by Adam Carter
DETECTIVE OMNIBUS:
7 TO SOLVE
Adam Carter
Copyright 2018, © Adam Carter. All rights reserved. No content may be reproduced without permission of the author.
Originally published as Detective’s Ex (2014), The Murder of Snowman Joe (2015), One-Way Ticket to Murder (2016), The Murder of Loyalty (2015) and The Woman Who Cried Diamonds (2016).
Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com
DETECTIVE’S
EX
CHAPTER ONE
The Victim
Mr Polinski was a kindly old man, large of life both in his frame and his exaggerated moustache. He was always ready with a smile as he bagged up the groceries, always willing to listen to any town gossip but never betraying a secret by imparting too much himself. He liked to listen and he enjoyed talking more than anyone could have believed possible. He had three children – two boys and a girl – waiting for him back home, although he would never mention just where home was. He was a proud man and a decent human being.
Last week someone walked into his shop and put three bullets in him.
Everyone knew Mr Polinski and no one had a bad word to say about him. He ran one of those places I like to call “hard-working shops”. You know the kind; they’re all over the place. They sell every essential from bread and milk to fruit and veg; their shelves are stacked full of cans and boxes and bottles and packets. And they never close, just run a neon sign outside flashing deep into the night saying “Open ‘til late” in a desperate cry to entice any wayward moths who for whatever reason are returning home so late.
I didn’t see the attack of course, but I was among the crowd of people gathered outside the shop that day as they carted off Mr Polinski’s body, covered with a drape so we couldn’t see the mess someone had made of him. People about me were muttering, telling one another how wrong this was, shielding their little ones from having to see too much yet not thinking to just not have brought them to a crime scene to begin with. I blocked out all that noise, the murmurs which I knew wouldn’t do any good. Instead I was trying to listen to what the police were saying, although it wasn’t much. They had a big enough job trying to keep the crowd back and I figured they had probably been trained not to gossip at murder scenes anyway.
Then I caught sight of Detective Carl Robbins stepping through the police cordon. Carl, a tall man coming up to his fortieth birthday, was almost lost in the thick coat he was wearing, and while no one could have blamed him for that at this time of year it almost seemed too convenient, that he could pull the lapel up as he pleased in order to avoid looking at the crowd. It did nothing to disguise from me his crop of untidy hair, nor his sincere, yet always far-too-serious eyes. I called to him through the crowd, having worked my way to the front. A constable held out a hand to stop me passing the cordon, but I hadn’t really intended on just running into the crime scene and ruining any chance Mr Polinski had for justice.
Carl looked over to me and for the briefest of instants it looked as though he was going to ignore me entirely, pretend I didn’t even exist. But then he trotted over to me, keeping both his head and voice low. “Lauren? Lauren, what are you doing here?”
“They’re saying Mr Polinski’s dead,” I said, not having had confirmation at the time. I didn’t of course know about the three bullets, but the rumour was that someone had tried to rob the place and Mr Polinski had put up a fight. That sounded just like him and I didn’t doubt it for a moment.
“You didn’t just watch him get carted out?” Carl asked.
“Aren’t you supposed to examine the crime scene before they remove the body?”
“And who says I haven’t already done that? Maybe I like crowds of people watching me re-enter crime scenes.”
I never cared for his dry humour when we were together, and I certainly wasn’t going to put up with it when someone had just been shot to death. If he had even smiled when he had said any of that it might have made a little difference, but the truth was Carl Robbins seemed incapable of such a thing. I remember taking him to a comedy club one time and his expression didn’t change the entire night. He’d enjoyed it, he said, but who can tell with Carl? I won’t go into the reasons we split up six months ago, but suffice to say that was only one of the ways in which he was simply infuriating.
“Carl,” I said in as flat a tone as I could manage considering what had happened, “just tell me what’s going on.”
“Tell you what’s going on? No, why would I tell you what’s going on?” He walked off shaking his head, and a part of me was glad because it meant I couldn’t punch him in the face. The constable who had been holding me back offered a sheepish shrug and I felt like kicking him in the shin just to make me feel better. I didn’t, obviously, because then I would have been arrested.
My back pocket buzzed and I stepped away from the constable to retrieve my phone. There was a message from Carl. “Mancini’s restaurant. 19:00. I’m buying.”
Well it actually said “Im buying” but I decided to let him off the apostrophe.
*
Mancini’s restaurant was not a restaurant. It wasn’t even called Mancini’s; we only ever called it that because the guy who ran the place always seemed to wear shorts, so we could see the man’s knees. Actually, when writing that down it doesn’t sound anywhere near as funny as saying it out loud, but it was one of the things Carl and I both found amusing during our time together. Never one to stretch his wallet, Carl used to insist on this being what qualified for our night out. In reality it was called “Fry and Dry” and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that in the main they served fish. And chips, open or closed.
I arrived shortly before seven that evening, not wanting to miss Carl, and found him just stepping out with two unwrapped parcels. He handed me one, a welcome warmth flooding through my hands, but I was more focused on Carl. He had started walking away from me and I kept pace, wondering what he was playing at.
“I shouldn’t be talking about my cases,” he explained without any real emotion as he stuck in his tiny wooden chip-fork and started eating, “so I’d appreciate it if we don’t stand around where we could be overheard.”
That made sense, and since it was him giving me the information I felt I couldn’t argue over a point like that. We set into a stroll then, and I fought for something to say, something to break the ice between us. It had been a while since I’d even seen him, after all, and there was actually a part of me that did wonder what he had been doing with himself since we’d broken up. There was a large part of me which didn’t give a whit, but I knew I would have to suppress that a while longer.
“So,” I said without thinking, “you still seeing that blonde?”
He didn’t even look my way as he methodically cut up his fish with his chip-fork. “Nope.”
“She dump you too, then?”
“Oh that’s right,” he said without inflection, “we came here to snipe, didn’t we?”
I stared into my chips but could not bring myself to apologise. Carl had made me angry even when we were together, but now we were apart it was infuriating even being with him.
“What happened to Mr Polinski?” I asked.
That was when Carl told me about the three slugs the attacker put in him. That was also the moment I entirely went off my chips.
“Mr Polinski was just a kind old man,” I said, not even realising I was saying it aloud. “Who’d want to kill him? I take it this was a robbery?”
“Nothing was taken.”
“So the gunman panicked?”
“In my experience when off-licence robberies go sour, the gunman doesn’t stop to shoot the owner three times. When people are panicked, Lauren, the
y run.”
I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me, although I was hardly stupid enough to miss his implications. “You’re saying whoever shot Mr Polinski intended to kill him before they even went into the shop?”
“I didn’t say that. But if that’s what you’re seeing in this I can hardly fault your observations.”
I knew what Carl was doing, but he didn’t have to meet with me at all so I had no right to tell him how to talk to me. Even when we were together he would be secretive about his assignments, as though I had a direct route to the media and was desperately searching for a reason to get him fired. It was actually one of the things we split up over. That he was telling me anything at all was confusing, and I could not for the life of me work out what his angle was.
“So why are you telling me any of this?” I decided to ask him straight.
“Haven’t told you anything,” he said with a shrug. “The police are on the lookout for a gunman involved in a robbery gone wrong.”
“You are? But you just told me ...”
He fixed solid eyes on me which made me feel about half a foot shorter. He had done that sometimes when we were together. It was one of the reasons we split up.
Actually, thinking back, there were a lot of reasons we split up.
“You may not see this on the television shows,” Carl continued as though he didn’t think I was especially stupid, “but detectives are like most employees. We do what we’re told. And I’m told we’re looking for a gunman involved in a robbery gone wrong, so that’s what I’m looking for.”
It clicked in my mind and I could only imagine how stupid he truly thought I was. Someone above him wanted this matter swept under the carpet; perhaps someone above him was even involved somehow. I put the possibility to him in the most delicate manner I could manage.
“What?” he asked with a genuinely furrowed brow. “No, of course no one above me is in on it. What are you ...?” He took a deep breath to calm himself and continued. “You really that stupid that you want me to spell it out for you?”
I gritted my teeth. I won’t bother suggesting his constantly calling me stupid was in any way responsible for us splitting up. I think the main reason was that he was a jerk, and that about covers it all.
“We’re understaffed and overrun,” Carl continued. “You heard about that bank robbery last month, right?”
I had vaguely read about it in the local paper, but had not paid much attention. There had been an armed robbery and a customer had been killed.
I must have mentioned some of that aloud because Carl nodded. “That’s the one. We’re tied down to that and don’t have time to look into this as well.”
“Do you think they could be connected?”
“No. I don’t need ballistics to tell me the guns used were completely different. Besides, the bank was amateur while this is too precise.”
“So you are saying it was an intentional hit?”
Carl rubbed at his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “I’m not saying anything, Lauren. But this case will be a whole lot easier if we’re looking for one man and a discarded firearm. If it was planned it means there may well be a gang involved, and that would mean more bodies being assigned to the case. The public don’t know squat, so it’s more convenient for all concerned if this is just a one-man job. And I doubt Polinski will be complaining much.”
“Mr Polinski,” I corrected without even thinking. “He always liked to be called Mr Polinski.”
Carl looked at me strangely. “I don’t think he cares any more, Lauren.”
“So explain one thing to me,” I said with narrowing eyes, “and please feel free to assume I’m an idiot.”
He shrugged. That wasn’t going to be difficult for him.
“What do you intend for me to do about it? Run my own investigation and solve the murder myself?”
“What? No. Why would you even ...? I want you to go to the media and tell them this was an organised killing. I want you to get more officers assigned to this case so I don’t have to do everything myself.”
“So you want me to ease your workload?”
“Well, yeah.”
I could not believe the audacity of the man. When he had seen me in the crowd he must have thought he had struck the jackpot. Good old Lauren Corrigan, willing to bail him out of yet another scrape. I can only imagine the expression tearing across my face in that moment, because Carl looked more frightened of me than I had ever seen him look before.
“Thanks for dinner, Carl,” I said, shoving my fish back at him. “Don’t call me again.”
Thinking back, I probably left him quite happy, seeing as he now had two dinners. Carl always was a pig. The very thought only infuriated me further.
*
I arrived back home probably half an hour later. It wasn’t that we were half an hour from my home, but that I ended up trying to walk my anger off. Carl had never been the greatest human being in the world and could have lectured on insensitivity, but he had always been good at his job. He took it so seriously I often wondered whether he’d thought about marrying it. It was no wonder then that he had come to me because his job wasn’t going too well, and not because he knew I wanted to see him. Not that I wanted to see him, I don’t want you getting that impression. But I’m rambling, which is something I’m prone to when I’m angry.
Getting back to an empty flat had not bothered me at all in the previous six months, although for some reason the silence preyed on my nerves that night. As I hunted through the fridge for something to throw in the microwave I couldn’t help but feel the oppression of the flat bearing down upon me. I convinced myself it was because of what had happened to Mr Polinski, that there was a part of me afraid that whoever shot him would come after me. But I knew that wasn’t it. I knew my trepidation had more to do with Carl than anything else. Carl, who wanted me to do his dirty work just so he could have a few more bodies put onto his case. His cause, when I stopped to consider it, was admirable; it was just his reasoning I had a problem with. If Carl desperately wanted to bring the killer to justice, that would be something I could get behind, but that wasn’t his motivation at all. Carl loved his job, lived for his job, and it killed him to think that he wasn’t capable of seeing the case through. His superiors may have wanted a body in custody to satisfy the media and to make their numbers crunch, but Carl Robbins wanted the right body. It was one of the only good aspects to his character, until you stopped to remember that he didn’t want the right body for any reason other than his own personal egotism.
There was some lasagne leftover in the fridge I probably should have eaten a few days before, but I gave it three minutes and it came out fine. Taking it to my living room, I turned on the television just for a little white noise and found the news. The news was, as always, filled with the morbid stories folk seem to love. Potential wars, missing teenagers, killers on the loose, and to round it all off a little mention of the football.
But then that was life. You lived, you died. They were the only two certainties: there wasn’t even a certainty you were going to be born between the two.
Mr Polinski kept resurfacing in my mind. Mr Polinski who had never hurt anyone in his life. Mr Polinski who hadn’t deserved to be shot three times in his own shop. I felt perhaps Carl was right after all: perhaps I should have just contacted the media and got him the attention he needed to have more people assigned to the case. It would help track Mr Polinski’s killer, but it wouldn’t bring the man back. It wouldn’t do anything for Mr Polinski actually; in fact the only person it would help would be Carl.
So I determined not to call the media.
But I also wasn’t about to let the murderer run around free as a gaol bird that wasn’t in gaol. If I wasn’t going to phone the media, however, I could not see any way in which I was going to help the poor man. By this time of course I already knew precisely what I intended to do; I was just trying to convince myself I hadn’t reached that conclusion. During my time with
Carl I had picked up on a lot of things regarding his work: tactics, skills, terminology. Carl loved his job and never shut up about it, so it wasn’t as though I even learned it all on purpose. There were times when we were together that I felt I knew more about being a detective than some of the people he actually worked with.
The news descended into the weather and a stupidly attractive redhead told me there were dark clouds moving in that night. By this time I was already far away. If I solved the case myself, that would be helping Mr Polinski and would really annoy Carl in the process. If the police weren’t that bothered in finding the killer, I would do so myself.
A small smile crept its way across my face as I realised this was the one thing Carl would hate me for. It wasn’t the first time I’d done something intentionally to wind him up, but certainly this was going to be the greatest.
In all fairness to Carl, my sadistic streak was also one of the major reasons we split up in the first place.
CHAPTER TWO
The Landlord
There was no chance I was ever going to get a look at the crime scene, but I reasoned I should have been able to pump some answers from Carl the next time I met up with him. If he could meet me solely to get me working for him I certainly saw no reason I could not turn the tables. In the meantime my investigation needed to get underway, so the first thing I did was find out where Mr Polinski lived. For some reason I had always assumed he lived above the shop: after all, it always seemed to be open so I figured it would not have made financial sense for him to have spent much of his time anywhere else. The phone book however told me a different story. I didn’t know his first name, but Polinski isn’t exactly a surname one can hide well, and so it was that I found myself early next morning knocking on the door of his landlord. I should briefly mention how I obtained the name and address of his landlord, which was relatively easy. I just asked Mr Polinski’s next-door neighbour and it turned out she had lived in the street for over twenty years and knew the landlord well.