by Brian Hughes
He ground to a halt in a puddle, the barrels of his smouldering shotgun spraying sparks across the road. Recognise this character yet? You should do. He was just responsible for the murder of a Scottish solicitor.
Then a creak! And an almost abstract, bass groan. The sort of noise that an unoiled wardrobe door would make. The overweight man doubled up, various expressions rearranging his face whilst some unseen force thumped out his features from the inside. His appearance altered limb by limb, until the shotgun, the dungarees and the stubble had all gone. And in their place stood an attractive woman.
She cast a wary glance around, straightened her skirts and set off towards the gates of the park. Moments later the yellow eyes in the doorway retreated. Then a tall, bent over character emerged onto the street. An old man dressed in a flapping coat that had clearly seen better days. His peculiar, almost feline, eyes watched as the woman disappeared into the mist. Then he checked cautiously about himself.
Please bear with me. What happened next is difficult to describe. The old man appeared to shrink. Only in width. Similar to a paper cut out being turned with its narrow edge towards the eye. In a needle-like explosion he disappeared completely whilst behind him the Corn Doll Cafe erupted into life. A violent profusion of shouts and screams.
Mr Brasswick and Mr Preston were united at last before the corpse of Charlie’s wife.
Chapter Three: The Creeping Man
“Mornin’ Reg.” Superintendent Hodges peered round the door and watched Nesbit drag the cold from outside down the corridor.
Nesbit shook the icy morning from his mackintosh and muttered a disgruntled, “Mornin’ Sir.”
“When you’ve got a moment, Reg…”
The shaking stopped, a snarl appearing on Nesbit’s face. It wasn’t that he didn’t have time for his superior. Far from it. As a rule there was so little crime around Greyminster the two of them had spent many an enjoyable afternoon in the Old Bull and Duck. Rainy afternoons, drowning their sorrows in the sort of real ale that had curls of bark floating in it.
No…it was just that Reginald Nesbit was a great believer in age before brains. And being almost ten years his superintendent’s senior he felt himself more deserving of the title ‘Sir.’ Not to mention the pay packet that accompanied it.
Several moments later Nesbit clattered into the office. Already Hodges was back behind his desk, scrawling his unrecognisable signature across some paperwork. Despite his massive bulk Hodges apparently had the ability to move faster than sound.
“Come on in, Reg.” His eyes were fixed on his work. Rather ignorant really, Nesbit thought, but part of that whole ‘Authority’ thing again.
Nesbit clumped into the tiny vault and felt the words “Bollocking,” and “Now I’m in for a good...” on the tip of his tongue. The atmosphere was as stale as an old sock cupboard in a Camembert cheese factory.
“Take a seat...” The pen nib continued to scratch.
Nesbit pulled the uncomfortable chair from beneath the desk carefully. Unfortunately not carefully enough to prevent it making a loud rasp across the boards. Everything about this damned office had been designed to generate unease. The authoritative windows that created a silhouette out of Hodges so that he resembled a spiked sea mine poised to detonate. The plush leather chair that raised him above everyone else like some Shakespearean throne.
Nesbit settled into his own seat with a cheerless wriggle, every squeak from his mackintosh being amplified by the walls.
“Now then, Reg…” At last the pen went down. Hodges took a deep breath that almost tore the wall-map from its moorings. “Apparently there’s been a murder in Greyminster?”
He arched one pursy caterpillar of an eyebrow. “Suicide, Sir...” Even as the correction was leaving his lips, Nesbit realised he’d said the wrong thing. “It’s all pretty straight forward. Just a suicide, nothing to get all ’ot and bothered about...”
“Right...I see...” Hodges steepled his hands and probed his bulbous lips. “So you’ve got it all under control have you, Reg? Only...”
His voice trailed off into the lull before the storm. “...I’ve just got wind of another report.” He petulantly fumbled with his files. “Old Mrs Preston of Sword Street. Another ‘suicide’ apparently.” The word ‘suicide’ had a ring of acerbity about it. “Identical to the first in almost every respect...but one...”
“And…what would that be, Sir?”
“Particularly cunning this one, Reg.” Hodges leaned onto his elbows and tugged his portly chin. Nesbit backed away, the front legs of his chair lifting slightly off the floorboards. “Y’ see, after the old woman had blown her head off with a shot gun, she somehow managed to carry the top of it halfway down Sword Street, drop it in a puddle outside Bramwell’s Bakers, and then return the headless body to where the suicide first took place.”
Hodges sat back, making a cat’s cradle from his fingers. “What do you think of that, Inspector?”
The words stumbled over each other in the rush out of Nesbit’s mouth. None succeeded in making it further than a grunt.
“Now listen to me, Reg! Don’t piss me off! We’ve been friends for too long for that sort of nonsense! Now, Clewes is a good man. You’d do well to look after him. He’s in for promotion this month and if y’ lose him you’ll be stuck!”
Slowly the air cleared. Hodges continued in a slightly less menacing tone. “I’ve got Scotland Yard breathing down my neck on this one, Reg. For the first time as long as I can bloody remember there’s been a murder in Greyminster. That’s my patch! So get up off your arse and earn your keep! Or take an early retirement. Either way I’m not fussy. And treat Clewes with a bit more respect...”
His eyes glazed. “I ’ad ’is mother in ’ere this mornin’. It doesn’t look good for the force that sort of thing. I’m too old to be replaced by some upstart from London for not doin’ me job properly.”
There followed a few introspective moments. “Sort this one out quickly and with the minimum of fuss. And be subtle! I’ve got your transfer in me desk here. Don’t force me to take it out and give it to y’! Now get out of my office and get some work done!”
With which words he burrowed his nose back into his files.
Here is Greyminster University, its ancient walls bandaged with poison ivy. Green braces of the stuff hold the stones together, the bare patches between discoloured with soot. There’s something uniquely dark and gritty about northern universities.
Not that the students care. Students will always be students no matter what. Educated privileged young men and women attempting to set the world to rights by seeing who can drink the most beer without ending up in hospital.
There they go now look, with their long hair and goatee beards and their dufflecoats and striped scarves. Brightly coloured ants, their heads filled with radical ideas that are older than the buildings themselves.
Look around these rooms of learning, if you would. Below us the campus, stretching its roots to the gasworks on Broad Street. To the west, the terraced houses bought up for the understaff. Little rows of factory accommodations each with a banner of smoke from its chimney. And amongst the poplars sit the historical halls that constitute the Masters’ Quarters. Dovecote Hall was one such building. A bulging Elizabethan affair with creaky old timbers that had warped beneath the weight of four hundred winters.
The gentleman in the long coat whom we previously met down Sword Street approached the front door. Then he turned, becoming a flattened, two dimensional creature that appeared to have been run over by a steam roller. He slid his scribbled line of a body through the door. Let’s follow him inside.
Professor Oliver Post, head of Mathematics, fumbled for his glass of sherry with fingers that resembled saveloys stapled at the joints. The orange glow from the hearth sparkled in the glass as he carefully lifted it to his lips. The glass shattered, leaving his pursed mouth resembling a pig’s bottom.
For a moment he sat there motionless, clutching the jagged s
tem, before accepting his lot and lowering it.
Professor Post was unashamedly fat. He threw heart disease into the wind. The specially constructed chair that he engulfed had an infrastructure of steel girders. Until several months ago Professor Post had just been ordinarily overweight, the usual middle-aged spread being the only indication of things to come. Now, however, he hadn’t seen his feet since his last visit to the lecture hall when he’d left a trail of footprints in the stone floor.
With his elephantine hands Post tugged his handkerchief from his pocket, his eyes growing moist. The handkerchief tore beneath his fingers. He let out a groan of despair.
The air shuddered before him. What had at first looked like a cobweb expanded into the figure of the yellow-eyed man, still supporting himself on his walking stick. A grin tore Post’s face apart, indicating that he was pleased to greet this newcomer.
“Jarvis! Good to see you old man...” He tried to stand up, realising too late that it was impossible. Several new cracks ran from the base of his chair.
“What news? What news?” he continued, undaunted.
Jarvis pulled a grimace and leaned against the mantelpiece. “Not good. Not good at all...” His voice was hardly perceptible. “It has begun Post, old friend. And there’s little we can do to stop it.”
He prodded inattentively at the glowing coals with his stick. Then he turned slightly, seeming to narrow. Post’s expression dropped.
“Are you certain, Jarvis? We need the man back here desperately.” He twisted his fingers together. “If my mass keeps on increasing I’ll soon start collapsing in upon myself! I wouldn’t mind so much if this sort of behaviour was even feasible. But I’m reacting in the manner suggested by an ill-informed student whose thesis I had the dubious honour to fail several months ago.”
“Bah!” Dr. Jarvis waved one hand in a gesture of dismissal. “The man’s a murderer, Post! I have witnessed it myself. Two innocent victims this morning.”
“Oh dear...” Post swallowed his grief, an unpleasant sight, his neck bulging in the manner of a toad’s. “We must stop him. We must get him back here. He’s the only one left who could possibly help us now...”
Post’s stomach had been crying out for food throughout this exchange. He grabbed the bell-pull by his chair. With a swift yank it brought down part of the ceiling, whilst in the scullery the brass bell exploded.
He coughed through the dust. “I’m sorry Jarvis, I wasn’t thinking. My God, this really can’t go on!”
Doctor Jarvis turned as the door opened. An almost spherical woman marched into the room. Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, her bare arms powdered with flour.
“Ah, yes, now...Mrs Baton...” With his giant palm Professor Post wafted the debris from his face. A few wires hanging from the ceiling remained inexplicably drawn towards him. “Could you fetch me something to eat. A leg of lamb would do nicely, I think. Don’t bother to cook it. I’m too hungry to wait.”
The little woman stood perfectly still for a short time, her fists on her hips and her screwed-up face frowning. Then she cocked her head on one side and said in a high pitched voice, “Why don’t I just ’erd up the ’ole flock and let you get on with it?”
“GET OUT!”
Mrs Baton swung, startled. Odd that. She hadn’t noticed Doctor Jarvis standing there a moment before. He had a nasty habit these days of turning up unannounced.
“You infuriating woman! You plebionic underling.”
“Oooh...” Mrs Baton thrust her nose into the air as if avoiding a bad smell. “’Oo rattled your cage then? Beggin’ your pardon, I’m sure.”
“Get Out!” Jarvis raised his stick above his head. “Your impertinence makes me sick, woman! Now take your foul, swollen arms and your rural dialect and sod off! Before I crush your rotten skull beneath my heel!”
“No need t’ be rude.”
But Jarvis had paused, his stick held motionless in the air. “Where’s Henry?” He narrowed one eye, casting a glance at Post who sat up and looked confused.
“He’s coming to pieces again, Jarvis.” The professor wrung his hands. “Why only this morning he laughed his face off the front of his head and into the skirting board.”
His voice dropped and as the following sentence left his mouth it rose in volume. “We must do something, Jarvis! We must do something now! All will be lost if we don’t act fast. This could be the end of EVERYTHING!”
10:35 a.m. Squalls of rain burst against the windows of Godswick, Fumble and Stotter. Inside the claustrophobic room the shiny mouthpiece prodded the spine of a legal folder. Spirals of dust shot into the air resembling an eruption of puffball spores.
Murder investigations had to start somewhere. “Always assuming it is murder,” Nesbit thought. But where to start? On the one hand there was the judicial background of the corpse. On the other, there was the Corn Doll Cafe where Dorothy Preston had recently met her end. Decisions, decisions. Nesbit studied the options until it dawned on him that the solicitor’s was closer to the Old Bull and Duck. Now his trusted oxford had just about prodded every damn thing in the building.
Despite his extensive training, which involved reading from cover to cover ‘True Detective Magazine’ every month, nothing had prepared him for the empty office. A chamber devoid of obvious clues, only the brain smeared up the wall suggesting that a murder had ever taken place here.
“So, where’s the tell-tale book o’ matches?” he thought. “With the secretly coded names of the other victims on the back?” He closed in on a half-chewed cigar and gave it a poke. “Where are the clocks that, in ’is death throes the victim cunningly rearranged into semaphore by moving the ’ands, thus spelling out the name of the culprit?”
The pipe nudged up against something soft. Remarkably soft. He prodded it again and the object squeaked.
“This is Mavis, Sir. Mavis Baum…” said Clewes. “She used to work as a cleaner for Mr Godswick. Thought she might ’ave something important to bring to this investigation.”
Nesbit looked up into a pair of dark eyes. They were swollen to bursting point, reminding him of the blood hound he’d owned as a child. Mavis Baum was short and thin with the hint of an olive complexion. The sort of discoloration one might find on mouldy pork. She hung her head compliently, as though she’d spent her life in servitude to the most ignorant of masters. She was plainly dressed in a mock tweed skirt, loosely clasping her bony fingers together.
“Ah…right…good thinkin’ Clewes. Now then, Miss…?” Nesbit stuffed his pipe into his mouth and waited for the space to be filled.
“Baum, Sir,” said Mavis meekly.
“Bomb? Unusual name...tell me, Miss Bomb, did you actually witness the murder?” He rocked back at an angle, the mouthpiece rattling arrogantly round his teeth.
“No, sir. I was takin’ my daughter to the stables...” Mavis pushed her head down when she spoke, as though eye contact would result in a brutal beating. Nesbit suddenly understood what it must have been like to be a Shogun. “She always goes t’ the stables before school. To muck out the ’orses.”
There followed a pause. Mavis studied her shoes so intently the air seemed to cloud. At length the silence was broken by Nesbit.
“Clewes? For God’s sakes, man!”
He turned on his startled companion.
“What’s the point in showin’ me this...” He formed the uncomfortable word in his mouth. “This...‘Woman’... if she never actually saw owt? I might as well question the ’atstand!”
“Under normal circumstances I’d agree, Sir…however, I thought Miss Baum might be able to fill us in on a few details.”
“Details, Clewes? What sort of details? How much horse manure’s worth on the open market, do y’ mean?”
Nesbit snorted. It brought a circle of linseed oil to the rim of his pipe. “That’s why you’ll never make inspector, Clewes. Too much messin’ around with unrealistic rubbish!” By now the mouthpiece was nudging Malcolm’s nose. “What we need ’e
re Clewes, are…clues, Clewes.”
At this absurdity he brought his tirade to a standstill. Malcolm seized the opportunity. “Actually, Sir, I thought Miss Baum might want to elaborate on what she was telling me earlier. About the mysterious gentleman hangin’ around on the other side of the road yesterday afternoon.”
Nesbit made no rejoinder to this. Instead he simply re-inserted his pipe and allowed a whistle to escape through the empty bowl.
“Go ahead, Mavis…” Mavis felt a gentle nudge in the small of her back. “Tell the inspector what y’ witnessed…”
“Well…Sir…it was like this…”
It has to be said that listening to Mavis was similar to listening to the radio through a pillow. With his face screwed up, Nesbit leaned towards her and cocked his ear at an angle. “What?”
“There was this man and he was all sort o’ flat like with yellow eyes…and when he turned round ’ee wasn’t there any more…”
“Just a moment, Miss Bomb. I can’t ’ear a word you’re sayin’.” He straightened up, inserting his oxford into one ear and giving it a squeaky twist. An expression of misgiving rewrote his features using his mouth as the autograph. “I’m afraid that unlike your previous employer my ears are attached to the side of me ’ead and not me boots.”
Mavis swallowed, squared her shoulders and tried again. “There was this man, Sir, who was all flat and…”
This time the trilby lifted from Nesbit’s head. “Yes…yes…thank you…Miss Boom” His teeth clamped themselves about the pipe so that the following words had to navigate its nib. “Take ’er down to the station ’ouse Clewes and get ’er to make a formal statement. And while you’re at it, put out a call for any two-dimensional zombies or little green men shaped like potatoes…”
“Sir…this might be important.” But Clewes was fighting a losing battle for his superior’s attention. Nesbit was now watching the stocky man who had muscled between them. A man in a one-piece suit with rubber gloves who, on reaching the far wall, studied the crimson smear across the flock.