by Adam Carter
Millar grunted. “His dogs attack someone?”
“No, we don’t think Truman’s involved.”
“If you can arrest someone for forgetting their pleases and thank yous, go right ahead.”
“Truman comes here?” Stoker asked.
“Sure. Everyone comes here, even hermits. Old MacDonald has to eat, same as everyone else, and he can’t grow all his own produce. He’s self-serving that one; sells his wares without involving the rest of the village, but still comes here for his luxuries.”
“And what does Truman consider luxuries?” Stoker asked.
“Whatever he can’t grow. Toilet paper mainly. Buys the stuff in bulk so he doesn’t have to come here too often.”
“And groceries?”
“Of course groceries. Everyone comes here for their groceries.”
“Have you had any strangers through recently?” Hart asked.
“Strangers? Now and then. Relatives of so-and-so, friends of such-and-such.”
“We’re after a group of men, possibly around three. One would have had a beard. They may have been fairly young.”
Millar scratched his chin. “Well, I’m not saying they didn’t come in, but I don’t really remember anyone like that. When are we talking about?”
“Maybe about a week ago?”
“Before the snow?”
“No, this would have been around the same time as it started getting really bad.”
Millar continued to think. “I don’t know. My memory’s not too good.”
“Maybe Tony or Clarissa served them?”
“Clara’s concentrating on her schooling lately so she hasn’t been working in the shop. Tony might have, yes. Hold on. Tone! Police!”
Hart winced. “You’re going to scare him.”
“Sometimes that boy needs scaring. Tone! Police want to question you! There are two of them so it’s serious!”
There were a few moments of silence and then they heard movement upstairs. Frantic movement at first, then begrudgingly a figure poked his head around the door. He was aged somewhere in his early twenties, thin and terrified.
“Lady wants to ask you a few questions,” his father told him.
“Hi, Tony.”
“Ma’am.”
Hart smiled. “Sorry, it’s nothing to worry about. We’re investigating something and you might be able to help.”
“I’m not in any trouble?” Tony flicked his eyes to his father.
Millar laughed soundly. “I don’t get much fun in life, don’t begrudge an old man.”
“Mr Millar,” Stoker said, addressing the younger. “We’re looking for three men who might have come into this shop around a week ago. They may have bought groceries.”
“Everyone buys groceries here, sir,” he said.
Touché, thought Hart. She said, “They would have bought a carrot.”
“A carrot?” cut in the elder Millar.
“Well, they might have bought more, we don’t know that. But they certainly bought one.”
“If they came in here, you mean?”
Beside her, Hart heard Stoker chuckle. He clearly knew what was coming and thought it just as ridiculous as she did. “Specifically,” she said, producing a bag, “this carrot.”
The two Millars looked at the bag, no doubt wondering what planet she was on.
“Uh,” the elder said, “why?”
“It’s evidence,” Hart said. “This carrot was used for the nose of a snowman. We need to find out who put it there.”
“Why?” the elder Millar asked. “Has the snowman made a complaint?”
Hart would have laughed – the entire situation was indeed ludicrous – but for the fact there was a body in the morgue and the potential for further corpses to begin piling up at any moment.
“Someone got this carrot from somewhere,” she said, “and I need to know whether it was here. Have any strangers come in lately and bought some carrots?”
“Actually,” the elder Millar said, rubbing his chin, “now that you mention it, there was someone wasn’t there, Tony? You said someone came in and bought one carrot. We had a laugh about it.”
Hart’s hopes spiked. “Tell me.”
“It wasn’t a carrot,” Tony said quickly. “I said shallot. Someone bought one shallot, not a carrot.”
“Shallot?” his father asked. “No, I’m sure it was a carrot.”
Tony shook his head, keeping his eyes down.
Hart exchanged a glance with Stoker. She could see he was thinking exactly as she did: that there was something screwy about Tony’s testimony. “Tony, look at me,” she said. When he just shrugged, she said again, more forcefully, “Tony?”
He looked up and she could see he was setting his jaw firm. It would have been obvious even to the corpse in the morgue that he was hiding something.
“I’m going to assume you don’t know how serious this is,” Hart continued slowly. “You’re a good kid, Tony. I know you’ve made some mistakes in the past, but if you know anything about this carrot, you need to tell me right now.”
“I don’t know anything,” he said, his voice small. “I don’t even like carrots.”
Hart wanted to keep the news of the body secret if she could. Truman wouldn’t tell anyone, but of course the kids who had found the body would have already told everyone they knew. The thought of these killers finding out about the discovery was making Hart want to keep as firm a lid on the secret as she could, but she knew if she was going to make any impact at all upon Tony Millar, she was going to have to shove the truth in his face and see how he reacted.
“We have a body in the morgue,” she said. “The person who bought that carrot is very likely the murderer. So if you know a name, Tony, you need to tell it me.”
Larry Millar gasped and turned angry eyes upon his son. But it was Tony’s reaction Hart had been watching for. The younger man’s eyes widened, he stopped breathing for a single moment. His eyes darted to his father, to Stoker, to Hart, all around them again before settling on nowhere. He had not known about the body, Hart decided, which relieved her no end.
“Tone, what have you got yourself mixed up in now?”
“Nothing, dad. Honest.”
His father clipped him around the ear. Hart had never seen him angry.
“You tell the detective who bought that carrot.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then,” Stoker said, “you admit it wasn’t a shallot?”
“No, it was a carrot. But I didn’t know him.”
“So it was one man?”
“Yes. No. I … I don’t remember.”
Hart’s eyes narrowed as she digested all this. Tony was the worst liar she had ever met. “How old was he?” she asked.
“Twenty-five, maybe thirty.”
“Height?”
“Average.”
“Clothes?”
“Normal.”
“Accent?”
“None.”
Hart resisted the urge to throttle him. “What did he say when he was here?”
“Nothing.”
“He must have said something if you’re telling me he didn’t have an accent.”
“Just regular stuff. He bought his carrot and his dog food and asked me how much.”
Hart tried not to smile. “He bought dog food?”
“Yeah. I guess he had a dog.”
Hart was certain now the people Truman had encountered in the field were the murderers. They had been seen heading away from the scene of the crime and they had bought a single carrot which had to have been the one in Hart’s hand. Now all she needed to do was properly identify them.
“Would you like to continue this down at the station?” Hart asked Tony.
“No.” He looked horrified. “No, I … I don’t know anything else.”
“We don’t need to bring him in, I don’t think,” Stoker said. “Keep a tight leash on your boy, Mr Millar. We have other avenues to investigate but we’ll be b
ack soon.”
Millar nodded, still not having taken it all in. “Will do, yes.”
Hart frowned at her companion but Stoker was already motioning her towards the door. Not wanting to argue in front of the suspect, Hart stepped back onto the street. The two of them walked several metres before she decided she would have it out with him. Before she could say a word, however, Stoker had grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into the alley beside the shop. He did not stop walking until they had gone all the way around to the back and she angrily shook the arm away.
“What are we doing?” she whispered harshly.
“Waiting.”
“That kid knows something.”
“Yes, but he wasn’t going to tell us.”
“So we just give up? We could have broken him at the station.”
“That would have taken time. I think we’d be better off letting him show us what he knows.”
Hart had no idea what he was talking about. Then she saw a window open on the upper level of the shop and watched as Tony Millar emerged. He had a little trouble working his way down to the ground and almost skidded on ice once or twice, but finally he was on the ground and walking.
“I can see,” Hart said slowly, “why I called you in on this one, John.”
Stoker was not smiling. “Let’s just see where he leads us. Thank me when we’re both having tea and laughing about all this.”
If there was anything to even think of laughing about, Hart wished someone would share the joke.
CHAPTER SIX
Things were bad, and Stoker was certain his partner did not realise just how bad they were. It was strange to think of Felicity Hart as his partner. Before his retirement, Stoker had usually worked alone and had always scoffed at the television versions of the police where lifelong partnerships were formed. However, that was precisely how he felt working alongside Hart. He had never seen himself as an old veteran offering sagely advice, but that was the role he had fallen into, and the one which Hart needed. He tried not to think of what might happen should he fail Hart as he had failed his own daughter so many years earlier.
But that was not the attitude he should have been entertaining while on the job. They were following Tony Millar and with any luck would be able to make their arrests and no one else would be hurt.
Tony led them on a direct path and clearly did not even consider that he might be followed. Initially Stoker and Hart had kept as far back as they could, well aware they were leaving visible tracks in the snow, but since Tony had not turned around even once, they had closed the gap and reduced their chances of losing him. Stoker was not certain of the youth’s destination, although could see Hart had already reached a conclusion.
“He’s going to church,” she said. “It’s the only thing out this way.”
Stoker found he had to concur. After everything that had happened to him in the big city, Stoker found he had little time for God any more. He had been inside that church perhaps two or three times during his years in Barrowville and fought to recall the layout. As a detective he had been trained to remember even the smallest of details, but since he was retired he had allowed the habit to die.
“You’d best take the lead,” he told Hart. “But we should do this as quietly as possible.”
“Should I have brought some weapons?”
“Why? Do you have any?”
“Only a truncheon and some pepper spray, and I already have those. I meant, if these people have killed already, maybe I should have called for backup.”
“I’m not sure you even have any backup to call.”
“I meant out-of-town backup. You know, cops with guns.”
Stoker grunted. “The last thing you need in a bad situation is to add guns to it, whoever you put behind the trigger. Besides, we don’t have any indication these guys are armed with anything worse than a hammer. Right now, though, we’re just observing. If we can see who Tony’s headed to, we can at least get a look at our killers. Then we can take things from there.”
“You really think the killers are hiding in the church?”
“Either that or Tony’s gone to confess his sins to someone who cares.”
It was mere minutes later that Hart’s assessment of the situation proved correct, for Tony entered the church grounds and moved to the front door. His two pursuers rushed quickly to the door so they would not lose him. Hart moved to open it immediately, although Stoker silently cautioned her. Opening the church door might cause an echo to resound through the large hall and send Tony running. In a whisper, Stoker counted down from fifteen and then opened the door as slowly as he could. The sound it made was probably nowhere near as bad as he had expected, although to his worried mind it was very much like an earthquake.
They stepped gingerly into the church, the eerie silence oppressive upon them. The main hall was long and spacious, tall stained-glass windows allowing the light of God to fill the area. Rows of pews took up all the nearby space, while at the end of the central aisle stood an altar. It was close to this that they could see Tony standing, arguing in whispers with Barroville’s priest, Father Bishop. Unlike Truman’s nickname of Old MacDonald, Father Bishop was the priest’s real name. Stoker had always found it somewhat amusing and sometimes wondered whether Father Bishop took the coincidence as divine intervention.
Keeping low, Stoker and Hart hurried down the rearmost pew until they reached one of the support pillars. From there they made their way quickly down the side of the pews until they finally came to rest behind a pillar much closer to their quarry. From this position, they could hear and see everything.
Bishop, a thin man in his sixties, seemed both worried and adamant about something, while Tony was irate and almost on the point of exploding. If he made a move to throttle the priest, Stoker fully intended to leap in and arrest him.
“We have to put a stop to this, Father,” Tony was saying. “Things are going too far now.”
“You’re talking as though you have any control over the situation,” Bishop hit back a little haughtily. “As though either of us does.”
“Well we need control,” Tony snapped. “Talk with her, Father.”
“I have. You know I have.”
“Then talk to her again.”
“She’s not going to listen to me. She only talks to me because I’m her priest; if she thought I had a hidden agenda she’d disappear entirely.”
“Then take me to her.”
Bishop laughed. “We do that and we lose her entirely. She doesn’t want to talk to you, Tony.”
“She told you that, did she?”
“You know she did.”
Stoker and Hart exchanged glances. They were hoping Tony Millar would have led them to three men and these two were discussing a woman. Unless the dog was female, Stoker reasoned they may have been barking up the wrong tree. He opted to keep the pun to himself.
“Then don’t tell her you’re setting up a meeting,” Tony all but pleaded. “Just arrange to meet her and I’ll be there instead.”
“If I did that, she would never trust me again.”
“We don’t have any choice now, Father.”
“There is always a choice, my son.”
“Damn it, Father, they found a body in the field.”
Whatever Father Bishop had been intending to say died in his throat. From his position, Stoker could not see the man’s eyes too well, but he could see his skin paling. “Dead? Who?”
“I don’t know,” Tony said, running agitated fingers through his hair. “Detective Hart didn’t say. She’s with that old guy, the one from the city.”
“Stoker?”
“Yeah. They found a body inside a snowman or something.”
“Could the death have been accidental?”
“Unless the guy died standing up, was snowed over and some helpful passer-by put a carrot on his face … no.”
“Dear Lord.”
“Father, please help me.”
“Of course, of co
urse.” Bishop looked as though he was about to collapse. His mind was no longer quite with them, and Stoker would have paid good money to know precisely what was going through his head. “But if this goes wrong, we’ve lost her, Tony. Forever.”
“I know that,” Tony said in a small voice. “But we have to try one last time. Before hers is the next body to turn up.”
The two men did not speak much after this and Tony left soon after. Hart made to step out into view, although Stoker held her back. Even as Tony left the church, Bishop disappeared out the back, leaving the two detectives to exit via the door through which they had come in.
Once they were back outside, Hart asked, “What was all that about?”
“I don’t know.” Stoker knew precisely what they would have to do now, although he was loath to suggest it. His primary goal in all of this was to protect Hart and if she agreed with his suggestion he would be surrendering all chance of being able to do that. However, it was what the investigation required and he could not shirk his duty just because he was afraid for Hart’s safety.
“John?”
“We need to split up,” he said. “One of us needs to grill Tony about what just happened in there; the other needs to follow the priest and see who he’s arranging to meet.”
“Good idea. Any preference which you take?”
Stoker knew which would be the more dangerous. “I’ll take the priest.”
“Right. If you find anything, give me a call, yeah?”
It was almost a joke, but it was also serious. Phone reception in Barrowville was not the greatest: sometimes it took a miracle just to get the television to receive signals from the channels you wanted. A temperamental signal in this instance could well cost lives, but it was all they had to work with.
“Please be careful.” It was silly, but all he could think of to say.
They were also the final words he had ever spoken to his daughter.
CHAPTER SEVEN