The Vacant Casualty Read online

  ‘Final reason: he was sniffing around. He had been quite excited these last few weeks and months. He was the sort of chap who’d love to expose a miscarriage of justice, or a cover up of some kind and he kept hinting at it. Not heavy-handed hints, you understand, but accidentally. He was foraging around in the library recently, and seemed to have a bee in his bonnet. This vote, for instance – it was supposed to be passed six weeks ago but he kept having it delayed while he asked for extra time to look into something. People were wary enough of him already, but that might have been what tipped someone over the edge.’

  The two men were intrigued and excited by this last possibility.

  ‘What do you think he was looking for?’ asked Bradley.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly tell you,’ said their host. ‘Remember, I’ve only been here a few years – less time than him.’

  ‘We’ve got lots of motives to investigate, then,’ said Bradley. ‘I suppose we ought to speak to some of these folks as soon as we can. Thank you, Major – I mean, Doctor.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ he said, getting up. ‘Good luck. I hope you liked the custard.’

  ‘It was pretty good,’ said Sam, wiping the last from his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Pleasure. Never met someone else who likes custard made from tortoise milk before. I’ll cook some more for you next time.’

  The major (or doctor) saw them to the door, closed it and then watched with amusement through the spyhole as Sam ran to one side to avoid being ungrateful to his host and vomited a violent gutful of grey custard onto next door’s lawn.

  ‘It’s not yet twelve, so we’ve still got a good while to go before the emergency Parish Council meeting this afternoon,’ said Bradley. ‘How’s the hangover?’

  ‘Pretty awful,’ said Sam, then gargled with water from a bottle. ‘Surely we’ve done enough of these old duffers for a morning? Can’t we go out into the country?’

  Bradley looked at his watch. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘Who do you think we should speak to, then?’

  ‘The druid. They say she lives up here on the Hill.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ said Bradley, nodding, and just at the same moment he spotted his police car up the road where he’d left it the night before, clicked the button to turn off the alarm with a triumphant gesture, danced a little jig and trotted up to it.

  ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said Sam, following twenty yards behind.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You shouldn’t ask me where we should go next, for starters. But you certainly shouldn’t do a little dance when the car alarm release goes off, like you’re on a game show.’

  ‘Oh whatever,’ said Bradley, unlocking the door.

  There was a sudden loud boom from nearby that made them both stop speaking, and look to where a plume of smoke was rising from the grounds of the school. No ordinary smoke, however, because this was green and giving off showers of blue sparks.

  ‘My God,’ said Bradley. ‘Some sort of terrible explosion at the school!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said a voice, and they spotted a schoolmaster further down the lane. He was looking particularly bedraggled, his trousers hanging in shreds and his face covered in soot. ‘Just a, uh, just a science experiment!’ he called out, sounding rather nervous. ‘No need to come and investigate – none at all! Good day! Oh dear . . .’

  And with that the strange man (who bore a remarkable resemblance to the actor Jim Broadbent) tottered out of view, back into the school grounds.

  ‘Is there anything that doesn’t explode around here?’ asked Sam, and both men walked slowly off towards the car, casting suspicious glances over their shoulders as they went.

  Chapter Seven

  SAM WAITED UNTIL they had been driving for a few minutes before he raised the topic again.

  ‘I really think you need to be a bit more . . . you know,’ he said.

  ‘I feel I know what you’re getting at,’ said Bradley. ‘I should be more of a, er, a sort of . . . rough type.’ The detective had been leaning forward and clutching the steering wheel nervously but now he forced himself to lean back into his seat and put his foot down, making the speed surge. ‘You were going to say I wasn’t enough of a man; that I should be more aggressive.’

  ‘Hey, listen! When we’re alone in the car there’s nothing to gain by you being a macho cop – God damn it, slow down! I’m feeling G-force here. Mind that— My God, did we hit it? Okay, that’s it, slower, slower. Okay, so the one thing I was going to say was, be more hardball in all your dealings with humans – apart from me.’

  ‘Define hardball,’ said Bradley, taking his eyes off the road and gunning the acceleration once more.

  Sam was happy to give out advice, but in his current state (and in fact, in any state whatsoever) he was not content to have his life put at risk simply for the purposes of making a drive in the country slightly more brisk. He made his feelings on this subject clear in words of one syllable.

  ‘Don’t take me as an example,’ he said. ‘But here’s my advice. Take no shit from no one, and refuse to believe what anyone says unless they’ve got cast-iron proof to back it up. Beat the crap out of the strong and threaten the weak mercilessly, then toss them a few crumbs of relief afterwards for the illusion that you wouldn’t fuck them over next time. Don’t trust your boss. Screw the system, and fuck being trustworthy except by your own twisted code – will you stop?’

  Bradley braked sharply then came to a slewing halt in the middle of a car-park clearing in the centre of the woods.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Sam, puking out of the window. ‘You’re doing well. I’ve never . . . I’ve never praised someone while puking before,’ he added. ‘And I guess I’m all the more impressed for that fact.’

  As Bradley went up ahead to the encampment on the top of the hill, Sam decided to remain seated on a tree stump in the woods, claiming he wanted to check for emails on his phone while still in signal, but in fact (as would have been clear to anyone more experienced in life than Bradley), he had been badly caught short and was nervously watching passing traffic for an opportunity to take an undetected toilet break in the woods.

  As Bradley neared the crest of the hill, he was braced by a quickening breeze, and coming closer to the top he found that the grasses swept in the high wind like gentle waves. The treeline parted, the bright sky broadened massively about him, and here, far away from the duties to which he was accustomed, and the life he knew, he suddenly and unexpectedly saw the beauty of the landscape as if for the first time, which quite took his breath away.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, you twat!’ said a voice.

  He turned and saw a middle-aged hag in thick boots trudging up the hill towards him.

  ‘Saracene Galaxista,’ he said. She stopped and he saw the reason for her bad temper and stooping gait. ‘Let me help you with that,’ he offered.

  ‘Oh, go on, then,’ she muttered, and handed over the twin pails of milk she was carrying. ‘Maybe you’re not that bad, despite being a pig. I’m only one of the order of Sisters of Galaxista. We’re just over here.’

  Bradley soon had cause to regret his largesse. For some reason when he made the remark it felt like holding open a door for a lady, a marginally meaningful gesture. Where had he assumed her to be taking the milk to – a meeting with him upon this random tussock? In fact, it turned out to be the camp a quarter of a mile away over some decidedly squelchy uplands about which Mrs Detective would certainly have something to say when it came to the effects on his Marks & Spencer brogues.

  That is little, however, compared to the effect that it had on his state of mind. A hangover which had been largely in retreat now made huge gains in important areas of head pain, nervousness, weariness, self-hatred and weakness to suggestion, and after Bradley had planted the milk down he passed out for a couple of minutes leaning against a goat, only waking to discover that Sam had caught up with him.

  ‘You were crying in your sleep,’ said S
am. ‘That is a bad hangover.’

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ said Bradley. ‘Why is it wherever I go, I only get to talk to you?’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ Sam punched him in the leg. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘that if I’m going to be stuck in this village or town, or what have you for the next few days, I’m probably going to need whatever sustenance I can get to keep me going. I’m assuming you’ve never smoked weed?’

  Bradley smiled as though this were a trick question, because to him the idea of a policeman taking drugs of any kind was a genuinely amusing idea – like a nun going to the toilet. It simply didn’t happen. Meanwhile the woman they were there to interview came back from a nearby tent, smiled briefly at Bradley, turned her back on him and started a mumbling conversation with Sam.

  ‘I’m not made of money . . .’ said Sam, followed by, ‘. . . Yes, that’s good. Okay, nice . . . No, come on, I’ve got to draw the line somewhere and horse tranquilizers is it . . .’

  Some money changed hands and then they separated, both looking very pleased and placing things deep into their pockets, before they realized that the detective was watching them intently.

  ‘Thank God I found you,’ said Sam too loudly to the druid. ‘I don’t know what I would be able to do without my herbal tea remedies.’

  Bradley looked the other two up and down.

  ‘How can I help you?’ asked Saracene Galaxista.

  ‘I want to know who would have wanted Terry Fair-breath out of the way,’ he said, bad temperedly.

  ‘That fucker? Everyone,’ she replied. ‘Come into my tent.’

  SHE SERVED them both with a cup of tea in a tent that was, much to their surprise, far more like a tasteful ordinary British drawing room than Major Eldred’s had been. Galaxista was hard to make out – she seemed half stupid, half bored and half stoned. And half intelligent, Bradley kept thinking to himself, but then he knew that was possibly a stupid remark to make, even inside your own head, so he abandoned it.

  ‘They all hated him, as you say. The little old sisters, the stupid fat Mayor, the Reverend, Lord Selvington, even the librarian.’

  ‘The librarian?’

  ‘Yes. Miss Elvesdon, that decided weirdo. They became friends – study pals, bosom buddies – over something. I think they were digging up something from the past. Then when he called it to a halt she was very hurt. You know, you should probably seek out the only heterosexual single male in the village, they would probably have a grudge against dear Terry. He was gay as a cock-shaped kite on the Queen’s Jubilee, but women swarmed to him.’

  Bradley nodded and took this in, but was not ignorant of the extended roll-up that was being passed around. He didn’t know enough about that sort of thing to make trouble, and he was still reliant on Sam to tell him how to develop his act. And Sam was having most of the roll-up, as far as he could tell.

  ‘So, who wanted Terry killed, Sister Galaxista?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ said the sister, sitting back on a cushion next to him. ‘It’s more a case of who didn’t want him killed. By which I mean me, I didn’t. He was a sweetheart for us and our cause.’

  ‘And what is your cause?’

  ‘We started off objecting to the nuclear waste dumps they were planning here thirty-five years ago,’ she explained. ‘Then there was going to be a massive bypass right across the hill, near the henge, and we said, like, no. No way! We got enough people and we rejected it.’

  ‘So you succeeded?’ Bradley asked.

  ‘Yes, but they keep on trying,’ said Saracene. ‘Their latest plan is to dump thousands of unused books here. A bunch of publishers had tens of thousands of those crappy parodies – you know, when talentless half-brained hacks try to make a quick buck off the back of genuinely successful authors by writing things with similar titles and book covers?’ she spat on the floor. ‘It makes me sick. Anyway, they have hundreds of tonnes of these knock-off books they want to get rid of, and they want to dig a hole in the hill here and bury them. But we said no. We cannot let it happen. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, we understand,’ said Sam. ‘You really don’t want it to happen.’

  ‘No. It can’t happen. This is a place of outstanding natural beauty, of ancient wonderment. We will call all the land’s children here to procreate and worship beneath the henge!’

  ‘Procreate?’ said Sam, starting to find his proximity to Galaxista uncomfortable. He sniffed suspiciously at his tea. ‘What’s in this exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘Just tea,’ she smiled.

  ‘And milk?’

  ‘Tortoise milk, of course,’ she said. ‘It’s full of complex proteins.’ He threw it on the floor with a shout.

  ‘Henge?’ Bradley was saying. ‘Oh, I see. It really is a place of crucial heritage.’

  ‘Stones came here from hundreds of miles away. This isn’t just a gathering of people who happen to be here and who reject modern technology. This is an ancient place of worship where ancient rituals are enacted by present-day people. Big, important rituals!’

  ‘Right,’ said Bradley. ‘Sam, let go of my arm. Sorry, go on. So what do you guys do up here, is there some kind of ritual?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And look here,’ she pointed out of a gap in the side of the tent. ‘We have forty men, women and children working with wicker all day long. They are helping to make our main piece for the great sacrifice.’

  ‘How remarkable. And it’s shaped like an enormous pole, almost like a man’s p— Sam! Stop tugging my arm like that!’

  ‘And here we have sixty others, digging the ceremonial trench . . .’

  ‘I see, I see. Almost like a woman’s . . . Yes, Sam. don’t worry, I’m coming with you. Let’s hurry along now. So long, sister! Put that cigarette down, now, Sam. Run!’

  Chapter Eight

  SAM SNOOZED OFF the effects of his large cigarette on the way back to the town, and when woken up on arriving there, he insisted on getting some lunch.

  ‘Not just any lunch,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some proper lunch.’

  Detective Inspector Bradley soon gave up trying to suggest what a proper lunch might be, allowing Sam’s nose to follow itself until they stumbled across the Legume & Gastropod pub, tucked away in a winding side alley.

  ‘Garlic mushrooms,’ said Sam, before his backside had even touched the bench. ‘Onion rings, deep-fried whitebait and a bacon-triple-cheeseburger. With onions, relish and anything else that comes with it. And a Coke? I would come in and order with you but I’ve got a bad leg.’ He handed the menu back to Bradley with a twenty-pound note, fell back in a swoon against the leather chair, turned his face to the window and relaxed in the hot sunshine.

  ‘Ordered,’ said Bradley, appearing sooner than expected.

  ‘Okay, man,’ said the writer, who, with the promise of large amounts of juicy fried food coming his way, surprised himself by snapping out of his reverie. ‘How do you think this is going? I’m getting a big kick out of this, baby.’

  ‘I . . . I’m not sure,’ said Bradley, picking over his words carefully. ‘I’m concerned that you were dealing drugs with those crusties up there . . .’ he began.

  ‘Good,’ encouraged Sam.

  ‘But then, I’m also slightly terrified that if we’d stayed up there long enough they would have sacrificed us to the sun god.’

  ‘It must be quite close to some solstice or other,’ said Sam. ‘And notice how I gave you a helpful wrist-tugging hint . . .’

  ‘Gold star to you there, young man,’ said Bradley, who was pleased to see that his approbation gave Sam pleasure. ‘Well done for saving our lives,’ he reiterated. ‘But still it leaves a lot unexplained. And still more motives!’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Sam, sipping his Coke. ‘We’ve still got to talk to the mayor, and many others, but I think we should get hold of the man with the Ye Olde Shoppe.’

  ‘Yes, he certainly sounds like he has a grudge against the council, that could be a motive.’

  ‘Right,�
�� said Sam, caught off-guard. ‘He has a motive, all right. But he’s also missing out on some major other Dickens puns for his shop.’

  ‘Right, I see—’

  ‘Nicholas Nippleby, A Tale of Two Titties, David Cop-a-feel. That’s off the top of my head, if he wants to have a porn shop. If he wants to get into any other linem of business (except being an actual Old Curiosity Shop), I could come up with a dozen puns on the spot.’

  As Bradley was in the course of nodding and smiling, and agreeing in order to stop Sam speaking, their food arrived and they quickly settled into companionable silence. Sam’s wordplay was happily confined to the Guardian easy crossword, while Bradley was rereading the Daily Mail that he had got all the way through at breakfast. By the time their food had been taken away and they were finishing their drinks, DI Bradley was looking at his watch.

  ‘It’s nearly time for the Parish Council meeting,’ he said sadly.

  ‘Right,’ said Sam, leaping to his feet. ‘I’m just going to very quickly nip to the bar. . .’

  BRADLEY AND SAM were admitted early to the meeting this time, although admittedly both were slightly nodding their heads owing to the ‘restorative’ double shots of whisky Sam had bought them both. However, it took the other members so long to assemble, and the room was so cool and shady and (with its many tall windows covered in dusty drapes) so deadening to sound, that the two men had the helpful best part of a half-hour’s rest at the back of the room before the meeting commenced.

  ‘We’re here today to discuss another member joining us,’ said Lord Selvington, snapping the room to attention. The detective and his companion instinctively looked at Major Eldred, who eyed them both meaningfully in turn before switching his gaze to the chairman. ‘And this is a very important decision. I suppose, beforehand – Miss Stissinghurst, is there anything we really need to get off the minutes from yesterday?’