Dead Unlucky

by Andrew Derham

  ‘That depends on when he died,’ replied Moses. No way was he falling for that one.

  ‘Between four and seven last Tuesday evening.’

  ‘Here in the flat. Watching telly, having a beer, chilling out.’ He pre-empted the next question. ‘Alone. Absolutely on my tod, Inspector, without a friend in the world. Who knows, maybe that’s just like you, the way you spend your evenings.’

  Redpath came in to bat, for the right side this time. ‘It’s Chief Inspector, Danny. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose it puts a few extra coppers in your pocket each week, does it? Yeah, that would be important to someone poor like you.’ He looked quite pleased at his cleverness, a proud sneer forming on his thin lips as he looked Hart up and down.

  ‘It’s not so much the money, Danny,’ replied Hart, pretending not to spot his joke.

  ‘No?’

  ‘You see, it’s the power I have over obnoxious oiks that I love. A mere inspector can only cart gobby scumbags off to the nick and make their lives a misery for a few hours. Me, I can keep it going for a day or two before someone tells me to stop being a naughty boy.’ Hart wasn’t going to tell Moses the truth, which was that his rank gave him only a bit more money, but a lot more hassle.

  Despite finding the quality of both the company and the location to be pretty squalid, Hart was pleased with how the conversation had gone so far. Danny Moses had blurted out that he was a regular at The Temple, not just the occasional visitor that Sophie Rand had suggested. He had also let slip he wasn’t short of a few quid, unlike the skint old copper.

  ‘So The Temple was where you slipped Sebastian his coke, was it Danny?’ asked Hart, looking him hard in the eye.

  The stare he got back was just as solid. ‘Coke? Don’t make me laugh. That snotty little teacher bitch and her snotty little teacher friends tell you that, did they? Yeah, I hear the news. You were sniffing around there last week, getting your rocks off pretending you were Clint Eastwood. The little one with the glasses is sort of entertaining, though, looks like their pet mole the way they tag him along.’

  ‘What’s your job, Danny?’

  ‘Job?’ He looked more than surprised, almost stunned.

  ‘Yes, job. What normal people do to get money. So they can live. You know, eat and drink and stuff.’

  ‘If I had a job, do you think I’d live in a place like this? Same if I dealt drugs. I’d live in a palace.’

  ‘Maybe you do, Danny, maybe you do. Because you certainly don’t live here. This is just your fetid little web, isn’t it? This is where the unfortunate flies come after they’ve been enticed by the spider. You just do your deals here, Danny boy. An anonymous little pigsty on an anonymous estate.’

  ‘You’re talking crap. You can check the place out and you won’t find a thing.’

  ‘We could check the place out, Danny, and we’d find enough traces to send half of London on a sky-high trip if we gathered all the specks altogether. But they wouldn’t be anything to do with you, would they? Oh no, they’d have been brought in by your cultured guests, or perhaps left by the people who existed here before you. You will have cleared out all the stashes the moment you heard that Sebastian Emmer’s head had hit the deck.’

  ‘Prove it.’ There was nothing else he needed to say.

  ‘We may, Danny, although I’m really more interested in finding Sebastian’s killer.’

  ‘Whose car is that outside?’ asked Redpath.

  For the first time, Moses lost some of his confidence, although he tried to hide his discomfort with a customary sneer. ‘Which one? There are millions of cars outside.’

  ‘You know which one,’ replied Hart. ‘The red soft-top Astra. Not a really pricey set of wheels, but not bad for a lad in his early twenties, just starting out on his illustrious and noble career. Two litres, turbo, leather seats, fancy wheels. Not bad at all.’

  ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘So whose is it?’

  ‘A friend lets me drive it.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Marco Bracken.’ The filth could get the name from the number plate anyway, if they hadn’t already.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘You know him already. The manager at The Temple.’

  ‘Must be a good friend to let you drive around in a motor like that.’

  ‘Yeah, he is. No law against having friends, is there? You should try it some time.’

  ‘So where does he fit into your moonlight economy, Danny? What part does he play in your little schemes to make yourself a rich man? I presume you’ve told the taxman about your income?’

  Moses tipped his head back to demonstrate his exasperation, his curly straw dropping onto the top of his back.

  ‘Are you dense or something? I don’t have a job, I don’t deal coke, I don’t do nothing. Get that into your stupid thick head.’

  ‘But you have enough dosh to be a regular at The Temple, where it costs as much to buy a thimble full of fancy lager as it does a couple of pints in my local.’ Hart leaned forward as he got louder. ‘This doesn’t add up, Danny boy, doesn’t add up at all. But when I eventually get the sums to work, I reckon the answer’ll be one that’s going to get you banged up.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Moses, as he opened and shut the mocking mouth he had made by tapping his thumb and fingers together.

  ‘When you phone your mate Marco to let him know we dropped by, tell him to have a happy Christmas. It might be the last chance he gets for a few years. Don’t get up, we’ll see ourselves out.’

  Hart and Redpath descended the block of flats the same way they had come up. The odds of dying as the lift plunged to the ground were marginally smaller than the probability of contracting the cholera that was an even bet if they had walked down the stairs.

  22

  Lockingham’s Parish Church of St Anselm witnessed a pretty good turnout for Sebastian Emmer’s funeral. Mrs Hargreaves had come along, of course, accompanied by several of the teachers from her school. Between them, Hart and Redpath recognised them all and were careful to have a short chat with every one of them. Most police officers stood at the edge of dismal proceedings like these, as though they were skulking, like they had no right to intrude upon the grief, or perhaps they had an ulterior, sneaky purpose for their presence. Public wisdom was that they had only turned up to gather information, to spy on the friends, relatives and gawkers, look into their eyes, watch their behaviour and hope to spot something amiss.

  Nearer the truth was that the coppers were out on a particularly unpleasant chore, were bored, and they hovered on the periphery out of disinterest or embarrassment. Hart had stood next to the murderers of the deceased at funerals many times before and not once had they given themselves away with a delighted guffaw as the coffin of their victim was lowered into the earth. There was nothing to learn at a funeral; every person he had ever seen who later turned out to be a killer could have earned an Oscar for their acting in the churchyard. Hart was there as a mourner, just like everybody else, and he didn’t have to try to hide his presence or apologise for it.

  ‘I hope you’ll sort out this business before the beginning of the new term,’ admonished Mrs Hargreaves, getting a swipe in before any pleasantries could be exchanged. He was a particularly disagreeable little serf and it was a pity and an injustice that she could not have him whipped to get him to work harder.

  Altogether more affable was the clever mathematics teacher, Mrs Morris. ‘This is such a terrible affair, gentlemen, and it can’t be an easy task to solve this mystery, and it somehow seems to me that you have so little information to go on. Please do take care and have a pleasant Christmas if you can.’

  Timothy Grove, Sebastian’s self-proclaimed best friend, was there, queuing near the graveside next to his father, waiting to offer his condolences to the Emmers and drop a fistful of earth onto the coffin. Hart shook the hand of them both, noticing the blotchy face and red eyes of the youngster.

  ‘Thanks fo
r your help, Timothy. We’re doing our best to find out who was responsible.’

  The boy looked at his shoes, trying to hide his watering eyes, and it was his father who spoke. ‘Are there likely to be any consequences for my son’s alleged little indiscretions, Mr Hart?’

  ‘Not unless he keeps going, turns into a real junky, and snorts or shoots his life away. But that’s for you to knock on the head, not me. For my part, I’m not looking to make his life any more miserable. He’s had enough of that for a while.’

  After their first meeting, Timothy had come to realise he wasn’t as hard as he had thought. Not hard enough to feel nothing for his dead mate, and certainly not hard enough to do time for messing with drugs. His father realised that Hart could steer his son’s life into taking a tricky turn, and that wouldn’t do his own career as a barrister much good either.

  The queue finally shuffled along so that Hart and Redpath stood face to face with the Emmers at the graveside. Clive Emmer stood straight in his black suit and tie with its wide knot at the neck. Mrs Emmer and Rebecca looked small in their black frocks, the lacy collars on their blouses somehow inappropriately pretty. They accepted the stock words of sympathy from the policemen. ‘It was good of you to come,’ replied the woman. Clive Emmer looked straight past them. For him they didn’t exist.

  Hart sent Redpath back to work; the walk to the police station would only take him a few minutes. Then he returned to the inside of the church and killed some time by perusing the stained glass that told the story of the life of Christ, and the brass plaques which extolled the spent virtues of the long-dead whom Sebastian had joined under the ground. He waited patiently for the mourners to trickle away from the churchyard and leave him on his own, most of them heading off to the Emmers’ to sip wine and nibble finger food.

  As he stepped back into the brisk air it started to rain heavily and so Hart lifted the collar of his dark grey raincoat around his neck. The sky was grey, the air was grey, everything above the ground was grey. Even the naked limes looked dead, their abandoned orange leaves no longer appearing fiery bright, now just a dun mush heaped against the fences, walls and muddy places. The only sound bouncing through the breezy graveyard was the unceasing morbid cawing from the rookeries in the forks of the trees, mocking the idyllic legend of melodious English birdsong.

  Hart stepped among the tombstones, pausing now and then to survey the inscriptions that were even more melancholy than the weather. At last, his eyes rested on the slab he was looking for, a glossy new rectangle of black granite with an arched top, cheered a little by chiselled gold lettering and a fresh vase of white lilies resting at its base.

  Why he wanted to stand there for a minute, gazing down alone in the soaking rain at the neat mound of earth, he had no idea. But Hart reckoned he was one of only two people alive who really knew what had happened to the girl lying at his feet and, for the first time in his life as a copper, he wondered whether he felt tears form in his eyes, or if it was just the cold that made them water.

  In Loving Memory of our Dearest Daughter

  Nicola Clare Brown

  Born 25th December 1994

  Departed this Life 9th September 2012

  Winged to Heaven by the Angels,

  Who could not wait for Her to dwell amongst Them

  23

  ‘Harry, it’s nearly Christmas, Christmas mark you, and you’re sitting here asking me if we can get permission to exhume the body of a seventeen-year-old girl!’ The Chief Superintendent’s moustache was already bobbing back and forth, and they had hardly even started yet. ‘You must be mad. Stark raving mad.’

  ‘It’s not quite like that, Sir –’

  ‘And against my firm orders, my clear and definite instructions. You have gone behind my back and pursued this case after I told you to lay off it, to keep well away. I’m going to have your skin for this, Harry. You can forget about Nicola Brown from now on, and about Sebastian Emmer too for that matter, because I don’t want you near a murder investigation ever again. And you won’t be either, not if you’re working in Lockingham. Now clear off.’

  Hart inched his chair a little closer to the Chief’s desk. ‘Just hear me out for a minute or two, things aren’t quite what they seem.’

  ‘You’ve got two minutes and not a second longer. And never mind your ridiculous request for an exhumation, just tell me why you should still be a police officer come tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I’ve had very little else in mind but your instructions since we spoke last week, Sir. And very cogent instructions they were, too.’

  ‘Cut the flannel, because if I think you’re being sarcastic you won’t last the two minutes.’

  ‘I visited Mr and Mrs Brown a few days ago because their daughter had been in Sebastian’s year at school. There was nothing more to it than that, I’ve spoken to loads of parents over the past week. I just wondered if Nicola had said anything before she died that could help us out in the murder investigation.’

  ‘And you also just got around to mentioning that it might be a good idea to take another look at her body?’

  ‘Nothing could be further from the truth, Sir. To my immense surprise they made the request themselves, before I had even started talking about Sebastian. I was hardly over their doorstep before they began haranguing me about an exhumation.’ Hart shook his head and puffed out his cheeks to demonstrate just what an ordeal the encounter had been. Rodgers raised his bushy white eyebrows as he carried on. ‘They said they had wondered themselves whether there was a connection between the two deaths. They felt it was all a bit too much of a coincidence otherwise, and that they never really believed Nicola would have taken her own life.’

  ‘But you were resolute in your refutation of that nonsense and tried to steer them away from it.’ Now it was the Chief Superintendent’s turn to mock.

  ‘That’s absolutely right, Sir. And with your cogent orders at the forefront of my thoughts, I might add. But, unfortunately, they were adamant. They’re surprisingly strong characters, startlingly persuasive people, and they could see right through me. They weren’t having any of it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And that’s how the topic of Nicola’s exhumation came up, and that’s why I’m bringing it to your attention.’ Hart paused while his eyes caught his boss’s. ‘So I didn’t try and sneak around behind your back after all.’

  The Chief didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t have the ammunition to call Hart a liar.

  ‘Sir, if we accept that there was a misunderstanding about me disobeying your orders, I think that brings us back to the matter of the exhumation.’

  ‘You’re pushing your luck, Harry.’

  ‘Nicola Brown was murdered.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ The Chief shook his head dismissively. ‘How can you possibly be certain of what you are saying?’

  Hart again looked straight into the eyes of his boss. ‘I’m a hundred percent sure on this one.’ That estimate was pretty close to the truth this time, although not spot on. But Harry was adopting the principle he used to employ in his younger days when tackling a prop forward on the rampage – if you went in half-heartedly, you’d come a cropper. Give it everything, and you had a chance.

  ‘Just because two kids from the same school die within a few months of each other, as though that’s never happened before? Is that it? Is that all you’ve got? Never mind the evidence, never mind the post-mortem, never mind the lack of a motive for killing that girl. The press can make that kind of speculation to sell their tawdry papers, but it’s not a luxury the police can afford.’

  ‘Loads of people are asking the question of whether these two deaths are connected, not just the press. But they don’t have to come up with an answer to it. I do. And I can’t do that without an exhumation.’

  ‘So what do we tell the coroner? What have you got for her that she hasn’t heard already?’

  ‘The love of your life is gardening, right Sir?’ And then, correctin
g a potentially disastrous diplomatic error, ‘Apart from Mrs Rodgers, of course.’

  ‘Harry, I want to get home early today.’

  ‘If you’d decided to hang yourself, you wouldn’t stand on a copy of Raising Remarkable Rhubarb or Begetting Beguiling Begonias, or whatever make up the classic tomes of the horticultural library. They would be too dear to your heart, you wouldn’t defile the things you loved in your miserable life. It would be like me tipping myself off a 1934 copy of Wisden. Gives me the shivers to think about it.’

  ‘Get on with it, man.’

  ‘So there’s no way Nicola Brown drops herself off her school books. Not a chance.’

  ‘You’re always trying to see inside people, pretending you’re some sort of clone of Sigmund Freud, instead of looking at the facts. Just look at the facts, Harry, the facts.’

  ‘That’s because it’s people who commit murder, Sir. It’s not facts, or even ropes or guns or knives. They are just used by people to create those facts. If the Met had looked at what made Nicola tick, they would have got the right answer, too. But they just considered the facts, and so they came up with the obvious conclusion instead of the correct one.’ And then, to be fair to the boys and girls down south, ‘Of course, they didn’t have the luxury of a subsequent murder to ring a few alarm bells like I did.’

  ‘And you believe you’ve got the right answer, when they couldn’t manage it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Rodgers ignored Hart’s laconic arrogance. ‘So that’s it? We stake our reputation for sanity, never mind decent police work, on your bizarre belief that suicidal people won’t desecrate their books?’

  ‘Then there’s the suicide note. It ends, Love Nikki. But in every other sample of writing to her parents, she signed herself as Nicola. Absolutely always.’

  ‘I’ll grant you that’s a bit better. But not much. Not much, because she wrote that note herself, there’s no question about that. It was found in her computer network folder at school and it was written there. The computer boys wouldn’t make a mistake like that.’