“That’s nice, dear,” Mrs Box cut her short in favour of her other customers. “Six pounds fifty.”
Cassidy handed over the tenner and received a handful of coins in return. She slipped these into the back pocket of her jeans to keep them separate from her own money before picking up the bottles and heading back to the corner.
Anfred was not there. Could he still be peeing after all this time? Cassidy scanned the room. He was nowhere to be seen. She took a swig. She waited.
***
Brough lay awake in his sleeping bag. The new bed was due to be delivered in the morning but with a gruesome murder to investigate, there was no way he could wait in. Shifts and rotas went out the window in these circumstances. And, being so new, he hadn’t even clapped eyes on his neighbours. He couldn’t really ask them.
Damn it.
The downside of being new and being alone.
He would try to call the furniture shop in the morning and make new arrangements. Oh well, he sighed. With this murder to sort out, it wasn’t like he’d be spending much time in his new bed anyway. What was he doing, buying furniture at all? He’d be moving on as soon as he could arrange it, wouldn’t he? No point buying encumbrances. When he thought of all the belongings he had left behind when the death threats had started - He sighed for his big telly, his espresso machine, and his ice-maker. All blown up in what was officially deemed to have been a gas explosion. These things were all replaceable; it was the inconvenience that annoyed Brough. As for people - well, he’d deliberately guarded against making close relationships. He had to maintain a distance in order to succeed. He couldn’t muddy the waters with personal attachments when anyone and everyone might be implicated.
Thoughts of his father were never far behind thoughts of Southampton. Brough’s face reddened with a blend of guilt and embarrassment. Dad had saved him, just as he had intervened to curtail a bout of bullying when David was at school. That was the embarrassing part. That Brough hadn’t really thanked his father for saving his neck and his career was where the guilt came from.
Exasperated, Brough forced himself to think of more pressing matters. He stared at the darkness where the ceiling was hiding and replayed the initial questioning of potential witnesses in his mind. There was not a fat lot to go on. Even though the entire town was rigged with CCTV, the marquee had effectively blocked out those in the square. There might be footage of people coming and going, in and out of the tent, but there were too many of them to make those images useful in any way.
As he lay there, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of his new home, the creaks, the bumps, the noise of the street, and the as yet unseen neighbours, Brough couldn’t shake the notion that he had seen the killer. He had questioned him. He had looked into his eyes.
But who, out of the dozens and dozens and dozens (and dozens) he had encountered, the fucking hell was it?
***
It was late. There were fewer - far fewer - drinkers in the bar. No more than a few stragglers who no longer had the energy to sing. Cassidy was at a table that had been freed up an hour ago. Her face was like a granite carving of the goddess of the Pissed Off. Anfred had not resurfaced.
Mrs Box was the only moving thing in the room. She was bustling around, wiping tables and tidying up. She was singing to herself, a formless, tuneless improvisation that was as grating as it was interminable.
Cassidy looked at her watch but didn’t register what it said so she had to look at it again. Enough was enough. With a scowl like an avenging traffic warden, she stomped over to a door in the corner on which a tarnished brass plaque advertised Gentlemen.
A man, gentle or otherwise, emerged, still attending to his fly.
“Hey!” he found himself harangued by an aggressive American voice. He blinked. The speaker was female and, enhanced by the beer he had swilled or no, wasn’t half bad looking.
“All right, love?” he leered. What allure he had was punctured by the punctuation of the greeting by a belch. Cassidy backed away from the stale, beery breath.
“Excuse me,” she said, although that should have been his line, “but did you see a guy in there?”
“I wasn’t looking, love,” the man screwed up his nose. “Not my type of thing.”
“About yea high,” Cassidy persisted, reaching her hand up to model an estimation of Anfred’s height. “Dark hair. Eyes. Kind of cute, I guess.” She blushed at this but the man wasn’t even looking at her. He was trying to get away.
“Place is empty, love.” Then he took an ungainly backwards step and almost toppled onto her. “Will I do?” He belched again. The wind of it ruffled Cassidy’s hair. She shoved him away.
“Not even close.”
Without glancing around, she pushed the door open and stepped into the forbidden zone of the Gents’ toilet.
“Hello?” she called, wrinkling her nose against the pungent aroma of urine and disinfectant. “Hello?” Still, it wasn’t as bad as that time her friend Miffy had pushed her into the guys’ restroom at high school. The squalor had been horrific and, what was more, she didn’t get to see anything and what was more, it had resulted in two weeks of detention and what was more, Miffy had got away scot free. At the time.
Cassidy made her way along the row of stalls, mindful of puddles or stray pieces of TP on the floor. Each of the three doors was unlocked and open. There was no Anfred. There were no gentlemen. It was like high school all over again.
Cassidy gave a little shriek when she turned to find herself suddenly faced with Mrs Box.
“Fuck me!”
“Didn’t mean to give you a fright, dear,” said Mrs Box, although her smirk suggested otherwise. “You can’t be in here. This is the Men’s. We don’t have them bisexual toilets here. This isn’t Ally McBeal.”
“I guess not. I was looking for a guy.”
“I see,” Mrs Box looked the American girl up and down. “Come to write your number on the wall, did you?”
It took a while for the inference to be drawn. Cassidy gaped, scandalised. “No!” she protested. “I - that - that guy - I was with him earlier -“
Mrs Box was chuckling; it was more musical than her singing. “Only joking, dear.” She took Cassidy by the cuff of her jacket. “I can show you where the Ladies is.”
Cassidy yanked her arm free but kept a civil tone to her words. “No, no, that’s - thank you anyway. I’m going to turn in now, in any case.”
She glanced around the room as if to spot a clue on the tiles or Anfred curled up under a wash basin but Mrs Box was shepherding her towards the door.
“Goodnight, dear,” Mrs Box waved her out, cheerily enough.
Before she turned the light off, Mrs Box caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the smeared and speckled mirror. She rolled her eyes.
Americans!
***
Cassidy clomped up the stairs. She was mad. How dare he abandon her that way? Who did he think he was?
With each flight, signs of drunken occupation became sparser. By the time she reached the third floor, there was only one casualty of beer slumped in the corridor. Her own floor was as deserted as ever. Pity; she could do with someone to kick.
She paused on the step outside her door. She could hear voices on the floor below. Two men were laughing and murmuring to each other, telling each other to be quiet.
One of the voices was distinctly Norwegian.
That bastard!
She hurried as quietly as she could down the stairs but hung back so she could see along the corridor. She was just in time to see That Bastard follow someone she didn’t see into the room at the end. The door closed behind him and was locked.
Bastard!
***
A couple of hours later, Cassidy’s fury had abated enough to allow her to fall asleep. She had been angry w
ith herself more than anything. She had wasted a whole day on that creep rat bastard, a day she could have spent on the thesis.
Of course, it hadn’t been a total waste. She had seen her first real live dead body. Up close and personal, too.
Maybe she should cultivate a relationship with the cops. The inspector guy seemed a bit off but the woman - sergeant, was she? - She might prove malleable enough to let slip information...
It was this line of thinking that soothed her into slumber but her repose was interrupted almost as soon as it started by the rattling of the door knob.
Cassidy’s eyes opened wide. She held her breath and listened. The door knob rattled again. Cassidy propped herself up on her elbows and watched as well as she could in the darkness.
The door was locked. Wasn’t it? Or had she, in her fury, forgotten to lock it behind her? No. She was sure she had. Hadn’t she?
She watched with mounting terror and alarm as the door began to open. As if in slow motion the door glided into the room revealing a huge, dark shape filling the doorway.
Cassidy sat up, her heart pounding, her brain screaming at her to get the fuck out of there.
The dark shape grew as it shuffled into the room, heading towards the foot of the bed.
Cassidy screamed.
Library
Brough had barely slept. He was too keen to resume the investigation. The initial findings of the forensics team would be available by the time he got to the station. He would have run there, combining his daily exercise with his journey to work but he had no clothes to change into when he arrived. He was too wired for running anyway. He’d probably burn off plenty of calories from nervous excitement alone.
It was too early even for a bus when he left the flat. The birds had yet to roll over and clear their throats. Brough walked at a brisk pace along the damp streets. The town was quiet. It was too late for nightclub stragglers and too early for street cleaners and milkmen. As he reached the town centre, he grunted in disgust at the shops that were brightly illuminated even though they had been closed since five thirty the previous afternoon. What a waste of resources! Was it any wonder shops were going out of business? Think of the savings they could make on their electricity bills!
He shook his head to dispel these thoughts. He was always doing this: making snap judgments about situations and putting it to rights without being fully apprised of the facts. It could be a hazard in his line of work. What did it matter if the shops went down the drain? What did it matter if the planet ran out of fossil fuels? Did any of this impinge on the current investigation? No. Then he must not entertain such ideas. He must focus his mind on the investigation under way.
“Early bird!” Detective Stevens from the Serious Crimes Department greeted Brough. “Kick you out, did she?”
“I’m sorry?” Brough hung up his coat. He was uneasy about having the big boys in his makeshift incident room. It made him feel awkward in his own space. Like when you’re trying to work and the cleaner comes in.
“Never mind,” Stevens handed Brough a folder, already swollen with paperwork. “Witness statements from yesterday.” Another folder appeared. “Forensics prelims.” A third. “Stats and facts about the victim.” And a fourth. “Cross references to similar cases, both cold and current.”
Brough settled into a seat, stacking the folders neatly in front of him. “You have been busy.” He lifted the cover of the uppermost folder. “Similar cases? This has happened before?”
“Well, not beer bottles in the eyes exactly, but no. Remember that couple in Wolvo? The whisk?”
“And you think there’s a connection?”
“That’s just one of the things the investigation will have to, you know, investigate.”
Brough decided he didn’t like Stevens. He didn’t like his sarcastic tone. He didn’t like the way he perched his buttock on the edge of the table. For his part, Stevens was well aware of the way the Southern softy had wrinkled his nose like an affronted bunny rabbit when he had found Stevens intruding in his workplace. He leaned closer, ostensibly to offer Brough a piece of chewing gum but really to watch the young upstart squirm.
“Let us have it,” Stevens said in a low, rumbling voice. “This case is too big for you. Let us have it in SCD. We’ve got the resources. We’ve got the manpower. You need us.”
Brough kept his eyes on the proffered pack of gum as though Stevens was training a weapon on him. “Thank you but no,” he said with a sniff. “I will be happy for your assistance as consultants, and any men or come to that women you can spare for the legwork but -“
He cut himself off as Stevens face with its uneven and unfashionable moustache leant in closer still. “You’re heading for a fall,” he breathed. “You do realise that, don’t you?”
Brough stared straight ahead. This afforded him a close-up view of Stevens’s pores but better that than to dignify the man’s attempts to undermine his confidence. Better not to acknowledge the insufferable brute at all. Other, bigger coppers had tried to intimidate him before. They had barely succeeded so this wanker didn’t stand a chance.
And where were they now? Most of them were no longer in the force. Some of them were now on the other side of the bars... Brough enjoyed the memory of the outcome of his previous tribulations. Stevens misread this as arrogance directed towards him.
After a moment of deadlock, Stevens leant back and stood. He stretched his arms and arched his back as though he’d just got out of bed. “Time I wasn’t here,” he said with forced cheeriness. He tapped the pile of folders with a meaty finger. “Read it. Read the one about cold cases. You’ll find it most enlightening.”
Brough didn’t move. He waited until the brute had taken himself, including his finger, away before grabbing the file and rifling through it.
Within seconds, Brough was loath to admit Stevens was right. It was most enlightening indeed.
***
Mrs Box was busy. She was always bloody busy but that was how she liked it. As long as she kept herself occupied and bustling about she wouldn’t have time to - to dwell...on...other things - She upbraided herself for losing focus. She pushed the swing door open with her backside and conveyed two plates of fried matter to the guests at table six.
On her way back to the kitchen, she brushed past table four where a guest was not so much reading a newspaper as camping out in it.
“Be with you in a minute, dear,” she beamed, already moving on.
“No, no,” Cassidy lowered the paper. “You take your time.”
Mrs Box stopped in her tracks and froze as though caught in some criminal act. She turned and came back to table four. Her professional smile was no longer in evidence. She chewed her bottom lip and sighed.
“I can’t apologise enough, love,” she was wringing her apron in her hands. “But at least you finally met my husband, eh? Not in the best of circumstances but -“
“I was terrified!” Cassidy interrupted, harshly. “First the murder -“
“Murder?” It was Mrs Box’s turn to interrupt. “What murder, dear?”
Cassidy held up the front page. Above a grainy picture of the victim, gleaned from someone’s cell phone, she wouldn’t wonder, the headline read, “HERE’S MUD IN YOUR EYE”.
“Ooh.” Mrs Box peered at the page. “Well, I never.”
“I was right there when it happened,” Cassidy added.
“That was lucky,” was Mrs Box’s surprising response.
“Lucky?” Cassidy gaped. “What the hell do you mean, ‘lucky’?”
Mrs Box took a breath. She didn’t like this young lady’s attitude, American or not. “I thought that was your line, dear. Murder.”
“In theory, but-”
“Different story, isn’t it, when it happens under your nose? Who was it, the poor bleeder? Was he a local?”
> Cassidy scanned the article then shook her head. “Um - no - I think he was just in town for the festival.”
“Oh,” Mrs Box considered this. “Oh, all right then.” She brightened considerably and switched her smile back on. “Jam and toast, dear?”
She swept away before Cassidy could give an answer.
“Unbelievable.”
***
Brough had plenty of time to read the files while the day grew lighter and people began to turn up for the morning shift. Apart from the whisk-related deaths, there was nothing in recent cases that was remotely as bizarre as the beer-bottle murder. The region appeared to have had a quiet couple of decades on the unusual killings front. But if you went back further to the cusp of the 1980s and 90s, there was a wealth of documentation it would take days to wade through. He wasn’t sure how much of it was pertinent or worth his while but then that was the thing about his line of work. The hours of slog, the tedium, the elimination of the bulk of the data one accrued. It was like prospecting for the smallest sliver of a gold nugget in a raging torrent of silt.
He had also had a quick flick through the personnel files. Of them all, Station Reception Officer Dobley was the longest-serving. Content to spend his working life as little more than a receptionist, singularly lacking in ambition, Dobley had been a fresh-faced, newly minted member of the team back when the cases in the files, now cold, were current. A chat with him might yield some shorthand, some quick reference points, Brough reasoned.
But first there was the team briefing. He jotted some notes on a pad before typing them up and printing them out. It was Day One proper of a rather grisly murder investigation and he was keen that they hit the ground running.
He made a mental note to include that phrase in his opening address.
Then his preparations were interrupted by a telephone call.
***
Cassidy left the Ash Tree before Mrs Box could load the toaster with bread. She packed a bag with notepads and pens, pulled on her jacket and almost skipped down the stairs and out into the bright morning air. She headed towards the town centre, eager to locate the library Anfred had assured her was there -
Blood & Breakfast, West Midlands Noir Page 6