The Vacant Casualty (22 page)

‘No, actually – he’s succumbed to his many injuries. And rum. He fell asleep outside.’

‘You know what I came here for?’

‘The one piece of evidence you left behind at the scene of one of the murders. You knew Brautigan had it, that it linked you to the prostitute murders in Fraxbridge. And you had to find a
way to get in here and retrieve it.’

‘How did you solve all this?’

‘Just a hunch,’ said the tall figure. ‘About the Full Moon Murderer. The major told us you went away once a month to visit your mother and I guessed that was exactly when these
killings were going on. You disappeared on the day of the full moon, when you committed your last murder. But the body was only found and the case handed on to Brautigan last night. It took me too
long to put two and two together . . .’

‘And make five?’

‘Well . . . no. Four, surely?’

‘It’s a saying,’ said Fairbreath.

‘Right. But it doesn’t really work in this con— Well, let’s not quibble over that right now. After what happened to Mumford, the bomb going off here was too much of a
coincidence. I decided you were coming back here to reclaim some evidence.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Fairbreath. ‘
You
! You never entered my calculations. You were nothing – just another casualty. A vacant casualty. Now you’re
going to arrest me, I suppose?’

‘I was considering it,’ said the tall figure out of the corner of its mouth.

Fairbreath bent over, looking distraught, cradling his head. Then one of his hands shot down into the water at his feet and came back up, holding the semi-automatic handgun in the evidence bag
that had been hanging on the edge of Brautigan’s desk.

‘Fucking Brautigan!’ said the tall figure. ‘What is it with him and not doing paperwork? So there’s something to be said for filing things properly after all –
Bradley was right!’

‘Bradley?’ repeated Fairbreath uncertainly.

‘Too right,’ said a voice from a dark corner at the other end of the room. ‘You put that gun down or I’m going to punch your stupid face into mashed potato, you toilet!
And that’s not just hyperbollocks . . .’

Fairbreath spun round, pulling the trigger, as startled as anyone else when the gun fired a stuttering burst, emptying half its clip into spattering explosions against the far wall, all the
bullets save for one, which hit the detective in the chest. A nasty jet of dark substance jumped from his chest in the gloom and he fell over on his back.

Fairbreath didn’t wait to see if he had killed him. He had clearly studied the building well and instead of running for the door blocked by Sam in Bradley’s coat, he turned towards
the fire escape, gun in hand.

A much louder noise boomed through the room, the sound not of a handgun, but an army-issue rifle. Fairbreath’s whole body was tilted towards the fire escape door as he saw it open and
caught a glimpse of the firearm facing him. But the strength of the shot picked him up, spun him over in mid-air and finally dissipated, letting him splash into a dark puddle six feet behind.

‘Whoopsadaisy,’ said the soldier.

D
ETECTIVE
I
NSPECTOR
Bradley was aware of a great deal of pain pretty much all the time. It only quietened down when he could
manage sleep, and for a while after the nurse visited to change his morphine drip. Mostly he was kept awake, immobile and in a kind of quiet agony. And pissed off.

He spent most of the first two days drugged beyond consciousness, but at lunchtime on the third day he woke to see Sam reading a Raymond Chandler novel in a chair nearby.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘That’s the detective I know!’ said Sam happily, putting down his book. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘How would you feel if you had a lung with a bullet hole in it?’

Sam thought about this for a moment.

‘Like shit,’ he said. ‘But in need of a drink.’

Bradley grunted, not wanting to move, but trying to spot what Sam held in his other hand until he lifted it up so the detective could see. It was a bottle of ginger ale.

‘Oh great,’ said Bradley. ‘You
are
a fucking help.’

‘Hey!’ said Sam, outraged. ‘What am I, a damn rookie? Would I bring you bloody grapes and a copy of
Grazia
? There’s a slosh of ginger ale in there and no more. You
know what the rest is. Or you will, soon after you have a slug. And here,’ Sam leant in conspiratorially. ‘Let’s get
Stalag 17
about this. I’m not smuggling this in
just for it to be confiscated. Here’s what you do. I don’t want the nurses doling out your ginger ale in case they catch a whiff of it, so I’m hiding it under your bag in your
locker here, and here’s a little hip flask for your pillow – it’s full. Get trusted guests to pour it out for you, okay?’ He illustrated this point by slurping a fair
measure into two paper cups and handing one to his friend.

Bradley looked into his cup and sniffed the liquid. ‘I’ve never said this to someone younger than me before,’ he said, ‘but you’re probably going to die
young.’

‘Up yours,’ said Sam, toasting him and taking a sip.

‘Cheers,’ grumbled Bradley, wincing at the pain of holding it up with the arm from his good side. ‘How are the townspeople, are they okay?’

‘Yes, I think so. Except for the vicar. It turns out that Mrs Trench was Terry Fairbreath all along, that’s how he knew what was going on.’

‘Bloody hell, no wonder he’s so surprised,’ Bradley said, taken aback.

‘That’s not the half of it. He’d been letting her suck him off for the past three months. Cheers to you, you old stinker!’ said Sam.

‘You’ve been
drinking
, you slag!’ Bradley said sharply.

‘Well, I couldn’t fit all the whisky in the ginger ale bottle, could I? What would you want me to do, throw it down the drain?’

Bradley grunted. ‘Open the curtains, would you?’

‘A pleasure. Your wife been round?’

‘Three times. You can’t make them keep her out of here, can you?’

‘I don’t think I can. And think of her feelings, old man – she cares for you.’

Bradley grunted yet again.

‘She didn’t realize what an absolute dishpot she’d married,’ Sam went on.

‘Okay, that’s enough. Give me another slug of that stuff and clear off. I can’t handle
two
pains at once!’

Sam raised his eyebrows, did the service he was asked and shuffled to the door.

‘Hey,’ said Bradley, his bluff called. Sam turned round.

‘Why didn’t you help me crack it sooner?’

‘I didn’t realize we were doing a
serial killer
thriller. All the signs pointed the other way. How could I have guessed?’

‘We going to do another case together?’

‘I don’t think so. As your civilian sidekick, I think the routine is that I would normally clear off at the end and next time you’d get another sidekick.’

‘Well,’ said Bradley, clearly having some trouble with how to phrase the next sentence. ‘You were pretty useful,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘Pretty annoying, but
pretty useful.’

‘Nice of you to say so.’

‘That’s all you get. Oh – and thanks for the whisky.’

‘Any time, man. See you later.’

Sam paused at the door and winked at Bradley, then left.

A minute later he put his head back round the door.

‘Wanted to say – I don’t really care about these things, but for your own sake, next car you get, don’t make it a Prius.’

‘Wasn’t my intention to,’ said Bradley. ‘But thanks for your input. Any other suggestions, stick’em on a postcard!’

Sam disappeared once more.

Bradley let his mind wander for a while, hoping to persuade the pain away or in some way out-think it, and must have fallen into a light doze because he was suddenly awoken by a huge shape at
the end of his bed. He was by no means yet over the shock of having been shot and the sight made him start – which provoked a nauseating wave of pain. He screwed up his face as he waited for
it to pass and the man standing there came to the side of his bed.

‘Didn’t mean to surprise you,’ he said shortly.

‘That’s okay. Pain’s something I’ve got to live with now.’

‘I understand,’ said Brautigan, and there was no doubt that he did. There was a huge gauze over his right cheek, stitches along his jaw, a nasty black bruise above his right eye and
his left arm was so firmly encased in plaster that it had been fixed to his waist with a splint so that it stuck out immovably.

‘It should have been me,’ said Brautigan in that deep voice, which was so rumbling it sounded like a heavy table being moved in the next room.

Bradley shrugged. ‘I got lucky.’

The other detective laughed. ‘I guess I was lucky to only be blown up!’

‘Listen,’ said Bradley. ‘I hope you don’t think I was stepping on your toes. I always wanted to crack cases like you.’

‘But you cracked the biggest one of all. I got to admit, I never thought you were a real dick, and now I know you were.’

Bradley couldn’t meet his eye. ‘If you like,’ he said, ‘you solve one for me some time.’

Brautigan put his hand, which was roughly the size and weight of a skillet, on Bradley’s shoulder and squeezed in what he might have thought was a friendly way, but which in reality would
probably have snapped an elephant’s leg. It was all Bradley could do not to pass out from the pain.

‘Let’s get a hamburger some time,’ said Brautigan, and arranging the muscles and pulverized cartilage of his face into a curious arrangement that was even more grotesque than
usual, he went out, banging the plaster-cast of his left arm against the side of the door as he went and swearing loudly. He was smiling, thought Bradley.

Bradley’s gaze wandered to the window and he grumpily surveyed the view – a huge swathe of sky, bright and yellow in the afternoon sun, interrupted only by the rectangular block of
another part of the hospital and a tall chimney in which Bradley had his suspicions they burned amputated body parts. He shivered.

‘Not even a bloody telly!’ he said, looking over at his bedside table and wincing from the movement. He hadn’t noticed before, but something had been left there for him, and he
knew who by. Standing almost a foot tall, there was a pile of paperbacks, some announcing their titles in garish colours and fonts, others older and plainer. He leant over and picked one up –
on the back it described itself as a classic of the crime genre. He leafed to the front and started to look through it, wondering whether this was where he would find out who his next sidekick
would be.

First published 2012 by Boxtree

This electronic edition published 2012 by Boxtree
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Copyright © Patty O’Furniture

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