by Tim Ellis
‘I’m joking. You’ll get used to my sense of humour, or lack of it. What I’m really saying is that if you do have an idea, speak up. I don’t care how ridiculous it sounds, I’m not going to shout at you, or make fun of you – well, not much, anyway.’
‘Thanks, Sir, I think.’
‘Have you got your own car?’
‘I’ve got an old Beetle. It’s a rust-bucket, but it goes.’
‘Okay. How about you drive to Hoddesdon Police Station in the mornings and leave your car in the car park? We can then take a pool car and at night return to the station and go home from there.’
‘That’s okay with me, Sir.’
‘And you can stop calling me “Sir”. As much as I like being a Sir, I’m not there yet. Sergeant will do from now on.’
‘Oh, okay, Sir. What time do you want me in the morning?’
‘Meet me at eight thirty, and from there we’ll go to King George Hospital and find out when they’re going to do the post-mortem. With any luck that might give us some evidence we can use to narrow down the motive. Have you seen a post-mortem before?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not squeamish are you?’
‘I don’t think so. I saw my dad dead.’
‘A post-mortem is slightly different. I’d wear some clean underwear tomorrow morning.’
She looked at him with a half smile.
‘That was another joke.’
‘Okay… What about the rest of your team?’
‘We’re a team of two, Richards. I’m the acting DI, but without the rank or the pay, and you’re the detective constable without the training or the experience.’
Richards smiled nervously. ‘If you say so.’
‘Don’t worry, Richards. I’ve been a DS for seven years; there’s not much I don’t know about murder investigations. We’re just going to be spread a bit thin, that’s all. There’ll be no time for romantic assignations with paramedics, that’s for sure.’
Richards looked away.
‘We also haven’t got the manpower for a house-to-house, so we’ll do a drop instead. I’ll type something up later asking for information, make copies, and then sometime tomorrow we’ll pop back and drop them through the letterboxes on both sides of the street. It shouldn’t take us more than half an hour.’
‘That’s a brilliant idea, Sir.’
‘Thanks. Right, anything else before we say goodnight?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Okay, off you go then. And thanks for all your help tonight, Constable.’
She smiled and her eyes sparkled. ‘You’re very welcome.’
As she opened the door and climbed out of the car it began snowing like the beginning of a nuclear winter.
***
Back in the small cold flat, the athletic-looking man took off his duffel coat and gloves and threw them on the back of the threadbare armchair. He pushed the hood back from his dark, wavy hair and smiled. There was no joy behind the smile. Joy was an emotion that had been stolen from him many years ago. The smile was in recognition of his accomplishment. The murder of Mr Taylor had gone the way he had planned it would – no more, and no less.
He picked up the marker pen from where he’d left it on the Formica-topped coffee table that he had bought for three pounds from a charity shop, and walked towards the wall above the bed. A photograph of Mr Taylor grinned at him. He scored a black cross through the face and stepped back to view the effect.
‘Not grinning now are you, you bastard?’ he said out loud. He felt nothing. It was as if he had successfully completed a mundane task that had been outstanding for some time.
It had taken him two years to find a job and get settled after his release from prison for grievous bodily harm, and another three years to find out where they all were, but eventually he had found them. Now it was simply a matter of a life for a life, fulfilling the promise he had made to himself and the others, tidying up the loose ends of the past so that accounts could be closed.
He stared at the next picture. He was tempted to put a cross through the woman’s face, but he controlled himself. There was no rush. Instead, he went to the kitchen to get a beer, and slipped a ready-made meal into the microwave.
***
It was eight forty when Parish walked into the station. He waved at the night shift playing poker downstairs while it was quiet. The detective’s squad room on the second floor was cold and eerie, and he felt as though he’d walked into a deserted building. He sat down at his desk and switched on the computer. Like everything else in the station, it needed replacing. It took him ten minutes to get to the login screen and bring up his email. As usual, his inbox was full of mostly rubbish. Of the thirty-seven emails, he deleted all but two of them. He opened a new email and wrote his report for the Chief. It included everything he’d found out about Greg Taylor’s murder, what he thought the possible motives were, and his loan of PC Mary Richards from Cheshunt Police Station. The last thing he did was to design a leaflet requesting that anybody with information about the murder should contact Hoddesdon Police Station. He gave the station telephone number rather than his mobile number because he didn’t want to be answering phone calls from crazy people all day tomorrow. After printing the leaflet, he copied it a hundred times.
Outside in the car park, he had to brush the fresh snow from his three year old Ford Focus before he could get in and go home. Three inches of snow had fallen and stuck in an hour and a half. It was still snowing, and he guessed the Siberian weather would cause him no end of problems with his investigation.
He arrived home at nine fifty. The ground floor flat, just off Conduit Lane behind the Conservative Club, had one bedroom, and that was the best he could say about it. He called it home, but it wasn’t really a home. It was just somewhere he parked himself when he wasn’t working – like an automaton recharging its power cell. He hadn’t bothered to put pictures up, or fill the empty surfaces with ornaments or photographs. What was the point? He lived alone. He was alone. His parents had died in a car crash when he’d been two years old and confined him to the care system. They were poor, and they left him nothing except a senile old woman in a home who had died many years ago. There was an Aunt in Australia and an Uncle in Japan, but they didn’t want to know him. He had no memories of being a child before he went into long-term fostering at eight years old. He had no brothers or sisters, no friends and no relationships. When did he ever get the chance to meet anyone who wasn’t a copper, a victim or a suspect?
He took a one-person meal out of the one-person freezer and put it into the one-person microwave. He didn’t even bother to find out what the meal was, because they all tasted of plastic anyway.
He only had a small television in the kitchenette that he watched the news on, so he had treated himself to a wireless laptop last week. Against his better judgement, he had logged on to an Internet dating agency a few days ago in the hope of finding someone to share his lonely existence with. At the moment he was browsing, learning the ropes, filling in his biography, which was obviously important because he didn’t want to appear too desperate.
He powered up his laptop and logged on to the FindLove.com website. He smiled. God, he could just imagine his colleagues at the station finding out about his new hobby. They’d think he was a sad loser, and maybe he was. Sometimes he wondered what he was doing, what it was all for.
The microwave pinged. He got up and put the plastic container on a tray, shook the salt and pepper pots on the steaming meal, and took it back to the armchair. While he was browsing, he put forkfuls of the unappetising meal in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. He decided to finish his biography tonight and put up the photograph he’d taken of himself with his mobile phone. It had needed a few tries to get a picture with a chin. He seemed to have a natural instinct to tuck his chin in every time he pressed the button. In the end he decided not to look at the camera, and that seemed to work. The photograph made him look intellectual, staring off into t
he distance as if he were contemplating the theory of everything. His black hair was slightly too long, but he thought it added to the illusion of mystery. His biography contained some little white lies, mainly about his interests and hobbies. He didn’t want to sound like a lonely workaholic, even if he was, so he said he socialised, did hang gliding and walked in the Lake District. He expected everyone stretched the truth a bit on their biographies. Once he’d finished describing the person he’d like to be, he published it.
Let’s see what we get, he thought. It was a bit like fishing, and he was the bait. He closed down the laptop and went to bed. He tried to read a chapter of a novel about frozen Russian bodies in Gorky Park, but he couldn’t concentrate. His mind was on the hundreds of beautiful women who were reading his biography and licking their lips in anticipation. He switched the light off and journeyed into the dark place to confront his nightmares again.
***
Wednesday, 15th January
It was five fifteen when he woke up sweating. After peeing, he padded into the living room in his bare feet and boxer shorts, powered up the laptop and logged on to FindLove.com. While it was loading, he made a mug of strong coffee to kick-start his internal organs.
There were three messages in his inbox. One was from a thirty-nine year old who “liked it rough” and wanted him to use his handcuffs and truncheon on her. No thank you, he thought, and deleted the message. The next one was from a twenty-eight year old with three children - a ready-made family. He pressed delete. The final message sounded more promising. It was from a thirty year old who, if the picture was to be believed, looked like a model. Her name was LoopyLou, but he suspected that it wasn’t her real name. Just as his wasn’t really Brad Russell – a combination of Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe. She ran her own clothes shop in Chigwell and also liked to socialise and take walking trips in the Lake District. She wanted to meet him. He wrote a short note back:
LoopyLou: Thursday night, eight o’clock in Chigwell. You choose where. Brad.
As soon as he’d sent the reply he began getting palpitations. He had to stand up, bend over with his hands on his hips and take deep breaths to calm down. A reply came back almost immediately:
Eight o’clock at The Ram Inn on Curzon Street. I’ll be in the yellow dress. LoopyLou.
Another early riser, he thought.
He sent back: Looking forward to it. See you there. Brad.
Smiling, he logged out and closed down the laptop. It was six thirty and time he got ready for work. A date already! Maybe his life was about to change.
For breakfast he had two pieces of liberally buttered toast and another coffee. When he switched on the television news, he learned that while he’d been sleeping, another three inches of snow had fallen. Pictures of cars in stationary queues were shown to illustrate the chaos on the roads. A spokesman for the council gave a convoluted excuse about why the gritting hadn’t made things any better.
Wishing that he owned a sled and a team of huskies, he left the flat at seven thirty.
***
Even though he had left the flat in plenty of time to drive the mile and a half to the station, he still managed to arrive five minutes late.
Debbie, the Chief’s secretary, hadn’t arrived yet, so the Chief had made a pot of coffee, and offered Parish a cup. It looked and tasted like treacle, but he smiled, nodded his thanks and put the cup down on the table. He didn’t want to tell a terminally ill man his coffee sucked.
‘Good report, Sergeant Parish,’ the Chief said, ‘but what’s this about a PC Richards from Cheshunt?’
Parish could see that the Chief had printed his report out and had it on the desk in front of him. He wondered why a man with probable terminal cancer would still come to work in the mornings when he could easily get early retirement and do the things he’d never had the chance to do – a bucket list.
‘Because of the staff shortages here, Sir, I thought I’d try my luck co-opting someone from Cheshunt, and it worked. I’ve got her for two weeks.’
‘Two weeks! I hope its not going to take you that long to solve a simple knifing, Sergeant?’
‘I didn’t say that, Sir. In a worst case scenario, I have the option of PC Richards’ help for that length of time.’
‘If I get a request to pay PC Richards’ salary for the two weeks, you’ll lose her. You know that?’
‘I expected as much, Chief.’
Referring to the report, the Chief said, ‘You’ve suggested three possible motives, Parish. What’s your gut feeling? Is it a random knifing, or was Mr Taylor the target?’
‘Too early to say, Sir, but from the limited information I have of Greg Taylor, it seems likely it was a random knifing. He was a teacher, hardly the stuff targets are made of.’
‘Okay, good. I’m pleased with your progress so far, Parish. Keep it up.’
Parish stood up, leaving the coffee untouched. ‘Thanks, Sir. We’ll know a lot more today after the post-mortem.’
The Chief nodded, and Parish left.
He looked at his watch and realised that the five minutes he’d lost he still hadn’t found; it was eight thirty-five. He looked out of the window overlooking the car park and saw PC Richards wrapped up in a red quilted coat, yellow snow boots, hat, scarf and gloves. She was occupying her time by building a snowman at the back of her VW Beetle.
***
‘I hope this is not going to become a habit, Richards?’ he said to her when he reached the car park.
‘What, Sir?’ she said, adding a lump of snow to the snowman’s head and smoothing it out, then standing back to admire the effect.
‘Building a decidedly shabby snowman whenever you have to wait five minutes for me.’
Parish couldn’t determine whether Richards was blushing or not as she bent down and picked up another handful of snow because she had healthy ruddy cheeks due to the exercise and biting wind.
Beginning to feel the cold, he pushed his hands deeper into his coat pockets.
Richards threw a snowball that hit him on the arm and said, ‘It’s a better snowman than you could build.’
‘I’m getting too old for snowball fights, and I have no desire to build snowmen.’
She threw another snowball, which hit him on the forehead, and then ran off behind a car, laughing.
He wiped the snow from his face. ‘I’m beginning to regret asking you to help me, Richards,’ he said in an angry voice, scooping up a handful of snow from the roof of her car. ‘We’re involved in a serious murder investigation, and…’
Richards stood up and began to walk towards him. ‘Don’t say that, I was only…’
A snowball hit her on the top of the head.
‘Sirrr!’ she squealed.
They were both laughing as Parish ran off along the road towards the car pool garage with Richards chasing him.
They stopped midway and had another snowball fight.
Passers-by smiled and shook their heads as if witnessing a free-for-all by out-of-control school children.
‘A truce, Richards?’ Parish said, out of breath, when they reached the garage.
Richards had a snowball in her gloved hand that she threw in the air and caught again. ‘It’s not another one of your tricks is it?’
‘No trick.’
‘Okay,’ she said warily, moving away from him, but still holding onto the snowball.
‘What’s your driving like?’
‘I think it’s good.’
‘In this weather?’
‘I can manage it.’
‘I don’t want to die.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘Okay, I’ll let you drive and we’ll see if we’re still alive when we get to the hospital.’
‘If we’re not, we’ll be in the right place.’
‘Yes, very good, Richards.’
Once they were moving south along the A1112 towards Goodmayes, Parish said, ‘Tell me about yourself.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,
really.’
‘There’s not a lot to tell.’
‘I want to know who’s got my back.’
‘Well, you know I went to Chigwell Secondary School. I left there with four A levels and went to the University of Greenwich to do a degree in Criminology and Criminal Psychology. Then I went to Hendon, then Cheshunt, and here I am.’
‘That tells me where you went and what you achieved, but it doesn’t tell me who you are. Surely you must have done the ‘Who am I?’ exercise at university?’
Richards’ face dropped. ‘I was the one the teacher picked on.’
‘Good. So tell me: Who are you?’
‘I’m an only child. You know I lost my dad in a petrol station robbery, and that’s what made me want to become a copper.’
‘Do you still live with your mother?’
‘Yes. We’re best friends. I don’t see any reason to leave home.’
‘What drives you?’
Richards didn’t speak for some time, and he had to check that her eyes were still open.
‘I’m still thinking.’
‘Okay.’
Eventually, she said, ‘I’m ambitious, Sir, but it’s fairness that drives me. I believe that everybody should be treated fairly.’
‘You’re in the wrong job.’
‘And you’re a cynic.’
‘I know.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m your boss for the next two weeks, Richards. That’s who I am, so keep your mind on what you’re doing.’
Parish found he was still in one piece when they arrived at King George Hospital. He had to admit that Richards was a good driver. Admittedly, the snow had turned to slush on the main roads and the traffic crawled along at five miles an hour, but she managed to get them to the hospital alive and that was the main thing.