Limestone Cowboy

by Stuart Pawson

  I could see two pale smudges against the gloom of the cage interiors, like two faces painted by an impressionist with a deft dab of the brush. “Rabbits?” I suggested after studying them.

  “No, they’re not rabbits. Look at the ears.”

  Dave took over. After a few seconds he said: “They’re cats. That’s what they are: cats.”

  I was in my office, clearing up and determined to go home on time, when Rosie rang.

  “You sound despondent,” she said after I’d introduced myself.

  “Hello Rosie,” I replied. “It’ll soon pass now I’m talking to you.”

  “Are you working hard?”

  “Not really, just musing on the behaviour of some of my fellow men.”

  “The producer telephoned me a few minutes ago,” she said without further ceremony. “The coroner has signed a warrant giving permission for my father’s body to be exhumed and the chancellor of the diocese has given his approval.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And are you pleased?”

  “Of course I am. Now we can do the tests.”

  “Have they given you a date?”

  “No, but he wants to do it as soon as possible.”

  I bet he did. “So it’s all up to the DNA.”

  “Yes, that’s right. It’s all up to the DNA.”

  I let that thought hang in the air, then said: “If you’re not doing anything tonight, Rosie, do you fancy that Chinese?”

  “Oh, yes, I’d like that. Thank you.”

  “Do you mind if we make it early? I’m starving.”

  “That’s fine by me.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  We didn’t bother with the banquet, that’s for special occasions, settling for a pair of dishes from the a la carte menu. Rosie was her old self: witty and mischievous, happy that things were moving along. She told me a few of the things that the schoolchildren had said, like the boy who thought the Atlas Mountains were stockpiles of school books, and I related a few of my own about our clients.

  “One youth who was given a community service order thought he’d been given a community singing order,” I said. “He asked which church choir he’d be in.”

  “One of my pupils, a girl this time, wrote in her exam paper that the European Market was held in Brussels every Wednesday afternoon.”

  “It’s the quality of the teaching that does it.”

  “Oh, definitely.”

  I paid the bill and took her home. On the way we saw the police helicopter in the distance, its searchlight on as it quartered the ground.

  “They’re having a busy day,” I said. “We had them out this morning.”

  “Aren’t you going to dash over to see if you can be of any assistance?”

  I glanced at her, then back at the road and at her again. “No way,” I stated.

  As I parked outside her gate Rosie asked me if I was coming in for a cuppa.

  “Is there any chocolate cake left?”

  “There might be.”

  “In that case, yes please.”

  The weather was changing and the temperature had dropped. Rosie shivered and switched on the gas fire, and went somewhere to turn up the thermostat. I stood behind her in the kitchen as the kettle came to the boil, wanting to put my arms around her. She cut the remains of the cake into two uneven halves and gave me the larger one.

  “How long have you lived here?” I asked when we were seated in the lounge, her on the settee, me in an easy chair. She gave me a potted history of her movements, first of all living in a succession of rented accommodations before splashing out, rather late in life for a first-time-buyer, on the bungalow.

  “You did the right thing,” I said. “The only advice my dad ever gave me was to get on the housing ladder, as soon as possible. It was good advice.”

  But a stupid thing to say, I thought, even as the words came out. It killed the conversation for a few moments.

  “I bought at a bad time,” she said, eventually. “Prices were high.”

  “There’s never a good time,” I told her. Profound words straight from the financial pages. “Just think of all those grotty flats and bedsits, where your rent goes straight to pay for the landlord’s villa in the Bahamas.”

  “Yes, I had a few of those.” She refilled our cups, then said: “When… when I left Gary – he was called Gary – I moved to Derby, landed a teaching job there. Supply teaching, not permanent. I had a horrible bedsit. Peeling paper, damp walls, the lot. Why I stayed so long I can’t imagine.”

  “What was Gary’s problem?” I ventured.

  “Gambling. He was a gambler. You don’t back horses, do you?”

  I shook my head. “It was a courageous thing to do,” I told her. “Making the break like that, moving on. It’s a pity more women don’t do it.”

  “They’re trapped, Charlie, that’s why. And it didn’t feel courageous at the time.” She put her cup down and sat in silence for a while. I was about to mention that we might have had a breakthrough with the dog fighting saga when she said: “I had a breakdown, Charlie. I lost the plot, completely.”

  “What sort of a breakdown?”

  She heaved a big sigh that said she’d let the genie out of the bottle and there was no getting it back in. “I don’t know. What sorts are there? I moved to Derby, into this awful bedsit, with nothing but the clothes I wore and what I could stuff into a Ford Fiesta. I worked one term as a supply teacher and then it was the summer holiday. I didn’t know if I’d have a job when it was over. I was so lonely I just… gave up. I sat in that ghastly, smelly room and cried my eyes out for three weeks. I didn’t wash, didn’t eat, didn’t take any interest in the outside world. I just let everything close in on me. I wanted to die, Charlie, but wasn’t brave enough to do anything about it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. One day, I thought, what am I doing? Nobody was going to come and sort me out, I had to do it myself. There was nothing organically wrong with me, I was fairly young, had a brain, could find work almost anywhere. I took a shower and found some clean clothes, went out and did some shopping. I telephoned the headmaster and he said he couldn’t offer me a permanent position just yet but there was plenty of work for me. I took him at his word and had an expensive hair-do, complete with silver streaks. Oh, and I put the deposit on a new car. Watch me go became my creed.”

  “And eventually you moved to Yorkshire.”

  “I landed a permanent post, and it was further away from him. I told you I came with baggage, Charlie. Now you know what I meant.”

  “That’s not baggage, Rosie,” I assured her. “It’s what gave you those tiny little creases in the corners of your eyes when you smile, that’s all. It’s what goes towards making you a caring human being. It’s… it’s all part of the recipe that made Rosie Barraclough, and why I find her so damned attractive.”

  She looked at me, her chin trembling. “Do you, Charlie?”

  I moved over to her, engulfed her in my arms, held her tight. “Yes,” I said. “Yes I do. All that’s behind you. You’re with me, now.”

  We sat like that for a long while as it grew dark around us. I tipped her face towards mine and kissed her on the lips. I wanted to stay the night, but didn’t ask. There was a ghost watching us, the ghost of her father. Soon we’d dig him up, do the tests and discover the truth. Win or lose, we’d come through it together. I drove home praying that he’d not done the deed, just so I could see the happiness it would bring Rosie. If he really were the murderer then it would be up to me to make her happy. I could do it, I was confident of that. It would just take a little longer, that was all.

  I always go into the office on a Saturday morning, to clear up any paperwork and prioritise any jobs that came in overnight. Friday night brings out the worst in some people. I hadn’t left home when the phone rang. It was Dave.

  “Have you heard?” he asked.

  “Heard what?”

  “About us, last night?”

  �
�Us? Who’s us?”

  “Me, Pete, Jeff and Don.”

  “You went to the brass band concert.”

  “That’s right, but we had a spot of bother on the way home.”

  “Oh no,” I sighed. A spot of bother could only mean one thing: drinking and driving.

  “It’s not that,” he assured me, reading my mind. “It’s something else.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, we didn’t stay until the end. We’d heard the set piece three times and that was enough. We decided to come a bit nearer home and have a drink. Heading along the Heckley Road, towards the Babes In The Wood, Pete just happened to notice that we were following a convoy of four-wheel-drives. Three of them. Suddenly they all slowed and turned off into this little lane that didn’t look as if it led anywhere. We called in the Babes and had a couple of pints. When we came out Pete said ‘I wonder what they went up that lane for? Let’s go see what’s up there.’ He was driving and Don encouraged him so off we went. After about a mile we found the three off-roaders, parked and empty.”

  “Aliens,” I said. “They’d been abducted by aliens.”

  “You’re nearer than you think,” Dave replied. “We assumed they were poachers, but then we saw these lights in a corn field, wandering up and down. We waited for ages but they just kept on wandering up and down, so we telephoned Dewsbury and told them all about it. We thought that maybe they were looking for badgers.”

  “What did Dewsbury do?”

  “They sent in the heavy mob, and the helicopter, and they were all arrested. Seven of them. They thought it was great fun, laughing and joking and taking the piss.”

  “So what were they up to?”

  “Crop circles. They were making crop circles in the corn. Said it would create interest in the area, generate publicity, help the tourist trade and all that.”

  “Ha ha! And what did your colleagues from the Dewsbury force have to say to you?”

  “They suggested, very politely, that in future we restrict our activities to Heckley and district.”

  “They can do them for criminal damage. It’s a face-saver. Not much of one but a result just the same.”

  “No they can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was their own chuffing field, that’s why.”

  We get a fair number of UFO sightings around Heckley. Apparently there’s a vortex somewhere up in the hills. That’s a fault in the structure of the Earth that allows magnetic energy to leak out, providing a source of power for alien spacecraft. They hover overhead and recharge their power packs. Foggy nights are particularly propitious, as this allows the energy to flow more freely. It also conveniently blurs the evidence. Anybody with more than half a brain puts the sightings down to the police helicopter with its Night-Sun searchlight on, or airliners groping their way towards Manchester airport, or to too many Carlsberg Specials, but they could be wrong. The Great Crop Circle Massacre was destined to be written into the annals of Her Majesty’s East Pennine Police Force, and those involved would be spoken of in hushed tones for the rest of their careers. I had a couple of hours in the office and went home to work on the paintings.

  *

  Sophie and Digby came to visit, on their way to her parents’, and Digby said it was nice to see me again and it had been really generous of me to run Sophie home last week, which made me glad that we weren’t holding the conversation in front of her mum and dad. Tea and coffee were refused but they insisted on seeing the paintings. Digby thought they were great, and appreciated the irony of the beautiful poetry and the careless lover’s doodles. He offered to ask his father to make a telephone bid for them, but I said they weren’t that good and discouraged him.

  The troopers on observation at High Clough rang to tell me that all was quiet. They were in regular contact with the control room but I’d told them to give me the occasional call. The Land Rover had left at nine and returned two hours later. The postman had driven straight past.

  Rosie had never visited my house but I’d have to invite her round soon, so I did a big clean-up, right through to the oven and the tops of the doors. I had a cleaning lady, once, but when she told her husband I was a cop he stopped her coming. He must have been scared she’d reveal more than she ought when we shared the obligatory pot of tea. Sunday I did all the usual Sunday things: cleaned the car; went to the supermarket; drove past the church and cursed the traffic jam near the garden centre. I rang Rosie and left a message, said I was just wondering how she was, but she didn’t come back to me. Not much moved up at High Clough.

  Mad Maggie Madison, one of my two female DCs, was back at work on Monday morning after a fortnight in Tenerife. She looked fit and tanned and had lost a couple of pounds.

  “You look well, Maggie,” I said when I saw her. “Good holiday?”

  “Brilliant, thanks. Have you missed me?”

  “You’d never believe how much. It’s been unbridled sexism for the last two weeks. We desperately need the woman’s touch.”

  “Saveeta still on her course?” she asked.

  “My little bit of Eastern promise? Yeah, she’s another week to do.”

  “Uh!” Maggie snorted. “You’re as bad as the rest of them.”

  I met Gareth Adey on the stairs as we went up to Mr Wood’s office for the morning briefing and he said something about my boys being busy on Friday night. I resisted the urge to tip him over the banister. They were already in there when we knocked and entered: Dave, Jeff, Pete and Don; the Crop Circle Four. Dave winked at me and Gilbert wore the expression of a father who has just learned that his teenage son has rodgered the vicar’s wife: a struggle between anger and amusement.

  “Have you heard about this lot?” Gilbert asked, looking at me.

  “I’ve heard the expurgated version.”

  Gareth, in his usual smug manner, said: “I’d rather not intrude into private grief.”

  “What do you reckon we should do with them?” Gilbert asked.

  “Latrine duties,” I said. “Put them on latrine duties for three months. Maggie’s back so we won’t miss them.”

  “We could do it, Boss,” Pete replied. “We’d have the cleanest bogs in the division, guaranteed. We could put those little blue things in the cisterns, and maybe even have a few flowers.”

  “I could supply the flowers,” Jeff said. “Grape hyacinths would go well with the blue water. We’d need some vases, though.”

  “Coffee jars would do,” Pete suggested. “Not plain ones. Those fancy Kenco ones. We could start collecting them.”

  “OK, OK,” Gilbert interrupted, holding up his hands. “We’ll spare you the latrine duties. But could we please have a little less gallivanting round the countryside like a bunch of cowboys? Dewsbury are threatening to sting us for the cost of the operations support unit and the chopper. Now, haven’t you any work to do?”

  They trooped out through the door, Dave at the rear. He paused, one hand on the handle, turned and said: “That might be an idea, Mr Wood.”

  Oh no, I thought. Don’t say it, Dave, whatever it is, please don’t say it.

  “What’s that, David?” Gilbert asked.

  “What you said about cowboys. It might be an idea for the gala. They could dress up like sheriffs and their deputies. Lawmen and all that. It might go down well with the kids.”

  Gilbert looked doubtful, started to voice his misgivings, but Gareth interrupted him. “Um, well, in the absence of any other suggestions, Mr Wood, it might be worth considering,” he said, as I glared after Dave as he pulled the door shut behind him.

  I was thinking about a mid-morning coffee when the man himself brought me one. “You’re a mind reader,” I said. “Pull up the chair,” and placed two beer mats on the end of my desk. “Gareth took the bait,” I told him.

  “He’s a twat.”

  “That’s no way to talk about a senior officer. So, how did the weekend go?”

  “Terrific, Chas. He’s a good lad, I really liked him.”


  “That’s what I thought. They called to see me on the way.” I sighed inwardly: with a bit of luck that disclosure would eliminate the need for any more untruths.

  “He plays rugby, and he’s devoted to Sophie. He asked me if he could marry her. Can you believe that? He actually asked me. Bet that doesn’t happen too often, these days.”

  “That’s great. So they’re engaged?”

  “I suppose so. He didn’t have a ring or anything.”

  “What does Shirley think?”

  “Oh, she’s over the moon one second, tearing her hair out the next. She spent all last week doing the house, now she scared stiff about meeting his parents. They seem to be quite well off.”

  “That’s good. What are they called?”

  “I knew you’d ask that, so I wrote it down.” He pulled a pay-and-display ticket from his pocket. “Here we are: Merriman hyphen Flint.”

  I said: “Wow! That’s a mouthful.”

  “That’s what I thought. Sophie says they own half of Somerset.”

  It was nearly my undoing. I thought Sophie had said Shropshire, so I responded with: “You mean Sh… Sh… Sh… she’s, er, she’s marrying into a wealthy family?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “Good for her.”

  “That’s neither here nor there, Charlie. They looked good together, and she’s ’appy. That’s all I care about.”

  He asked me about my weekend and I was blustering again when the phone rang. How the crooks we work with keep track of their various subterfuges escapes me. Perhaps they’re cleverer than I think they are. It was Control.

  “Things are happening up at High Clough, Charlie. Four vehicles have arrived in the last fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s interesting. Tell the OSU to start their engine and tell the FOP to give me a ring.”

  Five minutes later the pair in the Transit were telling me that another three vehicles had arrived. “That’ll do,” I said. “Stay put and direct the heavy mob straight in when they arrive. You watch out for escapees.”