by HRF Keating
Rules, Regs and Rotten Eggs
H.R.F Keating
© H.R.F Keating, 2007
H.R.F Keating has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2007 by Allison & Busby Limited.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter One
Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens spat out her bottled-up rage.
‘I’m going to resign from this bloody job.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said her husband, sitting beside her in the car he had just brought to a seatbelt-tightening stop.
‘Oh, yes? Is that all you can say when I tell you I’m going to quit the job I’ve had ever since I was fit to have a job? That I’m going to forget the belief I’ve always had that being a detective is something worth devoting one’s whole life to? Oh, yes? Is that your only reaction?’
For a second or two John sat thinking, his features under the waning light of the September evening seemingly settled into their customary calm.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘it’s really a question of what’s made you explode like that. Was it just momentary fury because that huge crowd in the square down there is mysteriously blocking our way? Or was it the sudden coming to a head of a long-nurtured feeling?’
‘Both.’
John laughed.
‘I suppose it’s no use pointing out to you that the two statements are logically at odds.’
‘All right, John Piddock, part-time Professor of Logic, let me say I don’t feel they are at odds.’
‘Very well, Mrs Piddock, licensed husband critic, I concede that perhaps my claim wasn’t completely correct. But, all the same, a sudden announcement like that does call for some explanation.’
‘Well,’ Harriet answered, her flare of rage diminishing, ‘I suppose actually it was both things at once that made me come out with it. You’ve got to admit that appalling lunch we’ve just endured was enough to make anyone think about quitting a job when you’ve virtually been ordered to go to it. And —’
‘No, wait a minute. That lunch wasn’t altogether awful.’
‘Oh, come on. Would you yourself have liked to find you’d been dragooned into going all the way out to that dreadful inglenooky cottage just to meet a writer — forgotten his name already, thank goodness — who absolutely had to find out about a senior woman police officer’s life. And kept me there all bloody afternoon.’
‘But you didn’t have to arrive so set on being frosty.’
‘Justifiably frosty, let me remind you. The wife had given the most appalling directions for finding the place, and, what’s more, she distinctly said One-ish, and we were there by twenty-past. Or only a bit later. There wasn’t any need for those chilly looks.’
‘Except that, apparently, she was certain they’d said twelve-thirty, and her souffle starter was pretty well a puddle by the time she brought it in.’
‘Her fault for expecting us to keep to that stuffy Never later than a quarter of an hour etiquette.’
‘Etiquette? I haven’t heard anybody actually say that word for … at least twenty years.’
‘OK, OK, I haven’t either. I’m not even sure I know what exactly it means. But —’
John, the dictionary devotee, broke in.
‘It’s something like, quote, conventionally accepted standards of proper social behaviour. Came across it the other day and looked it up. But, note, it’s very probably etiquette to give a full explanation for any sudden life-changing announcement.’
‘Oh, that. Yes. Well, I suppose I should explain. A bit.’
‘Even quite a lot?’
‘All right. But it’s not altogether easy.’
‘Try. The only way.’
‘Pig.’
She sighed.
‘But, well … Well, I suppose it’s really all to do with the new ACC.’
‘The Assistant Chief Constable (Crime), chap at the head of the CID?’
‘As you ought to know by this time. Right, the fact is the man’s doing nothing but make life difficult for me.’
‘But you used to get on very well with his predecessor, didn’t you?’
‘I did. I certainly did. Which only increases my feeling that this man is deliberately picking on me. I think he got it into his head at the start that I’m not the detective I used to be. He’d been told about the terrorist bomb that killed Graham, and simply decided I’d still be affected. But that dull weight has gone. Gone altogether. You know it has. I am not what I was in the months after that happened.’
‘You’re not. Without any doubt. Time has done the trick, as incidentally it’s done for me, more or less.’
‘Thank you. And, now I come to think of it, yes, it was in fact probably the ACC who decided I was fit for nothing more arduous than going off to Inglenooky Cottage to talk to that idiot writer.’
‘If he did, and I don’t think for a moment it would have entered his mind —’
‘You don’t know him, John. You don’t. He’s a typical example of someone who’s risen up the ranks by sticking firmly to the regulations and the rules, as if he’s climbing some sort of rope-ladder. And in the end he’s got to a place that’s simply too high for him. Oh, I know that as a graduate entrant myself, I’d be accused of being an intellectual snob if I said this to anyone but you. Yet it’s true. I tell you, the ACC, stuck there above, is pigheaded from the neck up.’
‘All right, that does happen, but —’
‘No. It’s the prospect of working under him all the way to my retirement date that’s made me seriously contemplate just now turning the job in. So there’s your answer.’
‘If you are that serious about it, I think we’d better make our way home, sit down with a quiet drink and discuss it all.’
Harriet looked down again at the market square ahead. It was a seething black sea of shoulder-to-shoulder, heaving and swaying people.
‘Hardly possible to drive through that,’ she said. ‘I can see why you braked so suddenly.’
‘Right, not exactly according to the Highway Code. But I didn’t expect to come over the crest and find it.’
‘What are they all doing there?’ Harriet demanded. ‘On an ordinary Tuesday evening, for heaven’s sake? I’ve had a bloody awful time, and I want to get home.’
‘I suppose,’ John said, with a puff of a sigh, ‘I’ll have to see if I can get round somehow. Do you know this place? What is it? Gralethorpe, did the sign say?’
‘Yes, I do know Gralethorpe, as a matter of fact. Been out here a couple of times. On inquiries.’
‘Very well, give your ignorant husband the benefit of your knowledge.’
‘Sorry, can’t really be much help. I was only here for an hour or so each time. Talked
to a nice old lady once.’ A wry laugh. ‘Went to her door wanting information, all ready to pretend I was from the Council. Then, the moment she appeared, apple-cheeked and innocent but with a look sharp as a pecking bird, I found myself dropping the pretence and producing the plain truth. Police officer on your doorstep. And, no fuss, she simply told me everything I’d needed to find out. And gave me a very good tea, too.’
‘Ancient rules of hospitality. I like that. And I quite like the Hard Detective being taught a lesson.’
Harriet bristled.
‘Look, I’ve warned you often enough about giving me that stupid media label. There’s a house rule about not ever mentioning it.’
‘So there is. Grovelling apologies. And I think I can see, now that the street-lamps are coming on, what that crowd’s there for. It’s a flavour-of-the month anti-hunting protest. You can see the banners, End Blood Sports.’
‘Ah, right. And I know something about it, actually. Piece of paper landed on my desk last week. There’s a politician of some sort, ex-MP I think, who feels he’s got a right to speak up for hunting wherever he can. In fact he’s probably that chap on the platform over there, all dressed up in the proper gear. And, yes, I remember the name. Rather an odd one. Roughouse. Something Roughouse.’
‘Spelt with only one h? If it is, I can tell you something about Robert Roughouse. I’ve read a book by him, travel book. He went out of his way to mention that Roughouse is an old Northumbrian name, deriving from an ancient keep or castle.’
‘Thank you, Mr Encyclopedia. But, as I was saying, apparently Roughouse insists on addressing any anti-hunting rally he hears of, and won’t be warned that he may get more than he bargains for. People can be pretty aggressive in a mining town like Gralethorpe. At weekends they like to go walking out in the open. They don’t much care for toffs riding roughshod — or, actually, extremely well-shod — all over the countryside.’
She looked once more at the square below.
‘But my piece of bumph doesn’t seem to have been read by any Gralethorpe police officer. Not a uniform in sight. Should be. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s trouble before long. Those are pretty angry yells now.’
‘You could be right. Brave of Robert Roughouse really to come here and face that, though I suppose he’s got as much right as that crowd has to have his say. And there is, actually, a good deal to be said for foxhunting.’
‘How d’you know? Confess. Ever been up on a horse? Ever?’
‘Well, no. Got me there. But listen. Listen to what he’s telling the crowd, now he’s got hold of a mike. You cannot just end 400 years of history, 400 years of courage and daring over the fences. That, in the end, is what keeps Britain great. He’s got a point, you know.’
‘I suppose he may have. But what I want is my supper. Or, in fact, after wading through that sodden souffle pretending hard for manners’ sake, what I really want is to postpone that heavy discussion you’re planning till tomorrow and flop in front of some mindless telly till it’s time for bed.’
‘Then we’ll be off. If you can tell me how to weave our way through the back streets.’
‘Certainly time I tried to. Specially as I think someone up there on the platform’s just switched off Roughouse’s mike.’
‘There speaks the cynical Hard — the cynical police officer. More likely, if his mike is off, it’s someone saving him from the anger of the mob.’
‘Oh, but, look. Look. No one’s saving him now. Those are rotten eggs beginning to fly.’
‘You’re right. They are. Dozens of them, too. Brown, white, and I dare say speckled.’
They sat on, looking at the ever-growing bombardment.
‘But how do you know the eggs are rotten?’ John said after a little. ‘Evidence of the smell? At this distance?’
‘Oh, all right. Most likely straight from the supermarket, today’s bargain offer. But by age-old tradition they ought to be rotten.’
‘Know what you mean. The conventional missile. But, rotten or farm-fresh, I still wouldn’t like to be Robert Roughouse up there in his nice red coat. Or pink, that’s what you have to say. Pink, despite the evidence of your eyes.’
Any question of getting home temporarily forgotten, they stayed watching in fascination.
‘Wow, look, at that one,’ John exclaimed. Almost purple in this light. May really be rotten. And sailing straight towards —’
Then, as the dark missile struck the wall only just behind Robert Roughouse, there came an odd sharp noise like a thick stick snapping.
And Roughouse, right arm raised, finger pointing high, pitched forward and lay face-down and unmoving.
Chapter Two
So Harriet never got her mindless flop in front of the TV. She knew, with no other police presence at the scene, that it was her duty to do what she could to investigate, though already she could see dozens of the potential witnesses quietly slipping away. Telling John he might as well make his way home as best he could, she grabbed the heavy torch they kept in the car and ran across to the town hall and the victim outside it.
The inert body had been turned on its back with a rolled-up raincoat pushed under the head. Shouting Police officer. I am a police officer, she told the people clustered round to move aside and knelt down. At once she saw that whatever it had been that had exploded just behind Roughouse it had not killed him. But it was plain he had been appallingly injured. Blood was pumping out from a dozen wounds or more. Judging by the quota of victims she had seen over the years criss-crossed with savage cuts, it looked as if he could well be in imminent danger of death.
‘A doctor?’ she called back to the onlookers standing round. ‘Has anybody called a doctor?’
Voices from the dark assured her that one had been summoned. She saw now from the pieces of shrapnel all around that what had seemed to be a purple egg hurled straight at the gesticulating figure on the platform must in fact have been a small bomb or grenade.
So, attempted murder. And, probably, before long plain murder itself.
She took out her dedicated police mobile and spoke to Headquarters. A few sharp words, and she had an assurance that an ambulance from one of the Birchester hospitals would be sent with all speed and a strong contingent of Gralethorpe officers would be urgently ordered to the square. Finally, she had it established that she should take immediate charge as Senior Investigating Officer.
Putting the mobile away, she realised a man was kneeling at Roughouse’s other side. Little of him bar a thatch of tumbled blond hair was visible in the patchy light as he bent with his ear close to Roughouse’s face.
‘You know him?’ she asked, penetratingly enough to make the man look up.
‘Yes,’ he answered, blinking in the beam of her torch. ‘Old friend. Since school and all that. Why I’m here, actually. Old Rob had heard something like that egg bombardment might happen, and I thought …’
His voice faded away at the reminder of how any idea of protecting his schooldays friend had proved out of the question, and he went back, with a new urgency, to dabbing an already sodden handkerchief at the still flowing blood.
And, yes, Harriet said to herself, what in my torch beam I saw glinting just at the top of his cheek must have been a tear.
She waited until he seemed to be a little less distressed, and then asked his name. But, with the people round now arguing loudly among themselves about what exactly had happened, she failed more than once to make out what he was saying. Eventually he fished out a card from one of his pockets and pushed it over to her.
However, as the minutes went slowly by while they waited for doctor or ambulance, she did manage to extract a few more thimblefuls of information. Roughouse, she learnt, was rather more than a simple politician, and rather less. Once holder of a Conservative seat, he had decided ‘the way ahead’ was to form a break-away organisation.
‘Do you know about the Innovation Party?’
Harriet quickly agreed she did, though that was barely true, a matte
r of glanced-at headlines. Details would be easy enough to come by when she wanted them.
‘Typical Rob,’ her informant went on in the same jabbed-out snippets. ‘Always going by his own — what? — code of honour. Yes, that.’
Harriet, thinking of the way Robert Roughouse had defied the increasingly ugly crowd, decided his own code of honour, outmoded phrase though it might be, had got it pretty well right.
‘Before that, all set to be an MFH.’
For a moment Harriet was totally baffled.
‘MFH?’
‘Master of Foxhounds.’
Then, after a little, came an added comment.
‘Tough job. But better to be in that than in politics. Poor Rob.’
The poor set up a new train of thought in Harriet. As soon as she could she asked another question.
‘Doesn’t being a Master of Foxhounds mean you have to be really very well off?’
The pale-haired head briefly looked up.
‘Didn’t mean poor as in cash-strapped. But, yes, you do have to be pretty rich to have your own pack.’
He bent his ear closer to the blood-stained face once more.
‘Not quite the done thing to say rich nowadays,’ he brought out as he raised himself up again. ‘Or not unless you put a filthy in front of it. But, as it happens, we all are rich, Rob’s close friends. Same school, enormous fees.’
Harriet thought momentarily how people from such schools still obey that rule of the done thing. The wisps of tissue paper laid on their lives, piece after piece, year after year after year, till they became a cement-hard casing.
With a jerk, as bright headlights dazzlingly blinded her, she realised the ambulance had arrived, and brought herself back to the immediate present.
*
When Roughouse had gone on his way to Birchester’s St Oswald’s Hospital, ambulance bell clanging out, Harriet saw that a party of uniformed officers was coming hurriedly into the square.
Right, Gralethorpe to the rescue at long last. And that man leading them, looking harassed and out-of-temper, should be a DI.