by Issy Brooke
Cath burst out laughing. “We know. Or, we’re pretty sure, at least, that you didn’t kill him. Come in and sit down. Can I go and get you a cup of tea?”
“Poor woman, she’s not here to be tortured,” Inspector Travis said. “Remember the Geneva Convention and all that.”
“I was going to make it in our staff area, not use that disgusting machine in the custody suite.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right then. So if you’re offering … my mug is somewhere on my desk,” the Inspector said. “Ms May? Tea? Coffee?”
“Er – oh. Tea, thanks.”
Cath disappeared and Penny regretted it immediately; now she was alone with the detective. The Detective Inspector waved her to a spindly-legged chair at a plain table. He sat opposite and regarded her coolly.
“This is somewhat embarrassing,” the Inspector said, looking completely unembarrassed.
“Er …”
“For the police as a whole,” he said. “And for me, of course. You see, we’re investigating the murder of a man that you knew. A man that everyone knew, but generally they knew him for unfortunate reasons. Warren Martin. A man whom no one is really mourning; he was a pest and a menace to womankind, in a low and irritating kind of way. He was never a danger to anyone but he was, I will concede, usually to be found in the wrong.”
“Right.” She was forcing herself to stop saying “er” but she couldn’t think of what else she could say.
Inspector Travis stroked his cheek. “And here is where you come in. Throughout the course of this investigation, one name keeps getting mentioned, Ms May. And that name is yours.”
“I … er. Oh.” Penny shook her head slowly. Yes, she was an outsider to the community. Yes, she was from “down south” which made her both something to be admired and something to be feared. Yet, in spite of the stereotypes of the rural people being unfriendly to incomers, she had received nothing but warmth and acceptance. Now she felt sick. Behind her back, were all the residents of Upper Glenfield convinced that she was really a murderer?
“Yes,” the Inspector went on, almost as if he was oblivious to the reactions his words were having. “You’re quite the local celebrity, aren’t you? The people of Upper Glenfield have been frankly horrified that we – the police – have been turning up on their doorsteps.”
“But that’s nothing to do with me,” Penny protested. “None of this is my fault.”
“I am not saying it is.” He spoke kindly. Cath re-entered with the cups of tea on a tray.
“Tea, tea, tea,” she said, dishing out the mugs. “Right. Where are we up to, Bill?”
“I’m just telling Ms May about how everyone we ask about Warren seems to ask about her.”
“It’s quite bizarre,” Cath said, sitting down.
Inspector Travis jerked his thumb in Cath’s direction. “What Cath isn’t telling you is this: she’s actually quite miffed. It used to be that Cath was the ‘local’ in Upper Glenfield. If there was anything going on there, she could get to the bottom of it, through gossip and eavesdropping. But now you’re there. It’s you, now.”
“Me? I don’t understand. I really don’t.” She still felt panicked but she had no idea why.
“You can be very useful to us, Penny,” Cath said. “Ignore him. I’m not miffed at all. Honestly. It’s a relief to me that Agatha doesn’t chase me round the market any more, trying to tell me about someone she thought looked a bit suspicious because they were buying aubergines in the mini-market at seven in the morning. Seriously, that has happened.”
“But I don’t see it,” Penny insisted. “Not the aubergines, though that is weird. People have been asking me about the murder but I’m not the police.”
“People have expectations of you, now. And don’t mistake me,” the Inspector said, his voice becoming harder. “We are not asking you to investigate anything. We’re simply suggesting that you do, indeed, open yourself to the possibility of gossip. People want to talk to you, Ms May. People want to tell you things. We would like you simply to listen. Oh, and report back to us, of course.”
Penny was stunned. Thrilled and alarmed, but mostly stunned.
“Er. Okay, then.”
Cath and Inspector Travis beamed widely, their expressions identical.
“Great. Of course, this is all off the record and totally unofficial. We deny everything. All we want is for you to keep an ear to the ground and ask questions and listen to replies. We may as well make you into an asset, all right?”
“I have one question, though,” Penny said, as her excitement faded a little at the edges. “With the Warren Martin case, do you think it was a targeted attack? Or something random? I suppose I really mean to ask: am I in any danger? Are any of us?”
“It is impossible to say,” Inspector Travis said. “But we are reasonably sure it was a targeted attack. I promise you that I would not ask you to do anything that might put you at risk. Except, of course, the risk of drinking our tea.”
Penny sat back and held her warm cup, thinking.
“Do you still want to do this?” Cath asked.
“Yes, I do,” she replied decisively. “What sort of leads have you got already?”
The two police officers exchanged a quick glance. “Not a lot,” Inspector Travis confessed. “And what we do know – from the pathology report – we’ll keep to ourselves. I don’t want to prejudice anything you might come to us with.”
“Right. Okay. Well, I do have some information but you probably already know it…”
Inspector Travis tensed up, leaning forward. “Go on.”
Penny felt herself blush. “I checked out his online dating profile,” she said, refusing to meet Cath’s eyes. She knew that she would be in for a grilling from her friend later. “And from there, I found myself on his photography portfolio. He’s really good, you know, by the way. So, have you heard of something called urbex?”
The officers shook their heads. “Where’s that?” Inspector Travis asked.
“It’s not a place. It’s an activity,” she explained. “It’s short for urban exploration. It seems that Warren was into exploring abandoned and derelict buildings, and taking photographs. I know the rumours said that he was found somewhere remote. Was he taking photos?”
The Inspector pursed his lips. “Okay, I suppose we can tell you some of what we know, because it fits. This urbex thing is new to me. He was found with nothing. He was fully clothed, and dressed for the outdoors. But he didn’t even have his phone or his wallet on him, never mind a camera.”
“It doesn’t mean that he wasn’t taking photos,” Cath put in.
“True.”
“Can you tell me how he died?”
Again the police officers looked at one another. Inspector Travis nodded. “Keep this to yourself. He was strangled.”
“What with?”
“We don’t know. Nothing was found. We’d asked your friend Drew about things that could be used. That was one of the reasons we called him in. That, and for tracking. One of our officers was waffling about nettles and so on.”
“Oh yes,” Penny said. “The fibres inside …” Drew had once gone into a detailed demonstration of how nettle could make rope.
Inspector Travis waved his broad hand in a dismissive gesture. “Well, it wasn’t anything like that. The marks around the deceased’s neck were caused by something wide and flat.”
“Ah.” Penny thought back to the day of the photoshoot at the dogs’ home. “A camera strap, then.”
Silence stretched out between them.
After a long few seconds, Inspector Travis nodded carefully. “Well. Yes. That would do it. Exactly like a camera strap.”
Cath began to grin again. “Excellent.”
“We would have come up with that sooner or later, Pritchard,” Inspector Travis said.
“Sure.”
“Hmph.”
Penny felt buoyed by this immediate success. Maybe it was going to work out just fine. Listen to gossip?
Yes. She could do that.
She could certainly do that.
* * * *
Penny wandered around the streets of Lincoln, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Cath accompanied her, leaving her formal suit jacket back at the station, claiming to be off duty. As they made their way through the pedestrianized area, Cath told her a little more about the demise of local policing.
“Everyone talks about the old-fashioned bobby on the beat,” Cath said. “It was before my time. But the older coppers talk about it, those few that are left from those days. They really did know everyone on their beat. One chap was telling me about how it was, when it all changed for him. His patch was a large rural area but it included a few small towns and lots of villages. And he knew all the shopkeepers and he went in the cafes and had a cup of tea with the staff and they told him what was going on, and when things happened, he knew where to go and what he’d find.”
“It sounds idyllic.”
“The thing was,” Cath said, “most of what the police were doing was intangible. That doesn’t satisfy the people who fund it all. They want graphs and charts and targets and achievements and statistics.”
“It’s the same in healthcare, and in education,” Penny said sadly.
“True. So this old guy was telling me about what happened. One day this new inspector turned up. He told them they were going to be ‘policing by objectives’ now. He went round all the shops, this new inspector, and told the staff not to serve the constables when they were on duty. No more wandering, no more gossiping. They had to have a reason to be anywhere. They had to justify it. Why were you walking down the High Street? No crimes have been committed on the High Street. Go to that other part of town. Someone’s house was broken into. You need to be there. Well, okay, but no crimes have been on the High Street because I’m walking down the High Street.”
“Oh.” Penny could see the problem. “And what about local knowledge and connections?”
“Exactly my point,” Cath said. “Oh, they are trying to claw it all back now, with community support officers and all that, but it’s too late. We’re fragmented. We’ve lost touch. And we’ve lost the respect and support of the community, I think.”
“And that’s where I come in. Basically I’m going to be your informant.”
“Yes, but not so underhand. Everyone knows you’re on the side of justice, after all.”
They came to the central market area, a large covered space with a plethora of stalls inside. “I’m going to pop in for some new pyjamas for my boys,” Cath said. “Coming for a browse?”
“Ahh – no. I think I’ll head home,” Penny said. “I’ve got a lot to think about.”
“You know where I am if you need me,” Cath said. “Oh! That online dating thing. So, have you made a profile? Have you had any hits yet?”
Penny backed away, leaving Cath standing frustrated by one of the doors to the market hall. “No. And no,” she said, laughing.
“No? Why not!”
“I’ve got work to do,” Penny said.
“Go on with you.”
Penny waved her hand and turned away. She wasn’t going straight home. She’d had an idea.
* * * *
She found just the place she needed, tucked down one of Lincoln’s many side streets. It was an independent camera shop. She browsed the window outside but the acronyms – and, indeed, the prices – made her feel dizzy. She sucked in a deep breath and jangled the door open.
The sales assistant was a young man, mid-twenties, with dreadlocks piled up and secured behind a colourful bandana. His skin was startling white but his eyes and hair were jet black, and the contrast was stunning, in a proper glossy magazine model sort of way. Penny told herself to behave. She wasn’t quite old enough yet to flirt shamelessly with young men; another decade and she could be as scurrilous as she liked.
“Good afternoon,” the man said. “How can I help you?”
“I would like to buy a camera.”
“You’re in the right place. What sort of photography are you hoping to do? Do you already have a camera?”
He was understanding and approachable as she explained that she had been using a small compact digital camera for her artistic reference work, but now she felt she wanted to take the next step. He carefully told her about the options she had, and she was pleased to discover she understood what he was talking about. His friendly nature disarmed her completely and she was soon handing over her credit card and agreeing to a much larger sum of money than she had intended on spending.
But now she was the proud owner of a DSLR – a digital single lens reflex camera, with a proper lens that went in and out like they did on the movies, and a flash on the top that popped up with a satisfying mechanical clicking sound. She also somehow bought a bag, some filters, a cleaning kit and a beanbag that she was told was just like a tripod, only more beanbag-ish.
“What’s the first project going to be?” the sales assistant asked cheerfully as he bundled up her purchases.
Now was her chance. “I want to get into urbex,” she said, trying to sound as if it was completely normal.
“Never heard of it,” the man said after a brief and telling pause. “Now, landscapes, they are always popular. Where do you live?”
“Upper Glenfield.”
“It’s lovely countryside around there. You’ll get some great skyscapes, too.”
“There’s an urbex group there. That’s urban exploration,” she added helpfully.
He bent down to pull some sticky tape from a roll under the counter, hiding his face. “Nah. Sounds dodgy to me.”
“Have you really never heard of it?” she asked.
He straightened up, his face blank. Too blank, she thought. He taped up her bag and passed it over. “Nope. I’d stay out of all that if I were you.”
“I like the idea of charting the decay of our industrial heritage,” she said, staring quite intently at him. Eye contact could be intimidating, she was finding.
The man sighed. “Look. I don’t know anything about urbex or any of that. Trains, that’s what I photograph. I like trains. But Upper Glenfield … urbex … well, be careful, that’s all I’m saying. If I had heard of it … which I haven’t … I’d tell you to watch out for that pair, Lee and Blue. I mean, they are okay guys, don’t get me wrong. Nice guys, the both of them. No harm at all. It’s just that … the law’s their own, if you get my meaning.”
“So you do know about the urbex group.”
“Nope. Nothing. Thank you for your custom.”
His pretty face was closed and blank, and she had no choice but to leave, clutching her bag, and knowing a big, fat lie when she heard one. He’d practically put a flag on it.
Chapter Seven
The rest of Tuesday was spent in a flurry of unpacking on the kitchen table, reading the hundred-page instruction manual and waiting for the camera battery to charge. Then she whiled away the evening exploring the menus and taking random shots of the kettle using different settings. Was “portrait” really so different to “macro”? She soon discovered that it was.
Kali obligingly ran up and down the back garden as Penny played with the “sport” mode until she had three dozen photographs of a dog’s blurred bottom and tail.
Photography was hard.
She barely slept, with “f-stop this” and “Warren Martin that” whizzing around her brain until she was in a half-dream where she was chasing a police officer while wearing nothing but a balaclava and shouting, “I’ve lost my aperture!” When she woke in the grey dawn, and the threads of the dream unravelled, she hoped they were just a product of the past few days, and nothing Freudian.
Kali was sitting beside the bed, staring at her. Penny sat up a little, and thought about Warren.
So, who were the suspects? She discounted the “every woman in the area” theory.
Eric had argued with him at the camera club, possibly because of his daughter Nina. Eric was a strange one, and Pen
ny felt a dislike for him. Was Nina a suspect, she wondered. There was more to investigate, there, and it was lucky that she had an excuse – the calendar.
“I wonder if their photos have turned out all right,” she said aloud, and Kali pricked up her ears in case the jumble of noise meant something like, “I must feed the dog a massive breakfast right now.”
The members of the camera club were supposed to upload the photographs to an online album that one of them had created, and then Penny would pick from it to begin mocking up some potential layouts. Some of them had scoffed at the need for a designer, until she had begun talking about fonts and kerning and spot colour and so on. Then they shut up, and she was allowed to get on with her job.
Penny stumbled through Wednesday in a daze as her brain sorted out what she knew about Warren Martin. She spent a little longer online, finding herself on the edges of forums dedicated to urban exploration, but some of the rhetoric was alarming and she didn’t stray in too far. She went back to Warren’s online dating profile, but there was nothing new to learn there. Yet she lingered, as if she could read between the lines of what he said about himself.
“I am a traditional, old-fashioned gentleman,” he declared as his opening statement.
What did that mean? More importantly, she thought, what did it mean to him?
He had asked every woman he met out on a date. And had been mightily offended when they said no. He was traditional. Did he see “traditional” in the sense of the man being the leader, and the woman following? Penny tapped her fingernails on the table top as she stared at the laptop screen. There was nothing wrong with that, if both parties were happy with it. She’d known many couples who quite happily lived that “traditional” lifestyle.
But Warren didn’t allow for other points of view, she realised. It was his way or nothing. He never took “no” for an answer. There was an arrogance there, she decided.
“I long to care for a wife and a family,” he later said, and she felt sad for him, then. That was really all he wanted to do. He’d never do it now. What a waste.