Young, Gifted and Deadly

by William Stafford

  ***

  All the curtains were drawn in the Barker house. A sign of mourning, Brough and Miller assumed, not knowing that the Widow Barker was currently living it up at a ski resort with a handsome and virile instructor called Fritz.

  It was the house next door that had brought the detectives back to the street. The absence of a washing-line was the only straw they had at which to clutch.

  “Looks quiet,” Miller observed, locking her car.

  “It sounds quiet, Miller. Honestly.”

  “That’s what I said. Perhaps they’m asleep.”

  “Or at work. Or at school.”

  “One way to find out.” Miller pressed the doorbell. Chimes sounded faintly within. They waited. Brough nodded; Miller rang again.

  “Nobody’s in,” she concluded.

  “Hmm,” said Brough, moving off.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Around the back,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Why?”

  “Because, Miller, there’s bugger all else to do.”

  In a fluid, athletic move, with his raincoat flapping like a superhero’s cape, Brough climbed over the side gate. He unbolted it so Miller could join him.

  “I want to have a look at that washing-line.”

  “Er - there is no washing-line.”

  “I know. But I’m looking for signs. Was it taken by force? Was it untied?”

  “Do you mean, did whoever took it take their time? Indicating it was somebody who lived here - or was it snatched down? Or cut off! By an opportunist!”

  “Yes, Miller. Exactly that.”

  “How will we know?”

  “Actually, Miller,” Brough looked up and down the Phillipses’ back garden, “I haven’t a fucking clue.”

  ***

  “Sorry, Chief.” Harry Henry looked downcast.

  “What the fuck for?”

  “I haven’t got a lollipop to give you and you’ve been such a brave girl.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, I-” Wheeler stopped herself. “Am you taking the piss?”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  Wheeler made as though to hit him with her newly bandaged hand. Harry, in his capacity as a registered first aider, had done a beautiful job.

  “You never fail to surprise me,” Wheeler marvelled. “This dressing is better than any I could get down the supermarket.”

  Harry Henry pushed his wayward spectacles back to their appointed spot. “Don’t you mean A and E, Chief?”

  “If I’d meant A and E, I would have fucking said A and E. The way this bastard government is going, there’ll be no more A and E. It’ll be a first aid tent in the supermarket car park; you mark my words.”

  With this dire prophecy, Chief Inspector Wheeler headed to the door. “You get on with that goat thing, chicken. It occurs to me there’s somebody I need to phone.”

  “Oh?” Harry blinked, his eyes magnified by his prescription lenses. “Who are you going to call?”

  Wheeler smiled grimly. “CostBusters.”

  ***

  From the far end of the garden, Brough called to Miller who was on the patio under the kitchen window. “Can you see anything?”

  “I can’t,” said Miller. She jumped on the spot, craning her neck. “There’s a hook or something; the line could have gone through there.”

  “There’s another one here,” said Brough, “a hook on the shed. Although that would have meant the line was hanging rather low. I wouldn’t want to dry my sheets on it, I can tell you.”

  “I don’t want to know about your wet sheets,” Miller grumbled. She pointed at the path. “Prop.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Line prop,” she pointed again. “You use them to prop the line up.”

  “No shit.”

  “Keeps your sheets off the ground.”

  Brough came toward her. Lying alongside the path was a long, wooden pole with a cleft at the end.

  “Well spotted, Miller. Props to you.”

  “Give it a rest, sir,” Miller scowled.

  “No, this is very interesting actually, Miller. This prop indicated that this household was at one time in possession of a washing-line.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Brough’s enthusiasm waned. “Oh, what are we doing, Miller? Prancing around like - like-”

  “Fairies at the bottom of the garden, sir?”

  Brough narrowed his eyes. “I mean, there’s a juicy double homicide and we’re footling around on a wild goose chase.”

  “It is the murder weapon, sir,” Miller pointed out.

  “Well, yes...” He kicked at a stray piece of gravel.

  “In this job, you’ve got to take the boring with the exciting. You know that, sir.”

  “Well, yes... Oh, stop being so bloody reasonable, Miller. Let’s go and submit our report. Write this down: there was a washing-line here but now there isn’t. Did you get all that?”

  But Miller wasn’t listening. She was peering in at the French windows that opened into the living room, her hands cupped around the sides of her head. “Um, sir...”

  “What now? Don’t tell me they hang their clothes up indoors.”

  “No, sir. Not their clothes.”

  “What do you mean? Stop talking in bloody riddles.”

  He pressed his forehead against the glass and squinted into the darkened room.

  A woman was suspended from the light fitting. Her feet hovered over a pentagram sketched on the carpet in charcoal.

  “Mrs Phillips, do you think?”

  “Probably, sir. Better make that a triple homicide.”

  ***

  “At fucking last! It’d be easier to get a sniff at the Pope’s ring piece than to get you to answer your fucking phone.”

  Dennis Lord laughed with delight. “Karen fucking Wheeler! I’d recognise those dulcet fucking tones any-fucking-where. It’s been a long time.”

  “Not fucking long enough. Listen, shit stain, I want you to come in.”

  “Come in where? Your fanny?”

  “I wouldn’t let you touch my fanny even if you had a ten-foot pole. Which, if memory serves, you don’t. Get your scabby arse down to Dedley nick at once.”

  “I shall do no such fucking thing.”

  “I’ll send a car.”

  “You’ll do no such fucking thing. It’s impossible, Karen. I’m a very busy man.”

  “It’s not an invitation to a fucking cream tea, Dennis.”

  Dennis Lord stopped spinning in his chair, catching the edge to Wheeler’s voice. “You’m serious.”

  “Of course I’m fucking serious. Do you honestly think I’d make a social call - to you, of all bastards?”

  “Well, um, no. I suppose not. What’s this all about, Karen?”

  “We have reason to believe you may be a target. It may have escaped your notice but two people to whom you have connections have recently been slaughtered. A Paul Barker and a Barry Norwood.”

  Dennis sat up straight. His eyes darted in all directions as if any number of maniacs might be hiding in his office. His throat was suddenly parched. Wheeler had used the word ‘slaughtered’. Not ‘killed’ or ‘murdered’ but ‘slaughtered’...

  “Now...” he tried to laugh. “Why would anyone possibly want to kill me?”

  Wheeler’s laughter was more convincing. “You know and I know you’m only still above ground level because I’m able to exercise fucking restraint. Listen, you stubborn twat. Come to the nick. Bring your laptop, your phone, your fucking teddy bear if you have to, but I need you under police protection.”

  “Why, Karen! I’m touched!”

  “Not by me you won’t be.”

 
; “Look, it’s sweet of you to think of me but it’s really out of the question. My schedule is tight - certainly tighter than your flappy old minge. I just can’t get away. In fact, I’m due at the Dedley hyperstore in half an hour.”

  “Oh, really?” Wheeler’s cogs turned and clicked. “Then I think I’ve come up with a compromise.”

  “Oh? Really?”

  “Yes,” Karen Wheeler grinned to herself. “I’m going to assign you two of my best men. They’ll stick to you like shit to a blanket and you, Dennis my love, can go wherever the fuck you want. Their names are Wren and Hobley and they’ll meet you at your fucking shop.”

  She disconnected. I’ve done my bit, she smiled to herself. I’ve arranged protection - of sorts.

  It was no more or no less than that bastard Dennis Lord deserved.

  ***

  Pattimore discovered Stevens in the male staff toilets. The detective inspector was splashing water on his face. Drops clung to the thick bristles of his porn star moustache.

  “Jesus...” was Stevens’s acknowledgment of his partner’s presence. While Pattimore used a urinal, Stevens continued to sigh and swear until the detective constable looked over his shoulder.

  “Something wrong, Ben?”

  “Gold star for the detective with his dick in his hand,” Stevens snarled. “Have you seen the state of this place? It’s a fucking warzone.”

  “Is it?” Pattimore shook himself and zipped up. He joined Stevens at the washbasins. In the mirror, Stevens looked more haggard than usual.

  “Year 8 Maths not go well, then?”

  “Well? Well?! I’ve never seen such fucking savagery. I just about escaped with my fucking life. Monsters, the lot of them. I thought I’d wandered into the fucking zoo by mistake and there’d been an outbreak of rabies. It ain’t funny.”

  Pattimore barely tried to suppress his smirk. He squirted a dollop of foam onto his hands and washed it off. “I had Year 10 for Textiles. They were as good as gold.”

  “Textiles? What’s that? Fucking sewing! Right up your alley.”

  The bell signalled the end of break. Stevens whimpered.

  “Any signs of the hooded hoodlums?”

  “Who? Snap, Crackle and Wank? No. I was too busy dodging paper darts and furniture.”

  Stevens’s phone rang. The theme tune to Starsky and Hutch echoed around the tiled room.

  “Hello?” He listened. “Fucking hell. Who?... Right you are. Cheers.”

  He pocketed the phone.

  “Well?”

  “Looks like we’ve got a Get Out of Hell card. That was your old bum chum.”

  Pattimore winced at the reference to his former relationship with D I Brough. Stevens observed the flinch and enjoyed it.

  “There’s been another one. Some woman. Her kid goes to this school. We’ve got to find him and tell him.”

  “Shit,” said Pattimore. “Poor kid.”

  “Be like looking for a needle in a mountain of shit in this place.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Pattimore snapped. “He’ll be timetabled, won’t he? We can find out which class he’s in and go and get him.”

  “Oh, yeah. That didn’t work with the other three, did it? Larry, Curly and Fuckwit.”

  “Inveterate truants, that deputy called them. But this kid-”

  “Callum Phillips.”

  “-should be easier to track down. Come on. Dry your eyes and we’ll go and ask the school secretary to reveal his whereabouts.”

  “I wasn’t actually crying, you prick,” Stevens assured him as they walked along the corridor to the school office. “It’s just that a paper dart caught me right there.”

  “Yes, Ben,” said Pattimore. “Now, work your charms on the secretary and get the information we need. What am I saying? Just show her your i.d.”

  ***

  But Callum Phillips was absent from the Science lesson where the timetable predicted he would be. The teacher, a wild-haired, bespectacled agglomeration of wrinkles and skin tags, shook his head sadly.

  “Such a good boy. Top of the class. Off the charts. But lately, he’s been distracted. Absent-minded. And now, absent-bodied too. Sad when they go off the boil like that.”

  “So, you’m telling me you’ve no fucking clue where he might be?” Stevens grumbled in a harsh whisper. Pattimore bundled his colleague from the lab.

  “It’s a school, Ben, not a prison.”

  “Prison’s too fucking good for them.”

  Pattimore stared at him. “I’ve never seen you this rattled. What did they do to you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Pattimore tried not to laugh. He gave Stevens a mock pat on the back to console him, deftly removing a sheet of paper he found taped between the detective inspector’s shoulder blades.

  CUNT, it said.

  “Hoi! What are you doing?” Stevens reached behind his back. Pattimore showed him the paper. “Oh, that. I put that there. To show them I’m not one to be messed with.”

  “Oh, really?” Pattimore scoffed. “Worked like a charm, did it?”

  He balled the paper and bounced it off Stevens’s forehead. “Come on. We need to find this Phillips kid. Let’s hope he’s easier to track down than that bloody zorilla.”

  “I doubt he’ll leave a trail of his own shit. He’s probably gone home.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Brough’s at his house, isn’t he? Along with the team investigating the scene of the boy’s mother’s murder.”

  “Not with you...”

  “Davey wouldn’t have phoned us if the boy was with him, would he?”

  “Oh. Suppose not.”

  “You need to get your head in the game, Ben. Come on - and before you say ‘pub’, we’re getting a coffee.”

  ***

  “This is most inconvenient, I’ll have you know.”

  Beatrice Mooney was displeased, to put it mildly. She glared across the table at the mild-mannered detective with the insipid smile. He had an irritating habit of pushing his spectacles up his nose every few seconds. Why didn’t he buy a pair that bloody fit him?

  “Sugar?” smiled Harry Henry.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  Harry nodded at the tea tray between them. At Dedley nick there was no room for vending machines. “In your tea. I’ll be mother.”

  “My mother would never have detained me against my will,” Beatrice Mooney pouted. “It’s outrageous. You should be locking up the criminals! Poor Paul’s killer for one!”

  Harry glanced over his shoulder as though to check something. “The door isn’t locked.”

  “Then I am free to leave?”

  “If you want. Free to go out into a town where there’s somebody who wants to kill you.”

  “Ridiculous! You’re barking mad!”

  “Am I? Barker wouldn’t think me barking mad. Nor would Norwood.” Harry clasped his hands together and leaned toward the head teacher. “I understand you’re keen to get back to the classroom, Ms Mooney, but-”

  She cut him off with a hollow laugh.

  “Now you are being ridiculous! I don’t have a classroom, Inspector Henry. I don’t face the children! I’m an administrator!”

  She pronounced the word with immense pride. Harry Henry was unimpressed.

  “All the same, if you want to get back to - whatever it is you do, you have to help us with our enquiries.”

  “I don’t see what I could poss-”

  “Ms Mooney, think! Is there anyone you have crossed recently? Anyone at all?”

  Beatrice Mooney shook her head. She pouted.

  “Anyone who might want Paul Barker dead? Barry Norwood? Dennis Lord?”
<
br />   Her face paled. “Dennis isn’t - is he?”

  “No! No! He’s under police protection too.”

  “Is he here? May I see him?”

  “No... he’s at work. He has been assigned a couple of officers-”

  Beatrice Mooney slapped the table, making the tea service rattle. “That’s what I want! Assign me some bodyguards! Let me get back to work!”

  “Um...” Harry Henry was thrown. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m not sure that’s...”

  Beatrice Mooney sat back and crossed her arms. She arched an eyebrow. Harry Henry capitulated. He bumbled to his feet; his chair scraped the floor.

  “I’ll see what the boss-” he gestured at the door before waddling through it.

  “Jesus...” Beatrice Mooney scowled. Alone in the interview room, her nerve failed her. The detective’s questions echoed in her mind.

  Who would want to kill you?

  Who would want to kill Paul? And Barry?

  Why is Dennis under police protection?

  She chewed at her lip. It had to be the sponsorship proposal. That was the only thing that connected her to the victims and the victims to each other.

  But the plans were still very much a secret. If she revealed them - if word got out - there could be an outcry. Corruption! Backhanders!

  Those bloody Lefties, banging on about education being a right...

  Then again, if she told that clumsy fool of a detective, it could lead to a swift resolution - an arrest!

  Now, who would be most vehemently opposed to Priory High becoming CostBusters Academy?

  Harry Henry crashed back into the room. “Um,” he said. “We don’t really have the man- or woman-power to give you a couple of bodyguards, Ms, but-”

  He made calming gestures to pre-empt an outburst. “The Chief says you can go back to school, provided I go with you.”

  “Good,” Beatrice Mooney said coldly. She got to her feet. “And when you get there you can arrest the deputy head.”

  10.

  At lunchtime, a fight broke out on the playing field. Kids poured from the dining hall and filled the embankment, bloodthirsty spectators in a Roman arena. The gladiators grappling on the grass were Logger and Callum. They swung their arms at each other, shoving and grabbing, while the crowd chanted, “Fight! Fight!” in case anyone was in any doubt about what was going on.