Non-Suspicious

by Ed Church

  For the first time, the Lumberjack fixed him with a full stare. There was something different behind his eyes, a new tempo to his voice when he spoke…

  ‘I couldn’t care less who that tough guy thinks he is. If he’s come through Goose Green. If he’s come through Wireless Ridge. If he’s marched into Stanley. Then I’ll respect him.’

  ‘You were in the Falklands?’ asked Brook.

  ‘Parachute regiment. And you could have put twice as much liquor in me last night. You could have poured meths down my throat. If I still had a pulse and I’d managed to lay one finger on that bully…’

  For the first time, he forgot his surroundings.

  ‘…I would have fucking killed him.’

  Chapter 17

  It was fair to say Marie might have reacted differently had the request come from anyone else. An overworked scenes of crime officer was no different to an overworked detective when it came to avoiding extra jobs. And there were plenty of ways to refuse some forensically compromised bottles from a sticky wheelie bin. But Brook could be a charming devil. It was why Marie now found herself sitting in the SOCO office of Grovebury police station with four neatly packaged non-alcoholic beer bottles, wondering how best to word the paperwork that would accompany them to the lab. Brook had gone out to fetch coffees and call Homicide again.

  The forensics officer gave up on the paperwork and allowed her mind to wander for a moment. In the ten years she had known Brook, he had probably tested her ‘no dating police officers’ rule more than anyone else. Okay, definitely rather than probably. She used to like the way he would turn up for work sporting whatever bumps, bruises and black eyes he had picked up playing rugby. Sometimes it was more serious. Slings. Crutches. But he always met her expressions of concern with a crinkly-eyed smile and a ‘You should see the other guy’.

  Marie knew a bit about rugby from the Irish side of her family, even if the Barbadian side were more interested in cricket. She knew, for example, that Brook had played flanker (he once described his role as ‘tackle anything that moves’) and that he had played to a decent level – a division or two beneath the pros despite the demands of policing. She suspected his love of the ‘social’ side of the game would have stopped him ever going any higher.

  Despite literally ruling herself out of dating him, Marie still had to confess to a touch of jealousy whenever Brook had a girlfriend. The relationships never seemed to last very long. Brook being on his own somehow seemed the natural way of things. An indivisible unit, like Ayers Rock or Big Ben. In any case, there was no point thinking about it too deeply now. Things had worked out well, she reminded herself. She was marrying Neil in a couple of months. And that was a good thing.

  She smiled as Brook re-appeared with two coffees and placed one in front of her before easing his big frame into an office chair. It creaked its objections.

  ‘Still one sugar?’ he asked.

  ‘Still one sugar,’ confirmed Marie in a gentle Irish accent. ‘So how did the call to Homicide go?’

  ‘Badly. As expected.’

  Brook had deliberately avoided asking to speak to DS Beckford, with whom he had fallen out in the churchyard. Instead he had run it by a different DS who answered the main phone number. He had no trouble recalling his withering conclusion:

  ‘Just so I’ve got this right. You’ve got an old dead bloke and a homeless drunk you’ve dismissed as a fantasist. Then you’ve watched some CCTV, decided some fella looks a bit dodgy, so you’ve returned to the drunk fantasist you dismissed earlier, and – lo and behold – he’s now given a perfect description of your guy on the CCTV. But he won’t give a statement. Look, do I even need to say what a defence brief would do to this? Not that it would ever reach court. Sorry, mate…’

  ‘So it’s still non-suspicious?’ asked Marie.

  ‘Yep. It’s a non-suspicious brutal murder. Clever, eh?’

  ‘That’s okay. We can work around this. Let’s just look at what we’ve got and have a think.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t bother about the bottle with half the label picked off. If our suspect drank three of these, then that’ll be the one that’s not from him.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘He wasn’t picking any labels on CCTV. That’ll be from someone’s bad date. I guarantee it.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re a dating guru now?’ laughed Marie.

  Even after ten years, Brook wasn’t sure which he liked more – the soft Irish accent, or the contrast between the green eyes and the flawless mocha skin.

  ‘Hey, I’m only a guru of bad dates,’ he replied. ‘That bottle has got awkward fidgeting written all over it. Either its owner moved on to hard liquor or they gave up and went home.’

  ‘Okay. That makes things twenty-five percent easier,’ said Marie, moving the bad date bottle to one side. ‘So, are we looking at fingerprints or DNA for these three?’

  ‘Not sure about fingerprints. You’ll have the member of staff who stocked the fridge, the barman that served him, the bad guy and then whoever collected the bottle. How about we just ask for DNA testing around the rims? I know it’s challengeable on its own. But if it provided a name that led to more evidence…’

  ‘You’re not wrong about it being challengeable,’ said Marie, turning again to the paperwork. ‘But… I can probably fudge it through.’

  ‘Great,’ said Brook, downing his coffee and pushing himself out of the creaking office chair. ‘And thanks. I owe you.’

  ‘You always owe me.’

  Chapter 18

  Brook left the police station via the back door and began the street-lit walk to Kings Cross and the tube journey home. It was over eight hours since he’d demolished the pancakes in Alfredo’s – definitely time to start considering the takeaway options on his route. A text from Jonboy interrupted the burger-versus-burrito dilemma:

  ‘Number One! Just heard about the balls-up with the Holloway Road footage of your dead bloke. That’s a bugger, isn’t it? Mainly as I won’t get my donuts now, but a little bit for messing up your investigation too. Anyway, there’s a few of us in tonight so I’m heading round to a kebab place, couple of doors down. Think one of their cameras reaches our front door here. Curious to see who was coming and going when your disc went walkabout. Also just fancy a kebab.’

  It was good to have a couple of allies.

  Soon the bright pedestrian plaza outside Kings Cross Station came into view – plenty of people out for a night on the town, putting their work worries behind them. Brook decided he needed to do the same. He knew just the place…

  London’s last ‘pound-in-a-pot’ strip bar was not going to be around for much longer. It was closing down, never to re-open – part of the grimy Kings Cross of the past rather than the shiny vision of the future. Brook couldn’t remember the last time he had been on the other side of its frosted glass windows but, whenever it was, he certainly hadn’t been this sober. He nodded at a towering, steroid-fuelled bouncer and headed straight to the bar to rectify that.

  Far from the high value notes that flew out of bankers’ wallets at other strip clubs, things were different here; the next dancer on stage passing among the punters with a pint glass into which the princely sum of one pound was duly expected and deposited. With around twenty people in tonight, no-one was making big bucks. Brook was well aware that the whole thing was not exactly edifying, but scruples and sobriety had a habit of disappearing at about the same rate. As he directed the barman towards a bottle of Budvar, a pretty brunette appeared at his shoulder.

  ‘You’re staying to watch me?’ asked the dancer. A black lacy top and short skirt covered a hint of curves. She was around 5’5” and well put together. Late 20s with an East European accent. Just around the corner, in the main room, one of her colleagues was receiving applause and whistles for her routine to a Shakira soundtrack.

  ‘I am,’ replied Brook, dropping a pound coin into the pint glass to complete the formalities. It joined a dozen others and a rogue Scottish pou
nd note. He looked up and noticed the dancer was still staring at him. Did she know him? The barman slapped the bottle down on the bar.

  ‘Four pounds, please, mate.’ Brook turned to pay and the brunette moved on. Appreciative applause and some indecipherable shouts signalled the end of the current dancer’s routine.

  The detective took his drink and moved from the small bar area to an adjacent room, scarcely any bigger. There was a raised stage at the back – the height difference between the two levels creating a baying, bear pit feel (one that the drunk punters seemed only too happy to embrace). Where the end of the main bar poked through to serve the larger room, he propped himself against it, settling in just as the brunette he’d spoken to appeared on stage.

  Brook didn’t recognise her chosen soundtrack. Something slower than Shakira anyway – more of a Burlesque feel. It had the strange effect of making the bear pit quieter with every item of clothing that came off, until it was in a concentrated silence. There was definitely a stage presence. And she was certainly very… athletic.

  At the same time, her repeated glances over to Brook were not going unnoticed – either by their recipient or others in the room, who flashed him a few ‘who the fuck is this guy?’ looks. Brook was still a little bemused by her interest in him. Still, as mysteries went, he would definitely take the one involving a naked dancer over the one involving a dead guy in a churchyard right now.

  After the concentrated silence, the routine came to an end to cheers and enthusiastic applause. Brook joined in as the dancer left the stage with a final glance his way. Some of the drunker occupants of the bear pit were looking his way too. He raised an eyebrow and gave them all his best ‘it happens’ expression before downing the remainder of his beer. All the same, he thought it might be prudent to head through to the other room to order his next one.

  Just as when he ordered his first drink, the brunette soon appeared at his shoulder. The lacy top and short skirt were back on, but there was no pint glass of pound coins in her hand this time. Instead she pulled up a bar stool and sat down next to Brook, her elbow nudging him and a foot brushing the back of his knees as she adjusted her position. He refused to hurry a long, lazy swig before looking the stripper’s way.

  ‘Nice routine,’ he said.

  The comment was met with a smile but no immediate reply. Instead his new companion leaned in conspiratorially, sliding her elbows along the bar and tilting her head coquettishly.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be out arresting people, officer?’

  Never what a policeman wants to hear in a strip bar.

  ‘Even superheroes need time off,’ replied Brook, before heading back to his previous spot and dropping a pound into the pint glass of a passing blonde. Purely in terms of getting fleeced for extra money, he would have been suspicious of any stripper flirting with him. But one who mentioned his job activated a whole different set of alarm bells. He was beginning to regret staying for a second drink.

  Glancing back, he saw that the brunette had followed him, now clutching a beer of her own. Whatever she was after, she was determined. After a few seconds, a new soundtrack kicked in and the blonde took to the stage, her chosen music much faster than the swingy number that had preceded it.

  Brook felt a tap on his elbow as the bear pit whistled at a bra flying through the air. He only half turned, keeping one eye on the action, unwilling to fully engage.

  ‘I’m better than her,’ said the brunette.

  ‘At what?’ said Brook, with a show of indifference.

  Undeterred, she leaned in close enough that her breath was on his ear.

  ‘So, if you’re a superhero, what’s your super power?’

  Brook kept his eyes on the stage.

  ‘Normally, I’d say X-ray vision. But you don’t really need it in this place.’

  No reply.

  After several seconds, his curiosity got the better of him. He turned to see that the brunette was now looking behind the bar, an anxious expression on her face.

  The detective followed her line of sight to the mirrored wall behind the array of bottled spirits. Staring back, from the reverse angle, the steroid-addicted bouncer at the main door. He was too stupid to realise Brook was now looking at him too.

  ‘You’re being a real asshole,’ said the stripper, leaving it open to interpretation as to whether it was directed at Brook or the bouncer. The guy had a ridiculous ponytail, shaved at the sides, and a knee-length leather coat over a black t-shirt, deliberately too tight. As Brook observed him, the barman began clicking his fingers and pointing at a drunk bloke in a suit staggering through the entrance.

  ‘Hey! Tomasz!’ he said, trying to get the bouncer’s attention. Brook made a mental note of the name as ‘Tomasz’ finally turned back to his job and sent the drunk tumbling into the street with the minimum of effort. The barman shook his head.

  Brook returned his gaze to the stage. Whatever was going on between the brunette and the bouncer, he really didn’t want anything to do with it. This drink would definitely be his last. As the routine continued, he polished off the beer and moved the empty bottle across the bar, holding up a flat palm of ‘no thanks’ when the barman looked interested.

  ‘Well, nice to meet you,’ he said, stepping past the stripper who had latched onto him.

  ‘Wait!’ she replied, pinching the elbow of Brook’s jacket and pulling down in a don’t go gesture. The detective looked at his elbow, then at the brunette. It took her a second to meet his eyes, too busy looking at the bouncer again with some kind of awkward reassurance (‘It’s okay. I’ve got this’).

  For the first time, something else caught Brook’s eye. High up on the stripper’s right cheek, and again, on the jawline. Two rows of bruises were just visible through the camouflage of make-up. Irregular circles in a row, separated by gaps of unmarked skin – the distance between knuckles. Surprisingly wide gaps though.

  It must have been a colossal left fist that had done this.

  The stripper caught the detective looking at the bruises and any trace of a smile disappeared. As the bear pit roared some more approval, Brook turned back towards the mirrored wall and found the bouncer again – eyes wide, jaw clenched, a flush of colour in his face. What was going on between these two? Brook scanned down to the point where he could see the bouncer was clutching a bottle of Coke. It looked tiny in his fist. His colossal left fist.

  ‘Actually, I told a lie about X-ray vision being my super power,’ said Brook.

  The stripper’s smile returned at his apparent willingness to engage. She moved closer.

  ‘Really?’ she said, pressing her hip into him. ‘You prefer to see things for real?’

  ‘My super power is mind-reading,’ continued Brook, ignoring her question. This time it was he who leaned in and spoke into an ear… ‘You’re in a violent relationship with the bouncer at the door. He’s on bail for beating you up, but you both want the case discontinued. He loves you really, he’ll never do it again… Whatever. The pair of you thought that compromising a police officer might give some good leverage to get the charges dropped – even if he does have to control his jealousy in the process.’

  Brook nodded down to where a hip was still being pressed against him, albeit with less enthusiasm than a moment ago. ‘I wonder where all this would have ended.’

  The stripper restored the space between them.

  ‘You must already know the case,’ she said. ‘I noticed you at the police station when I came in to change my story.’

  ‘Nope. Just good old-fashioned mind-reading. But thanks for explaining how you know I’m a copper…’ The blonde on stage finished her routine as Brook leaned in one final time to make himself heard. ‘…It was bugging me.’

  He left the bear pit behind him and walked back towards the only way in and out. The bouncer watched him coming. He had taken off his leather coat to display his physique like a parading stag. Brook scrutinised him more carefully this time. Watching him in the mirror hadn’t real
ly conveyed his true size.

  The man was drawn to a different scale – four inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than the detective. His skin seemed to strain under the sheer volume of chemically enhanced muscle. Prominent veins around his temples looked like rivers on a map, while his face displayed the acne scars of extreme steroid abuse and an artery pulsed in his neck. The guy was a cardiac arrest waiting to happen, but his poor long-term health would make him no less destructive in the next few moments. He took a step into the middle of the doorway, blocking Brook’s path.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ asked Brook.

  The bouncer angled his head slightly to one side and looked down at the detective. He was chewing gum in time to the metronome artery in his neck – the cocky look of an alpha male on home turf.

  ‘Yez. There iz problem,’ he replied, flexing his pecs. Thick, Slavic tones (Brook couldn’t help but think of Bond villains). No doubt this was where the smaller man was meant to start apologising for any misunderstandings, to meekly ask to get past and catch his train, to hope that a display of sufficient subservience might save him from a beating…

  ‘Actually, there are three problems, Tomasz,’ said Brook, meeting the contemptuous stare. The authoritative tone and unexpected use of his name tweaked the balance of power, putting the bouncer back in the classroom.

  ‘The first problem is that, if you fight me, the cops who come will find you’re on bail and you’ll never get bail again.’

  The bouncer’s chewing slowed but he neither spoke nor moved.

  ‘The second problem is that, if you fight me, the owner of this place will lose his licence and you’ll never get security work again.’

  The bouncer finally stopped chewing, which Brook thought was a shame. It freed up the nine-tenths of his brain taken up by the task. The giant used the new-found computing power to speak.

  ‘And what iz third problem?’ he asked, looking Brook up and down with his best sneer.