by Tin Larrick
THIN MEN, PAPER SUITS
and other stories
by
Tin Larrick
Copyright © Tin Larrick 2014
Smashwords Edition
THIN MEN, PAPER SUITS
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred,
distributed, leased, licensed, publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Copyright © Tin Larrick 2014
Tin Larrick has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s
imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Thin Men, Paper Suits
The Sergeant
Taylor's Dummy
Hell's Teeth
Dead Slow
Mr Solitaire
Cry Havoc
The £50,000 Signature
Detective at the Door
About the Author
****
Thin Men, Paper Suits by Tin Larrick
four of a kind
The minute I overheard his voice, I knew I’d found him. It had the gravelly reserve of a voice that knew it shouldn’t have strayed from the estates. It was out of place.
Like me.
He was sitting in the corner of the bar, looking at nothing. I watched him as he ordered coffee, and for some reason I thought of an animal caged in a zoo – perhaps continually perplexed by the constant stream of onlookers, perhaps not.
The Inn on the Track was quiet. The dark, wood-panelled walls looked like slabs of chocolate. I looked at the clock hanging by the bar. It wasn’t quite ten-thirty. Out on the concourse, the echo of a muffled tannoy could be heard, announcing the imminent departure of the eleven o’clock eastbound from Eastbourne to Ashford. Few stops along the way – straight along the coast towards Europe’s portal, as if the orchestrators of this operation had foreseen the need for a service that could carry passengers for whom speed and distance were of paramount importance. Why else would someone be here, waiting to leave at this dead time of the morning, if they were not running away from something?
I looked back at him. A dull rain had started to throw its steel tacks onto the roof of the concourse; a harsh, invading sound. I tasted my coffee. It was cold. The waitress must have seen my scowl – she hurried over, a mousy woman of forty; stray hair teasing her ears.
“Yes, love? What can I do for you? Sir?”
I broke my glance away from him and looked at the waitress. She noticed where I had been looking.
“Poor love, he’s been here since seven. The manager thinks he’s drunk and wants me to call the police, but he’s just been sitting there, quiet as a cat. He ain’t done nothing, and he’s paid for all of his coffee, so why not leave him? Oh, I’m sorry.”
I had been holding out my cup since ‘Poor...’ She took it from me.
“Same again, love?”
I nodded.
“Are you bound on the eleven o’clock?”
I looked at her.
“Men sitting alone, they’re usually on the eleven o’clock.”
I looked over at him again. His eyes were far off in some other place.
“Don’t call the police,” I said.
She frowned.
“I did ask him which train he was getting, but he didn’t reply. My own thinking is that he ain’t waiting for any train.”
She disappeared behind the corrugated wooden bar to the espresso machine. I slowly rose out of my seat and went to sit next to him.
I stared at him. His face was smooth, young, but his eyes were watery blue. I hoped to find out what had diluted them in that way. I could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing.
The waitress arrived with the two coffees, and gave me a smile as she left. I sipped at mine; he blew on his and left it to cool.
“So, you found me,” he said.
“So it would seem. You’re a long way from home.”
He frowned.
“Town Farm’s just down the road.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
He thought for a moment, and picked up his cup.
“Is that a full house?” he said, slurping at the coffee.
There was a sudden cacophony from outside on Terminus Road – a burst of police sirens, shouts and the thudding of a helicopter. The sound echoed around the dark bar for a moment, and then it was gone.
“I think you know better,” I said.
“You’ll never find him.”
“Maybe not, but I hope you’re wrong.” I stood up. “Shall we?”
He rose, slowly, and shrugged his jacket on. I slipped the handcuffs around his wrists and covered them with my jacket.
“Today,” he said, as I led him out, “is my birthday.”
*
the cannon
I walked down the stone steps of Grove Road police station and blinked in the winter sunlight. Ordinarily, the place would have been heaving, but not today. Every man, woman and dog had been dispatched north to Ashdown Forest, flanked by all the major news networks, in the grim pursuit of one single man. It made me think of a fox hunt.
I felt like I was probably the only one left, but before I got started on the preliminary interviews I wanted to visit the crime scene. I flicked my cigarette and walked down to the garage. I checked out an unmarked Sierra, and headed off towards Pevensey Road.
Since the opening of the new multiplex down at the Crumbles a year earlier, the Cannon, a towering, domed art-deco building, had been out of use. Repeat pattern-posters covered the chipboard hoardings on the windows, and the concrete pillars that gated the now-opaque front doors were wrapped in spirals of garish advertisements. PATRICK SWAYZE | DEMI MOORE | GHOST was still emblazoned on the white Now Showing banner in vivid red letters. It seemed appropriate.
There had been talk of reopening the cinema as a bingo hall, or of razing it to make way for a new block of student halls of residence, or of turning it into some form of chic-modern drinking den. In any event, the site had been fenced off awaiting demolition.
When I arrived it was still ablaze, and didn’t look to be abating any time soon. Trumpton seemed to have it under control, but to my mind it had been burning rather longer than I felt comfortable with.
Both ends of Pevensey Road were cordoned off and every residence within the cordon had been evacuated – the fire had spread beyond the site perimeter fence and was devouring some cars parked nearby. The flames leapt higher and began to climb a yellow crane wedged inside the demolition area in North Street.
More pumps seemed to be arriving every minute – I had counted six when something heavy thumped into my shoulder from behind, knocking me off balance.
“Hey, get out of the way.” The massive firefighter shoulder-barged past me as he ran towards the building to help a colleague with a hose. “No civilians inside the cordon.”
I reached inside my jacket for my warrant card, but he was already gone. There was nothing more I could do until the fire was out, and even then I had to wait for the building to cool sufficiently for the investigators and forensic scientists to get in there.
I wanted to give them a heads-up. Unlike them, I wasn’t starting with a blank canvas. I guess that’s one of the advantages of being a detective. Unlike them, I
knew – not a guess, I knew – they would find a body.
And I knew who it was.
*
hope
I walked through the deserted station to my desk. I gathered up an armful of post and flung it on the floor. I hadn’t sorted through it for several days.
This was my latest trick. To shield Claire and the girls from the crap coming through the letterbox, I had started collecting the post on my way out the door, intending to sort through it at my desk. This was my way of kidding myself that I was tackling it, but deep down I knew that the only thing I had become adept at was ignoring the problem. I hadn’t opened a letter in weeks.
I kicked the mail under the desk. The gesture revealed one or two envelopes with angry red frames – the mark, I knew, of final demands and other vicious last-chances.
The early waking moments, when the world was quiet, were the worst. This was when despair sucked at my conscious and the worry knotted my stomach into a tight ball. As the day progressed and my defences awoke, I found it all easier to ignore, but when I was alone my thoughts threatened to consume me.
I ran through my now-familiar routine of self-comfort, laced as it was with delusion. The promotion exam was only a few months away. If I was successful, and then successful at the boards, and then amassed sufficient evidence in 12 months to justify my confirmation in rank, then I should be looking at a few extra thousand a year. I didn’t know what that would mean in terms of monthly income – I really ought to work it out – and of course there was always the risk that I would be posted out to the arse-end of Sussex – far enough away for the fuel and service costs on the Cavalier to eat up any noticeable increase in my take-home pay.
A tall, lanky man in his mid-forties appeared in the doorway of the office, interrupting my musings. He stuck out a hand.
“DS Proudfoot? Dan Proudfoot? I’m DC Paul Hope. Drafted in from Brighton. Your inspector called in and said you need a hand?”
“I’m honoured. I thought I was the only bugger here. Every single man-jack of East Downs’ finest is counting blades of grass up in Ashdown Forest.”
“This is where the real action is, though. Right?”
I nodded and gestured towards the door. We walked to the CCTV room, and I briefed DC Hope on the developments so far.
In the CCTV room, while we surveyed the bank of video monitors, Barry, the operator, was babbling excitedly as he scoured the footage, trying to assure me that he had been on top of the situation the whole time. The remnants of a Chinese takeaway and several days’ worth of Page 3 lay scattered across the desk, and I hoped he was right.
I leaned in closer to one of the screens, and tapped it. Barry recognised the five men, and switched the cameras to show the narrative of their movement. The men walked away from the old cinema, and out of shot. They appeared on another camera in a street around the corner, and then on another, and then another, before they disappeared out of range.
“Baz, do us a favour. Back up the footage a bit. About an hour or so?” I said.
“Right.” Barry fiddled with the controls. The images rewound themselves, and Barry tinkered with the angles until the old cinema site was in view again.
“Now this is on random rotation,” he muttered. “But it’s on time lapse, so it should compress…” He was talking to himself. The technobabble went over my head.
“There!” I said, jabbing at the screen.
A group of men were walking down Pevensey Road. The image was grainy and jerky, but it was the same group. The same bunch I had in the cells, bar one.
I squinted at the screen. Barry spoke my thoughts.
“Sarge, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s six of them there. I’m no academic, but it looked to me like only five came out.”
“No flies on you, Baz,” I said. I peered at the new addition to the group. He was huge – shaved head, tight commando t-shirt clinging to his bulging frame, combats and boots.
“Gotcha,” I said to myself.
*
hippodrome
“I want to confess.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I’m guilty. Just take my confession and get me out of here.”
“But I don’t understand why you gave up all your mates.” Hope leaned across the table, and rested his chin in his palm in an exaggerated display of relaxation.
“I told you – I want to confess.”
“Son, this is serious,” I said. “Don’t take the piss.”
“Son? What are you – five years older than me?”
I checked my notes, and read his name aloud.
“Adrian Knight. Why do they call you Hippodrome?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
He didn’t speak. He was slouched in his chair, twitching with nervous energy. His jet black hair was swept back, and his slim, muscular body clearly bore great strength. Every muscle stood out under the skin.
“You were seen running through the station concourse at midnight. You reeked of smoke, you had soot stains on your skin, and you had four cigarette lighters in your possession. You were arrested and immediately gave up your cronies – the last one of whom, I might add, we just picked up trying to board a train to London.”
The one they called Hippodrome’s eyes flickered.
“That’s right, my friend. You gave them up, and now we’ve got them.” I sat back in my chair, and gestured towards the tape recorder. “You want to confess? The floor is yours.”
Hippodrome’s eyes flicked to the machine and back to me.
“I… I started the fire,” he said, leaning forward slightly to address the machine.
“Just talk normally, lad. The mike will pick you up,” Hope said.
Hippodrome flushed.
“Go on,” I said.
“I broke into the site, took a lighter, some old polyester shirts, and up it went. That’s it. Guilty, you know.”
“Perhaps you can tell me what kind of accelerant was used.”
“Lighter fluid. I got it from the garage.”
“Our forensic teams have given us a fairly accurate idea of what time the fire was started. I’d like to compare it with the answer of the man in the know, however.”
Hippodrome blanched as he tried to think of an answer.
“I don’t believe a word of it. I think you’re trying to throw us off the scent.”
“That’s perverting the course of justice, lad,” Hope said.
“I still don’t understand why you gave up your crew,” I said. “Where you’re from, that’s worse than death. I can’t quite figure out your angle.”
Hippodrome shrugged, his flimsy cover giving way to a sulk. I sighed, and dropped the file on the table.
“You’re, what, nineteen? Apprentice chippy to the old man? Is that right?”
Hippodrome was silent.
“But you’ve got talent, am I right? You can sing, act, dance, all of it. You could go places, given half a chance.”
Now I had his stare.
“How does that go down in your neck of the woods? A wannabe dancer, born and bred in Shinewater. You even tell anyone?”
I picked a report up from the file in front of me and flicked through it.
“Here we go. Assault ABH. Adrian ‘Hippodrome’ Knight, aged fifteen, got a pasting outside the youth club because word got round that he was auditioning for the local theatre group. No room for it on the wrong side of the tracks, is there? No room to be anything?”
Hippodrome said nothing.
“What’s the matter? Dirty Dancing not get a release round your way?”
Hippodrome stood up, and leaned across the table. Hope stood also. I stayed where I was, keeping my head level but my eyes on him. Hippodrome raised his fist, and slowly uncurled his middle finger. He stuck it out towards me, held it for a few seconds, and then sat down again.
In riposte, I opened the file, and, deliberately slowly, like a poker player showing his winning hand, laid down five Polaroid photographs on the table.
<
br /> Four of them were police mug shots. The fifth was a picture of a pre-teen lad mucking around on a rickety climbing frame in one of the forgotten Shinewater hangouts. The boy in the picture had a red hoody on, and was grinning at the camera, looking back over his shoulder as he navigated the death-trap climbing frame. I had borrowed it from a missing person report made some years earlier – for one reason or another, despite being in and out of police custody, the subject had managed to avoid having his picture taken.
“Four out of five, Hippodrome. I picked up your leader at Eastbourne Central about two hours ago. That’s nearly a full house. Nearly.”
I removed the four mug shots, and pushed the picture of the boy in the red hoody forwards. Hippodrome kept his eyes level with mine, then dropped his gaze to the picture without moving his head.
Then he forgot his bravado, and picked up the picture. He forgot us as well, forgot where he was, and touched the surface of the picture as a thousand memories came flooding back.
I waited until the first prickle of tears quivered in his eyes.
“You want to be someone, Hippodrome? Help us out. Tell us where he is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He accented this last ‘t’ with a click of his tongue, but his voice was wavering.
“Hippodrome… we’ve got all we need. The minute that fire is out, we’ll get in there. We’ll find his body. We’ve already got a case. Make it easy on yourself. Tell us where he is.”
Hippodrome dropped the Polaroid back onto the table, hugged himself, and looked away, over my head.
“He’s the only one I want.” I pushed one of the mug shots forward. This one had been taken the previous night, and despite the harsh artificial police station lighting, it still accurately represented the surly good looks of the young man sitting opposite me.
“Come on, Hippodrome. Help me out, and you could make this the last time you have your picture taken in this place.”