Dying Fall, A (8 page)

And you had rheumatism instead, thinks Ruth. As for the apples and corn dollies, she suspects the local fox. There’s a fox in her garden in Norfolk that steals her wellingtons if she leaves them out on the back step.

‘Thing sees her, I think,’ says Pendragon. ‘Sometimes he’ll look up, staring straight past me, tail wagging in recognition.’

Despite herself, Ruth shivers. She looks at the sleeping dog who, thankfully, does not look up, ears pricked, to greet his ghostly mistress.

‘So, why the gun?’ asks Cathbad, helping himself to another hunk of bread. ‘You seemed pretty scared when we arrived.’

‘It’s a long story,’ Pendragon says again. But, unlike the Dame Alice story, this does not seem to be a tale he is inclined to tell. Instead he drops down on his knees next to Kate. ‘Do you like those dolls, Kate?’ He looks up at Ruth. ‘I found them in the house, under one of the floorboards. I think they belonged to Dame Alice. One of the stories told against her was that she made wooden effigies of her enemies and then burnt them.’

Ruth looks at her daughter playing happily on the floor with the voodoo dolls. Next to her, the devil dog sleeps on.

‘Harry Nelson!’

The large man behind the desk gets up, arms outstretched. The two men don’t actually embrace—the desk is in the way for one thing—but they exchange a hearty handshake.

‘Sandy Macleod! How long has it been?’

‘Too long. But you don’t look a day older.’

‘I feel a hundred years older,’ says Nelson, sinking into a chair. It feels wrong to be this side of the desk but it’s great to be with Blackpool CID again. Bonny Street Station hasn’t changed a bit: there’s still the blue light outside the door, still the rather grim Victorian brickwork, still what looks like the same graffiti outside, ‘Pigs Go Home’. Sandy himself, though balder and fatter, looks much the same. He has a lugubrious, rubbery face, like an old-style music-hall comedian. Nelson remembers that it was always hard to know whether Sandy was joking or not.

‘How’s the countryside treating you?’ he says now, sending a WPC out to make tea with an admirable lack of political correctness. (‘Make us a cuppa, there’s a good lass’.)

‘I’ve had a tough couple of years,’ says Nelson, thinking that this is an understatement. Child abduction, murder, a serial killer, not to mention the mess of his personal life. But Sandy looks quite admiring as he says, ‘You’ve had a few high-profile cases.’

‘God save me from high-profile cases. My boss loves press conferences. Just hearing the word
Crimewatch
gives him a hard-on.’

Sandy laughs. ‘We’ve got a few like that here. Same everywhere, old-style coppers are dying out. They’ve all got degrees now.’

‘You’re not wrong there.’

The WPC comes back with tea in proper cups and even a couple of Kit Kats. Nelson thanks her, thinking of the response he’d get if he sent Judy or Tanya out for refreshments. The word Kit Kat reminds him of Katie.

‘How’s the lovely Michelle?’ asks Sandy. He had been a guest at their wedding, twenty-odd years ago.

‘Champion. She manages a hairdressing business. Nice little set-up.’

‘And the girls?’

‘Both at uni.’

Sandy groans. ‘My boys too. Don’t know why the hell they have to go. Costing me an arm and a leg and all they do is get pissed in Thailand.’

‘How old are your sons?’ Nelson remembers them as little boys in identical Blackpool strips. He can’t remember their names.

‘Tom’s nineteen. He’s at Sheffield reading engineering. Ben’s just finished at Birmingham. God knows what he wants to do. Advanced piss-artistry perhaps. He’s living back at home, driving Bev and me mad.’

‘It’s tough, isn’t it,’ says Nelson. ‘Just when you thought they were off your hands.’

It’ll be another eighteen years before Katie is off his hands, he thinks. That is, if Ruth continues to let him be part of her life.

‘So, Harry,’ says Sandy. ‘What brings you to these parts?’ Nelson is so surprised to be referred to by his first name that he almost doesn’t answer. Somehow, in Norfolk, everyone calls him Nelson, except Michelle, that is. Ruth had even called him Nelson in bed.

‘I’m on holiday,’ he says, at last.

Sandy laughs again, the folds of his face turning upwards. ‘A holiday in Blackpool! Things must be bad.’

‘I wanted to spend some time with Mum,’ Nelson says, not entirely truthfully. ‘She’s getting on a bit.’

‘We all are, cocker,’ says Sandy. ‘I’m going to put in for early retirement in a few years.’

‘You’re joking.’ Nelson doesn’t know what shocks him more: that a contemporary of his might soon be eligible for early retirement or that Sandy Macleod, whom he has always considered the ultimate coppers’ copper, would ever want to quit the job.

‘I’ve had enough,’ says Sandy. ‘Too many bloody graduates, too much paperwork. Do you remember the old days? Drinking after hours in the Red Lion? Sid the Greek? Fat Bernie?’

‘I remember,’ says Nelson, though Sid the Greek and Fat Bernie are just names to him now. He’s sure that every police station has their equivalent. Suddenly he feels rather sad.

Sandy, though, seems to pull himself together. He sits up straighter, brushing chocolate crumbs off his paunch.

‘That case you mentioned, the fire. Professional interest, was it?’

‘Not really,’ says Nelson carefully. ‘Woman I work with, forensic archaeologist, victim was a friend of hers.’

Sandy groans. ‘Don’t talk to me about forensics. Every Tom, Dick and Harry’s a forensics expert these days. Put on a paper suit and you think you’re God.’

‘This woman’s OK,’ says Nelson. ‘Bit of a pain sometimes but OK.’

‘Well, we’re definitely treating her mate’s death as suspicious,’ says Sandy, pulling a sheaf of papers towards him. Nelson tries not to wince at the state of his friend’s intray. Though he’d never admit it to Sandy, Nelson quite likes paperwork and his desk at King’s Lynn is always immaculate.

‘Emergency services called at one a.m.,’ says Sandy, reading from a sheet. ‘Alerted by a neighbour. Arrived at one-twenty. Front door was locked, victim was just inside the door, looked as if he’d been clawing at it, traces of wood under his fingernails. Cause of death, smoke inhalation.’

‘Door locked from the outside?’

‘Yes. The key was still in the lock. No attempt to hide it. Seat of the fire was in the hallway. We found pieces of material just inside the front door, doused with petrol. Looks as if they’d been pushed through the letterbox.’

‘Jesus.’ Nelson is silent for a moment, thinking of Ruth’s friend—Dan Whatshisname—trapped in a burning house, clawing at a locked door. What a way to go.

‘Did you find anything else?’

‘No,’ says Sandy. ‘We had the bloody forensics buggers in there, sealed the place off, went over everything with a fine tooth comb. There were a few things that seemed out of place. For one, we didn’t find a mobile or a computer. You’d expect a university professor to have a computer. Probably one of the latest iPricks.’

Sandy speaks with contempt, and certainly his own computer, which looms over the desk, is not of the cutting-edge variety. It has ‘Property of Blackpool CID’ stamped on the back.

‘Maybe it was at the university,’ suggests Nelson.

‘No, we checked. He shared an office with another chap. Lots of books but no computer.’

‘Why would someone take his computer?’ asks Nelson.

‘Search me,’ says Sandy.

‘But you’re thinking murder?’

‘I don’t think it was an accident, put it that way. I think someone wanted Dan Golding dead.’

‘But why? I mean, he was a university professor.’ Despite his association with Ruth—and with Erik—Nelson still imagines a university professor sitting in a book-lined room, writing with a quill.

Sandy looks at him consideringly for a moment, as if wondering how much to tell him. Then he seems to make a decision, reaching for another file which is lying (Nelson can hardly believe this) on the floor.

‘Dan Golding taught at Pendle University,’ he says. ‘It’s one of the new ones, on the outskirts of Preston. Thing is, we’ve had a few funny incidents at Pendle recently.’

‘What sorts of incidents?’ asks Nelson. He’s expecting some loony lefty behaviour, animal rights activism perhaps (he’s had experience of that himself recently). So he is amazed when Sandy says, his comedian’s face deadly serious, ‘White supremacists.’

‘White supremacists? You mean, like the Ku Klux Klan?’

Now Sandy does smile, a brief, gummy grin which is soon replaced by the sad clown expression. ‘Lancashire’s version,’ he says. ‘No burning crosses but offensive notes sent to black members of staff, an attempted fire-bombing of a gay pride event, statue of Nelson Mandela defaced. Obviously an organised group, though we haven’t made much headway in identifying the ringleaders. The feeling on campus is very twitchy.’

Nelson remembers Ruth’s description of Dan feeling ‘intimidated’.

‘But why would they target Dan Golding?’ he asks.

Sandy shrugs. ‘He was Jewish, apparently. That might be cause enough for these bozos. But if this was them—arson with clear attempt to kill—it’s a step up from sending anonymous notes with pictures of monkeys on them.’

‘Is that what they do?’

‘Yes. Crude little leaflets about the superiority of white Aryan men. Last one was so badly spelt that my sergeant—a university boy—said that if this was Aryan supremacy he was glad to be black.’

This fits with Nelson’s own experience of the far-right—most of the Neo-Nazis he has met have been so stupid that walking and talking at the same time was an effort. Didn’t stop them being violent, though. He remembers policing a demonstration in Salford that got very nasty.

‘Have you got any suspects?’ he asks.

‘A few names,’ says Sandy. ‘Nothing definite.’ He doesn’t seem inclined to share these names with Nelson and Nelson doesn’t blame him.

‘So Dan Golding might have been killed by Nazi arsonists?’

Sandy smiles sardonically. ‘Welcome to my world,’ he says.

Nelson thinks about Sandy’s last statement as he drives across Blackpool to his mother’s house, the house where he grew up.
Welcome to my world.
Does Sandy think that Nelson’s world does not include racists, arsonists and other unpleasant forms of humanity? Does he think that Norfolk is all about sheep-stealing? But Sandy mentioned Nelson’s recent cases, he must know that his old friend has been to some very dark places. He was probably just trying to wind him up. That
would
be like the old Sandy. One thing is clear though: the death of Ruth’s old friend Dan is starting to look very suspicious. He will have to ring her and let her know. He wonders what she and Katie are doing at this moment. He knows that Ruth and her archaeologist boyfriend have been on a boating holiday and (grinding gears) he doesn’t mind this in the least. Nevertheless, when he thinks of Ruth and Katie he always thinks of them on their own, walking on the beach or sitting in Ruth’s untidy cottage playing with educational toys given by Ruth’s trendy lefty friends. He smiles, vowing silently to buy Katie a toy gun for her next birthday.

Welcome to my world . . . The trouble is, Nelson is not sure which is his world any more. Being back in Blackpool is having a disorientating effect. On the one hand, as he said to Sandy, he feels about a hundred years old. The strain of the last couple of years—several murder cases, including two involving children, tensions at home and at work, a serious illness—sometimes he thinks it’s a miracle that he’s still functioning at all. On the other hand, as he passes through the familiar streets—the signs for the waxworks and the tower and the South Shore, the guest houses, their multi-coloured facades and cheerfully corny names (Funky Towers, Youanme, Gracelands) belying the desperation of their appearance—the continual delusional associations with New York (he passes three Broadway Diners in five minutes), the stalls selling barm cakes and chips with curry sauce . . . he can’t believe that a day has passed since he left the place. It’s as if on every street corner he might bump into his young self. Harry Nelson the gawky schoolboy in his hated grammar-school blazer, the swaggering youth with gelled-back hair, the young policeman fresh from his encounters with Fat Bernie and Sid the Greek. The sight, sound and smell of the town is in his DNA; how can he have stayed away so long?

Since he has been in Blackpool he has been plagued by this Jekyll and Hyde sensation. The place feels like home, everyone is friendlier here and motherly old ladies in shops call him ‘love’. Yet, at the same time, everything has changed. People look poor. They were poor in the old days, he supposed, but they seemed to be having more fun. He remembers Scotland Week, when the factories up north were closed and their inmates streamed down to Blackpool for their annual holiday. Those factory workers must have been poor but, by God, they used to enjoy themselves. Now there is a general sense of depression, even among the star-spangled posters for the Pleasure Beach and lookalike acts at the Grand Theatre. A few years ago there was great talk of regeneration, of building a super casino, Blackpool as the new Las Vegas but, as far as Nelson can see, this has come to nothing. About a third of the shops on the High Street are boarded up, and when he and Michelle wanted to eat out last night their choice was either chips or an American-themed pizza restaurant. He hates to think that he’s become the kind of effete southerner who can’t cope without his daily sushi fix but, all the same, a person can get tired of a carbohydrate-only diet. Jesus, he must be getting old.

On impulse he drives past his turn-off and follows the signs to Bloomfield Road. Since he last attended a football match the place seems to have become one vast car park, a concrete wasteland bordered by rows of terraced houses, all in the primary colours he remembers from childhood (when he first watched
Balamory
with his daughters he thought of Blackpool). He spots the ‘Donkeys Crossing’ sign that always makes him smile and a new Travelodge that seems to have sprung up next to the stadium. He is looking for the statue of Jimmy Armfield, his father’s hero, which was unveiled a few months ago. He finds it at the corner between the South Stand, the Jimmy Armfield Stand, and the hotel. Jimmy, nine foot tall and raised on a plinth, smiles into the distance, bronze foot on bronze football. Nelson parks by the kerb, gets out and touches the football boot for luck. A proper boot it is too, not one of these flimsy day-glo affairs (or, worse, white) favoured by modern players. You got out at the right time, Nelson tells the statue. You never got to see players paid half a million a week but still miss sitters from the ten-yard box. Your wife was probably just a wife, not a WAG in seven-inch stilettos. You never tweeted or blogged or appeared on
I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.
God bless you, Jimmy.