Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Geoffrey opened the door to Desmond’s flat. No furniture, no pictures on the walls: The place was bare.
“We’re too late.” Geoffrey’s voice echoed in the space.
“I guess his daughter took all his things.” Catherine walked through the flat, stepping from one room to another. She entered a bedroom. “There’s a few boxes left in here. Do you think it would be bad of us to take a look?”
“Anything is justified if it gets you closer to the killer, Catherine.” Geoffrey found his old self returning.
He was a detective again and it felt good.
He noticed a red spot on the hardwood floor.
Savoring the moment, he squatted, dabbed it with a finger.
It was 1986 again and he was at the top of his game.
He was a respected copper on the Met, had an active sex life, and went to the toilet no more than three or four times a day.
The spot was dry but Geoffrey remembered the color well. It was dried blood.
“It’s cakes,” said Catherine, from the other room. “Boxes and boxes of cakes. I didn’t know Desmond did so much baking!”
“Catherine, I may have found something of interest.”
With a jolt, Geoffrey was reminded that it wasn’t 1986. Squatting had been a bad idea. The pain shot through him. “Ow! Ow! Bloody ow! Jesus Christ! Bloody ow! My bloody knees! I think I’m stuck! My bloody knees!”
“I think I have something that might help with the pain,” said Catherine. “These are cannabis cakes.”
—
Catherine sat on the floor next to Geoffrey and they agreed to share one small piece of cake. One small piece between the two of them shouldn’t do much harm. Geoffrey suggested it might even help them to look at the case from a new perspective.
“Aren’t you concerned? I mean, you were a police officer. It’s illegal.”
“Catherine, I spent a year undercover. I’m afraid to say I’ve had my fair share of hashish. I built up a considerable level of tolerance. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Well, since we’re being honest with each other, Geoffrey, I smoked rather a lot at a yoga retreat a couple of years ago,” she whispered in his ear. “I used to do it all the time in the seventies.”
They each took a bite. Geoffrey commented that it was a little too dry.
While they waited for the effects to roll in, they contemplated why the cakes were there.
Who knew what went on behind people’s front doors?
Had Desmond been running a little operation?
He’d never seemed to have much interest in the actual baking the group did, but maybe he’d been doing some on the side.
Rather a lot, in fact. Geoffrey had heard rumors about Desmond’s corruption in the past, but it was hard to believe that he had been dealing drugs.
If Desmond’s daughter had cleared out the place and left the boxes, surely that meant she was in on it.
Catherine had heard she was a piece of work.
Her husband had owned a lot of businesses.
Perhaps he had some kind of felonious bakery on the go and Desmond was the supplier.
But for them to be a criminal family, running a drugs business out of an old people’s home, it just seemed too wild to comprehend.
The room turned sepia and Catherine’s body started to hum. Was the marijuana taking effect? Strong stuff. She felt that old paranoia. Geoffrey was talking about something but she couldn’t focus.
“So, you see, this was the living room but now it’s no longer a living room, Catherine, because no one is living in it, you know?
It’s just a room, and what is a room but a box?
Why are we naming rooms? I mean bedroom.
It’s only a bedroom once you put a bed in it, but the bed takes up space, you know, the more bed…
” Geoffrey paused, apparently stunned by his own profundity. “The less room.”
“I suddenly feel very stoned,” said Catherine.
“Oh, really?” said Geoffrey. “I don’t think it’s affecting me.”
“You said you’d found something interesting,” said Catherine.
“Huh?”
“Before you hurt your knee, you said you’d found something interesting.”
“Over there,” said Geoffrey. “Look at the floor. There’s a speck of blood. We should probably collect a sample.”
Catherine walked over to the spot Geoffrey was pointing at. She took tweezers from her handbag and scraped up a speck. She inspected it closely, then sniffed. A fit of giggles hit her.
“What?”
“This is…” She struggled to get out the words. “This is ketchup.”
Now they were both in hysterics, laughing like they hadn’t done in decades, laughing at the absurdity of the situation.
Two retirees, stupidly high, in the middle of what was supposed to be a covert murder investigation.
Catherine sat down against the wall, beside Geoffrey.
They looked at each other, sharing the moment.
Catherine felt she could see Geoffrey, truly see him, the man behind all the nonsense, all the desperation to prove how clever he was.
She could see that it came from an endearing vulnerability. He was a sweet man.
He kissed her on the lips. “Sorry, Catherine. I just think you’re quite lovely.”
She smiled. “No, it’s fine.”
They were silent again, their eyes still connected.
“How are your knees feeling?” said Catherine.
Geoffrey stood up. “I think they’re all right. Wonder drug. Did you say you had a key to Carol’s flat?”
“Yes.”
“We should take a look now.”
—
Walking down the corridor, Geoffrey and Catherine held on to each other for support. Going out into the world was frightening. They didn’t want to be seen, not in this state.
Elisa walked by, heading in the direction they’d come from.
“Hello!” she said cheerfully. They looked at the floor and mumbled back. Catherine held on to her handbag tightly.
They were on their way to investigate Carol’s flat when Geoffrey mentioned that he had the munchies, and their priorities changed. Holding on to each other, trying their very best to look sober and normal, the pair took the lift downstairs and headed for the Apple Tree.
With lunchtime nearly over, there was hardly anyone in the restaurant, but to Catherine and Geoffrey it looked like a terrifying mass of people.
The truth was that they were too stoned to do something as taxing as sitting down at a table and ordering something to eat.
They stood at the edge of the restaurant, staring at it as if it were an obstacle course beyond their current capabilities.
“I’ve an idea,” Geoffrey whispered.
He crept along the wall in the direction of the kitchen’s swinging double doors. Catherine followed, tiptoeing like a child at a sleepover on a midnight snack run.
“I’m sure there’s some bread we can grab in here,” he said. “We’ll leave an IOU.”
It was only when they found themselves in the kitchen that the absurdity of what they were doing dawned on Catherine.
They had apartments full of food; there was even a communal kitchen.
Why were they conducting an SAS raid on the restaurant?
Whatever tolerance she had once had for class B drugs had entirely faded away.
To Catherine’s relief, there was nobody in the kitchen. She scanned the counters for a loaf of bread or, in the absolute best-case scenario, a bowl of chips. Her highly disciplined diet was on pause.
“Will this do?”
Geoffrey was holding a raw potato. Even in her state, she was able to recognize that they could surely do better.
But then something caught Catherine’s eye.
A folder on the counter labeled “Weekly Meal Plan.” From out of nowhere, she found focus, a moment of clarity.
They were supposed to be investigating a murder but had, all of a sudden, turned themselves into wild-eyed potheads, trawling the building for food.
In that folder there might be a clue as to how Desmond had been killed.
She fumbled through it, looking for Wednesday.
There it was. Shepherd’s pie. On the day that Desmond died, the Apple Tree had been serving shepherd’s pie, his last meal, according to the autopsy.
Why had they been fixated on that lick of Carol’s spoon?
Surely this was the more obvious explanation.
No slow-release poisons, or somehow contaminating the spoon but not the cake mixture itself.
That didn’t add up, did it? Why had they so quickly accepted that Carol was the murderer?
Innocent until proven guilty, and as far as they knew she was nowhere near being charged.
She could be on her way back to Sheldon Oaks right now, for all they knew.
Someone working in the restaurant could easily have poisoned Desmond’s meal. Once that had failed, they could have strangled him, hit him, pushed him off the roof. If they were staff, they would certainly know how to get up there. But who?
Just then, there was a loud clatter of pans falling to the floor, making Catherine and Geoffrey jump in terror.
Of course the kitchen wasn’t empty. How could they have been so stupid?
They looked up to see not a chef but Belinda walking around the corner of the L-shaped space, with disheveled hair.
She saw them and adjusted her skirt, a postcoital glow written all over her face.
Following sheepishly behind her was Marco, the waiter.
No one knew quite what to say. Each couple had been caught by the other in the act of doing something wrong.
Geoffrey broke the silence. “I’ll pay you ten pounds for this potato.”