The Operator (Bruce and Bennett Crime Thriller 2) (15 page)

She didn’t know it, but the situation was soon to
become even more complex.

Stacey had insisted on a
pizza before they set off.

Erica objected. ‘It’s a strain on the heart to run
straight after eating.’

‘It’s a strain on the fkn belly not to eat man. Aa’m
not dragging meself doon a damp muddy track heaving with morderers and rapists,
and even dog crap, without some decent scran inside iz. A nice big four cheese
pizza will set iz up nicely. And Aa’m entitled to me expenses. Yer gettin off
light man.’

Stacey now dripped molten cheese into her scarlet
mouth from a height with something like ecstasy. ‘And Aa’m not runnin.’

‘Maybe you have a point. Captain Jack always
insists the men have their dinner before going into action. In O’Brian’s
novels. Napoleonic wars. Salt pork and plum duff. Maggoty biscuits.’ Erica
nibbled some of her extra thin pizza crust, and picked off the roasted veg and
goat’s cheese from the top.

‘Eewww! Bet they’d have fought better on four
cheese pizzas.’

It was properly dark by the time they set off for
the affluent street along the golf course, joining Erica’s regular jogging
route just at the start of the path past the crematorium where the graveyard
ran alongside the golf course. It seemed odd to be using a taxi to go jogging,
and Stacey’s help was proving expensive, but they were both very merry,
considering Erica had had nothing stronger than sparkling water and Stacey only
a treble vodka and Red Bull. ‘Fitness drink, innit?’

Erica had her mobile, some emergency remedies, an
attack alarm, and a perfume spray. Someone had given it to her for Christmas,
someone who didn’t know her very well. She’d never found a perfume yet which
didn’t smell like artificial chemicals and alcohol, and not in a good way. The
smells which make life pleasurable are the sea, creosote fences, gorse flowers,
hot bread, fresh ground coffee, new paper, books, vanilla, cloves, and of
course the way people smell, all different and all interesting, if not always
pleasant. But sprayed in an assailant’s eyes the scent might be of some use.
They both had torches too, in an attempt to avoid standing on anything left by
the neighbourhood dogs.

There was a thin yellow smile of moon and a haze
of smoky mist in the air. The few stars that showed were turned down to
minimum, with the muted glitter of lead.

They set off along the golf course boundary track
with the high fences of Kingston’s neighbours on their left, the dark hedges
fringing the green sweeps of the course on their right. They were ‘jogging’
very slowly, Stacey complaining all the way, and Erica fizzing with impatience.

Enough light spilled out of the houses’ upstairs
windows to help them see their way though they couldn’t see their feet. As they
got nearer to the drinking den and Kingston’s house, they could see a ghostly
glow ahead. The track finished there and turned sharply down the snicket
alongside his house and onto the street. The source of the glow was an old
lamp-post with a battered, archaic look. A bit like Narnia.

They were almost in its pool of light, Erica
jogging ahead, Stacey walking behind as the trodden part of the track there was
rather narrow, and brambles and hawthorns kept catching at them, trying to trip
them up. Their torch beams swayed in front, illuminating strolling slugs, damp
fallen leaves, unidentifiable dark patches. Erica, unable to resist looking at
wildlife, spotted something moving on the ground, to the side of the track, and
bent to have a look. Just as she registered the bright pin-small eyes and
questing nose of a small hedgehog, there was a loud thock! and something
smacked into her left arm. She staggered, then stood, disorientated. For a few
seconds, she was only aware of the impact, then a deep burning pain seemed to
drill into her bicep.

‘Fuck, fuck it, what the fuck.’

‘Erica?’ Stacey caught up. ‘What the buggery was
that?’

She shone her torch around and it picked out
something fluorescent yellow. A golf ball. She picked it up.

‘Look at this! Some posh bastard on the fkn golf
course...at this time of neet! It could’ve hit yer head! Hey, it could’ve hit
me
!’

Stacey shouted into the grassy blackness over the
fence, where the serene greens and fairways lay quiet. ‘Wanker! Aa’ll fkn
morder ye, ye bastard, come on, man, bring it! Haway, if ye’ve got the balls!’

Nobody was willing to ‘bring it’. ‘Here’s yer fkn
ball back then, ye twat!’ Stacey hurled the golf ball as far as she could into
the dark.

‘Oh shit, Stacey. That was evidence. We’ll never
find it now. There’ll be golf balls all over the place. Can you shine the torch
on my backpack, while I get the Arnica out?’

Erica put two tablets of Arnica under her tongue
to dissolve, after shaking out two tiny tablets into the lid to avoid touching
them with her hands. Not just hygiene, but remedies aren’t supposed to be
touched by fingers. A few doses would reduce the bruising a lot, but there
wouldn’t be any miraculous cure from a blow like that. Just helping the body to
help itself.

‘I need to get some witch hazel on this...’ she
rubbed the place where the muscle burned. ‘At least it wasn’t my head.’

‘Coulda been. If ye hadn’t bent doon just then...
Aa’ve a good mind to go up to that Golf Club and play war....’

The mental picture of Stacey invading those
hallowed portals did a lot to get Erica over her initial shock. ‘I don’t
suppose they’d let you in... you’re not wearing a tie, or a penis.’ Erica was
flashing her torch about at roughly shoulder and head height.

‘What ye looking for? Aa need a drink.’ Stacey lit
a Lambert, bored. Her fag end glowed like a firefly.

‘This hurts like hell, but it could have been a
lot worse. I’m wondering if the ball ricocheted off something before it hit me.
If it came directly from the course, it would have hit me on the right
arm....and it wouldn’t have made that loud noise. It could’ve hit the fence and
then my left arm... unless it came from further over this side, like one of the
back gardens or the bushes behind them...’

‘Who cares, neebody’s dead.’ Ever the philosopher.

Erica found a dent in one of the planks in the
garden fence which looked fresh, a few gleams of newly exposed wood showing in
the torch beam. She tried to photograph it with her phone, doubting it would
come out.

‘Anyway, golf baals’ll be hitting the fence aal
day lang,’ Stacey pointed out. ‘Nee way yer can prove that was the one what got
ye.’

‘Very good point, intern mine, it might’ve been
easier if you’d not got rid of our evidence.’

‘Soz.’ For once Stacey was contrite. ‘Aa could’ve
been on TV if Aa’d kept it. Even
Crimewatch
is better than nowt.’

They moved on into the light pool. Erica showed
Stacey the pile of stones where the murderer had got the weapon to bash
Kingston. It seemed like a long time ago, and already the depression looked
less marked, growth had started as nature erased the rock’s absence. Blades of
grass were starting to stand up and turn green.

They shone their torches along a bit, where the
drinking den had been. Now the trodden area was decorated again by the
traditional loitering youths detritus – empty fag packet, crushed beer cans, and
a couple of miniatures of voddie.

Looking at these, Stacey was moved to a sigh of
nostalgia. ‘Eee, worrit’s like to be young!’

Erica bent and stirred the little heap of refuse,
her left arm hanging useless. It felt numb, but fizzyy electric shocks were
running up and down it.

‘This crap’s been dumped here recently. What’s
this?’ A glint under the debris.

She moved the miniature bottles and uncovered a
syringe. ‘Looks like vodka’s not exciting enough for someone.’

‘Eeewww! Don’t touch it man Erica! It’ll be heavin
with Hep C and shit.’

‘Do you think it could have come from Kingston’s
house? Nicked while he was being offed?’

‘Fk knows. Aa think we should tell the bizzies
about it. And yer arm and all.’ The police often leaked stuff to the
tabloids...

‘I might take the syringe in, just in case, but I
doubt it’s important. What happened to me was an accident, I hope. If not, it’s
hard to prove otherwise. ‘

She could just see Will’s sardonic features when
she told him she’d been whacked by a golf ball. Yeah, right. Like she was going
to act the helpless female. He’d like that way too much.

‘Wanna go to A and E?’ They had to raise their
profiles somehow or they’d get sidelined out of it. Sod Erica and her weird
hang-ups about Willy Bennett!

‘No thanks. I’ll treat it myself. I don’t think
anything’s broken. I just hope the bruising and stiffness won’t be too bad.
What if I can’t swim, or do my gym class?’ A feeling of panic rose at the
thought.

They turned back, Erica sucking Arnica tablets.

A door in the high wooden fence opened suddenly
and a woman looked out at them. She was wearing a thick fleece, more sensibly
dowdy than sporty, over a flowered dress and slippers. The house was about two
or so away from Kingston’s; as far as Erica could tell, next door to where the
man in the golf jumper had spoken to her last time.

‘Is everything all right?’ The neighbour came
further out, seeing that they were women. She held a black and white cat in her
arms. ‘I came out to the garden to call Siggy, and heard a bang, like something
hitting the fence. I listened for a bit, and all I could hear was women’s
voices, so I thought it might be safe to look out.’

‘My arm got hit by a golf ball. Some idiot forgot
to shout ‘fore’, and couldn’t even keep the ball on the course. What kind of
person practices his shots in the dark?’

‘Nobody plays golf at night, dear. It would be
those young thugs,’ said the woman positively. ‘We’ve had plants broken,
greenhouses damaged, streetlamps vandalised at night.’

‘Mr Kingston as well?’

‘Oh yes, specially him, and Mr Archer. Because we’re
at the end of the track where they hang out. In fact it’s a lot worse now than
it’s ever been. It used to be more day times, the odd golfer off their game,
but those damned hoodies! They do it on purpose. They find the balls golfers
have lost on the course and let fly. Bloody vandals, pardon my French.’

‘Surely they won’t still hang about here straight
after the murder, with the police about.’ Erica’s arm was throbbing but she
wanted to continue the contact. Stacey had sloped off into the darkness to
smoke. No point talking to some posh wifey.

‘Well it’s a more exciting place now, isn’t it?
Way cool, as they’d call it! And as for the police! It took a murder to get
them here, all the times we’ve called about the vandalism, did they take a
blind bit of notice? And anyway the police aren’t patrolling here any more. We
believe they’re on drugs. ‘

Presumably she meant the youths rather than the
police.

‘Horrible squalid litter they leave behind.
Underage drinking! Smoking. Something should be done about it.’

They left the neighbour to her indignation and
Siggy’s supper and got a taxi back to Erica’s. Stacey watched as Erica put
cotton wool soaked in witch hazel on the big red mark made by the golf ball.

‘I’ll keep topping this up.’

‘Ice, man woman, ice!’

‘Yeah yeah. You go home, I’ll be alright.’

Erica had trouble sleeping that night. Her arm
throbbed, and her mind raced. She was reluctant to believe that someone would
deliberately aim a golf ball at her. Surely it must have been a random throw or
hit which just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She couldn’t
help thinking, though, if she had not stooped to look at the hedgehog, it might
have been her head that took the full force. The loud ‘thok’ as the ball hit
some part of a fence or tree trunk could have been the sound of her skull
splintering.

But would a few youths do such a thing? They were
more likely to go in for some low-level intimidation, threatening remarks and
body language, or just keep out of sight and enjoy their contraband booze. Was
it likely they’d had anything to do with Kingston’s murder? But he was a
doctor. And doctors with private practices might have drugs at their houses. If
it was a burglary gone wrong, Kingston having a go in true alpha male style, a
hoodie or hoodies high on ket and e’s might respond with such bizarre savagery.
But would they return to the scene of the crime, and leave more evidence
behind, if so? Surely the police would test the previous lot of rubbish for DNA

The next day, her arm was
stiff and painful, and there was a dense dark bruise despite her efforts with
arnica, ice and witch hazel. She had a long hot shower before Weetabix, soya
milk and hot grape juice. What to do about the syringe? She’d picked it up in a
plastic bag she found under the hedge and it still lay, wrapped up, in her bag.
Tonight was her dinner date with Jamie, the cute young doctor. Maybe she should
show him her bruise.

She decided to take the syringe into the police
station at lunch time. It might be evidence of a kind. She tried not to admit
to herself she felt a strong urge to keep poking the bear, a certain blue-eyed
bear, with a stick. Before work, she needed to swim, all the more so as she was
desperate to know if she still could, and how much her injury would cramp her
style. And as for her style tonight...

Swimming was painful. Each time her arm left the
water it burned, but she pressed on. She kept thinking, I’ll just do half a
mile, then I’ll stop. Then, I might as well press on to forty lengths. That’s
two thirds. Ish. Then fifty. Then, it might as well be a mile now. Doing her
hair was difficult too. But she felt better ‘in herself’ as the local saying
was. The idea of not being able to exercise was scary. Especially today. She
wanted to enjoy dining out, and it was hard to do that if she hadn’t earned the
calories up front.