Dead Unlucky (4 page)

Sebastian Emmer’s parents lived on an estate lying at the edge of town, where Lockingham meets the fields. Alanbrooke Close was tucked away with all the other field marshals: Auchinleck, Wavell, Slim and, of course, good old Monty. It was the most exclusive area of the town, what the other locals would call posh, and there were some nice cars on display in the drives, cars pretty much like Hart’s. The Mercedes and the Jaguars, of course, were tucked up out of sight for the night, sleeping inside their double garages.

The house itself wore a pretence of Regency about it, a pair of white columns embedded into the brickwork either side of a thick front door. The front garden was neatly tended and no fence stood to separate it from the close. Hart and Kanjaria walked along the short path, stood at the door, and Hart pressed his right index finger against the bell push. The constable looked him in the eye for a bit of encouragement and he smiled reassuringly.

The chime of the bell was answered by a woman a couple of years younger than Hart and she opened the door as far as the security chain would allow, with her head tilted so that she could see through the gap better. Hart had already produced his identity wallet and held it in front of what he could see of the woman’s face.

‘Mrs Emmer? I’m Detective Chief Inspector Hart and this is Constable Kanjaria. May we speak to you for a moment?’

‘Clive, it’s the police,’ called the woman into the void behind her, ignoring the subjects of her message as they waited outside her front door.

‘What the hell do they want at this time of night?’ returned a man’s voice from nowhere.

‘I don’t know, I haven’t asked them,’ she replied, still half turned around, with her right hand grasping the door catch.

Hart thought he had better play a more major role in this little tragicomedy. ‘Mrs Emmer, may we step inside please?’ he said, trying to sound firm yet gentle.

She turned back towards him, looking a little stunned as though she had forgotten he was there, and pushed the door to so she could unfasten the chain, and then opened it wide. As they stepped over the threshold, Clive Emmer appeared in the hall, a newspaper dangling from his hand. He was a tall, thin, straggly man wearing a beige cardigan on his body and a horseshoe of greying black hair on his head.

‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘I think we had better go into the living room if that’s all right with you, Mr Emmer.’

Clive Emmer turned away abruptly and led them into a room best described as sparkly. Everything seemed to be coloured a shade of either white or gold. The walls were papered in cream with floral patterns of faint magnolia and lime green, and two countryside scenes hung in gold frames. There was a mirror, gold-bordered, and a gold-pendulum clock sat on the sideboard before a backdrop of gold-rimmed plates. The myriad of bulbs on the walls and ceiling, held in their golden fittings of course, gave the place the feel of a glitzy entertainment complex, where the lights had been turned up to maximum brightness at the end of the evening to tell the customers it was time for them to shove off. A little plastic tree stood on a small table in one corner, a grudging concession to the impending season of joy and goodwill.

Hart lowered himself into a cream leather armchair while Kanjaria and Mrs Emmer sat together on the sofa. She was short and chubby, although not overtly fat, and wore pink slippers on her feet with the fluffy wool insides poking over the tops. Her husband insisted on standing, but guarded his own armchair just in case anybody else entertained any ideas about using it.

‘I am sorry Mr and Mrs Emmer, but I have some very bad news to tell you.’ Hart’s eyes flicked between husband and wife as he gave it to them straight; there is no better way, no good way at all. ‘Your son, Sebastian, has been found dead.’

Clive Emmer decided he needed to sit down after all. His wife sat with her eyes wide open and her mouth forming a perfect letter O as she stared into the policeman’s face. Nothing was said and Hart knew that there was no need for any words for a while; let the putrid main course be digested in its own time. When the moment was right, he served them up the foul dessert.

‘I’m afraid there is more bad news. It appears very much as though Sebastian was murdered.’

The denial came immediately. ‘But he can’t have been,’ said the boy’s mother. ‘Are you sure it was Sebastian? It could have been somebody else. It probably was.’

‘We are as certain as we can be, although I would appreciate it if you would be kind enough to make a formal identification either tonight, or in the morning may be better. You see, we found Sebastian’s driving licence in his blazer pocket, a blazer of Highdean School.’

‘Well that doesn’t mean much, does it Clive?’ asked Mrs Emmer as she frantically canvassed from face to face, her gaze finally settling on her only possible ally, desperately trying to induce her husband to help shore up the bricks of her crumbling world. ‘It could have been one of his friends. Sebastian just lent him his licence, that’s all.’

‘I’m afraid that isn’t the case.’ It was always kindest to crush any false hopes as quickly and as permanently as possible. ‘You see, his mobile phone had your number stored in it under the heading of
home
. And the photograph on the licence matched the victim.’

And this disclosure brought the mother to the point of the most bitter sorrow, and Mrs Emmer sobbed wretchedly into her hands for the son she now knew she had lost. And then the realisation that he had actually been wrenched forcibly from her by the hand of another human being struck at her heart, and she somehow managed to cry even harder. Her husband stared ahead, his grinding teeth managing to make him appear more angry than recently bereaved.

‘Would you like some tea, Mrs Emmer? Shall I put the kettle on?’ asked Kanjaria gently.

Her husband answered for her. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ he shouted. ‘Our son’s just been murdered and all you can think of is guzzling tea. And don’t you dare put your hand on my wife’s shoulder,’ he barked again, shaking his finger. Mr Emmer did not think to offer comfort to his wife by cuddling her himself. ‘How did Sebastian die?’

Hart answered calmly, remaining unruffled for the sake of the wife and also because he recognised it was only fair to make concessions to a father whose son’s brain had recently been exposed to the gaze of the world. ‘He was found lying in an alley this evening. It appears he was hit on the head with a hard object.’

‘It appears? Don’t you bloody well know, man?’

‘We know very little as yet, which is why I would like to ask you just a few questions; we want to find the person who did this as quickly as possible. And then we’ll leave you in peace.’

‘Get on with it then.’

‘What time did you expect Sebastian home this evening?’

Surprisingly, it was Mrs Emmer who lifted her head from her hands and spoke. ‘Well, he gets home pretty much when he likes, you see. After all, he’s eighteen and so we don’t feel the need to keep tabs on him too much. Usually he stays at the school, it’s a boarding school of course, but he may come home occasionally, especially at weekends. He comes and goes when he wants to.’

‘Did he have a car?’ asked Hart, although the key found in the lad’s pocket had already told him the answer.

‘Yes. We bought him one for his eighteenth birthday. Quite a nice one, although I’m not sure what kind it is.’ Clive Emmer knew but he wasn’t telling anybody. His abject distress seemed to be embedded inside a brooding bitterness.

‘So why would he have been walking? He was found in an alley, Mrs Emmer. Why didn’t he drive?’

‘I really couldn’t tell you that, I’ve no idea. He will have driven to Lockingham from school, that’s for sure.’ She had stopped crying now. She was almost cheerful. In her subconscious she was talking proudly about a son who was still alive; the previous ten minutes had not happened.

‘Did he have any friends in the area?’

‘He does have a few but I’m not sure where they live. Most of his friends are from school, and that’s a fair way from here. And kids from there come from all over.’

‘Do you mind if we have a quick look in his room?’

‘Well, I don’t mind, but whatever for? There’s nothing up there. I know that because I keep it tidy for him when he’s away. You know, change the sheets, that sort of thing, put his clothes in his drawers, so I know pretty much everything he keeps in his bedroom.’

‘It’s just routine. We won’t be long.’

‘Just go up the stairs and the door’s right opposite when you get to the top.’

‘Nobody’s asked
me
whether you can snoop around, and it’s
my
bloody house,’ snorted Clive Emmer, still staring straight ahead.

Now that she had stopped talking, Mrs Emmer began to cry again.

Sebastian Emmer’s bedroom was just like that of any other schoolboy. Well, any other schoolboy of wealthy parents and a mother who keeps it looking as dapper as the barrack-room of a regimental sergeant major. On a desk sat his computer, a pricey one boasting all the top of the range bits and pieces and sockets for this and that. An LED TV connected to a digital recorder stood on a wide shelf next to a docking station which had been used to drive his parents crazy. In the wardrobe hung a collection of shirts, jackets, trousers and a few silk ties with half a dozen pairs of shoes at a hundred pounds a pair neatly arrayed underneath them. The few posters papering the walls were of old rock bands like Led Zeppelin and the Stones, as perversely befitted a modern young man.

Hart knelt down and stuck his head under the bed as Kanjaria pulled open the top drawer of a small cabinet by the boy’s pillow.

‘Got anything?’ he mumbled.

‘Nothing much, Sir. A few coins, pens, pencils. A book:
Female Sexual Fantasies Deciphered
. And a stack of Mars bars. Must have had a very sweet tooth.’

At the mention of Mars bars, Hart’s head jumped up just enough to hit itself on the bottom of the bed.

‘Ouch,’ he exclaimed as he dragged himself up from his hands and knees; he had never felt the need to generate more colourful expletives in order to appear matey in front of junior colleagues.

As they were delving inside drawers of socks and upmarket underpants, another bedroom door opened and footsteps passed by on the landing. Hart and Kanjaria silently opened the door wide and watched the back of a girl descend the stairs, long blonde hair trailing down a light blue dressing gown. When she reached the living room, they began to hear voices. Hart moved along the landing and poked his head around the girl’s bedroom door. He saw an old fourteen-inch television on a shelf next to a cheap stereo unit. Little stickers of the girl and her friends contorted into zany poses were plastered onto any available spaces. Clothes were slumped over the backs of chairs, and books and garish copies of
mizz
lay haphazardly on the floor. Pictures of Becks, Justin Bieber and lots of pretty boys pretending to play guitars kept watch.

‘Let’s go,’ said Hart as he returned to the boy’s room. ‘There’s nothing else to see, although that computer will have to be taken away pretty sharpish.’

A voice called up from the hall. ‘How long are you two going to be? We’re not inviting you to stay the bloody night, you know.’

After they had reached the bottom of the staircase, Kanjaria sat down on a stair so that her brown eyes were level with the wretched girl’s red ones.

‘Was Sebastian your brother, Love?’

A single faint nod.

‘We’re so sorry, we really are.’ And the policewoman risked the father’s wrath by rubbing the young girl’s shoulder.

‘Mrs Emmer, just one last little thing,’ said Hart on the way out. ‘Did Sebastian have any illness that you know of?’

‘Illness? No. Nothing, apart from the sniffles we all get at this time of year. He’s always been healthy. Likes his football and rugby, that sort of thing.’

‘No history of diabetes or anything like that?’

‘No, of course not. I’d know about that, wouldn’t I?’

‘Yes, of course you would. Thank you.’

And Mrs Emmer closed the door against a heartless world.

Walking back to the car Hart and Kanjaria said nothing, but as they lowered themselves into the front seats they simultaneously released a pair of huge sighs.

‘I liked your comments to the little girl, Constable. There’s always plenty of sympathy dished out to the parents at times like these, but the siblings who have lost a brother or sister get forgotten.’

‘Thanks, Sir. I’m glad to be out of there, though, that’s for sure. We didn’t learn a lot either, did we?’

‘Nonsense,’ replied Hart. ‘We found out loads of stuff. We found out my rule about bringing a tea waitress along doesn’t always hold true. And the necessity of having a female officer as a sidekick turns out not to be a rock solid law, I think we discovered that.’ Kanjaria smiled as she appreciated him mocking himself. ‘You might as well have been a hermaphrodite from Neptune, it wouldn’t have made any difference in there tonight. Whatever we had done, whoever we had been, Clive Emmer would have despised us, as he seems to despise the world. His wife? She just does as she’s damn well told.’

‘But are we any closer to finding out who killed him, Sir?’ After all, this was a murder enquiry, and Kanjaria’s young voice was tinted with excitement.