Last Reminder
STUART PAWSON
To Doreen
Sometimes we forget to thank those to whom we are most indebted. I would therefore like to record my appreciation of the skills and efforts of Teresa Chris and Marion Donaldson.
I am also grateful for the assistance and patience of the following: Hazel Mills, John Crawford, Dennis Marshall, John Mills, Douglas Laycock and several anonymous experts who answered my questions when they no doubt had more important tasks to complete.
Most of the jokes came from the aforementioned too.
I was late, so I indulged myself with a leisurely breakfast. I have a theory about these things. Breezing into the office an hour after everybody else, bristling with energy like a hedgehog on the live rail, creates a better impression amongst the troops than skulking in at ten past, ill shaven and suffering from caffeine deficiency.
The personal radio propped against the window was asking all available cars to go to the by-pass, where a lorry had shed thirty tons of self-raising flour. A lot of other people were going to be late for work this Monday morning. Could be interesting if it rained. I looked out of the window but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, worse luck. I snipped the end off the boil-in-the-bag kippers, guaranteed not to stink out the kitchen, and poured myself another cup of strong, sweet tea.
I was on my way in, personal radio hissing and crackling on the passenger seat, when the message
came for Lima Tango to go to the park.
‘We’ve our hands full at the by-pass, skip,’ I heard the observer protest. ‘Can it wait?’
I reached across and pressed the transmit button.
‘Charlie Priest to Heckley control. What’s the problem in the park?’ I asked.
‘Hello, Mr Priest,’ came the reply. ‘Have you slept in?’ Another theory crashed and burnt.
‘Only exercising my knack for being the right man in the right place. Am just passing park gates. What’s the problem?’
‘Not sure. Message garbled, caller sounded hysterical. We’d be grateful if you could take it.’
‘OK, will be at the keeper’s cottage in under two minutes. Out.’ I spun the car round and made a left turn through the gates of Heckley municipal park.
I grew up in this park. When I was a toddler my parents would bring me for walks on Sunday afternoons. We’d feed the ducks and I would ride the paddle-boats on the little lake. Later, it was birds’ nesting and cowboys and Indians in the woods. As teenagers we would moodily follow the girls around, rarely integrating with them, or maybe use the tennis courts or the putting green to show off our skills with racket and club. Later still, much later, it was moonlit strolls under the chestnut trees, the air heavy with the scents of magnolia, honeysuckle and unrequited lust.
A newspaper headline described the assassination of President Kennedy as the day innocence died. I’d put it about fifteen years later than that. No one in their right mind came into this park at night since that time, unless they were looking to be mugged, stabbed or raped. Teenagers of both sexes roared round on motorbikes or in stolen cars, leaving their jetsam of lager cans, used condoms and burnt-out wrecks in their wakes. Addicts and dealers plied their trade, while others sought comfort and privacy in the cloying darkness.
The leaves across the road told me that I was the first vehicle down the avenue that morning. The rhododendrons had long lost their blooms, but the roses were confused by the late summer and managed a respectable show. The tennis courts were still there, but Tarmac now, and their wire cages hung broken, like wind-blown spiders’ webs.
The curtains moved when I drew up outside the keeper’s cottage, and he came to the door as I opened his front gate. He was a little man, his face lined and cracked by the drought, or perhaps by the ceaseless battle against impossible odds to keep the park a thing of beauty. He wore a grey jacket over a collarless shirt. Gardeners always wear jackets. Roses grew round the door and his little garden glowed with colourful plants that I couldn’t begin to recognise. Clearly, no weed ever made it past infancy there.
I flashed my ID. ‘Detective Inspector Priest, Heckley CID,’ I told him.
He gestured with a wave of his hand, as if he had difficulty speaking. ‘They’re ower ’ere,’ he managed to say and, moving past me, he began striding towards the lake. I hadn’t expected him to congratulate me for being quick, and he didn’t. Two minutes is a long time when you are waiting for the police. I turned, carefully closed the gate, and followed.
There was a muddy patch leading down to the water’s edge, puddled by webbed feet and several generations of guano. The mud was criss-crossed with the tracks of mountain bikes.
I stood next to the keeper, surveying the carnage.
‘They allus come to t’door to be fed, every mornin’.’ I realised he was weeping. ‘They din’t come this mornin’.’
Well, they wouldn’t, would they? After a moment I put my hand on his arm. ‘Go put the kettle on,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll see what I can find here.’ He sniffed and nodded and shuffled away.
They were floating in the shallows, four of them, their necks abruptly terminated, so the carcasses resembled weird retorts from a Dali-esque chemistry set. There had been nothing graceful about these deaths. No prima ballerina, nudging her sell-by date, had given the performance of her career in this park last night. Deprived of life, of
balance, the swans had slumped over, bobbing about with all the elegance of bags of sausages. Their waterlogged wings were extended and black feet reached upwards, like bats taking flight. When I looked into the water, staring through the reflections, I could see blood oozing into the mud. And everywhere, blowing across the grass, into the flower beds and the azalea bushes, was a blizzard of white feathers. Winter had come early, and I could taste kippers.
I hooked a finger into a discarded beer can and studied it. Once it had contained Newcastle Brown, and now it was smeared with gore. I used to be a Newky Brown man myself, a long time ago. We drank it in the back rooms of pubs with flagstone floors, listening to songs about moving on, and the people you saw on the streets of London. Never was a generation so deluded. Now we have people like that in every market town in the country. Back at the car I popped the can into a plastic Sainsbury’s bag.
The front room of the keeper’s cottage was tiny and cluttered. He and his wife collected toby jugs. And little dolls with crocheted clothes. And plates celebrating various events and places. A coal fire blazed in the hearth and condensation streamed down the windows. The keeper’s wife, still in her dressing gown, gave me tea in a china mug with teddy bears on it.
‘Don’t see many like that, these days,’ I said, nodding towards the fire. They mumbled agreement. The morning sun was lancing through the window, and between the runnels of water you could see the mist rising from the dew-sodden grass. ‘You’d live in a beautiful place,’ I told them, ‘if it wasn’t for the people.’ This time the agreement was more enthusiastic.
They’d seen and heard nothing. On the previous evening they had driven into the estate, to a harvest festival supper, and returned about ten thirty. It was impossible to say if the deed had been done by then. They gave me descriptions of the kids they regarded as the most likely offenders, but they meant nothing to me.
‘Do you know who to ring at the council,’ I asked, ‘to get them to remove the bodies?’
He was a council employee, so he did.
‘OK. Well, I suggest you arrange for them to be collected, as soon as possible. Do you have any objections if I ask the
Gazette
to do an article, with photographs? It’s very doubtful that we’ll catch anybody, but if we create enough fuss we might just tweak their consciences.’
They had no objections, but disagreed with me about the consciences. ‘Right. I’ll ask them to have a photographer here as soon as possible, and I’ll tell our town parks officer to call on you. Thanks for the tea. I’ll have another look around, and let
you know if we turn anything up.’
Outside, I rang the
Gazette.
The girl on the front desk told me that the photographer was at the accident on the by-pass, but she’d see what they could do. I collected the Sainsbury’s carrier bag and wandered back to the water’s edge.
The tyre tracks led me through the flower beds, tiptoeing in the mud and trying to avoid the worst of the wet leaves that soon soaked my trouser legs. I found a plastic bag with evidence of solvent in it and a couple of butane canisters that might have been there for quite a while. Slowly, I worked my way towards the little jetty where the boats are moored.
The boats are intended for children only, and looked just like the ones that were there when I was a kid. I’ve never seen any similar ones anywhere else. They have paddles, operated by a hand-crank, and large white numbers painted on the side. To protect them from vandals a chain laced them all together, and the whole jetty was fenced off with iron railings that arced down into the water. I dropped the carrier and stared at the railings, hypnotised by the scene. I edged forwards, drawn by disbelief and horror.
Pulled over the tops of the iron spikes, like those socks that golfers use on their clubs, were the necks and heads of the four swans.
* * *
The office was unusually full when I arrived. Detective Constable David Sparkington, known as Sparky to cops and crooks alike, except when he’s in earshot, looked up from the keyboard he was tapping with all the confidence of a novice bomb disposal expert.
‘Morning, boss,’ he said. ‘Sleep in?’
‘No, I’ve been on a wild goose chase.’ It was the first time I’d been late in twenty-odd years, and everybody knew about it. ‘Heavy night,’ I explained.
‘Somebody lie on your shirt flap?’
‘Sadly, no. Home-made booze. Sloe gin, to be precise. God knows what they’d put in it, but it was good stuff.’
‘They put sloes in it. Otherwise it’s solid gin.’
‘It didn’t taste anything like gin.’
‘It doesn’t, but it is.’
‘That could explain it.’
Nigel Newley, my bright young detective sergeant, was doing his impression of a koi carp, opening and closing his mouth as he tried to interrupt us. ‘Thanks for going to the morning assembly, Nigel,’ I told him. ‘Give me twenty minutes to do a quick report and we’ll have a chat, unless there’s anything spoiling?’
‘OK, boss. There’s nothing that won’t wait.’
My little world is a partitioned-off corner of the main CID office. I hung my jacket behind the door
and typed up the details of the Heckley Park massacre, in rhyming couplets to give it more impact. On the way in I’d left the beer can and other goodies with the scenes of crime boffins. When I’d finished I wandered out into the main office, looking for a cup of something hot and sweet and an update on the morning’s proceedings.
Sparky looked at his watch. ‘Might as well have one in the canteen in ten minutes, when they do the judging,’ he replied when I suggested putting the kettle on.
‘Judging? What judging?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘The silly tie contest. Don’t pretend you’d forgotten.’
The silly tie contest was the latest in a series of fund-raising exercises for the local hospital. ‘Aw, Carruthers!’ I thumped my palm with my fist. ‘Completely slipped my mind. What time does it start?’
‘Now.’
Nigel caught my attention with a wave. He placed his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone he was holding and hissed, ‘Are you in, Mr Priest?’
I looked down, recognised what I modestly call my body, and nodded to him.
‘It’s the editor of the
Heckley Gazette.
Says somebody has killed the swans in the park, and that you know all about it.’
I reached over his desk and took the phone. ‘Hiya, Scoop. It’s Charlie Priest. Did you get a photographer there before the dustbin men took the bodies?’
‘We certainly did. Now all I want is a nice juicy quote from you.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Is your pencil poised?’
‘Yep.’
‘Have you licked it?’
‘Get on with it!’
‘OK, put this. Detective Inspector Priest, that’s spelt P-R-I-E-S-T, of Heckley CID, says, “If I catch the sadistic
bastards
who did this I’ll personally hang them by their knackers from the town hall clock.” Knackers starts with a K. Did you get all that?’
Nigel’s mouth dropped open, revealing a set of lower teeth whose gleaming symmetry could have graced a wall chart. Sometimes I hate him.
The editor, who I went to school with, thanked me. ‘Put it on the slate,’ I replied, handing the phone back to Nigel.
The troops were beginning to drift towards the door, on their way to the silly tie contest, so I stood there, reviewing them as they passed by. ‘Good morning, my brave young crime busters,’ I enthused, rubbing my hands together. ‘Nice to see you have all entered into the spirit of things, or are you just sloppy eaters?’
The canteen was crowded. I queued for a toasted currant teacake and mug of tea and joined two uniformed sergeants at their table. ‘Excuse me, is this chair vacant?’ I asked, in my best attempt at a Liverpudlian accent.
‘No, it’s just a bit absent-minded,’ one of them responded in a much better one, piling a couple of plates on top of each other to make some room.
I told them about the Heckley Park massacre and they agreed to round up a few glue-sniffers and take their dabs. A prosecution was unlikely, but we like to keep the pressure on them.
‘Can I have your attention, please!’ Gareth Adey, my uniformed counterpart, was standing up and using the canteen’s primitive PA system to bring the room to some semblance of order. After lots of mumblings and another request for silence he said, ‘Thank you. This won’t take long because some of you…’ He repeated himself for effect. ‘
Some
of you have work to do.’ It was a veiled dig at CID and an overt threat to his own men to get their butts out of there as soon as this was over. ‘As you know, we are here to announce the winner of the CID silly tie contest. This proved to be very difficult, as the depths of silliness being plumbed were extreme even for our beloved CID. So, without further ado, I announce the winner is…’ He pulled an envelope from his pocket and pretended to read the contents. ‘…the
one-and-only
Detective Constable Jeffrey Caton.’
Inspector Adey made an expansive gesture towards Jeff, and loud jeering erupted. Jeff strolled to the front of the room and took the microphone from Adey. When it was quiet again he said, ‘This is the proudest moment of my life. I’d like to thank the following people from the bottom of my heart: first of all, Mrs Brenda Prawn, who for many years worked the electronic testing machine at the Durex factory. If Brenda hadn’t had an off-day in June 1966, and let a faulty batch through, I might not have been here today. I’d also like to thank the midwife for having…’