Twelve
Mary had retired from the police force more than fifteen years earlier, but there were times when it wasn’t hard to tell that she’d have been a copper to reckon with.
Seeing that steely glare when Nathan dared to dance without getting rid of his chewing gum.
Watching her mouth an industrial phrase or two (and mouthing was as far as she ever went) if that crucial rise did not peak, as it should, on the second count of a waltz.
Or now, during the mid--session refreshments, listening to her voice her frustration with the entire group, after the Latin medley she had spent the previous week putting together had gone tits-up in spectacular fashion.
‘Gloria … the paso doble is a choreographed bullfight,’ Mary said.
‘It’s passionate and dramatic, but when you were supposed to be waving that matador’s cape around’ – she put down her tea and stepped forward to demonstrate the series of bold, swishing movements that Gloria should have made – ‘it looked as if you were trying to put a duvet cover back on.’
Miller saw Gloria’s head drop for a second or two and winced. He guessed that this was what it must have been like to be slumped in the Old Trafford dressing room after a first-half drubbing; on the receiving end of the ‘hairdryer treatment’ from Alex Ferguson.
If Alex Ferguson had a blue rinse and cataracts.
Picking up her mug again and shaking her head – more in disappointment than anger – Mary turned to Gloria’s husband.
‘Ransford, I know it’s not your favourite dance and that your knee’s still playing you up, but to be honest you were less of a powerful and dangerous bull and more of a lolloping pantomime cow. ’
Nathan snickered and made a mooing noise, and, in keeping with the bovine theme that seemed to have suddenly developed, Mary shot him a look that would have curdled milk.
As much on Gloria’s behalf as his own, Ransford began to remonstrate.
Even though his protestations were no more than half-hearted, they quickly sputtered away to nothing when he caught the eye of Mary’s husband.
Howard’s expression delivered an urgent message familiar to most of the group.
The pair had served on the force together (though Mary had always outranked Howard) and nobody knew better than he did that there was sweet F.A.
to be gained by arguing the toss when his better half was of a mind to give folk a talking-to.
‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ Ransford said. ‘About the lolloping.’
‘I promise we were trying,’ Gloria said.
‘Oh, I know that, love.’ Mary slurped her tea and waved their apology away. ‘And it’s my fault for putting together something that was probably a bit ambitious.’
‘Well, we won’t get better if we don’t push ourselves, will we?’ Ransford turned to Gloria, who nodded and slipped an arm through his.
‘Quite right,’ Mary said, before turning to Nathan and Ruth. ‘Now then—’
‘I know,’ Ruth said, raising her hands, ‘I know. Our samba was sloppy and my hip rotation on our rumba was rubbish.’
Mary cocked her head, as if she was thinking about it. ‘I wouldn’t go quite that far, love. Rubbish … ish, perhaps.’
‘It was my fault.’ Nathan gave Ruth a thumbs-up. ‘You were great.’
‘No, she wasn’t.’ Mary downed what was left of her tea. ‘Admittedly, you were worse.’
Still in his twenties and the youngest of the group, Nathan just smiled, happy enough to be told off about anything as long as he was dancing with Ruth.
No matter how many times Miller had gently tried suggesting to the lad that he was wasting his time, his blindingly obvious crush on the woman who, Miller guessed, was ten years his senior showed no signs of easing off.
Mary walked across to a window ledge and put her empty mug down on the tray that held the tea things.
She helped herself to a second digestive and took a nibble before turning back into the room and heading towards the one couple yet to receive her appraisal.
Miller, who was still working his way through his own collection of biscuits (snaffled when the break had been called), turned to his partner, Veronica, and gulped theatrically.
‘Last but hopefully not least …’
Alan, the pianist who’d been poached somewhat contentiously from the Thistleton Community Choir a few months earlier, played a series of dramatic chords, as though providing accompaniment at the nerve-jangling climax of a horror film.
It earned him a laugh from Howard, Ruth and Ransford, but Mary chose to ignore it.
‘No, certainly not least,’ she said. ‘That’s always unlikely to be the case when Declan’s the most accomplished dancer in the group.’
‘Teacher’s pet,’ Nathan said.
Mary chose to ignore that, too. ‘But it’s actually Veronica who I’m going to single out this evening, because she was precise and expressive and her break during the mambo was spot on every time. So, well done, love.’
Veronica said, ‘Ta very much’, and reddened slightly, this being the first time she’d received such fulsome praise.
She had not been a member of the group much longer than Alan had been playing piano, having been brought in to even up the number of dancers.
At that time – ever since he’d rejoined the group following Alex’s death in fact – Miller had been happy to provide accompaniment for the sessions himself, but Mary had been keen to get him back out on the floor, where he ‘belonged’, as soon as she had the chance.
‘Declan, though, was not really with it, tonight,’ Mary said.
‘Oh.’ Miller scratched his head. ‘So I was without it, then?’
‘Well, yes, apparently.’
‘Buggered if I can remember where I left it.’
‘There’s no need to be silly, Declan. I’m just saying you seemed a bit … distracted, that’s all.’
After a few seconds, Miller became aware that Mary was waiting – along with the rest of them – in the hope that he might say something about what had been distracting him. It was usually a case he was working, a murder more often than not, and they always loved hearing about those.
This time, Miller just jammed another custard cream into his gob.
He was certainly not going to let on that he’d been thinking about the letter tucked behind that tango trophy on his mantelpiece. The details of the bereavement package. The price they’d put on his dead wife.
The truth was, in this place with these people, it was all but impossible for Miller not to think about Alex.
They had joined the group together and been quickly marked out by Mary as a couple capable of winning prizes.
Surprised as he was by how quickly he had taken to the world of amateur ballroom -dancing (the outings to the pub afterwards had certainly helped), Miller had nonetheless been convinced that Mary was starting to lose the plot.
It was not long however, before he and Alex were entering competitions – local and national – and those trophies Mary had predicted were beginning to take up space in their front room.
The Swinton (Seniors) Ballroom Shield, the Blackburn Classical Sequence Medal, the Keighley and District American Smooth Grand Prix.
The big one – the North-West Lancashire Over Forties – had eluded them for obvious reasons that nobody wanted to dwell on for very long.
Miller still knew every move of the tango they had danced to kick things off that night, and the routine that would surely have won it for them in the second half had Alex not vanished from the dressing room.
Had she not been lured to a meeting with her murderer.
Miller looked at the expectant faces of the men and women whose friendship and support had come to mean so much.
He decided that, even though what was actually weighing on his mind was not something he’d be comfortable discussing later over a pint and a bag of pork scratchings, there was something he could talk about to keep them happy; to make them feel engaged.
Even though it was done and dusted, it was still a murder investigation … of sorts.
‘Yeah, sorry, Mary … sorry, everyone,’ he said. ‘I think I’m finding it hard to focus because of this very weird case I’ve been working.’
‘I knew it.’ Nathan slapped his fingers together like he was somewhat younger than he actually was, and rather more of a badass.
The excitement among this disparate collection of dance enthusiasts was immediately obvious, because Miller had seen it before: the keen interest in whatever case he was working, and the willingness to exchange ideas or even, on occasion, to suggest theories whether they were asked for or not.
‘Weird sounds interesting,’ Howard said.
Ransford and Gloria nodded in unison.
‘Yeah, weird’s always good,’ Ruth said.
‘I like the sound of it already,’ Mary said.
Disparate was putting it mildly.
A pair of retired coppers in their seventies who, as you might expect, were usually responsible for the less outlandish of the theories on offer.
A Jamaican couple who were not a great deal younger, but still had the energy to waltz/jive/foxtrot for several hours every week and run an independent florist’s just behind the Pleasure Beach.
A twenty-something nerd who kept saying he wanted to be a copper himself (but somehow made a living out of messing about on his computer), and the slightly older woman he had the hots for, who did secretarial work from home.
Other than the fact that she used to be a traffic warden, Miller knew very little about Veronica and, even if pushed, could only have estimated her age as somewhere between forty and sixty.
She was nice enough, though, and a decent dancer, though she wasn’t in Alex’s league (not in any sense, no matter what Mary might have been thinking).
‘Oh, this case is definitely interesting.’ Miller polished off his last biscuit and brushed away the crumbs. He looked at each of them in turn for a few seconds, letting the tension build. ‘It’s about a murder … that wasn’t really a murder at all.’
‘Ooh,’ Gloria said.
Mary rubbed her hands together. ‘Well, you’ve got me hooked.’
‘It doesn’t sound like much of a story.’ Nathan looked a little embarrassed when everyone else turned to stare at him, and began to stammer a little when Ruth rolled her eyes. ‘I’m just … is there at least a body in it?’
‘Of course there’s a flipping body.’ Miller saw Nathan perk up immediately, but was still keen to have a little fun with him.
‘What, you think I’m some sort of lightweight, Nathan?
’ He winked at Ruth, then continued as if he was becoming increasingly agitated.
‘You think I spend my working day controlling traffic or helping people across the road?’
‘No, course not, I just—’
‘I’m a homicide detective.’
‘Yeah, I know … sorry, Dec.’
‘There is most certainly a body,’ Miller said. ‘And there’s a lot more besides. There’s dogs for a kick-off. All manner of dogs.’
‘That’s smashing to hear,’ Veronica said.
‘Because I like dogs.’ She stared at Miller.
‘But I don’t like stories where -animals get hurt.
I don’t give a tuppenny stuff what happens to the people, but if anything bad happens to those dogs, I shall be properly upset.
Can you promise me the dogs in your story are going to be all right? ’
Miller wasn’t altogether sure what had happened to Ezra Simmons’s two Bullys, but it was only a detail, so he made Veronica the promise anyway.
‘Right then.’ Mary clapped her hands together. ‘Sounds like we’re in for a fun session at the Bull’s Head—’
‘First round on Nathan!’ Howard’s suggestion immediately met with the approval of all but one of the group.
‘But we still need to work up a thirst, so let’s crack on. I think we’ve had enough Latin for one week, so let’s try a nice gentle Viennese waltz, shall we? Back in the same pairs then, and … Alan?’ Mary looked across to the man at the piano. ‘Something suitable … ?’
Veronica’s concerns about canine welfare had clearly been heartfelt, so Miller hoped she wasn’t too upset at Alan’s choice of ‘How Much is that Doggie in the Window?’ (complete with call-and-response ‘woof-woof’s) which smacked just a little of taking the mickey.
At least the song was in classic waltz time.