Prepared to Die

by Peter Dudgeon

  “Do you recall what he bought?”

  “Dan … why are you so interested?”

  “Just curious. Once a copper always a copper I guess. Can you remember?”

  “Like it was yesterday. He picked up tampons, which I thought was odd, no one ever spoke of him having a girlfriend, and his grandmother was in her eighties. Then he asked for razors. I pointed out our disposable Bics and Gillettes, but he said he wanted the old-fashioned blades, the type you ‘fix in yourself.’ I told him we hadn’t stocked those in over ten years. He tutted, paid for the Lillettes and left. I think I saw him once after that, briefly, at the church fair. He was leaving as I arrived. That’s all I knew of him. Poor sod, what a way to go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Being murdered.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know something about this?” asked Charlotte.

  “As much as you. Probably less. The other man they found, do you know who it is?”

  “People are speculating it’s Anthony Nixon, Jean’s husband.”

  “How come?”

  “He’s missing and Jean’s not answering calls. I know her from Yoga. She’s not been to class the last two weeks and I called to see if she was okay. She said Anthony was gone. Since they found Sebastian Fallon, she’s not answering her phone. Less than an hour ago, when I was locking up, I saw the police stretcher a body out. It was too squat to be Fallon’s and looked about Anthony’s size and shape. I know you shouldn’t speak this way about the dead but Anthony Nixon had quite a beer belly. Sorry, I’m rambling.”

  “No, it’s okay. How were they, the Nixons, as a couple?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did they fight, had they ever split up?”

  “Anthony and Jean? Not that I know of. I remember her saying they had a bit of a falling out when he went vegetarian. But other than that they seemed fine; they were always hand in hand when they walked the dog through the village. He was an accountant, drove a big black Volvo. She came across as proud of him, in the main. Oh God, I really hope it’s not Anthony. Jean’s going to be a mess if it is. I must try to call her again.”

  “Do you think Anthony Nixon could have been looking after Fallon’s accounts, or his grandmother’s?”

  “I really wouldn’t know.”

  The background hum of the phone dropped for a few seconds.

  “Dan, you still there?”

  “Yeah, sure … just thinking.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was two a.m. and Daniel was struggling to sleep. The bedroom door wasn’t flush to the frame and it rattled as the February storm fluted through the house. There was a packet of paracetamol on his bedside cabinet and Daniel sat up, ripped the packet, flattened it, folded it in two and got up to jam the makeshift wedge between the door and its frame. “There, better.”

  But it wasn’t much better. It wasn’t the wake of the storm causing his restlessness. DCI Edwards’s words were drowning out the gusts and clatters.

  You should see inside his place … there’s some weird shit … there’s some weird shit. You should …

  That state, of being awake but on the edge of sleep, brought with it possibilities. Possibilities like Edwards’s words being an invitation, rather than a throwaway comment. You SHOULD see inside his place. You have my permission. He started an internal dialogue; a pattern of conversation which would have played out between husband and wife, if Alison had still been alive.

  You won’t be able to get in there anyway.

  So there won’t be any harm in taking a walk around there, in having a look.

  What for, what exactly do you expect to see?

  Something they’re not looking for. They want to get Fallon’s murder off their caseload, and move on to higher priorities. I can understand that. But I’m not in a rush; I have all the time in the world. And if I don’t find anything, then at least my curiosity’s satisfied.

  What business is it of yours anyway, eh? Daniel, mind your own.

  “Oh fuck it!” Shortly after two-twenty a.m., Daniel’s feet hit the floor next to a pile of clothes. He sighed, rubbed his eyes and resolved to be less of a slob. Alison’s voice said, ‘You’re not a teenager you know. In the wardrobe or in the basket! Anyway, what are you thinking, going out at this time of night?’

  “Shhhh.” He commanded no one and rubbed his eyes, muttering, “If you’re losing it Dan, this is a sure sign.” Then he was comforted by a thought, if you’re caught in Fallon’s place they’ll put it down to the stress of your bereavement. Guilt grasped his stomach and twisted it for the mere thought of exploiting Alison’s death in that way.

  Daniel lived on an unadopted lane. The owners of its six residences chipped in every fifth autumn to have the lane re-levelled with stone. The council had no obligation to provide street lighting and Daniel trudged down the lane, in the void of the rural night. Thick-soled Doc Martins crunched over grit, his breath a white wisp in the weak moonlight.

  He made his way towards the rippling orange-hazed puddles of Church Road (Blaine’s main road), occasionally glancing up at the shining buckles of Orion's belt and the full moon, which frequently emerged between scudding clouds.

  Walking down Church Road, he became conscious of the torch, no fatter than a Cuban cigar, protruding from his jean’s pocket. He lifted his bomber jacket’s elasticated waist over the torch then returned his hands to warm pockets, checking the lightweight, disposable, all-in-one overall was still safely tucked out of sight.

  Dan doubted he would see anyone; the streetlights were sparse, the pub long since closed. Tomorrow was Wednesday, the day rubbish was collected and black wheelie bin lids at the end of driveways lifted in the gusting winds, as though whispering night-time secrets. As Dan smiled at the thought, a loud fluttering next to his ear startled him. Half a dozen bats darted with random purpose across the road and disappeared into the bowels of St Hughs’s graveyard. A hand came to his chest and he let out a lungful of air.

  The shining green cross above the pharmacy cast a weak light upon rattling steel shutters. Daniel passed it, then crossed the road and stood at the end of what he knew to be Fallon’s drive.

  Edwards wasn’t kidding about the machete.

  Daniel folded and raised his arms to protect his eyes as he pushed a blind path between a barbed mix of branches and thorns. He finally came free and brushed rainwater from his sleeves as he swivelled on his heels, surveying his moonlit surroundings. At least the overgrown front garden and drive would keep him out of view of the neighbours; he was sure his snooping would go undetected.

  With the torch taking a sweeping path across the drive, the light clipping his toecaps, Daniel headed towards the back of the house. The door he came upon was surely locked. It lead to the kitchen and he peered through the window, the torch’s limited diameter flicking from spot to spot around the floor. Evidence tags were tacked to the hall’s parquet. There was little else to see.

  So that’s what you got up at two a.m. for? Brilliant.

  With gloved hands, Daniel tried the door without hope. Astonishment swept him as the door bowed. It was caught at the bottom, swollen against the frame, yet clearly unlocked. He re-pocketed his torch, bent his knees and exerted upward pressure on the Yale lock’s pull-brass. The door creaked open, swinging gently until its internal handle hit a fridge-freezer’s door with a dull thud. A weak, fusty waft of old curtains and bad hygiene spilled from the kitchen door.

  Time to put on overalls. Daniel suspected that forensics had collected all the evidence they were going to. The odd stray hair turning up at Fallon’s would be no big deal. Still, no sense taking risks. He felt like Mulder searching government bunkers for signs of extra-terrestrial cover-ups as he stepped across the threshold, head to toe in elasticated plastic, guiding his inquisitive torch.

  Was the local impression of the man correct, that he was a loner, a recluse? He pushed the kitchen door shut behind him and started with Fallon’s fridge; what a per
son consumes is a window to their soul. It was a cheap-looking three quarter height Frigidaire and the internal light, which was supposed to come to life on opening, was out. He used his torch to scan the contents. A can of sardines lay open and uncovered, without company, on the only shelf. White fluffy patches of fungal growth had formed on the fish’s tomato sauce and Daniel turned his nose away, coughing against his sleeve.

  The freezer was just as sparse with a broken stack of mini pizzas and two tubs of cheap ice cream (the cream-free type). He briefly flicked the torch around the kitchen, spying a pan thick with lard on an electric hob. Above the hob, a grease-streaked backboard lead to a yellowy white extractor hood.

  So son, you’re not big on cleaning. What do you spend your time doing, stuck in here on your own?

  He moved on into the hall, sticking close to the wall so as not to disturb forensics scattered labelling on the floor. He wasn’t particularly interested in their evidence, he was more curious about what they weren’t looking for, what they might have missed.

  Along the hall on the right was a glass-panelled door. He took a long, high stride to avoid disturbing the labelling and stepped through the door into the living room. He was about to turn on the light, then - despite the property’s seclusion - decided not to take the risk.

  That background odour of poor hygiene, evident the moment he’d entered the kitchen, strengthened, assailing his nostrils.

  A rocking chair with striped fabric sat at the centre of a beige and brown swirling-patterned carpet. The chair faced away from Daniel, towards a twenty-one inch, dusty old-fashioned TV, which was perched on a brick plinth. As he neared the chair, the smell intensified, morphing into the fetid sweet porcine stench of decaying flesh.

  He thought he heard something move, a noise beyond the chair, but dismissed it as the house’s roaring silence messing with his mind. He reached out with his torch and used its tip to nudge the chair’s back. There was no reason to do it, but who can pass an empty rocking chair without rocking it? As its ancient springs groaned, dust rose and it rocked just enough to disturb two rats. They hissed and squealed as they leapt from the chair and scurried past Daniel’s feet into the kitchen. His ears picked up a whoosh; his heart gaining pace as he aimed his torch over the chair’s back to discover the remnants of an unidentifiable half-eaten animal, the size of a badger.

  He put his hand over his nose and turned, deciding to leave the room and carry on with his search. He paused before leaving as, to the left of the door, he came upon a bookcase.

  What we consume makes us who we are.

  He ran the torchlight along the titles of three shelves worth of dusty books and magazines; National Geographics between ten and twenty years old; a section of English classics: The Brontes, Austen, Dickens; a collection of Mills & Boon. Then, at the top right, a small section, completely out of place: Capote’s In Cold Blood; Mein Kampf; Helter Skelter - The Manson Murders; Sleep my Little Dead by Kieran Crowley (which had a bookmark just past the midpoint).

  Daniel slid out his iPhone from his inside jacket pocket and snapped the books with his camera app. The flash lit up the room and he regretted not putting it on silent as the synthesised camera shutter echoed. He flicked the silent switch, re-pocketed his phone, zipped his overalls and headed back into the hall.

  He found Fallon’s sculpting room (once perhaps a dining room), at the end of the hall. Given the thick layer of sawdust on the carpet, he remained in the hallway to avoid leaving footprints. From the doorway, he studied the room with torchlight. Fallon’s never-to-be-finished sculpture was at the room’s centre, his discarded apron against the table leg. Torchlight swept across the tabletop from one child’s body to the next. Perhaps four hundred years ago, installed in a church, this might have been a powerful, innocent piece. But here, in the belly of a crumbling house - the dark lair of a social outcast - its sinister overtones were strong enough to prickle the hairs on his neck.

  Daniel retreated and climbed the stairs. He guessed the house was at least a hundred years old. It sounded older as his boots bowed each step towards the first floor, each inevitable creak sounding like the opening of an exhumed coffin.

  Three rooms led off the landing and he determined to scan each, starting with the one to his right. The bedroom was an exhibit from a bygone age, a lady’s dressing room from a time of corsets and covered legs. Torchlight swept across a dressing table. It had an ornate mirror with a frame which boasted the irregular symmetry of antlers. On the dressing table, facedown, lay a bone-handled brush, waiting patiently to detangle hair which had long since been buried with its owner. He moved towards the dresser and reached out, lifting a creaking, limp, semicircular brass handle, ready to search the first drawer.

  His search was instantly aborted as heavy footsteps creaked a path across the landing behind him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In Blaine, something was cooking. Two triangular Erlenmeyer glass flasks sat on electric rings of a stove, in a room without windows. Both contained a viscous magenta liquid, the thickness of blood, which bubbled gently, steadily approaching the boil.

  A single strip-light buzzed on the ceiling, occasionally flickering; about to die. There was no one to witness this. The rats clearly couldn’t flag to their master that the bulb needed changing. They were imprisoned in three puppy cages, placed along a deep, ten-foot long shelf which spanned both ends of the room. At the shelf’s end, nearest to the only door, the immobile rats - a pair once incessant in their scampering, before their master had removed their legs - lay fat and bloated. Their furry bodies rose and fell with weary breath.

  Despite their incapacity (or perhaps because of it), their senses were alert and ears - with scant fur and prominent veins - twitched, rotating towards the door. A familiar sharp clunk of shoe-leather on concrete steps grew louder. Their prone bodies took in sharper, rapid breaths. The moan of the door’s hinge was drowned out by their neighbours’ rustled scurrying and frantic squeals.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Daniel darted from the room. By the time he reached the landing, the stranger was twisting off the bottom step at pace. He was skinny, around five six and wore the type of jeans that only half cover your backside; he hitched them as he disappeared into the hall.

  “Police, stop!” It was an instinctive cry. Daniel would worry about lacking authority later. He instantly weighed up the quickest way to descend; two leaps he reckoned if he could use the bannister for balance. He jumped and was in the hall in time to see the intruder open the back door. The kid tried to shut the door behind him but Daniel was on it, getting his boot in just in time to wedge it open.

  The kid, looking like he carried a limp, hurried down the moonlit drive. Daniel was faster and tripped him just before they reached the cover of overgrown trees. The kid sprawled down the drive on his face and grunted in pain. Daniel landed his knees either side of the kid’s hips, instinctively pulling and clamping the kid’s scrawny arms behind his back, wrists crossing the waist of his Gap boxer shorts. Daniel’s fingers instinctively reached for cuffs that weren’t there.

  The kid, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen, exploited Daniel’s hesitation, squirming onto his back. He pleaded with frantic eyes and the snarling scar of a badly repaired cleft palate. Strands of his auburn, shoulder-length hair clung to the spittle at his mouth’s corners. Daniel took him by the scruff of his Holister T-Shirt and the kid grabbed Daniel’s wrists, with the temporary strength panic had given him.

  “Get off me, I’ve not done nothin’.”

  “You’re not in trouble. I just need to know your interest in this place.”

  “Nuffin’ just curious.”

  “Come on. You’re not on the record. If you were nicking stuff, I’m not going to report you. Just tell me.”

  “Hey, who are you? You’re not bill.”

  He saw no harm in telling the truth. “Retired … DI Sheppard. What’s your name son?”

  “Not telling you nuffin’. Le’ me go.”


  Daniel lost focus as he heard a distant police siren. The kid said, “Shit, le’ me go,” and wriggled underneath him.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. The possibility of being found at Fallon’s place hadn’t been a serious consideration. What were the chances of being caught by the police in a disused property, set back from the road, in a deathly-quiet village at two-thirty in the morning? Perhaps the car was on route to another call? But the flashing lights dancing around the swirling treetops above Daniel remained as the siren grew louder, then cut out. Over the sound of whispering leaves, a car door clunked shut.

  “Why did you visit 41 Church Road in the early hours of this morning?” How many times had Daniel sat on the opposite side of this table, in this very room? He’d lost count.

  The unlikely situation of being interviewed under caution by one of his best friends at Louth’s West Parade station, seemed all the more ludicrous by the lateness of the hour. According to the clock in the interview room, just visible beyond DCI Edwards’s broad shoulders, it was three-thirty a.m. Less than two hours ago he'd been fighting insomnia. Just his luck that the kid he’d disturbed hadn’t entered Fallon’s as stealthily as Daniel had; shortly before he’d arrived, a neighbour had called the police after hearing the kid jimmying Fallon’s back door.

  Why hadn’t the officer who’d picked them up dealt with this, rather than calling Edwards all the way out here? It was hardly the crime of the century.

  “I couldn’t sleep and just got a bit curious, that's all. I knew the property was empty and wanted to take a look. You know how it is Ted. I struggle to ‘let things go.’” The reference to his mug, his parting present, was supposed to keep things on a personal level, but by the look on DCI Edward’s face as he shook his head and leant back, resting steepled fingers against his chest, the tactic had failed.