Questions

By the time Cassidy and Anfred were questioned by the police, it was late in the day. The sky was on the brink of going dark.

The coppers at the scene had done well to keep everyone on site when the discovery of the body was made. Even those who had been strictly speaking off-duty and knocking back bottle after bottle of Orcwater Gold had sobered up and rallied to assist.

Detectives and investigation teams and forensics and all the rest of it had flocked to town from the larger, regional station a few miles away, but D.I. Brough made it clear he was heading up the proceedings. It was his manor, damn it. (D.S. Miller had wrinkled her nose at this phrase, so he decided he wouldn’t say ‘manor’ anymore.) The crime scene had been secured. A smaller tent had been erected inside the marquee, shielding the body and protecting the evidence. An image of Russian dolls flashed across Brough’s mind.

How thrilled he had been when the call had come in! The whisk-killer of Wolverhampton could wait - the bloke was dead already; he wouldn’t mind. Ramming his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat, Brough had barked Miller’s name until she appeared at his side and they made their way on foot around the block to the beer festival.

Now, a few hours later, he had that sinking feeling of getting nowhere slowly. No one he spoke to had seen anything. He began to suspect there was a conspiracy afoot: they were all covering up for someone. He knew how tight knit these communities could be. And now, of all people, he was faced with an American girl and her Scandinavian boyfriend. He may as well have been conducting interviews at the zoo.

“And you’re certain you saw nothing?” he asked again. It was fast becoming a catchphrase.

The American girl shook her head. Standing beside her, the boyfriend was becoming impatient.

“We’ve been through this -” he began.

“Hoi! Bjorn Again!” D.S. Miller cut him short, raising her finger as warning.

“I’m speaking to the young lady,” said Brough, unfazed. He raised his eyebrows as a cue.

“I was just in the crowd,” Cassidy spoke quietly. Seeing the dead man had shaken her. This was not part of the research she had planned. “We were all enjoying the music. So many people. I’m sorry; I couldn’t see anything.”

“May we leave now, Inspector?” Anfred set his jaw, looking the detective in the eye.

“Watch it, Henry Fjord,” D.S. Miller snapped but Brough waved her down.

“Steady, Miller.” Brough returned the Norwegian’s stare. “If you weren’t the only one in the whole bloody tent with a cast-iron alibi...” It was true. He’d been the one providing the musical accompaniment to the murder. Everyone else had been lost, intoxicated, in the melee.

“You’d what?” Anfred would not look away. “Take me downtown and beat out of me a confession?”

“I don’t like your attitude” Brough observed. Damned if he was going to look away either!

“I don’t like your coat,” Anfred countered.

Brough’s mouth fell open at this. The American girl shook her boyfriend’s arm. “Anfred!” she gasped. Then she turned to the detectives to apologise. “We’re sorry. We’ve been drinking. He’s a little wired after the performance. You should have seen him. No wonder everyone got pretty stoked.”

Brough’s eyebrows rose again. “Stoked, as you put it, enough to kill someone with two bottles of beer?”

“So you’re ruling out tragic accident?” The American appeared to have perked up. Brough backed off, uncomfortable at this change.

“I ask the questions,” he pointed out. “Right, we’ve got your names and addresses? You live together.” Miller consulted her notes and nodded frantically.

“We’re at the same guest house if that’s what you mean,” Cassidy said carefully.

There was a beat, a brief silence, as if none of them knew what to say or do, then D.I. Brough cleared his throat and the moment was gone.

“Well,” he said, drawing out the word, “we’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”

“So we can leave?” the Norwegian was eyeballing him again. Brough didn’t like this one bit. Rather than enter into another staring competition, he rolled his eyes and addressed his response to the Yank.

“You may leave,” he said magnanimously. “Before I change my mind.”

The Norwegian led the girl away but he shot over his shoulder before he went, “It’s your coat you should change, Inspector. And you might rethink those shoes.”

Brough was gobsmacked. Miller chose her words before speaking.

“He’s one to talk. Christmas jumper.”

Brough glowered at her. She was sorry she spoke but had the good sense not to say so.

***

Cassidy was astonished to discover, upon her return to the Ash Tree, that the beer festival appeared to have found a new home. The bar was chock-a-block with drinkers and not all of them could have been residents.

Mrs Box was speedily but efficiently dispensing drinks from behind the counter, despite having to climb onto upturned crates and a small stepladder in order to reach some of the bottles and optics.

Cassidy was reluctant to enter. She said she wanted to go up to her room - Alone! She was keen to make clear - but Anfred steered her into the crowded room, prescribing something strong and stiff to help her with the shock. Before she could retort to what she suspected was innuendo, he had disappeared, weaving his way through the boozing multitude towards the bar.

She found her way to a corner. Perhaps the killer was in the room! Perhaps he would strike again! She pressed her back against the wallpaper, feeling protected on two sides. She went up on tiptoe to try to see Anfred over the mob.

Suddenly, he was in front of her, carrying two glasses of brandy. She hadn’t seen him approach and was quite startled when he thrust the drink under her nose. She inhaled the fumes and found them warming.

“I can’t believe people are still drinking,” she nodded towards the rest of the room.

“People will always drink,” Anfred replied, dismissively. “Especially in England.”

She shook her head. “I mean after what happened.”

“Death is good for business.”

Cassidy was scandalised at his callousness. “Cynical much?”

“I’m a pragmatist,” he grinned. “So the mood has changed a little. The consumption of alcohol has not.”

“But the festival - it can’t go on.” This seemed to Cassidy the height of bad taste.

“It will,” said Anfred, matter-of-factly. “This town needs it too much.”

“But what about that poor man? Where’s the respect?”

Anfred raised his glass in a toast. “I drink to his memory!”

“You’re not funny,” Cassidy shook her head. “I think you should know that.”

If she was hoping to knock the look from his face, it didn’t work. “And you’re too serious,” he laughed. He was too close for comfort, because of the crowded room, and she had nowhere to back away. “You must enjoy life while you can,” he blew brandy breath into her face. “That poor man as you call him - what was he doing? Having the time of his life. What a way to go!”

Cassidy bent her knees, shrinking from this invasion of her personal space. It wasn’t that she found him unattractive. The whole situation was too cramped, too restricting.

“You’re weird,” she said to the patterned wool on his chest.

“Why, thank you!” he gasped, delighted.

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“No offence taken,” he laughed. “Oh hold on!” He reached under her chin and made her stand up straight. “You have something...” He touched her cheek ever so lightly with a fingertip. “Øyenvippe. Eyelash,” he explained. He showed her his finger as proof. “May I get you another? Drink, I mean.”

“Um...” Cassidy was thrown. It was as though the touch to her face had pressed a restart button. She was still rebooting, trying to deal with the changing situation. Did she actually like this guy? Did she like like him?

“Actually, would you mind?” Suddenly he was holding a banknote in her face. “I have to make pee.”

Cassidy sighed. The romance of the moment was burst like a bubble. She snatched the cash and elbowed her way past him and towards the bar. Anfred watched her go. When he was satisfied she was engaged in the transaction with the diminutive landlady, he took a good look around at the other drinkers.

You never know who you might encounter.

***

At that moment, things were winding up at the marquee. The forensics team was packing up and Brough and Miller had spoken to the last of the revellers and let them go home.

It had been right, Brough reminded himself, to keep everyone at the scene rather than trying to ferry them to the station for questioning. He knew the boys from Serious Crimes were already looking down on them. They wanted to take the case off his hands completely. It was a Serious Crime and that was their thing but Brough was determined to hang onto it as much as he could. He would liaise. He would consult. But he would not, damn it, relinquish control of the investigation.

If - no, when - he brought about a satisfactory resolution, he would use it as leverage to get himself transferred - promoted even - away from this awful place.

The Serious Crime boys - he called them that even though their boss was a woman, a barrel of a woman with hair like a bog brush - had tolerated this foot-stamping with a smirk. They knew he’d come a cropper, drop a clanger and make a balls-up sooner rather than later. He was given leeway because his reputation preceded him. Some said he had been lucky but, however reluctantly they allowed it, he had a chance.

But just the one.

“Quite a to-do, eh, sir?” Miller offered him her packet of crisps. Which he ignored rather rudely; he had his running to think about.

“You can say that again, Miller,” he nodded. “You can say that again.”

Miller didn’t bother. Instead she said, “Most we get around here is a bit of shoplifting. Or there’s a heron going around nicking fish out of garden ponds. But this... I can’t believe nobody saw nothing.”

“It’s not unusual,” Brough’s tone took on an even more patronising tone, “Crowded room. Perfect cover.”

“But - so elaborate,” Miller made a meal of the word, pausing in her crisp-eating to enunciate more clearly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Brough condescended, “Opportunist. Killer saw his moment, grabbed his victim, pulled him under a table, took what was to hand - to wit, beer bottles, while everyone else was dancing around and whooping like Americans.”

It was this last detail that seemed to disturb him the most.

The brief silence that followed was broken by the crunching of a large ready salted between Miller’s molars.

“And the motive, sir?”

“Fucked if I know.” He was deflated but only momentarily. There was always procedure. “We need to find out all we can about the victim.”

With a flick of her wrist, Miller pulled her notepad from her pocket and opened it. “Dennis Morgan. Forty-five. Divorced.”

She was looking to him for something - approval? Congratulation? A reward?

What she got was a smile riddled with impatience and sarcasm.

“In the morning, eh, Miller? In the morning.”

He strode away. Miller realised, but not right away, she had better put her notepad away before attempting to reach in the packet for another crisp.

***

Cassidy had reached the bar. It had taken a gargantuan effort and she felt like planting a flag in the counter. She waved Anfred’s ten pound note in Mrs Box’s general direction, hoping the catch the landlady’s eye.

“Yes, love?” Mrs Box turned to her at long last, although she was still busy serving someone else.

“Two beers, please.”

This request was met with a look of derision. “That’s a bit vague, dear,” Mrs Box laughed but not unkindly. “Which beers do you want?”

Cassidy scanned the chiller cabinets behind Mrs Box. Nothing was familiar. Evidently, world famous beers from home had made no inroads in this stupid town.

Mrs Box raised her eyebrows and broadened her grin as though to prompt the girl. Other customers were waiting; patient for now but they could turn any second!

“Um...” Cassidy panicked and then inspiration struck her. “Say, do you have any Norwegian beer? Rango-something.”

Mrs Box wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Not ringing any bells.”

“Forget it,” Cassidy exhaled. “Two of anything’s fine.”

Mrs Box produced two brown bottles from somewhere and divested them of their caps. “Thirsty, are you, love?”

“What?” As if the accent wasn’t difficult enough! “Oh! Oh, no. I’m not alone. That guy -“

“That’s nice, dear,” Mrs Box cut her short in favour of her other customers. “Six pounds fifty.”

Cassidy handed over the tenner and received a handful of coins in return. She slipped these into the back pocket of her jeans to keep them separate from her own money before picking up the bottles and heading back to the corner.

Anfred was not there. Could he still be peeing after all this time? Cassidy scanned the room. He was nowhere to be seen. She took a swig. She waited.

***

Brough lay awake in his sleeping bag. The new bed was due to be delivered in the morning but with a gruesome murder to investigate, there was no way he could wait in. Shifts and rotas went out the window in these circumstances. And, being so new, he hadn’t even clapped eyes on his neighbours. He couldn’t really ask them.

Damn it.

The downside of being new and being alone.

He would try to call the furniture shop in the morning and make new arrangements. Oh well, he sighed. With this murder to sort out, it wasn’t like he’d be spending much time in his new bed anyway. What was he doing, buying furniture at all? He’d be moving on as soon as he could arrange it, wouldn’t he? No point buying encumbrances. When he thought of all the belongings he had left behind when the death threats had started - He sighed for his big telly, his espresso machine, and his ice-maker. All blown up in what was officially deemed to have been a gas explosion. These things were all replaceable; it was the inconvenience that annoyed Brough. As for people - well, he’d deliberately guarded against making close relationships. He had to maintain a distance in order to succeed. He couldn’t muddy the waters with personal attachments when anyone and everyone might be implicated.

Thoughts of his father were never far behind thoughts of Southampton. Brough’s face reddened with a blend of guilt and embarrassment. Dad had saved him, just as he had intervened to curtail a bout of bullying when David was at school. That was the embarrassing part. That Brough hadn’t really thanked his father for saving his neck and his career was where the guilt came from.

Exasperated, Brough forced himself to think of more pressing matters. He stared at the darkness where the ceiling was hiding and replayed the initial questioning of potential witnesses in his mind. There was not a fat lot to go on. Even though the entire town was rigged with CCTV, the marquee had effectively blocked out those in the square. There might be footage of people coming and going, in and out of the tent, but there were too many of them to make those images useful in any way.

As he lay there, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of his new home, the creaks, the bumps, the noise of the street, and the as yet unseen neighbours, Brough couldn’t shake the notion that he had seen the killer. He had questioned him. He had looked into his eyes.

But who, out of the dozens and dozens and dozens (and dozens) he had encountered, the fucking hell was it?

***

It was late. There were fewer - far fewer - drinkers in the bar. No more than a few stragglers who no longer had the energy to sing. Cassidy was at a table that had been freed up an hour ago. Her face was like a granite carving of the goddess of the Pissed Off. Anfred had not resurfaced.

Mrs Box was the only moving thing in the room. She was bustling around, wiping tables and tidying up. She was singing to herself, a formless, tuneless improvisation that was as grating as it was interminable.

Cassidy looked at her watch but didn’t register what it said so she had to look at it again. Enough was enough. With a scowl like an avenging traffic warden, she stomped over to a door in the corner on which a tarnished brass plaque advertised Gentlemen.

A man, gentle or otherwise, emerged, still attending to his fly.

“Hey!” he found himself harangued by an aggressive American voice. He blinked. The speaker was female and, enhanced by the beer he had swilled or no, wasn’t half bad looking.

“All right, love?” he leered. What allure he had was punctured by the punctuation of the greeting by a belch. Cassidy backed away from the stale, beery breath.

“Excuse me,” she said, although that should have been his line, “but did you see a guy in there?”

“I wasn’t looking, love,” the man screwed up his nose. “Not my type of thing.”

“About yea high,” Cassidy persisted, reaching her hand up to model an estimation of Anfred’s height. “Dark hair. Eyes. Kind of cute, I guess.” She blushed at this but the man wasn’t even looking at her. He was trying to get away.

“Place is empty, love.” Then he took an ungainly backwards step and almost toppled onto her. “Will I do?” He belched again. The wind of it ruffled Cassidy’s hair. She shoved him away.

“Not even close.”

Without glancing around, she pushed the door open and stepped into the forbidden zone of the Gents’ toilet.

“Hello?” she called, wrinkling her nose against the pungent aroma of urine and disinfectant. “Hello?” Still, it wasn’t as bad as that time her friend Miffy had pushed her into the guys’ restroom at high school. The squalor had been horrific and, what was more, she didn’t get to see anything and what was more, it had resulted in two weeks of detention and what was more, Miffy had got away scot free. At the time.

Cassidy made her way along the row of stalls, mindful of puddles or stray pieces of TP on the floor. Each of the three doors was unlocked and open. There was no Anfred. There were no gentlemen. It was like high school all over again.

Cassidy gave a little shriek when she turned to find herself suddenly faced with Mrs Box.

“Fuck me!”

“Didn’t mean to give you a fright, dear,” said Mrs Box, although her smirk suggested otherwise. “You can’t be in here. This is the Men’s. We don’t have them bisexual toilets here. This isn’t Ally McBeal.”

“I guess not. I was looking for a guy.”

“I see,” Mrs Box looked the American girl up and down. “Come to write your number on the wall, did you?”

It took a while for the inference to be drawn. Cassidy gaped, scandalised. “No!” she protested. “I - that - that guy - I was with him earlier -“

Mrs Box was chuckling; it was more musical than her singing. “Only joking, dear.” She took Cassidy by the cuff of her jacket. “I can show you where the Ladies is.”

Cassidy yanked her arm free but kept a civil tone to her words. “No, no, that’s - thank you anyway. I’m going to turn in now, in any case.”

She glanced around the room as if to spot a clue on the tiles or Anfred curled up under a wash basin but Mrs Box was shepherding her towards the door.

“Goodnight, dear,” Mrs Box waved her out, cheerily enough.

Before she turned the light off, Mrs Box caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the smeared and speckled mirror. She rolled her eyes.

Americans!

***

Cassidy clomped up the stairs. She was mad. How dare he abandon her that way? Who did he think he was?

With each flight, signs of drunken occupation became sparser. By the time she reached the third floor, there was only one casualty of beer slumped in the corridor. Her own floor was as deserted as ever. Pity; she could do with someone to kick.

She paused on the step outside her door. She could hear voices on the floor below. Two men were laughing and murmuring to each other, telling each other to be quiet.

One of the voices was distinctly Norwegian.

That bastard!

She hurried as quietly as she could down the stairs but hung back so she could see along the corridor. She was just in time to see That Bastard follow someone she didn’t see into the room at the end. The door closed behind him and was locked.

Bastard!

***

A couple of hours later, Cassidy’s fury had abated enough to allow her to fall asleep. She had been angry with herself more than anything. She had wasted a whole day on that creep rat bastard, a day she could have spent on the thesis.

Of course, it hadn’t been a total waste. She had seen her first real live dead body. Up close and personal, too.

Maybe she should cultivate a relationship with the cops. The inspector guy seemed a bit off but the woman - sergeant, was she? - She might prove malleable enough to let slip information...

It was this line of thinking that soothed her into slumber but her repose was interrupted almost as soon as it started by the rattling of the door knob.

Cassidy’s eyes opened wide. She held her breath and listened. The door knob rattled again. Cassidy propped herself up on her elbows and watched as well as she could in the darkness.

The door was locked. Wasn’t it? Or had she, in her fury, forgotten to lock it behind her? No. She was sure she had. Hadn’t she?

She watched with mounting terror and alarm as the door began to open. As if in slow motion the door glided into the room revealing a huge, dark shape filling the doorway.

Cassidy sat up, her heart pounding, her brain screaming at her to get the fuck out of there.

The dark shape grew as it shuffled into the room, heading towards the foot of the bed.

Cassidy screamed.