by JL Merrow
Mr. K. sent it a look of betrayal. “They seemed like such nice young men. Always polite. And they did the job so quickly too.”
I did my best for the bloke—unblocked the pipe and tidied up a bit—but I told him straight, the same thing was gonna keep happening unless he had a total refit including raising the bath. I could tell he thought I was just trying to screw him for some extra work.
Maybe if I’d bodged the job so I could do it in half the time and thrown in a few sirs, he’d have given it to me.
The rest of the day was your bog-standard stuff, mostly involving, heh, bogs. New siphon on one and a leak on the other—sort of jobs I could do in my sleep, which was just as well considering my eyelids were a bit on the heavy side after the previous night. I had to stifle a yawn as I waited for Mrs. G. to write out a cheque in shaky old-lady handwriting.
“You look like you could use an early night, dear,” she said as she handed it over. “New baby, is it?”
She was eyeing my ring finger like it meant something it didn’t. And yeah, I guess it looked like I was wearing a wedding band, but seriously, did questions of right and left have no meaning to anyone these days? “Uh, no. I haven’t got any kids. Just didn’t sleep well, ta.”
“No children? Well, don’t leave it too late. You want to be young enough to enjoy them.”
Cheers, love. Just what I needed—a reminder of another conversation me and Phil hadn’t quite got round to.
Phil was busy on his identity-theft case, so I ate my tea alone. Even the cats had buggered off somewhere. They sloped back in just as I was on my way out to meet Dave, presumably to make sure I wasn’t trying to sneak off without filling their food bowls, as if I’d do anything that daft. I prefer my legs skin on, ta very much.
I beat Dave to the White Hart by around thirty seconds, and we were both early. Not that early has to mean desperate to get out of the house, of course.
“You’re lucky you caught me on a free night,” he said as he parked his considerable arse on the barstool next to mine. “What with all the bloody antenatal classes and pregnancy massage and all that bollocks. I ask you, why’s she got to bother with all that this time round?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t exactly my area of expertise. “Dunno, mate. They changed the procedure since you had the first two?”
Dave and his wife married young and popped out a couple of kids in their early twenties. Dave and Jen, I mean, although come to think of it their kids were now also in their early twenties and therefore old enough to be this latest sprog’s parents. Both had been living away from home for a few years now. Maybe I should ask Dave to give Phil’s mum some tips.
I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it must be weird growing up with your dad a copper. Must be like dad squared, when it came to underage drinking and the odd herbal cigarette. Not that I’d ever done a right lot of either, but I didn’t kid myself I was in the majority here.
Dave laughed and patted his belly. There was a fair amount of it to pat. “Can’t you tell? It’s the dads what have ’em now, like bloody seahorses.”
I grinned. “Your Jen not still giving you grief about the diet, then?”
“Too bloody knackered to give a toss. She’s spent the summer with her feet up, going Get this bloody thing out of me. Says she’d kill for a rum and Coke too.”
Cheers, mate. A flashback to Vi saying I could bloody kill her made me shudder, but I s’posed it was as good a way as any of introducing the topic of the day. “So are we gonna talk about this murder?”
Dave sighed. “Better buy me a pint, then, hadn’t you? And a packet of salt ’n’ vinegar, while you’re at it.”
A skinny barmaid with creepily perfect makeup and bleached-blonde hair took our order. “You new here, love?” I asked, ’cos I hadn’t seen her before.
“Yes. Since two weeks.” Her accent was foreign—German, maybe?
I caught Dave giving me a sly look. “Bloody foreigners,” he muttered when she went over to the other side of the bar to use the till. “Coming over here, taking our jobs, impregnating our women—”
“Har bloody har,” I told him, sticking up a finger and swivelling it gently at him.
Dave cackled, and the barmaid gave us a funny look. “Private joke,” I told her, in case her hearing was sharper than Dave had given her credit for.
We took our pints over to a secluded table (not hard to find on a Monday night) and sat down.
“So, you spoken to your mates in St. Leonards?”
Dave nodded. “Yep. Rang ’em up and offered them the scoop on one Tom Paretski. Course, they were well disappointed when I told ’em you were a local bloody celebrity round our way, tripping over bodies both dead and alive left, right, and bloody centre.”
“Oi, I’m not a celebrity.”
“Course you bleedin’ are. Front page of the local rag for saving that barmaid, weren’t you?”
“Yeah, well, you’ll notice we’re not exactly being mobbed by people asking for my autograph. Anyway, so what did you find out?”
“One or two things.” Cagey bastard.
“Come on, are you gonna tell me, or do I have to bribe you with a packet of pork scratchings?”
“It’s a serious offence, bribing an officer of the law. Better make it worth your while by adding a pint as well. Nah, only kidding, my shout. Same again?”
I then had to wait half an hour while he heaved his bulk over to the bar, waved the barman over from the other side, ordered the drinks and the nibbles, and carried them back to the table.
“You did that on purpose, you bastard,” I greeted him on his return. It wasn’t exactly a leap of logic, seeing as we both still had half our original drinks left and he hadn’t even touched his crisps.
He still didn’t say anything until he’d opened his pork scratchings and scoffed a handful, the git. “You’re fine. Never a serious suspect anyhow.”
I stared. “That’s it?”
He stared back. “What? I’m not gonna give you all the ins and outs of an ongoing police investigation. Be a breach of professional ethics, that would. I will tell you this, though. For what it’s worth, my money’s on a lover.” Dave belched and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Why? I mean, do they know for certain she had one? I mean, she was a busy lady, fingers in all sorts of pies.”
Dave snorted. “Oh yeah? Bit of a dyke on the side, was she?”
“Christ, not that kind of pie.” I sent him a look I hoped conveyed just how unimpressed I was with his so-called sense of humour. “Least, not that I’m aware of. I was just wondering if she had the time for a lover.”
“Who knows? But it’s suggestive.” Dave leaned forward, not without a bit of difficulty, and tapped the side of his nose. “Now, you didn’t hear this from me, but there were definitely circumstances suggestive of a lover spurned.”
“What circumstances? Which, obviously, I also didn’t hear from you,” I added as encouragement.
“Ah.” Dave took a long swig of beer. “Well, they got a bit of a surprise when they cut her open for the postmortem. Prize in every packet, you might say.”
“You what?”
“Whoever did her in shoved a gold necklace down her throat. Well, tried to, anyhow. Owing to the cause of death, there wasn’t a right lot of room.”
Suddenly I was ice-cold. “Diamond?” I asked, and could have kicked myself for it a moment later.
Dave stared at me. Then he put down his pint. “Bloody, bleeding bollocks.” He shook his head. “You’re going to be the death of me, Paretski, you know that, don’t you? David Southgate, tragically taken from us in his prime, predeceased by his sodding career. Come on then, out with it. What do you know about that bloody necklace?”
Look, I didn’t want to drop Vi Majors in it. But this was Dave. And, well, it was murder, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know anything,” I started. “And I’ve never even seen the sodding thing. But, well . . .”
&nbs
p; I told him all about my first meeting with Amelia F-M., which, when you say it like that, sounds like some posh radio station for genteel young ladies. I didn’t reckon Vi would be caught dead listening to it, but then again, she wasn’t really in their demographic. Posh, yeah. Genteel? A big, fat no.
Dave heaved a sigh. “Fine. You realise I’m going to have to pass this on? And they’re going to want to talk to you again. Why the bleedin’ hell didn’t you tell them this to start with?”
“Didn’t know it was significant, did I? Shit,” I added as a thought struck. “Are you gonna get in trouble for telling me about the necklace?”
Dave stared into his pint for a minute. “Nah,” he said at last. “We’ll spin it that you and me were having a friendly chat over a pint, and you just happened to mention the victim hiring you to find a necklace. Whereupon I, seeing as how I knew stuff you didn’t, was on it like a car bonnet and got you to sing like a canary what’s won The X Factor and got top billing at the Royal Opera House.” He sat back, his expression a lot like Arthur’s after he’s managed to sneak some of Merlin’s dinner without getting caught. “That’ll do. Just don’t grass me up, and we’re golden.”
I gave him a sideways look. “So did you tell me about the necklace after I’d sung, or not?”
He sent back a look that was full-frontal and unimpressed. “Paretski, you’re the world’s worst liar, and believe me, I’ve met some fucking tragic ones in my life. Yes, I told you about the necklace, using my professional judgement to determine that sharing a confidence would persuade you a full confession was advisable. Happy?”
“Well, not with you calling it a confession. But yeah, I can work with that.”
“Thank God. Pork scratching?”
I held up a hand to ward off the snacks of the devil. “No, ta.”
He snorted and shoved the crisps in my direction instead. “Worried you won’t fit into your wedding dress? How’s all that going, anyway? The wedding preparations, that is, not your bleedin’ love life ’cos I do not want to know. Have you even set a date yet?”
“Nah. Sometime next summer, that’s all. Got to get my sister hitched first.”
“Yeah, well, don’t leave it too late.”
“Christ, why does everyone seem to think time’s running out for me?” Not that Mrs. G. had been talking about weddings, of course. Still, I was starting to get a bit paranoid, what with the way the whole world seemed to be singing the same tune.
“Bloody hell, when did you turn into such a drama queen? Jen reckons the best places get booked up two years in advance, that’s all.” He huffed at my look of surprise. “She’s only planning the christening already. Wait until the baby’s born, I keep telling her. Don’t count your chickens. Will she listen? Will she bollocks.”
What with my brother and sister both being childless, and most of my mates of the nonbreeding persuasion, I hadn’t had a right lot to do with christenings up until now. “How much planning does a christening take? Don’t you just turn up at the church, splash the sprog with a bit of holy water, and God’s your uncle?”
“She wants a bloody reception.” Dave shuddered, his belly doing a weird ripple thing. “Posh finger food and piano music. Like the baby’s going to give a crap.”
“Thought that was mostly what they did. That and the sleeping and crying.”
“Eff off, or your name’s going right to the top of the babysitting list.” Dave took a long swallow of beer. “Ah, that’s better. So you and Morrison, you planning to adopt or something?”
“Jesus, let us get hitched first, yeah?” I fixed him with a stern look. “And don’t bloody tell me not to leave it too late, yeah? I’ve had about as much of that as I can stand.”
Dave laughed, the bastard. “Mortality creeping up, is it? Christ, just wait till you get to my age. Everything sodding aches, and if it doesn’t, it’s ’cos it’s bloody dropped off.” Then his smile turned misty, which was disturbing. “It’s gonna be good for us, this nipper. Me and Jen. Keep us from getting old and sad.”
There was only one possible response to that, so I made it, Dave told me to eff off again, and then we got another round in. Good times.
I slept like a baby Monday night, despite (or maybe because of) being on my own. Well, like one of the babies in an advert for expensive, brand-name nappies designed by NASA, anyhow. Dave reliably informs me real babies aren’t like that and prefer to spend most of the hours of darkness puking, pooping, and having a paddy.
Course, if they were that bad, he wouldn’t be having another one, would he? I lay in bed for a mo in the morning and wondered what it’d be like having a kiddie of my own.
Then Merlin jumped on my stomach and Arthur gave my foot a friendly scratch, both of then miaowing fit to wake up the dead ’cos breakfast hadn’t been served, and I reckoned I might have a fair idea already.
My phone rang just as I pulled up outside the first job of the day. (Washbasin down the road for the newly single Mrs. Z. She didn’t volunteer how the last one had got cracked, and I didn’t ask.)
“Paretski Plumbing,” I answered breezily.
“Tom Paretski? This is Vi Majors. I need to talk to you.” She was one of those people with a telephone voice that could carry across three continents without the need for 4G. I moved the phone further away from my ear.
“I’m listening,” I said cautiously.
There was a barely audible tch. “Not on the phone.”
Bloody hell, not her as well. “Yeah, see, I’m not sure I’m gonna be out your way for a bit—”
“I’ll come to you. Where do you live?”
“Fleetville. St. Albans. But—”
“Where’s that? Oh, never mind, I’m rubbish with directions anyway. Just give me your postcode, and I’ll set the satnav. You’ll be there tonight?”
I hesitated, not sure if Phil would be free to come round—I had a feeling this might be just his area—but sod it, she might be a big lass, but if it came down to a fight, I was fairly sure I could take her. And she had just lost her stepmum, never mind that she hadn’t exactly broken down with grief last I’d seen her. Actually, that brought something else to mind. “What about your dad? Are you sure you should leave him? He looked a bit cut up about it all on Saturday.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine.” She dismissed all five stages of grief with the airy confidence of someone who’d never lost someone they cared about.
Then again, Alex had been a widower before the advent of Amelia, hadn’t he? So she’d lost her mum sometime in the past, and presumably she’d actually liked her.
Jesus, poor Alex. He must be devastated, going through it all a second time around. “Maybe he could come with?” I found myself saying, when I hadn’t meant to agree to her coming round at all.
“God, no. I told you, he’ll be fine. He’s with Uncle Arlo.”
There was that name again. All these As were giving me a headache. “That’s his brother?”
“No. Amelia’s brother, as if that had anything to do with anything. Look, just give me your postcode.”
I gave. I also told her not to come round before eight ’cos I’d be having my tea.
Then I rang Phil and offered to cook him pasta tonight.
I played it safe and didn’t mention Vi was coming round until after we’d eaten (just a carbonara, with a rocket salad on the side, as I couldn’t be arsed to do anything fancy), but Phil was still less than impressed with my plans for company for the evening. “Going for the record, are you—most murderers entertained in one living room? And what if I hadn’t been free tonight? Hoping the cats would leap in to protect you?”
I leaned back in the sofa and nudged my plate to one side with my toes so I could put my feet up on the coffee table. It was all right. I had clean socks on. “Don’t be daft. She can’t have done it.”
Phil leaned back too, but kept his feet on the floor. Probably just as well, seeing as Arthur jumped up on his lap a moment later. That cat could do serious damage by lan
ding on unsupported knees. “Why not? She’s got plenty of upper-body strength. Keen tennis player, from what I heard. And she rides.”
“So? Nobody strangled the woman with their thighs.”
Phil huffed. Arthur’s ears twitched, and he kneaded Phil’s legs with his paws. “Have you seen these horsey types? Spend more of their time slinging hay bales and mucking out stables than they do in the bloody saddle. Don’t be fooled by the padding on those arms. She’s probably got more muscle on her than you have.”
“Oi, who are you calling a wimp?” I flexed my biceps in his general direction. You have to have a reasonable amount of strength in your arms, in the plumbing line. Course, legs are a different matter, but luckily it wasn’t shorts weather anymore. “Anyway, she still didn’t do it. Can’t have, or she’d never have said what she did up at the fayre. You heard her, telling everyone she hated her stepmum.”
“No, I didn’t, and neither did you. We heard her saying everyone else hated her.”
I thought about it. “S’pose you’re right. All except Alex, some bloke called Lance, and Uncle Arndale.”
“Arlo.”
“Whatever. You’re still not telling me that’s actually a name. Not that Lance is much better, poor sod.”
“Fit right in round here, though, wouldn’t he?”
I frowned. “You what?”
“Arthur, Merlin . . .”
“What, you think it’s actually short for Lancelot? Jesus, his parents must have hated him.”
Phil shrugged. “It’s not that bad. Makes a man stand out, get noticed, having an unusual name.” He looked a bit wistful, in a grass-is-always-greener sort of way.
“Oi, I hope this doesn’t mean you’re planning on changing your name by deed poll to something weird and wonderful, like that nutter who called himself after the entire Arsenal football team. I mean, seriously, he could at least have picked a decent side.” A thought struck. “Hey, we haven’t talked about names, have we? After we get hitched, I mean. Are we gonna be Paretski-Morrisons? I don’t reckon Morrison-Paretski would work.”