams to establish their aptitude for their chosen profession of policing. Harry had no problem with any of that, but he also reckoned they should put you through a rigorous examination to evaluate your fondness for tea. If you couldn’t drink gallons of the stuff during the course of a working day, then you had no chance of making it as a half-decent detective.

  ‘That’s just what the doctor ordered, Mrs Brown. Milk, no sugar, please.’

  The Browns sat next to each other on a sofa built for two as they waited for the water to boil. Two little people in their neat little home. This room was the centre of their existence, the place where they watched their TV, read their books and papers, and where Mrs Brown enjoyed her needlework. She was short and thin, he was short and pudgy, his bald head and no neck making him look like a couple of potatoes of disparate sizes, one perched on top of the other.

  ‘Ron said you’d be round,’ began Mrs Brown as a way of starting them off. ‘He thought it was a bit peculiar a boy in her year dying like that so soon after our Nicola.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting there is any connection, of course,’ commented Hart carefully. ‘But I do have to be certain I get all the background I can about Sebastian. That’s why I’m here.’ Hart had long ago accepted the fact that even good people sometimes have to lie. ‘I’m afraid that means I’m going to have to ask you some questions, questions you probably already answered months ago. Sorry to put you through it all again.’

  ‘That’s okay, it can’t do us any more damage, that’s all been done already.’ Ron Brown’s comment was a simple factual statement, not a manifestation of a man feeling sympathy for himself.

  ‘How was Nicola before she died? Was she behaving as she always did, or do you think her mood had changed at all?’

  It was the dead girl’s mother who called out on her way to the kitchen. ‘Yes, she was a bit different, wasn’t she Ron? Quite a lot different, actually.’

  ‘You’d said so yourself, and I agreed with you, if you remember,’ concurred her husband.

  An alteration in her mental state just before her death. So it probably was suicide after all, thought Hart as he left them to speak, without interruption so as not to lead them on.

  ‘She sort of changed a bit over the summer holiday,’ continued Mrs Brown. ‘She had done all the work on her university application over the break and then sent it off to the college people nice and early. And she was applying for a part-time job in a hospital somewhere or other as well. It was volunteer work, just to help out and also get some experience for her doctor’s course at university.’

  ‘We don’t know how she managed to pack everything into her life,’ added Mr Brown. ‘She was always busy was our Nikki. She’d never sit in front of the telly like most kids, not unless there was some serious programme on, about things we’d never understand. But we’d watch it with her, just to be interested, if you know what I mean. We always thought she was living half a dozen of a normal person’s lives, the amount of things she managed to do. But she was always looking for more to cram in, like that hospital job.’

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Mrs Brown as she carried in the tea, ‘she was even more bouncy than usual, even happier, if that was possible.’

  Okay, theories other than suicide have just been tossed back on the table, thought Hart, annoyed with himself that he had prejudged what his hosts were going to say.

  ‘Yes,’ rejoined her husband. ‘We think it had just hit her that she was actually going off to university and then to be a doctor. To Cambridge as well! Her teachers said she had a really good chance of getting in there. She was so happy, she could hardly keep it all in.’

  ‘Can you imagine that, Chief Inspector? Our Nicola! Off to Cambridge to be a doctor! That’s a first for our family, that’s for sure.’

  For a beautiful moment, Hart watched both parents bathe in their pride, their euphoria, their bliss, at what their daughter was destined to achieve. And then he saw their shoulders slump as they slipped back out of their gorgeous past and returned to the pitiless and malevolent present. Their Nicola was not going to Cambridge. Nor was she going to study medicine. She wasn’t going anywhere. That wonderful future had been plundered from her and from them.

  Hart moved the conversation along. ‘Did Nicola have any problems at school? Any worries?’

  ‘Not that we know of,’ Mrs Brown answered. ‘She never said a bad word about the place.’

  Ron Brown furrowed his brow. ‘Mind you, we thought that a bit strange. Every kid must have a few bad days at school now and again. But she wouldn’t let on if she did. Maybe she just didn’t want to knock Highdean, knowing that it wasn’t too easy for us to send her there.’

  Hart took a sip of his tea. ‘How long had she studied there?’

  ‘Since Year 10,’ answered Daisy Brown. ‘She had done so well at her local school, we decided we wanted her to go somewhere a bit better. We’ve no complaints about the place she used to go to but, when we knew she was so special at school work and things, we wanted her to have the very best.’

  ‘How did the school react to Nicola’s passing?’

  Daisy Brown was clear in her opinion. ‘They were very kind, Chief Inspector, very kind indeed. We had lots of teachers come round to say how sorry they were.’

  ‘Which teachers were those, Mrs Brown?’

  ‘There was her biology teacher, I don’t remember his name.’ Paul Outbridge, thought Hart. ‘A gentle, kindly man; he was so cut up we thought he was going to cry.’

  ‘I did catch him having a sob, if you remember,’ added Ron.

  ‘And her geography teacher came round, and a nice looking girl who taught Nikki PE. I remember, it was a lovely September day and we sat out in the garden having a chat. It’s a shame Mrs Hargreaves couldn’t spare the time, but I expect she was very busy. But Mrs Morris came, of course. She still rings us now and again, just to see how we are. She’s a lovely lady, isn’t she Ron?’

  ‘Lovely lady. And don’t forget Hiba and her parents. They’ve been round a few times.’

  ‘Works at the embassy, he does. Very high up in something or other.’

  ‘And what do you do for a living, Mr Brown?’

  ‘I work on the railway, clearing the tracks, cutting the hedges so they don’t get in the way of the trains, general maintenance, that sort of thing. Daisy does some cleaning at the leisure centre.’

  ‘We’ve always been good savers of money, Chief Inspector. Not tight-fisted I hope, but always careful if you know what I mean. We’d saved a bit over the years and Nikki was our only child, of course. Even so, it was a struggle to send her to that school and we did without enjoying some of the other things we’d have liked. But worth every penny, I’m not complaining on that score. Not complaining at all.’

  Hart’s eyes panned around the little room. That was perhaps the only fib that Mrs Brown had told this morning. It had been more than a struggle to send their daughter to Highdean. The fees had sucked up every financial resource they had.

  ‘Daisy, perhaps the Chief Inspector would like another cup of tea.’

  ‘Go on then. You’ll spoil me.’

  While Daisy Brown popped back into the kitchen, Hart lifted himself up and walked over to the mantelpiece to pick up a framed photograph. ‘Is this Nicola? It’s a beautiful photo, Mr Brown. Really lovely.’

  And lovely it certainly was. Nicola was holding hands with her mum and dad on either side. Her short brown hair curled under her ears and a couple of licks protruded onto her thin face. There was pride embedded in the smiles of the parents, and joy radiated from the smiles of the whole family. Life was great, and it was only going to get better.

  ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector
, I’m glad you think so. Next door took it for us in the summer, just three weeks before Nicola died.’

  ‘Here’s your tea, Chief Inspector,’ proffered Daisy as she returned with the tray. ‘And don’t think you’re inconveniencing us, we usually have a cup about this time, don’t we Ron?’

  ‘The Chief Inspector was just saying how much he liked our photo.’

  ‘Yes. We love it. Treasure it now, really. Nikki came to us late, you see. We’d been trying for ten years or more and we’d given up by then. Then she came along right out of the blue. It was a miracle and we just couldn’t believe our luck. She became our reason for living and we just don’t know what we’re going to do without her. There doesn’t seem to be any point any more, it’s all just a waste of time.’

  There were no words of comfort that Hart could provide to fill the silence surrounding the parents’ thoughts. What do you say? Why don’t you join an amateur dramatics club, or something? Why not get out and make some new friends? Why not have another child? Perhaps Daisy Brown was right. Perhaps there truly wasn’t any point any more. Perhaps the life that remained to them really was just a cheerless and tedious waste of time.

  ‘We’ve done our best,’ said Ron Brown. ‘But we’ve just lost all interest. We used to love the garden and kept it looking nice. We’d spend ages pottering outside in the summer. The postman always said how pretty it looked out front but, well, you’ve seen it yourself now. We just don’t have the energy anymore.’

  ‘And Ron hasn’t treated himself to a round of golf since Nikki went. I bought him a set of clubs for his fiftieth, second-hand but a full set all the same. I used to joke that I got them for him just to get him out of the house, so I could have a bit of peace.’

  ‘I’m sorry to bring this up, but I believe there was a suicide note found when Nicola died.’