The world’s best dad?
It had to be.
See, miracles did happen!
But now the trick was to extract the mug from the mud without damaging it. It might be a slow process, but it would be worth it in the end.
She heard the sound of a lorry starting up, and turned to see exactly where it was.
It must have been the shifting of her weight that upset the balance – that knocked off kilter the delicate equilibrium she had established with the earth.
But she didn’t think that.
She didn’t think anything.
She simply registered in a blind panic that she was sliding down the slope to the bottom of the pit.
She hit the water not so much with a splash as with a thud.
Because it wasn’t really water at all.
It was more like a mud stew.
A mud stew which she couldn’t swim in!
A mud stew which was dragging her down!
If it wasn’t too deep, she was all right, she told herself.
If it wasn’t too deep, she could stay here for days, if she had to.
But if it was too deep, she would drown in a sea of mud.
She had reached the bottom, and her hand came into contact with something hard – or at least, harder than this bloody mud.
She ran her hands along it, assessing its usefulness in assisting her escape. And then she realized what it was, and knew it would be no bloody good at all.
She struggled to her knees and gasped with joy as she realized that her head and upper torso were clear of the mud.
And then she heard the man’s voice.
‘Can you hear me?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And are you all right?’
‘Of course I’m not all right,’ she screamed. ‘I’m practically up to my neck in shit.’
‘No, I mean, are you hurt?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So if I threw you the end of a rope, do you think you could wrap it round yourself?’
‘Yes.’
The man threw down the rope.
‘Make sure the knot’s tight,’ he said.
He waited while she fastened it.
‘Is that secure?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I was the top Girl Guide of my year,’ Louisa said – and then blushed, because she didn’t like to brag.
‘Well, stay there,’ the man said. ‘I’ll start hauling you up in a minute.’
Stay there, she repeated to herself. What the bloody hell else am I going to do? But wisely, she did not articulate the thought.
When the man had been gone for perhaps a minute, there was the sound of an engine starting, then she felt a tug at her waist, and she was airborne.
When she reached the lip of the hole, the driver stopped the lorry, and came back to pull her free manually.
‘Thank you for getting me out of there,’ Louisa said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t very gracious earlier.’
‘That’s all right,’ the driver said. ‘But it’s lucky I came along when I did and saw you fall into the hole, isn’t it?’
On the other hand, it could be argued that if you hadn’t distracted me, I’d never have fallen into the hole in the first place, Louisa thought.
‘Yes, that was lucky,’ she agreed.
She looked down, and saw the mug was still there.
‘Do you see that mug?’ she asked, pointing to it.
‘Yes,’ the lorry driver replied, mystified.
‘Hold onto the rope, I’m going to get it out.’
‘You’re going to do what!’
Louisa knelt down next to the mug. If she simply pulled, she would probably break it, she thought, so she would have to do a little digging first. She scraped at the mud with her fingers, and then wiped her hands off on her filthy uniform.
‘You’re crazy. You do know that, don’t you?’ the lorry driver said.
A lot of people would have said that, she thought, especially if they knew what she had discovered at the bottom of the pit – because it was undoubtedly true that her second discovery of the day was much more important and significant than the mug, which had been the first.
But it wouldn’t be more important or significant to Archie Eccleston.
She eased the mug free of the morass. It would need to be washed carefully, but otherwise it was perfect.
She climbed slowly to her feet. She’d have to do something about this mud all over her, she thought, because if it dried she’d be as stiff as the statues in the Corporation Park.
‘Now, young lady – and I want no arguing about this – we’re going to take you to the nearest hospital for a check-up,’ the lorry driver said.
‘Maybe later,’ Louisa replied, and was surprised to hear how much authority there seemed to be in her voice. ‘But what happens first is that I stand guard over this hole while you inform the officers out on the street that I’ve just found a body.’
FOUR
The first thing that Colin Beresford noted when he arrived at the former allotments on Old Mill Road was not the square white tent which had been erected over the area in which the body had been discovered, nor the fact that Dr Shastri’s Land Rover was already there. No, the thing that made that initial impression was that he was nearly knocked over by a bloody large tipper truck which was picking up speed even before it left the site.
The rain was coming down fairly heavily, but not so heavily as to obscure the other end of the allotments, where there were at least half a dozen trucks waiting to be loaded by the mechanical diggers.
Well, we’ll soon put a stop to that, he told himself.
He spotted a man in a yellow safety helmet and yellow jerkin who was frantically signalling with his hands, like a young canary learning to fly. That’d be the feller he needed to speak to.
He set off across the field, which – courtesy of the rain and the heavy plant – had become a quagmire. Even stepping carefully, he was aware he was probably ruining his new leather shoes, and on top of that, the cigarette he lit up was soon soaking wet – which somehow took the pleasure out of it.
When Beresford drew level with the fledgling canary, he tapped him on the shoulder. Closer to, he could see that there was, in fact, very little birdlike about him, since canaries are rarely over fifty, overweight, or unshaven.
‘Yes?’ he said, in what came close to being the least friendly tone that Beresford had ever heard.
‘Are you in charge?’ Beresford shouted, over the sound of a lorry which was just roaring past them.
‘Yes. I’m Jed Higgins. And who the hell are you?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Beresford.’
‘Really? You look too young for that. I’d have said you were only a sergeant.’
‘You’re going to have to close this down,’ Beresford said, gesturing with his arms.
‘I’m what?’
‘You’re going to have to close this down. I can’t have you operating this close to a crime scene.’
‘Oh, you can’t you, can’t you? Well, let me tell you, sonny, the crime scene is over there, we’re over here, and since time is money, you’re going to need a court order to close me down.’
‘Be reasonable,’ Beresford pleaded. ‘By the time I got a court order, you could have destroyed valuable evidence.’
‘Tough,’ Higgins said. ‘And a word of advice, sonny – don’t think you can get round it by bringing in the big guns on this, because you’ll lose. Your chief constable and me are brethren, if you know what that means.’
‘Well, if you’ve got Mr Pickering on your side …’ Beresford said dejectedly.
‘I have.’
‘Then there’s nothing I can do to stop you once your vehicles have passed the roadworthy test.’
He turned, and began walking towards the tent.
‘Just a minute,’ Higgins called after him.
‘Yes?’
‘What’s a roadworthy test, when it’s at home?’
‘It’s what it sounds like. I bring the police mechanics down here, they do a fifty point test on all your vehicles, and if they pass, they stay on the road.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Yes, I can. I’m empowered by the Road Traffic Act. That particular bit of legislation has been in force ever since Crane v. Meadows. And once it’s underway, even Mr Pickering can’t stop it.’
‘All right, I’ll close it down,’ Higgins said. ‘But I think you’ll find that crossing me has been a big mistake.’
‘That sounds suspiciously like a threat,’ Beresford said.
‘You must take it as you like.’
‘We’ll let it pass this time,’ Beresford said. He leant forward, so their faces were almost touching. ‘But if you ever threaten me again,’ he continued, ‘I’ll beat the crap out of you – and to hell with the consequences.’
It was quite a large tent, easily big enough to accommodate two paramedics, three technicians, Dr Shastri, Beresford and two uniformed constables. What made it feel crowded was not the number of people but the bloody big hole in the middle of it, which Louisa Paniatowski had used for mud diving practice.
‘My mum was as chuffed as little apples when I told her what my new job was,’ one of the paramedics was telling Beresford. ‘It’d be nice clean work, she said, ‘not like working in a factory or a building site. A nice clean job! Look at me!’
Beresford grinned. ‘You’re more like a mud pie than anything else,’ he admitted.
It must have been a hell of a job, setting up the winch over the hole that the JCB had gouged out of the earth, then pumping out as much of the mud and water as they could, he thought. And even then, the real work had only just begun, because two of the paramedics had been winched down with a stretcher, and had had to manoeuvre the body onto it. Now, the stretcher was being winched out of the hole at the speed of a snail reaching the end of a marathon – and even that didn’t seem to be suiting some people.
‘Slow it down,’ Dr Shastri kept saying. ‘Slow it down! Don’t you realize my patient gets travel sick?’
There was an appreciative chuckle, because everyone knew and liked Dr Shastri.
Beresford’s own attitude to the doctor was confused. He’d lost his virginity at the comparatively late age of thirty, and since then getting women into bed had been his main hobby/obsession. He didn’t keep count of his conquests, of course – that would have been juvenile – but he believed it was somewhere around 173, and he should, by rights, have been doing his best to make Shastri his 174th. Yet if hell froze over and – as a consequence – this undoubtedly beautiful woman offered herself to him on a plate, he would turn her down.
He didn’t know why – he just knew he would.
The stretcher reached the lip of the hole, and the technicians swung it clear, uncoupled it, and laid it gently on the ground.
Shastri squatted down beside the body. She did not invite anyone else to join her, so no one else did.
‘I would say he was about five feet ten inches tall,’ she said, ‘and from the fragments of clothing remaining, I would say he was wearing a suit when he died. It is hard to estimate his age, because his face, as you can see for yourselves, is as much a quagmire as the field outside this tent.’
‘That couldn’t have been caused by the bucket of the mechanical digger, could it?’ Beresford said.
Shastri shook her head. ‘I would consider that unlikely for several reasons.’
‘And they are …?’
‘Firstly, even on a long dead body, I could tell if the wounds were new. Secondly, the bucket would have done much more damage than we see here – it could well have decapitated him. And thirdly, I am convinced that the murderer did it deliberately, so that even if the cadaver was found, it could not be identified.’
‘Isn’t “convinced” a bit too strong a word to use at this stage of the investigation?’ Beresford wondered.
‘No, it is not,’ Shastri replied, with a hint of rebuke in her voice. ‘As a poor Indian doctor working with you clever white people, I must choose my words very carefully – and “convinced” is precisely the right word to express my degree of certainty.’
‘I don’t see how—’ Beresford began.
‘Of course you don’t,’ Shastri interrupted. ‘But if you come and join me, you soon will.’
Beresford squatted down beside her.
‘Notice the hands,’ Shastri said.
‘What about them?’
‘Don’t the fingers seem unnaturally short to you?’
‘Now you mention it, they do seem short – and I can’t see the nails,’ Beresford said. ‘Oh Jesus!’
‘Yes?’
‘The killer cut off all his fingertips.’
‘He did indeed.’
Kate Meadows’ Triumph Spitfire and Jack Crane’s Vauxhall Chevette were parked on Old Mill Road, next to Beresford’s Austin Allegro. It had stopped raining, but the air had a damp freshness about it totally unsuitable for a good smoke – which was why Crane had retreated to inside his car.
Meadows didn’t smoke. She didn’t drink, either, and she never touched the processed food which the rest of the team wolfed down during an investigation. She had only one vice (if vice it was), and that was a taste for evenings of sado-masochism with complete strangers.
Beresford emerged from the tent and walked towards them.
He waited until Crane had climbed out of his car, then said, ‘It’s a man, and he’s dead.’
Meadows grinned. ‘You seem in a good mood, sir.’
‘Oh, I am,’ Beresford agreed. ‘After all, what better way to start the day than getting your new shoes caked in mud, and being handed a case which would have had Miss Marple reaching for the smelling salts? Now, can either of you tell me what the first thing they always drill into you during your training is?’
Meadows glanced at Crane, and that glance said, I’m the sergeant here, which puts you at the bottom of the totem pole, young Jack, so you answer his bloody stupid question.
‘Well?’ Beresford demanded.
‘The first forty-eight hours of an inquiry are the most important,’ Crane said dutifully.
‘The first forty-eight hours of an inquiry are the most important,’ Beresford repeated. ‘Now that is a shame, because the first forty-eight hours of this inquiry passed by unnoticed three years ago. Did I say three years ago? Maybe it was five. Or ten! We won’t know until the doc’s played tickle and tell with her little scalpel. So what can we do while we’re waiting?’
‘I suppose we could get a list of allotment holders and start questioning them,’ Crane said, ‘but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the first thing you taught me in training was never to interview anybody who could turn out to be an important witness without collecting as much information as you can.’
‘Correct,’ Beresford said. ‘And since what we actually know at the moment is nothing, we could be doing a lot of damage without even realising it. So we’re stymied, and I’m open to suggestions for filling up our time.’
‘We could always go and talk it over with the boss,’ Crane suggested.
And the moment the words were out of his mouth, he found himself wishing he could be instantly transported to somewhere more comfortable – like the middle of Death Valley, for instance.
To suggest they talk it over with Monika was fine. Ever since she’d been discovered in a coma, they’d been going to her hospital room to discuss their cases. They didn’t know if it did any good – whether the words which passed over her bed stimulated her brain or merely sounded to her like a jumble of disconnected noises – but they had been assured by her doctor that it couldn’t do any harm, and that was good enough for them.
So suggesting they talk it over with Monika hadn’t been a mistake – the mistake had been in calling her the boss.
It simply wasn’t fair to Colin Beresford, because he was the boss now. Of course, that might only be temporary – and all of them, Colin Beresford most of all, hoped it was – but as long as Beresford was in charge, he had to be acknowledged as such.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to—’ Crane began.
But the other man had already raised his hand to indicate he wanted to hear no more.
There was an awkward silence that probably only lasted for ten seconds – but felt long enough to have viewed a biblical epic in – then Beresford said, ‘Good idea – let’s go and talk it over with the boss.’
Forsyth watched Beresford’s red Allegro pull away from the curb.
‘Even at this stage, I had been hoping that your friend Judd’s mistake would pass unnoticed,’ Forsyth said.
‘He’s not my friend,’ Downes countered.
‘Isn’t he?’
‘No. He’s just someone who screwed up when I happened to be working in the same general area of the operation.’
Forsyth laughed. ‘Ah, so now he screwed up, did he? Not an hour ago, you sounded as if you were prepared to defend his reputation – the actions he took – right up to the hilt.’
Yes, but an hour ago, you hadn’t started tarring me with the same brush, Downes thought – an hour ago, I didn’t think there was any chance of his mistake dragging me down.
‘What do we do now?’ he asked, hoping to provide a distraction.
‘Now, we follow Colin Beresford and his merry band of investigators,’ Forsyth said.
‘Then we’d better get started, because we’ve already lost visual contact,’ Downes said.
Forsyth laughed again, and opened the glove compartment. Within lay a bank of screens and electronic components, the like of which had never graced a Volkswagen Beetle before.
‘Gifts from our cousins across the Atlantic,’ Forsyth explained. ‘I had a transmitter planted in Colin’s car earlier in the day, and now I can find him if he is anywhere within twenty-five miles from here.’ He closed the glove compartment, and the car was once again a very ordinary Beetle. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘I have no need to track them at the moment, because I know exactly where they’ll be going.’
Sometimes, Forsyth’s arrogance was enough to tip even a discreet man like himself over the edge, Downes thought, as he heard himself say, ‘You know where they’ll be going?’
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