by Brian Hughes
Not exactly a sentiment shared by the rest of his dormitory, none of whom appeared to know who Kevin Dalton was. The police are making further enquiries.’
Extract From the Greyminster Chronicle Sept. 31st 1997
The rooftops of Greyminster resembled twisted spines, grubby with soot and bent around the eaves. Flurried squalls flung rain against the bleary-eyed garret windows as the east wind probed the terrace ends.
Raindrops raced each other to the window ledge of Godswick, Fumble and Stotter’s. There was barely a sound in the musty office. Just the faint snatches of a pen nib as it scribbled through a dry ledger, accompanied by the occasional snuffle of Mr Godswick himself. Mr Godswick was as shrivelled as a dead leaf, drowning in the sort of tweed suit that would have looked better on a man of twice his build. It was a suit designed to add grandeur to whoever had the audacity to wear it. And Mr Godswick considered himself a most important man indeed. His wrinkled apricot of a head was currently thrust from the giant collar so that he resembled a tortoise, small wisps of white hair statically charged about his ears.
At length he raised his eyes, slid the half-moon spectacles down his purple nose and laid the fountain pen carefully to rest on the blotter. “It’s not often that I open ap the offices at this ungodly hour...” His voice had a surprisingly broad Scottish lilt. “Still, I’m always willin’ to mek an exception in the case of a pretty yang woman.”
He leaned across the desk towards the pretty young woman in question, flashing her a loose-dentured smile that he hoped would be accessible. The woman seated demurely in the leather chair flicked her fringe from her watery eyes and stared back. Such steady, unemotional features.
Godswick flicked his eyes away. Pushing his bent spine against the chair back he shuffled his papers nervously.
“So...” He forced his spectacles up his nose again with one hooked finger. “What exactly can we do for you, Miss…?” He waited for the response. It was customary at this point for the client to supply their name. Perhaps he hadn’t put enough inflection into his voice.
A creak broke the stillness. A creak that started at the base of his spine and worked its way upwards into the roof. It grew in strength until the light fittings rattled. Godswick lifted his face and his head nodded worriedly. He was just in time to witness the most unsettling and final experience of his life.
The surly expression of the woman dramatically altered. So dramatically that not only was her face different now but the features were twisted out of shape. Her shoulders broadened, her arms shortened, the point of her chin retreating into her neck.
With a dirty noise her pert breasts transformed into a broad chest. Her pale lips became a disorganised snarl. Her auburn hair withdrew into her scalp, becoming an acicular crew cut. And from her slender, white fingers grew a double-barrelled shotgun.
Godswick fumbled over his bottle of Angina medication. His craggy forehead slowly avalanched.
“What the Hell are you?” The confusion tied his following words into a knot. “How...what...the Devil be gone!”
Two shotgun cartridges bolted across the office, ripping apart the stale air. There was a deafening crunch, followed closely by the latent ‘Ber-rok’ of the explosion. And with the sound that would be made if a bag full of liver had exploded beneath the wheels of a double-decker bus, a spatter of brain spread up the wall behind him.
Godswick slumped. Blood inched its way along his fingertips. With a soft drip, drip, drip the droplets plummeted, a circle of darkness spreading out on the rug.
Chapter Two: An Inspector Calls
Malcolm crammed the triangle of toast into his mouth and let it hang there, resembling an envelope that hadn’t been pushed through a letterbox properly. Black crumbs flicked outwards in all directions as he scrabbled round the living room, fighting off his mother and tripping over Dinky toys. For a moment he paused, removing an escaping globule of butter from his lip. It was a difficult operation performed with his tongue and one that almost sent him cross-eyed in the process.
“Best to wrap up warm, dear.” The diminutive figure of Mrs Clewes was contentedly stuffing his scarf into the collar of his dufflecoat, indulging herself in what mothers do best. “It’s a nasty mornin’ out there. We don’t want you gettin’ a cold on your chest, do we?”
After several muffled false starts the toast was removed so that Malcolm could best get his tongue around the words. “Mother...make sure that Timothy gets to school on time.” He tried to remove the model shuttlecraft from his left foot. It was reluctant to let go. “He was late yesterday. And could you call in at the launderette to pick up my washing? The ticket’s somewhere on the dresser.”
“Of course, dear.” Mrs Clewes patted the scarf down at the back, ensuring that nothing short of a nuclear blast could penetrate through to Malcolm’s fragile neck. He’d been a sickly child and all those nights sat by his bed clutching the Night Nurse weren’t easy to forget. “Now just you go t’ work and ’ave a nice time.”
She fumbled a stray crumb from his shoulder and studied it carefully. Malcolm was giving her one of his patronising looks again. She’d noticed this change of attitude since he’d gotten together with that Inspector Bloody Wots-Is-Name!
“Mother...you heard what the inspector said on the phone. There’s been a murder. An actual murder in Greyminster! I’m hardly likely to ‘have a nice time’!” Malcolm waited patiently whilst the old woman buttoned up his toggles and adjusted the hood to her own satisfaction.
“It’ll give you something to do, Malcolm. Get you out in the fresh air.” She pushed a handkerchief into his pocket. “Now go on or you’ll be late.”
And she handed him his lunch box. The dreaded box with the portrait of Garfield on it. She’d included an apple today. It’d help build up his strength and keep his teeth nice and healthy.
Poor Malcolm, what did it matter if he was almost six feet tall and built like the proverbial ‘End of the Yard Outhouse’? His skin was so pale in his mother’s opinion he resembled a warmed-up corpse.
Malcolm unadjusted the scarf and turned to the front door before his mother found anything else to put straight. He poked his head around the living room doorjamb and set an ear against the stairs.
“Good-bye Timothy...” There was a grunt from the bathroom. Malcolm waited for a moment, reached the conclusion this was all he was going to get, straightened up and readjusted his thoughts onto work.
Eight o’clock, Sword Street. An apathetic gathering of shops opposite the entrance to the park. It was still very early and, although dawn had broken, a duvet of storm clouds had dragged itself over the rooftops obscuring the February daylight.
Most of the shops were still closed, their shutters battened down against the winter. However somebody was up and about. At least, their door was continually clicking open and closed, forced by the insufferable wind to perform.
The Corn Doll Cafe. Current owners, Dorothy and Charles Preston (retired). At that moment Charles was dragging the battered dustbin across the cobbled yard, several loose cabbage leaves overhanging the lip. It clanked loudly over the stones.
Charles stopped and pushed his spectacles back up his nose, studying the ominous sky. The clouds were menacingly fat this morning. To be honest it was more of an excuse to catch his breath really. Charlie wasn’t exactly a youth and his legs had been bent into hoops by rickets.
From somewhere above there was a rumble of swollen wood. A voice rang out from next-door’s bedroom window. Charlie waited for the abuse.
“Shut that bloody racket up, y’ stunted get!” Albert Brasswick shook a threatening fist towards him.
Charlie stood his ground having trodden this road before. He rattled the dustbin round in a semi-circle.
“I’ll ’ave the bloody constabulary onto you if y’ don’t!”
“Mornin’ Albert...”
“Don’t bloody ’Mornin” me Preston, you aggravatin’ short-arsed sod!” Take a steak pudding, remove the steak, fill the hole
up with jelly and paint the sides red and, give or take the odd feature, you’d have Albert Brasswick’s head in all its glory. “Now shut the buggery up.”
He shook his fist.
“No I won’t shut up!” Charlie started to tremble, his undersized frame filled with tension. He was fast reaching boiling point, trembling like a kettle forgotten on the hob. “Buggerin’ shut up your fat buggerin’ self!”
He cocked his crab apple head on one side and threw a threatening squint in the butcher’s direction. The doughy cranium above turned purple.
“How dare you, you insignificant runt of a dwarf!” Brasswick started to search for something out of sight. No doubt something to throw and used in the castration of pigs.
“Keep your nose out of my business, y’ fat carcass of lard!” The normally mild mannered Charlie Preston rattled the dustbin from side to side. Its rim sent shrapnels of sound ricocheting off the yard walls. “Just ’cos you’ve got a cow’s tit for an ’ead!”
Enough was enough. Brasswick raised an ornamental saddleback above his bristled scalp. It was a large object, heavy enough to require both hands. If Brasswick had been a Warner Brothers’ cartoon, small geysers of steam would have been blowing out of his ears at this point, accompanied by the sound of a factory whistle.
At that moment the argument was brought to a halt. Gunshots echoed through the Corn Doll’s kitchen door. The noise shattered on the brick walls with an almost electronic reverberation, then faded amongst the other buildings of the terrace.
Albert Brasswick stared open-mouthed towards the Preston’s back door, until the weight of the saddleback became too much to bear. He lowered it, short stabs of pain reaching his elbows.
Charlie Preston shook his head, checked his torso for bullet holes and then blinked like a marmoset. “What was...?” His voice trailed off. “Oh my god!”
He brought his fingers up to his wrinkled lips, the dustbin toppling with a crash to the cobbles. “Dorothy?”
Greyminster canal, or ‘the cut’ as it was locally known, wound towards the shadowy fells resembling some sort of unearthly grey-green reptile. At this early hour it was protected by a blanket of mist that seemed to amplify sound. Sticklebacks broke the murky green membrane, seeming much closer than they actually were.
The oak trees along the towpath receded into watercolour stencils airbrushed flat against the fog. Between the reeds there rose the pungent smell of dewy earth and the stench of blood.
Inspector Nesbit prodded the ruptured skull. Not with his finger, you understand. That would have been unhygienic. Instead he used the mouthpiece of his trusted oxford. He’d never actually bought any tobacco for his battered pipe. Nonetheless it was always there, peering out from behind the doctor’s letter in the top pocket of his mackintosh like some sort of periscope. He considered it an invaluable piece of homicide equipment. Most items around the police station had been prodded at sometime or other.
“Ah...mornin’ Clewes.” Nesbit stood up, his knees creaking in the process. “Not too early for you is it?”
“Sorry Sir.” Nesbit turned to be confronted by his subordinate. “No buses. Had to walk. Er, watch out, Sir...”
Nesbit paused, his mouth open slightly. He’d almost stuffed the pipe into his mouth. His jaw slammed shut. He stuffed the pipe into his pocket and nibbled his white moustache hairs instead.
“Yes, well...” he said at length. “There wasn’t much need to rush any’ow, Clewes. As it turned out...”
His voice had a rasp of misery about it. Reminiscent of a certain morose TV detective, Malcolm often thought. Although not so much a John Thaw as a Johnny Morris.
“Wasn’t there, Sir?” Clewes studied the body on the grass, tentatively lowering himself onto one damp knee. “I thought you said there’d been a murder.”
He opened the jacket and rummaged around beneath the lapel. Then he pulled something from inside with a grimace.
“Suicide Clewes.” Nesbit thrust his hairy hands into his pockets. He had the thick, broad fingers of a layman. Something that had always made him self-conscious that.
Clewes opened the wallet and arched an eyebrow.
“Or an accident,” Nesbit grimly continued. “Nothin’ suspicious any’ow. Just some farmer several genes short of Neanderthal man. No doubt we’ll discover who he was with the post-mortem.”
“Looks like murder to me, Sir.” Struggling back onto his feet, Clewes studied the wallet whilst Nesbit breathed moodily down his nose.
“This is Greyminster, Clewes. North Lancashire! Not bloody Oxford.” He blew a spout of hot breath up one side of his nose intended to dislodge a weary midge. “There might be five or six murders a week down that end of the country. But unless Miss Marple’s come up ’ere to visit ’er North Country cousin, I some’ow doubt this is anythin’ other than simple ‘Misadventure’.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be too certain, Sir...” Malcolm didn’t want to challenge Nesbit’s authority, regardless of how wrong it might be. But he felt this was important.
“’Ow long ’ave you been workin’ for Greyminster CID Clewes?”
“About four months, Sir.”
“And in all that time, ’ow many murders ’as there been in Greyminster?”
“Well, there was Mrs Robinson over Devil’s Crevice way, who’s chicken got savaged by a dog...” Even Malcolm knew this was clutching at straws. Since joining the division they had spent most of their working hours playing dominoes in the Thatch.
“None, Sergeant!” Smugness settled on Nesbit’s craggy brow. “Let me tell y’ somethin’ Clewes.” He thought about that statement. “Malcolm,” he corrected himself. A correction that, ironically, Malcolm felt uncomfortable with. “I’ve bin workin’ ’ere for thirty-odd year. And I’ve never ’ad a murder case yet...”
Malcolm pulled himself up to his full, impressive height. “Where’s the shot gun?”
Nesbit blinked, a puzzled frown performing acrobatics with his forehead.
“Sir...” Malcolm added.
“’Ee probably tossed it in the cut when he’d finished with it!”
“So this man, Sir, blew the top of his own head off and then, somehow, found time to throw the weapon in the canal?”
There followed an awkward silence. Inspector Nesbit began to fumble with the bowl of his pipe, unsure whether to remove it from his pocket or not.
“And presumably, Sir, he then decided to throw the top of his head in after it...”
Four eyes rapidly searched the moist ground for bits of skull. There were none to be found.
“Yes, well…they’re a funny bunch farmers!” Nesbit’s voice now had an edge of uncertainty about it.
“He wasn’t a farmer, Sir.” The wallet was thrust beneath Nesbit’s crimson nose. He crossed his eyes and studied the black and white photograph. Beneath it, in tiny letters, was the officious title, ‘Donald Godswick. Solicitor and Insurance Broker.’ There followed an uneasy silence broken only by a throaty cough.
“He was a highly respected member of the community, Sir,” Clewes went on. “Not exactly the sort of person who’d go round removing the back of his head for a laugh...”
“Now listen to me Clewes!” Nesbit’s finger jabbed the air in front of Malcolm’s chest. “I’m the boss around ’ere, so don’t go tellin’ me...”
“Malcolm!” The voice shattered the stillness and brought the ticking off to a brusque halt. Both police officers looked up at the three grey forms emerging from the fog. Malcolm visibly winced.
“Mother!” He took a step forwards. “What are you doing here? Why isn’t Timothy at school yet?”
Sergeant Partridge’s corpulent face appeared behind Mrs Clewes. His cheeks were swollen from the sprint and an expression of ‘What could I do?’ was written across his clumsy features. Inspector Nesbit brought up his right arm to prevent the old dear from stumbling over the corpse.
“I’ve brought your flask Malcolm.”
Malcolm’s cheeks burned as he was pre
sented with the green flask with its Snoopy logo.
“And your gloves...” He reluctantly accepted the hand-knitted gloves from the considerate old lady. “We don’t want you gettin’ frost bite in your fingers now, do we?”
He stepped in front of the murder scene, ensuring that his muscular legs blocked Timothy’s view.
“’Ow’s the murder comin’ along? Found out who’s done it yet?” It was natural for a doting mother to share her only son’s excitement.
“There wasn’t a murder, Mrs Clewes. That’s just...” Nesbit formed the following word very carefully, “Just...Malcolm’s...overactive imagination.”
He smiled. The sort of smile that was usually accompanied by two fingers. Malcolm ground his back teeth together angrily.
“Now Jack...” Nesbit attempted to wrap his arm about Sergeant Partridge’s shoulders. A difficult task considering the size difference between them. “I want you t’ wrap this lot up with so much tape the ’Ouse’old Cavalry couldn’t get through. Keep the plebs out for us, will y’? Until the forensic lads turn up.”
He turned to Malcolm who was trying to hide the flask behind his back. “And Malcolm, when you’ve finished tellin’ your mother about all the murders round Greyminster, p’raps we could go for a pint down the Thatch...”
With which derisive comment he turned and, narrowly missing a cow pat, swung his mackintosh towards the road.
Jack Partridge watched the figure submerge into the fog. Then he turned to Malcolm wearing a look of understanding. “He’s not goin’ to get a pint at ’alf past eight in the mornin’. But bein’ a great detective, I’m sure he’s aware of that!”
On a February morning such as this dawn never managed to get going properly. But a sufficient quantity of daylight had filtered through the clouds with enough gloomy reluctance to create the odd shadow in an otherwise desultory world.
From the doorway of number 41 Sword Street loomed a pair of yellow eyes. Eyes that blinked with an almost antediluvian wisdom. They watched as an overweight gentleman sprinted past across the cobblestones. An overweight gentleman dressed bizarrely in a clown suit.