The late lamented Timothy Trent was in a showroom coffin, which he would have to vacate - Harold had someone else lined up for the morning. Through their tears, the Trents had approved the walnut veneer, the brass-effect handles and the sateen lining, but now it was time to put poor Timothy to bed.
“Let’s be having you,” Harold called out. There was no answer - of course there was no answer - but the undertaker provided one, chewing the words at the side of his mouth like an incompetent ventriloquist. “Ready when you are, Uncle Harold,” he squawked like Mr Punch. Oh, the laughs you could have!
The chuckle was cut short when Harold saw that Timothy Trent was not where he had left him. The walnut veneered, brass-effect-handled, sateen lined coffin was empty. Harold plunged his hand in and patted the upholstery to make sure. He looked under the table and searched all corners.
Timothy Trent was nowhere to be seen.
The back door was wide open.
“Fuck me!” Harold Cole streadied himself against the empty casket. “They’ve fucking nicked him!”
He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief.
What was he going to tell the Trents?
***
Brough and Miller were having coffee in the Serious canteen when Superintendent Ball approached.
“Call’s just come in,” he said with some urgency. “Our dead bloke’s turned up in the park.”
“And is he?” said Brough.
“In the park? I just said so, didn’t I?”
“Is he dead, is what I meant?”
“Ah, well, he is now...”
“What do you mean?”
“Well - oh, it’ll be quicker if the pair of you get down there and see for yourselves. Field Park.”
“I know it,” said Miller. She got up and left.
“She all right?” Ball nodded after the departing detective.
“As rain,” said Brough, although he didn’t sound convinced.
Twenty minutes later, he and Miller were outside the park keeper’s shed, getting in the way of the to-ings and fro-ings of the scene-of-crime team.
“What’s the story?” Brough collared the officer in charge.
The SOCO sucked in his cheeks. “Parky comes back from lunch or wherever, notices his shed has been tampered with, arms himself with a whatsit - a litter picker-upper thingy - you know, one of those spiked stick jobbies? - and goes inside and finds our man stone dead in the chair.”
“Thought they didn’t use them any more.”
“What, chairs?”
“No, the spiked sticks. Thought it was more of a -” Brough made pinching motions with his thumb and forefinger. “You know; what are they called, Miller?”
D S Miller, her hands thrust deep into her raincoat pockets and her mind away with the fairies, gave him an open-mouthed blank look.
“Come on, Miller!” Brough made pincers of his hands and directed them towards her nose. “What are they called?”
Miller blinked. “Crab sticks?” she offered. Both men laughed.
“Ha! No, Miller; nice try, though.”
“The park keeper found the deceased in the chair, you say,” Miller focussed her attention on the SOCO.
“Yes.”
“And there are signs of forced entry?”
“To the shed, yes.” He indicated the ground where a trail of bare footprints were still visible in the remnants of the snow.
“That’s what I meant.” Miller trudged back to her car and got in. Brough gave the SOCO an apologetic grimace.
“She’s not usually this abrupt. But let us know as soon as you identify the poor bastard, will you? I’m guessing it’s our runaway corpse.”
“I heard about that,” said the SOCO with an air of wonder. “Rose from the dead like a Frankenstein, killed the woman who was doing his autopsy and legged it.”
Brough held up a finger to correct a salient point. “It’s not a Frankenstein. You’re referring to Doctor Frankenstein’s creation, often unfairly called a monster.”
“Fuck me, mate,” the SOCO shook his head. “No wonder your partner’s off her cake if you’re like that with her all bloody day.”
He withdrew to the shed, evidently preferring the company of a murderous revenant to that of the prissy detective inspector.
Brough joined Miller in the car.
“Serious,” he said.
Miller said nothing.
4.
“The gang’s all here,” said Superintendent Ball as Brough and Miller ambled into the briefing room.
Detective Constable Pattimore waved sweetly at Brough, who ignored both the wave and the gestured invitation to sit beside the young man. Jason, Brough fumed inwardly, I’ve told you repeatedly: not in the workplace. Brough feared they would have to have that talk yet again.
“Right, then,” Ball clapped his hands. “Let’s get started. Who knows what?”
“Dead bloke’s turned up again, ain’t he?” said Stevens, picking flecks of sausage roll from his teeth but choosing to leave those that had nestled in his moustache unmolested.
“Has he?” said Harry Henry, pushing his loose spectacles back up his nose. “Alive and well, I hope?”
“No, mate,” The downward curve of Stevens’s moustache became more pronounced. “Dead as a dead dodo’s doornail.”
“Ah. Disappointing,” Harry Henry nodded. He looked at the others for support in this view.
“Miller and I attended the scene,” Brough jumped in, “He seems to have got there of his own volition, broke into the park keeper’s shed and therein expired.”
“Hold up, Dave.” Stevens put a hand on Harry Henry’s arm as if the mild-mannered detective was about to do something rash. “This is the same bloke from the autopsy? How do you explain it?”
“The dead don’t just get up and walk,” added Harry Henry. “Do they?”
They looked to Superintendant Ball for reassurance.
“Well?” Superintendant Ball invited Brough to elucidate. “Detective Inspector?”
Brough sat back on the sofa and made expansive gestures. “It’s quite simple, gentlemen, Miller. The man wasn’t dead at first. He escaped from the mortuary, sought refuge in the park where he subsequently died. For the first time.”
Pattimore winked at Brough, who ducked it like a thrown brickbat. Not at work, Jason, fuck’s sake!
“A minute, please!” Harry Henry raised a tentative hand as though asking permission to go for a wee-wee. “They don’t do autopsies on people who aren’t dead. Do they?”
“We all make mistakes,” said Stevens philosophically. “Shit happens.”
“My!” Harry Henry pushed his glasses up his nose again. It was too nightmarish for him to contemplate.
“Here,” said Ball. He pointed a remote control at a projector suspended above their heads. A photograph of a man in his thirties appeared on the white board behind him.
“It’s upside down,” observed Pattimore.
“I can see you have the makings of a fine detective,” said Ball. He stared helplessly at the remote in his hand. Brough got up and took it from him. Two clicks later, the image was the right way up and Brough was back in his seat wearing a smug smile.
“Teacher’s pet,” muttered Pattimore. Another wink. Brough was incensed. He would definitely have to have it out with Jason when they got home.
“Dental records reveal this is Lawrence Pickett, 34, of Flat 216, The Mansions, Dedley. Someone go over there, find out some more.”
Everyone nodded but no one volunteered.
“And now this.” Ball clicked the remote again. Lawrence Pickett’s face dissolved in an unnecessary display of computer wizardry and was replaced by that of another man of similar age. This one had neck tattoos and one of tho
se things in his septum that made it look like his nose was permanently dripping.
“Timothy Trent,” Ball continued, reciting the facts as he knew them in a flat, expressionless manner. “Hit by a van just an hour or so ago Driver didn’t have a chance; he just walked into oncoming traffic.”
“Vehicular suicide...” said Brough. “What’s that got to do with our other man, the Pickett fellow?”
“That’s just it, you see.” Ball’s lip quivered and his eyebrow twitched. “By all accounts, as of last Tuesday, our Timothy Trent here was already dead.”
He waited a moment for that news to sink in before bringing them up-to-speed with the sudden and unexpected death of the apparently healthy and vital Timothy Trent. Brough and Pattimore were seemingly trying to outdo each other with pertinent questions.
What did it say on the death certificate?
Who was the doctor who pronounced him dead and what did he say?
Hadn’t the undertaker noticed anything?
Had he begun the embalming process?
The answers, as far as Ball could provide, were: heart failure; the family’s general practitioner says there’s no history of such demises in the Trent family; and no, the deceased’s will had stipulated no embalming or preservation of any kind was to be, um, undertaken, and he was to be cremated in one of those environmentally friendly cardboard jobbies.
“So,” said Harry Henry, “he turns up at his parents’ place, dies, the family arranges a funeral director, but he gets up and walks out and gets himself run over.”
“Bright side,” Stevens piped up, “Funeral’s already booked.”
“Someone needs to get down to the funeral parlour,” said Ball. “And,” he cast a meaningful look in Stevens’s direction, “- someone tactful needs to approach the parents. Why did he go to their place and not back to his own flat? We’m looking for anything that links these two men apart from age, build and the fact that they’m dead but they won’t lie down. Yes, Harry?”
Harry Henry had raised a worried finger. “They won’t get up again, will they? Do you think?”
Ball blew out his lips like air escaping from the neck of a balloon. “I hope we can rule out that eventuality,” he said. “But I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Zombies!” Stevens enthused.
“You’ll be all right then,” said Miller. “They only go after people for their brains.”
Her remark brought laughter to what had been a bizarre and macabre briefing but the team’s enjoyment was cut short when the briefing room door swung open. There in the doorway was the diminutive but formidable figure of the head of Serious, Chief Inspector Karen Wheeler.
“K - Karen!” Ball gasped. “We weren’t expecting you until next week. Course finish early, did it?”
Wheeler looked at each face in turn before entering the room. Ball backed away, ceding her the floor. Any second now the air would be blue with gratuitous invective; Wheeler was someone who exuded profanities from every pore. Her team eyed her warily, waiting for the shoe to drop and the balloon to go up. No one wanted to be the fan that got hit with the shit.
Chief Inspector Karen Wheeler took in a deep breath. Batting her eyelashes, she smiled her sweetest smile.
“Good afternoon, everybody,” she said in a voice that was uncharacteristically soft and pleasant. “It’s good to be back.”
***
The man with the lopsided smile was waiting in the car park of the Oddfellows Arms. He was smartly dressed and the back of his neck was itching from his new haircut. No matter how you try to prevent it, some of the smaller clippings always work their way under your shirt collar. It was an irritant but the man with the lopsided smile hoped the prickliness was worth it. He hoped his encounter with the seemingly elusive Dickon would be more than compensation for his current discomfort.
The barmaid he had spoken to earlier had left. She had spent twenty minutes at the bus stop opposite the pub before being transported away by a grimy single decker to fuck-knows-where and who-the-fuck-cares.
The man with the lopsided smile watched two snake-hipped young men mince their way indoors. They had accessorised the lavender polo shirts that gave away their status as members of staff with badges and brooches. The evening crew, the man reckoned. Double the staff. Dickon must be expecting double the custom. The man would have to try to sideline him before the pub got too busy and gave Dickon the excuse not to leave the bar.
The man with the lopsided smile had set his sights on Dickon, the flamboyant bar manager of Dedley’s only gay pub.
He didn’t want to let him get away.
***
“Do you know,” Pattimore was rubbing his chin as he contemplated the projected face of Timothy Trent, “I’ve seen him before. Does he look familiar to you, Davey?”
Brough coloured visibly, as though stung by the nomenclature.
“He does a bit, Detective Constable,” he replied with special emphasis. “Can’t quite place him.”
“Easy,” said Stevens. “You’ve both probably bummed him.”
Brough and Pattimore gave him looks of outrage and amusement respectively.
“Our friend Stevens might be onto something here,” Chief Inspector Wheeler interjected.
“I can assure you -” Brough began but a raised hand from his superior cut him off.
“Cast your minds back, gentlemen,” Wheeler smiled, “Perhaps you encountered the deceased at some watering hole that you frequent.” She smiled beatifically, with the patience of Buddha, and waited for the penny to drop.
A light seemed to come on behind Pattimore’s eyes.
“That’s it! Davey, do you remember? A few weeks back in the Oddfellows. We were mocking his cowboy shirt.”
Brough looked daggers at his boyfriend.
“Well, Detective Inspector?” Chief Inspector Wheeler arched a perfectly appointed eyebrow.
“I think you’re right,” Brough conceded.
“I knew it!” Stevens was triumphant. “The bugger’s a bumlord!”
“I’d be willing to wager,” Wheeler brought up the picture of Lawrence Pickett alongside that of Trent, “that our other walking corpse was also of the homosexual variety. Detective Constable?”
Pattimore looked intently at the face of Pickett. “I dunno... He might have been in; I can’t say for certain, like.”
“And you think it’s significant, their homosexualitiness?” chimed in Harry Henry.
“We can’t rule it out. Not at this stage.” Wheeler awarded Harry Henry her most toothsome smile so far. The poor man was quite unsettled and shrank from her attention.
“Somebody’s targeting the gays?” said Stevens. “Or am they all getting up and walking around dead because it’s something else they can add to their list of unnatural practices?”
“Steady on, Stevens!” Superintendant Ball admonished in accordance with some policy document somewhere. Pattimore had to struggle not to laugh out loud.
“Detective Inspector Stevens,” Wheeler’s smile honed in on him like a laser beam, “We shall have an exchange of words in my office when this meeting is over.”
Stevens made a face like a child unjustly served a school detention. He sat back and crossed his arms, scowling.
The rest of Serious swapped glances, glances that asked what the fuck was going on? Where were Wheeler’s volcanic temper and her navvy-shaming invective? It was all decidedly odd.
The lady in question received a phone call and left the room to answer it in peace and privacy. The team rounded on Superintendent Ball.
“What’s happened to the chief?” asked Brough.
“She’s like a fuckin’ pod person,” said Stevens. “Why ain’t she swearing and cursing like normal?”
Ball waved down their outburst. “As you may
have been aware, Chief Inspector Wheeler has been on a training course. Manners and Management.”
“Sounds like a Jane Austen,” said Brough.
“It’s made her into a fucking zombie,” said Stevens. Then he thought about what he had said. He pointed wildly at the screen. “You don’t think her’s one of them, do you? The restless dead?”
“Gulp,” said Harry Henry.
“I can assure you,” Superintendant Ball shook his head, “Chief Inspector Wheeler is very much alive and well. She’s adopting a new managerial style, that’s all. I ask you to bear with her and be supportive. I’m sure it’s pinching her like a pair of new shoes so do try not to be provocative.”
“What you looking at me for?” Stevens was indignant. He addressed the room, “What’s he looking at me for?”
Everyone ignored him.
Chief Inspector Wheeler came back in and soon became aware that all eyes were upon her.
“Is there something on my face?” She touched her cheek.
“No, Chief!” the Serious team chorused as one.
“Let’s crack on, shall we? Pattimore -”
“Yes, Chief?”
“You think there’s a connection between both our dead men and this pub?”
“Possible, Chief.”
“I think you ought to get yourself down there undercover and do some poking around - Stop sniggering, Stevens. And Brough, why are you wrinkling your nose up?”
“Well, it’s just that Pattimore and I are known there, Chief. We’ve been there quite a bit.”
“Birds of a feather boa...”
“Shut up, Stevens! So, you’m saying there’s no point Pattimore going undercover? He should just question people directly?”
“No, no; I’m all for undercover,” said Brough. “If it’s known that the police are interested in the pub then all sorts of people will stay away. People who might have seen something or know something.”
Wheeler nodded.
“Agreed. So, Brough and Pattimore am on the bench for this one. Miller? Are you all right, Miller?”
Miller was far from all right. Her face was sickly pale and drenched in sweat. Her blonde hair was dark and sticking to her brow.
Coffin Dodgers Page 4