Episode 3 - The death

Breakfast next morning was the usual chaotic event at the cottage. Gary got up as soon as PeggySue called out that she was awake and hungry (in so many words). While Gary fed and watered the breakfast attendees, Cleo fed the new babies. They had not exchanged a single word with one another.

Gary wondered if it was getting out of control, this big family he thought he had always wanted. Cleo had not tried to make it up with him the previous night, and he had not dared to make the first move, so angry was she with him. Gary was bereft and miserable, and he was facing another dreary day at Headquarters, where being a superintendent had added the burden of making management decisions that often worried him.

Cleo was still involved with the babies when Gary told her pointedly that was leaving soon so could she spare him a minute? She could, but not a friendly one. Attempts to make it up did not work. He did not even get a goodbye embrace.

“But we always have a hug,” he moaned.

“And I have a detective agency,” said Cleo.

“I want you to have a detective ageincy,” said Gary.

“Then don’t knock it!” said Cleo. “We can talk later. I’m busy right now.”

***

When Gary reached HQ, Nigel had been writing reports for over an hour. A car from the traffic division had just driven to the block of flats in Beethoven Street, where Daphne lived. Although that block was not as tall or notorious as the tall block next to it, it was not a friendly building and the presence of the police caused uneasiness among most residents.  Daphne Lewis lived on the third of five floors. There were ten flats in the block and Daphne rented a smaller one on the right hand side of the inside stairway. The lift was out of order, so Len Wolfe and Mike Curlew, the crew called out that morning, were forced to march up the stairs. Two armed policemen trained in gang warfare had been instructed to accompany the patrol crew, but should keep a low profile if possible, though keeping a low profile in Beethoven streat was a tall order. Gang warfare was no stranger there, where pimps and prostitutes were in the majority with a sprinkling of money launderers and trouble-makers to make control even harder.

Mike Curlew had not been at Middlethumpton HQ for long, having left the Birmingham force to join his wife, Mia, who was strikingly good at any job thrust on her and had rapidly become one of Gary’s closest colleagues, which was a form of humiliation for Mike Curlew, who quickly suspected is wife of having an affair with him. Len Wolfe was straight from college and inexperienced, but aware of Mike Curlew’s nastiness.  

Mike, who was in his own opinion over-qualified for such drudgery as looking for missing girls,  rang the doorbell several times and hammered on the flat door to no avail.

“She’s not at home,” said Len.

“Or not able to come to the door, Len. We’ll have to go in and see. The caretaker will have a general key.”

Making any kind of decision was pleasurable to Mike, who wanted to impress this junior cop.

“I can open it,” said Len, however. He took out a bunch of keys and wires and crouched to work on the lock, ignoring Mike’s instruction not to break in. It took him only a few second to get the door open.

“I’m glad you’re on our side,” said Mike condescendingly.

“Whose side is that?” said Len.

Mike did not deign to answer that taunting. It was Len’s turn to taunt.

Mike pushed his way into the flat. The living-room was on the right and the kitchen opposite, on the left of the short corridor connecting the rooms. The living-room appeared to have been ransacked. All the drawers in the tall-boy had been wrenched out and their contents tipped onto the floor. Various other cupboards and drawers had been searched, too, emptied and left open, the sofa cushions had been thrown about and a standard lamp had been knocked over.

“Someone was desperate to find something,” said Mike. “Better wear gloves for this little mission.”

Len drew a pair of latex gloves out of a pocket and put them on.

“Do you think there was a fight?” he said, wanting to confirm that Mike was in charge.

“How should I know? Forensics might.”

Mike phoned Gary and reported the state of the living-room. Chris Marlow should take a look, he told him.

“Marlow has gone. The Chris here is a Winter, like Greg. Everyone gets confused.”

“I’m not likely to,” said Mike. “We’ll look at the other rooms now”.

“Get a move on then,” said Gary to Mike’s surprise. There was no love lost between the two, but Gary was usually more civil. Hw wondered why Mike did not know Marlow had left. He purported to know everything.

“Are you OK, Gary?” Mike asked. “You sound cheesed off.”

“Family business,” said Gary in a tone that told Mike to mind his own business.

***

The main bedroom in Daphne’s flat was alongside the living-room. Sliding, glass double doors that served as the window led onto the balcony, as did a French window in the living-room. Both doors had keys and both were locked with the keys in the locks. There was no one on the balcony.

“Whoever was here came through the front door,” Len said.

“I suppose you’re right,” said Mike reluctantly.

Opposite the main bedroom was a small boxroom, wall to wall with the bathroom, whose door was at the end of the short corridor. The single bed had not been slept in. A sports bag had been dropped under the window and left there. The small wardrobe was empty. Mike explained why the second bedroom was small as if he were instructing an apprentice.

“These flats usually have longish bathrooms with a bathtub at one end,” he said. “I used to live in one quite like this.”

“Where?”

“In Birmingham. before I came here to join my … wife.”

“You sound as if you didn’t want to come,” said Len.

He had hit on a topic that Mike did not want to discuss. Undeterred, he continued.

“Isn’t Mia the bright spark who got promotion almost on the spot,” said Len. “She has your rank now, doesn’t she? That must be a bit contentious for you.”

“Contentious? She’s insufferable,” said Mike.

Len felt a kind of pity for this grumpy, unhappy colleague.

“Sounds bad. We’d better take a look in the bathroom,” he said.

So that was Mike’s problem. Jealousy, though Len could not think of a reason for a man to be jealous of his successful wife. Did he want to destroy her? Marriage was not on Len’s menu, and certainly not to a policewoman. He liked women, but not as candidates for settling down. His bachelor flat suited him nicely. Connie, his on and off girlfriend, was fortunately not the clinging type, he thought.

When Len told Mike that to cheer him up, Mike told Len he was a deluded arsehole if that’s what he thought. All women trapped men, often with a kid and often with some other man’s kid. Len decided to get off that topic a.s.a.p.

***

The bathroom door was ajar. Seconds later Len was standing at the head end of the bathtub, the taps and a small window being at the far end.

“There’s someone in the tub,” he called. “I should have knocked.”

Mike, who had been poking around in the small bedroom, came into the bathroom to see for himself. There was no water in the tub. It had probably leaked away in the time between the woman’s death and her discovery.

“If I’m not very much mistaken, the woman I has been dead for days,” said Mike.

Len bent over the corpse to check the body temperature with the back of his hand. The woman was stone cold and smelt of decay.

“Don’t touch anything!” Mike snapped.

“She’s stone cold and I wasn’t going to even though I’m wearing gloves,” said Len, straightening up. He coded himself into his phone and took snaps of the scene from every angle.

“I don’t suppose she was stabbed,” he said.  “There’s no blood.”

“It might have been washed away. Anyhow, a wound on the woman’s back would have congealed fairly quickly. But it’s not our problem,” said Mike. “A visible injury would be nice, of course. Time of death would be easier to tell and, there would be a weapon to find. That’s always a challenge.”

“You sound like Poirot,” said Len, wondering why Mike was so cold-blooded. Would he have to be like that?

“I hope that was a compliment,” said Mike.

The two patrol cops went back into the living room. The stench was getting to them.

***

“Do you know who it is, Mike?” Gary asked when Mike rang him moments later.

“It must be the woman we were looking for.”

“Not must; could, Mike. Is there a photo of her anywhere?”

“We’ll look,” said Mike, resentful that he had been corrected by the guy he thought was shacking up with his wife, though he couldn’t care less what Mia did as long as she did it discretely. His move to Middlethumpton had been pre-empted by an incident he preferred to forget.

“I’ll come and look myself,” said Gary.

“No need. The flat is empty apart from the corpse. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“Not this morning, Mike. Wait for Chris and Ned to arrive with their forensic stuff and then you can leave. I’ll call them now and tell them to hurry. Hand in your reports to Nigel if you leave before I arrive.”

“Have I ever not handed in my report, Gary?” Mike asked, piqued at the rebuff he was getting. “Someone ransacked the living-room, too. Did I mention that?”

“No. Forensics will look after that, Mike. You’re function as patrol cops does not extend to forensic investigating. You’re a great colleague and I know you want the promotion I can’t offer you until the action to recruit career-beginners is finished. No one wants to come to Middlethumpton, so it’s quite difficult and the traffic police are always at the top end of the queue for newcomers.”

Gary rang off first and Mike allowed himself a rude gesture he would not have made face to face with his superior.

***

It wasn’t hard for Len to see that Mike had a problem with Gary. Mia and Gary were known to work closely, especially after Mia’s colleague had taken time off to have a baby. It had taken Len only a few days to put two and two together on an interpersonal level. He hoped it made five in this case, but if someone had to go, it would be Mike and Mike probably knew that. How much of a wasp’s nest was HQ?

***

A minute or two later, Chris Winter entered the flat with Ned close behind and surprised the patrol crew.

“You shouldn’t have left the door open,” said Chris.

“Sorry, it was me,” said Len. “Who are you?”

“Forensics. I’m Chris and this is Ned.”

“I’m Len.”

“New to the game, are you?” said Ned. “They don’t tell you the really important things at college, do they?”

“Like closing doors?” said Len.

“Or like how to break and enter with the appropriate tools,” sneered Mike. “You learn that by doing.”

“We had to get in, Mike,” said Len. “You were happy to let me use those tools.”

“Forget it,” said Chris. “For the record, it was an emergency, wasn’t it?”

Mike nodded obediently and Len thought what an unpleasant colleague he was. Chris was letting him off the hook, after all. Mike had tried to prevent them entering and there was a corpse in the flat. Gary had probably suspected that and not said anything to Mike. A bit of one-upmanship, Len thought.

Mike regretted his mean remark since it was a reflection on his own slackness. He could have prevented Len from using those tools, but he hadn’t. Chris was of exactly the same opinion. You did not let a junior assistant take the rap for blunders you’ve made yourself. Mike was passing the buck, but Len had done the right thing, it had transpired.

Chris was not in the habit of preaching, however. He had a good working relationship with Ned and thought others should make an effort to work together whatever they thought of their colleagues inprivate. Chris was a surgeon turned pathologist, while Ned was a chemist and forensic researcher. Their prowess as a team was not confined to Middlethumpton HQ.

“I’ll call Gary again,” said Mike. “He was in a foul mood last time. I don’t think he will want to be bothered with a corpse today.”

“Gary does not care for corpses and avoids them like the plague,” said Chris, laughing at Mike’s attempt at one-upmanship. “Something might have held him up, Mike. Give him a break. It’s no skin off your nose.” As for foul moods, Chris wondered if Mike was always so detestable.

***

Of course, Chris knew about the rivalry between Mike Curlew and everyone else in the fight to be appointed head of the homicide squad. Gary had accept the superintendent post because he needed more salary to finance the villa he had bought rather than actually wanting to do administrative work. But a few days before the previous Christmas, when Gary’s family was due to move in, the villa had been severely damaged by fire.

The promotion had lost its true purpose, and Gary was at a crossroads, not for the first time in his life, thought Chris who suspected that the hunt was on in Gary’s eyes, to find someone else to take over the superintendent post, leaving him to get back to his job as head of the homicide squad – a job he had never really quit. Chris was aware of Gary’s dilemma, but he had no intention of talking about it, especially to Mike.

“Go home and write a book!” Chris had urged more than once, when Gary was in a particularly fitful mood.

“That’s what Cleo wants, but I can’t go freelance hack with 7 kids to get through school,” he had replied.

“I thought you wanted a big family.”

“I love them all, Chris. That’s the problem.”

“Send Cleo out to work full time,” Chris usually advised. “That’s probably what she wants anyway. She can’t go on for ever producing kids.”

“I’ll reserve judgment on that.”

“Don’t!”

***

Gary’s most urgent problem was that as superintendent and ‘overlord’ of the crime sector, he had had to choose his own successor between Greg and Mike, the only two qualified for the job apart from Mia, who would not get it because she was married to Mike (Gary’s opinion, but not everyone’s). The longer Gary postponed that decision, the harder it would become. Nigel had told him to get someone for upstairs and take his office back since he had actually never left it. Gary tried to explain that such posts were subject to nepotism or the old boys’ network, neither of which appealed to him. But one day he had not been able to resist asking Nigel if he would like the superintendent job upstairs.

“Seeing me as a son and natural heir?” Nigel quipped.

“Or the right man for the job of appeasing Gisela and her traffic department or speaking Latin with Henry, who was the third superintendent managing (or not really managing) the finances at HQ.”

“The right ‘man’ for the job is Mia, and you know it, but while you come to your senses you can count on me, Dad,” said Nigel. “Even Greg is too wayward.”

“You’re too young, my boy. They’d be stuck with you for 30 years. And for the record, I am not having an affair with Mia.”

“But you’d like to,” said Nigel. “And she’s just waiting for you to kick Mike out and take her in.”

“Pure fantasy, Nigel!”

“I’m just repeating the gossip.”

“Well, don’t. None of it is true, except perhaps my dislike of Mike attitude.”

“I’ve had second thoughts about your kind offer,” said Nigel. “I’ll stick to my cross-dresser troupe.”

“And I’m sticking to my wife, Nigel, so put HQ straight on that.”

“You could ditch it all and join the troupe,” said Nigel.

“Only if you pay me.”

“I can see Bertie’s headlines now,” said Nigel. “Cop turns fairy.”

“I’ll ignore that.”

“Are you planning to sing, Gary? I’ve heard about your singing. Some might need compensation for aural damage.”

***

Shortly before eleven Gary, cheered and amused by his outrageous assistant’s dialogue and insinuations, arrived at the building in Beethoven Street and immediately took charge. That was not to Mike’s liking, but he had burnt his boats with Len and Chris so he would now assume a low profile and be amicable. He thought a breath of air would do him good first and went out onto the balcony. He had been outwitted by Gary’s sheer presence, but he was also a victim of his own basic resentment of superiors in general and Gary in particular.

***

“Where is it?”

“In the bathroom,” said Len.

“Have you examined it, Chris?”

“Superficially; no gun shots or stab wounds.”

Gary took a quick look at the bathtub’s occupant.

“Where’s the water?” he asked.

“The bathtub was empty when we first saw it,” said Len.

“Not quite,” said Gary.

“Yes it was,” said Len.

“Don’t taunt, Gary!” Chris said. “Don’t worry, Len. Gary only jokes with people he likes. The corpse is still in the tub so it isn’t actually empty.”

Len, who had reddish hair and a pink complexion, blushed.

“Where’s Mike?” Gary asked.

“Having a smoke on the balcony,” Len said.

One more nail in Mike’s promotion coffin, thought Chris.

***

Very soon, the paramedic team ordered by Chris arrived bearing a stretcher. The woman, who had been photographed from every angle for a second time by Ned, and as a Polaroid image shot for Gary to use immediately, genuine photos not always being replaceable by images on a phone, completed the woman’s role in the investigation until her identity and the cause of death had been established. There’s something more tangible about an instant printout, though any image could be called up on a mobile phone, Gary mused as he looked at the image for a long time. The paramedics wrapped the woman in a gold foil sheet, placed her respectfully on the stretcher, strapped her in, and left for the HQ lab.

Gary went out to the balcony to tell Mike he could leave, but might want to do something about his attitude to his young colleague.

There was no point in Gary waiting on hand for forensics to finish their investigation. He would go to Romano’s bistro for a bite of lunch. On instinct, Gary invited Len to accompany him. Mike’s turn of duty would be over once he had parked the car at HQ. Leaving him out of the invitation was as overt a snub as Gary could achieve at that moment. Len accepted gratefully. If he had previously thought that the purpose of being a policeman was to fight crime, he was changing his mind. He took care not to ask why Mike was left out of the invitation.

“The fiend within,” he muttered instead as he bent himself into Gary’s red car. “Six foot three, Sir,” he explained.

“Don’t see Mike as an enemy, Len. It will make working alongside him harder,” Gary advised. “You should meet my wife. She says things like that.”

“I was out of order with Mike, Sir. I haven’t quite worked out how much junior I am to him.”

“When you are on patrol, you are in it together; equals; you depend on one another, sometimes to save someone else’s life, sometimes your own lives. Mike may have forgotten that.”

“He has a clever wife, Sir.”

“So do I. It isn’t always the clever wives who are at fault if something goes wrong in a relationship. It’s often the guys who think it’s their divine right to be superior. I’m guilty too, but I’m improving.”

***

Gary wondered at that moment if he was improving. His performance the previous evening had not shown him in a good light.

***

“Thanks for telling me that.”

“I’ll see what I can do for you. Are you good at paperwork?

“MA in history, Sir. World War II was my subject. I’m a pacifist now.”

”I’d like to read your thesis, Len. I’ll talk with Cleo and we’ll ask you to dinner one day soon.”

“Thanks, Sir.”

“It’s Gary from now on, Len I’m not in line for a knighthood.”