At one of the tables, Martin Dalgliesh sat with someone who looked like an older brother; taller and slimmer, and no cleft palette, but he had the same wavy auburn hair, similar Hollywood blue eyes and a tall forehead dashed with freckles. It nagged at Daniel that Dalgliesh might be drinking under age. He reminded himself that - currently - this was none of his business. He tried to ignore the Dalgliesh brothers’ presence, and concentrate on the gig.
On Daniel’s side of pub, cliques of friends clustered all around, just in front of the ‘stage’, the noise of their conversations drowning out the rhythm of Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk, which thudded through the PA system.
The beer flowed. Getting to the bar without inadvertently brushing your crotch against the backside of someone’s spouse, was an exercise in futility. Still, Daniel got there, ordering a pint of Black Sheep for him and another vodka with lime and soda for Charlotte. Randy served him, “Just about ready DI Dan?” Only Randy called him that.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Bricking it?”
“You have no idea.”
Randy threw his head back, laughed and fetched Daniel his change.
“Randy, do us a favour.”
“Sure.”
“If you get chance, have a chat with Charlotte. She’s not been out in ages, and she’s on her own.”
Randy leant to one side, to spy her. It was easy enough for him to see her over his punters’ heads; Randy was six foot three. “Don’t mind if I do.”
Daniel felt immediate regret, “And don’t get any ideas. She’s out of your league.”
“Ouch … tell it like you see it.”
“Always.” Randy was still smiling - did this guy ever stop?
Daniel delivered Charlotte’s drink. She smiled unconvincingly and thanked him. “You okay?” asked Daniel.
“Fine … go.” She took his free hand and squeezed it briefly, “Enjoy.”
Randy announced over a muffled radio-microphone: give a warm welcome back to ‘DI Dan the guitar man.’ Daniel knew he’d get that title, or perhaps Randy’s rare alternative, ‘our very own singing detective.’
Daniel alone registered the announcement; his audience carried on with their conversations. That was fine, if he just played in the corner without attention, if the end of each track came without even a ripple of applause, at least he’d done it, another hurdle overcome.
Backing tracks - just drums and bass guitar - were programmed and ready to go at the push of foot pedals. He’d planned to start, at Charlotte’s suggestion, with ACDC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ but paused for a second. Alison had complained about him playing that, ‘For goodness sake Daniel, you’re a Christian. Is that as serious as Methodists get with their religion, not thinking twice about singing the virtues of Satan?’ He’d laughed this off, retorting, ‘It’s only rock-n-roll … and I like it.’ A subtle Rolling Stones reference she never got.
He cranked up his half stack, took a deep breath, and struck out three simple A-chords in perfect rhythm. By the second loop of the intro, he was nodding along with the riff and people were listening; he couldn’t see it - concentrating as he was on the fret board - but he sensed it. And when he looked up to scream the first line, ‘Living easy … living free’ into the microphone, everyone was watching, some of the men nodding along, some of the women smiling. Daniel couldn’t stop a cliché crossing his mind.
Better than sex? - damn right it was.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Daniel was ripping chords, Mallory Hewitt was looking forward to smashing golf balls out of sight. The driving range, the same range that Anthony Nixon had frequented, was on the B1200, the road which bisected Blaine. If you looked at Blaine on a map, you’d soon spot Church road and the B1200 forming a crucifix, crossing at the village’s heart. The driving range was near Jesus’ feet, four miles south of Blaine’s centre.
The range had been built upon a disused air force landing strip, abandoned in the eighties and left for nature to reclaim. It had been bought by Harold Phillips, a burgeoning entrepreneur, who wasn’t shy when it came to borrowing money. He’d opened two enterprises on the disused land: a go-cart circuit, open all day ’til six, and the driving range which opened for as long as Harold could stay awake, usually around eleven p.m..
The early noughties were prosperous for Harold, most driving range customers had rocked up in BMWs, inevitably bought with released equity during a housing bubble which few seemed suspicious of. After the crash of two-thousand and eight, punters looked increasingly worried, before their number rapidly dwindled. The business now barely broke even, so Harold handled his remaining customers with care.
Mallory Hewitt was one such customer. His white 500 series BMW lurched its way through potholes towards the range. One of the floodlights was out, and had been during his last three visits. He looked across at empty bays, each separated by racing green canvas partitions. The bays faced an unkempt field which was peppered with target flags at fifty yard intervals. Harold rarely mowed the grass these days, which really pissed Mallory off, as the ball was supposed to travel three hundred yards when he cracked it (fifty of those rolling) not two-fifty.
What sort of a faggot drives to two fifty? Harold, I’m going to bust your balls if you’re still here.
Mallory’s boot opened automatically as he rounded it to collect his Taylormade clubs. The bag was black, a combination of suede and leather. And heavy. Mallory enjoyed his ability - at a stocky but lean six foot four - to carry the bag like it contained nothing but cotton wool. His metal woods (a term his wife, Hen, seemed perpetually obtuse about) jutted proudly from the bag’s neck. They boasted thick, matching, expensive Taylormade covers. None of those shit furry animal club-covers for Mallory.
He half expected the desk to be unmanned - Mallory knew where Harold kept the key if the door to the bays was locked - but Harold was sitting there, dirty green Wellington’s resting upon a scarred desk, staring at a battered looking iPad which leant against the desktop, propped up by his stomach.
The over-egged canned laughter from some comedy show or other blasted with a distorted volume through the iPad’s speakers. Harold was laughing along with a dirty chuckle.
“You should get a stand for that thing, you cheapskate.”
“Oh, hi Mallory, didn’t hear you come in. Who needs to buy a stand when you’ve got one of these?” He laid the iPad face up on the table and, as if to emphasise the point, slapped his belly, making it wobble. “I was just going to lock up. Can you lock up instead, when you’re done?”
“Locking up? You should be out there mowing that disgrace of a range. Honest to God, next time I’m just going to drive past this shit-hole and head for Louth. You’re letting this place go to shit.”
Harold looked like he was about to defend himself, or perhaps make a fervent suggestion that Mallory stick his clubs somewhere dark and painful. Instead, he got up and said, “I guess I’ve got half an hour, if you don’t mind hitting balls while I mow.”
“No problem, you’ll be target practice.” Mallory flashed Harold an un-naturally white smile of victory, let out a baleful laugh, and headed towards the machine, which dispensed a sample of worn golf balls into a wire basket with a rapid series of clunks. Each ball had ‘Property of Phillip’s Range’ stamped on it, as though someone might steal such crap. Mallory let out an involuntary barrage of tuts and sighs, the type which had triggered tonight’s argument with Hen.
All Hen had to worry about was arranging deliveries around an increasingly complicated social life - not to mention beauty regime - and fitting in the school run. For once, couldn’t she have some friggin’ empathy for his stress? Where the hell did she think all this money came from? From a job where you didn’t have to bend rules, where you treated everyone like your affable uncle, and where you could make real friends? She had no fucking clue. She wanted to have her cake and eat it: The Range Rover Sport; the perpetually attentive good-looking husband who never let his figure go; the
two perfect kids who never swore; the new kitchen with the island plus huge range cooker - on which she never cooked - and the house with three more bedrooms than they needed just in case people wanted to visit (they rarely did). If he hadn’t had the promise of smashing these shitty yellow balls down the range he might have ended up smashing in her pretty, shitty little face instead. Actually, scratch ‘pretty’, somehow doing very little for the last fifteen years, had left strangers mistaking Hen for her mother.
Mallory picked the middle bay (he always did) kicked the stand out from under his golf bag, placed it out of harm’s way next to the corrugated wall behind, and pulled out his driver. He determined not to think about the argument with Hen, he needed to figure out a strategy for a much bigger problem of his own making.
Harold’s cart trundled down the side of the field, coughing out black fumes from its puny exhaust pipe. Reaching the one hundred yard mark, the cart cut a path towards the centre of the range.
So that’s his strategy, mowing back and forth at short range, out of the danger-zone.
Mallory replaced his driver and picked out a club which had a six degree head the size of two fists, a monster saved for bludgeoning his way out from under overhanging branches, providing a low and brutal trajectory. If Harold thought he’d escaped he could think again.
Mallory decided to spend a few minutes reflecting, and battering Harold, before throwing around solutions. He placed his ball down on the round rubber excuse for a tee, waited for Harold to drive towards the 150 yard target, then let rip. His first ball skidded just left of the truck. Under the piercing light, Harold’s arms flinched at the steering wheel. Mallory smiled and reached for another ball.
So … what exactly was Mallory, Morgan Stanley’s senior hedge-fund controller, culpable for? What caused the tension up his neck and shoulders, a taught spring this ball-slugging was supposed to unwind? At Morgan Stanley USA, a bunch of spineless bastards had just settled a $2.6 billion deal with the US government for the mortgage fraud they’d assisted during the two years leading up to the crash. Why couldn’t Mallory live in the good old US of A, where you could commit mass fraud, then buy your way out of it with a fraction of the money the fraud had earned you?
The left wing UK press had jumped on it pointing out that, since most of that bad debt had been sold on to the UK and beyond, the UK exchequer should be getting some of that compensation. Worse than that, they were now baying for blood, demanding again why nobody had been held to account for causing the biggest financial disaster in recorded history.
With just a hint of fade, Mallory’s fifth ball tore down the centre of the range. It struck the cage, a few inches from Harold’s head, with such force that it became lodged. The truck stopped. Certainly a great shot, but Mallory barely noticed. He was lining up more balls, lost in thought.
The Independent newspaper had sent in undercover reporters and one of them had interviewed Mallory. So, what exactly had he admitted to (boasted about)? A lot, but foremost was encouraging the sales team to dump toxic shares, whilst recommending the same shares to pensions investors. What was wrong with that? The press (and hence, some of the public) were making the stupid mistake of letting morality impede good business sense. Stupid fuckers. Didn’t they realise that the investment banks weren’t running the UK, they were the UK. A third of UK exports came from financial services. Still, pressure was growing for a scape-goat, to protect the board, and his inadvertent blabbing to the press might just have handed them Mallory’s head.
Mallory, you should have kept your, “… fucking mouth SHUT.” His self-flagellation coincided with his best shot yet and he smiled as the ball kept low, then soared like a plane leaving its runway.
Mallory hadn’t clocked that Harold had abandoned his mowing. Nor had he noticed the person behind him, until he spied the glint of his three iron’s shaft as it flashed out of his bag. He span round and shouted, “Hey what the fuck do you think-” but his words were cut short as the club’s head swung with lightening speed along a brutal path, splitting his temple. His body crashed against the bay’s barrier, and he staggered, his nineteen stone mass taking out the next three green partitions, which fell like dominos. He finally came to rest, lying across the fallen partitions, barely conscious. Recognition flickered across his eyes as his attacker clambered onto the overlapping green partitions, one foot either side of Mallory’s thighs, and brought the club down on Mallory's face, again and again and again, blood and splintered bone spraying like a newly tapped oil well.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
At the end of Daniel’s gig, Randy shouted over the microphone, “Let’s give it up for DI Dan, our very own singing detective.” Randy’s punters must have heard him this time as a bubble of enthusiastic clapping and whistling resounded. Daniel released himself from his Les Paul, held it by its neck out towards the audience - as if some of the applause belonged to his guitar - smiled modestly, and nodded his appreciation.
Once the applause had died down, Daniel headed over to where Charlotte was standing. She’d bumped into a friend, a short, mousey looking woman, with dark-framed glasses. Charlotte kissed her on each cheek. The woman said, “Sooooo good to see you again. We should do this another time … soon … now you’re not … I mean now you’ve got some free … oh, you know what I mean.” The woman turned to Daniel, got on tiptoe and drew him closer with a beckoning hand. He bent down and she whispered in his ear, “And you … you can arrest me anytime, rock star.” She left then but not before pinching Daniel’s backside.
Daniel looked at Charlotte, “Pissed?”
“Her or me?”
“Her.”
“As a fart.”
“You?”
“So so. But I mean this, it’s the God’s honest truth … you were fab tonight Daniel Sheppard.” She kissed his cheek and hugged him, more tightly than she’d ever done before.
The phone buzzed in his pocket, and one of the best nights in recent memory, took an unwelcome turn.
“Sorry, I have to take this.”
“Sure, do you fancy walking back, or should I call us a taxi?”
“Taxi sounds good. Give me five, best take this outside, I’ll be back … Ted? sorry, hold on a minute, just getting to somewhere quieter.” Dan walked towards the corner of the unlit car park. The tarmac was covered in snail trails, reflecting brightly the mid-summer’s moonlight. He slipped the other side of a Honda SUV, away from the jeering and screeching laughter of those spilling from the pub.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at The Crown.”
“How many have you had?”
“A couple, why?”
“I know you’re not due to start ’til Monday, but can you get over to the Blaine driving range tonight?”
“What’s up?”
“Looks like a double murder. Possibly murder-suicide, we’re not sure yet. We’ve got uniform at the scene, DC Aitken. Forensics should be there by now too.”
“Any witnesses?”
“One, I think.”
“I can't be questioning witnesses with beer-breath. And anyway I wont be able to access the scene without ID.”
“Already sorted, Aitken’s got your ID - sorry I was a bit presumptuous and got her to swipe it from your drawer before she headed out. As for your beer-breath … chew a mint.”
There was a long pause as Daniel weighed up his options: defying Edwards and finishing up a perfect evening or kick-starting his return to duty with this case. Edwards clearly sensed his hesitation, “If you can’t take this from the start, I’ll have to give it to Robinson.”
The words murder-suicide lingered. Another murder-suicide in Blaine, less than nine months since the last one. If it was just a co-incidence, the odds were astronomical. If, of course, the murder-suicide conclusion was correct. A big ‘if’.
“I’ll do it on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“If it does turn out to be a murder-suicide, we’ll need to test a conne
ction with the Fallon case.”
“Oh not-”
“Hear me out. To rule out a link, I’ll need unfettered access to the Fallon/Nixon case-file - no protests from Robinson.”
It was Edwards’s turn to be silent.
“Do we have a deal?” asked Daniel.
“I guess we do.”
Daniel arranged for the taxi which dropped Charlotte off, to accept his onward fare. The old Ford Mondeo’s diesel engine rumbled on as Daniel watched Charlotte fumbling with her front door keys. She looked over her shoulder, smiled brightly and waved. He waved back and she was gone; safely inside at a good hour to relieve the babysitter.
“Could you drop me at the driving range?”
“Driving range?” The driver, Albert, was grey-haired with a west country twang. He ran Blaine’s only taxi service and knew Daniel vaguely. That’s to say Alison had had occasion to book him from time to time.
“Yes please.”
“You’re the boss. Didn’t know they opened this late.” Albert pulled off in no hurry. “Say, I was so sorry to hear about Alison. She were a lovely woman.”
“That she was,” replied Daniel as he stared upwards out of the window, barely a wisp of cloud to obscure the stars.
Some taxi drivers know whether people wanted to talk or be left with their thoughts. Alfred clearly had that gift and hardly spoke during the ten-minute drive.
Were those nerves clawing at the beer in Daniel’s belly and tingling away at his skin? His knees were jangling a little too (a childhood habit). Alfred looked across and Daniel made a conscious effort to regain control of his legs.
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