Amanda and Felix both flinched and turned to look at the door at the opposite end of the landing.
‘Somebody’s in there,’ whispered Amanda.
Felix put down his briefcase and crossed the landing in three strides. He stood for a long moment, then took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
In the front bedroom an old man was leaning out of a bed by the window, trying to reach a walking stick that had apparently fallen on to the wooden floor. He propped himself on an elbow, glared at Felix and grumbled:
‘You took your time!’
Felix froze.
Took in the gaunt, grey face, the frail body, the bedside table filled with pills . . .
Then he stepped backwards out of the room and pulled the door smartly shut behind him.
Amanda was at his shoulder now. ‘What is it?’ she said, but Felix couldn’t speak because all the words he’d ever known seemed to be whirling around inside his skull like bingo balls.
The ones he needed finally dropped slowly from his numb lips.
‘We killed the wrong man.’
The Wrong Man
‘What?’
Felix cleared his throat. ‘We killed the wrong man.’
‘What?’ she said again, and Felix was going to repeat his line, but then realized they could be here all day saying the same two things to each other and still not quite grasp what had happened, or how. Only one thing was clear: accidentally assisting a man who had planned to die by providing him with an instrument of death was a technicality.
Doing the same thing to a man who had not planned to die was something else entirely.
‘The wrong man ?’ Amanda said, not moving. ‘What do you—?’
‘Ssh!’ He glanced at the bedroom door.
‘But how do you know ?’ she whispered.
And he hissed back, ‘Because the man in this room is expecting us.’
Amanda gasped at the closed door, and then turned to stare down the landing at the inanimate mound that had been a living human being just minutes before.
‘But how—?’
‘I don’t know.’
Amanda stared at the front bedroom door again, as if she could see through it, and through the wall beyond that, and into the road outside.
‘Shit!’ she said, and slow horror dawned on her face.
And then he heard it too.
Sirens.
For one long, thrumming moment Felix might have panicked.
Then he said, ‘You have to go.’
‘Go?’
‘Yes. You have to go,’ he said again, more urgently this time. ‘Just go home and forget this ever happened.’
‘What?’ she stammered. ‘But what will you do?’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of everything.’
Felix had no idea what everything might entail. All he knew for sure was that Amanda was twenty-three with her whole life ahead of her, while he was seventy-five, with most of his behind him. Mathematically, it made no sense for her to be involved.
‘Hurry now,’ he said, but she was looking at him, open-mouthed, wide-eyed. Dazed. Felix put a hand on her back and propelled her firmly along the landing and down the first few stairs.
She grabbed the banister and turned to look up at him. ‘But what about you?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘You just go.’
‘OK.’ Her eyes swam with tears. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and then she hurried on down the stairs and out of the front door.
The dog had come into the hallway to watch her leave – and now looked up at Felix, waiting for his next move.
But Felix didn’t have a next move.
He looked again at the body of the man he’d believed to be Charles Cann. Then he walked slowly downstairs and sat on the sofa.
This was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
As soon as he had the thought, Felix rejected it, but, an instant after that, he knew it was true.
Jamie’s death had been tragic. Heart-crushing. Unbearable.
But it had not been his fault.
This was.
Amanda had handed the man the mask, but it was his fault. He’d assumed she would react the way Chris would have reacted. But it was her first time and the man was dying badly, and she’d panicked. In hindsight, it all seemed very obvious that something had been likely to go wrong. He should have planned for disaster, taken charge, sat on that side of the bed, warned her more forcefully – done something – before the point of no return . . .
Numbness crept slowly over Felix Pink. A merciful detachment. His old life was over, and now he was just going to sit here and wait for someone to come along and show him the way his new life was going to be.
He took off his watch. It was nothing special – just a quartz Sekonda he’d been given when he’d retired, and probably worth a pound for every year he’d given to the company – but there was no reason to have it scratched by handcuffs. He zipped it safely into the inside pocket of the beige jacket. There were two of those – one on each side – and they were very useful. He kept his reading glasses in the other one.
The sirens were closer now. Soon they would be here. Felix wondered what being arrested was going to be like. What they would say. What he would say. Would they have guns? Should he put his hands up? Like a cowboy? He hoped they wouldn’t make him lie on the floor to cuff him. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to get up again, because of his hip. He had been on the list for a replacement for over a year now and it wasn’t getting any better . . . Although he supposed that the policemen would just help him up if he got into difficulties, so maybe he shouldn’t worry about that aspect of his imminent arrest.
The sirens wailed.
Felix straightened his tie with a trembling hand, and cleared his throat in preparation. He brushed at the mascara smudge on his beige jacket, but it didn’t come off. He tutted and wondered if it ever would. It would be ironic if he had to throw the jacket away now, all of a sudden, and before he had identified a worthy replacement. Although where he was going he probably wouldn’t need the beige jacket for quite some time. Or any jacket . . .
The little black-and-tan dog jumped up beside him on the sofa, then sat and scratched its ear with a noise like a flag in a high wind. Felix wondered if it had fleas. He stood up quickly and with a wince, and brushed his trousers down briskly. He didn’t want to give Mabel fleas—
Then he froze.
Mabel!
Who would let Mabel out if he didn’t go home? Worse, who would feed her? Nobody knew he wasn’t there. Nobody knew he wouldn’t be there. And even if they did know, nobody had a key. By the time word filtered back to his neighbours that he had been arrested, Mabel could be dead!
The sirens groaned and faded. Through the window he saw the blue flashing lights swing into the road.
Coming for him.
But he couldn’t be arrested. Not yet. Not until he had made sure Mabel would be all right.
With a twinge in his hip that made him suck air through his teeth, Felix hurried through the house and out of the back door. The little black-and-tan dog rushed out with him, barking and excited to be out.
‘No!’ Felix said. ‘Inside!’
He limped back to the door and waved an urgent hand at the dog, which was sniffing around some rusty paint tins.
‘Here, boy! Here, boy!’
The dog cocked its leg on an old wooden ladder.
Felix heard the car doors slam. He picked up the dog, and deposited it unceremoniously inside the house, then closed the back door and lurched down the garden as fast as he could go.
The garden was so dense with brambles that it was only after he’d rounded an old greengage tree at the end of it that he realized it was completely enclosed by a solid wood-panel fence, silver with age, as tall a
s he was – and without a gate.
Felix put his hands on the top of the planking, clambered awkwardly on to an old plastic garden chair, and peered over the fence to the safety of the fields beyond. Even on the chair, the fence was armpit-high. He’d never be able to climb it. Not even for Mabel.
His bid for escape was over.
Felix looked back up the garden. The house was almost hidden from his view by brambles and the tree, which leaned drunkenly between him and the back door. But through the branches he could see the hi-vis jacket of a policeman, checking the back of the house. He hadn’t seen him. Yet. Felix glanced skywards and thanked Margaret for dressing him in beige. But it would only buy him seconds. Once the policeman turned and came down the garden, there was only so much a beige jacket could do to hide a full-grown man against a garden fence, and then he would be captured.
Felix turned and shook the top of the fence as if he could pull or push the whole thing over.
And that’s exactly what he did.
With a rotten crack, an entire six-foot panel of fence flopped flimsily towards him like a big wooden blanket.
For one surprised moment, Felix was the only thing holding it up. Then he lowered the panel quietly to the ground, and hobbled over it to freedom.
It wasn’t until he got off the bus in Barnstaple that Felix Pink realized that, in all the confusion, he had left his briefcase on the landing.
The Worst Job Ever
Calvin Bridge stared at the body in the bed and wondered for the umpteenth time why he’d become a policeman.
He’d always loved the idea of being a police officer. Something about being good, when everybody around him was bad. But being a cop had turned out to be about more than just being good. There was also a lot of paperwork involved. And a lot of getting up early and going to bed late. And thinking ! There was an awful lot of thinking. Calvin wasn’t stupid, but constantly thinking about things – like crime, for instance – required a lot more effort than he’d imagined it would. Not that he was lazy. Far from it! He jogged five miles three times a week, and once had even been persuaded by his girlfriend, Shirley, to go into plainclothes and become a detective. Calvin had gone along with it because going along with things was in his nature, and because his uniform did take a lot of fiddly ironing. But after a single horrible murder case, he had been relieved to give up detective work.
And Shirley.
He didn’t regret either decision. He could do what he liked at home, and at work he was happy bumping along the bottom of burglary and public-disorder offences and shoplifting – most of which were committed by a hard core of about a dozen addicts and alcoholics, or by Tovey Chanter, who was neither, but who outstripped both in his sheer enthusiasm for wrongdoing. Anyway, the point being that there was rarely a crime committed in Bideford for which Calvin Bridge didn’t have a good idea of where to start.
And now . . . this.
They’d been called to a possible break-in – his favourite kind of case, because only occasionally did a possible break-in turn into an actual break-in, but it still gave him a chance to switch on the old blues and twos and put his foot down. And even when it did turn out to be an actual break-in there was rarely anyone still in the house to have to deal with by the time they arrived. Not unless the perp was on drugs and too dazed to run.
Anyway, this was an actual break-in. And then had quickly turned into something much more sinister . . .
His colleague, Jackie Braddick, had banged hard on the front door, while he’d snuck round the back in case anybody was dangling out of a kitchen window.
Nobody was.
Calvin had tried the back door and it had opened, and a little black-and-tan dog had squeezed between his shins and trotted out into the overgrown garden.
Calvin had called, Hello? but nobody had answered. However, the back door being unlocked seemed suspicious, so he’d drawn his baton and walked quietly through the house. Downstairs first – the kitchen with dirty dishes in the sink, and the dining room, where a hole in a window breathed on the curtains.
Calvin had noted there was no glass on the floor, which meant it wasn’t a recent break, so had moved on. He’d peered into the living room, with the coffee table piled high with crap that didn’t belong there, and then he’d opened the front door for Jackie and followed her upstairs . . .
And now here he was, standing guard over a corpse while Jackie was in the front bedroom, comforting a confused old man who kept saying that he was the one who ought to be dead. Said he’d woken and seen a tall, white-haired figure at his door, like the angel of death, who’d disappeared without a sound – and taken the wrong soul with him.
It’s all my fault, he kept saying. It’s all my fault.
Calvin sighed. Worst job ever . . .
It was a private game he and Jackie played to mitigate the daily assault on their persons and senses. A stoic attempt to turn a no-win situation into a dubious kind of victory for one of them, at least. Like when Jackie had had a tooth knocked through her lip by a runaway donkey. And a drunk in a minidress had once shat on Calvin’s shoe. Both previous winners. The loser bought the first drink the next time they went to the pub. Except that today they were both playing the same game, so unless one of them had to deal with bodily fluids or violence between now and the end of their shift, today would be a tie.
Still, plainclothes were on their way and, once they got here, Calvin could stop thinking about the dead man in the bed. He wasn’t crazy about corpses, so he looked forward to getting back in the car and driving to Bideford police station and having a cuppa with the lads and maybe a bit of Sergeant Coral’s wife’s terrible fruit cake. But until then he had to think about things here. The tip-off and the unlocked back door and the yappy little dog and the briefcase on the landing, and the poor old boy in the front room and the corpse in this one, presided over by a big black oxygen cylinder on a trolley that stood solemn guard beside the bed. It was hard to see how they all fitted together, but even his limited experience told him that it was inevitable that somehow they would. That at some point all the dots would join up to form a recognizable picture of what had happened here and why.
He heard the front door open, and peered over the banister to call, ‘Up here!’
Calvin hoped it wouldn’t be DCI Kirsty King. They’d worked together during his short spell in plainclothes, but once had been enough for Calvin – the case had gained her a commendation and him a nervous tic. Calvin had appreciated DCI King’s down-to-earth thinking and inclusive approach. Even though he’d been young and inexperienced, she had treated him like a man who’d had something to contribute. And to his surprise Calvin had contributed! He’d exceeded both their expectations, and she’d told him she felt he had a real future in plainclothes. And then, when it was all over, he’d proved her wrong by immediately requesting a return to uniform. She’d never said so, but Calvin knew he’d disappointed her.
But luckily the detective wasn’t King. It was an officer he didn’t know – a young bloke with neat hair and a corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches. He looked like a scientist.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’
As he walked up the stairs, Calvin brought him up to speed. ‘PC Bridge, sir. Responded to a call about two possible intruders. Male and female. No sign of forced entry. The tip said two suspects went in the front door. Back door was unlocked. And we’ve got a body in this room and a male resident in the front bedroom.’
‘What?’ said the detective, glancing over his shoulder towards the front room.
‘Old man, sir. Very confused. Says he should be dead. I think he’s a bit . . . you know . . .’ Calvin’s finger circled his temple to officially diagnose the old man as nuts.
Still the detective stared at him blankly.
‘A body?’ he said. ‘Whose body?’ The young man’s eyes darted past Calvin to the bed and he s
aid, ‘Dad?’
Oh shit.
Calvin realized his mistake with a mixture of horror and defensive irritation. Why hadn’t plainclothes got here sooner? What was taking them so long? Now he’d screwed up big time and it was all their fault!
Right on cue, he heard the front door open and DCI Kirsty King call, Hello.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Calvin told the panicky boffin. ‘Would you mind coming downstairs with me?’
‘But I have to . . . Can I just?’
He tried to peer around Calvin, who spread his arms. ‘Just for a minute, please, sir.’
The man hesitated, then turned, and Calvin followed him.
Not a Crime
Reggie Cann wasn’t a detective or a scientist. He turned out to be something in computers. Calvin guessed that made the leather elbow patches ironic. Now he sat on the sofa, with a cup of tea Calvin had made, shaking a little. ‘I can’t get my head round it,’ he kept saying. ‘I only came home for lunch.’
Kirsty King nodded, her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward sympathetically in the easy chair. DC Pete Shapland perched a little more awkwardly in a less-easy chair and took notes. Calvin watched from the hallway while overhead were the creaking floor and muffled voice of his partner, Jackie Braddick, keeping the old man calm. He’d kept trying to get out of bed, but although she was young, Jackie had the cheerful smile and iron will of an NHS nurse, and so far the old chap had been compliant with her, and her alone.
‘Where do you work, Reggie?’
‘CompuWiz. In Bideford.’
‘I know it,’ said King. ‘Up in Old Town, right?’
He nodded.
‘What time did you leave this morning?’
Reggie shrugged. ‘About eight fifteen. It’s not far.’
DCI King started. ‘OK, we had a call mid-morning saying there were intruders in your house.’
‘Intruders?’
‘A man and a woman.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t know who that could be.’
Exit Page 4