The telephone bleeped imperiously, rousing Brough from his musings. It was the pathologist. Brough’s face went red as if he’d been caught out.
“I’ve found something.” The voice was excited, but in a professional manner.
“What?”
“Killer was clever but not all that careful. Skin fragments under the librarian’s multi-coloured fingernails. Ran a DNA check.”
Brough clutched the receiver tightly as if to squeeze the information from it.
“Didn’t have to look very far,” Alastair continued. Brough’s mouth fell open when Alastair disclosed the name.
“Perhaps there’s some error?” Brough asked although he knew deep down he had got his man. “I mean, he could have been having a - a- dalliance with the librarian and - “he blushed, “you know, back scratching and all that. They do that, some women, you know.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Alastair laughed. Brough blushed again. “But you could ask him if you like when you question him. Or, better yet, get him to take his shirt off.”
Brough cleared his throat, trying to bring the conversation back to a more formal level.
“But it’s definitely his?”
“As sure as I can be.”
“Thank you.”
“Say, what about a dri-”
But before the pathologist could complete his invitation, the detective inspector had hung up.
***
Brough rounded up a couple of uniforms and briefed them quickly without going into too much detail. The three of them went down to Reception.
It was certainly a lot brighter there. The old, faded and curling posters had been replaced with new colourful ones about crime prevention and help lines. Everything was neat. The counter had been polished. There was even a second vase of flowers on the windowsill.
Dobley was still there. Sitting in his coat, waiting for young Whojimmyflop to take over. He flicked a salute as Brough approached.
“You go get ‘em, sir!” he grinned.
Brough signalled to the constables. They went behind the desk and seized Dobley by the arms.
“I just have,” said Brough grimly.
Dobley stood up. He wasn’t going to be any trouble.
Answers
Damn it. The station was a charging station but it wasn’t equipped for questioning proper. A right good interrogation was required and for that, Brough’s stomach dropped to his shoes, the suspect would have to be transferred to SCD down the road.
There you wouldn’t find those mirrors you could see through from the next room. That was considered passé and not good enough for the Serious boys. They had state of the art recording equipment, audio and video. Instead of observing through glass, you could now sit in the next room and watch the interview on screens via a live link-up. Making police work even more like a television programme. It was all a bit flash for Brough’s liking but this was the way things were going and, perhaps, a crime this Serious merited the use of top of the range gear. This was not merely talking tough to a couple of prepubescent shoplifters. This was the real deal. A mass murderer. A serial killer. This required the biggest of guns.
And so Dobley was collected in a van. Brough rode with him, but in the front. The van took them away from the decaying town centre and down a hill. A couple of miles later, it pulled up behind the imposing edifice of the divisional station, recently refurbished to house the high-falutin’ shiny new Serious Crimes Department. Spotlights on a patch of lawn pointed their beams at the rotating metal sign so that those arrested after dark would be impressed by where they were being taken into custody. He glanced over his shoulder to look at Dobley through the meshed window. He looked far from impressed. Brough wondered if the money squandered on all this “re-branding” couldn’t have been better spent keeping a small branch station going.
He deigned to allow Stevens, called back into work when it got around the grass had got his man, to observe the suspect via video camera, as Dobley sat patiently at the table, sans tie, sans belt and shoelaces.
“Him?” Stevens gulped coffee from a plastic beaker, “Am you shitting me?”
“I shit you not,” replied Brough.
“Let me have five minutes with him. I’ll get it out of him, the whole bloody lot.”
“He’s my collar.”
“I don’t care if he’s your fucking Cartier necklace. Let me have a go at him.”
“It’s my case. I nicked him.”
“And I say you should let us handle it from here.” Stevens crumpled the cup and dropped it onto the floor.
“It’s my case,” Brough repeated, quietly. Stevens breathed out through his nose like an angry bull.
“Tell you what,” Stevens took pains to calm himself. “Let me have first crack. You can watch from here. Observe the fucker. You’ll find that can be very useful. I’m not trying to tread on your toes, even though you am a fucking grass.”
“I beg your pardon!”
Stevens held up his hands. “Sorry, sorry, force of habit. What do you say? You can always storm in and take over if I’m not getting nowhere.”
Brough thought about it. The ‘grass’ jibe had weakened his resolve. He gave his consent.
“Lovely!” Stevens rubbed his hands together and left. Seconds later, he and a detective sergeant Brough didn’t recognise appeared in the room next door. Dobley barely looked at him as they sat down.
Stevens got through the formalities quickly and efficiently. The showy recording equipment, audio and video, was started up. Introductions were made - the D.S. was called Woodcock - and the interview began.
Stevens opened a manila folder and spread the gory crime scene photographs in front of Dobley as though he was about to perform a tarot reading. Dobley glanced down but quickly looked up again. His lips parted in a grimace of disgust.
“Not pretty pictures, are they, Trev?” Stevens winced in sympathy. “Not the sort of thing you’d want to put in frames and hang up in your nice clean reception area, are they?”
Dobley didn’t respond. He was looking at the lens behind the detectives’ shoulders. On the other side, Brough twitched and had to remind himself the creepy bastard couldn’t see him.
“Look at the fucking pictures!” Stevens exploded suddenly. Dobley flinched. The D.I.’s eyes were wide and staring - glaring at him. The unkempt moustache was quivering with barely contained rage. With considerable effort, Dobley lowered his gaze to the glossy images on the table.
A look of horror and absolute repugnance formed on his features and didn’t look as though it would ever leave them. His brow furrowed in puzzlement. His eyes sought the inspector’s.
“Why are you showing me these?” He sounded as though he might throw up at any second. His face was pale and sickly, coated in a sweaty sheen.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Stevens made an expansive shrug. “Caption competition?” He snatched up one photograph. “What about this one? Have a go. Woodcock here - the best he could come up with was ‘Never mind glasses, his eyesight’s so bad he needs fucking bottles’. I think that’s shit, don’t you? Don’t you think that’s a shit caption for this photo, Trevor?”
Dobley’s head dropped. Stevens took this as a nod. He nudged the detective sergeant.
“Here, Gary, Trevor here thinks your caption’s shit. Are you going to take that from him, Gary?”
D.S. Gary Woodcock made a sound like a mirthless laugh. He’d thought his caption was quite good, actually.
“So, go on.” Stevens slid the picture closer to Dobley. “Give us a caption for this image.”
Dobley said nothing. Stevens swapped photographs.
“What about this one, then? Bloke with a bloody big book rammed down his neck.”
“Um, ‘food for thought’?” offered Woo
dcock.
“Not you, Gary,” Stevens sneered. “Not your fucking turn, is it?” He turned to look at the D.S. incredulously. “’Fucking food for thought’? Fuck off.” He turned back to Dobley. “Well?”
“I don’t know why you’re showing me these horrible things.”
“Because I want to see what you had for lunch, that’s why. Jesus! I wonder how that station of yours gets anything done if they’m all as thick as you.” He cast a glance to the camera lens, just long enough for Brough to see his hairy smirk. Brough, for his part, bristled.
“And what about this one? Nice bit of home decorating, wouldn’t you say so, Woodcock?”
Dobley’s expression hardened when he saw the shots of the librarian’s living room.
“Looks familiar, does it?”
Dobley pushed the photographs away. He looked at the detectives in turn. “I’ll only talk to Brough,” he said.
Watching the monitors, it was Brough’s turn to smirk. He had to make do with hoping the wanker Stevens was imagining it.
The recordings were paused. Stevens and Woodcock left Dobley alone with the photographs. They joined Brough in the observation room.
“You heard,” Stevens grumbled.
“I did indeed,” Brough replied smugly. “I’ll borrow your Woodcock, if I may.”
D.S. Woodcock looked to Stevens for permission. Stevens grunted. Brough and Woodcock went to the interview room.
***
Brough was playing back the video recording of the interview with Dobley. The red and stubbly head was flickering in freeze frame on the flat screen.
“Ugly bugger,” was Stevens’s assessment. He was sitting the wrong way around on a chair with his forearms on the back rest. Brough surmised this odious man would wear a baseball cap in the same conventionally unconventional manner.
“But telling the truth,” Brough added. “At least, I believe him.”
“He can say what he likes,” Stevens threw a drained plastic cup at the television. It bounced off Dobley’s nose. “We’ve got him. He did that library weirdo.”
“He’s not denying that; he -“
“He’s lying about the others. Perhaps he thinks he’ll get off more lightly. Silly bastard. He’d be more famous if he owned up to the lot.”
“It’s not about being famous. You heard him -“
“I bloody did. Most piss-poor motivation for a murder ever.”
“I don’t know,” Brough considered. “Some people get killed for pulling away too slowly at traffic lights.”
Stevens mulled this over. “Crazy fuckers,” he pronounced.
“Watch again - see how his body language changes. When he’s talking about the librarian, see how open he is. But when the other victims are mentioned... look at his eyes. They’re all over the place.”
Stevens wailed. “Oh, you’re not going to give me all that psychological bollocks, am you? I hate all that shit. What happened to coppers going with their gut?”
Brough toyed with the remote control. Serious Crimes certainly had some serious hardware. The bad boys always get the best toys.
“There’s still a place for the more traditional, instinctive policing. This is just a way of formalising that. You get a feeling about someone - this is an amplification of that. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Bah!”
Enjoying Stevens’s annoyance, Brough pointed the handset at the television and pressed Play.
***
On the screen, Dobley’s face began to move, his mouth working as though framing his words before speaking. Off- screen, Brough’s deeper voice and southern accent asked calmly and patiently for Dobley to describe the scene.
“I followed her,” the contrite and ashamed Dobley began. He kept his voice relatively steady as he recounted the horrors of his crime. “I knew who she was, like, because, well, I used to go to the library for the large print Westerns. For me dad, like, not me. I prefer biographies, me. Any road, the library closed early of course, because of the murder. And it was my half day so it all sort of come together.
“I followed her - she walks to work, or rather she did. She won’t be walking anywhere no more. And when she put her key in the front door, I rushed up behind her and shoved her into the house. Landed on top of her in the hallway. She didn’t have a clue what was going on. So I gets off her - there was nothing kinky going on; I want to make that clear. This was - this was - this was business, I suppose you’d call it.
“I sort of shooed her into the kitchen. Didn’t give her chance to stand up. Just sort of bundled her along. She was gasping and sobbing all the while and I told her she better shut up. Well, she wasn’t going to shut up, was she? Stands to reason. So I had to clatter her with something and the first thing I found was a frying pan. Well, that shut her up.
“And then, I don’t know. I don’t know what come over me. I sort of got carried away like. Once I got started I knew I couldn’t stop until I’d finished. It was like my hands weren’t my own. My dad - he was a butcher, you see. I don’t know what that’s got to do with it. I don’t know about geneticals and all that but I don’t think you get jobs passed down the generations. Besides, when he had me, he was a postman. Any road, I could sort of see myself doing it - the chopping her up, I mean - and it wasn’t like it was me doing it. It was like I was hypnotised or something.”
“See his eyes!” Brough paused the recording. “He’s not making this up.”
“He’s round the bloody twist,” Stevens groaned. “That’s how this will go. He’ll get hospital not jail.”
“And now, I ask about the others...” Brough restarted the recording with a flourish of his wrist.
“I have already fucking seen it, you know,” Stevens complained.
“Ssh,” said Brough.
“I don’t know anything about that lot,” Dobley sat up, as though to distance himself from the crime scene photographs of the other victims.
“But you said it wasn’t like you - with the librarian, I mean. I wonder if you perhaps did the rest as well but have been more successful in blocking them from your mind.”
Dobley shook his head slowly and repeatedly. His eyes were wet and his lips trembled. “No,” he said at last. “I would have remembered. Like watching a film. I would have seen it. I would remember seeing it.”
“Look at this. Dennis Morgan. Do you like beer, Trevor? I can call you Trevor?”
“Yes. I mean yes you can call me Trevor. I don’t like beer, no.”
“And what do you think of those who do like beer, Trevor? Those who take over the town, causing trouble.”
“No!” Dobley cried out suddenly. “You’re going off on a tangent. It’s not like that. It’s not why - “ He broke off and did that mouth-moving thing before he gave voice to his next sentence. “People want to have a beer, I say go for it. Live and let live -“
A snort from Stevens.
“And the festival’s good for the town. I want what’s good for the town.”
“So you went to the festival or didn’t you?”
“I like to show my face. See some familiar faces. Folk come from miles around, you know.”
“But you don’t drink the beer?”
“There’s more to it than beer.”
“Did you know him? Dennis Morgan? Was he one of the familiar faces?”
“No, I -“
Brough paused the recording to interject, “It’s the truth. This was Morgan’s first visit to Dedley Beer Festival.”
“Whoopee cack,” said Stevens.
“Keep your eyes on his eyes,” Brough tapped the face on the screen.
“And you keep your fucking fingers off my plasma.”
“I now ask him about the homeless man - identity still unconfirmed.”
&nb
sp; Stevens rubbed the sides of his head with both hands. He was losing what little patience he had. “I know! I watched it live! Can we just review the tape without the fucking director’s commentary?”
On screen, Dobley glanced at the photographs of the homeless man, his head all but sliced in two by the brutal introduction of the book. Dobley’s face expressed his shock and disgust more eloquently than words. He looked away.
“How did you get the book, Trevor?”
“What book?”
“The book in the photograph. That book.”
“I never. I wouldn’t. I respect books.”
“And the homeless? Do you respect them?”
“Well, I - I - don’t like them in the town if that’s what you mean but I - I would never -“
“At the time this man was killed, you weren’t at your desk, were you, Trevor? You’d nipped out, hadn’t you? On one of your little errands.”
“I - I -“ Trevor’s face became a writhing mask of panic. Then he deflated like a leaky balloon and his head sank. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Sorry for what, Trevor? The murders?”
“No!” Dobley sat up straight again so he could look Brough directly in the eye. “I mean, I’m sorry about the library lady, I shouldn’t have done that, but I never done the others.”
“Then what are you sorry for?”
“I’m sorry I skipped off work, sir. I only nipped out for a packet of mints. The old D.I. he was always sending me out to fetch this and that and I sort of got into the habit, sir. You won’t dock my wages, will you? Sir? I’ve still got some of the mints, sir. As proof.”
“Why did you do it, Trevor?”
“Keeps me breath fresh for the public, sir.”
“The librarian. Miss...” Brough checked some notes, “Grayson.”
Dobley chewed his thumb while his brain strung together his statement. Tears coursed down his flabby face and when he spoke his voice was thick and cracked.
Blood & Breakfast, West Midlands Noir Page 13