Chapter 7 #2
‘Ah, yes: the post mortem.’ Shaking her head.
‘Sadly, this shall now not take place until the morrow, for we already hath upon our slate two suicides, and a man whose unfortunate end was precipitated by the events of Saturday’s protest.’ She tutted.
‘He was set about by pugnacious ruffians on Bridge Street.’
‘Shite . . .’ A riot was bad enough without fatalities.
‘And so, wretchedly does turn the wheel of life. We are but a brief spark of candlelight, flickering in the—’
‘Sheila?’ A voice, from inside the marquee – with all the warmth of a mortuary slab. ‘Playtime’s over. Tell whoever it is they’ll have my preliminary report by close of business and not before.’
Sheila placed a purple hand over her weird little heart. ‘My mistress needs me, and I must be about my allotted tasks.’ Then she slipped inside the tent again, closing the flap behind her.
Like a creepy usher in this Cinema Of Horrors.
Roberta stuck two fingers up at the blue plastic marquee. Grimaced. Then turned and limped back towards her MX-5 with Tufty scuffing along behind. ‘Swear to God, that woman gets weirder every day.’ Limp, limp, limp. ‘Time is it?’
‘About twenty-five to. Give or take.’ He evicted some more leaves from his stabproof vest. ‘What you wanna do?’
Good question.
Go home. Soak in a hot bath. And plan a monster blowout retirement party so debauched that Police Scotland would speak of it forever in awed whispers . . .
But she had a murder inquiry to run.
Roberta hissed out a long breath and surveyed the crime scene with its police van, and Scenes Transit, and patrol cars – missing one, now that PC Gifford had scarpered .
. . ‘Suppose we better get cracking: commandeer an office at the nearest station, draft some bodies in, set up a HOLMES instance, search the misper database, drink some rank coffee, organise . . . things.’ She stuck her hand out. ‘Keys.’
Tufty stopped walking. ‘Thought you were, and I quote, “hungover like a mother-snudger”?’
‘That was before my sustaining butty and horrible woodland adventure. Now give me the blipping keys.’
‘Nope. Kate and me is hasing an romantic dinner for two tonight, and she’d be upset if I died in a horrible car crash. So Tufty is Mr Does-The-Driving today!’ And off he scurried, leaping into the driver’s seat and cranking the engine. Grinning and waving at her as he beeped the horn: ponk-honk!
Idiot.
She closed her eyes. Pinched the bridge of her nose. Took a deep calming breath. ‘Only eight weeks, three days, six hours, and twenty-five minutes to go, Roberta. You can do it.’
Ponk-honk!
‘Just try not to kill anyone . . .’
The MX-5 tootled along, top down, radio off – though Tufty was humming away to himself, nodding along to whatever daft wee tune was playing in his hollow little head – as they approached the ever-expanding outskirts of sinful Inverurie.
Well, maybe ‘sinful’ was overegging it a bit.
At least the fog had faded to a wispy mist, glowing away as the sun beat down from above. The ground dropped away to the left, across a churned-up field of brown, where bright-yellow diggers and tippers planted yet another crop of cut-and-paste houses.
Roberta went back to her phone, thumbs jabbing away at a motivational text to that useless lazy twunt, Barrett:
Where the heck are you and Lund? We’ve got a murder to investigate!!!!!
FINGER OUT, YOU SNIDGING FRUDGER!!!
SEND.
She frowned at the screen. ‘I miss swearing. Proper swearing.’
Tufty shrugged. ‘You’re the one who wanted to clean-up the team’s language.
’ He put on a gravelly voice that sounded nothing like her.
‘“Some of us have small children to think of!”, “Swearing isn’t big or clever!”, and my personal favourite: “Foul language is indicative of a stunted IQ and limited vocabulary!”’ Dropping back into his usual stupid voice for: ‘Cos it’s not often one hears an Detective Sergeant using big clever words like “indicative”. ’
So she hit him.
‘Ow!’
‘I do not sound like that.’ Roberta scrunched her face and huffed out a breath. ‘Besides: got the feeling PC Gifford was mocking us. About the not-swearing.’
‘I liked it when we had our Special Mystery Hat of Terms from whence were drawn the day’s words of approbation and disapprobation, uniting the discommodious—’
So she hit him again.
‘Ow! Stop it!’
‘Nobody likes a show-off.’
They drove on in silence for a bit, as palisades of brown fencing reared up on either side of the road, corralling yet more identikit housing.
Tufty drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Gu-uuuv . . .? Are you really getting a sauna?’
‘Wee retirement treat for me.’ Well-deserved after all these spudging years.
‘Aye, if the sodding builders ever finish. Three weeks, and all they’ve done is rip everything out back to the stone, and put the electrics in.
No wooden panelling; no benches for my pert, sweaty little buttocks; no hot sizzly stones. How am I supposed to—’
Her Airwave chimed out its three bleeps: incoming call.
Then a nasal teuchter accent whined from the speaker: ‘Control to Alpha Charlie Nine: safe to talk?’
Roberta pushed the button. ‘Fit like the day, Jimmy?’
‘Assistance needed: campaign office, Kingsfield Road, Kintore. Caller reports “violent mob” on scene.’
‘Aye, very good. So why don’t you call the local bunnets and make them do something about it?’
‘From what I see: you sent the last two home. Inverurie are trying to pull officers in off their rest days now. Meantime, would you be a nice acting detective inspector and go sort it out?’
‘What?’ She actually laughed at that. ‘No chance: I’m running a major murder Op, here!’
‘Oh, I know, but your skeleton in a bin can probably spare you for a couple of minutes. Unless you’re chasing down a hot lead and an arrest is imminent as we speak . . .?’
Buggering shiteflaps.
‘Aye: thought not. Kintore. Don’t make me clype on you to the Big Boss.’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’
The call ended with a wee snort. Then silence.
Of course he sodding would.
That was the trouble with modern policing – no loyalty. Every sod in uniform was lining up to stab poor, hard-working, beset-by-idiots, honest-as-the-day-is-sharny officers like her in the bum.
Tufty pulled an innocent face. ‘Kintore?’
‘Oh for . . . flipping . . . scrudge.’
‘Told you: we should go back to the word-of-the-day thing.’
‘Urgh . . .’ Roberta slumped in her seat. ‘All right, all right: put your foot down, we’ve got a riot to stop.’
A groan. ‘Not another one! We just did that two days ago! I’ve still got bruises on my unmentionables.
’ He wriggled in his seat, face like a spanked buttock.
‘Snidgers and snudgers running about, waving placards and attacking each other and chucking fizz-bangs and kicking nice police people in the underparts and smashing shop windows when they should be celebrating the nice police people for solving murders and rescuing victims and I don’t want to . . .’
Blah, blah, blah.
There was more, but Roberta tuned it out.
OK, new plan:
Go to Kintore.
Stop the riot.
Give everyone a really stern talking to.
Then get back to work and catch whoever killed the poor sod in that wheelie bin.
Easy.
Right?