Christmas Crackers

by David W Robinson

  “I had a word with him, and he swore he was off the drink for the afternoons he was working here.”

  Joe laughed humourlessly. “I think he may have been telling you a few porkies.”

  Devers shook his head. “This won’t do the centre any favours. I have to go out there now and explained to all those people that Santa is being carted off to hospital. They’ll want their money back, the kids will be screaming the place down, and unless I can find a replacement, I’m likely to be hung, drawn and quartered.” Devers looked Joe up and down. “I don’t suppose you’d—”

  “Forget it, Geoff. I don’t mind helping anyone out, but I have my niece and great nephew with me, and I’m not sitting here until eight o’clock tonight talking to other people’s brats.”

  The manager sighed. “The Gazette will rip us to pieces. You know what they’re like.”

  “I know,” Joe replied with a grunt. “I’m no medic, but I think he’s having a heart attack.” Joe glanced at his watch. “And if the paramedics don’t get here soon, they may be too late.”

  “Has he said anything?”

  “He can hardly talk. All he said to me was, ‘ask’, but I don’t know who I’m supposed to ask, or what. Does he have any family?”

  Devers shook his head. “Widower. Wife killed in a car crash about twenty years ago, near as we can tell.”

  “I suppose he claims that’s what made him hit the sauce.”

  “Shouldn’t think so,” Devers argued. “He was driving. Drunk, naturally. Hit a pedestrian and killed him… or her, and as he swerved to avoid it, he rammed a lamppost and killed his wife, too. Went down for three years for it.”

  Joe sighed. “And he still didn’t learn his lesson?”

  Paramedics appeared and after speaking with the first aider, bent to their task.

  Joe watched them at work, marvelling at their calm efficiency. “Right. I’ll leave you with it, Geoff. Anyone needs to talk to me about it, you know where they can find me.”

  “Sure, Joe, and thanks.”

  Joe turned to leave and as he did so, Rick Barnes stopped him. “Your photograph, sir.”

  In the flurry of events, Joe had forgotten about it. He took the freshly printed picture, tucked into a small, Christmassy presentation card, slipped it into his pocket and with a nod of thanks, stepped out of the rear exit, back into the mall, where Cheryl and Danny were waiting for him.

  “Everything all right, Joe?” she asked as he made for Mullion’s and a much needed cup of tea.

  Joe eyed Danny, now playing with the toy car Santa had given him. “It doesn’t look too good for the old man.”

  “Danny said he was tanked up.”

  Joe ordered two teas and a soft drink for the boy. “Drunk as a skunk if you want my opinion. Not beer, either. Strong spirits.”

  Cheryl passed the carton of soft drink to Danny and took her tea. “Will he live?”

  “Dunno,” Joe said, handing over the money for the drinks. “Doesn’t look good.”

  Alarm spread across Danny’s face. He tugged at his mother’s sleeve. “Mam, if Santa’s gonna die, who’ll bring me my computer? Cos he promised, did Santa, that I’d get one.”

  Joe tutted and silently cursed himself for his indiscretion. He crouched before the boy. “You’re a big lad now, Danny, and I think you’re old enough to know the truth.” Above him Cheryl pulled a face as if dreading Danny’s response when he learned about Santa. Joe ignored her. “Santa has a deputy. Y’see, he’s just like me and you, is Santa. He catches colds now and again, and he gets the flu, so he has to have a deputy in case he’s not well.”

  Danny considered this for a moment. “So if Santa is too ill, his deputy gets to be Santa instead?”

  “See, I said you were a clever lad. That’s exactly what happens. So he’ll be there on Saturday night.”

  “With my computer?”

  Joe groaned inwardly. Like elephants, children never forgot. “Only if you’re a good boy.”

  ***

  The following morning, the lights in the Lazy Luncheonette came on just after five thirty, cutting through the dark, blustery, rainy night. An hour and a half later, the draymen of Sanford Brewery were crowded into the dining area, eager to fill their empty bellies with breakfast and be on their daily rounds of the town’s pubs and clubs.

  “Job and finish today and tomorrow and Saturday, Joe,” one of them explained as he paid for his full English breakfast. “The sooner we get round, the sooner we get done.”

  “You open on Boxing Day, Joe?” another asked.

  “Only until lunchtime,” Joe promised. “My crew need some downtime, too, you know.”

  With over forty years’ experience of running the place, first assisting his father, later as the proprietor, Joe knew what to expect of Christmas week. Passing truckers, all keen to get home for the holidays would be few and far between, and when the draymen left, it would be the shoppers from Sanford Retail Park, who would crowd the place out from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, at which point, Joe would call it a day, and lock up so he and his small staff could clean down and get their own shopping done.

  It was more than an irritation, then, when his niece, Detective Sergeant Gemma Craddock, accompanied by Police Constable Vinny Gillespie walked in just after nine o’clock.

  “Morning, Uncle Joe,” Gemma greeted.

  Joe prepared tea for them. “Nice to see you, Gemma, but it’s Christmas week and before long we’ll be buried in customers.” He pushed the beakers across the counter. “Whatever you want, make it snappy.”

  She laughed. “We just called in to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

  Joe smiled cynically. “There may be no fool like an old fool, but don’t try to fool this old fool.”

  Gillespie’s clear brow creased as he tried to wade through Joe’s repetitious advice.

  Joe explained, “If you were alone, Gemma, I’d have guessed it was a social call, but bringing Vinny with you, it has to be business. Now what can I do you for.”

  Gemma laughed again. “Never could pull the wool over your eyes, could I?” She glanced around and nodded to table 8, by the windows. “We need a word about Barry Chiversleigh.”

  Now Joe’s brow creased. “Who?”

  “Santa the red-nosed alki in the Gallery,” Vinny explained.

  “Oh, him? How is he?”

  “Dead,” Gemma announced. “He died in Sanford General late yesterday afternoon. We’re just following up on the witnesses, and Geoff Devers told us you were there when he collapsed.”

  Joe agreed with a nod, and poured another beaker of tea. “Sit yourselves down. I’ll be with you in a minute.” He raised his voice across the dining area. “Sheila, can you take over here? Plod want a word with me.”

  Busy collecting dirty plates and cutlery from the tables, Sheila tutted at Joe’s insouciant attitude to the police, greeted Gemma and Vinny warmly, and carried her tray to the kitchen, before coming back to the counter to relieve Joe.

  He joined his niece at the window table, took out his tobacco and began to roll a cigarette.

  “You can’t smoke that in here, Mr Murray,” Gillespie observed. “I’d have to book you.”

  “You book me in my own place, Vinny, and it’ll be the last free cup of tea you get from me. Anyway, I’m not going to smoke it in here. I’ll step outside when I’ve done with you.”

  “You should pack it in anyway,” Gemma said. “It’s a nasty habit, and it’ll kill you one day.”

  “I will do one day,” Joe agreed.

  (Note: Joe eventually gave up the weed while on holiday in Torremolinos. You can read about it in Costa del Murder.)

  “So,” he went on, “the old boy is dead. Heart attack, was it?”

  Taking a large gulp of tea, Gemma shook her head. “Alcoholic poisoning. Ethylene glycol.”

  Joe whistled. “Antifreeze? I knew he was kay-lied. Even Danny complained about the stink of booze, but I didn’t know he was that serious.” Realisation daw
ned quickly on Joe. “So it was murder.”

  With a smile, Gemma held out her hand. Gillespie reached into his pocket, pulled out a fiver and handed it over. Joe raised his eyebrows.

  “I bet Vinny a fiver that you’d say it was murder.” She tucked the money in the breast pocket of her topcoat. “No one is saying he was murdered, Uncle Joe. All we’re saying is he drank antifreeze. End of story.”

  Joe leaned on the table and jabbed his index finger into the Formica top to emphasise his coming words. “Let me ask you something, Gemma. How much do you know about alcoholics? They may be smashed out of their brains most of the time, they may not know what day it is, they may be utterly dependent, but until they get really desperate for booze, they will not take pure poison, and every alki on the block knows about glycol. It’s lethal. You can take the odd sip, sure, but eventually, it catches up with you. I’ll bet that fiver you just took off Vinny, and match with twenty quid out of my till, that someone put the stuff in his tea, and it was deliberate. As I said: murder.”

  Gemma backed off. “No way am I placing any bets with you. You get it right too often.”

  “Did you check his home for the stuff?”

  “Yes, and before you ask, we didn’t find any. But we did find half a dozen hip flasks, and he had one at work.”

  Again the light dawned in Joe’s brain. “So that’s what he was trying to say.” Eager to explain, he went on, “When he collapsed, he was trying to talk, and I thought he said, ‘ask’ but obviously, he didn’t. He was trying to tell me to check his flask, which now that I know, I assume would be in one of the staff rest rooms.”

  “We found it there, but it had been washed up by one of the crew.”

  “To remove all traces of antifreeze.”

  “To stop people bad-mouthing him, Mr Murray,” Gillespie said. “Or at least that’s what the girls in the Gallery told us.”

  “A convenient excuse for cleaning it out, Vinny,” Joe said. “Have you had any of them checked for glycol?”

  “They’re being analysed as we speak,” Gemma replied. “We should know later this morning.”

  “Did you take the one from the Gallery?”

  Gemma nodded. “Joe, we’re not here to listen to your deductions. You’re a witness. We want to know what you saw.”

  Joe looked out on the rain streaming down the windows. No danger of a white Christmas this year, unless the temperature dropped dramatically over the coming days.

  He cast his mind back to the previous day and re-ran the scene in his head.

  “Not much,” he admitted while Gillespie made notes. “Danny and I were just leaving. One of the elves, Ruth, was showing us to the exit. Then I heard someone scream. There was a woman with her kid behind us, but I don’t know whether it was her, the kid or the other elf, Laura, who screamed. Laura was badly shaken up when the old man collapsed, y’see. The other two elves were standing around like spare parts.”

  “And Chiversleigh – Santa?”

  “He was on the floor struggling to breathe. No one was doing anything other than Laura panicking, so I checked him out. God, he stunk of booze. He was really struggling, wheezing, gasping, you know. I figured it was a heart attack, so I dialled the medics, and organised the elves to get the place clear. Then Geoff Devers showed up with a first aider and I let them take over. As I’ve already explained, while I was waiting for them Chiversleigh tried to speak to me. Was the antidote in his hip flask or something?”

  “I don’t know, Joe,” Gemma said. “Let’s concentrate on what you saw. At any time did you see anyone else near him, anyone who might have administered the poison?”

  “Yes. The elves.”

  “Oh, come on, Joe,” Gemma protested. “We checked on them and we couldn’t find a link between them and the old boy.”

  “And that means there can’t possibly be a link?” Joe demanded. “What do you know about Chiversleigh?”

  While Gillespie sifted through his notes, Gemma slurped her tea and made small talk with her uncle. “Doing anything special for Christmas, Uncle Joe?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. I’m thinking of a party here.”

  Gemma laughed. “What? In the Lazy Luncheonette?”

  “Why not? It’s only for Brenda, Sheila, Lee, Cheryl and the boy, but I’m not sure yet.”

  “Right,” Gillespie said, cutting in on their chatter. “Barry Chiversleigh, aged seventy-two. Lives alone, somewhere off Leeds Road. Known alcoholic.” The constable looked up. “That’s it.”

  “Geoff Devers told me he’d done time for drunk driving.”

  “Oh, there is that,” Gillespie agreed. “Served two out of three years. This’d be fifteen, sixteen years ago. Smashed out of his brains, swerved to avoid a pedestrian. Hit and killed the pedestrian anyway, and then smacked into a lamppost and killed his missus. The prosecution wanted a tougher sentence, but the judge said he’d suffered enough and he’d live with killing his wife forever, so he only gave him three years.”

  “Who was the pedestrian?”

  Gillespie checked his notes again and shrugged. “Dunno. I didn’t write that bit down.”

  “I can see where you’re going, Joe,” Gemma said, “but I think you’re sniffing out something that didn’t happen. The fact is—”

  “The fact is, Gemma, I saw those girls, the elves, bringing him cups of tea or coffee, and the photographer, Rick Barnes, complained that they were always getting in his shot when they were moving behind Chiversleigh. Now suppose one of those girls is related to the pedestrian Chiversleigh killed? They had every opportunity to drop a nip of something in his brews. A nip of antifreeze, for instance.”

  Gemma sighed. “Well, now that you’ve mentioned it, I suppose we’d better investigate. But I am not ringing you with the name of the pedestrian he killed. I won’t have you sticking your nose in.”

  “You want justice?” Joe demanded. “Then you put up with me sticking my nose in.”

  ***

  “So why are we graced with the pleasure of your company, Joe?” Ian Lofthouse asked.

  At the age of fifty-three he had been editor of the Sanford Gazette for more years than Joe cared to remember. A short, portly man, his thinning hair swept across his head in a patent comb-over, thin glasses perched on his nose, he had that happy knack of being able to bully his reporters and the subjects of his stories without their realising they were being bullied.

  He and Joe had had their differences over the years, but most were ironed out quite affably, as a result of which Joe, who had left the Lazy Luncheonette just after three o’clock, had no difficulty getting to see him. Shown through the offices, the ceiling and walls covered with Christmas decorations, a large, but artificial tree gleaming near the doors, he made himself at home in the visitor’s chair opposite Lofthouse, and responded to the editor’s opening line.

  “I wanna know why you haven’t joined the 3rd Age Club yet.”

  Lofthouse chuckled. “That’ll be the day when I join that motley mob of geriatrics. News is a young man’s game, Joe, and I pride myself on being young enough up here,” he tapped his temple, “to keep this rag going.”

  “And rag is about right,” Joe muttered. “Tell me, Ian, did you get the story of Barry Chiversleigh, yesterday?”

  “Chiversleigh?” Lofthouse’s podgy features clouded for a moment. “Oh, you mean the old git in the Gallery?” he reached across his desk and picked up the afternoon edition.

  SOZZLED SANTA SINKS INTO THE SNOW, blazed the headline.

  Joe was appalled. “Snow? There wasn’t any snow.”

  “Yes there was,” Lofthouse argued. “The fake stuff. Anyway, never mind the technicalities. What do you think of the headline. Serve that snotty prat, Devers right. What was he doing employing an alki?”

  “Has this gone out, yet?”

  “On its way to the shops as we speak,” Lofthouse replied, his voice glowing with pride.

  “You do know he’s dead?”

  The editor gr
inned. “Who? Devers? Good. I never did like—”

  “Not Devers,” Joe interrupted. “Barry Chiversleigh. He died at the hospital yesterday.”

  Lofthouse blanched. “Oh, bugger.” His lugubrious face dropped even further and he turned begging eyes on Joe. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “Do I look like I’m joking? That’s what I came to see you about.”

  “Oh, rats. We’ll have to run an apology, now.”

  “Are you telling me you let your muppets run with this story without checking up on Chiversleigh’s condition?”

  The editor clucked. “They’re not muppets. They’re dedicated news men and women.”

  “My eye.” Joe shrugged. “Still, that’s your problem. You dug yourself into a hole, you gotta dig yourself out of it.” He smiled thinly. “Mind you, I may just be able to help.”

  Lofthouse was suddenly all ears. “How?”

  “Well, you have to understand that I’m shooting in the dark. The cops think Chiversleigh drank himself to death. I think he was poisoned, and I think I know who did it.”

  Lofthouse whistled to demonstrate how impressed he was. “Go on.”

  “There’s no proof of this, so if you print one word, I’ll deny this conversation ever took place, but to confirm my suspicion I need information on an incident which took place fifteen or sixteen years ago, when Chiversleigh was drunk, hit and killed a pedestrian and killed his missus into the bargain. He went down for it. I need to know who the pedestrian was.”

  “Hmm. Drunk driving, eh? How come the cops haven’t given you the victim’s name?”

  “They will, but not until tomorrow. I need it now, and I’m sure you’ll have it.”

  Lofthouse snatched up the phone and barked instructions to his crew. A minute later, he put the receiver down. “They’ll check the archives. We’ll have the story on file somewhere.”

  “Good man. Y’see, you can co-operate when you want.” Joe sat back and took the Daily Express from one pocket, a ballpoint from another, and pored over the crossword.

  Lofthouse looked down his nose. “You sit in my office reading that comic?”

  “Their anagrams are better than yours,” Joe argued, and in answer to 4 across, Wee gnat for an old gaol. (7) inked in NEWGATE.