by JL Merrow
“Not on the menu.” And yep, there was that smirk I’d come to know and . . . Oh, fuck it. Yeah, all right, love. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. “Pork chops do?” he went on.
“Great, if we had any.” I didn’t stomp into the living room, because that would have been childish. Merlin taking one look at me and shooting out of the room like he’d been turbocharged meant bugger all, the nervy so-and-so.
“We have. I went shopping.”
Huh. This was another thing that was taking a bit of getting used to. It felt weird, not knowing the contents of my own fridge. “Fine, then,” I said, and sat down on the sofa, which was something of a painful process. Funny how you don’t notice how much you use your stomach muscles until some great git with iron fists tries to punch your guts out through your spine.
Not that I was laughing. It would’ve hurt too much anyway.
“While you’re waiting, have a read of this.” Phil’s voice right behind me made me jump but, give him his due, he didn’t laugh, just handed me his tablet. There was a document open, and at the top of it a picture that was etched into my recent memory, although without the rabid snarl I remembered. Kelvin Reid. “It’s what I dug up on him so far.” He paused. “You might want to scroll down to the part about hobbies and interests.”
“What, are you writing his CV for him?” I scrolled and read. It was, as it happened, a lot like a CV, although more warts-and-all than I’d have been happy sending off to potential employers. When I’d finished, I put the tablet down. I didn’t turn round, because my stomach would not have been a happy bunny. “You’re still there, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” came a gruff voice from behind my left lughole.
“You know, you could have told me he was an amateur boxer. I might not have argued with you about going to A&E so much.”
“You, not argue? That’ll be the day. Besides . . .” Something about his tone as he trailed off made me twist around to face him after all, despite what my gut thought about it. “I forgot you didn’t know. Forgot I hadn’t showed you the file.”
I could feel the grin spreading over my face. “What, the great Phil Morrison admitting a mistake? Bloody hell, is the world coming to an end?”
“Shut up. I was rattled, wasn’t I? Don’t like seeing you hurt.”
The warm and fuzzies still had a bitter edge to them. “Yeah, well, I s’pose it serves me right for not watching where I was bloody well going.”
Phil leaned over the sofa back to put his arms around me. “He hit you with a sucker punch. It happens.”
“Ever happen to you?” I was betting it hadn’t. There’s a world of difference between five foot eight and six foot one when it comes to picking victims for your next mugging. And that’s leaving aside the fact that my fiancé tends to make your proverbial brick outhouse experience a sudden urge to go on a high-protein diet and get down the gym.
Phil surprised me. “Yes. Early days on the job. I was chasing down a shoplifter; he hid round a corner and waited for me to catch up.”
I cricked my neck giving him a sidelong look. “Ow. Did you feel a right muppet too?” I rubbed the skin over the pinched nerve.
Phil laughed, kissed it better, and nodded. “Took me months to live it down too. He was shorter than you. Or possibly she was.”
“You got decked by a little girl? A big strong bloke like you?”
“Did I say that? Our thief was assigned male at birth, but wearing a dress at the time. We never did clear up if that was a gender-identity thing, a fetish, or a disguise for when they fancied a bit of bargain hunting.” He let go of me and straightened up, which wasn’t a bad move. His back had to be killing him, leaning over like that, and the last thing we needed was both of us crocked. “Right. Food.”
I sat watching the telly and contemplating my own mortality until Phil brought a couple of loaded plates in. Pork chops and beans on toast. Plus half a grilled tomato each wobbling self-consciously on the side of the plate. Suddenly I was ravenous. Okay, it wasn’t what I’d have cooked, but it was good, solid comfort food. Just what the doctor ordered. “Brown sauce?” I asked hopefully, taking my plate.
Phil rolled his eyes and went to fetch it.
For once the gods smiled on us, and Dave Southgate didn’t turn up until after we’d finished eating and were kicking back with a beer in front of the telly. And yeah, I know, pills and alcohol. But it was one beer, and they weren’t the really good drugs. Even Phil had given in after a token moan.
“Thought we might be seeing you,” I said as Phil showed Dave in. Arthur gave him a hard stare and then slunk off to the kitchen. He’s not daft, my cat, and Dave didn’t look like he was in a cuddly mood.
“We’re all hooked up to computers now, aren’t we? Every time your name comes up in a report, I get an email alerting me and a bloody big klaxon goes off. Happens so bloomin’ often I’m going deaf in one ear.”
“Nah, that’s just the excuse you give to the wife when she asks why you didn’t get up for the nipper in the night. How is he, by the way?”
Dave’s face softened for an instant—then solidified to granite. “Don’t you change the subject. He’s fine. What’s this I hear about you kicking off with a murder suspect?”
“Oi, he hit me, not the other way around. And, I might add, because of that flippin’ mugshot your lot put out on the telly. I ought to sue. Defamation of character, adding injury to insult—”
“Don’t push it, Paretski.” Dave dropped heavily into an armchair with an oof. Good thing Arthur wasn’t still sitting there. “You all right, then? Seen a doctor?”
“Don’t you start,” I muttered as Phil came out with a suspiciously smug “Yes, he has.”
Dave gave him a dark look. “Christ, any more of that and I’ll start thinking you’re a good influence. So he’s been checked out?”
“Yes, he has,” I said pointedly. “And what’s this about Kelvin Reid being a suspect? You got anything on him?”
“Only statistics.” Dave must have caught my blank stare. “He’s the lover, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but he hit me because he thought I’d done it. So it can’t have been him.”
Dave turned to Phil. “And you let him out on his own?”
“Oi!”
“Hate to break it to you, mate, but sometimes, murderers aren’t honest.” You could have used Dave’s sarcasm to lag a pipe.
“Git. I know that, but . . . he seemed really upset.”
“You’d be bloody upset if you were facing a life sentence.” He didn’t ask what Reid had been doing up there in the first place, so I presumed Big Kelv had told the arresting officers the same story he gave us.
“Any news on the cause of death?” Phil put in.
“He died of thirst,” Dave said flatly. “No, wait, that was me. Newly minted DCI, cut down tragically in his prime by a fatal lack of hospitality.”
Whoops. My mum brought me up better than this. “Sorry, mate. Beer? Phil’ll get it,” I added, flashing a smile in the appropriate direction.
Phil muttered something I didn’t catch, but disappeared into the kitchen.
“You’ve got him well trained,” Dave said with a smirk.
“Too right. Want to see him come when I call?” I winked in case he hadn’t got the innuendo.
Dave’s shudder probably had seismologists miles away wetting themselves in glee. “You can leave your sex life out of it when I’m around. Oh, cheers, mate.” He took the beer Phil handed him.
“That was pretty nippy,” I told Phil approvingly as he sat back down beside me. “Worried you were going to miss all the good stuff?”
Dave snorted. “Chance’d be a bloody fine thing. It ain’t like on the bleedin’ telly, you know, with all their tame lab coats working through the night. Our lot clock off at 5 p.m. sharp, and half past three on Fridays. And they’ve got a backlog that makes NHS waiting lists look like the queue for the gents at a bleedin’ Women’s Institute jam-making workshop. No, we hav
e not got any news on the cause of death. Forensics are working on it. Allegedly. So what the bloody hell did you say to Kelvin Reid that made him go postal on you?”
“Nothing. Literally, nothing. I didn’t even see the bastard before he hit me.” I frowned. “Which is what I told your flippin’ minions.”
Dave shrugged. “Yeah, but you can tell me the real story.”
“I told them the real story! Seriously, he recognised me off the telly. That’s all.”
“And where were you when all this was going on?” He turned to Phil with a suspicious air.
“Café.”
“Yeah, I never did get my coffee.”
“Right. You two just happened to stop in at Jonathan Parrot’s old workplace to get a cup of coffee and a muffin.”
“Well, no.” I glanced at Phil. “We’re investigating the murder. I mean, Phil is. Obviously. ’Cos that’s his job. I’m a plumber. Pure and simple.”
“Simple, maybe. But pure? Pull the other one, mate, it plays ‘God Save the Queen.’ Right. Who’s hired you?”
“Mrs. Parrot,” Phil told him before I could get a word in.
Dave gave him an assessing look. “Think she did it?”
“We’re keeping an open mind at the moment.” Phil’s face would make a professional poker player hang up his cards for good. You can take the lad out of the police force . . .
“Up yours.” Dave clearly wasn’t impressed with this reminder of my beloved’s gamekeeper-turned-poacher status.
“Nah,” I answered Dave’s question. “She might have had some serious delusions about the state of their marriage, but she wouldn’t have killed him.” An unpleasant thought hit me. “S’pose you’re going to say statistics are against her and all. Going to have to pick one and stick with it, aren’t you? Or do you reckon they were in it together, Lilah and Reid?”
Dave wasn’t fazed. “Stranger things, Paretski. Stranger things. So you interviewed the staff at the Smithy?”
“Kind of,” I said, as Phil gave a curt, “Yes.”
We exchanged glances. “Well, we didn’t get to talk to the Hobbit properly,” I explained.
“Who?” Dave’s look said he was starting to wonder if I’d been hit in the head, not the gut.
“Proudfoot. Young Oliver. He was busy with customers all the time. Popular lad. Had a natter with Lilah’s daughter, Hazel, though. She seemed genuinely cut up about it all.”
“Yeah, that’s what our boys and girls thought. Not that I’m discussing the case with you lot in any way, shape, or form.”
“Perish the thought. Did they happen to mention what they thought of Tallulah?”
Dave cackled. “Hoping we’ll do your job for you? Not a chance. You can form your own conclusions. Although strictly off the record . . .” He paused dramatically.
“Yeah?”
“Begins with B and rhymes with ‘snitch.’ But quote me on that, and we’re having words.” He glugged down the last of his beer and stood up. “Right. Some of us have got nippers to see to. Try not to piss off anyone else, won’t you?”
“Cheers, mate. We on for a pint next week?”
“Christ, yes. Jen donated all my beer to a bloody food bank. I told her, they don’t even want alcohol, but did she listen? Just dumped it all in the box with the cans of soup and instant noodles. She doesn’t like me drinking around the lad. Says it’s a bad influence. I ask you, how’s he supposed to know what’s in the bottle? He still thinks that’s what food comes in. No, don’t get up. I’ll see myself out. Again.”
He stomped off. I turned to Phil with a grin. “Think it’s his age, or has this second go at fatherhood finally mellowed him?”
Dave’s dulcet tones sounded from the hall. “Oi, I heard that, Paretski. You go round getting yourself half killed by any more murder suspects, and you’ll find out how much I’ve bloody mellowed.” The front door closed behind him. Quietly.
Phil smirked. “Definitely the kid.”
I woke up stiff next morning, in more ways than one. Phil took care of one problem, although I had my suspicions it was just an excuse to check my belly over for signs of internal haemorrhaging while he was down there. I had a couple of paracetamol with my breakfast to deal with the other, feeling a wuss even as I gulped them down. I’d had a gander at the relevant area myself, and to be honest, the bruising was less than impressive, visually speaking. Also, a few crunches now and then wouldn’t go amiss.
“Working today?” Phil asked as I munched on my toast.
I swallowed. “Seeing as how it’s that or make a choice between eating and paying the mortgage this month, yeah.”
He gave me a look over the top of his coffee mug. “There’s two of us paying the bills now. You can take a day off if you need to.”
“Took one yesterday, didn’t I? Anyhow, I don’t want to disappoint the customers.” Start getting a reputation as unreliable in my line of work and you can flush your business down the toilet. “What are you up to today? Jonny-boy’s case? Or have you got other stuff you need to do?”
“Paperwork. And a meeting that’s not going to come to anything.”
“Why not blow them off, then?”
“Same reason as you. She might not end up employing me, but she’s got plenty of friends with money to spare. And husbands who like a bit on the side.”
“Fair enough.” I hesitated. “Could take a trip up to Pluck’s End tonight, though, if you still fancy checking out that pub.”
Phil frowned. “We’re shooting tonight.”
“Oh. Right. Forgot.” It was a barefaced lie. “We could miss one night. For the sake of the case.”
His frown deepened. “You sure you’re okay to work today?” It was clear he reckoned I was feeling the effects of yesterday’s assault and battery worse than I’d let on.
Which left me in a quandary. On the one hand, I didn’t want to give him any more reasons to wrap me in metaphorical cotton wool. On the other . . . here was an excuse to miss shooting tonight, handed to me on a silver platter.
It was taking all I’d got not to grab it with both hands.
Joining the shooting club had been Gary’s idea, and I’d thought it was a pretty naff one at the time, but it’d grown on me to the point I actually did a quick search on the internet for local clubs and mentioned it to Phil as something to get us out of the house.
More fool me. He’d been all for it. Apparently he’d been on the waiting list for firearms training when he left the force sooner than planned. I couldn’t say I’d been sorry—at least this way, we’d be novices together.
“You know they do stag do’s too?” I’d told Phil on the way to our introductory session, just before Christmas. “Take you up to Scotland or Budapest for a weekend with all your mates and let you blast away at anything that doesn’t move. The website’s full of bollocks like ‘Do you want to be James Bond?’ and ‘Time to be a real man.’” I flashed him a lewd grin. “They literally go on about your testosterone rising when you’re holding your weapon. Makes you wonder about straight blokes, if they go for that kind of marketing.”
Phil kept his eyes on the road, but his mouth quirked up in amusement. “If you want that sort of thing for the stag do, you’ll have to talk to Darren and Gary.”
Our respective best men. We’d left all plans for the stag do in their so-called capable hands, and I for one was beginning to have second thoughts. “Might just do that. I’ve been having nightmares we’re going to end up with a bondage night at a local dungeon.”
Phil smirked outright. “Or a Morris dancing evening.”
“Better watch out Darren doesn’t catch you taking the piss out of his favourite pastime or he’ll shove his stick—sorry, staff—where the sun don’t shine.”
“I wasn’t laughing at the thought of him doing it.”
“I could jingle my bells with the best of ’em.” I gave him a sidelong look. “Bet my staff would be bigger than yours and all.”
“Promises, promises.”
>
The gun club was down in the basement of a community centre in an area of St. Albans that was even dodgier than the estate Phil had grown up on. I wondered if any of the members ever got mugged for their guns. Possibly in a bid to stave off the robberies with violence, it was completely unmarked both outside and in the building—no helpful signs to tell us Lethal Weapons This Way. We had to ask at the desk.
Maybe it was simply to preserve the polite fiction that Brits don’t have anything to do with those nasty firearm things. Well, not unless they’re the type who live out in the country on their own estates and have a surname as double-barrelled as their shotguns.
Given that I’d had a gun pulled on me twice in the last couple of years, I wasn’t buying it.
We met up with a guy from the gun club and a group of other gun virgins, some of them alarmingly young (seriously, one little lad looked around five; I’d known older kids who weren’t even allowed to play with toy guns). The gun club guy, who was your average late-middle-age white bloke and introduced himself as Trevor, showed us around and told us the rules of the range, most of which boiled down to Don’t kill anyone, including yourself. Then we got to the fun part, which was where we got to try out the hardware.
This being Britain, which (according to Trevor at any rate) has the strictest firearms laws in the world, there weren’t any submachine guns, antitank missiles, or James Bond–style handguns. We were left with rifles of a couple of different calibres and degrees of banginess, and antique muzzle-loading pistols last fired in anger at the O.K. Corral.
While any visiting American gun enthusiasts would have been totally underwhelmed, and Trevor certainly seemed to mourn the good old, pre-Dunblane days of handguns for all, it was bloody good fun. Particularly the antique pistols, which had a decent kick and, more importantly, were prone to shooting actual flame out the sides as they filled the whole range with gun smoke to the extent that you could barely see the targets by the time we were done shooting.
So why wouldn’t I want to go on this particular Friday night? Well, for starters, once the initial fun and frolics were over, probationary members were restricted to .22 rifles. Compared to more serious weapons, these make a noise slightly less impressive than your average slammed door, and have a kick like a one-legged gnat that’s not trying too hard.