Bitter Pastoral_A DCI Caleb Cade Crime Thriller of rural Ancaster County.

by John R Goddard

  Upstairs in the study, three walls are lined with bookshelves floor to ceiling. One side is all nursing; one side is mine still with Classics, literature, history, politics sections, never taken away as Bess and I have so many books of our own. A pile of children’s books for Grace still sits forlornly in one corner, along with boxes of toys and puzzles for her regular visits years previously.

  At the desk, correspondence is all neatly piled in trays, ‘Dealt With’ or ‘Pending.’ There too is my mother’s ever adventurous reading pile - ‘Stoner,’ the wonderful American novel of a seemingly pointless life endured perhaps yet somehow fulfilling, a Walter Moseley detective novel of racist 1950’s America, Elena Ferrante’s ‘My Brilliant Friend’ telling of two poor Neapolitan girls over their lifetimes, and the week’s New Statesman and Nursing Times magazines. She cannot let go even though now retired.

  Worryingly a pile of books with book marks lay in a neat pile; when going away she never fails to take all her ‘books in progress.’ Oddly since I seldom read now, she has persuaded me to pursue all of these titles and I have tried - to please her - without enjoying any but the melancholic ‘Stoner.’ A woman who read and entranced me with the classics of poetry, novels and drama, from around the world once I reached ten, is not easily denied even now. A regime of reading discussed with my father before I was born and we held to it as precious.

  Laid like an unexploded bomb on her neatly made bed, I find an envelope containing a hand-written note. For me.

  ‘Darling boy, I just felt like a short break, retired people can do that sort of thing on a whim you know! Ovid is with me. Will let you know where I am. When I know! Please do not worry. Your laundry is in my utility room so do take it, your supermarket order will come to you next Sunday morning as usual, your freezer is stocked with meals for a month at least but I shall be back long before that. Much love, Mum X X.’

  I sit on her bed, cold and lifeless like the house. Is she angry, scared, what? Hard to tell from mere words but brittle comes to mind. Strange in the extreme, a note left here, not a call or a text or an email from such a modern technology savvy woman. Or someone who did not want to be questioned, the worried tone of her voice noticed.

  My gaze goes from the note and through the net curtains on the window. A large black 4 x 4 pick-up vehicle draws up outside, a Barracuda, Shark, Warrior or Trojan, or some other ridiculous macho name that they give such vehicles. Its driver and passenger are sitting there within the darkened cab; parked in the perfect place to have a good view of the house and our activities. Is it the same one as at Albion, as young Cat Rudd’s, or just pure chance again? The registration number is obscured with mud, deliberately no doubt. There are a lot of these vehicles about, especially in rural areas. It is a Trojan; I can see the model details as I zoom in with my iPad camera. A strange name for a brand, given what happened to the Trojans: taken in by a childish ruse to cause their total oblivion. I don’t think it is made by Volkswagen though, corporate kings of self-harm, until the next global company is caught cheating and lying through its glossy PR teeth.

  I go out of the back door, followed by Sam, and walk quickly around the house and towards the vehicle, which roars with power and is away even as we approach. Ena says it belongs to none of the neighbours or their relatives, and ‘I’d know.’

  ***

  The neat rear garden, the product of my mother’s and Sam’s joint loving care, is surrounded by high shaped thickets of holly, hawthorn, hazel and ivy, bursts of red berries giving the only colour against the brown of winter’s nature and white of the still thick frost, mist and thin snow in the sharp icy air. Our kingly oak stands in the middle of the lawn, a remnant of when this whole valley was wooded centuries ago and from whence my, and then my daughter’s swing, hangs to delight or depress as now.

  I sit on the dearly loved wooden bench my father crafted with his own hands. Positioned in the corner of the garden where the hedge is always thinner, he could see the field and sloping vistas beyond. Most photographs of him are set outdoors, some with an infant Cade sat here on his knee, or on his shoulders as he swam in a nearby lake. I have only those two images of fun and laughter with him, so very brief. When younger I often sobbed for my, our loss, so many times in this very place.

  As a child, I loved the liquorice aroma from the beet in the field but today it brings no comfort. My breath hangs heavy in the cold air; my eyes see nothing. A stoat sits up suddenly in the field, staring at me from ten yards away. As my attention stirs, it lopes away across the frost covered ground, its white skin making it hard to follow save for the brown blotches on its flank and shoulder. A robin sings brightly nearby, hops close in affection. A wren, no bigger than my hand, uses its long thin bill to stab out insect larvae, spiders and other juicy titbits beneath the litter of leaves under the hedge within feet of me. It makes no sound. Wrens are too busy foraging in winter to sing, a shame as it emits a cascade of rattling notes on occasion.

  A text pings on my phone. At last, my mother and an explanation, but no. Detective Chief Inspector George Odling demands Sam and I return to the scene of ‘the accident.’ He stresses ‘Now’ three times.

  I phone my mother once more and leave a calm message. I What’s App her, I email her, just asking that she get in touch and tell me where she is. I surprise two of her local friends, ringing on the pretext that I want to ask my mother something and cannot find her. She is with neither of them, they lunched with her Friday but have heard nothing since.

  I worry, I decide and send my mother the better image of the dead woman by email and What’s App, asking if we might talk about this as soon as possible. There is no one else to ask or trust with something as precious and dangerous as this, save perhaps Jerry, my closest friend from University days. I send him a note and the woman’s picture lest my flashback of seeing and perhaps meeting her at some point is real for some unfathomable reason.

  “There’ll be some simple explanation,” Sam reassures as we leave. I do not even nod. I cannot shake the feeling that things have changed drastically, and for the worse.

  8

  Police messages crackle out as my black BMW hums across the few miles south-east to Albion House at the heart of the D'Eynscourte valley’s sweeping landscapes. Among the litany of minor crimes and incidents that uniform is dealing with - a road accident, three domestic violence incidents, a child lost then quickly found, two chases of stolen vehicles, a man waving a machete in an Ister street - there is no mention of the suspicious death we are heading to. Until an afterthought, ‘Likely hit and run near D'Eynscourte village, Chief Superintendent Creel wants urgent update.’

  My mind thrums. With thoughts of my mother, her encounter with the dead woman, the black pick up, a possible murder in Ancaster City, ‘Cat’ Rudd - real name Duane, Creel interested in a case he would normally think way beneath his august personage, Odling quickly involved personally at Albion on a case he would quite easily pass off to uniform in the normal run of things. Especially as his squad clearly has a murder on. Knowing the man’s thinking, it makes no sense. From tomorrow, the hit and run is in my new squad’s area, could be left to uniform for a day and then dumped on me as a mark of my inferior standing.

  Too many imponderables, too much contained anger against Creel, Odling, my situation, my life. I drive far too fast for the narrow twisting roads, mist and frosty conditions, silently cursing the score of school buses, slow tractors and especially large Range Rovers and such driven by county set or nouveau riche women. Drivers who seem to regard any vehicles that are smaller or less expensive as beneath notice and certainly not suitable to share road space and obstruct their passage to and from little Jerome’s private school or an ‘Ancaster Ladies Who Do’ coffee morning. ‘Do’ what? Large lorries also come towards us at various points, hogging two-thirds of the surface, their girth too large for roads laid down for carts centuries previously. These modern drivers seemingly unconcerned if they cause harm.

  As we arrive I hard
ly even register the police car and its flashing light that is pulled across the road until Sam suggests I stop. I brake hard with a fierce skid to narrowly avoid collision. A PC stands nearby with clip board in hand and approaches to both reprimand and move me on. Seeing me, he turns away with a shrug of disgust and stops a white van that has come up behind me. The road is closed two hundred yards each way from the incident site. Light traffic at both ends is waved down, questioned, turned back. I tell Sam to stay in the car until I call him.

  Fields and roadside are still unsullied white and frozen as the sun offers only a thin heat through billowing clouds with the mist slowly lifting. I hardly notice the chill air but the cadences of bird song lilt as I walk towards where I can see the imposing bulk of DCI Odling strangely waiting a hundred odd yards past the Albion House gateway and forty odd yards beyond where the body was found. Two PCs pass within a yard of me but make no sign of greeting.

  Oddly another quote rears. Ezra Pound urging the setting of keel into the sea’s breakers.

  A galaxy of police vehicles are parked on the road and verge by Sam’s van and the Albion House gates, destroying the tyre marks, footsteps and the point of impact that were so clearly visible as evidence earlier. Police footmarks have tromped all over here, going everywhere with abandon. Presumably Forensics - ‘Scientific Services’ as they are officially known in Ancaster police circles, or ‘The SS’ unofficially - have swiftly, too swiftly surely, dealt with those areas though only two of their distinctive light blue outfits are to be seen and they are near Odling with none elsewhere.

  Way past the body, between me and the other DCI are a line of ten police constables on my left as I walk on the taped off track on the other side of the road to the body. Police greatcoats buttoned, helmets pulled down, gloves on, faces pinched, the squad’s breath is steaming like that of prancing horses at a gallop. Their backs are to me, as they lean over, some crouching, inching their way along. Studying the ground as they go, and occasionally stooping to examine something in detail and place it in an evidence bag while their uniform Sergeant makes a note of the find and marks the location with a numbered sign. They are up to nine markers but again in the wrong area surely: a hundred yards from the collision point at Albion’s gates and thirty or forty yards beyond the body. Strange. I reassure myself it is routine without real belief. The Scientific Services Photographer appears, snaps away at objects found and their locations in a rapid blink of shutter speeds.

  Despite the squad’s concentration and the cold, perhaps because of them, I can hear the occasional merry banter and dark humour about similar suffering endured previously. All ceases instantly when they become aware of my presence in their peripheral vision as I pass ahead of them on their right towards Odling, impatiently pacing to show his usual displeasure with anything, everything and me at this point in time.

  ***

  Hostility and hatred are basic elements of nature; the ancient runes say locally. I feel such palpably flood towards me in an almost physical wave that quietens even the bird song. The distinct mutter of ‘Bastard Cade’ comes and then another voice distinctly says, ‘Fucking Resign, Better - Die’ before they are belatedly called to order by their Sergeant.

  Such insults and confrontations as this have been rare where I worked in the police headquarters building itself in the past seven years. From the beginning, I realised I could never win with reason and so avoided even potential daily conflicts, retreating within myself, safe in my protective routine and Intelligence office, no contact with anyone save a very few. I arrived at work early, left late, kept to myself, perhaps gained the respect and even some liking from my own small team and lived the life of a recluse, seeing only my mother, Sam, Jerry, very few others on any regular basis. As the Head of Intelligence, my help had also often been needed for major operations or by C.I.D.. Senior officers from Sergeants and above had to be courteous if they wanted requests dealt with at all speedily, or thought they had to.

  I think I had also gained grudging respect for making the Intelligence and Records Department into a modern fast response digital resource. Some on high had even given veiled praise for the unit’s innovations. We had begun gathering background information proactively on trends locally in housing, employment, schools, colleges, business, technology and leisure and looked to see possible criminal developments that might emerge. It had helped break up gang fights between schools, domestic violence incidents on one estate in particular and some fraud activity. We had also persuaded officers to write a monthly report of ‘Impressions’ on things going on, characters in their geographical areas or special interests, and problems they could foresee. Such approaches had meant that some crimes could be and had been predicted and prepared for. I say ‘we’. Joint ideas but my much-liked deputy, Sergeant Amy Grayling was the public face, schmoozing the troops and hierarchy, attending most of the policy meetings and conferences. I gladly let her take the plaudits and indeed from today my position as Head of Intelligence. It is out of character but I text her ‘Good Luck.’ I wanted her to come across and join my new squad but promotion to acting DI, and the lure of a normal working week to be with her accountant husband and two young children, had decided her to stay where she was. Who could blame her?

  I needed to make the move back to detecting for reasons of my own, she did not.

  From tomorrow, I am to work out in the world on a daily basis, interacting with the broad mass of police officers from PCs upwards, all of whom are on my side. Supposedly. Things will be vastly different from Intelligence. Neither the mass of colleagues, nor indeed the public, will be slow to show their true feelings towards me in word and deed. It’s already begun. Duane Rudd. Now I am an active Detective Chief Inspector, Head of the newly created Major Crime Team 2. Now I need the respect, or at the very least the obedience and support of the mass of officers.

  Given all that, such insubordination as has just happened cannot be ignored. It must be crushed, instantly. The question is how? Whether to face them down purely through rank or the complaints procedures or reason? None of those will help. Rank is artificial, procedures too long winded, we are beyond reason.

  I have left the final decision on how to respond until the first incident. Of course, I have always known. My own very direct way has always worked in the past. No time like the present to make it clear that I am back and mean to stay so. On my own terms.

  ***

  Hearing the insults and the snorts of derisive laughter that follow before Sergeant Edgar Brocksom belatedly intervenes, I stop instantly, still facing Odling who is now busy barking orders to a tall woman DC. My back is to the line of officers five yards behind. I turn slowly as the line continues to inch forward, their attention again fully on the ground after the command to concentrate. The line straggles to a motionless halt of itself then as the constables and Community Support Officers, some staring down their magnifying pole equipment, some kneeling on haunches, realise that I have not moved on.

  As one, their gaze leaves the ground and rises to stare coldly at my half-turned profile. Save for two young and fresh PCs whose faces seem just openly interested, after all they are up close and personal with one of the County’s few infamous figures.

  Turning fully back, the cold pierces me as ‘could blows the wind frae east to west’ for Scottish poet Robbie Burns. My eyes sweep the line right to left, from verge side to verge side, as they all stand. I want to make my gaze understanding and pleasant, but know it is bleakly sharp. Even if they try to meet my stare with a sneer or open hatred, most in the end shuffle and wither. The young female PC steps back on seeing my eyes rest on her.

  My look pans slowly back along the line, left to right, finishing on Sergeant Brocksom who pointedly stares at a point way above my head. None now meet my gaze, save for PCs Smith and Marshall who stare determinedly back from the middle of the row, showing off to the two women PCs they stand beside. Their body language dares me to respond to their heavily whispered insults. They know I wi
ll have recognised their voices, ones known and loathed since childhood.

  I walk slowly back past the searchers, and then along behind the line of men and women, avoiding the evidence markers. I stop behind Smith and Marshall, slouching side by side and relishing their moment of fame.

  “A word with PCs Smith and Marshall, Sergeant Brocksom?” I say pleasantly, drawing the two men back out of their group and towards me with a touch on their arms. I lead them five yards distant behind the line and out of the others’ vision. Brocksom dare not object, and stands the line sharply to attention.

  All of the squad are staring ahead, ears straining. A muted splash and a light curse comes as a forensics officer tumbles in the ditch. No one moves. The wind quietens. I can hear the background noise of cars being stopped at the cordons, imagine drivers being asked if they pass that way regularly, have seen anything untoward recently and then being allowed to complete a three or five-point turn and retreat after their details and registration number are quietly noted.

  Only Brocksom and Odling are facing us three as I quietly assess the two men, each several inches taller and far bulkier than I. Smith looks down, brazenly hostile and aggressive, projecting his whole size and weight in arrogant dismissal, welcoming a public confrontation to enhance what he sees as his own unerring reputation for righteousness. Marshall is just following his friend and glorious leader, he knows not where or why, but tries to take the same attitude.

  Instinct and control is all. I look amiably at my old ‘playmates’ from D'Eynscourte village school, then change to a frown of quizzical pity for a long minute. Time stretches out and the squad fidgets as do these two. It is doubly cold, just standing. The confidence of the dynamic duo ebbs slightly as they dredge reason up through their overwhelming need to be noticed. Even as I, as the far senior officer, abruptly and loudly call them to attention by name. Crisis makes you think clearly, even if too late. Both realise that a public and then official reprimand for a clear breach of discipline, even to such a universally loathed officer as me, could harm their already stuttering careers. Jobs, pensions can always be lost even if it is unfair. Officialdom follows its own purposes, especially for those with poor track records like these. Even I will have friends in the force, somewhere. I must have, how else can I have survived this long or at all. I can see the thoughts clash with anger to crease their brows.