“Huh?” she recoiled from him, baffled by his melodramatics.
“You’re the resident expert, no? I want to get your take on the three murders that have happened since your arrival in this lovely spot.”
“My ‘take’?”
“You must have some theory.” He stepped towards her. The backs of her legs hit the edge of the bed.
“I...”
“I see you’ve been talking to the police.” He stepped closer still. Cassidy had to walk sideways to get away from the bed and into open space.
“Not as a consultant,” she said, wondering if there was anything sharp she could grab in a split second should the need arise. “More of a witness or a suspect or something.”
“How exciting!” He advanced again. Cassidy backed towards the chair at her table.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” she tried to keep her voice even and casual in tone. “It’s always been my problem, I guess.”
He too was looking around. He put a hand to his belly. “Got anything to eat?”
But Cassidy wasn’t listening.
“Everywhere I go,” she continued, lost in reflection. “They drop like flies.”
“Something I can snack on?” Anfred rephrased his question.
“Um?” she met his gaze.
“I’m ravenous,” he admitted with a sad, little pout. It worked.
“Oh, um...” Cassidy was suddenly back in the room, “there’s a candy bar by the bed.”
Anfred twirled on his heels then pounced towards the bedside table, snatching up the oblong of chocolate. “Thanks,” he said brightly and perched primly on the edge of her bed. Somewhat incongruously, he tore the end from the chocolate wrapper with his teeth.
Cassidy resumed her reflections although Anfred’s attention appeared to be consumed by the candy in much the same way that the candy was being devoured by him.
“I mean, I just seem to be in the area when-” she broke off. “Did I say you could sit on my bed?”
“I’m not sure,” Anfred replied, his mouth bulging with chunks, “My stomach pangs were too loud.”
“Just eat the candy and get out.” Cassidy resumed her post at the door, her hand raised, poised to open it.
“Don’t you want to know what I think?” Anfred sucked the tips of a couple of his fingers. The smacking of his lips made her want to smack his face.
“What about?”
“The murders!” He leaned back on the bed, supporting himself on his elbows, looking far too comfortable for Cassidy’s liking.
“They want to talk to you, you know,” she announced with the playful glee of a child announcing a sibling was in trouble, “The cops.”
“I bet.” Anfred didn’t seem bothered in the slightest. “I’ll tell you what I think.” He lifted a hand from the bedspread and waggled it at her. “I think there’s more to this than meets the eye.”
“That’s brilliant,” said Cassidy flatly. “You should be a detective.”
Anfred patted the bed as though inviting a pet to join him. “Come. Sit. Listen.”
“I’ll sit here,” Cassidy fetched the chair from the table. “Between you and the door.” She sat and crossed her arms. This move amused him but then just about everything seemed to amuse him. It must be the easiest gig in the world, doing stand-up in Norway.
“Suit yourself,” he conceded. “You are safe with me.”
“Yeah...” Cassidy didn’t sound convinced. He chose to ignore the irony of her tone.
He sat up, becoming more animated as he expounded his view.
“First we have the guy at the festival. Bottles. In the eyes.”
“Don’t remind me,” Cassidy grimaced.
“Then there’s the tramp in the library with a priceless book.”
Cassidy frowned. How did he know about that? She asked him.
“What?” He didn’t see what she was getting at.
“The book. I didn’t think the cops had released details.”
Anfred waved this away. “This is a small town. Words get around. I have my ear to the pulse.”
“That’s ground,” she corrected him.
“I have my pulse to the ground,” he amended. “I hear things.”
He was looking far too smug for Cassidy to stomach. He - “Just a minute!” she interrupted her own thoughts as well as his. “You said three murders.”
“When?” Anfred frowned.
“When you came in.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you did.”
He shook his head. “Please be reminded that English is not my first tongue.”
“Oh, don’t play the dumb foreigner card,” Cassidy got to her feet and poked her finger in his face. “You know perfectly well what you said and your English is way better than most people I know back home.”
“A slip!” he shrugged. “I meant to say two. Of course.” He kept his eyes on her finger as though it were a snake that might strike out at his nose at any second.
She took her finger away and employed one on her other hand to indicate the door.
“I want you to leave now.”
He lay back. “But this bed is so soft!” He spread his arms in wide arcs as though making an angel in the snow.
“Go!” Cassidy yelled. She pointed at the door again. He brought his flapping to a sudden halt and looked directly in her eyes.
“There will be a third, of course. If it has not already happened.”
“Oh, there’ll be a murder all right,” Cassidy wrenched the door open. “If you don’t get your ass out of my room right now.”
But he, infuriatingly, did not move. He laughed - surprise, surprise. “Ha-ha! How will you do it? Batter my brains out with your laptop? Bore me to death with your thesis?!
His laughter increased. He was actually rolling about on the bed. Cassidy thought people only claimed to do that sort of thing during internet conversations.
She closed the door and looked down at him.
“Maybe I slipped you a poisoned candy bar,” she said. There was no amusement, no emotion in her voice.
He stopped.
“And you wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it,” Cassidy continued.
Anfred nodded appreciatively. “You’re kind of sick. I like it.”
“Aren’t you going to eat the rest of it?” She picked up the largely empty wrapper from the night stand and held it out to him. He turned his face away.
“No, no, I’m quite satisfying.”
“Go on,” Cassidy insisted. “Finish your candy.”
He turned to meet her gaze. “Very well.”
He took the wrapper and, with a defiant look, crammed his mouth with the remainder of the bar. He made sounds of enjoyment, chewing the uncomfortable mouthful enthusiastically. But then his eyes widened. He clutched at his throat. He extended an arm towards Cassidy, imploring her to help. He fell off the bed.
“I’ll give you that,” said Cassidy after a moment. “That was funny.”
“Pretty cool, huh?” Anfred sprang up. “I should be an actor.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Cassidy wrinkled her nose.
“To poison me?”
“To call you an actor.”
He, of course, laughed and she, for the first time since he had showed up, laughed too.
“I need a drink,” he announced suddenly.
“So, go and drink.”
“You have something?” he glanced around as if beverages might be found on any surface.
“Not a drop.”
“Let us go downstairs.” He opened the door, already decided.
Cassidy screwed up her nose. She pointed out that the bar would be closed at this late hour. This
did not discourage him in the least.
“Come on,” he urged. “Where’s your spirit of adventure?”
“Curled up fast asleep,” Cassidy folded her arms to signify her resistance. “Like I ought to be.”
“Come on,” he urged again. “We will find something.”
“I’m not thirsty -“
“I won’t take No for an answer.” He reached out for her hand. “Come!”
“No!” Cassidy turned her face away. What was it about him that reduced her to childishness? Why didn’t he just piss off already?
“Or...” he wiggled his eyebrows, “I will scream the place down. And you will be ejected for having a male guest of the opposite sex in your room, you wicked thing.”
Cassidy twitched her shoulders, affecting indifference. “Go for it.”
“Don’t push me.” He was smiling but his eyes were suddenly stern and glowering.
“I’m not,” Cassidy countered. “Go ahead. I’ll join in.”
“You think I am bluffing?”
“I know you are,” Cassidy laughed. “You want somewhere to stay tonight, don’t you?”
Anfred nodded, outsmarted but he liked it. “You are one smart biscuit.”
“Cookie,” Cassidy corrected him, reflexively.
“If you’re offering!” Again, the eyebrow waggling. What, was he possessed by Groucho Marx? “Come on,” he reached out for her hand again. “Let us go on a little raid. Or have you had enough excitement for one lifetime?”
Cassidy looked at his outstretched hand and then to the look of anticipation on his face. “And will you leave after our little raid, as you call it?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
Anfred nodded in acceptance. Then he brightened and pulled her out into the corridor. “Then let us go. And try to keep your noise-making to a minimum.”
Cassidy pulled the door shut behind her. What the fuck am I doing? Who the hell is this guy?
But she let herself be pulled by the arm all the way to the kitchen nevertheless.
***
Also up at that late hour were D.I. Brough and D.S. Miller, still at work. They were reviewing the CCTV footage provided by the librarian. The two detectives stood behind a chair occupied by an IT technician who, though glad of the overtime, was beginning to flag with fatigue.
“Hold up,” Brough leant into the technician’s ear. “Back a bit.”
The technician obliged.
“Sir?” Miller shifted her weight from one foot to the other. How many more times must they go over the same few seconds of footage? She was concerned about Jerry. Had he been fed? Was Mum all right? Had some horrible domestic accident befallen her and she was lying dead in the kitchen and was Jerry making a meal of her face?
Miller shuddered. The murder investigation was disturbing her imagination.
“Look!” Brough’s voice brought her out of her macabre musings. “There!”
She leaned in closer to the monitor. The technician wriggled in his seat, trying not to register the fact that a breast - a woman’s actual breast - was resting on his shoulder.
“That’s the librarian woman, sir,” Miller pointed at the blurry figure with poor dress sense, jerking across the screen in low definition. “Um, Grayson, I think.”
“Yes,” said Brough, patiently. “There she is at the counter. Check the time code. And there’s Miz - um- the American, and the victim. He goes between the shelves and -“
He stood up straight. To the technician’s dismay, so did the breast-owner.
“Golly,” said Miller.
Brough clapped his hands together. “We’ve got her!”
Miller was not so sure and said so. Brough dismissed her doubts.
“I know, I know,” he waved dismissively. “We don’t actually see anything, but -“
“How could she get from the counter to the stacks and back again?” Miller took the bold step of interrupting her superior. “You saw yourself: the time codes.”
“What are you saying, Miller?”
“How could she be in two places at once?”
Brough opened his mouth. It remained open while he thought of an answer. “Evil twin?” he offered weakly. “Who works at the same place...?” He trailed off. It was nonsense and they all knew it.
“It’s definitely her though,” the technician offered, having frozen a frame of the librarian in unflattering close-up.
“Keep out of this, Ian,” Brough snapped. “Grown-ups are talking.”
Ian the technician looked like he’d been slapped in the face. His shock dissipated quickly when the breast reappeared at his shoulder. Miller was leaning over him again.
“Go on, Ian,” she encouraged. He recorded those three words in the hard-drive of his mind for replay on a loop during private moments alone. Ian cleared his throat and tapped the lower right corner of the screen.
“Time codes is off,” he said, his voice still thick. “Out of whack. Somebody’s been fiddling with them.” He kept his face towards the monitor, aware that it must be bright red at this point.
“Is that possible?” Brough’s coffee breath tickled Ian’s other ear.
“Could be,” said Ian, shrinking from the breath on one side to the breast on the other. “Unless you want to run with the evil twin idea.”
“Hmmm,” said Brough. He stood up, stretching his arms and back. He became aware Miller had said something and asked her to repeat.
“The book, sir?”
“We’ll throw it at her.”
“No, the murder weapon, sir. Norwegian MILFs or something.”
“Mythology,” Brough corrected. “You think the title might be significant?”
“Dunno,” Miller sighed. “I’m just conjecturating.”
Brough was suddenly energised. He began to walk quickly around the room. “You might be on to something there...”
Miller and the technician shared an eye-roll. Their shift appeared to be as far from over as it had ever been.
“Shall we bring her in, sir?” Miller caught Brough’s attention on his next pass, rousing him from his thoughts.
“Hmmm?”
“The librarian lady, sir.”
“I think we should bring her in,” Brough announced. He strode from the room.
“Great,” said Miller.
“Twat,” said Ian.
***
Trying not to giggle, Anfred and Cassidy made their way down through the darkened guest house. The bar, to their disappointment but not their surprise, was locked.
“Should have guessed,” Cassidy sighed.
“She is not stupid as she looks, this landlady woman,” Anfred observed. “To the kitchen!”
“But -“
“Ssh!” Anfred gave a mock look of panic along the corridor.
“Don’t you Ssh me. Ssh yourself!”
“Quiet! Come on!”
The kitchen door was also locked but, as Anfred suggested, they were able to gain access through the open-plan dining room and the swinging service door that connected it to the kitchen.
“Makes you wonder why they bother locking the other door,” Cassidy whispered. He was still leading her by the hand and she realised this was not at all unpleasant or entirely unwanted. He glanced over his shoulder.
“I stopped trying to fathom the English out long ago,” he said. “They are an eccentric lot.”
“I’ll say,” Cassidy nodded.
“No need; I already did.”
Even in darkness, the tidiness and good order of Mrs Box’s kitchen was apparent. Light from a security lamp outside the window fell on rows of shadowy shelves, their pots, pans and bowls in neat rows, like soldiers sleeping regimented in
their bunks. Mrs Box was proud of her kitchen. Indeed, the most ornate and expensive photo frame in the building boasted the Health and Hygiene certificate awarded by the local council.
Anfred and Cassidy stole across to the cupboards. He began to open and close cupboard doors while she looked on, ostensibly keeping watch.
“So,” she began, daring to speak above a whisper, “what are you hoping to find in here?”
“I don’t know,” Anfred moved along the row. “A key...a store cupboard...Cooking sherry.”
“Eww,” Cassidy grimaced. The romance bled out of this little adventure.
“Any port in a storm,” he reasoned.
“I don’t like port either,” Cassidy shuddered.
“Hah! That amuses me.”
Cassidy frowned. She hadn’t even been trying.
Anfred paused in mid-action. “What is this?” His eyes were wide. Cassidy scurried to him.
“What is what?”
Dramatically, Anfred opened the door of a standing cupboard, taller than he was. You could stack three Mrs Boxes in it.
They peered in.
“Toilet duck,” Cassidy read from a plastic bottle. It was a cleaning cupboard, for all Anfred’s melodrama.
“Not for me; I’m cutting back,” Anfred quipped. “Unless we happen on some lemonade. The search continues! Mrs Box’s drawers. We must rummage therein.”
“Eww,” Cassidy found herself saying a second time. Anfred laughed. He was having fun at least. He set to pulling open drawers in the long worktop, leaving them hanging open like an impatient burglar. Cassidy wandered over to the tall, metallic refrigerator that was whirring softly to itself like a bulldog with sleep apnoea. She opened one of the wide doors but before she could look inside at the contents suddenly spot lit, she was distracted by her raiding partner.
“Aha!” he cried, surprising himself with the loudness of his voice. “I mean:” he adjusted his voice to a stage whisper, “Aha. Je har det!” He withdrew a key ring and jingled it merrily.
“Good job!” Cassidy enthused. She moved towards him, leaving the fridge door hanging open. “But which key does what?”
Behind her the fridge door swung shut. Had either the Norwegian or the American turned around, they would have seen, before the light went out, and the rubber seal clung to the frame, a severed human head on a plate. The head of the young man with whom Cassidy had seen Anfred go into that room on the third floor...
Blood & Breakfast, West Midlands Noir Page 11