Anfred!
Huh! Cassidy scowled at the memory of seeing Anfred going into a room with some guy or other. She felt foolish for allowing herself to think he was interested in her, when all the time he was a - a -
He was a goddamned flirt, that’s what he was, whatever else you might care to call him. He had led her on, without question. And then just left her stranded! It was hateful. It was cruel.
Cassidy grimaced. The sun was a little too bright and the skin encasing her skull a little too tight. What had she been drinking? So many beers with so many dumb names. Vicar’s Asshole and that kind of thing.
She ducked into a convenience store for a bottle of cold water and some paracetamol. As she pushed the pills from their silver blisters and unscrewed the cap of the Evian, she reassessed her opinion of the Scandinavian scumbag. Maybe she misread the signals. Maybe the beer had distorted her perception.
Yeah, blame the booze, kiddo. And if Anfred wasn’t interested, that was a relief, wasn’t it? Let him do whatever with whomever. She had no time for that kind of business. She had to focus on the thesis.
The road that led to the square was cordoned off. Policemen guarded the tape, nursing cardboard cups of coffee and chatting amiably among themselves.
Damn it. The library was beyond the square and around the corner. She would have to find an alternative route.
She stepped up to the barrier and beckoned the nearest officer to ask him for directions.
“Yank, am you?” the cop nodded. He shot a sideways look to his companion. “What can I do for you?”
***
Brough called D.S. Miller to the incident room (he had renamed the briefing room yet again) to help him set it up. While he pinned enlarged photographs of the crime scene to a board, she went around placing his freshly-printed agenda and what he called an “information pack” on each seat.
He uncapped a brand new marker pen - the washable, wipe-offable kind - and found the scent it gave off invigorating. In neat block capitals he wrote his name across the top of the white board. He stood back to admire it, thought better of it and wiped it off again with his handkerchief. He turned to see Miller was watching him and appearing far too amused for a woman with a job to do.
***
Cassidy was becoming angrier with every step that took her further away from the town centre. Those rotten cops! They had deliberately given her bum directions and now she was wandering around, who knows where. The library was nowhere to be seen. There was a square - not that square but another one. This one was grassy with a statue in the centre. It could be Cupid. It could be Robin fucking Hood for all she cared. There was a war memorial in the form of an obelisk and there were a large number of students milling around a bus stop. Cassidy kept walking.
A parking lot. A row of quite respectable houses. But still no library, damn it.
There was no one around she might ask. She thought about turning back and asking the students but she felt daunted by their number. So she kept walking.
A park. In that park, a pile of old stones.
She’d heard that libraries were in jeopardy but had the council already reduced theirs to rubble?
Closer inspection (and reading a board provided for tourists) revealed this was the Priory of Saint James. Cassidy was puzzled.
Susan Saint James?
Why would an old sitcom star have her own building? And here of all places?
And why wasn’t it finished? Builders’ strike?
As she strolled around it struck her that the building was not unfinished. It had been completed and inhabited long, long ago. She read the tourist information. Monks had lived here until it was dissolved. Well, she figured, made from limestone it was bound to wear away eventually. Acid rain, most probably.
She looked at the most complete remnant - a Gothic archway - and tried to imagine bald-pated men in rough, hooded robes, chanting, illustrating manuscripts, cultivating cucumbers - or whatever else it was that monks got up to.
“All right, chick?” A voice behind her made her jump. She turned to see a group of people all quite smartly dressed. In their midst, were an anxious bride and groom. The voice belonged to the most unkempt member of the party with a couple of serious-business cameras on straps around his neck. “If you wouldn’t mind, only I’ve got another wedding to snap in half an hour.”
“Umm,” Cassidy managed. She picked her way across the stones in the grass that depicted where the rest of the walls had once stood. The wedding party swept towards the building’s remains like a flock of vultures swooping on carrion.
Good luck to them, Cassidy thought. It was hardly a good omen, starting married life in ruins.
She retraced her steps back towards the town. The students were swarming onto a bus like piranha bringing down a hippopotamus. Ahead was the shopping area. Here she’d be more likely to encounter someone she could approach for directions to the library.
Maybe she had been too quick to judge the cops. Maybe she had misunderstood their directions. She was still acclimatising to the accent after all.
No. She remembered the twinkle in that cop’s eye and the encouraging look his amigo had given him.
Bastards.
She could feel herself getting worked up again. Calm down, Cass, she told herself. Count to a fucking thousand.
She was back in the marketplace, back at the fountain. She gazed around for someone she could ask. There was no shortage of people but they were keeping themselves to themselves and avoiding eye contact. Cassidy soon worked out why. Not far off, a couple of people in matching body warmers and clipboards were trying to stop people and sign them up for charitable donations. They stepped in front of shoppers with a nimble leap and a bright-eyed greeting and were either blanked or sworn at, receiving instructions on what to do with their clipboards in no uncertain terms.
Cassidy moved from that spot before the charity workers noticed her and trapped her in a pincer movement.
Not far off an olde worlde signpost splayed is arms in several directions. This way to the public toilets. That way to the benefits office. And - Cassidy was delighted to read - the other way to the library!
At last!
“I wouldn’t trust that thing if I were you.”
Cassidy jumped. What was it with assholes sneaking up behind her today?
She turned. A grimy man in scruffy clothes was smiling through black and broken teeth.
“Excuse me?” Cassidy asked, and then cursed herself for not getting the hell away from there as fast as her feet could take her.
“Kids swing on them, turn them around. You could end up on the moon for all you know.”
“Right...” Cassidy began to sidle away as surreptitiously as she could.
“If you’m after the library, it’s that way and round the corner.”
“Oh! Oh, thanks. Appreciate it.” Now she felt guilty. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a banknote. It was blue and there was a picture of their Queen on it. That was about as much as she knew about it. She held it out, hoping the man’s filthy fingers wouldn’t come into contact with hers. The man seemed adept at accepting money without upsetting his patrons and expressed his thanks many times, his eyes twinkling wetly.
Cassidy backed away before turning. Her blood ran cold as he scampered after her.
“I could walk you there, Miss,” the man called out. “It’s no trouble.”
“I’m fine, thanks!” Cassidy called out without turning around. She walked faster. He didn’t seem to be following, thank fuckery. She hurried along the road he had indicated and yes indeed, there was a corner, and yes indeed, around that corner stood the library.
Marvellous!
She barely glanced at the stucco on the building’s facade, and just about registered the statue high above the entrance. A
woman reading a book. That figured. Cassidy hoped to be emulating that bitch within minutes. The reading, she meant, and not the bare breasts that had turned green from exposure to the elements. Typical of the Brits, Cassidy reckoned. A monument to their beloved topless tabloid models.
Ah! The calm, coolness of the library hit her as soon as she stepped inside. The fluster and heat of her bad temper dropped right away. This was her milieu - even if she couldn’t pronounce the word correctly. She strode up the short flight of steps to the counter.
“Excuse me; can you direct me to the archive section, please?”
The girl behind the counter raised an eyebrow at the American accent but then jerked her thumb towards the right. “Enquiries desk,” she muttered.
“Thanks.” Cassidy followed the thumb, aware that the girl was watching her go.
The enquiries desk was unstaffed. A chair was pushed from the desk; it looked like it had been vacated in a hurry and there was a mug of coffee left to go cold. The computer monitor was scrolling a screensaver over and over. It reminded Cassidy of the Mary Celeste.
She waited. Why did the girl send her here when there was no one around?
She glanced around. Apart from a few old women browsing paperback romance novels and a man nodding off on an easy chair in the corner, the place wasn’t very busy. To either side, a staircase stretched up to the next floor. One was modern and utilitarian; the other was more to Cassidy’s liking. It was in the older, original part of the building, a broad flight of marble steps that bent back on itself halfway up. Both staircases bore signage. Upstairs for non-fiction, reference and, Cassidy was thrilled to see, local history and archives.
Fantastic.
She abandoned the desk and headed for the old, cold steps. Finally, after more than a day of farting around, wasting time drinking with that bastard Norwegian bastard, she was about to do what she’d come here to do. It felt good.
There was another desk, staffed by a thin man whose dark hair was shot with white as if he’d recently been painting a ceiling.
He looked at her with a quizzical expression as though unaccustomed to having people approach and ask him for things.
“Um, hi,” Cassidy said, a little nervously. “Could you help me, please? I need...” She pulled out one of her notebooks and showed him a page. He took the book from her and got to his feet.
“Wait here,” he said, pointing at a long table topped with green leather. He left her to settle, crossing the room in long, quick strides.
Cassidy’s thanks died in her open mouth. The guy was fast! She selected a chair near the table’s end in order not to disturb a couple of old men at the other end who were poring over newspapers. There was also a girl with brightly coloured hair and far too many bangles to be practical, scribbling in an exercise book and periodically consulting a stack of sociology books. None of them remarked her arrival.
She barely had time to warm the upholstery before the librarian returned, trying to appear as though he wasn’t struggling beneath the weight of the enormous tomes he was carrying. The volumes hit the table with a thud.
“Thanks, I -“
The librarian held out her notebook with one hand and pointed at a notice suspended above the table with the other.
SILENT READING.
“Oh, right!” Cassidy took back her notebook. The librarian pointed at the sign a second time before turning on his heels and returning to the desk. Cassidy bit her lip. Oops.
She rubbed her hands and opened the first book.
Fantastic.
Book
She lost herself for over an hour in note-taking and background reading. The books were unique, put together from newspaper articles and other records dating right back to when Moses was a puppy, it seemed to her. The period she was interested in specifically was more recent but it wouldn’t hurt to put things into a broader context.
She dropped her pen onto the pad and flexed her hand to relieve it of cramp. A break was warranted. Maybe this place had a coffee machine.
Sitting across from her, someone was reading the day’s paper. The murder at the beer festival was all over the front page. “Killer Shows A Lot of Bottle” quipped the headline. Cassidy didn’t get it. Neither was she comfortable with the British press’s tendency to joke about things inappropriately.
The paper twitched and was lowered to the table. Cassidy found herself looking directly at the dirty homeless guy from earlier. He winked at her.
Cassidy was stricken with a mixture of horror and disgust.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered. She tried to get back into her notes but she was all too aware that he was looking at her. Mindful of the sign above them and wary of the librarian over at the desk, she looked the tramp in the eye and hissed “Fuck off!” across the table in a stage whisper.
The man winked again. Perhaps it was a nervous condition - Cassidy didn’t care. He stood up and walked away. Cassidy breathed out in relief.
“Unbe-fucking-lievable.”
***
A few streets away - what Cassidy would have described as a couple of blocks - in the “incident room”, Brough and Miller were still waiting to begin the briefing. Miller assured him for the fifth time that they would be there “any minute”. They just weren’t used to this kind of thing; that was all.
Brough was a simmering mass of impatience and frustration. He had just come off the phone with the leader of the Chamber of Commerce. Asking him to keep the whole thing quiet. Seeking to minimise impact on the precious bloody beer festival. Brough had snorted with audible derision, arousing the ire of the leader of the Chamber of Commerce. Brough was reminded of the importance of the festival to the tradesmen and tradeswomen of the town et cetera and blah-blah. Brough had interjected to ask how he was supposed to keep it quiet when the murder was plastered all over the papers, television and local radio.
He asked D.S. Miller this very question as he recounted the telephone call. She was forced to confess she hadn’t a bloody clue. Not a good position for a detective to be in.
“I’m advising discretion,” Brough informed her. “That’s the watchword I’ll be giving at the briefing. If it ever gets under way. Discretion. Try and play this down as a one-off.”
“That’s probably wise, sir,” D.S. Miller nodded liked the toy dog in the rear window of her car.
“Thank you, Miller,” Brough was pleased. Then his face changed. “What do you mean, ‘probably’?”
Miller sighed. Then she steeled herself with a deep breath. The time for plain-speaking had come.
“The men won’t like being called in, sir.” She directed her words to the space above his head. It was a technique that worked well, in her experience. Unless you were telling someone a loved one had been found brown bread - at such times it was best to look them in the eye or, if you couldn’t manage that, at the space between their shoes. “Lots of ‘em booked time off to enjoy the festival. There’s normally never no trouble. Lots of ‘em was in that tent when it happened.”
“And I’m expecting statements from every one of them.” Brough looked the detective sergeant in the eye. She seemed about to say something else but then she broke eye contact and bit her lip. Brough resumed. “It’s a joke and we’re the butt of it. Crowd riddled with coppers and a murder right in the middle of it.”
“Well, you put it like that, sir...”
“Fetch me a coffee, would you? Then round the buggers up. Let’s get this thing moving.”
Miller raised her eyebrows at being sent for coffee. She didn’t want to set a precedent but she didn’t think this was time to make a stand either. She hit upon a compromise. She would fetch him a coffee but she would make sure it was so horrible he wouldn’t ask her again.
“Somebody say coffee?” It was Dobley, bustling his way in with a cardboard tray of cardboard
cups with plastic lids. “Only I nipped out on my break and I thought you’d like one, sir, to set you up for your briefing.”
“Why, Dibley-” Brough began. Miller muttered the correction. “Dobley! That’s very thoughtful of you. Thank you.”
“Least I can do, chief. Do you notice the um...?”
“The um...?”
Dobley nodded towards Miller. He was reluctant to say indelicate things out loud in the presence of a female. He mouthed the word ‘johnny’.
“The johnny?” Miller frowned. “What johnny?”
“The one that’s no longer there,” Brough explained. “I did indeed, Dobley. Well done. Place is looking better already.”
Dobley flushed bright red from his collar to his brow. Gushing thanks and giggling, he backed out of the room like a geisha.
“He’s certainly perked up,” Miller said, watching the empty doorway. “Since you came here, I mean.”
“What do you mean? I hope I haven’t been giving...signals.” Brough looked embarrassed. Miller bit back her laughter and attempted to reassure him.
“No, in his work, I mean. He’s bright as a button behind the front desk. I put that down to you. Or a change in his medication.” At this point she did laugh. Brough joined in, uncertain. He lifted the lid from one of the coffee cups and peered at the murky brown liquid inside. It seemed usual. Not laced with Rohypnol or anything of that nature.
He caught Miller looking at him as though reading his thoughts. The smirk at the corner of her mouth would give her wrinkles if she wasn’t careful.
***
Cassidy was taking time off from her note-taking. She strolled among the bookshelves, perusing the True Crime section. One day they’d have to put up a shelf - no, a bay of shelves! Add a new wing to the building! - to house all the books she would write. The thought tickled her but she knew she mustn’t get ahead of herself. Maybe she should go back to her seat.
“Excuse me.” A whisper hissed behind her like a good-mannered snake. Cassidy turned to face a woman with a trolley laden with books. The woman was in clothes that appeared to be home made. In the dark. She was being mobbed by a long, shapeless skirt and a medley of baggy knitwear. Her long and frizzy hair was pinned messily at one side. Half-moon glasses hung on a chain at the high neck of her floral print blouse.
Blood & Breakfast, West Midlands Noir Page 7