The Facts of Life and Death (14 page)

Even though he was looking at a blob of mud down a microscope, Calvin suddenly felt very small. He wished he could be that tiny, that insignificant.

That hard to find.

‘Are the Burrows near the sea?’ asked King.

Calvin straightened up. ‘Without the pebble ridge, Ma’am, the Burrows
are
the sea.’

DCI King glanced over as she swung the Volvo out of the car park and said, ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘You
did
warn me,’ admitted Calvin. ‘But I still wasn’t ready.’

King laughed. ‘The mud lets the boyfriend off the hook, wouldn’t you say?’

Calvin looked at her blankly. He had no idea why she was asking him or what the right answer might be.

‘They lived together…’ said King encouragingly, and then stopped speaking to allow him to pick up the thread.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘So . . . that . . . means …’ he went on, speaking slowly to give himself time to think.

She helped him out. ‘If you lived with someone and you wanted to kill them, where would you be most likely to do it?’

Calvin thought about killing Shirley. He’d have to avoid the corduroy sofa.

‘In the bath?’ he said. ‘With a knife?’

King raised her eyebrows. ‘I wasn’t thinking of specifics,’ she said. ‘But you’d kill them at home, right?’

‘Probably,’ he agreed.

‘You wouldn’t take her out to a field and push her face into mud until she died, and then load her body into your car and drive it somewhere else and dump it, would you?’

‘Probably not,’ said Calvin again. He wasn’t crazy about mud in his car.

‘That would be too much like hard work,’ King went on. ‘Too organized.’

‘Yes, it would,’ he agreed.

‘Especially for a junkie who doesn’t own a car,’ she said, and Calvin finally caught a glimpse of how her mind worked.

It was apparently quite different from the way
his
worked.

In fact, Calvin was starting to worry that his mind worked differently from everybody else’s.

For instance, he had gone out last Saturday and brought Shirley an engagement ring, but instead of postponing everything for a couple of years the way he’d imagined it would, the ring had only seemed to make her worse. Suddenly there was a church booked, and he was being bombarded by wedding-invitation designs and something called
swatches
, and he was expected to pore over
The Big Book of Baby Names
on date nights, instead of watching Korean gangster movies and having sex on the sofa.

Calvin had committed to a ring; he hadn’t realized that the ring had committed
him
to pretty much everything Shirley claimed it did – including three children, because ‘It’s a nice round number.’ He’d wanted to point out that in fact three was uneven and also a prime, but was afraid that Shirley would actually agree with him – and push for four instead of dropping back to two.

Calvin sighed and wondered what having kids would be like. Better or worse than puppies? Probably very similar, he thought. Messy and tiring to start with, and then after a few months they learned your routine and things got a lot easier.

He could always do extra shifts at work until then.

‘Calvin!’

Calvin blinked at DCI King. He had the distinct feeling she’d said his name more than once.

‘Are you
deaf
?’

That confirmed it. ‘No, Ma’am,’ he said.

‘Well then, try to pay attention, will you? I don’t want to keep repeating myself like those idiots you see calling their dogs in the park.’

‘Sorry, Ma’am.’

Calvin touched his sleeve to his brow. Trying to keep up with life was making him sweat.

JUST AFTER MUMMY
went to work, Daddy appeared at Ruby’s bedroom door in his cowboy clothes even though it wasn’t Friday. ‘Want to go catch a killer, Deputy?’

Ruby gasped in excitement and Daddy held up a warning finger. ‘Don’t tell Mummy.’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ said Ruby, and bounced off the bed

Ruby kept craning forward on her seat, even though it wanted to tilt her backwards. She wanted to see the killer first; wanted to be the one to spot him; wanted to shout, ‘There he is!’ and point her finger, and feel the car swing around hard in pursuit.

If they didn’t catch him tonight, next time she would bring a cushion.

She looked at Daddy. ‘You should have a badge,’ she said. And then immediately, ‘Can
I
have a badge?’

‘What kind of badge?’

‘A deputy’s badge. And you can have a sheriff’s.’

‘We’ll see how it goes, Rubes. I don’t think the Gunslingers would want me to give out badges until they knew you were going to stick at it.’

‘I
am
going to stick at it,’ Ruby assured him.

‘We’ll see then.’

Ruby perched on the edge of her seat, even though they weren’t in Bideford yet. They passed tiny hamlets, no more than a house or three, but she glared at them all with raw suspicion.

They reached the outskirts of the town – the supermarket and the discount shops and the little industrial estates where little industry happened.

Here they saw people, out and about, walking their dogs, waiting at bus stops, eating chips from paper cones.

‘What does a murderer look like?’ Ruby eventually thought to ask.

‘The news said white and about six foot tall.’

‘How tall is six foot?’

Daddy showed her a few inches between the tips of his thumb and forefinger. ‘About yea much taller than me.’

‘What colour is his hair?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘What colour are his eyes?’

‘Don’t know that too.’

Ruby screwed up her face. ‘It’s
difficult
.’

Daddy laughed. ‘If it wasn’t, the police would have caught him, I reckon. That’s why we got up the posse, see? To keep an eye open.’

‘I thought we were on the posse to hunt him down?’

‘We are,’ said Daddy. ‘But that’s
how
we hunt him down. You keep an eye open and when you spot him you hunt him down. These things take time, Rubes. I told you it weren’t a game, didn’t I?’

Ruby nodded.

They drove through Bideford in a zigzag, and then went on towards Westward Ho!, slowly up the long hill, and quickly down the other side as if they were surfing a wave to the beach.

‘Where are the other Gunslingers?’ she asked.

‘Round and about,’ he said. ‘We split up so we can cover more area. Some of us on this side of the water and some on the other, off towards Barnstaple. Chip’s covering Torrington. Nobody knows where he’ll strike next, see, Rubes? That’s why he’s hard to catch.’

She nodded. That made sense, although she was disappointed that they weren’t all riding in convoy, the way she’d imagined they’d be. Of course, she was even more disappointed that they weren’t all on horses, but even she knew that that was unrealistic.

Now and then Daddy did flash his lights at another Gunslinger, or raised a hand as they passed. When he did, he’d murmur their names.

‘Shiny,’ he’d go. Or ‘Whippy.’

Just that. No more.

Ruby watched the men’s silhouettes pass and longed to ask questions about Shiny and Whippy and Blacky and Daisy. Wanted to know why they had those names; wanted to say hi and show them that she was a deputy, even though she was only a girl and only ten. But the Gunslingers didn’t stop to talk, just drove on – all hunting for the same killer.

It was very grown-up.

They looped through Westward Ho! and then went through the lanes to Appledore, past the shipyard, and back up to Northam.

They slowed a few times as they passed men walking alone, or sitting in parked cars, and Ruby peered from the window with her heart thudding in her ears.

What would she see? What would a killer look like? Would she be able to spot him? And if she did, would he
know
he’d been spotted? The idea made her shiver, and at those moments when Daddy took his foot off the pedal and they coasted past a stranger, Ruby wished she’d brought her guns. Even if they were sticks, somehow she’d feel safer with them in her pockets.

‘Any good, Rubes?’ Daddy would say.

‘No good,’ she’d say.

Some were too short to be the killer. Some were too tall. Some were too fat or had dogs, or umbrellas, or were laughing, or holding hands with a girl.

‘Everyone looks just . . .
normal
,’ she said.

‘Well, everyone is,’ said Daddy. ‘But even normal people do bad things.’

Ruby didn’t like that idea. If
that
was true, then
anyone
might be the killer – and that made her feel a bit weird inside.

As they drove back along Bideford Quay, with the shops and pubs on one side of the road, and the masts and rigging and wheel-houses of little ships on the other, Ruby started to sing ‘Red River Valley’, and Daddy joined in.

Then he sang ‘Mama, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys’, and by the time they were halfway to Westward Ho! they were both singing ‘Stand By Your Man’ at the top of their voices. Daddy did the
‘boom boom BOOM
’ in a funny deep voice that made Ruby laugh so hard she could barely catch her breath.

Then Daddy stopped singing.

‘Dad-deee!’ giggled Ruby. ‘You missed your booms!’

But he was looking at a young woman, who was walking back towards Northam with her thumb stuck out.

‘Look at this,’ he murmured, and shook his head.

He checked his mirrors, then swung the car around in the road.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ruby.

‘Take care of her,’ he said. ‘Before anybody
else
does.’

‘Where am
I
going to sit?’

‘In the back.’

Ruby made a face. ‘But I don’t
want
to. I can’t see the killer so well from the back!’

‘Taking care of people is part of the job, Ruby,’ said Daddy sharply. ‘Don’t spoil the whole night now.’

Ruby pursed her lips and crossed her arms. She didn’t want to spoil the whole night, but she also didn’t want to sit in the back. It wasn’t
right
. The back was where she sat when she was a little girl going to school with her Mummy and Daddy, not when she was a deputy on a cowboy posse.

The woman looked around with a frown as the car stopped beside her, then bent as the window squealed down slowly. It was electric but it didn’t work that well.

‘Hi,’ she said warily. She was younger than she’d looked from behind – maybe eighteen, and with hair pulled so tightly into a knot on top of her head that her eyebrows were miles above her eyes.

Daddy leaned across Ruby. ‘You shouldn’t be hitchhiking. We’ll take you anywhere you need to go.’

The girl looked at him, then up and then down the road, then at Ruby.

‘This your little girl?’

‘Yes,’ said Daddy. ‘She’ll get in the back if you want a ride home.’

The girl looked at Ruby, then smiled and said, ‘Yeah, OK. Thanks.’

Ruby huffed and puffed and squeezed between the seats so that the girl could sit in the front, and they set off.

The girl’s name was Becks. She was coming from her grandmother’s in Appledore, and walking the three miles home to Bideford.

‘Why don’t you catch the bus?’ said Daddy.

‘I do if it’s raining.’

Daddy leaned forward and made a show of peering up at the black sky through the windscreen wipers.

‘And it’s three quid each way,’ the girl amended.

‘Still,’ he said. ‘That Frannie girl got herself murdered around here, you know.’

‘Yeah,’ shrugged the girl, as if she doubted the relevance of that. ‘But everyone knows that were her druggie boyfriend, and six quid’s six quid, innit?’

‘It is,’ said Daddy. ‘Are you going to call your grandmother to let her know you’re safe?’

‘I don’t have a phone.’

‘You want to use mine?’

‘Nah, it’s fine. She’ll be in bed by now. Thanks.’

They slowed for a roundabout and Ruby hung between the front seats. She couldn’t resist telling the girl, ‘We’re going to catch the murderer.’

‘Yeah?’ said Becks, looking at John Trick with new eyes. ‘Are you a policeman?’

‘We’re just helping out,’ said Daddy. ‘The police haven’t got the manpower these days.’