Death in High Circles (The Falconer Files Book 10)

by Andrea Frazer

  Falconer gave a deep sigh of defeat, and turned on his heel. Maybe another coffee, in the canteen this time, would improve his temper, for this young DC was doing nothing for his bad mood but exacerbate it.

  ‘I’ve got a terrible pain in my side,’ he heard as he left the office, but he ignored it. He didn’t know whether Roberts was turning into a hypochondriac after his two spells in hospital, but he’d certainly had enough time off work since he’d joined them to last a whole career.

  As he was sipping his scalding drink, Carmichael entered the canteen looking a real mess. His hair was sticking out in all directions, he was unshaven, he had bags under his eyes, and, when Falconer watched his approach, he noticed that the man had on odd socks.

  ‘Whatever happened to you?’ he asked, thinking that his sergeant looked as if he had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

  ‘I thought we’d have a really peaceful evening, with you taking Monkey, but we’d both forgotten that we’d promised to have Mulligan – and he arrived just after we’d got all the kids up to bed last night.

  ‘He wasn’t a problem when you stayed with us,’ continued Carmichael, as Falconer thought, oh yes he was, but only for me, as I remember it. I had to share my bed with him for the duration. ‘Anyway, when he came before, the pups were so tiny that they didn’t notice him. This time they were terrified, and we had high-pitched howls until I went downstairs at four this morning and dragged his blanket up to the room he shared with you at Christmas. Then he settled, and the pups finally went to sleep.

  ‘I slept right through the alarm, and so did everyone else, and I didn’t wake up until nearly half-past eight. I just got out of bed, rolled into my clothes, and drove here like the clappers. Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to be so late.’

  ‘Did you know you’ve got odd socks on?’

  ‘At the moment, I feel like I’ve got odd feet on. I feel like death.’

  ‘Well, I don’t, so let’s just hope that no one’s feeling murderous today,’ said Falconer, concluding the conversation while Carmichael collected himself a pint of tea (in the special mug kept for his use only; he was a bit of a favourite with the canteen ladies) and four bacon rolls, just to help the tea settle, as he had missed his breakfast.

  After Falconer had sipped another cup of coffee and Carmichael had engulfed his rolls, three doughnuts, and another pint of tea, just to ensure a balanced diet of sweet and savoury, they left the canteen to see if anything had come in by way of telephone for them while they had been absent.

  As they passed the front desk, the ever-present Bob Bryant – real name Trevor, but kept very hush-hush – hailed them with the news that there had been a call about vandalism overnight in the out-lying village of Fallow Fold.

  ‘No cause for alarm,’ he assured them. ‘Probably just teenagers out for a little troublemaking. I’ve sent PCs Merv Green and Linda Starr out to do a bit of door knocking.’

  ‘What sort of vandalism?’ asked the inspector, curious, as vandalism was not something that happened frequently in any of the villages, the small communities usually taking care of any misbehaviour in their midst without bothering the local constabulary.

  ‘Some mildly offensive spray painting on the one of the houses; couple of cars keyed, flower pots thrown around: that sort of stuff, nothing major league. Once the culprits have been identified, their parents will give them hell, and make them pay for the damage themselves, either in actual money, or in chores of restitution. Local justice still has a lot of clout round the villages, where it’s easy to identify the miscreant, because there simply isn’t a great deal of choice. Not like here in Market Darley, although we don’t do so badly ourselves.’

  ‘Did you alert DC Roberts?’ asked Falconer. ‘He’s at a bit of a loose end at the moment.’

  ‘I did, actually, but he said he was much too busy doing something for you. That’s why I sent a couple of uniforms.’

  ‘We’ll see about that!’ the inspector growled back in reply, and headed for the stairs at a fair pace, more than interested in finding out what it was that he had given Roberts to do that was so much more important than the investigation of a new crime, just reported. Carmichael trailed behind him, glad that it was someone else who was out of line, with the boss in this sort of mood. He himself was far too tired to even listen to a lecture, let alone take one in.

  At the top of the stairs, Falconer suddenly halted and put his finger to his lips. ‘I think we’ll see if we can surprise him, so that he doesn’t have time to look busy,’ he whispered, then crept down to the office door, gathered himself in readiness, and opened it soundlessly.

  Roberts was sitting with his chair swivelled so that his back was to the door. He sat there with his mobile phone in one hand, and a chocolate bar in the other, chatting away as if he had all the time in the world – to some friend or other, from the sounds of it. It was only the sound of Carmichael’s mighty yawn that attracted his attention at last.

  He whirled round, a look of horror on his face, suddenly turned his conversation to a business-like, ‘We’ll be in touch, sir, if we hear anything,’ and tried to look busy. ‘Just a lost cat, sir. Nothing to worry about,’ he prevaricated, doing his best to look interested in and connected to his work.

  ‘Do you know how long I’ve been standing here listening to your banal conversation?’ Falconer asked, a sardonic smile turning up one corner of his mouth. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been caught red-handed, and I won’t stand for this sort of attitude towards police work.

  ‘I know you’ve had two holidays in the local National Health hospital, and have got used to being waited on, but you’re back on duty, now. I’ve a good mind to see if I can’t get you a month or so on traffic. That should wake you up and make you feel grateful to be in plain clothes.’

  ‘Sorry, gu … sir. I don’t know what came over me. It must be this awful pain I’ve got. In my right side, it is, and it just keeps nagging. It won’t happen again, I promise.’

  ‘Fortunately, I like pies,’ replied Falconer, enigmatically, then continued, ‘And Bob Bryant tells me that you were too busy to investigate a report of vandalism out in Fallow Fold. Do you realise that your laziness and lack of enthusiasm has cost the station two – I said two – uniformed officers. That won’t look good on the budget, will it? “DC Roberts had to catch up on his social life, so time and resources were wasted while an official vehicle and two uniforms were sent instead.”

  ‘Pull your finger out and apply yourself. You know full well that Carmichael and I are both rostered to have the afternoon off, and that’ll leave you, nominally, in charge. I don’t want to come back to the office to a string of complaints about your slack, lacklustre attitude, and I don’t want to hear another word about nagging pains in the side. At the moment, you’re a nagging pain in the arse to me, and you don’t hear me complaining about it. Consider traffic, and think on, lad!’

  Falconer sent Carmichael home at eleven thirty, for a chance to sleep off his Mulligan-inspired hangover, and it was not until nearly noon that Green and Starr returned, entering Falconer’s office giggling and fooling around.

  ‘Another pair not seriously concentrating on the job,’ he muttered grumpily, and asked them what they had discovered in Fallow Fold. Finally settling down, Merv began the debriefing.

  ‘Some old French woman had “Frog” sprayed across her front door, and some of her flower pots smashed. She was in a furious mood, as she’s a very keen gardener, and has lived in England for nearly thirty years and doesn’t consider herself French any more.’

  ‘There were three cars scratched with sharp objects along their sides,’ put in ‘Twinkle’ Starr, ‘And the couple who both run a gardening group had some of the windows in their greenhouse smashed.’

  ‘And some old guy who runs the bridge club complained that he had a death-threat, but he burnt it. I reckon he’s round the twist, though; one of those funny, mincing old beggars, who fusses about absolutely everything, but doesn’t act
ually want to get involved.’

  ‘What was the wording of this threat?’ asked Falconer, suddenly showing a spark of interest.

  ‘He wouldn’t say,’ replied Green. ‘Said it was personal, and none of our business.’

  ‘I reckon he’s making it up to seem important, seeing as how he’s such an insignificant little man,’ added Starr. ‘Anyway, they’ve organised a meeting in the village hall for tonight, by telephone and grapevine, so that they can try to identify who did the damage, and decide how to stop it happening again.’

  At that point, they started to nudge each other and giggle again, and Falconer dismissed them both as no good to him whatsoever, the mood they were in. It must be spring, the sap rising, and love in the air. He could only guess at the reason, the mood he was in.

  When he got home, he walked into his living room, took one look around, turned, and walked straight back out again. His first job on this free afternoon would be to go to the DIY store just outside Market Darley, to buy some more hooks and eyes for all his doors, and some of the little gadgets that kept children out of cupboards and drawers.

  The fallout he had discovered in the house, he would deal with when he had the means of preventing it happening again. It was useless to clear up and then go out again, as the chaos would just be repeated while he was out.

  In Castle Farthing, Carmichael slept the sleep of the just, having collapsed on his bed with his size fifteen boots still on. Mulligan, the cause of his case of exhaustion, dozed outside in the back garden in the spring sunshine, and the pups and their parents happily chased insects, either through the grass, or airborne, now that the giant had been subdued and drugged into sleep by the warmth of the sun.

  Harriet slept in her pram, with the sunshade attached, and Kerry sat outside with a cup of tea, enjoying the peace and quiet, as the boys had gone over to their great-aunt Rosemary’s for the afternoon, giving their mother half a pound of peace and quiet in which to do absolutely nothing.

  All was well in the Carmichael household. For now.

  Things were not so rosy in Fallow Fold, where a great deal of anger had been generated by the overnight acts of vandalism.

  In the Maitland household, Marilyn woke to find the other side of the bed empty. Melvyn had not managed to get upstairs the night before. She found him downstairs, stinking of bourbon and slumped in an old Windsor chair in the kitchen. With a sigh, she shook his snoring body, and addressed a question to the bleary countenance that finally tried to focus on her.

  ‘Where the hell did you get to, last night? What are you doing skulking down here? Too rat-arsed to get up the stairs, were you?’

  Melvyn rubbed his stubbly face and muttered, ‘I was just chilling out with a half of Wild Turkey, when that hyperactive American harpy phoned up, then that disgustingly cheerful French woman, both of them dribbling on about setting up a Historical Circle.’

  ‘And?’ Marilyn encouraged him.

  ‘Well, I was so damned sick of all these bloody groups that I just blew my stack, telling them I needed some peace in my life, and that they could go to hell, because I was having a well-earned unwind.’

  ‘Melvyn, you didn’t.’

  ‘I did. Or, at least, I think I did. I don’t think I dreamt it. After that, I finished the bottle, and moved on to some malt that we had left. I’d had about enough of the whole bunch of them, what with doing this new timetable – change after change, with everyone going off on long holidays at the most inconvenient time.

  ‘Then that awful old biddy came round yesterday afternoon and finally, just when I thought I’d got them all off my back for a while, I had two more phone calls wanting me to do something else for a pittance. I just flipped. Sorry. I’ll apologise when I’ve had a shower, a shave, and a couple of cups of good, strong coffee.’

  ‘You make sure that you do,’ his wife retorted. ‘The job may not pay much, but we need the money, and you don’t declare it anywhere, so we don’t have to worry about paying tax. Hmph!’

  Before he could prepare himself for his apologies, though, the phone rang yet again, and Melvyn groaned out loud. ‘I bet that bloody thing’s for me.’ And it was. It was an invitation to the village hall that evening to discuss the vandalism that had taken place during the night, and Melvyn received the news of the nocturnal activities with a glum face.

  That was his evening gone. He’d have to get round to the shops and stock up on something strong for the latter half of the evening, as he was sure to be in a foul mood again, and need another little relaxer. This time he’d leave the phone off the hook and put in his earphones to listen to a little chill-out music, before he went to bed. It would be nice to actually make it upstairs tonight.

  When Falconer got home from the DIY store with his new collection of hooks and eyes and little fiddle-de-dees to stop his new cat from getting to the places where no cat should be, he was prepared to sort through the shredded papers from the top of his desk, as the results of this little attack were what had caught his eye when he returned earlier, and turned on his heel and gone straight out again.

  This time, when he entered the house, he was chagrined to find that the local free paper had been delivered in his absence, and was now just a very large pile of slender strips just inside the front door, a few of the tatters having been trailed into the sitting room for playthings. Would he never win? And did he still need an electric paper shredder?

  Making a mental note to buy one of those metal mesh mail catchers that could be fitted to the back of front doors, for the sole purpose of preventing this sort of happening, he went to his toolbox for a screwdriver. At least he could keep them out of his other rooms, if he made the effort this evening, and would know that his trip downstairs the following day would not be full of terrible and messy surprises.

  He received a tremendous amount of help from the cats in general, on this little DIY mission, as they all tried to catch the screwdriver as he manipulated it, or patted away his next little packet of hooks and eyes, to chase it into some difficult to access corner, and he was sure Barry Bucknell never had this problem in his old black and white television series.

  On his bedroom door he fitted two hooks and eyes; one outside to keep the cats out when he wasn’t up there, and one inside, to keep them out when he was in bed. That should spike the little games Monkey devised for his undivided, if negative, attention.

  Finally, the last fixing was done, and he could retire to the kitchen to see about getting something to eat. He was not a man used to scrabbling about on his knees doing ‘little jobs’ around the home, and he had raised quite an appetite. He would do something quick and easy.

  Or, at least, he would, when he had cleared away the mess that ‘Some-cat’ had made of the kitchen roll he had left out on the work surface on its holder.

  The impromptu meeting in the village hall that night had been scheduled for six thirty, so that the whole evening wasn’t taken up with local grumbling, and it was being chaired by Mabel Wickers, a frequent chairperson in her younger years, and an enthusiastic volunteer for such duties in her later ones.

  She effortlessly silenced the complaining group of people, and opened the meeting by announcing what had already been reported to her, asking for any further acts of vandalism to be added to her list after the meeting.

  ‘So far, Antoinette Chateau has suffered the unfortunate experience of having the derogatory and inflammatory word “frog” painted on her front door, and some of her beloved pots of plants have been smashed. These were particularly spiteful acts against a harmless and friendly lady who has always participated in the gardening activities of this village with gusto.’

  Antoinette relaxed her pained and victimised expression, to give a little smile at such a nice description of her as a good resident.

  ‘The damage to paintwork on cars,’ Mabel continued, ‘was to the vehicles of Duke Zuckerman, Martin Fidgette, and myself; a cowardly act carried out by a cowardly individual, which will undoubtedly affect
our insurance premiums.’

  Two male voices from those gathered made fairly loud comments of discontent and anger as this was announced. Martin Fidgette in particular was besotted by his car, to the point that he would not let Aggie drive it at all and, on many occasions when he was not available, she had had to resort to using her bicycle to get where she wanted or needed to be.

  ‘Ferdie and Heidi Schmidt had some of the panes of glass in their greenhouse broken, a consideration that might yet prove catastrophic to their spring seedlings …’

  ‘I heard something!’ shouted Ferdie. ‘I definitely heard someone creeping around in the night, but I went back to sleep. I am a very heavy sleeper.’

  ‘You’re very heavy, full-stop!’ Marilyn Maitland was heard to murmur quietly. Ferdie was not a particularly tall man, but he was broad, and looked a typical German. Many villagers felt intimidated by him, although he was a very friendly and sociable man. Appearances mean so much when someone doesn’t know one.

  ‘It is also noted,’ continued Mabel, not letting the interruptions make her lose her place in her announcements, ‘that Lionel Dixon received a very unpleasant communication, although he doesn’t feel able to share its contents with us, because it concerns a personal matter.

  ‘We need to winkle out who did this, and why, for we cannot tolerate such behaviour in our peaceful and happy community. Reports of any further vandalism and, of course, any information that may lead to the apprehension of the perpetrator, to me, please, and I shall co-ordinate and report to the police as necessary.

  ‘Before we finish, I should like to propose that Mr Maitland draws up a rota for a patrol through the village, twice after dark, at unspecified hours. I’ll be in touch when he has a timetable worked out. Thank you very much for your time, ladies and gentlemen.’

  The meeting officially broke up at that point, leaving twos and threes of people to have private moans with each other and their friends. It had been attended, not just by those affected but, as word had got round, by those who had been left out of the spiteful acts, that they may find out of what to be extra protective, and about what to be on their guard.