Rob Johnson - Lifting the Lid

by Rob Johnson

  For a few seconds, they stood motionless as they gazed at their victim, their bows and arrows now pointing at the ground. Then, and at exactly the same instant and without any visible cue passing between them, they each began to caress his hair and face with tender sensuality.

  A small crowd started to gather, and Sandra moved closer to maintain her uninterrupted view.

  By now, Patterson’s body was completely rigid, his head tipped backwards and his teeth bared in a fixed grin which managed to convey both embarrassment and annoyance. If he was trying for “Hey, I’m just an ordinary festival guy like the rest of you and isn’t this fun”, he’d failed badly.

  The three Cupids rotated around him, and their caresses ventured steadily downwards from his head to his shoulders and beyond, a face always directly in front of his own, eyeball to eyeball and pout to grimace. There was a movement at the edge of Patterson’s mouth, and Sandra could just make out the words, ‘Piss off, you arse bandits, or I’ll nick the lot of you.’

  Apparently she wasn’t the only one to have heard him, and someone in the crowd shouted out, ‘Jeez, mate. Relax, will ya? They’re only having a bloody laugh.’

  Patterson’s remark seemed to be a not unexpected response for the Cupids, and they immediately intensified their efforts. Still stroking him with their hands, they proceeded to rub their entire bodies against his in an up and down motion, sometimes with their backs and sometimes with their fronts. Without resorting to unseemly violence, Patterson was locked to the spot.

  The crowd, which had tripled in size by now, was roaring with laughter and encouragement, and Sandra also found herself clapping her hands and laughing like a loon until she suddenly remembered why she was there. She felt the panic rise from somewhere deep inside her as she turned towards where Trevor had been standing, knowing full well that she’d see an empty space.

  ‘Shit.’

  As she set off, she was aware from her peripheral vision that Patterson tried to do precisely the same thing but instantly fell headlong in the dirt with an almost naked Cupid hugging his ankles.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘Come on, Milly. Shift.’

  Trevor was almost sprinting towards the camper van when it finally came into view, and he glanced back to see that Milly was lagging behind and clearly intent on seeking out additional sources of food.

  His hand trembled, and he struggled to get the key in the lock. He took a few deep breaths and concentrated… Click. Milly was beside him now and leapt onto the driver’s seat the moment he opened the door. Trevor unceremoniously bundled her over to the passenger side as he climbed in and fired up the engine. He reached down to release the handbrake and then jumped at the sound of a sharp tapping noise on the glass to his right. So swiftly did he turn that he felt a sudden but fleeting spasm of pain in the back of his neck.

  The woman’s face seemed familiar. She was smiling, but her eyes gave him the distinct impression the smile was far from genuine. She rotated her index finger to indicate that she wanted him to wind down the window, and he reluctantly obliged.

  ‘Well, well. Fancy bumping into you again,’ she said. Milly stared at her and wagged her tail. ‘Hello, doggie.’

  He remembered now. It was the woman he’d collided with on the hotel stairs.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I’m wrong, but I believe you have something that doesn’t belong to you.’ The smile remained, but her eyes widened as she arched an eyebrow.

  Trevor clutched at his chest, and he felt the bulge of the package through the soft material of his fleece.

  ‘Oh dear. Touch of heartburn perhaps?’ The smile evaporated, and she held out her hand, palm upwards.

  Heart attack was more likely, thought Trevor, and wiped the sweat from his brow. He took the tag of his jacket zip between his forefinger and thumb and, millimetre by millimetre, pulled it down with such slow deliberation that he might have been performing a striptease.

  ‘Today would be good.’

  She was obviously getting impatient, and he was about to rip open the rest of the zip when a man’s face loomed over her shoulder. Trevor’s hand froze, and his jaw dropped. He could see the gun reflected in the window of a nearby car.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said the woman with a scowl. ‘Someone behind me, is there? Well if you think I’m going to—’

  ‘I wouldnae turn round if I were ye, hen.’

  Trevor’s focus was drawn to the heavy scar on the man’s cheek, the chunky gold earring and the long black hair which was scraped back so tightly into a ponytail it must have been impossible for him to blink. Definitely not the sort of person he’d want to meet on a dark night in some deserted alley. Come to that, not the sort of bloke he’d want to meet in broad daylight in the middle of a busy festival car park either.

  ‘I see ye have something for me.’

  Trevor stared down at the corner of the padded, green Jiffy bag protruding from inside his jacket. Oh God, how he wished he’d never set eyes on the bloody thing, that he’d never checked into the hotel, that he hadn’t broken the toilet lid, that he’d—

  ‘Don’t piss me about, pal. I’m nae in the mood for playing games. Giz it here.’

  He edged the woman to the side, and his left hand reached in through the open window. The right hand followed, and this one was holding a rather heavy looking gun, which was aimed directly at his head. It was at this point that Milly apparently decided she wasn’t at all keen on this intrusion, and she started barking at him like a deranged Rottweiler.

  ‘Shut yir racket.’ The muzzle of the gun shifted a few degrees, away from Trevor’s head and towards the dog’s.

  What happened next was almost too quick for Trevor to take in. The woman’s arm snapped upwards and caught the guy on the elbow so sharply that the gun was now directed at the roof of the van. At exactly the same moment, her hand whipped up from the small bag slung at her hip and shot a fine spray straight into his face. He roared in pain and staggered backwards, clutching at his eyes, then tripped and fell heavily to the ground, dropping the gun in the process.

  Trevor grabbed at the handbrake, but before he could even engage first gear, the woman appeared in front of him through the windscreen. He watched the movement of her lips as they made some kind of “tut tut” sound, but he took even more notice of the gun which had been pointing at his head only a few seconds earlier. She waved it back and forth as if wagging an admonishing finger and then aimed it at his chest.

  He eased his foot from the accelerator pedal, and she edged around to the passenger door and climbed in. Milly, who had stopped barking and was looking faintly bemused by this whole chain of events, obligingly and uncharacteristically jumped down from her seat and scuttled off into the back.

  ‘Drive.’ The woman’s voice was calm and assured.

  Trevor’s palm hadn’t left the gear shift, and he yanked it backwards as he continued to stare wide-eyed at the pistol. He was beginning to turn away when a powerful hand slammed onto the steering wheel. Crimson eyes blazed in at him through the still open window, tears streaming down the contorted features.

  There was a dull thud and a faint crunching sound as the woman brought the butt of the gun crashing down onto the back of the intruding hand. It vanished instantly to the accompaniment of an anguished shriek of extreme pain.

  ‘Drive!’

  Trevor let out the clutch far too quickly, and the van lurched forward, almost flattening a shortish guy in a tan-coloured leather jacket, who just managed to fling himself out of the way.

  ‘Shit,’ said Trevor, glancing into his wing mirror to see the man he had almost killed lose the battle to stay upright and go sprawling onto the ground. ‘Wasn’t that—’

  ‘Your policeman buddy?’

  ‘Patterson.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Trevor could see she was still aiming the gun at him. He felt an unpleasant disturbance deep in his guts, and it wasn’t because all he’d had to eat in the
last twenty-four hours was a handful of biscuits.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A light breeze rippled the material of the patio umbrella, and a sudden gust threatened to blow the notebook off the slatted wooden table beneath. Maggie Swann made a grab for it and caught it just in time. So far, there had been very little that was worth writing down. Doyle had been reticent on the phone to put it mildly, but now, face to face, he was honing his blood-out-of-a-stone act to perfection. For some minutes, Logan had been drumming his fingers on the edge of the table – a sure sign that his patience tank was running on empty.

  ‘I must say I’d hoped for rather more cooperation,’ he said after another lengthy pause.

  Doyle spread his palms wide but said nothing.

  ‘I mean, all you’ve told us is that you led the investigation into Imelda Hawkins’s disappearance, that you never found her and that you didn’t suspect foul play or even that she was dead at all.’ Logan leaned forward across the table. ‘Why not?’

  ‘As I said before, it was a long time ago.’

  ‘Long time? Eighteen months?’

  ‘Memory’s not what it used to be, I’m afraid.’ Doyle tapped the side of his head as if to emphasise the point.

  ‘Oh come off it, Doyle. That’s bullshit, and you know it.’

  Again the spread palms and the sealed lips.

  Logan stopped drumming and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘What happened? Someone get to you, did they? Told you to drop the case?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Freemason, are you?’

  Doyle gripped the arms of his chair. ‘What the hell has that got to—’

  Both Doyle and Swann were facing towards the house, and they could see his wife step out through the sliding patio door with a tray of tea things. Unseen by Logan, he opened his mouth to speak, but Swann shook her head at him to keep quiet.

  There was something incongruous about a woman serving tea in a figure-hugging black dress that would have been far better suited to some swish cocktail party at the Savoy. Swann was no fashion expert, but she guessed it was expensive designer gear, and the double string of pearls round her neck looked like the genuine article too.

  ‘Sorry it’s taken so long,’ said Doyle’s wife. ‘Phone rang just as I’d filled the pot. The tea had gone cold by the time I’d finished, so I had to start all over again. It never ceases to amaze me how some folks can jabber on. Hah, I’d like to see their phone bills. Still, I suppose it is Saturday, and most people have that free-calls-at-the-weekend thing nowadays, don’t they? Now, who’s going to be mother?’

  Swann pretended to study her notebook, partly to conceal a giggle and partly because she was aware that three pairs of eyes were probably trained on her.

  ‘Pop it down here, love. I’ll do it,’ she heard Doyle say.

  ‘It was Jessica by the way, darling. Wants to know if we’re going to the Ladies’ Night at the Lodge again this year.’

  Swann looked up to clock the pained expression on Doyle’s face and the broad wink that Logan threw at her.

  ‘Can we talk about it later?’ said Doyle. ‘We’re right in the middle of something at the moment.’

  ‘Catching up on old times, eh? Okay, I can take a hint. I’ll leave you to your reminiscing then.’

  She gave her husband an affectionate pat on the shoulder and headed back towards the patio door.

  ‘Speaking of old times,’ said Logan loudly enough for her to hear. ‘You still see anything of Veronica from Admin these days, Tom?’

  There was a choking sound and the clatter of cups and saucers as Doyle came close to dropping the teapot. Swann thought she detected a slight hesitation in his wife’s step, but she might have been mistaken.

  ‘What the bloody hell did you have to say that for?’ said Doyle as soon as his wife had disappeared back into the house.

  It was Logan’s turn to spread his palms wide, and he added a self-satisfied smirk for good measure.

  ‘Attractive woman, your wife,’ he said. ‘Must be, what? Twelve, fifteen years younger than you?’

  ‘You threatening to blackmail me, Logan?’

  ‘But I’m a police officer. How could you think such a thing?’ He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Mind you, I seem to remember that Tony Ambrose took a fair few photos at your retirement bash. I wonder if—’

  ‘All right. All right. What is it you want?’

  ‘Three sugars, please.’

  Swann wondered if it was physically possible for someone to actually explode from smugness. Doyle was showing no sign of picking up the teapot again, and Logan was obviously far too busy congratulating himself. She was gasping for a cuppa, and if she was ever going to get one, it seemed she’d have to be mother after all. She stood up and pulled the tea tray towards her.

  ‘Either of you wearing a wire?’ said Doyle.

  Logan and Swann exchanged glances.

  ‘A what?’ said Logan.

  ‘I’m not saying another word till I know this isn’t being recorded.’

  ‘And why would we want to do that exactly?’

  ‘You want me to frisk you?’

  Doyle’s “Donger” nickname flashed into Swann’s brain, and she felt a wave of nausea at the idea of a full body search. He wasn’t nearly as repulsive as she’d imagined he would be, and despite the wavy white hair, baggy eyes and sagging jowls, she could tell he’d probably been not bad looking in his day. Even so, a letch was a letch, and she had no desire to have his hands all over her.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Logan. ‘We’re not wearing wires.’

  ‘Trust you?’

  He ignored the jibe and ploughed straight on. ‘So what made you think Imelda wasn’t dead?’

  ‘Call it… a copper’s intuition.’

  Logan waited for him to continue. He didn’t. ‘Care to elaborate?’

  ‘For a start, we never found a body.’ Doyle raised a hand to silence Logan, who seemed to be on the point of interrupting. ‘You want to let me finish? – Nor was there any kind of motive for murder. No enemies to speak of. No-one stood to gain financially. Not even the husband.’

  ‘You interviewed him presumably.’

  ‘Of course we interviewed him,’ said Doyle, his tone clearly conveying his resentment at being taught how to suck eggs. ‘Several times in fact. You know as well as I do that the husband is always the most likely suspect in cases like this.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well he was either bloody clever and an exceptionally gifted actor, or he was totally innocent.’ He took a sip of his tea and winced. ‘Put it this way,’ he added, spooning sugar into his cup. ‘He was certainly no Einstein in the brains department.’

  ‘He have an alibi?’

  ‘For what?’

  Logan sighed. ‘For the time she disappeared.’

  ‘But that’s the thing of it. No-one knew precisely when she went AWOL. She was a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, so she was often away for days at a time. On this particular occasion, she’d checked into a hotel in Birmingham for four nights, but nobody’d seen her from the moment she signed the register till she was due to vacate the room.’

  ‘So it could have been any time during those four days.’

  Doyle nodded.

  ‘What about her employers?’ said Logan. ‘You check with them?’

  ‘Course I checked.’ Again the sucking eggs tone of voice. ‘At least, I tried to.’

  Logan raised an eyebrow.

  ‘No such company ever existed apparently. We found some letterheads at her house, but the address turned out to be an abandoned warehouse in Cheam.’

  ‘And you didn’t think that was suspicious?’

  Doyle rolled his head back and gazed up at the sky. ‘God give me strength.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Logan. ‘So what did Trevor have to say about it?’

  ‘Seemed genuinely gobsmacked. Went all pale and vacant, like he’d gone into some kind of trance.’
<
br />   Logan started drumming his fingers on the edge of the table once again. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then nothing. No body. Trail had gone cold. We couldn’t pin anything on the husband, so that, as they say, was that.’

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

  Doyle fixed him with a Mona Lisa smile.

  ‘And what happened to the file?’ said Logan.

  ‘End of interview, I think.’ Doyle pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

  ‘So who was it that got you to drop the case and make out it never happened?’

  Doyle was already making his way across the patio towards the house. ‘Use the side gate on your way out, will you?’ he called back over his shoulder.

  Logan jumped up and almost sent his chair flying. ‘Who was it, Doyle? How much they pay you, eh?’

  Swann thought she heard a faint chuckle as Doyle stepped inside and slid the patio door shut behind him.

  * * *

  As Logan began to back the car up the gravel driveway, Swann could see Doyle in the front room window. He was on the phone and gesticulating wildly at whoever he was talking to.

  ‘I think we might have rattled him,’ she said.

  ‘Stroke of genius, wouldn’t you say? The stuff about Veronica and the photos.’

  She decided not to feed his already bloated ego. ‘D’you think he really did take a bribe then?’

  ‘Expensive house. Fancy car. Wife dripping with designer fashion. Must be on a bloody good pension if he didn’t.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  This was the second time in the space of a few minutes that Patterson had been subjected to the ridicule of a small group of total strangers, and he was less than happy about it. He had never liked being the centre of attention even in social situations – not that he ever encountered many of those – but it was part of his job to be as inconspicuous as possible. Being publicly groped by three almost naked, middle-aged Cupids would hardly conform to anyone’s notion of blending in with the crowd, and now here he was, sat on his arse in a puddle of muddy water, being watched by a bunch of guffawing buffoons. He scrambled to his feet and scowled as he felt the cold wetness of his pale beige trousers clinging to his lower regions.