The Vacant Casualty (19 page)

‘That stuff’s good,’ said Bradley.

‘Yeah, man,’ said Sam.

‘Oh yeah,’ said Bradley.

‘So let me tell you how it works, then,’ said Sam, feeling garrulous. ‘I’ve given you two classic endings – the butler did it, the detective did it. The next one in
line is,
everyone
did it.’

They were doing about eighty when they neared the turning for Mumford, and Bradley hardly slowed as he hit the corner and scorched up the hill towards town.

‘That’s a very good hypothesis,’ said Bradley.

‘It’s
not
one. How many times do I have to say? Hey, who the hell’s that coming up behind us?’

‘The grannies, the Parish Council, the librarian . . . They’ve all got something to hide,’ said Bradley, looking determined.

‘You’re not to take this as your new theory,’ warned Sam. But the car behind had taken up all of their attention. It was approaching them fast – and they were doing
almost ninety miles an hour. Now it began to weave from side to side, nudging ahead, then revving its engine and swerving to the other side to get through. Bradley made no evasive manoeuvres, but
his necessary movement in the narrow, tree-shrouded, winding lane made it appear he was deliberately blocking its passage, and the other driver became more dangerous and erratic as his speed
grew.

‘What’s he playing at?’ said Bradley. ‘He must be one of them, trying to stop us . . .’

‘No . . .’ warned Sam. They were nearly at the little town’s main street now, and neither car had slowed down. Bradley picked up his radio.

‘Percival? DI Bradley to Sergeant Percival?’

There wasn’t even the beat of a pause. The reply came crackling through at once.

‘Pshhhhft. Percival here.’

‘We are now to regard the entire population of Mum-ford as suspects. This is a town at war. And we are at war with it.’

‘Pshtshhht. Understood.’

‘They have tried to cover up a murder. They tried to kill a police officer once, and are now trying again. Get everyone. I mean EVERYONE! I want this town surrounded!’

‘Keep your bloody hands on the wheel!’ shouted Sam.

But it was too late. The lane opened up, the overhanging trees vanished, and all of a sudden they were careening across the middle of the square, braking hard but still doing upwards of seventy.
Then sixty, fifty . . . But the shops on the other side were approaching rapidly. They turned, skidded, both cars forming a pirouette and their tyres
ther-dududding
over the cobbles. Sam
crouched and pulled his hands over his head, seeing the pink painted shopfront of Mrs Stainwetting’s Teae Shoppe loom above him.

Then there was a crash. He pulled his hands ever more tightly over his head, expecting falling glass to cut through them, and thinking all sorts of thoughts at once: that he’d never play
‘Moonlight Sonata’ again; that being able to play ‘Moonlight Sonata’ had never really got him anywhere in the first place, and his energies might have been better invested
elsewhere; that he had never been in a fulfilling relationship; that the previous fact probably had at least in part something to do with his lifestyle and he really ought to sort himself out if he
came through this; that by sorting himself out he meant cutting down to nothing stronger than smoking weed and drinking port; that there must be a small chance he’d get a sexy scar out of
this car crash; that he had never found a satisfactory answer to the impenetrable mystery of why Fritz Lang had made two film noirs back to back in the mid-1940s with such similar plots and with an
almost identical cast (Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea); that there must be a chance he would get cut in half and still be awake to see his own guts spilling about the place.

Then he passed out.

I
T MUST HAVE
been some time before he woke again. As he came round he expected to find himself peering up into familiar but withered faces telling him
that he had been in a coma for sixty years, or to be feeling around for an amputated limb. But the fact that he was upside down and felt his face pressed against a cold marble floor signalled to
him that he had not been urgently whisked to hospital, or tended to and mended by educated and loving hands.

He rolled on his side, then got up. The detective’s car was sticking in through the plate-glass window of the tea shop. Sam had been thrown clear, attracting to the surface of his clothes
a certain amount of broken glass and whipped cream, and to the rest of his body a number of new and unexpected aches. He rested against the counter and ate a chocolate eclair, first taking certain
shards out of it. Then he lit a cigarette, climbed over the wreckage and walked into the square.

The sight that greeted him was, to his mind, out of a

Paul W. S. Anderson movie. Which may not be a universal analogy, so the author will elucidate.

Helicopters were flying above, armed troops marching in formation over the south side of the square, and the denizens of Mumford were to a man, woman and child lined up in front of the Town Hall
with their arms behind their heads. Searchlights flitted across the paving stones from hovering gunships.

Ahead of him was a figure he recognized and so he stumbled forward, only to be suddenly surrounded by SWAT officers, assault rifles at their shoulders, their voices screaming for him to get on
the ground. He did so, and welcomed the relief from his aching legs and back, and the cold of the stone beneath his cheek.

‘Wait, wait!’ shouted a voice, running closer. ‘That’s my partner. Let him go! Help him up!’

Rough, gloved hands grabbed Sam beneath the armpits and hoisted him reluctantly to his feet. He found himself face to face with Bradley.

‘You okay?’ asked the detective.

‘It’s you,’ Sam said weakly. ‘I thought I was in the film
Minority Report
or something. Or that short story by Ray Bradbury, what’s it called . .
.’

‘Snap out of it, man!’ shouted Bradley, giving him a slap. ‘We’ve got our miscreants. It was the whole town, as you said.
Everyone
’s the murderer.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Sam, struggling to make himself heard above the beating of the rotor blades in the air above, the loudhailers shouting orders to troops all around and the heavy
grinding of the tank tracks as they moved through the streets, crushing the cobbles beneath their weight.

‘I didn’t
say
everyone did it,’ said Sam. He could see Bradley was struggling to hear him and so he beckoned him over to a nearby shop that was open – a pharmacy
that had been given the improbable title of Ye Olde Cure-iosity Shoppe (Chemist). They stepped through the broken windows and made their way to the back of the shop.

‘I’ve got bad news for you,’ said Sam, sitting down.

Bradley didn’t seem able to concentrate. He kept answering queries from the radio on his belt and giving further invasive orders for the town to be searched and cut off. Looking around
himself in dismay, Sam suddenly saw this as a great opportunity, the kind he had never had before. Bradley was still distracted as Sam searched along the shelves. He took effervescent vitamin
supplements, aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen, hangover cures, extract of milk thistle, chewing gum, Lockets, children’s cough syrup (for nostalgia’s sake) and anything else he could
find, until his pockets were full. Then he saw a kettle in the back room, boiled it and made himself a cup of extra-strength flu remedy, which not only tasted nice but was always good for getting a
bit high.

‘So,’ said Bradley, finally switching off his radio set. ‘Oh, thanks,’ he said, accepting a cup of Lemsip. ‘What’s the news?’

‘I hadn’t
finished
,’ said Sam. ‘I
told
you I hadn’t finished running through the various options for who’s done it!’

‘But we’ve got all the old ladies. Five cars found with bashes on them, and when we’ve interviewed everyone we’ll be able to tie them all together.’

‘Fine,’ said Sam. ‘But we haven’t solved Terry’s disappearance, have we? I haven’t told you the next in the sequence of people who might have done
it.’

‘You mean there’s more?’

‘Of course there is! Come on, follow me . . .’ With the windows blown out, the chemist’s shop was not much quieter than the street. Holding his mug, Sam walked forward through
the rubble of the front window and studied the suspects all lined up. They looked as if they were ready to be shot, which sent a chill down his spine. He spotted a nearby police car and walked
towards it, hoping there at least it would be quiet enough to talk without feeling one’s head was about to explode. Bradley was dawdling, talking on his radio again, and Sam took this
opportunity to dart over to the car wreck he had crawled out from and search around in it until he found the rum bottle. Unbroken.

‘A victory,’ he whispered. ‘Another victory for me against the universe. Fuck you, world!’ He realized that he must still be a little bit high as he raised the bottle to
the sky and attracted not only the attention of everyone from the town, but also the thirty or so armed officers who happened to be milling about, and half a dozen concealed snipers, the red aiming
spots of whose rifles suddenly appeared on his chest.

He waved his arms over his head in surrender.

‘Okay,’ he said slowly. ‘Sorry, nothing to worry about, I’m DI Bradley’s partner.’ The red spots vanished and the SWAT team wandered off, looking for other
targets, and Sam returned to the car, plucking his cup of Lemsip from the roof and getting in the back, wondering if there were any health implications about mixing these things together.

‘Hello, old bean,’ said a familiar voice.

Sam already had the rum bottle almost to his lips and turned his head somewhat comically towards the man next to him, in the awareness of having been caught out. He heard a laugh.

‘You go ahead. I’m not in a position to suggest that’s inappropriate, even if I wanted to. Look . . .’ It was Horace, holding up his hands, which were handcuffed
together.

Sam took a good long swig of the rum, then handed it over to the prisoner and sipped his hot drink.

‘It was me driving that car behind you. Terribly glad you weren’t badly hurt,’ said Horace.

‘But we saw you driving off ages before that.’

‘In the wrong direction. I was stoned out of my mind. I woke up in a little lane ages later and decided to race it back.’

‘Jesus,’ said Sam. ‘We’re not very grown up, are we?’

‘No,’ said Horace, looking down. ‘I’m not.’

‘I wasn’t being posh by using the first person plural, Horace,’ said Sam. ‘I meant both of us.
We’re
not very grown up.’

‘It’s true,’ admitted the aristocrat.

‘You have to act up to the role, and get used to being the Earl of Cheltenham.’

‘Ah,’ said Horace.

‘Ah?’

‘Not strictly accurate, once again. I got a call half an hour ago.’

‘Another promotion?’

He nodded sadly. ‘Dear second-cousin-thrice-removed Philomina.’ With handcuffed hands he awkwardly doffed the homburg that he was wearing at rather a jaunty angle (the only angle to
wear it, Sam expected he would say), and clutched it to his heart, gazing heavenwards with a noble air.

‘Old?’ Sam asked.

He nodded happily.

‘Distant?’

Once again Horace gaily signalled that this was indeed the case. ‘Couldn’t be more distant. New Zealand, South Island. Shacked up with a lumberjack over there, the randy old
biddy.’

‘I feel a quote is in order about how the Lord takes us when he feels it is right.’

‘Yes,’ he reflected, ‘but then, that’s probably balls. She was killed by a falling tree that showed certain signs of having been tampered with by a chainsaw. Naughty
hubby was after her inheritance.’

‘So what does that make you?’

‘Duke of Rochester. Fancy a line?’

‘No, come on . . .’ said Sam, wondering whether he could have smuggled drugs past his arresting officer, and then reflecting he almost certainly could. But taking drugs while
in
a police car seemed to him to be perhaps beyond innocent fun, and possibly straying into the area of actually asking for trouble. A little pouch of white powder was offered to him.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he thought, licking his finger and dabbing it so that it was frosted all over with crystals. ‘But we’ll all be dead one day,’ was ever the
answering thought, and so he sucked the acrid powder from his finger and chased its sickening taste down his throat with a large gulp of rum.

‘By the way, do you remember asking me about an ogre?’ said Sam.

Horace suddenly looked suspicious. ‘This wasn’t some dreadful children’s book you were pitching to me, was it, in the hope that I’d send it on to my publisher?’

‘No, it bloody wasn’t! A
real
ogre. Or as real as a – well, whatever. You asked me if I’d seen one. We ran into him.’

‘Oh!’ said the aristocrat, jerking up in his seat.

‘Literally,’ added Sam, wishing, parenthetically, that the occasional and accurate use of this word still had the power it deserved, and adding, just to make his point, ‘I
practically stuck my hand up his bum. And Detective Einstein over there tried to brain him with a mashie. Or a niblick, or whatever it was. This white stuff does make you talkative, doesn’t
it?’

‘It has that effect.’

‘But my question was, if you knew about this bloody great mystical creature roaming the woods, why didn’t you warn us?’

‘Well, I didn’t know for sure, did I? I saw it myself a couple of months back when I was out foraging for mushrooms.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you.’

‘
Magic
mushrooms. I’d hidden my stash somewhere in the woods to prevent Mother from getting her hands on it again – she posts some dreadful shit on Twitter when
she’s high. Supporting House of Lords reforms, that sort of thing. But I was high as a goose when I buried it, and I couldn’t find the stuff sober, so got tooty again and went out
looking for it in that state. I thought he was a hallucination, but then as I drove away, he took a bite out of the old jalopy the size of a dinner plate that was still there in the morning. So I
got sort of confused. Now I come to mention it, he did seem a touch on the dangerous side. How did
you
escape?’