Twenty-Seven
They ate lunch in the Deadly Duck.
The pub was actually called the Black Swan, but multiple run-ins with the Food Standards Agency over the years, plus at least one confirmed case of salmonella in a ‘Clucky Devil’ spicy chicken burger, had more than earned the place its nickname.
There were plenty of other establishments at which they could have chosen to eat, any of which Xiu would have preferred, but Miller had managed to talk her round.
Taste and safety weren’t everything, after all.
He explained that the remote possibility of hospitalisation always added a tantalising frisson of danger to dining at the Duck, complemented by the thrilling bouts of verbal sparring with Janet – the venue’s fearsome landlady – which Miller always looked forward to.
‘But she seems to really dislike you,’ Xiu had said, the last time she’d witnessed such an exchange. ‘You know, a lot.’
‘It’s just bantz,’ Miller had said.
‘Is it, though?’
‘We go back a long way.’
To be honest, Miller wasn’t altogether sure if Janet liked him or not and he knew that she wouldn’t have the first idea what bantz was, but it was true that they’d known one another a long time.
Inevitably, it was Alex that Janet and her husband -Graham – the Black Swan’s chef de cuisine/microwave -operator – had been closest to.
Having to deal with Miller once in a while was the price they’d had to pay for being Alex’s friends.
The pair of them had both been happily sozzled at Miller and Alex’s wedding and, rather more recently, Graham had generously prepared all the food for Alex’s funeral.
There’d been a fair amount of it left, obviously, but Miller had not forgotten the gesture.
‘What’s this?’ Miller shoved a forkful of lasagne into his mouth, then unfolded the piece of paper that Xiu had passed across the table.
‘My friend on the Sexual Offences Unit sent it to me,’ Xiu said.
‘It’s the statement made by Sania Malik.
She’s the woman who was assaulted on her way home from the King’s Head.
’ Having learned – through bitter experience – what to order if she was to avoid that frisson on which certain people seemed so inexplicably keen, Xiu bit into a simple cheese and tomato cob, then sat back and chewed while Miller read the statement.
Sania Malik had been attacked within ten minutes of leaving the King’s Head on a Sunday night just over a fortnight before.
She’d been bundled into an alleyway behind a warehouse near the football ground, and subjected to a serious assault that would undoubtedly have become an aggravated rape had her attacker not been disturbed by shouts and footsteps from the other end of the alley.
‘Why did she wait to come forward and report it?’ Miller asked when he’d finished reading.
‘She always intended to,’ Xiu said. ‘It just took a while before she felt strong enough, I suppose. I know the length of time between the attack and her reporting it means there wasn’t a rape kit done, but she kept everything she was wearing. Sealed her clothes up in plastic bags straight away.’
‘That’s smart thinking.’
‘Yes, because she’s very smart … and even if a good defence lawyer might be able to pick holes in the chain of evidence later on, it will help us find her attacker.
You’ve read what she went through, so you know …
he was pawing at her and slobbering over her.
So there’s plenty of DNA, and even if it hasn’t been matched to anyone on the database yet, we can definitely match it to a suspect when we’ve got one. ’
Miller looked at the statement again. ‘It’s not much of a description.’
Xiu nodded. ‘There wasn’t a lot of light in that alleyway, so it’s not like she got a good look at him, on top of which the assault was obviously traumatic. This is all Sania can remember.’
‘Right, so he was big, he was bald, and … what do you make of this booze thing?’
‘I know. It’s a bit vague.’
‘A bit?’ Miller pointed and read out, ‘I could smell fancy booze on his breath … that weird French stuff. I don’t know the name of it.’ He looked across at Xiu. ‘It’s not a lot to go on.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘I can think of plenty of French stuff that’s weird. Eating cheese after your main course but before your pudding for a kick-off. No idea what this weird booze she’s on about is, though.’
Xiu looked up and was more than a little startled to see the Duck’s landlady looming over her. ‘Oh …’
‘How’s your food?’ Janet’s voice was forty-a-day hoarse and her tone suggested that she didn’t really give a toss either way.
‘It’s nice.’ Xiu nodded at her cob. ‘Thank you.’
Janet looked rather shocked at the positive feedback. ‘No … thank you.’
‘My partner doesn’t really do jokes.’ Miller smiled at Janet. ‘And she takes the piss very rarely, so it’s best to assume she just has incredibly low standards.’
‘Like your former wife,’ Janet said.
‘Touché,’ Miller said.
‘Come again?’
‘My food, on the other hand, is definitely not “nice”.’ Miller pushed a fork through his lasagne’s watery mince.
‘That would be ridiculous, but I wouldn’t go as far as to describe it as “completely horrible”, either.
It’s no worse than mildly unpleasant, which is definitely an improvement, so please feel free to pass on my compliments to Graham. ’
‘Is there really any point?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘You’re a decent detective by all accounts.’
‘I’m not going to deny it.’
Janet turned to stalk back towards the bar, muttering as she went, ‘So I’m sure you can work out exactly where he’d tell you to stick ’em.’
Miller watched her go, then turned to look at Xiu, who appeared as baffled as ever by the exchange. ‘Like I said, Posh. Bantz.’
Twenty minutes later, on their way back to the station, Xiu said, ‘All set for tonight?’
‘I’ve never been more excited.’
‘Come on, Miller. Think about what that animal did to Sania Malik. What he might do to any number of other women if we don’t catch him.’
‘Yeah, sorry.’ Miller hadn’t intended his lack of enthusiasm for their forthcoming heavy metal outing to be quite so obvious.
‘I just need to do a quick bit of shopping first.’ The idea of buying something he neither wanted nor needed called to mind a somewhat bizarre memory; one he was surprised that Alex hadn’t brought up a few nights earlier, when she was cheerfully recalling a few of his less than ‘finest’ hours.
‘I’ll tell you something else weird about the French. ’
Xiu looked at him. ‘What?’
‘The fact that you have to wear budgie smugglers in public swimming baths.’
‘I think it’s a health and safety thing,’ Xiu said. ‘Baggy swimming trunks can get caught in the vents.’
‘I actually got thrown out of a swimming pool over there.’ Miller shook his head, the details coming back to him. ‘A few years back, when me and Alex went to Brittany on holiday.’
‘What happened?’
‘Well … I was minding my own business, happily paddling about in my bog-standard swimming shorts, you know, like a normal person, and this jobsworth blew his whistle and told me I had to get out. Told me not to come back unless I was wearing an acceptable costume.’
‘What did you do?’ Xiu asked.
‘I got out, I got changed and I immediately went to buy a pair of Speedos, just like Monsieur Jobsworth told me to.’
‘Right …’ Xiu waited, guessing there was more.
‘Then Alex and I trotted off to the nearest bar, where I put away two beers and half a bottle of red wine. Then I popped on my new cossie and went straight back to the swimming baths, whereupon I promptly got chucked out again.’
‘Even though you had Speedos on?’
‘I was chucked out for pissing in the pool.’
‘Ah … did they have that special dye in the water?’
‘No idea. I think that’s a myth, anyway.’
‘So, how—’
‘I did it off the diving board,’ Miller said, proudly. ‘The high one.’