“Hell.” McLaren strode to Nigel, who was leaning his head against the wall. As this angle, with the light falling full on the older man’s face, the bruises and the cut beneath his eye showed up markedly against his pale skin. Turning a chair to face his friend, McLaren sat and leaned forward, as though having dropped in for a chat. His words came quietly but firmly, “You’ll be fine. You’re not going anywhere with Detective Harvester. You’ve done nothing wrong. You defended your and your wife’s lives against an armed intruder. Please don’t worry. We’ll go see Maureen when they’ve got you patched up, shall we?”
During this conversation, Harvester had stepped out of the room, but he now returned, his face red and a smile playing about the corners of his lips. He walked up to McLaren but stopped several feet from him. “I’ve just radioed for a Superintendent to be turned out, McLaren.” He paused, watching McLaren’s face for the full effect of his words.
McLaren rose to his feet, the knuckles of his right hand pressing against the tabletop.
Harvester continued, smiling more broadly now that he had McLaren’s attention. “I’m making an allegation against you. Perverting the course of justice. We’ll see what the Super has to say about that.”
McLaren grabbed a handful of Harvester’s jacket with his right hand and seized his right upper arm with his left hand. Turning Harvester around, McLaren stepped behind him. As he dragged Harvester outside, the constables rushed to the doorway, wanting to witness history. McLaren dragged Harvester across the flagstone patio, kicking aside chairs and tables as he made for the edge of the garden. The few constables outside stopped their activities and parted like the Red Sea for Moses as McLaren flung Harvester around to face him. Taking a deep breath, McLaren slammed his right fist into Harvester’s jaw, sending him reeling backwards into the rose bushes.
“You should thank me, Harvester. I’ve just instigated a family reunion for you.” He snapped off a broken rose stem, sniffed it, and threw it at the man. “Harvester’s your name. Now you’re with the rest of your kind, the arachnid harvesters, the spindly-legged predators who infest bramble patches. How’s it feel to be home?”
Harvester yelled in pain and tried to stand up; McLaren remained rooted to the spot, his chest rapidly rising and falling, his face flushed. Towering over the sprawled-out man, McLaren growled his order. “And about Nigel Forester…he’s going nowhere. Understand?” He waited for a moment, sizing up the man at his feet.
Harvester lay where he was, staring up at McLaren.
McLaren turned abruptly, pushed his way through the coppers who were hesitantly moving toward Harvester, and thundered back into the pub.
The scene faded from McLaren’s eyes as he stood by his bedroom window. The night had darkened while he had relived that terrible event more than a year ago. The moon had disappeared behind a bank of clouds while he lost himself in the memory, and a cool wind had sprung up from the west. In spite of the warmth of the June night, McLaren shivered. He rubbed his forehead, telling himself it had all been for the best, that he was glad to be shut of a department whose Chief Constable eventually had sided with the extremist councilors and a ranting media out for blood. But he was lying to himself. He had loved the job, still loved the job. Regardless of the constables’ testimony that the poker had never been bent or bloody, that it was Nigel Forester’s word against a known career burglarall of which left Harvester out on the proverbial limb and madder than ever with McLarenMcLaren had been suspended from duty.
He slammed his fist into the wall. When the Chief Constable had offered him the option of resigning from the Force instead of being prosecuted for assaulting a police officer and perverting the course of justice, McLaren knew a brick wall when he saw one. Knew the handwriting on that wall, too. Knew he’d forever be a marked man, and back in uniform in days.
He had resigned in an overwhelming rush of sadness and anger, the hurt of being torn from the CID branch, which he loved, as painful as a loved one’s death. Now, he was reliving that fiasco of justice, that moment of Harvester’s triumph. It was something he had no desire to unearth.
A fox barked in the darkness and the moon emerged from its nest of clouds before McLaren wandered to his bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress, his toes burrowing into the deep pile of the lambskin throw rug, his heels resting on the cool wooden floor. It’s been a year, he reminded himself. Surely it’s time to get on with my life, to mend the pain. If not for my own good, then for Dena’s.
He opened the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet and rummaged within its depths. His fingers felt the cold, metal photo frame and wrapped around one of its corners as he pulled it from the drawer. He opened the easel stand on the frame’s back and set the photo on top of the cabinet, next to the alarm clock. Sitting in the darkness, he stared at the photo. He needed no light to see Dena’s brown eyes, or envision her smile. Hadn’t he conjured up her face countless nights this past year when the nightmares had awakened him, when he had downed too many beers?
Telling her picture that he’d think about the two of them, he lay down. The night closed around him, obscure and soothing. The wind caressed his bare chest, cooling his anger. A flash of lightning crackled beyond the oak. In that second of near-blinding brightness, Dena’s face jumped out from the darkness, seemingly alive and blessing him with her smile. Then, as the blackness reclaimed the land and his room, he turned onto his side, facing her portrait. He lay again in the darkness, aware of the storm, the smell of rain approaching downwind. And as he drifted off to sleep, he thought that the storm mimicked exactly his life at the moment.
The ringing that awakened McLaren later that morning at half past seven was not from his alarm clock. He hadn’t set it the previous night. The obnoxious noise came from his phone on the bedside stand. Forcing his eyelids open, he cautiously sat up, testing his stiff back and his aching head. The phone rang again as he rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and he muttered “Yeah? What?” to the unknown caller. His tone and temperament changed when Jamie Kydd’s cheerful voice sang into his ear.
“Late night, Mike?” Jamie’s humor was evident in his voice even if McLaren couldn’t see him.
“More like an early morning.”
“Storm keep you up?”
“That and…” He glanced at Dena’s photo and laid it face down on top of the bedside table. I must’ve been drunk last night to get that out, he thought, then ran his left hand through his tousled hair.
“The case bothering you, won’t let you sleep?”
“Yeah. I’ve a lot to think about.” He pushed the photo frame slightly farther away from him.
“Well, here’s another little something to think about.” Jamie paused, as though bracing for his friend’s explosion of gratitude. “In regards to getting that information you wanted…”
McLaren sighed heavily. “Don’t tell me.”
“I thought you wanted to know. You rang me up.”
“I meant don’t tell me you got caught lifting a file or something.”
“What kind of detective do you think I am? No, don’t answer that.”
“Did you get anything, then?” He ran his fingers through his hair, once more astonished at the depth of Jamie’s friendship.
“If you haven’t looked at your email yet this morning…”
“Bloody hell.”
Jamie grinned. “I’ll take that as a ‘not yet,’ shall I?”
“Get on with it. Did you get anything or not?”
“I emailed those reports to you.”
“I must be still half asleep. You emailed the reports? How?”
“Simple. I scanned them on the computer, saved them as .pdf files, and emailed them as attachments.”
“Must’ve taken hours.”
“Well, it did take a while.” Jamie exhaled heavily, but McLaren wasn’t fooled.
“Acting’s not your strong suit, Jamie. Cut to the chase.”
Jamie muttered something about a genius never bein
g appreciated in his home town. “I stayed late, after my shift ended. Not too many lads around the station in the wee small hours so I had a better chance of getting the files and scanning them. I, uh…” He hesitated momentarily, as though wondering how to phrase this bit of news. “You didn’t get the entire report. I sent you the pages I thought were most pertinent.”
“Smashing!”
“I also emailed you a few photos of her body…in situ and of the area itself. I just chose a few to send.”
“Sure. I didn’t expect the whole bloody file. That would’ve taken hours to scan and send. As it is, I hope my damned computer doesn’t crash. Thanks.”
“Uh, Mike…I can tell you now, if you’d like, where her body was found.”
McLaren withdrew a pad of paper and pen from the drawer in the nightstand. “Yeah?” He wrote swiftly, making no comment as his friend related the details. When Jamie finished, McLaren sank back against the bed’s headboard and stared at his notes. Half mile out…right side of road…in a depression two yards from the road’s edge…stone barn searched…victim’s right shoe missing…“This is first rate, Jamie. Ta. I’ll get to those emails right away and let you know what I find at the barn.”
“I just hope it’s more than straw and stones.”
The ballistics report stated that the bullet that killed Marta was a .38 caliber fired from a revolver. Most likely a Webley. The pathologist reported that although casino personnel stated Marta had been drinking that evening, the alcohol was no longer in her blood. Marta had been shot at close proximity, perhaps six to ten inches. Gunpowder markings were consistent with that distance, the particles embedded into the skin. Death was instantaneous, or close to it. Fixed lividity and other usual indicators that help pinpoint a time of death could not be used due to the advanced decomposition of the body. The entomologist established the presence of ticks, spiders and several species of flies, as well as maggots, on the remains…
McLaren looked up from the computer monitor. Insects, especially flies, went through life cycles that could be clocked, from laying eggs, to developing larvae, to adulthood. Knowing the type of insects on and under the body, the quantity of a specific insect, and the stage of the life cycle pointed the finger at the time of death. Insects were a witness more reliable and unvarying than the human kind. Especially in this case, with Marta’s body lying for over a week in the open, in the summer heat.
He went back to the report. ‘Although not conclusive, death probably occurred the night of her last casino outing. The insects’ activities are consistent with the time…’
He next looked at the photos of the stone barn, the immediate vicinity, and Marta’s body in situ, and printed them out. After logging off, he laid the photos on the kitchen worktop, next to his keys. Then, whistling, he went to take his shower.
The storm of early morning left a blanket of mist that still hugged the valley and wallowed in depressions in fields and gardens when McLaren left his house at nine o’clock. A chill laced the air and condensation coated the cooler surfaces such as outdoor water pump handles, farm machinery, and ungaraged cars. The small willow at the edge of his garden took on a phantom-like quality, its leaves a green smear beneath a wash of gray. There was a stealthy movement as a bough waved faintly at McLaren and a tendril of mist swirled past the dark lump of the cypress. A bird chirped somewhere in the obscurity, then everything was still.
Except for McLaren’s whispered “Damn.”
As he approached his car, he saw it. Eleven empty beer bottles set up like a frame for tenpin bowling. The extra bottle was placed in front of the bottle at the triangle’s apex, which pointed toward the car’s windscreen. A twelfth bottle lay on its side, pinned beneath one of the windscreen wipers. Deliberate. A mute message.
He returned to his kitchen, dug around in the closet and located a pair of rubber washing-up gloves and a large paper sack. Back outside, he pulled on the gloves and placed the bottles inside the sack. Perhaps Jamie could work on them off duty, he thought, then folded the top of the sack closed. He stood there for several seconds, staring at his car, aware of the weight of the bottles. Again he asked himself the unanswerable question: what was going on and who was doing this?
The gravel area where the car was parked held no hints. No footprints, no castoff shirt button, no blood spatter. Still, the detective in him was too strong to ignore, and he carefully stepped away from his car and walked around it in a wide circle. Nothing.
He set the bag on the car’s passenger seat, intending to drop it by Jamie’s house later in the day, then got into his car, and drove to Noah’s Ark. But the bottles haunted him all the way to Chesterfield. Was he the trapped, fallen beer bottle?
The animal shelter was a modern one-story building of steel and white-painted cement blocks. A row of windows near the roofline encircled the structure as a strand of pearls claimed a woman’s neck. McLaren parked beside a panel van that declared ‘Noah’s Ark’ in brilliant green paint along its side. He swallowed another sip of coffee before settling the travel mug into the cup holder, and opened the door.
The mist had burned off in the thirty-minute drive to Chesterfield, leaving the air warmer and hinting at a still-warmer day. Blackbeech Drive, on which the animal shelter was located, hummed with traffic this Saturday morning, and McLaren wondered if the neighboring businesses saw enough custom to keep them going. He locked his car and wandered up to the shelter’s front door. An electronic tone, like a doorbell, sounded toward the back of the reception area as he entered.
A young woman barely out of her teens straightened up from her bent-over position behind the front desk. Giving McLaren a smile, she asked if she could help him.
The sunlight slanted through the glass insets bookending the front door and the row of windows near the ceiling. Nice, he thought, noticing the pale blue walls and white ceramic floor tile. Bright, airy, cheery. Nice for the animals, too, if the upper windows circle around toward the pen area.
Then, he suddenly knew they did. Any place touting itself an ark and shelter would see to the comfort of its animal residents. And that included a light, airy spot for the cages. He took in the pamphlet stands and signage for dog training classes before grabbing a blue poker chip from the supply in the plastic cube on the countertop.
A clever bit of marketing, he thought, reading the advertising printed on the chip. ‘Don’t gamble with your pet’s health. Noah’s Ark.’ The other side gave the shelter’s name, address and phone numbers. Other colors of chips mixed with the blues in the cube. He pulled out a red chip. ‘When the chips are down, call Noah’s Ark.’ The emergency phone number ran in bold print beneath the slogan.
The black chip announced ‘Stack the odds in your pet’s favor. Noah’s Ark health care.’ All three chips gave the same shelter information on the back. He smiled again at the slogans, stuck the chips in his trousers pocket, and leaned against the edge of the counter, focusing on the woman’s face.
“We’re offering a discount,” she said, seeing what had held his interest. “It’s good until Saturday week on spaying and neutering of your animal if you adopt one through us and have our veterinary staff perform the procedure.” There was an accent to her voice that McLaren couldn’t pinpoint. “Plus,” she added, getting no response, “we’re giving coupons for £25 worth of pet food, which is good for cat, dog, or rabbit. The coupons become active upon animal adoption. They’re redeemable at most supermarkets, pet supply stores, or here at the shelter. Does that interest you?” She smiled again, this time showing perfect, white teeth.
“Ordinarily, yes.” McLaren smiled back. “But I’m never home to let a dog out, I’m allergic to cats, and I have still nightmares about Harvey.”
She looked blank.
“The six foot tall invisible rabbit. James Stewart starred in the film.”
She shook her head. Too young, McLaren thought. Still, there are the classic flicks on the telly.
“We have several nice birds,” she continu
ed, unruffled. “An African gray parrot, several budgies, a cockatiel…”
“I appreciate your assistance with the pets, but I’d like to talk to you about another matter, if you can spare me a few moments.”
“If it’s a matter of your pet’s health,” she began before McLaren interrupted her.
“I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
The girl glanced around the area. Seeing no one who wanted her, she nodded hesitantly. “What’s this in regard to?”
McLaren had begun walking slowly to a corner of the reception area and she followed. They stopped beside a shoulder-high cardboard display stand offering sample packets of various dry pet foods. McLaren turned so his back was toward the corner and he faced the front door. Old habits die hard, he thought before returning his attention to the girl.
After introducing himself, he explained why he needed to talk to her. She frowned and pressed her lips together, and for a moment McLaren feared she would refuse to help. A dog barked from the kennel area behind them, enticing several more dogs to answer before she shook her head.
“Bad business, that.” She plunged her hands into her skirt pockets and shifted her body slightly so that a shaft of sunlight illuminated the top of her head and brought out the red streaks among the brunette strands.
“Were you here when the money was stolen? That was last”
“A year ago this past May.” She shook his head again. “It was so terrible.”
“So you were working then. Did you know Verity Dwyer?”
“Yes to both questions. I’ve been here for three years.”
“This seems a nice place to work, taking care of animals.”
“I love it. The only downside is becoming attached to our residents. The animals.” She smiled and glanced toward the room where the animals for adoption were held.
“Did Verity like it here?”
“Yes, as far as I knew.”
“You weren’t particularly friends, then.”
Cold Revenge Page 12