Authors: Andrew Derham
‘You see, Arthur, what tremendous willpower I possess,’ boasted Hart as he sat with his friend in The Pickled Firkin to enjoy a lunch time tipple on New Year’s Day. ‘My resolution was to drink more beer this year, a beverage replete with the full range of B vitamins. We’re only a few hours into 2013 and I’m already suckling a pint of Spitfire to my lips to honour the pledge I made with myself.’
‘A most remarkable achievement, of which you should indeed be proud,’ praised Arthur Rhodes as they bumped their glasses together. ‘And you deserve a bit of pleasure, since you’ve been out and about locking up half the county over the past few days.’
Hart’s mood suddenly darkened. ‘I’ve only been clearing away the rats, Arthur, and it turns out there were more of them crawling around in the sewers of this case than I thought. I don’t like people who make a living pushing drugs. I don’t like headteachers who cover up their kids’ murders. And I don’t like people who try and kill me. The world’s better off with them inside and I’m happy to have put them there. And if the other half of this county are tucking similar ideas into their heads then I’ll stick them away, too. The lot of them.’
Hart smiled. ‘Sorry to inflict a sermon on you Arthur, I’m just a bit bruised by Patricia Luft leading me on like that. That’s it with women from now on. I was a bit of a conceited dimwit to think she would be interested in me at all. Mind you, I couldn’t have known she’d try and bump me off.’
‘No need to worry about being taken for a ride, old boy; she had us all fooled. Even that renowned expert in matters feminine, Darren Redpath, was saying you’d be mad to pass over a chance like her. Then there was the Chief and that flashy dinner he invited both of you to a few weeks ago. But the first prize for being a complete bonehead must go to yours truly for singing her praises when you were stuck in hospital right after she had fed you her witch’s potion. There’s me, sitting by your sickbed and saying what a cracking woman she was when it was her who had put you between the sheets. After that calamitous attempt at matchmaking, I realise I should stick to cutting people up, not joining them together.’
Hart was only half listening as he stared into the withering foam on his pint. ‘I had the best part of twenty-five great years with Maggie. Ever since the day Lynn McCarthy knocked on my front door and told me she had been killed, I’d never looked at another woman, never wanted to. I should have left it at that. No one can replace Maggie and I was foolish to think anyone could. That’s what really irks me, Arthur – Patricia Luft elbowing her way in between Maggie and me.’
‘Not all women are like Patricia the Poisoner, so don’t take yourself off the market. Maggie would want you to be happy, just the same as you would want for her if you had died and she’d been left behind. So buck yourself up and get a couple more pints in, they won’t walk over here on their own.’
After Hart had returned with a pair of full glasses, Rhodes gripped his new pint with a big hand and eyed it disparagingly. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to sell beer in these tiny little cups. Think of all the waste. You’d halve the barmaid’s time, halve the washing-up, halve the number of trips to the bar, just through the simple device of making the glasses twice as big. Some of the truly great leaps forward in human development are due to such uncomplicated insights.’
‘Arthur, if it was the size of a bucket, it still wouldn’t be big enough for you.’
‘Talking earlier of our guru who guides us in matters pertaining to passion, Redpath didn’t exactly hit on a winner by turning up at that party last night, did he?’
‘You heard about that?’
‘Whatever miseries you endured at the hands of Patricia Luft, there has to be some small comfort in knowing that your New Year’s Eve exploits are already the stuff of folklore. They’ll be admired for years to come by generations of coppers.’
‘But not emulated, I hope.’
‘Well, perhaps they won’t quite make the training manual.’
‘There’s no malice in Darren. He wouldn’t have gone to that party if he’d known how I’d been stitched up. He told me the girl he was with hardly knew Patricia Luft, they just bumped into each other occasionally at some badminton matches in the area leagues.’
‘And Patricia got wind that she had a copper boyfriend, no doubt.’
‘No doubt. When Darren got to her house and found out who had invited them, he just thought one of us had misunderstood when I’d said earlier I was going there to meet her on our own. It’s not like he was dreading me turning up at any minute.’
‘And certainly not expecting you to arrest his host.’
‘From the look on his face last night, that did come as a bit of a surprise.’ Hart managed a smile. ‘I’d bet a diamond to a pebble he was only invited to rub the proverbial salt into my wounds. Luft will have been bragging to all her mates, and Darren was the messenger who was going to bring the hilarious news into the factory.’
‘But you altered the bulletin,’ smiled Rhodes. ‘So who is the lucky lady who is currently receiving the benefit of his manly attention?’
‘As I said, there’s no malice in Darren, but sometimes there’s precious little good sense either. He was out with a teacher from Highdean School. Can you believe that? A teacher from the school which has had two pupils murdered. As you can imagine, he’s been grounded from this case,’ noted Hart, deliberately employing a term which showed what a naughty boy his sergeant had been.
‘Knowing poor old Darren, I can’t say it’s the most amazing revelation I’ve ever heard. Any closer to collaring the scum who killed the kids yet, though? Without wishing to belittle your achievements so far, old boy, you did start off investigating a murder.’
‘Yes and no. I reckon I’m close to knowing who killed Nicola, but there’s still a bit of work to be done to be sure.’ Arthur Rhodes supped at his pint. There was no point in asking the obvious question, because he wouldn’t get an answer. ‘But, out of the seven billion
Homo sapiens
who inhabit this planet, any one of us could have killed Sebastian Emmer. In the literal sense, I haven’t got a clue. I don’t even know if one person murdered them both.’
‘Surely you’ve got something to go on, Harry. What about the golf club? And the footprints? You’re looking for size eleven boots.’
‘The club tells us nothing, except that someone swiped it from Ron Brown’s garage, a garage with a broken door, so it was easy to get at. The boots? They’re more the puzzle itself than the clue which will solve it because they could be pointing me in the wrong direction; I can’t be dead sure those footprints belong to the killer, not certain enough to discount someone who’s got different sized feet. What I’d really like to know is, who washed away their prints on the money Sebastian was carrying? And why was his car parked at the end of that alley? If he was on his way to visit the Browns, why didn’t he just stick it outside their house? If not, where was he heading?’
‘Maybe he was just off for a stroll in Greenway Park. Perhaps it’s that simple.’
‘An eighteen-year-old lad rushing home from school in his sporty wheels, frantic to take a walk in the park? Perhaps he was desperate to get to the swings before the other kids hogged them?’
‘You can be cruel to me at times,’ said Rhodes. ‘Another?’ he asked, tipping back his head to catch the last drop.
‘One more and then I’m off. I’ll get irritable if I don’t snatch some more sleep.’
‘An unknown phenomenon that would be,’ sparred Arthur as he headed to the bar. His rusty hair perched on a hefty frame never had trouble getting spotted so he wasn’t away for long. ‘How do you think the scales of justice will weigh up the villains you’ve managed to snag so far?’ he started as he set the fresh beers down.
‘It’s not the villains I’m thinking about, it’s what the generals so charmingly refer to as the collateral damage that get my sympathy. A couple of weeks ago Rebecca Emmer and her mum were looking forward to Christmas with the family. Not a particularly appealing pair of male kin it’s true, but a brother and son, father and husband nevertheless. By next year just the two of them will be living in a pokey flat because their house was bought with drug money and it’ll be sold to pay back the public as recompense for the crimes inflicted against society. Fair enough, of course, but they don’t deserve that after what they’ve put up with over the years.’
‘Yet again the innocent cop the sharp end of the stick, old boy.’
‘Annalee Hargreaves will get a fine, maybe a spell of community service or a suspended sentence. That’s not much of a pain of course, it’s the criminal record that will sting. She won’t be welcome in a classroom again.’
‘And the drug-dealing duo? How big an operation was that?’
‘Can’t say yet. But Clive Emmer must have had some help getting the stuff into the country. He’ll grass them up, it’ll knock a year or two off his sentence. I’d like to have seen Marco Bracken go down with them, though.’
‘Who?’
‘The bloke who let Danny Moses deal at his club. Sadly, there’s not a chance of that. If Danny snitches, it’s just the word of a pusher against a guy who can call in a hundred witnesses to say he’s such a nice chap he makes it his serious business to kick peddlers out of his place. He did, too – so Danny could get a free run and hand him some of the profits. Sometimes the snakes manage to slither away.’ Hart finished what he could manage of his beer and then gave a tunnel of a yawn. ‘And that’s what I’m going to do myself. These batteries need recharging. They’ve got a bit of work to get through tomorrow.’
Like many other young professionals, Simon Chandler was pleased to have had the foresight to place his foot on a rung of the property ladder. And not the bottom one, either – he had obtained a mortgage on a pleasant terraced house in a part of England which was highly sought after, if the prices people were willing to pay were to be believed. The furniture was cheap, admittedly, and if the two bedrooms were joined together they wouldn’t have had enough space to accommodate a rich man’s wardrobe, but he had a place he could call his own where he could sit, eat his meals and read his books, and he felt some pride in his achievements so far.
He wasn’t pleased to see Hart standing on the doorstep of his investment late in the morning of the second day of the year, but he reluctantly invited him in and did his unnatural best to be civil. He was even more put out when Hart asked him for his recollections of the party he had attended the previous September, the gathering to celebrate Paul Outbridge’s twenty-fourth birthday.
‘It was just a party, that was all. Nothing exceptional to it. A few of Paul’s friends getting together and having a good time.’
‘Did everybody have a good time?’ asked Hart. ‘How about Mr Outbridge himself?’
‘Sure, why wouldn’t he? It was
his
birthday, after all. He was pleased to see everybody. I think he was actually a little bit embarrassed in a happy sort of way that so many friends had turned out.’ Chandler proffered a grin to tell Hart he knew his friend was inadequate, and it showed just how magnanimous he was to be pleased for him.
‘It wasn’t only his friends who were there though, was it? A fair few other people decided to gatecrash the shindig. Danny Moses and a few of his mates for starters. I bet Mr Outbridge was dead chuffed when they turned up to drink his beer.’ Hart’s eyes shuffled around the room as he spoke. They settled on Chandler’s sideboard with interest and he pushed himself up from his seat while the teacher thought of a riposte.
Chandler’s head swivelled to follow Hart as he wandered across the room. ‘Actually, you’re wrong there. I think Paul felt it was quite exciting that people who were a bit, how shall I put it,
dangerous
, turned up on his big day. It made him feel like he was one of the lads.’
‘Hello, sailor.’
‘What?’
‘I was just introducing myself to your little statue here,’ answered Hart politely as he picked up the figure from the sideboard. ‘And how did England’s revered maritime hero come to be standing among your cups and saucers?’
‘Oh, that! I can’t remember where he came from, I’ve had him for years.’
‘Mr Chandler, I’ll only forgive a lie like that the once. Now, I’m brewing up a storm and I don’t much care whether you get blown away by it or not.’
‘If you must know, I took it from Paul’s. I suppose you’re going to arrest me for theft.’
‘Yes, I must know. And leave any sarcasm to me, because I’m better at it than you.’ Hart sat back down and looked at the tacky figure as he held it between his thumb and forefinger. At least they had managed to chop the right arm off. ‘Go on then, Mr Chandler. Why did you take Mr Outbridge’s model of Nelson from his flat?’
Chandler rubbed his face and sighed, embarrassment disguised as tedium. ‘Before the party, we decided we’d all pinch something. Nothing valuable, it was just for a laugh.’ Hart’s impassive face did not join in with the joke. ‘Come on, Mr Hart. You know what a nerd Paul is, it was just for a giggle. I always meant to give it back, just drop it into his bag or something, but I never got round to it.’
‘So were you all in on this jolly jape?’
‘Just the four of us. Me, Sophie, Seb and Timothy. The others didn’t know Paul that well, we thought it would be a bit unkind if we got them involved.’
‘So, out of kindness, you restricted your membership of the band who had invaded his home for his birthday party so that they could pilfer his possessions to only his very best friends.’ Chandler thought Hart sounded like a nagging vicar but deemed it prudent to keep his opinions to himself. ‘So who nicked what?’
‘I took the statue. It was a bit obvious really when you think he keeps them for show on his mantelpiece. Timothy swiped a cheese grater from the kitchen.’ Chandler sported a juvenile grin as though he thought that funny despite himself. ‘And Seb took a magazine from his bedroom. And that was it.’
‘What about Ms Rand? What was her booty?’
‘She backed out. Said she had second thoughts, decided it was being a bit cruel, especially as it was his birthday party. I suppose she’s not so unkind as the rest of us, probably because she’s a girl,’ replied Chandler, confessing the defect of spite on behalf of the entire male gender.
‘What was the magazine about?’
‘Weird stuff. We all had a big laugh about it afterwards, even Sophie. Some old dog with a whip and kinky boots pretending to tie a bloke up and give him a spanking. We think that’s why Paul never asked us about the stuff that went missing, he would have had to take the ribbing about the magazine.’ Chandler smiled at a memory. ‘Mind you, Sebastian took the piss anyway, about him being a perv for being into that sort of stuff.’
‘Did you know that the person who killed Sebastian was wearing size eleven boots?’
This change of direction unsettled Chandler, and he shifted himself about in his armchair. ‘Lots of people wear size eleven, I’m sure.’
‘But, unlike you, most of them didn’t know Sebastian Emmer. I’d like us to go through your alibi one more time. Just to be certain. Where were you again on the evening he was killed?’
But Hart wasn’t really interested in the answer. He wished it had been Simon Chandler who had killed Sebastian Emmer. Sour, mean, cowardly, sullen Simon, who enjoyed watching other people being taunted, but who never had the guts to be anything more than a spectator, or the source of merely petty unkindness, himself.
But, sadly, it was somebody else.
*****
‘Harry, how are you getting on with those murder investigations?’ asked the Chief as they passed on the stairs. ‘I hear you’re close to pulling in the girl’s murderer, but are still some way off from finding the boy’s. Just a reminder that the press are getting restless for some robust news after their festive break. They won’t forget. They never do.’
‘Veritable elephants those reporters, Sir. But it turns out that things have swapped around a bit and I’m actually a tad closer to finding Sebastian’s killer after this morning. I need a lab report before I’m certain about Nicola, and I shan’t make a move on either case until I’ve got all the details sorted out.’
‘Are they connected? Is that much known for certain?’
‘Kind of. If Sebastian hadn’t dabbled in drugs, no one would have had a motive to kill Nicola. And if Nicola hadn’t been killed, nobody would have done away with Sebastian.’
The Chief pursed his lips and nodded gravely, an indication that he understood perfectly.
‘By the way, Sir, I’m off down to London this afternoon to see a diplomat very high up in the Egyptian embassy. Very high up indeed,’ teased Hart.
‘Be careful, Harry.’ The Chief wouldn’t have looked more worried if his pressed navy blue trousers had been on fire. ‘The last thing we want in Lockingham is a diplomatic incident.’ The less he knew, the less he would fret, so he changed the subject. ‘Sorry to hear the evening with Patricia Luft didn’t go too well.’
‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Sir. It’s her that’s off to jail.’
*****
Hart’s drive to London resolved the questions that only the best friend of Nicola Brown could answer, and there was now little doubt remaining in his mind as to who had killed the school students. He had to spend three hours on a journey which provided him with just a twenty minute chat, but it had been worth it. And at least Hart could put the trip to Mayfair on his expenses form this time.
Hiba Massaoud had turned out to be a delightful girl: erudite and well-spoken, charming and polite, forthright and helpful. In her cultured bearing and her integrity she reminded Hart of her father. But her lovely nature had made the conversation even more painful for Hart because it was clear that grief was still oozing from her pores.
The lab report on Nicola’s clothes came through on the evening of the next day and it confirmed what Hart had learned from his conversation with Hiba. Early on the final morning of the school holiday, it was time for Harry to take a last swig of his tea, grab his coat, and head off to apprehend the killer of a schoolkid.