Heat Trap

by JL Merrow

  I got the local cab firm to give me a ride up to the Dyke, planning to walk down into the village and retrieve the Fiesta from the Four Candles car park after I’d eaten. It’d be a bit of a trek, but I was in the mood for some fresh air and exercise.

  “Want to come in for a quick one?” I asked Al, the driver, when he dropped me off.

  “Nah, cheers mate. Against my religion, innit?”

  I stared at him. “Al, you don’t have a religion. Unless private enterprise counts.” As well as driving the cabs, Al also ran a thriving sari concern that Mrs. Al manned the till and did the books for, and the kiddies helped out in after school. They were all nominally Catholic, but I hadn’t noticed any of ’em beating a path to St Thomas’s church on a Sunday.

  “That’s what I mean. Sitting around drinking when I could be making money? That’s a cardinal sin, that is.” He grinned and waved me off.

  I ambled into the pub and made my way over to Marianne at the bar. She looked like she could do with a bit of cheering up, so I smiled at her. “All right, love?”

  “Tom,” she said, and stopped. She looked a bit distracted for a mo, then rallied just as I was starting to get worried. “What can I get you?”

  “Anything good on the specials today?”

  She cast a guilty glance at the blackboard, which was uncharacteristically bare. “Sorry. We’re a bit… But the regular menu’s on.”

  “No worries. I’ll just have a pint of Squirrel and a cheese ploughman’s.”

  Marianne nodded and scribbled in her notepad.

  “At least that ex of yours is giving you a bit of space today,” I said to make conversation.

  Marianne seemed to shrink in on herself, and she looked around skittishly. “No, he’s…he’s not been in lately.” She dropped the notepad and crouched down to pick it up. “I’ll just take this through to the kitchen,” she said and scurried off without looking at me.

  Brilliant. I’d managed to catch her in the five minutes a day she wasn’t worrying about Carey, and what did I do? I had to go and remind her about him. Well done, Paretski. Still, it had to be a good sign that he wasn’t around. Maybe he’d realised he wasn’t helping his case, hanging around all the time and making her nervous.

  When I’d finally got my pint, I took it over to a table in the corner and scanned the place, trying to work out if there was anyone else around here who might have been giving her grief. It all seemed to be locals, though.

  Maybe she was just a bit uncomfortable manning the place on her own, I decided. Because by the time I’d munched my way through my cheese, crusty bread and pickled onions—let’s face it, there was no one right now who’d give a monkey’s about my breath stinking—the Devil’s Dyke was still conspicuous by her absence.

  “Boss not in today, love?” I asked Marianne next time she had a free moment.

  “She had to go see someone,” Marianne said distractedly, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. It sprang back immediately, but she didn’t seem to notice. Then she leaned over the bar with a brittle smile. “Um, Tom? Have you got a mo?”

  Since I’d been spending my lunch hour with a leisurely pint, I couldn’t exactly pretend I was rushed off my feet. “Course I have. Is it that tap in the ladies’ loo playing up again?”

  She shook her head, blonde curls bouncing. “No, the tap’s fine. It’s just, there’s this funny smell in the cellar, see? And I think it’s getting worse. Could you just have a look and check it’s not the drains?”

  I frowned. “If your drains have burst, it’s the water company you’ll need to speak to. And shouldn’t we wait to talk to Harry?” Harry wasn’t the sort of person to put up with people—even mates—poking around her nether areas without permission.

  “She won’t be back for a couple of hours,” she said. “And I’m worried it’s going to start noticing out here, see? Someone might call environmental health, and we’d get into trouble.” Marianne pulled out the big guns, opening her eyes wide and leaning over so far I was worried she’d topple right over the bar. Her being a bit top heavy and all. “Please?”

  I didn’t much feel like it—but on the other hand, it wasn’t like I had anything to rush home for, was it? Not with me and Phil on the out-and-outs. I wondered what he’d been up to since I’d last seen him, and if he’d noticed a bloody great gaping hole in his life.

  Then I told myself to stop being so bloody melodramatic. It was just a tiff, right? We’d get over it.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll give it a look-see.”

  There might have been a bit of self-interest in there too—call me squeamish, but if Harry had sewage from a burst drain seeping into her cellars, I’d just as soon know about it before I ordered another pint and a ploughman’s.

  Marianne smiled her relief. “Thanks, Tom. You’re a treasure.”

  So I finished my pint and followed her down the steps to the cellars, half my mind on whether I’d still got the number for that bloke in pest control, in case it turned out to be a dead rat or something.

  Which, funnily enough, wasn’t too far from the mark.

  Although believe me, I wasn’t laughing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  James Dean didn’t have a bloody clue what he was on about. In my experience, which isn’t as limited as I’d like it to be, nobody has a good-looking corpse.

  Grant Carey certainly wasn’t bucking the trend. He looked smaller, dead. Insignificant. Like a kid who’d been playing the tough guy, until some bigger kid came along and cut him brutally down to size. And his face… I was going to see his face in my dreams. Bloated, blackened—and Christ, the stench. Thinking of it only made it worse, and I backed off, my hand over my mouth, trying not to breathe.

  “What is it? Did you find something?” Marianne’s voice was shrill and nervous.

  I grabbed her hand and carried on moving. I’d have had to draw in a breath to say anything, and I just couldn’t. Dragging Marianne along with me, I went up those bloody stairs faster than Merlin when he hears the can opener—Jesus, God, don’t think about eating—through the kitchen door and out into the sunshine. Then I leaned against the wall, my head down and my hands on my knees, and gasped in lungfuls of blessed fresh air while I waited for my stomach to stop heaving.

  “What did you find?” Marianne kept asking.

  “Oi, what’s going on here?” A bloke I knew by sight had come through from the bar and followed us out—probably to find out where the bloody hell his next pint was coming from—and was staring at us. “Somefin’ wrong?”

  I gave him a twisted smile. “Just a bit, yeah. Christ. Call the police, will you?”

  “What, you had a break-in?” he said over Marianne’s “The police? Oh my God!”

  “Yeah.” I had to clear my throat. “Some bastard broke into the cellar and died there.” Shit. Harry was going to kill me for dragging the name of her pub through the mud.

  Marianne put a shaky hand on my arm. “Did… Did you see who it was?” She went a bit pink. “I mean, was it anyone you seen before?” She went even pinker.

  I frowned. Shit, was she going to have hysterics if I told her? I mean, the way she’d been talking about him all along, she might just be glad he was dead, but she’d been with him a long time. Maybe she still cared a bit? Like he’d still cared for her? “Er, yeah. Sorry, love. It’s Carey.”

  “What, Grant Carey?” the bloke from the pub interrupted. “Short lad, up from London? Looks a bit like you?”

  He fucking well didn’t anymore. I swallowed. “Yeah. You know him?”

  Pub-bloke shrugged. “He seemed like an all right sort. What’d he die of, then?” He laughed and nudged Marianne just below her left boob. “’Ere, I hope it wasn’t the beer.”

  I stared blankly at him, while Marianne gave a loud sob and disappeared back inside. “Police?” I reminded him, giving a pointed look a
t the phone he was holding.

  “Oh. Right. Yeah. Sorry, love,” he yelled through the door and finally punched in the numbers.

  By the time he’d finished giving all the details, with so much bloody backwardsing and forwardsing between me, him and the operator I was wishing I’d cut out the middle man and just rung Dave Southgate, Harry had got back from wherever she’d been.

  She stomped up from the car park and gave me a look that didn’t bode well for my future welcome up at the Dyke. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve got a problem,” I said, managing to stand up straight. “Grant Carey’s in your cellar. Dead. Well dead. Cops are on their way.”

  She didn’t look surprised, but then I’d seen Harry open a gag gift of a live frog that hopped out of the box and onto her arm without turning a close-cropped hair. She folded her arms. “And we know this because?”

  “’Cos Marianne was worried about the drains and sent me down there to have a butcher’s, all right?”

  There might have been a slight softening of the granite that made up her features. “Christ, that little turd. Even when he’s dead, he’s a pain in my arse. Drink? You look like you could use one.”

  “Yeah. Just a beer, okay?” I added in case she was planning to dose me up on the hard stuff, which really didn’t feel like a good idea right now.

  “Wait there.”

  Harry went back inside.

  Pub-bloke cleared his throat. “Right. I’ll be off, then,” he said and scarpered.

  I should probably have got his name and address, in case the police wanted to talk to him, but chances were Harry knew who he was. And anyway, all he’d done was make a phone call.

  Harry was gone long enough I reckoned she must have gone down into the cellar to take a look for herself. Or maybe she was just checking on Marianne. At any rate, she came out a few minutes later with an opened bottle for me and one for herself. Not that she looked like she needed it. Feeling honestly a bit narked that she was taking this so much better than I was, I took the bottle with a nod of thanks and slid down the wall to sit on the ground with my back to it. I sipped the beer cautiously, not sure how my stomach was going to take it, but it went down beautifully, the familiar, bitter taste washing away the cloying, fetid sweetness in the back of my throat. “Cheers,” I said, feeling a bit better.

  Harry nodded, her face stony as she loomed over me. She was probably thinking about how bad this was going to be for business—after all, they closed places down if they found a dead rat, didn’t they? God knows what they did for a dead man. Maybe Phil would know—God, Phil. I had to tell him about this. I might not be too happy with him at the mo, but I was pretty sure dead bodies trumped domestics. And he needed to know, what with the case and everything.

  I was not just desperate for a bit of comforting from my bloke, all right?

  I fumbled my phone out of my pocket, and managed to hit his number on the second or third go.

  “Tom?” Phil’s voice, when he answered, was such a bloody relief I’d have been embarrassed to admit it. He sounded a bit wary, like he was worried what I was about to say.

  Hah. Little did he know.

  “Yeah. I’m up at the Dyke. With Harry.” I pulled myself together. “You can stop worrying about how to nail something on Carey. Someone else has done the honours. He’s here. Dead.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You called your mate Dave?”

  “Someone called the police. Dunno who they’ll send.”

  “You found him?”

  “’S what I do, innit?” I tried to smile, but it felt so weird I decided it wasn’t worth the bother. “He was in the cellar.”

  “How’d he die?”

  “Dunno. Didn’t exactly stick around to examine the body.”

  “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  “Trust me, I’m sure.” My stomach gave a gentle heave at the memory. “Been dead a day at least, I’d reckon.” Even in this heat, it’d have to take a while to get him looking—and smelling—that bad, wouldn’t it? I thought about it.

  Then I decided I really didn’t want to think about it anymore.

  “Shit.”

  That was when I heard the sirens. “I’m gonna have to go.” I hesitated, then said it anyway. “See you tonight?” I hoped I didn’t sound as pathetic as I felt.

  All right, maybe I was just a little bit desperate for some comforting.

  If Phil noticed anything, he was kind enough not to mention it. “I’ll come round to yours. And Tom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take care, okay? I’ll see you tonight.”

  Something ice-cold in the pit of my stomach thawed, just a bit, as I hung up.

  Must be the beer. I took another swig.

  Yeah, that was it. The beer.

  I spent an exhausting couple of hours at Dave’s police station, drinking crap vending machine coffee and cursing the dodgy air-conditioning along with everyone else. By the time they’d finished with me—and this being a suspicious death, it was all by the book, so I had to deal with junior officers who didn’t know me from Adam and weren’t particularly disposed to like me—I could have recited my story in my sleep. Which given that it was basically just “There was a nasty niff and I found a body,” I could probably have managed without all the intensive rehearsal they seemed to think necessary down the nick.

  Trouble was, they didn’t just want to know about me finding him. They wanted to know everything I knew about the bloke, including our cosy little chat at Phil’s place, and the fact that Harry had hired Phil to discredit him.

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I was dropping Phil and Harry in it by snitching about all this stuff, but what was I supposed to do? The coppers, in my experience, tend to get pissed off if they find out you haven’t been telling them the whole truth, and it wasn’t like I had a chance to talk things over with all interested parties first.

  It was a bit of a bugger.

  And was I supposed to say anything about Mortimer? Not to mention Mrs. M, and her throwaway comment about killing Carey, which had been weighing on my mind more than a little.

  I decided to let that one slide. I mean, I knew she hadn’t meant it, but the police tend to take death threats on the serious side. And Christ, hadn’t her and the kiddies suffered enough?

  Not as much as Carey, though, my mind chipped in with, helpfully.

  The worst part, though, was when I finally got to talk to Dave. I was ushered into his office, where he was sitting glumly at his desk, fiddling with a half-dismantled fan. There were big sweat patches under his arms, and he looked as hot and bothered as I’d ever seen him. The afternoon sun was streaming in through his window, which probably had something to do with it.

  “You ought to get ’em to fix that air-conditioning,” I said, flopping into the visitor chair. I was feeling a bit hot and bothered myself.

  Dave grunted and put the fan down. “They have fixed it. Or so they tell me. Apparently, I can’t have it bearable in here without it being ten degrees below zero in reception. Which we can’t have, obviously, because God forbid any members of the bloody public freeze their bollocks off when they come in to complain about us.”

  “Take it from me, Dave, no one’s going to be complaining about the cold around here.”

  “You say that, but you don’t have to deal with the support staff. You could take the whole bleedin’ lot of ’em to the Sahara bloody Desert and they’d still complain about draughts. I had Lesley from filing in here today moaning about how she had to put on a cardi when she came to work and it wasn’t bloody natural. Natural. I ask you. What’s so bloody natural about having to work in a bloody sauna?” He sighed and fanned himself with a copy of Billboard, which seemed like a funny name for a police magazine until the penny dropped with a clunk. Christ, this heat w
as killing off my brain cells wholesale.

  I wrestled the few survivors into submission and came up with an idea of why I might be still there. “Got a lead on who offed Carey?”

  Dave sighed again, a bit more heavily this time. “We need to talk about your boyfriend.”

  “Thought that sort of stuff was all a bit too much information for you.”

  Dave didn’t laugh. He didn’t even smile. “How much time have you spent with him since last Thursday?”

  I was still in question-answering mode, so I didn’t think anything about it at first. “Thursday… That was the day we went into London. Yeah, that’s right. He came over that evening and stayed over. And I met him for lunch the next day. But hang about, why d’you want to know? ”

  “And after that? Did he spend the weekend at yours?”

  “Some of it. We had Sunday lunch over with Cherry and Greg.” And Mum and Dad, not to mention the elephant in the room.

  Dave nodded. “How’s your sister doing these days?”

  “She’s fine. What do you want to know about me and Phil’s movements for? Reckon we did it? Duffed Carey up between us and bunged him in Harry’s cellar?”

  “Tom, you’re a mate. Of course I don’t bloody think you did it.”

  He didn’t meet my eye, and that emphasis on the you was all too significant.

  “What, you’re after Phil? Come off it. You can’t seriously think he did it.”

  “No? That bump on the head affected your memory, has it? Because I’ve got a very clear recollection of him getting himself arrested for threatening Carey only last week.”

  I stared at him. “That was bollocks. You know it was. Carey made it all up and got the witness to go along with it.” I felt a twist of guilt as I said it, though. Don’t speak ill of the dead and all that. All I could think of was the way Carey had seemed when he’d come round to mine.