Library

Brough had barely slept. He was too keen to resume the investigation. The initial findings of the forensics team would be available by the time he got to the station. He would have run there, combining his daily exercise with his journey to work but he had no clothes to change into when he arrived. He was too wired for running anyway. He’d probably burn off plenty of calories from nervous excitement alone.

It was too early even for a bus when he left the flat. The birds had yet to roll over and clear their throats. Brough walked at a brisk pace along the damp streets. The town was quiet. It was too late for nightclub stragglers and too early for street cleaners and milkmen. As he reached the town centre, he grunted in disgust at the shops that were brightly illuminated even though they had been closed since five thirty the previous afternoon. What a waste of resources! Was it any wonder shops were going out of business? Think of the savings they could make on their electricity bills!

He shook his head to dispel these thoughts. He was always doing this: making snap judgments about situations and putting it to rights without being fully apprised of the facts. It could be a hazard in his line of work. What did it matter if the shops went down the drain? What did it matter if the planet ran out of fossil fuels? Did any of this impinge on the current investigation? No. Then he must not entertain such ideas. He must focus his mind on the investigation under way.

“Early bird!” Detective Stevens from the Serious Crimes Department greeted Brough. “Kick you out, did she?”

“I’m sorry?” Brough hung up his coat. He was uneasy about having the big boys in his makeshift incident room. It made him feel awkward in his own space. Like when you’re trying to work and the cleaner comes in.

“Never mind,” Stevens handed Brough a folder, already swollen with paperwork. “Witness statements from yesterday.” Another folder appeared. “Forensics prelims.” A third. “Stats and facts about the victim.” And a fourth. “Cross references to similar cases, both cold and current.”

Brough settled into a seat, stacking the folders neatly in front of him. “You have been busy.” He lifted the cover of the uppermost folder. “Similar cases? This has happened before?”

“Well, not beer bottles in the eyes exactly, but no. Remember that couple in Wolvo? The whisk?”

“And you think there’s a connection?”

“That’s just one of the things the investigation will have to, you know, investigate.”

Brough decided he didn’t like Stevens. He didn’t like his sarcastic tone. He didn’t like the way he perched his buttock on the edge of the table. For his part, Stevens was well aware of the way the Southern softy had wrinkled his nose like an affronted bunny rabbit when he had found Stevens intruding in his workplace. He leaned closer, ostensibly to offer Brough a piece of chewing gum but really to watch the young upstart squirm.

“Let us have it,” Stevens said in a low, rumbling voice. “This case is too big for you. Let us have it in SCD. We’ve got the resources. We’ve got the manpower. You need us.”

Brough kept his eyes on the proffered pack of gum as though Stevens was training a weapon on him. “Thank you but no,” he said with a sniff. “I will be happy for your assistance as consultants, and any men or come to that women you can spare for the legwork but -“

He cut himself off as Stevens face with its uneven and unfashionable moustache leant in closer still. “You’re heading for a fall,” he breathed. “You do realise that, don’t you?”

Brough stared straight ahead. This afforded him a close-up view of Stevens’s pores but better that than to dignify the man’s attempts to undermine his confidence. Better not to acknowledge the insufferable brute at all. Other, bigger coppers had tried to intimidate him before. They had barely succeeded so this wanker didn’t stand a chance.

And where were they now? Most of them were no longer in the force. Some of them were now on the other side of the bars... Brough enjoyed the memory of the outcome of his previous tribulations. Stevens misread this as arrogance directed towards him.

After a moment of deadlock, Stevens leant back and stood. He stretched his arms and arched his back as though he’d just got out of bed. “Time I wasn’t here,” he said with forced cheeriness. He tapped the pile of folders with a meaty finger. “Read it. Read the one about cold cases. You’ll find it most enlightening.”

Brough didn’t move. He waited until the brute had taken himself, including his finger, away before grabbing the file and rifling through it.

Within seconds, Brough was loath to admit Stevens was right. It was most enlightening indeed.

***

Mrs Box was busy. She was always bloody busy but that was how she liked it. As long as she kept herself occupied and bustling about she wouldn’t have time to - to dwell...on...other things - She upbraided herself for losing focus. She pushed the swing door open with her backside and conveyed two plates of fried matter to the guests at table six.

On her way back to the kitchen, she brushed past table four where a guest was not so much reading a newspaper as camping out in it.

“Be with you in a minute, dear,” she beamed, already moving on.

“No, no,” Cassidy lowered the paper. “You take your time.”

Mrs Box stopped in her tracks and froze as though caught in some criminal act. She turned and came back to table four. Her professional smile was no longer in evidence. She chewed her bottom lip and sighed.

“I can’t apologise enough, love,” she was wringing her apron in her hands. “But at least you finally met my husband, eh? Not in the best of circumstances but -“

“I was terrified!” Cassidy interrupted, harshly. “First the murder -“

“Murder?” It was Mrs Box’s turn to interrupt. “What murder, dear?”

Cassidy held up the front page. Above a grainy picture of the victim, gleaned from someone’s cell phone, she wouldn’t wonder, the headline read, “HERE’S MUD IN YOUR EYE”.

“Ooh.” Mrs Box peered at the page. “Well, I never.”

“I was right there when it happened,” Cassidy added.

“That was lucky,” was Mrs Box’s surprising response.

“Lucky?” Cassidy gaped. “What the hell do you mean, ‘lucky’?”

Mrs Box took a breath. She didn’t like this young lady’s attitude, American or not. “I thought that was your line, dear. Murder.”

“In theory, but-”

“Different story, isn’t it, when it happens under your nose? Who was it, the poor bleeder? Was he a local?”

Cassidy scanned the article then shook her head. “Um - no - I think he was just in town for the festival.”

“Oh,” Mrs Box considered this. “Oh, all right then.” She brightened considerably and switched her smile back on. “Jam and toast, dear?”

She swept away before Cassidy could give an answer.

“Unbelievable.”

***

Brough had plenty of time to read the files while the day grew lighter and people began to turn up for the morning shift. Apart from the whisk-related deaths, there was nothing in recent cases that was remotely as bizarre as the beer-bottle murder. The region appeared to have had a quiet couple of decades on the unusual killings front. But if you went back further to the cusp of the 1980s and 90s, there was a wealth of documentation it would take days to wade through. He wasn’t sure how much of it was pertinent or worth his while but then that was the thing about his line of work. The hours of slog, the tedium, the elimination of the bulk of the data one accrued. It was like prospecting for the smallest sliver of a gold nugget in a raging torrent of silt.

He had also had a quick flick through the personnel files. Of them all, Station Reception Officer Dobley was the longest-serving. Content to spend his working life as little more than a receptionist, singularly lacking in ambition, Dobley had been a fresh-faced, newly minted member of the team back when the cases in the files, now cold, were current. A chat with him might yield some shorthand, some quick reference points, Brough reasoned.

But first there was the team briefing. He jotted some notes on a pad before typing them up and printing them out. It was Day One proper of a rather grisly murder investigation and he was keen that they hit the ground running.

He made a mental note to include that phrase in his opening address.

Then his preparations were interrupted by a telephone call.

***

Cassidy left the Ash Tree before Mrs Box could load the toaster with bread. She packed a bag with notepads and pens, pulled on her jacket and almost skipped down the stairs and out into the bright morning air. She headed towards the town centre, eager to locate the library Anfred had assured her was there -

Anfred!

Huh! Cassidy scowled at the memory of seeing Anfred going into a room with some guy or other. She felt foolish for allowing herself to think he was interested in her, when all the time he was a - a -

He was a goddamned flirt, that’s what he was, whatever else you might care to call him. He had led her on, without question. And then just left her stranded! It was hateful. It was cruel.

Cassidy grimaced. The sun was a little too bright and the skin encasing her skull a little too tight. What had she been drinking? So many beers with so many dumb names. Vicar’s Asshole and that kind of thing.

She ducked into a convenience store for a bottle of cold water and some paracetamol. As she pushed the pills from their silver blisters and unscrewed the cap of the Evian, she reassessed her opinion of the Scandinavian scumbag. Maybe she misread the signals. Maybe the beer had distorted her perception.

Yeah, blame the booze, kiddo. And if Anfred wasn’t interested, that was a relief, wasn’t it? Let him do whatever with whomever. She had no time for that kind of business. She had to focus on the thesis.

The road that led to the square was cordoned off. Policemen guarded the tape, nursing cardboard cups of coffee and chatting amiably among themselves.

Damn it. The library was beyond the square and around the corner. She would have to find an alternative route.

She stepped up to the barrier and beckoned the nearest officer to ask him for directions.

“Yank, am you?” the cop nodded. He shot a sideways look to his companion. “What can I do for you?”

***

Brough called D.S. Miller to the incident room (he had renamed the briefing room yet again) to help him set it up. While he pinned enlarged photographs of the crime scene to a board, she went around placing his freshly-printed agenda and what he called an “information pack” on each seat.

He uncapped a brand new marker pen - the washable, wipe-offable kind - and found the scent it gave off invigorating. In neat block capitals he wrote his name across the top of the white board. He stood back to admire it, thought better of it and wiped it off again with his handkerchief. He turned to see Miller was watching him and appearing far too amused for a woman with a job to do.

***

Cassidy was becoming angrier with every step that took her further away from the town centre. Those rotten cops! They had deliberately given her bum directions and now she was wandering around, who knows where. The library was nowhere to be seen. There was a square - not that square but another one. This one was grassy with a statue in the centre. It could be Cupid. It could be Robin fucking Hood for all she cared. There was a war memorial in the form of an obelisk and there were a large number of students milling around a bus stop. Cassidy kept walking.

A parking lot. A row of quite respectable houses. But still no library, damn it.

There was no one around she might ask. She thought about turning back and asking the students but she felt daunted by their number. So she kept walking.

A park. In that park, a pile of old stones.

She’d heard that libraries were in jeopardy but had the council already reduced theirs to rubble?

Closer inspection (and reading a board provided for tourists) revealed this was the Priory of Saint James. Cassidy was puzzled.

Susan Saint James?

Why would an old sitcom star have her own building? And here of all places?

And why wasn’t it finished? Builders’ strike?

As she strolled around it struck her that the building was not unfinished. It had been completed and inhabited long, long ago. She read the tourist information. Monks had lived here until it was dissolved. Well, she figured, made from limestone it was bound to wear away eventually. Acid rain, most probably.

She looked at the most complete remnant - a Gothic archway - and tried to imagine bald-pated men in rough, hooded robes, chanting, illustrating manuscripts, cultivating cucumbers - or whatever else it was that monks got up to.

“All right, chick?” A voice behind her made her jump. She turned to see a group of people all quite smartly dressed. In their midst, were an anxious bride and groom. The voice belonged to the most unkempt member of the party with a couple of serious-business cameras on straps around his neck. “If you wouldn’t mind, only I’ve got another wedding to snap in half an hour.”

“Umm,” Cassidy managed. She picked her way across the stones in the grass that depicted where the rest of the walls had once stood. The wedding party swept towards the building’s remains like a flock of vultures swooping on carrion.

Good luck to them, Cassidy thought. It was hardly a good omen, starting married life in ruins.

She retraced her steps back towards the town. The students were swarming onto a bus like piranha bringing down a hippopotamus. Ahead was the shopping area. Here she’d be more likely to encounter someone she could approach for directions to the library.

Maybe she had been too quick to judge the cops. Maybe she had misunderstood their directions. She was still acclimatising to the accent after all.

No. She remembered the twinkle in that cop’s eye and the encouraging look his amigo had given him.

Bastards.

She could feel herself getting worked up again. Calm down, Cass, she told herself. Count to a fucking thousand.

She was back in the marketplace, back at the fountain. She gazed around for someone she could ask. There was no shortage of people but they were keeping themselves to themselves and avoiding eye contact. Cassidy soon worked out why. Not far off, a couple of people in matching body warmers and clipboards were trying to stop people and sign them up for charitable donations. They stepped in front of shoppers with a nimble leap and a bright-eyed greeting and were either blanked or sworn at, receiving instructions on what to do with their clipboards in no uncertain terms.

Cassidy moved from that spot before the charity workers noticed her and trapped her in a pincer movement.

Not far off an olde worlde signpost splayed is arms in several directions. This way to the public toilets. That way to the benefits office. And - Cassidy was delighted to read - the other way to the library!

At last!

“I wouldn’t trust that thing if I were you.”

Cassidy jumped. What was it with assholes sneaking up behind her today?

She turned. A grimy man in scruffy clothes was smiling through black and broken teeth.

“Excuse me?” Cassidy asked, and then cursed herself for not getting the hell away from there as fast as her feet could take her.

“Kids swing on them, turn them around. You could end up on the moon for all you know.”

“Right...” Cassidy began to sidle away as surreptitiously as she could.

“If you’m after the library, it’s that way and round the corner.”

“Oh! Oh, thanks. Appreciate it.” Now she felt guilty. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a banknote. It was blue and there was a picture of their Queen on it. That was about as much as she knew about it. She held it out, hoping the man’s filthy fingers wouldn’t come into contact with hers. The man seemed adept at accepting money without upsetting his patrons and expressed his thanks many times, his eyes twinkling wetly.

Cassidy backed away before turning. Her blood ran cold as he scampered after her.

“I could walk you there, Miss,” the man called out. “It’s no trouble.”

“I’m fine, thanks!” Cassidy called out without turning around. She walked faster. He didn’t seem to be following, thank fuckery. She hurried along the road he had indicated and yes indeed, there was a corner, and yes indeed, around that corner stood the library.

Marvellous!

She barely glanced at the stucco on the building’s facade, and just about registered the statue high above the entrance. A woman reading a book. That figured. Cassidy hoped to be emulating that bitch within minutes. The reading, she meant, and not the bare breasts that had turned green from exposure to the elements. Typical of the Brits, Cassidy reckoned. A monument to their beloved topless tabloid models.

Ah! The calm, coolness of the library hit her as soon as she stepped inside. The fluster and heat of her bad temper dropped right away. This was her milieu - even if she couldn’t pronounce the word correctly. She strode up the short flight of steps to the counter.

“Excuse me; can you direct me to the archive section, please?”

The girl behind the counter raised an eyebrow at the American accent but then jerked her thumb towards the right. “Enquiries desk,” she muttered.

“Thanks.” Cassidy followed the thumb, aware that the girl was watching her go.

The enquiries desk was unstaffed. A chair was pushed from the desk; it looked like it had been vacated in a hurry and there was a mug of coffee left to go cold. The computer monitor was scrolling a screensaver over and over. It reminded Cassidy of the Mary Celeste.

She waited. Why did the girl send her here when there was no one around?

She glanced around. Apart from a few old women browsing paperback romance novels and a man nodding off on an easy chair in the corner, the place wasn’t very busy. To either side, a staircase stretched up to the next floor. One was modern and utilitarian; the other was more to Cassidy’s liking. It was in the older, original part of the building, a broad flight of marble steps that bent back on itself halfway up. Both staircases bore signage. Upstairs for non-fiction, reference and, Cassidy was thrilled to see, local history and archives.

Fantastic.

She abandoned the desk and headed for the old, cold steps. Finally, after more than a day of farting around, wasting time drinking with that bastard Norwegian bastard, she was about to do what she’d come here to do. It felt good.

There was another desk, staffed by a thin man whose dark hair was shot with white as if he’d recently been painting a ceiling.

He looked at her with a quizzical expression as though unaccustomed to having people approach and ask him for things.

“Um, hi,” Cassidy said, a little nervously. “Could you help me, please? I need...” She pulled out one of her notebooks and showed him a page. He took the book from her and got to his feet.

“Wait here,” he said, pointing at a long table topped with green leather. He left her to settle, crossing the room in long, quick strides.

Cassidy’s thanks died in her open mouth. The guy was fast! She selected a chair near the table’s end in order not to disturb a couple of old men at the other end who were poring over newspapers. There was also a girl with brightly coloured hair and far too many bangles to be practical, scribbling in an exercise book and periodically consulting a stack of sociology books. None of them remarked her arrival.

She barely had time to warm the upholstery before the librarian returned, trying to appear as though he wasn’t struggling beneath the weight of the enormous tomes he was carrying. The volumes hit the table with a thud.

“Thanks, I -“

The librarian held out her notebook with one hand and pointed at a notice suspended above the table with the other.

SILENT READING.

“Oh, right!” Cassidy took back her notebook. The librarian pointed at the sign a second time before turning on his heels and returning to the desk. Cassidy bit her lip. Oops.

She rubbed her hands and opened the first book.

Fantastic.