Scene of Crime

by Jill McGown

  He held the phone to his ear, to hear Baz saying hello over and over again. At least he was answering now.

  “Where the hell were you?” Ryan demanded. “I called ten minutes ago.”

  “Sorry, Ry. I was desperate for a pee.”

  “Why didn’t you take the phone with you? That’s the whole bloody point of mobile phones!”

  “Sorry, Ry.”

  Ryan sighed, using both hands on the steering wheel as he negotiated the roundabout and joined the queue of traffic into Malworth, which was moving at half a mile an hour. Why did he feel responsible for Baz? Because blood was thicker than water, he supposed, though no blood had ever been as thick as Baz. He was in court on Wednesday morning because he had been too stupid to get rid of the cannabis he’d just bought when the police had raided the Starland. Ryan had lost count of the number of times Baz had been nabbed for possession. He might even go down for it this time.

  He put the phone to his ear again. “It’s all right, Baz,” he said. “Forget it.”

  “Where are you?” asked Baz. “Do you want me to meet you?”

  “No. Just go home, Baz. I’ll see you at the Starland later on.”

  Ryan terminated the call, and crawled toward the edge of town. One or two of the houses set back from the main road had Christmas lights strung through the trees in their front gardens; it looked nice, he thought. Festive. The town’s Christmas lights, lining the main shopping streets, were okay, too, he supposed, but he hadn’t really expected to have this much time to admire them.

  Once he was approaching the one-way system, traffic ground to a stop. It was three days before Christmas, and Malworth was pretty busy, with the shops staying open for the late Christmas buyers and all manner of people entertaining the shoppers in the glistening streets, but this was a complete standstill. He frowned. Maybe there had been an accident or something. He sat motionless behind a bus and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

  What was the holdup, for God’s sake? He wound down the window, admitting flecks of rain and the sounds of a children’s choir singing Christmas carols, craning his neck to see beyond the bus, to the traffic lights. But there were no traffic lights, and he swore to himself. The lights had failed, and the traffic on the crossroads had no idea who had the right of way. The intersection was a snarl of vehicles. Rain spattered the steering wheel, and he wound up the window again.

  He’d heard that in-car entertainment was a huge industry in Japan, because the city streets had virtually reached gridlock, and he could see that it would be, if they had to do this every day. The owner of the vehicle he was sitting in was not, unfortunately, big on in-car entertainment, and he had only the children’s choir, closer to him now and audible through the closed window, to entertain him. They had gotten through three carols by the time the people in silly costumes who were collecting for some charity, and were turning the traffic jam to advantage by soliciting the drivers for a contribution, got around to him. A large Pink Panther approached him and tapped on the window.

  “What’s it for?” he asked as he rolled down the window once more.

  “Jordan.”

  For some reason he’d expected a man, but it was a woman’s voice, muffled, coming from the pink furry throat.

  “Jordan?” He couldn’t remember seeing anything about Jordan. “Has something happened there, then?”

  Her paw went to her lower jaw and pulled it down a little. “No!” she laughed, her voice clearer. “Little Jordan Taylor. The baby that needs the operation in America?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “It’s Ryan, isn’t it?” she said, as he dug in his pocket and pulled out some change, throwing it into her bucket. “Hello. I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  He stared at the large pink face as she looked down the line of cars, sizing up her next victim. “Hi,” he said, as casually as he could under the circumstances. Who was it, for God’s sake? He didn’t think he really wanted to know. He just wanted out of here. Now.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said. “Have a nice Christmas.”

  “Same to you,” said Ryan, his brain racing. The lights came back on, to an involuntary cheer from Ryan—and everyone else caught up in the jam, no doubt—and he moved forward on the clutch, his heart beating faster. He was held up on red now, but at least could see the intersection beginning to clear.

  He watched the bright pink, slightly bedraggled creature in his mirror as she made her way back to the safety of the pavement. He had no idea who she was; a friend of a friend maybe. Someone’s mother. He replayed her voice in his head, and knew that it was familiar. The way she’d said his name had been familiar, too. Someone who spoke his name—that ought to be a clue, because people didn’t, usually, not in conversation. So who had occasion to use your name a lot? People who told you what to do, he thought. Teachers. Was she a teacher? Could be. But whatever way you looked at it, he had been clocked driving a stolen car by someone who probably wouldn’t approve, and he didn’t like that. He hadn’t been driving the car for ten minutes, for God’s sake, and he’d been stationary for most of them.

  Carl Bignall ducked down to check himself in the rearview mirror, and persuaded a lock of dark hair over his brow so that it seemed to have fallen there of its own accord. He was thirty-five minutes late; Marianne would not be pleased. The car blinked as he locked it, and he ran down the three flights of stairs from the rooftop car park, his step light for the well-built man that he was, sidestepping hoses and planks and tarpaulins as he made his way through the corridors, arriving in the wings to find some man he’d never seen in his life before reading Buttons. He frowned. It wasn’t like Dexter to miss rehearsal. But whoever his stand-in was, he was reading well, which was a refreshing change.

  Maybe Marianne was trying him out, but if so, Carl thought, he was a late starter. He couldn’t be much younger than Denis Leeward. Maybe he’d just moved here—he might have been the star of whatever amateur dramatic society he’d belonged to before. That could create problems, of course, but Marianne would try anyone out and worry about the politics later. The pool of talent wasn’t exactly deep.

  And Judy Hill was reading Cinderella, for some reason. The idea of a middle-aged, pregnant Cinderella appealed to him; it could be the story in reverse. A last-chance Cinderella deserting the faithful Buttons for a one-night stand with a flashy prince. Searching for him when she finds she’s pregnant, only to find that he doesn’t want to know.

  “Carl! You’ve come, you darling man! I’d given you up entirely!”

  “I am so sorry, Marianne,” he said, his hands held up in a gesture of truce.

  “Did you get caught in that frightful traffic jam the others were talking about?”

  “No,” Carl admitted. “I heard about it on Radio Barton, though. It would have been a good excuse, but I cannot tell a lie—I was nowhere near the town center. I got held up at home. Estelle—you know. She wasn’t feeling too good.”

  “Isn’t this her writer’s circle night?” said Marianne.

  “Yes,” said Carl, and smiled. “Of course, maybe she’s just playing hookey.”

  “Dexter’s got the flu or something, darling. This lovely man’s stepped into the breach.”

  “Good for him,” said Carl.

  “The thing is,” said Buttons, joining him in the wings, “did you bring the chimes?”

  Carl smiled. “I did,” he said, pulling the tape from his pocket. “And the ballroom sounds, and the horses’ hooves, and all the rest of it.”

  Buttons shook his head. “On tape?” he said. “Whatever happened to two half coconuts?”

  “It’s all state-of-the-art stuff now,” said Carl, and held out his hand. “Carl Bignall,” he said with a smile. “I cheat and copy what I need from CDs.”

  “Lloyd. I came in with the ersatz Cinders and was commandeered.”

  “Lloyd, of course! I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s nice to put a face to the name at last. Are you thinking of joining us?”
>
  “No,” Lloyd said, shaking his head vehemently. “I’m just helping out.”

  Carl held up the tape. “Judy? Can you read Cinderella and work the sound effects at the same time?”

  “I expect so,” she said doubtfully. “If Marianne doesn’t need me on stage.”

  “But I do, darling,” said Marianne, with a flick of the scarves with which she draped herself. “Oh, I suppose you can read her lines from the wings, but you’ll have to speak up, darling, if anyone’s going to hear their cues. God knows how we’re going to get this production ready on time.”

  Carl stayed in the troupe because he enjoyed acting and writing the script, but he found Marianne very tiresome. With her, the amateur dramatics were not confined to the stage.

  “Has poor Estelle got this awful flu, too, darling?”

  “Oh, no, she’s fine, really. Just a touch of the sniffles.” His answer to Marianne’s belated concern for Estelle’s welfare was far from truthful; Estelle hadn’t ever been fine, and this year she’d been seeing Denis Leeward for depression and God knew what else, making his life hell while she’d been at it. The lies were automatic: he had been telling them for years, and could switch off his domestic circumstances as easily as he could switch off a light. “She’s having an early night,” he said.

  “Good, good!”

  Marianne went into a huddle with Prince Charming, a bit long in the tooth for the principal boy’s part, in Carl’s judgment, but her legs were as good as any he had seen, and that was the important bit when it came to fishnet tights and thigh-slapping.

  “What do you do when you’re not understudying Buttons?” asked Lloyd.

  “I’m an Ugly Sister,” said Carl.

  “He’s a wonderful dame,” said Judy, taking the tape from him. “Really sexy. What do I do with this?”

  “Do you ever wonder about all this cross-dressing in pantomime?” asked Lloyd. “Does it mean anything?”

  Carl shrugged. “I think originally it just allowed a bit of gender-bending in safety,” he said. “Most people have a little bit of the opposite sex in them, don’t you think?” He turned to Judy. “I’ve put all the effects on there,” he said. “All you have to do is play them on cue, then stop the tape. They’re all in order.”

  “Oh, right. So I should mark up a script with the cues.”

  “Yes—I expect madam will want to hear them all, so you’d better put the tape in, and I’ll make sure we’re rigged up to the sound system.”

  “Am I surplus to requirements now?” asked Lloyd. “Or will you want to concentrate on being ugly?”

  Carl opened his mouth, but was forestalled by the voice that floated through from the stage. “Where’s my wonderful substitute Buttons? Are you there, darling?”

  “There’s your answer.”

  Eric Watson’s jeans-clad legs descended from the loft and he pressed the button that folded the ladder neatly back up, closing the hatch, then pulled over the hinged ceiling molding so the hatch disappeared altogether. There was no mistaking that knock; he had given his guests instructions to remain absolutely silent. He smoothed his remaining wisps of hair down, and glanced at the clock as he went downstairs and along the hallway to the front door. Ten to nine—it had taken them long enough to get here, he thought as they banged at the door again. He opened the door to a uniformed constable who looked to be about twelve and a half.

  “Yes?”

  “Constable Sims, Malworth,” said the young man. “We’ve had a report of a suspected break-in at your next-door neighbor’s house.”

  “So?”

  “We can’t get an answer, sir, and we can’t get round the back because the rear gates are locked. We wondered if we could get through from your garden.”

  He was joined as he spoke by another, older constable.

  “Can’t you climb over the back gates?” said Eric. “They’re not that high. You’re young and fit.” He looked at the older one and amended that. “Well, he is, anyway,” he said with a nod of his head at Constable Sims.

  “We think that might be how the intruder entered,” said the overweight one. “We don’t want to disturb any evidence.”

  “You’re actually going to look for some, are you?” But there was no harm in letting them go over the back wall, Eric supposed. He stood aside, motioning down the hallway toward the kitchen. He let Sims pass, but held up a hand when the other one tried to come in. “I don’t think I caught your name,” he said.

  “Warren.”

  “You’re supposed to give your name and station when you approach members of the public.”

  He apologized; Eric allowed him entry.

  “Did you see or hear anything, sir?” asked Sims as they walked through.

  “I heard glass breaking. I thought it was these kids again.”

  “Again?”

  “They come here from the London Road estate. Throwing bottles at the wall and stuff like that. I heard them this teatime. But it sounded a lot closer this time, so I went out and had a look in case it was my greenhouse.”

  “But you didn’t see anyone?”

  “No.”

  In the kitchen, Eric unlocked the back door and took them outside. As they walked out, the security light came on, turning the dark night into near daylight. “There you are,” he said, indicating the low ornamental wall that divided the gardens. “Make the most of it before they wall me in.”

  Sims stepped over the low wall and made his way toward the house. “Window’s broken,” he called over. “I’ll have a look inside.”

  Warren acknowledged that with a wave of his hand but didn’t join him.

  “Aren’t you supposed to go in with him?” said Eric.

  Warren raised his eyebrows. “Know a bit about the job, do you, sir?”

  “You could say that. I did it for eighteen years.”

  “I understand the intruder was seen running away,” the constable said. “I think my colleague can handle it on his own. You were saying something about the neighbors walling you in? What’s all that about, then?”

  “That pile of bricks is for the new, higher wall that my friendly neighbors intend building.”

  “Are you not on the best of terms, then?”

  “Let’s just say we’re not bosom buddies.”

  “And you definitely didn’t hear anything suspicious tonight?”

  “I told you. I heard breaking glass—presumably it was their window. I came out to see if it was my greenhouse, but it wasn’t, so I went back in.”

  “We’ve had a report of a row going on a few minutes before that. Would you know anything about that?”

  Oh, so that’s what he wanted to know. “Are you asking if I had a barney with my neighbors? Do you think I heaved a brick through their window or something?”

  “No,” said Warren. “We’ve had a report of a disturbance, that’s all. I wondered if you heard it, too.”

  “No,” said Eric.

  “And you definitely didn’t see anyone when you came out?” The policeman wandered down the driveway, toward the greenhouse. Eric followed him down.

  “No,” he said. “No one.”

  “And you saw no one hanging around before that?”

  “No.”

  “As I said, we’ve had a report of someone seen running away. You didn’t see anyone on the road at the back here?”

  “No,” said Eric, beginning to lose count of how many times he had said that now.

  Constable Sims appeared again. “Kev,” he said. “You’d better come in here.”

  Eric didn’t say I told you so.

  Tom Finch was working late, catching up on the paperwork that he could no longer ignore. Judy Hill had tried to make him do it on a methodical, regular basis like she did—she said that she had made herself do that right from the start, because she hated it, too. But while Tom could see the logic of doing something you didn’t like for a half an hour or so in the working day rather than waiting until you would be in real trouble if it
wasn’t done, and then going at it for three and a half hours for which you would not be paid, he had never had the self-discipline necessary to carry it out. Besides, you got it done quicker in the evening—the bad guys might do their work under cover of darkness, but it was in the daylight that it was discovered, as a rule.

  He wrote his signature with a flourish on the very last sheet in his tray, yawned, stretched, and scratched his head, startled, as he still was, to discover the strange bristly sensation.

  He’d had his golden curls cut off the last time he went for a haircut; sitting in the chair, looking at himself in the mirror, he realized they had to go if he ever wanted to be taken seriously, and had issued the command to the hairdresser. He had expected an argument during which he could let himself be talked out of it, but she just asked him how short he wanted it, and went at it with the scissors when he had told her to remove as much of it as she liked. He had watched it fall to the ground with a mixture of dismay and satisfaction.

  Now, he looked at the phone when it rang with much the same feeling. If he had left at half past five, he wouldn’t have been here to answer it. He was tired. It was almost nine o’clock, and he’d worked a twelve-hour day. He wanted to go home. But you never knew—it might be some informant with a juicy piece of news for him. He picked it up. “CID, Finch speaking,” he said.

  “Sarge,” said the girl manning the dispatch room, “Malworth attended a suspected break-in at 4 Windermere Terrace, Malworth, and they’ve reported finding the body of a woman in the house. She’d been bound and gagged—it looks as though she suffocated. Their inspector wants Stansfield CID to attend.”

  Tom tried to suppress the little thrill he always got when a really serious crime presented itself. Windermere Terrace was at the moneyed end of Malworth; large town houses that were still owned by people who lived in them, rather than turned into flats. It was his job to investigate crime, of course, and the more serious the crime, the more interesting it was, but he felt that it wasn’t a particularly attractive trait. You shouldn’t be pleased, however professionally, that someone had died.