Young, Gifted and Deadly

by William Stafford

  “Ah, yes. The wallet found in his jacket indicates he is Paul Barker, local entrepreneur.”

  The team pulled faces; they had never heard of him.

  “And what about how he was found?” Miller chimed in. “And where he was found?”

  “On the bandstand in Field Park, do you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “The body was arranged to fit a crude outline of a five-pointed star.”

  “Pentagram.” This was Stevens. The others turned their heads in astonishment. “It bloody well is! A pentagram. They use them in devil worship.”

  “Who do?” said Harry Henry.

  “No, mate. Not Voodoo. Devil worship. Satanism.”

  “And how the fuck do you know this?” Wheeler was surprised. “I know I’ve told you to go to hell a thousand times but I didn’t think you’d actually fucking been.”

  “Saw it in a film,” Stevens shrugged. “To The Devil A Dildo. It was ace. Lots of lezzing up.”

  The others emitted groans; they might have guessed.

  “How many more times?” Wheeler threw up her hands - and a cloud of flour in the process, “Pornography is not like real life. If it was I wouldn’t have to spend half my Saturday waiting in for a bastard plumber to show up.”

  “No, no,” said Brough. “I think Ben might be onto something here.” He scribbled a quick sketch and showed it to Stevens. “Was the star in the film like this?”

  “Yeah! From what I remember. Of course, I wasn’t focussing on the fucking scenery.”

  “Ugh,” said Miller.

  “Right,” said Wheeler. “We need to find out what we might be dealing with here. Harry, hit the books. Wiki-fucking-pedia if you have to. Brough, Miller, find out more about Mr Barker - perhaps he was into all sorts. A cult, maybe. Fucking hell,” she ran a hand down her face, whitening it like a clown’s. “That’s all we fucking need in this town. Go on,” she jerked a floury thumb toward the exit in time-honoured tradition, “Fuck off.”

  Brough and Miller, closely followed by Harry Henry, fucked off.

  Pattimore and Stevens remained.

  “What about us, Chief?” Pattimore was eager. “Do you want us to go to the lab, fetch the results?”

  “Good idea, Jason. Go on; off you fuck.”

  ***

  Logger sloped off; the others had gone back to school. That specky twat Callum wotsit had suggested it would be good to show their faces around the place in order to establish an alibi. Dogger and Bonk had followed blindly and that irked Logger considerably. He regarded himself as the putative leader of the gang and did not like being elbowed aside. Especially by a specky twat.

  He skulked off, taking umbrage behind a disused outbuilding that was rumoured to have been a bike shed. Who rides a bike to school these days? Nobody; that’s who. The roads are too busy with four-by-fours, dropping off the kids.

  Satisfied he was alone, Logger took out his phone. He sent a text message.

  Safe to call

  Seconds later, the phone buzzed and shook. The rapidity of the response always startled Logger, no matter how he steeled himself for it.

  “Hello,” he said and found - as always - a sudden need to clear his throat.

  “Guess who,” said a deep voice in his ear. The words were followed by a laugh, although there was no humour in it.

  “Look, I know what you’m going to say-” Logger tried to pre-empt a litany of his failings.

  “I doubt that,” rumbled the caller. There was a metallic tone to the voice; Logger guessed it was electronically distorted for the sake of anonymity. He had no clue who the caller was, but as long as the money kept coming, that was fine by him. “I doubt that entirely. If you knew what I was about to say, we should have no need of telephones.”

  “Um, no, I suppose.”

  “Humour me. What was I about to say?”

  “Ah - well - um...”

  “I doubt I should be so inarticulate.”

  “Yes, well...” Logger composed himself. “You were about to tell me what a balls-up we’d made of it.”

  “I doubt I should be so vulgar but I take your meaning. Continue.”

  “And that going to the supermarket was a big mistake. And recruiting the new chap was an even bigger mistake.”

  “I’ll stop you there. I’ve heard enough. You are in error in every respect. On the contrary, dear boy - the visit to the supermarket was a triumph!”

  “It was?”

  “Undoubtedly! And as for the latest recruit, he has excellent potential. You must cultivate him.”

  “If that means burying him in my grandad’s allotment, you’re on.”

  “Cut the levity. The new boy is crucial for the next phase.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Say so I do. Take him under your capable wing. Teach him and, more importantly, learn from him.”

  Logger sneered. As if the specky twat could teach me anything!

  “He’s a weirdo,” he complained.

  “We are all individuals.”

  “No. He’s proper weird. Worse than ever since the initiation.”

  There was silence. “Initiation,” the caller said flatly.

  “Yes. The other night. I don’t know what you did but it’s pushed his buttons all right.”

  “When was this?”

  “The other night. Out on the field.”

  “My dear boy, I told you that was postponed. If you have taken the initiative and carried out matters for yourself-”

  “I never!” said Logger.

  “Then you told him what to expect and he imagined it...” the caller was thinking out loud.

  “We never breathed a word,” Logger defended himself and his gang.

  “Hmm,” the low voice rumbled like a roll on timpani. “Be that as it may. Look after him. You’re going to need him. Now, tell me, step by step, what went down at the supermarket. I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

  But by the time Logger reached the end of his account, the caller was incensed.

  “So, you are telling me no one knows who you are or where you’re from?”

  “We was very careful.”

  “Not a glimpse of a school badge or a flash of a school tie?”

  “Not a sausage!”

  The caller swore. Logger was both amused and terrified.

  “Let us hope, for your sake, the attendant police officers are not as thick as you.”

  The caller disconnected. Logger stared at his phone. He felt an urge to smash it against the wall, to stomp on the pieces. But he didn’t. It occurred to him that whatever he did to the device would be visited upon his body.

  He strode toward the main building, feeling a sudden need to be among people. The bell rang, heralding home time. Kids boiled from the exits like maggots from a corpse. The image made him shudder.

  “Alright, Log?”

  Logger yelped. Dogger was at his elbow. “Coming down the park? Apparently there’s a dead body there.”

  Logger felt sick. “Who says?”

  “Callum.”

  “I might have known. How does he know?”

  Dogger shrugged. “He’s got an app. Latest news.”

  Yeah, that’d be right. The specky twat wouldn’t have games or porn like normal people.

  “Might be worth a squint, I suppose.”

  “Bonk’s already gone. I said we’d meet him there.”

  “OK...” Logger scowled. Another decision taken without his say-so! He thrust his hands into the pockets of his hoody and balled them into fists.

  ***

  The clean-up crew at CostBusters worked like ravenous vultures on carrion, picking the aisles bare of debris. It struck Charlie West that they woul
d be the people to call to tidy up after you’d committed bloody murder which, given his current frame of mind was not too remote a possibility. He ducked into the staff toilets, shut himself in a stall and pulled out his phone. His call was diverted directly to voicemail, adding to his frustration.

  “Listen to me, you little shit!” he growled. “What the fuck was all that in aid of in my work today? I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again: you and your no-mark friends are to keep away! Stay in fucking school, for fuck’s sake. If I’d caught hold of you, I’d’ve handed you over to the coppers without batting an eyelid. You do know that, don’t you? I can’t - I won’t have you fucking up this job for me. Go and get your kicks somewhere else - no, scratch that. Stay in bloody school and learn how to behave. Christ!”

  His anger spent, Charlie slumped against the back of the door. “Look, I know it hasn’t been easy on you, Nathan, since Mom... And I’m doing my best for you, I really am, but you’ve got to meet me halfway. So no more arsing around, OK? Listen, I’ll be finished at six. I’ll bring us something nice back for tea, all right? We can watch a film, all right? See you later.”

  He disconnected.

  Across town, in Field Park, his brother saw he had a message. He deleted it at once, unplayed and unheeded.

  7.

  Brough and Miller found themselves heading back to the larger, more well-to-do houses sooner than they would have liked. But at least they weren’t distributing leaflets this time - not that the gruesome murder of a local businessman was in any way a consolation.

  Miller pulled up outside Paul Barker’s house, a tasteful detached property with pampas trees stationed in a line between its garden and next door’s. Brough nodded at the exotic plants.

  “And they try to tell us there’s no such thing as climate change.”

  “Who does?” said Miller.

  There was a car on the drive, a Bentley, expensive but not ostentatious. Barker had not been overtly flashy with the wealth he had accumulated from his factory.

  A light was on in the front room. The newly-widowed Mrs Barker was at home.

  “At least she’s been told,” said Miller as they reached the front door. “She has been informed, hasn’t she?”

  “I hope so,” said Brough. “A couple of uniforms will have been around earlier.”

  He rang the doorbell.

  “Worst part of the job,” said Miller. “Telling somebody their loved one is dead.”

  “Yes,” said Brough.

  “Even worse when you have to say they’ve been horribly murdered, like he was. Tied down. Garrotted. With a bloody washing-line of all things. Horrible.” She shuddered.

  “Er - Miller...”

  The front door had opened. A middle-aged woman in leopard print and gold chains was staring with bloodshot eyes at the couple on her doorstep.

  “Oops,” said Miller.

  Brough flashed his i.d. and introduced himself and his colleague.

  “You’d better come in,” said Mrs Barker with a wet sniff.

  “Wipe your feet, Miller,” Brough advised in a whisper. “You’ve already put one of them well and truly in it.”

  Mrs Barker led the detectives into a reception room dominated by a black leather suite. On a glass coffee table with gilded legs stood a half-empty (or half-full, if that’s your inclination) bottle of sherry and a single glass. Mrs Barker gestured to the armchairs, perching her narrow behind on the sofa’s central cushion.

  “This is about my husband, isn’t it? Oh, of course it is! What else would it be about?”

  She reached for the glass, her hand visibly shaking.

  “We are sorry,” said Brough, “at this difficult time but we need to look into your husband’s background in order to help us piece together what happened.”

  Mrs Barker nodded. She cupped the glass of sherry in both hands as though it would warm them. “Tell me,” she took a sip to steel herself. “Did he suffer?”

  Brough and Miller exchanged glances. Before either of them could form a response, Mrs Barker let out a bitter laugh.

  “I hope he did! I hope he bloody suffered! The stingy fucker! I hope it hurt a lot! I hope he was terrified! No - I hope he was humiliated.”

  She downed the rest of the glass and poured herself another. “I mean, look at this place,” she made an expansive gesture. Her overfilled glass sloshed some of its contents on the deep-pile rug.

  “It’s nice,” said Miller.

  “Bollocks,” said Mrs Barker. “The money he made! We could have been living somewhere nice. Like Solihull. Or Little Aston. But, oh, no. We stayed in this shithole because he said he was a Dedley man through and through. Like that means anything. Tell me, Inspector, do the words ‘tight-fisted arsehole’ mean anything to you?”

  Miller laughed; Brough remained inscrutable.

  “We could have had villas in the south of France, a lodge in Val D’Isere. But, oh, no, he wouldn’t let me spend a penny. Do you know what that’s like?”

  Miller squirmed. “Actually, I could do with a comfort break.”

  Brough scowled.

  “Through there, past the stairs.”

  Miller hurried out. Mrs Barker’s eyes bore into Brough’s.

  “Did you never meet my husband?”

  “I can’t say I had the pleasure.”

  Another bitter laugh. “Because you look the sort. I can spot them. I’ve acquired the knack. I couldn’t when I married him but I bloody well can now.”

  Brough shifted uncomfortably. “Sort?”

  “He had one of them wotsits. An app. For finding like-minded individuals. Thought I didn’t know about it, but I did. Tried to tell me his late-night excursions were jogs around the park. But he never seemed to get any fitter.”

  “An app?” Brough prompted, pencil poised at his notebook.

  “What’s this?” said Miller, breezing back in. “A nap?”

  “App, Miller. Like those interminable bubble games you’re always playing.”

  “Oh,” Miller sat back down. “Level eighty-one last night,” she said proudly. “What app’s this?”

  “My husband had one,” said the widow, her words beginning to slur. “For picking up benders.”

  “Oh,” said Miller. “Like MINCR, do you mean?”

  “That’s the one!” Mrs Barker raised her glass in congratulation. “You should be a detective, love.”

  Miller beamed; Brough scowled again.

  “And your husband left the house last night on one of his excursions?”

  “Must have done. I was a-bed. We have separate rooms, you see. Like that wasn’t a tell-tale sign! And I believed him when he said it was on account of my snoring.”

  She recharged her glass. “So, d’you think it was one of them, one of his jogging friends who did him in. It’d serve him right.”

  “We’re not in a position to discuss that,” said Brough. He got to his feet so Miller did the same. “Mrs Barker, do you mind if we have a look around? Your husband’s things - did he have a home office here?”

  “Knock yourselves out,” Mrs Barker sat back and slumped like a discarded marionette. “He’s got a den upstairs. In what should have been the kiddies’ room. If we’d had any.” She waved her glass in the general direction of the ceiling and then licked the resulting spillage from her thumb.

  “Thank you,” said Brough. Miller followed him out.

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” he muttered as they climbed the stairs.

  “What? Her reaction? You don’t think she’s a suspect, do you? She might be! She seems pretty fed up. All his money’s hers now, I should think. There’s a motive for you.”

  Miller grinned, pleased with herself.

  “No,” said Brough, trying a door. It opened onto a
room decorated in garish pink. A theatrical dressing-room mirror dominated one wall. Over the four-poster bed, a framed poster of Hello, Dolly! “Don’t you read the papers, Miller? Barker’s firm’s in a bit of a hole. You could say the bottom’s falling out of the market.”

  Miller frowned; she didn’t get it.

  “He manufactured toilets, Miller.”

  “Oh. So, business has gone down the pan!”

  Brough ignored the quip. “What do you think? His room or hers?”

  “His, deffo,” Miller took it all in. “So, what was it?”

  “What was what?”

  “What was it what you weren’t expecting?”

  “Oh! Just took me by surprise, Miller.”

  “What did?”

  “You did. Knowing about MINCR.”

  Miller beamed. “It’s not all about birds throwing themselves at pigs, you know.”

  “No,” said Brough. “That’s TINDER.”

  ***

  Brough called Wheeler and told her it might be worth looking in Barker’s mobile - it was among the personal effects found on the businessman’s body - to see if any of his contacts, particularly those in his pick-up apps might lead somewhere.

  “Felch me and belch me,” Wheeler groaned. “Is every fucker gay these days?”

  “What a wonderful world that would be,” said Brough.

  Wheeler snorted. “I’ll get Harry to do it. Spice up his life a bit. He must be bored shitless sorting through those files.”

  She rang off and went in search of Harry Henry.

  “Nothing here...” said Miller, replacing a pair of fluffy pink handcuffs in the bedside drawer. “Although he has got quite a collection of double-ended dildos.”

  “Stop salivating, Miller.”

  “And, oh!” Miller’s hands seized on a flyer. “He was a DICWAD. Remember them?”

  “Of course I remember them!” Brough snapped. “How could I forget?” A previous case had involved the Dedley Independent Chorus With Amateur Dramatics Society. and Brough dreaded to think what production they were murdering next.