Detective Omnibus- 7 to Solve

by Adam Carter

  “Better,” Hayden said, buckling her seat-belt and deciding the man could run courses in safety awareness.

  Soon enough they arrived at Eddings’s home and Hayden looked over the house next door. She could see no sign of movement and there were no windows open, but she was hardly going to let that stop her.

  “Are we going to break in?” Eddings asked. “I have a credit card handy.”

  “You watch a lot of cop shows, right?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “That’d be like getting home from school and watching Grange Hill.”

  “Are you going to kick the door in?”

  Hayden decided sometimes she hated the public. “Do you know where Locke went to get rid of the settee?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.”

  “But I know where she got rid of her last settee.”

  “You … She makes a habit of this?”

  “They were going to charge her for taking away her old one, so when she got a new one she dumped it.” He leaned closer to whisper conspiratorially, “Illegally.”

  “She dumped it?”

  “That was why I was surprised she was getting a new one already. Couldn’t have had the old one more than a year.”

  She wished he would stop mentally wandering off places. “Where did she dump it?”

  Eddings looked a little uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t want to get her into any trouble.”

  “I think she killed Slade and right now she might be killing my partner.”

  “Are you sure? She seemed like such a nice girl.”

  Hayden bit back her reply and said instead, “Maybe I should check. Better safe than sorry.”

  “Quite, quite.”

  “Eddings, where did she dump the flaming body!”

  Eddings physically jumped and Hayden could see some curtains twitching now; but she was seething and did not much care. There was still a chance she was completely wrong and had just defamed the woman’s character to all her neighbours. If that was the case, she would sort it out later, but right at that moment all she cared about was finding Tremens.

  “The river. There’s a shallow part where it meets the fields.”

  “How do you know that was where she dumped it?”

  “Because she told me afterwards. She was worried she’d done a really bad thing. She tends to do that, you know. Does things on the spur of the moment, then worries about them later. She’s her own morality police, you know.”

  “Just tell me about this river.”

  “Well, you go to the Field and Fountain and there’s a track behind it leading off through the fields. Just follow that and you’re there.”

  “What’s the Field and Fountain when it’s at home?”

  “A village pub.”

  “You seem to know a lot about what Locke does, Mr Eddings.”

  “I went with her, after she’d dumped the first settee. She’d convinced herself to go get it back, so I went with her. But when we got there it had sunk and we couldn’t get it out.”

  “So you’ve driven there before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is the address of this pub in your sat nav?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  She held out her hand. “Keys.”

  “Keys?”

  “Car keys. If you’re such a fan of TV cops, you’ll know I’m commandeering your vehicle for police purposes.”

  “Oh, right. Certainly.” He dug through his pockets and took far too long to come up with his keys. When he found them, Hayden snatched them from him and climbed back inside the car. Eddings was still talking, but she slammed the door on him and tore away from the kerb. She finally had a destination; now it was time to discover whether she was already too late.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gazing out across the river, Tremens could not help wonder what he was doing there. When Suzie Locke had asked him to come with her in the van, he had not quite known what to expect. That she would take him through a field and to the edge of a river had not quite been on his list of best guesses, however. The river was shielded by a great number of weeping willows, the green sludgy water not enticing him to go for a swim. There was a winter chill to the air and in places he could see the water had begun to freeze.

  What they could have been doing out there was beyond him.

  “You said you wanted me to see something. Uh, is this it?”

  “Sort of.”

  She looked more nervous than he had ever seen her, and he began to wonder just what the problem was. “Are you in trouble, Suzie? Is it something I can help with?”

  “It’s about Slade.”

  “Has he threatened you?”

  “Threatened me?”

  It had been a stab in the dark, but Tremens had felt it worthwhile asking, if only to gauge her reaction. If anything, she became even more nervous. “How well exactly do you know Slade?” he asked.

  She looked down at her feet. “Well.”

  “Well? Well as in well, well?”

  “Well as in … well, sort of … well enough.”

  “Well, well, well.”

  “Was that a joke?”

  “Just a realisation. You were having an affair with him, weren’t you?”

  “It wasn’t an affair,” she snapped, then controlled herself. “Or, at least I didn’t realise it was.”

  Tremens thought through that. “He hadn’t told you about his wife, right?”

  “No.” A look of anger flitted across her face, followed by the strangely disturbing flash of a smile.

  “So all those questions about what I would do if I discovered someone was cheating on me? It was all about Harry Slade?”

  “You said you would have chucked him out into the cold.”

  Tremens snorted. “Too right I would have. But then with a snake like Slade I never would have invited him into the warm to begin with. Why are we at the river?”

  “My life had fallen apart. I should have been angry, should have felt something. But I didn’t. Not really. I told myself I was angry, but I wasn’t.”

  “That’s … nice.”

  “Is that a normal reaction, Richard?”

  “To not feel anything?” He shrugged. “Probably. If you’re not angry, you’re numb. There’s nothing wrong with that. So, where is he? You told him to take a hike and he went north?” Her story did not make any sense, but he still had no idea what she had brought him all this way to tell him. She had been having an affair with Slade, sure, but that didn’t help find the guy.

  “I’ve never been cheated on before, I didn’t know how to react. I thought it was the way anyone would have reacted, thought it was normal. But if it was normal, you wouldn’t be looking for him so hard, would you?”

  Up until that moment, Tremens had thought of Suzie Locke as a nice young woman. He had known her for a while now and she would slip him an extra rasher of bacon when the boss wasn’t looking. She was good-looking, sweet and sincere. It had been this façade that had prevented him from looking much further. Now he was beginning to think he perhaps should not have come all this way alone with her. She had yet to say anything truly incriminating, but he was getting a bad feeling all the same.

  “Is Harry Slade dead?” Tremens asked.

  Suzie looked away. It was probably the worst response she could have given him.

  “Is he in this river?”

  “It was a bad decision, wasn’t it?” Suzie asked.

  “Killing a guy? Yeah. You … you can’t see that, can you?”

  Suzie was trying not to cry, but it was difficult for her. Tremens almost reached out a consoling hand, before remembering what she was crying over.

  “I’m an ordered person, Richard. I like things to be right. Clean. Septic. Everything has its place, you know? People are no different. Men belong with women and women belong with men.”

  “Well, that’s a debate in political correctness if ever I heard one.”

  “You know what I mean,” she snapped. “A ma
n belongs with one woman, and a woman belongs with one man.”

  Tremens did see now, and it scared him. Pleasant little Suzie Locke was a nice girl, so long as the world worked the way she thought it should. But as soon as something happened she didn’t agree with, or didn’t understand, she would panic and lash out to correct that mistake. If she had genuinely not felt anything when she killed Slade, it only told Tremens she had some kind of problem. But sociopath or not, she had still killed a man, and for that there would be consequences.

  “You need to come with me to the station,” Tremens said, keeping his voice calm. So far, Suzie had not shown any violent tendencies, and he wanted to clear this up before that could change.

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “Not at this stage. But I do need to ask you some questions about what happened to Slade.”

  “Then ask.”

  “You might want a solicitor present.”

  A look of genuine sadness overcame her then; it was as though she had still been hoping he might agree with the decision she had made. “I thought you’d understand, Richard.”

  “What exactly made you think that? Because I eat the food you serve me?”

  “I thought we had something between us. I guess I’m going to have to be grateful I brought you out here.”

  “Yeah, why did you bring me out here?”

  “To clean up.”

  Before Tremens could say another word, there was something being sprayed in his face. He had not seen her produce the canister and cursed himself for a fool that he had not expected it. He had thought she might pull a knife or something, not spray him in the face with some form of chemical.

  He fell to his hands and knees, his eyes stinging fiercely. He had no idea what he had been hit with, but while he was incapacitated Suzie could be doing any number of things. Tremens flailed with his arms, trying to keep her at bay, but since he was kneeling on the ground he doubted he presented much of a threat. He tried to listen to whatever Suzie was doing, but the burning in his eyes consumed his senses and he was no longer even certain he was facing the right direction.

  “Sorry, Richard,” she said, her voice flat. That was not a good sign. If she had delved into the same psychological temperament as when she had killed Slade, it meant she no longer believed she was doing anything wrong. Tremens knew nothing about psychological conditions, but Suzie Locke was nuts.

  “We need to talk about this,” he said, trying to stall her attack with whatever he could.

  “We did talk. You told me I was in the wrong.”

  He could hear her moving, perhaps fetching a weapon. Desperately, he fought to think of what he had to hand, something he might use to defend himself. But he had brought nothing, not even his own car. Nor was there anything in the area he might use. There was a field and a river: there weren’t even any people about should he shout for help.

  His eyes itching like mad, he realised one of those could be useful after all.

  Dropping his hands to the ground, he madly scrambled for whatever he could find. His fingers closed upon small stones and he tossed one to the left. Another he threw ahead of him, another to the right.

  To the right, he heard a dull splosh.

  Raising his left leg, he propelled himself to the right, charging until his foot struck the water. Leaping, he threw himself into the dirty river, ducking his head beneath the surface and rubbing furiously at his injured eyes. The water was near freezing and filled with scraggly weeds which clutched eagerly at his clothes like some faerie river monster, but Tremens knew the river was his only chance at survival. Blinking rapidly, continually rubbing water in his eyes, he was at last able to see again. His eyes still burned terribly, but as he crouched in the river he could make out colours and shapes once more.

  And he could see Suzie Locke standing on the shore, holding a plunger.

  He did not even want to think about how she intended to kill him with that.

  “I must say, Richard, you’re being very unreasonable.”

  “Congratulations, Suzie. You’ve just convinced me you’re not all there.”

  “Look at it from my point of view,” she said. “I’m losing one of my best customers.”

  “What a shame for you.” Tremens took a few steps back. His foot caught in something which wasn’t a plant. Feeling behind him with his hands, he discovered something large under the water. It felt like a settee, which meant Suzie was not the only person who had been dumping things in the river.

  “I wish you could agree with me,” Suzie said, “but it looks like you’re all the same.”

  He had no idea whether she meant the police or men in general, but he watched her walk away and disappear from sight. He had no idea where she was going but doubted she was just leaving him. His eyes were beginning to feel a little better but if he was going to survive this he needed something to use as a weapon.

  Remembering the settee, he reasoned that there would be wooden supports inside. If he could somehow cut through the material, he might be able to pull out the framework and fashion a makeshift club. Reaching beneath the water, not able to see much of what he was doing due to the murkiness of the river, Tremens was able to find a hole in the seam. Pushing in a finger numb with cold, he widened the hole and tore into the piece of furniture. His spirits lifting, he used both hands to reach inside, groping for the wooden supports. His hands found something else and his fingers squelched as they passed through something decidedly gooey.

  That was when he heard the engine.

  Turning away from the settee, he watched in mounting horror as the van reversed towards him at speed. Its back doors were open and he could see it was filled with all manner of cleaning equipment. The van did not stop at the water’s edge but barrelled over, shooting straight towards him. Trapped in the water, there was nothing Tremens could have done to evade it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It had not been the way she had wanted to do things, but Suzie knew the police would be all over her anyway. She had never thought they would have been able to connect her to Slade, but that had been her own fault, really. She had said too much to Tremens, foolishly believing he would understand what she had been forced to do. Tremens had wanted to arrest her, which meant it probably had been murder after all. Suzie was not a bad person, and if she had done something wrong she knew she needed to be punished. She still could not understand what it was precisely that she had done wrong, but Tremens was a detective and if he said it had been wrong then she believed him.

  As she had stood at the edge of the river, plunger in hand (because killing someone with a wrench was definitely wrong), she had come to realise there was only one thing she could do. If killing Slade was so bad, assaulting Tremens was also bad. So she needed to remove Tremens, make sure he was in no condition to tell anyone what she had done. But that would not punish her: it would only exacerbate her crimes. She could not continue with her life, knowing she had committed such wrongs.

  So she had returned to her van and reversed it towards the river. Making sure Tremens did not tell people what she had done was vital, but so was paying for her sins. She hardly felt the jolt as her rear wheels left the ground, but a few moments later the vehicle had stopped moving and she could feel it sinking. Water began to coat the floor and Suzie removed her hands from the wheel. She made sure her seat-belt was buckled and then closed her eyes. All she had ever really wanted out of life was a little happiness, but she had never been able to find it. Several times now she had thought she had, but something had always happened to destroy it for her. Now she did not much care. She had broken the law and she would pay, just like the law declared.

  Glancing out the window, Suzie could see the river water frothing, strange coloured clouds working their way through the murky depths. She remembered her van had been filled with cleaning products and that they had all spilled out into the river, some of them splitting open. She smiled, but there was no mirth to the gesture. This was probably the first real
clean the river had ever had.

  “No!” someone cried. Suzie was pretty sure it wasn’t her.

  Looking out the forward window, she could see a car had pulled up. It was odd because it belonged to her neighbour, Oddings, but as the door opened a woman stepped out. She recognised her immediately as that annoying woman partnered with Tremens. That she was driving Oddings’s car meant she had already worked out Suzie’s part in all of this, which meant she could not afford to drown just yet. She could not die knowing someone could still expose her.

  Besides which, she was getting the impression her van wasn’t going to sink any further.

  The detective had jumped into the river by this point and was tearing open the driver’s door. “Where’s Richard?”

  “Having a bath,” Suzie said.

  The detective paused; then punched Suzie in the face and dragged her from the cabin. “Detective Hayden,” the officer said. “I’m arresting you for murder. Now tell me where Richard is before I make that two.”

  “You can’t have him back, Hayden,” Suzie said flatly. “I didn’t do any of this so you could have either of them back.”

  “So you admit you murdered Slade?”

  “So I’m told.”

  There was more uncertainty, more nervousness, in Hayden than Suzie would have expected. The detective grabbed her by her collar and threw her into the water. “Just tell me where he is.”

  In that moment, Suzie understood that Tremens and Hayden meant something to one another. When Tremens had said they were partners, he had not been talking about work.

  Another man had done it to her again.

  “He’s gone,” Suzie told her, bitterness creeping into her voice, even though she always convinced herself she did not feel any emotion at this stage of things. “The river claimed him.”

  Hayden released her, her eyes tracking the surface of the river, but there was no movement at all. There were reeds, toilet cleaner, an old settee jutting out of the water, but nothing else. Suzie had not realised the settee had even been visible, but supposed she must have hit the thing when she had reversed her van into the river. She briefly thought of Slade, still trapped inside and dead. She almost wished she did feel something for him, but she did not. Nor, she was not surprised to discover, did she feel anything for having killed Tremens. About the only emotion she was feeling was anger towards Hayden and everything she represented as the other woman in her life.