BLOOD DRUGS TEA (A Dark Comedy Novel)

by Saunders, Craig

*

  There’s something else about Harry. She collects free things. If you go round her house you would find cupboards full of ketchup and salt and hotel jams. Most of them are off, but she still takes away the free things. I can’t figure out if she’s tight or mad or just too sane. She also likes the faces people pull when they put on tricky shoes. She wonders if the face really is connected in some way to the feet, like the song.

  I agree with her here. There are all sorts of connections if you look in the right way. Sometimes when I need a dump my hearing goes funny.

  *

  “It’s not the usual, is it?” she said.

  “Nope,” said Pill. “I walked past on the way here and the police were there. Someone snapped her neck, and crushed her head in – I think someone must’ve killed her. But I think this is going to be one of those ‘death by misadventures’, you know, just to keep the crime figures down.”

  “The fall would explain the snapped neck and the crushed head.” I put in. Pill’s opinion didn’t really count for much. I couldn’t see this ending up as a death by misadventure.

  You’d be amazed. Take a walk around a city on the cold dark night and one day you’ll find a body. How many murders a day are there in the country? The only time when one of those gets mentioned is when ‘it’s a tragedy’. Some media friendly face or mutilated kid to pin the public’s ire on. The prostitutes, the homeless, the domestics...? If it can be swept under the rug, sweep they will.

  The bell rang and I went to get it. The doorbell rang three more times on the way and the clang of dead electrics sang out.

  Harry was making me nervous – I’m not too good about girls, and she looked at me funny. Which was almost guaranteed to make Joe look at me funny, then Reb would join in and I’d have a moral conundrum floating about in my stomach along with an acute sense of nausea.

  I came back up the stairs with Reb in tow.

  Reb fancies me. Have I told you that? Reb is astoundingly gay (when I say astoundingly gay, I think I should qualify the statement – I don’t mean he was camp, or wore slippers, I mean gay enough to fancy Robbie Coltrane) and Joe, of course, disapproved.

  “I had a race with a bus this morning," he said as he came in. "Can you believe it? The bus was actually rocking back and forth, like he was spoiling for a race. I thought ‘you twat’.”

  He smiled as he sat down. His jeans hung off his waist and his pants showed. “I won, mind.”

  Reb was so posh he could hardly speak.

  Pill said, “Alright? Got any wheezy? I’m humming on the buses, man.”

  After a while you get then hang of him. If you just remember he talks complete and utter shit, you’ll be fine.

  “Nope,” said Reb. “I’m not carrying.”

  Anyway. That’s us. These are what a lesser mind would call my cronies. I call them my friends.

  *

  There, as far as the introductions go I think that’s everyone. This is the part where I have to introduce another character. My house. Inanimate objects, locations, and sometimes animals are often neglected for the role they play in a story. My home plays a large part.

  This is where the majority of our conversations take place. I go walking with Reb sometimes and our town, too, could be a character. I don’t like the outside as much as the inside though, so I’ll probably overlook many of the things a more outgoing narrator would notice (little bits about Bridgend, it’s location in relation to other towns. It’s geography. It’s fundamental make up and raison d’etre. But you’d get bored.) To me cities are like brilliant contraptions, nothing more.

  I like my home, though. I know it fairly well.

  The house is two storeys. My living room is upstairs and my bedrooms are downstairs. My bedroom window looks out onto a tiny front lawn. I’ve got no back garden. The previous owner, thankfully, sold the land. The outside of my house isn’t very interesting. All the interesting stuff goes on inside.

  Upstairs, there’s the kitchen, the living room and my study. Downstairs there are two bedrooms. One is used for friends who might stay over, but although the bed is made up nobody has ever stayed there in all the time I’ve lived here.

  The toilet’s downstairs, too. It’s blue.

  Every room apart from the bedrooms and the kitchens are stacked with my books. I’m a voracious reader. Novels mainly, but there’s a couple of factually enticing snippets here and there. I don’t like reading about real life, although I do have a couple of treatise on the art of forensics, fingerprinting, police procedurals and that, mainly bought for me by my friends. They think it would be good background information. I think it’s all nonsense.

  Solving crimes is about donkeywork and, as Poirot would have it, the little grey cells.

  *

  5. The Painters

  We were all together. A regular band of misfits. Murder beckoned.

  I put the kettle on again and Reb took a seat on the couch filling up the gulf between Harry and Joe. Joe tutted and tried to make as much room as possible between himself and Reb.

  Reb tried to apologise for his lateness by saying, “Sorry I’m late. I had a bath when I returned from the scene of the crime. I was bored laying there so I proceeded to play submarines. Against the Russians. I won. The periscope took a battering though.”

  I wasn’t sure as an apology that it really worked.

  Reb works in the mortuary and I translate his speech for all those who don’t speak posh. It still doesn’t make sense though. That’s probably why he gets on with Pill.

  Pill and Reb talked bollocks for a time while I made some more tea for Reb, the latecomer. I could hear them from the kitchen. I could also hear that Joe still wasn’t talking to Harry.

  I wish I was talking to Harry. The amount of time those two spend not talking makes my mood as black as the inside of an Irishman’s arse.

  If she were mine I’d talk to her. I’d even talk to her post-coitus. Is that a word? I think I’m in love. Perhaps I’ve already told you that. But it bears repeating.

  I brought the tea in, with the last of my biscuits. We began our strategy.

  You have to have a strategy to solve crimes. You can’t just go flouncing around and expect to come up with the solution. There are hard mental processes involved. Added to which, there’s Reb. He can get us the skinny on cause-of-death.

  Most of the deaths that come across Reb’s table (or slab, which for some reason is mortuary parlance for 'table') are solved within hours. Sometimes there’s a really juicy crime though, the kind that stumps the police.

  “How do you know Reb didn’t do it?” said Joe, finally, after I told him that Reb had left his fingerprint and his ring at the scene. Reb laughed about it. He liked to live on the edge. It wasn’t everyday that he got to the scene before the police did though. Today had been special.

  “Cause Reb’s never done it,” said Harry in reply to Joe. Trust Harry to find some disagreement with Joe, if there was disagreement to be had.

  “Why would he put his ring there?” Pill said. Through all this I should point out that Reb sat quietly with a smug smile on his face.

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was his wife. We won’t know until we ask him,” I said.

  “So if Reb didn’t do it, who did? Who was the girl?” said Harry.

  “Reb’s wife?” said Joe, laughing. “That’s rich.”

  “Well, alright, maybe not.”

  I felt good. We could do things the police couldn’t. You’d think the police would be just as able to find a murderer by asking around but Pill has contacts that know a thing or two about the seedier side of life. Some people wouldn’t talk to the coppers even if the crime of the century had just been committed against them.

  “I was out walking and I found the body. I didn’t call the police cause they always think that the person who found the body is the killer,” said Reb. “I don’t know who the girl was, but no doubt we’ll find out in time.”

  “So why did you leave your ring?” asked
Harry.

  “It’s not my ring.” He showed us his hand, bearing the ring, with a flourish.

  “Your fingerprint then?” I asked.

  “It’s not my fingerprint,” he said.

  I thought about it now in hindsight. The fingerprint on the girl’s pale flesh was still fresh in my mind’s eye. It had been too small for Reb. Although Reb had long, almost effeminate hands his fingers weren’t small enough to have left the fingerprint. I thought now it must have been a girl’s.

  “Shit.” I said. I’d destroyed evidence that I thought Reb had left. I got the ring out of my pocket and put it down among the tea mugs on the coffee table.

  “Well, that’s me fucked up. I found this ring and a fingerprint and removed them both from the scene, because I thought they were yours. Now the police have nothing to go on.” They passed the ring around, each reading the inscription.

  “Looks like it’s down to us then,” said Reb. “As it should be.” He was inching closer to Joe on the couch, making Joe hunch up in discomfort. The big man was backed into a corner. I’m sure Reb was enjoying himself.

  Joe sighed and looked at me. “If they ever find out what you did you’ll be for the high jump.”

  I put a bony hand out and pick up my tea. I assumed Joe was talking about the police but then when Joe said ‘they’ he could mean anyone. Did I mention he’s psychotic?

  Reb and Harry were watching me. People always look to me for answers. Sometimes I just don’t have them. In this instance I didn’t have the slightest insight.

  I made great inroads on my tea.

  *

  We walked to the scene. I swung my arms in time with the tapping of my boots on the pavement. The boots were too big really for my legs, but I like them. I’m too skinny for boots. Skinny in a good way though, like a model. Or it would be skinny in a good way if I were a girl. I’ll never get fat.

  I know why middle-aged men get fat. It’s because they get married. Getting married makes you fat. Or women make you fat. I haven’t decided which. I’m not married though, and I’m not fat. So it stands to reason. It might not stand to scrutiny.

  I should probably explain, as a kind of interlude, why I don’t work.

  I’m digressing again. I’ll get back to the high road at some point. Just let me lead you by the hand and show you the sights. Relinquish control to me. It’ll prove easier on you that way.

  Anyway, I’ve written a couple of books. Someone paid me to write a book on noise management once. I’ve been living off the proceeds for the last three years. I still get royalties for it. People actually need someone to tell them to shut the door. I can’t believe the extent some people need to be led by the hand.

  Arseholes.

  I haven’t written a book now for years. About the same time as I stopped writing I stopped sleeping.

  I didn’t say any of my books had been good. But I wrote them and you didn’t. Bear that in mind before ye judge. I like to slip into olde worlde English from time to time…but I’ll refrain. In the interests of good taste. e.

  “Well,” said Harry as we walked. “Reb, when are you going into work? You can let us know the cause of death at least.”

  “I’m going in today. I’ll let you know what I know when I know it.”

  “Might be able to tell just from looking at her, I guess,” said Joe.

  “Nah, a post-mortem’s the thing. They’re much better at telling the cause of death than doing a Miss Marple on a body.”

  I drifted off as I walked. It was warm around my ears. Only around my ears though. I wondered if it was because Harry was looking at me or if it was localised global warming.

  *

  Sometimes I think global warming is a plot. The Masons or some other shady organisation created it to hold back the next flux in the ice age. The polar cap periodically expands. Scientists widely think (which is a rarity – they often think, but it’s usually unidirectional and gets them into trouble) that the ice age is cyclical, that the caps periodically expand and cover most of the northern hemisphere.

  The shady organisation went too far though. It’s one of the perils of being human, and part of an evil cabal – you never consider all the angles. They’re my only enemy. The same people invented aids to kill Africa. They’re preparing it for colonisation just in case their plan to hold back the ice age fails. Big plans, those fellas.

  Sometimes I think I might be more psychotic than Joe. Maybe it’s just the lack of sleep. It makes my thoughts fly off into uncharted waters.

  I wondered in silence as the others chattered around me. My eyes were sore for lack of sleep and my thoughts were shattered. I couldn’t hold a thought for long enough to think anything about the girl, smashed and dead on the pavement.

  *

  The police had turned up when we got there. They’d been there since Pill had passed on the way to mine. There was a small huddle of early morning sightseers like us, agog at the sight of a cold corpse near the mall. The corpse was wearing a red skirt, knee length, and a halter top, which I could only see the top of through the sheepskin jacket she wore. She had on high heels. I thought she didn’t look like a club goer – more of a pub lass, if my eye for shoes was right. Her ensemble didn’t really match for clubbing. Her hair, a dusty blonde, was still fanned out around her head. It lay unmoving despite a gentle wind. Her umbrella periodically shifted in the breeze.

  The forensics team hadn’t arrived. There were just a couple of bobbies looking shifty and trying to keep the onlookers back. One of them had pudgy lips (I mean pudgy, not podgy. Pudgy is slimy). He looked more of a noncestable than a constable.

  Us five all stood around stamping our feet and rubbing our hands to keep warm. Harry looked at Joe as if for approval then went up to one of the bobbies. The one who didn’t look like a kiddy-fiddler.

  “Who was she?” she asked.

  “Stay back, ma’am,” said the policeman, in a good parody of a TV policeman. Too many cop shows before bedtime for him. He gently took her arm like a patronising uncle and guided her back to stand by us.

  “What happened, Officer?” asked Reb, in his best sucking up voice. Reb, being posh, could get away with almost anything. I didn’t think Pill was helping our chances of finding anything out though. He was standing there doing a pill jive right in the middle of the street.

  He should have come down by now.

  The bobby looked to his mate for confirmation – he had that straight out of school look, with fresh cheeks. He was younger and leaner than his dodgy counterpart. His mate shrugged a non-committal shrug.

  He said, “I think she fell off the high rise up there. Nasty way to go.”

  A sudden upswing in the breeze swung the girl’s upended umbrella round so it span, like a spinning top.

  We waited. Harry’s nose turned red. I felt warm inside.

  Forensics turned up at the same time as the coroner. They wouldn’t move the body until it was all done with the coroner. We stood and watched the show. The coroner got out his little bag of tricks. There were two of them. After about a minute, the coroner pronounced the girl officially dead, and the crime scene, if that’s what it was, was marked up and cordoned off, us now standing behind the cordon. The forensics crew took photographs.

  Just as the coroner was taking the gurney out of the back of the van the first detectives showed up. One was Harvey Dean, CID. Not as good as Johnny Markham but a pretty decent chap all the same. We knew him well and he knew us. Seeing us as he got out of his car he gave a long sigh. He thought of us as busybodies, but pretty much harmless. He held up a hand to us in a begrudging wave and walked up to the bobbies. No doubt getting all the details of the crime scene, although from our position back behind the tape, which wound round a lamppost and a couple of bollards forensics had brought to the scene with them, we couldn’t hear.

  I think Harvey’s wife left him. That...crumpled look. Like a man who’s forgotten what it was to be alone.

  We stood there waiting with f
our other onlookers, out for an early morning stroll. I guess one of them had called it in a waited for the police to show up, regretting their foray into good citizenship in the cold. The two other onlookers were shivering just as we were.

  Pill looked at me and said, “You lot be alright for a minute?”

  “Why?” I asked stupidly.

  “Cause I’ve got an arsicle forming.”

  “Eugh!” said Harry with a grimace.

  Pill left to find a toilet. Macdonald’s down the street wouldn’t be open yet. I didn’t fancy his chances at this time in the morning. I turned my attention back to the crime scene and put Pill from my mind. It wasn’t difficult.

  Harvey pulled something showing from a top pocket of the girl’s coat. It looked like a note. It was A4 sized. He unfolded it and made a show of reading it. He conferred with his partner and they talked for a while. He looked over the scene with a practised eye. He finished taking notes in a little black book with a tiny pencil and finally came over to us. I was glad because I was freezing and I didn’t think we were going to find much out from the crime scene. It was obvious the girl had jumped or been pushed. Which it was we were to find out.

  That’s my favourite sentence of the day.

  I always suspected that Harvey Dean had a soft spot for Harry.

  He pushed his shoulders back as he came over. He had a slight paunch and thinning brown hair, shrewd eyes that you could imagine working their charm in the interview room. She fluttered her eyelashes at him and my heart nearly sputtered with love.

  “Alright, it’s the famous five,” said Harvey over his shoulder to his partner, a slight shifty man called, oddly enough, James Dean. A right pair they were too. We’d met before on several cases.

  “Hiya, Harvey,” said Harry.

  “Wotcha, Harvey,” said Reb. They knew each other from the mortuary.

  “Who’s the stiff then?” asked Joe.

  “Don’t know yet. Won’t know that till we get her back to the mortuary. I’ll let Reb know when we know.”