The Footprints of the Fiend

by William Stafford

  I need to rest, he told himself. My thoughts are all over the place since the explosion. I have seen those two before; I know I have.

  It will come to me.

  17.

  Stevens, Woodcock and a carful of uniforms pulled up opposite the window cleaner’s address. A Thomas Turnbull was registered as the owner of the van that advertised his business. The semi-detached house in a decent part of town was listed as his office and his residence.

  “Looks quiet,” Stevens observed.

  “How can something look quiet?” Woodcock queried. “It sounds quiet, you mean.”

  “Piss off, smart arse.” Stevens got out and slammed the door. Woodcock followed. The uniforms joined the detectives on the pavement. Stevens tried to mobilise them with eye signals and some pointing of his finger. The uniforms stared at him blankly.

  “Fuck’s sake,” Stevens muttered.

  “Allow me,” Woodcock stepped forward. “You two around the back. You two out front with us, but hang by the gate in case he makes a break for it.”

  The uniforms dispersed but not before they’d all got in each other’s way.

  “Fucking Keystone Cops,” Stevens muttered. He and Woodcock strode up the path to Turnbull’s front door.

  “Lot of post,” Woodcock observed. “Place looks empty.”

  “Could be a ruse,” Stevens shrugged. “To make us think there’s nobody home.”

  He pushed the doorbell. They heard it chime. They waited.

  Stevens pushed the button again. He rattled the letterbox and rapped his knuckles on the door.

  “There is nobody home,” he eventually conceded.

  And then the front door opened.

  “Alright,” one of the uniforms greeted them with a cheesy smile.

  “What the cocking fuck am you doing in that house?” Stevens bristled.

  The uniform shrugged.

  “Back door’s wide open. Place is empty. Pongs a bit.”

  “Barry!” the other uniform called from within. There followed the unmistakable sound of him retching and his vomit splashing on the floor.

  Stevens barged his way in. Woodcock and the uniform exchanged a glance.

  They made their way through the house to the kitchen and the door that led off to the garage. The second uniform was supporting himself at a workbench, his chin glistening and his face pale. He raised a hand weakly to indicate the cause of his gastric distress.

  Stevens and Woodcock put hands to their mouths - their own mouths - and took in the scene.

  The body of a man, wrapped in cling film, was on the concrete floor. He was still attached to the chair he’d overturned. Woodcock was already phoning it in.

  “Terry Turnbull, I presume,” said Stevens.

  “Thomas,” Woodcock corrected.

  “Terry Thomas, I presume,” said Stevens. Woodcock decided against a second correction.

  “Been here for weeks by the smell of him,” Stevens trod carefully around the dead man. “That constitutes an alibi, I suppose.”

  “So the pub attacker’s appropriated the window cleaner’s ladder and bucket and he’s been going around the pubs painting the footprints on in broad daylight!”

  Stevens and Woodcock turned in amazement to the uniform who had spouted this analysis. Stevens approached him.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Um, Pattimore, sir.”

  “Well, just you listen to me, P.C. Pattimore. Leave the detecting to the detectors - ives. The detectives. Okay?”

  “Sir.”

  “All we can do is wait for Forensics to come and do their shit.”

  “Actually, sir,” Woodcock lifted a finger. “There’s no sign of forced entry. The house is in good order. Makes me think the attacker is someone Mr Turnbull knows - um, knew.”

  “And the open back door, clever clogs?”

  Woodcock pulled a face.

  “It’s a nice area,” Pattimore offered. “My auntie Jean lives around the corner. Perhaps Mr Turnbull habitually leaves the back door unlocked. Especially if he’s at home. And the attacker didn’t realise. He was coming and going through the front door or the garage, using Mr Turnbull’s keys and never thought to check the back door.”

  Stevens was balling his fists. Woodcock stepped in.

  “P. C. Pattimore has a point, sir. “

  “Yeah. On his bloody head. That’s why he has to wear that helmet.”

  “So, the attacker comes to Turnbull’s home. Turnbull lets him in - he knows him, he trusts him - and then Turnbull ends up cling-filmed to a chair in his own garage and suffocates.”

  “Hmm,” Stevens thought this through. His eyes warned the upstart constable to keep his fucking gob shut.

  “You don’t think the attacker intended to kill Mr Turnbull? Sir?”

  Stevens looked down at the corpse with its blue face and bulging eyes, wrapped like so much supermarket meat long past its sell-by.

  “It’s manslaughter at least,” he sniffed, almost sounding disappointed. Then he cheered up, “But somebody’s dead, Gary! That’s the point! At last this fucking case just got Serious!”

  ***

  “I’m sure I can’t supply you with that information.” The receptionist at the Railway Hotel stood her ground. Miller walked in to find Brough looking less than happy.

  “And I’m sure I could go and get a warrant and seize your files.”

  The receptionist glanced nervously at the fingernails she’d been grooming.

  “Not those files!” Brough snapped. “I just need to know if a certain gentleman about this tall and this overweight, thinning hair, jowly face and wearing a grey suit, is staying here or not.”

  “I couldn’t possibly say.”

  “Hold up a minute,” Miller intervened. “Your description sounds like whatsisface, Councillor, um, Dixon. Gerald Dixon. Saw him the other night in the Simoom.”

  “Ah...” Brough assimilated this information. He turned back to the receptionist. “Will you kindly page Councillor Dixon and tell him the police would like to talk to him?”

  “My pleasure, cocker.”

  She picked up a telephone in one hand and ran a manicured finger across her monitor. She pursed her glossy lips.

  “Nobody of that name here, chick. There’s a Dick Geraldson; will he do?”

  “That’ll be him,” Brough flashed his teeth in an insincere smile. He was grateful the councillor was an unimaginative coiner of pseudonyms.

  The receptionist tapped in a room number. She gave her fingernails another inspection while she waited.

  “No answer,” she sniffed, hanging up. “Must be out.”

  “No shit,” said Brough.

  “In fact,” the receptionist scrolled through her screen, “bugger’s not been in all night. Hasn’t checked out. Here, if you think he’s done a bunk, tell him we wants a word with him and all. Unpaying your hotel bill is a crime, ain’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but unpaying isn’t a word.”

  “Could we have a look in his room, do you think?” Miller flashed the receptionist her i.d.

  “Ar, go on then,” the receptionist picked up her magazine. “Room 302. Dolly’s up there cleaning. She’ll let you in with her pass key.”

  Miller said thanks. Brough was already heading for the lift.

  “Not lost your way with women then,” Miller smirked as they watched the numbers above the door light up and go dark.

  “Shut your face,” said Brough.

  They laughed.

  On the third floor they found the aforementioned Dolly, a woman smaller than her trolley of cleaning products, failing to steer her trolley in a straight line along the narrow strip of carpet. The trolley bashed into one wall then the other while th
e tiny woman grunted and swore. The occupants of the rooms beyond those walls thrust their heads out into the corridor.

  “Fucksake!” complained one.

  “I didn’t ask for an alarm call,” quipped the other.

  “Tosser,” sneered the first.

  The heads withdrew as Brough and Miller strode along the corridor to accost the cleaner.

  “Hello, Dolly,” said Brough.

  The cleaner peered up at him and then across at Miller.

  “You two want a room, you should go to Reception. You’ll have to pay for the whole night. You cor just have it for half an hour.”

  Brough showed her his i.d. Her expression changed.

  “It was just a few bog rolls,” she spluttered. “My Frankie had the trots. I’ll put ‘em back. Well, I’ll put new ones back. You wouldn’t want...” She trailed off.

  “Can you let us into Room 302, please?” Miller smiled.

  “Course I can, chick.” Dolly’s relief was almost palpable. She waddled towards the end of the corridor. She swiped a plastic card into a slot. There was a bleep and a red light turned green. “There you am.”

  She scurried away and resumed bashing the walls with her unwieldy trolley.

  Brough ushered Miller into Room 302.

  “Not exactly the Ash Tree, is it?” Miller recalled their first case.

  “Thank goodness,” said Brough, looking around.

  The bed was made. The wardrobe door was ajar; the councillor’s clothes were visible within. The en suite was tidy; his toothbrush was leaning in a tumbler. There were no other items on display.

  “Why would a councillor check into a hotel less than a mile from his home?” Brough looked out of the window. You could see the entrance to the zoo across the road and the castle at its centre. He shuddered to think of recent events within those walls.

  “I dunno,” Miller sounded apologetic.

  “Just thinking aloud,” Brough closed the curtains. “His wife’s out of the country. On a cruise, apparently.”

  “So perhaps he checked in to save himself from the housework.”

  “You have a dim view of men, Miller.”

  “I’ve had many a view of dim men,” Miller punctuated her remark with a mock grin.

  “I think it’s more likely he’d gone to ground. Wanted to be incognito. Incommunicado. Out of reach.”

  “So he’s a lazy bastard.”

  “More likely he’s trying to avoid someone in particular. Someone pressuring him, perhaps. Someone trying to get him to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

  “Hmm...” Miller looked around the room once more, her hands thrust deep in her raincoat pockets. “So where’s he now? What’s flushed him out of hiding?”

  “Or who? I saw him with a man.”

  “Not everyone’s gay, you know.”

  Brough chose to ignore that one.

  “They were walking off together, in that direction. Wish I’d followed them now. I didn’t get a proper look. The other man was in a uniform, like a security guard or something - you know, like a copper but not quite. Like you see in the shopping centres. Oh!” he grunted with frustration. “I wish I could remember... It just struck me as important. Like when you see someone familiar but out of context. Like seeing the weatherman off the telly buying toilet paper.”

  Miller nodded.

  “And I wish I could remember where I’d seen his face before. The security man.”

  Miller nodded again.

  “So, what’s our next move?”

  “Call Wheeler. Have her put someone here in case he comes back. And we tell that receptionist to keep her trap shut. Don’t want him bolting before we can talk to him.”

  “Right.”

  Brough left the room. Miller followed, pulling the door shut behind her. There was no sign of Dolly and her trolley.

  ***

  Terence Flax, normally even-tempered, was in danger of losing his cool. That jackanapes was AWOL again and there was a paper to put out. Oh, he knew full well that young Dunn didn’t regard the Dedley Chronicle as a serious or proper paper. That was missing the point, Flax thought. He still had a deadline to get the new edition to the printer. He still had a readership, albeit a dwindling one, to please. If the Chronicle went out a day or two late, it would cost them readers and advertising revenue.

  He ransacked Theo’s computer for the stories he’d requested. He found them in a file with the date of the next issue. They were all complete - Theo was a good boy; Terence had never said he wasn’t. Terence would be able to salvage the issue.

  There was one piece that was unfinished. Something the boy had been working on in relation to the current spate of pub roof vandalism... There wasn’t time to read what the boy had put together. Perhaps it was better to leave this particular story until the next edition. Perhaps by then, what were current events would be fading into the past. And the past is what the Dedley Chronicle does best...

  He closed the file but not before he’d had one last look at the photograph that dominated the page. The staring eyes of long dead crackpot Laocoön Smith seemed to bore into you, Flax reckoned. Hypnotic; no wonder the old charlatan was so successful back in his day.

  At last, Flax managed to tear himself away. It was funny but that picture of Laocoön Smith reminded him of someone.

  ***

  Pastor Mike was in his office when Linda tapped on the door. He opened the nearest Bible and adopted a studious expression before he invited her in.

  “Ever so sorry to protrude,” said Linda, “only me and Grace am a bit concerned, like.”

  “Grace?” Pastor Mike looked up.

  “Her here,” said Linda, pulling Grace into the room. Grace, embarrassed, looked at the carpet.

  “Welcome, sister!” Pastor Mike stood up and came towards them. He took both of Grace’s hands in his. “I’ve seen you at our Sunday gatherings?”

  “Um,” Grace looked embarrassed.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

  “Um, Grace has a problem, Pastor Mike,” Linda intervened to break the awkwardness. “It’s her boss.”

  Pastor Mike’s face creased in a show of concern.

  “Touching you up, is he? Octopus in a suit?”

  Grace looked scandalised. The mere suggestion that Councillor Dixon would - would - She could feel her face growing hot.

  “No, no! He’s gone missing. He - he - “ Grace’s composure collapsed. Linda proceeded to rub her forearm and murmur soothing sounds.

  “Oh dear,” said Pastor Mike, releasing Grace’s hands so she could attend to her tears. “Please, tell me all about it.”

  He indicated a chair facing his desk and took up position in his larger, comfier seat, his hands clasped over his blotter. Linda guided Grace to the chair and stood behind her like a prison guard supervising a visit.

  Grace sniffed and snivelled until she got herself together. She relayed the course of events as she knew them. Pastor Mike nodded and smiled with what looked like sympathy. Linda became distracted by something that refused to leave the cosy hollow of her nostril.

  “I see,” Pastor Mike judged Grace had finished. “And have you attempted to contact this, ah, gentleman?”

  “Who? Mr Johnson?”

  “Yes; if he was the last to have a meeting with Councillor Dixon.”

  “That’s the thing,” Grace began to snivel again. “I can’t get hold of him either.”

  It was true. She had tried Johnson’s mobile number several times to no avail. She had rung the site office - Johnson had a security firm keeping a watchful eye on the site and, no doubt, a team of builders on speed dial ready to spring into action as soon as permission was granted by the council - but it just rang and rang and rang. She had even emailed the com
pany via their webpage, shielding herself from the lurid images of pouting young ladies wrapping themselves around shiny poles, but so far no response had been forthcoming.

  “I am sure everything is fine,” Pastor Mike stood up, signifying the interview was over. “I will mention Councillor Dixon in Sunday prayers. He is fighting the good fight, after all. Keeping our beautiful town free from vice and wanton women.”

  Grace nodded and blew her nose. She stood up. Pastor Mike was already holding the door open. His eyes widened as though a brilliant idea had just occurred to him.

  “What you young ladies need is a project to keep your minds from worrying about Councillor Dixon.”

  “Who?” said Linda.

  “Come with me.”

  They followed him along the landing to the store cupboard. Pastor Mike was surprised to find it unlocked but he said nothing in front of the ladies. He opened the door and turned on the light.

  The boxes of leaflets had been opened. A couple of them were empty on the floor of the storeroom.

  Trevor...

  “Here we are, ladies,” Pastor Mike used one of his keys to slice open the tape on a fresh box. He handed them a few hundred leaflets each.

  “What’s this?” said Linda.

  “Please, dear ladies, hand these to everyone you meet.”

  “One each, like?” Linda thought it best to check.

  “Linda, you can hand them to the patrons of the coffee shop. Miss, um, you can distribute them as you see fit. As you go through the town. As you trawl the supermarket. Slip them into library books if you get a chance.”

  Grace looked at the image of the wanton young hussy on the leaflet. She was encircled in red and crossed out. Quite right too.

  But how would this help her to find Councillor Dixon?

  “Is there a problem?” Pastor Mike’s smile almost dared them to say there was.

  “Um, what if I get a paper cut?” Linda raised her hand.

  “First aid box is under the counter. Miss, ah?”