Untimely Graves

2-1

2

He’d just finished breakfast and was shrugging himself into his jacket when the phone in the kitchen rang. ‘Mayo.’

‘Thought I might catch you before you left, Gil. Sorry I didn’t ring last night.’

‘Alex!’ His mouth lifted in an involuntary smile, just at the sound of her voice. Especially since she was ringing him before eight, mornings never being her best time. Even more especially considering her previous assertions that she and her fellow course-members were kept up until all hours every night, up to the eyebrows in work. But touched, and, knowing Alex, not having far to look for the reason: though she’d never admit it openly, she was worried about him, unable to forget what hell the last few weeks had been for him. He felt warmed by this unnecessary concern, but it had to be admitted that, though he’d toughed it out, as usual, it had been no picnic. And not only for himself as detective superintendent, but for every other senior officer in the Division also.

They talked for a while, catching up on what had happened the day before. When they’d just about exhausted that, she asked, ‘What did you have for dinner last night?’

‘Dinner?’ he repeated, momentarily thrown.

‘Food. You know, the stuff that fuels the body and keeps it going.’

‘Oh, that!’ He laughed. ‘I had one of those M & S microwave things you left in the freezer.’ He cast a guilty glance over his shoulder towards his supper – and breakfast – dishes still stacked unrinsed and forgotten in the sink. Still waiting to be put in the dishwasher, an unthinkable sin to Alex. He thanked the Lord his life hadn’t yet encompassed the horrors of video telephones.

‘Which one?’

‘Which one what?’

‘Which meal did you have?’

He found he had to search his memory. ‘The beef. Boeuf bourgnignon. It was delicious.’ He was able to say this with perfect truth and felt it absolved him from adding that half an hour after midnight, he’d found it necessary to get up out of bed and make a large cheese and pickle sandwich to fill up the yawning spaces. His friend Henry Ison, the police doctor, had once told him that a low blood-sugar level was not conducive to proper sleep. Alex’s understanding of how much food was good for him and his waistline didn’t necessarily coincide with his own. In his opinion, one-portion, microwaved meals were meant only for women and weeds. Someone of his size needed more than that to keep body and soul together.

She went on, uncannily percipient, ‘Sleep well?’

‘Like a log,’ he lied.

‘Hmm.’ Never mind video, he couldn’t deceive her, though it was partly true.

It wasn’t an empty stomach alone that had kept him awake. But the sandwich, and a cup of tea, had helped him put a brake on the merry-go-round of unprofitable thoughts which had prevented him dropping off. After it, his stomach comfortably full, his thoughts in proportion again, he’d slept at least better than he had in a month.

The cold-blooded murder of a local football star, shot through the passenger window of his car when he drew up at a red light at 3 a.m. one morning, had sent earthquake tremors throughout the Division, not without justification. Danny Fermanagh had been a lad of Irish immigrant parentage and native charm who was going places, a clean-cut boy hero, whose murder had touched a collective local nerve. His adoring public hadn’t wanted to believe the truth that emerged, that Danny, when he wasn’t playing for Lavenstock United, had been involved in small-time drugs dealing. When the killer wasn’t immediately apprehended, the police became the scapegoat: they’d had a tip-off about Fermanagh’s drug-dealing connections some time ago, it was alleged in the press – without revealing how this knowledge had been come by – and had apparently ignored it. The truth was something different, but it wasn’t expedient to say so. The footballer had been watched for months, with one particular undercover detective detailed to get matey with him in an attempt to net the bigger fish who were supplying him: Danny-boy was notoriously loose-lipped when he’d had a noggin or two. Unfortunately, those behind him had taken matters into their own hands and shut him up permanently before he could say anything too revealing.

There’d been mistakes, yes, a reluctance to act quickly, failures of communication. Allegations of CID bullying in their attempts to pull in witnesses. However unfounded, and most of the accusations were, as Mayo knew full well, it was no surprise that Joe Public, goaded by some sections of the media, saw the whole affair as a typical police c**k-up which the Division as a whole was having to live down. There was to be the inevitable enquiry, though it was felt within the Division that Mayo had been dealt a tough hand. He had a very good private idea of the killer – or, more correctly, those who were behind the murder – but that didn’t mean, even if more resources had been available – which they were not – that he’d ever get the person who’d pulled the trigger. This, he felt ominously, was going to be one of the few stickers of his career, one of those cases which were never solved. Not one that he’d ever forget, though.

But inevitably other crimes were waiting, other problems had come along and Danny had now been consigned to that limbo labelled ‘Pending’.

He looked at his watch, not wanting to be the one who terminated the conversation, but Alex seemed reluctant to let him go. ‘You’re looking after Moses all right? Don’t forget his vitamin supplements, will you?’

This was just filling in time! She knew better than he that there was no chance whatever of him not looking after the cat – Moses himself would see to that, self-preservation being his middle name. As for vitamin supplements … ‘That cat’s going to live to 120, vitamins or not,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who needs the supplements.’

Alex laughed, and at last said she must go. ‘Back to the salt mines. I’ll be home tomorrow. Two whole days’ rest from this madhouse!’ She didn’t sound overwhelmed by it. ‘Love you, Gil.’

‘Love you, and miss you, too,’ he answered, inadequate as this was to express what he wanted to say. Unable, as always, to say more. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ she said drily, ‘I’ll really try.’

In line with the recommendations of her new job, she’d been sent on this two-week training course, with a weekend break in the middle. He hoped she was enjoying it: the idea of dramatis personae from the Crown Prosecution Service gathered together for two weeks of each other’s company filled him with a horrified amusement, but Alex had said she was actually looking forward to it – and it sounded as though she was in fact relishing it. Unfairly, this made him feel badly done by. She knew that he, along with most other police officers, trod warily with the CPS, who, like as not, saw fit to throw out as unsafe for prosecution, due to what they considered insufficient evidence or whatever, cases the police had toiled over for months. He appreciated that her new career was giving her a buzz and he was glad for her, but he didn’t have to like what she was doing. It smelled too much of collusion. Sleeping with the enemy.

Because he felt guilty, thinking like that, he dutifully stacked the dishes in the machine before he went out. He also went to feed the parrot, who was tuning up for his morning recital, his shrieks sounding even more demonic than usual. Sometimes Mayo thought he’d be better off living in Oxford Circus than in this menagerie, where the occupants did not live in harmony. It would certainly be quieter.

Moses was sitting in front of Bert’s cage, his eyes lit with an unblinking, malevolent yellow glint. No wonder the parrot was losing it. One day I’ll get you, the cat’s gaze said. Try it, said Bert’s mad glare. Mayo resisted temptation, and shut the cat in the kitchen.

It was just on eight when he walked into Milford Road Divisional Headquarters, having decided to make time to walk down the hill to work, loosen up, clear his head and maybe tune into some of that feel good factor he heard so much about. He was met with the usual controlled hubbub associated with changing shifts that issued from the office behind the front desk – doors banging, telephones ringing, exchange of banter. He asked, as he normally did, to see the night duty officer’s occurrence book, and glanced through the usual depressing spate of crimes – drunk and disorderlies, acts of vandalism, car thefts. Routine stuff. And housebreaking. It looked very much as though Lavenstock’s finest were signally failing to come to grips with this last.

‘There’s a lot of it about,’ pointed out the desk sergeant, Light by name, miserable old sod by nature, when he saw Mayo’s eyes resting thoughtfully on the entries. ‘Four again last night. All that grief, just for drug money! I’d show ’em.’

‘Hmm. Inspector Moon in, yet?’

‘No, sir, not yet,’ Light answered with relish, looking pointedly at the clock. Tough as old boots, he hated all policewomen on principle, and Abigail Moon in particular, since she didn’t put up with his old buck and gave as good as she got.

‘Right. Tell her I’d like to see her when she gets in, will you?’

Light said it would be a pleasure.

The door next to Mayo was flung open and a hefty young policewoman bounced through, nearly knocking him over. He dimly remembered seeing her around. A big girl. Beefy red arms under a short-sleeved white shirt, moon face, mouse-brown hair streaked blonde and pulled tight back in a scrunch. ‘Nobody ever tell you standing behind doors is an unsocial act?’ she demanded, before she saw who it was. ‘Whoops, sorry, sir – I thought it was someone else!’ Her face turned as red as her arms.

‘My fault, shouldn’t have been standing there. No harm done.’ He regained his balance, nodded to show there was no ill feeling and turned to make his way up the stairs.

‘Tracey,’ he heard Sergeant Light ponderously behind him, ‘a word in your shell-like.’

Who was she?

No one had yet come forward to identify the woman found in the flooded uplands.

She had been discovered by two small brothers, indulging in forbidden activity. It was Saturday morning and they’d been intent on making the most of being off school on a day miraculously free from rain, and set off to fish in what at that point was normally a dismal trickle of water yielding nothing more interesting than sticklebacks and tadpoles. Now, it had suddenly, magically, become a river. Had they but known it, the Kyne had always been officially classed as a river, though it was never much more than a brook anywhere along its course, sliding lazily along in its upper reaches, becoming somewhat swifter and wider before joining the more robust Stockwell in its own deep valley … where Lavenstock, back in the mists of time, had started as a medieval river-bank settlement, expanded when it was drawn into the Black Country industrial developmental sprawl, and now spread its residential suburbs inexorably upwards towards the hills on either side.

The two boys, from one of the estates past which the Kyne meandered, had got more than their act of disobedience warranted. Inexpertly casting their lines, they’d convinced themselves that the thing on which one of their hooks had fastened must at least be a huge salmon, if not a shark, swimming around in there. Reeling in his line, shrill with excitement, the ten-year-old at last drew forward what was attached to it: a horrid, bloated thing which had drifted into the far bank, become wedged under a group of low-branched alders and balsam, and was now freed.

The boys, who’d been warned they’d be given what for, and not half, if their parents caught them messing around near the floods, had abruptly abandoned their tackle and fled in terror, as quickly as their wellies sinking into the squelchy mud would allow. Shane wasn’t for telling what they’d seen, but Darren, who was only eight, was blubbing for his mum (something he’d hotly deny later) and in the end Shane was glad they had told when the police cars and ambulance arrived and he had the kudos of telling his story to the police. It was as well he didn’t know then that he’d remember it in his dreams for years to come.