Tufty jammed on the brakes and the patrol car screeched to a halt outside an identikit house at the end of an identikit street. He flicked off his seatbelt and jumped out into the night. Steel scrambled out of the passenger side, puffing after him as he sprinted up the driveway.
She grabbed the back of his muddy jacket and pointed. ‘Go round the back: catch the bastard!’
He peeled away, running along the front of the house and around the side. A six-foot wooden fence blocked the way. Damn it: gate was locked too.
Two steps back, then lurch forward and jump... clambering over the top and dropping down into the back garden. The whole thing was lit up like a football pitch, a cordon of security lights blazing away. Tiny shed on one side, a collection of kids’ plastic tat toys: Wendy house, tipper truck, swingset, a rocking horse in the shape of a dinosaur — all of it glowing in its Technicolor splendour.
A man stood on the other side of a rotary dryer, in a dressing gown, waving a spade, shouting over the back fence and into the darkness. ‘AND THERE’S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM, YOU PERVERT FREAK!’ He spun around and the dressing gown flared out, revealing a Darth Vader T-shirt and a pair of tartan jammie bottoms. Bared his teeth at Tufty. Then jabbed the spade at him like a rifle with bayonet fitted. ‘Another one, eh? Come on then!’
Tufty skidded to a halt, hands up. ‘Woah, woah. Police. I’m the police.’
Steel barged out through the kitchen door. ‘Did you get him?’
Mr Spade grinned. ‘Oh I got him all right.’ He jiggled his spade, swinging it about. ‘Right in the face. Pang!’
Tufty went for the back fence, foot on the centre rail, and up... Coming to a halt with one leg straddling the top.
The houses stretched away to the left, hiding behind their own timber fences, but on the right it was nothing but fields bathing in the moonlight. Sinister grey shapes moved across the stubble, their eyes gleaming like jackals’. Sinister sheep. Sheeping sinisterly. But they were the only living things out there. No sign of anyone else.
Sod.
He hopped back down again. ‘Gone.’
‘Damn it!’ Steel did a three-sixty, fists clenched. ‘Motherfunker!’
Mr Spade backed off, nostrils flaring as he grimaced at Tufty. ‘What have you been rolling in?’
Steel grabbed at the guy’s dressing gown. ‘Did you recognise him? The man you hit?’
‘He was wearing a mask. One of those cheap plastic kids’ things.’
She let go of the dressing gown and snatched the spade off him instead. Holding it under the nearest security light, turning it back and forth. ‘Can’t see any blood. Might get some DNA off it, though.’
So close.
Tufty got out his notebook, flipping it open at the last marked page. Pen poised. ‘Right, let’s start at the beginning.’
III
The manky pool car was still slewed half on the road and half on the pavement. Steel slouched back against the bonnet, puffing away on her fake cigarette, making a fog bank all of her own. It gleamed like a solid thing in the moonlight.
Tufty’s phone was warm against his ear, notebook pinned to the roof of the car. He wrote the word ‘MAYBE’ in it and underlined it three times. ‘Yeah. OK. Thanks. Bye.’ He hung up. ‘Maud says she’ll do her best, but the lab’s backed up as it is.’
Steel pulled the e-cigarette from her mouth for long enough to spit in the gutter. ‘Which is secret SEB code for “no’ a chance in hell”. Sod.’
‘This still means you owe me a fish supper, though, right? I mean, I predicted he’d be out and about tonight. And, ta-daaaa!’
But Steel just stared off into the distance, eyebrows knitting away at something just inside her head. ‘You fiddled about two shift patterns to work it out?’
About time she took an interest.
‘Told you: I has a clever.’ He leaned over the bonnet at her. ‘It was pretty obvious he was on a two-week cycle, so probably works offshore. The tricky part was the other shift pattern, but then I had an even cleverer!’
She stared at him. ‘Did your mum drop you on your head when you were a kid?’
That was the trouble with old people — no appreciation of popular culture.
‘See, it had to be a really weird shift pattern to match up them being on nights while he does his thing. And the only shift pattern I could think of that’s that screwed up is the one I had to do for three years up in Banff, back when I was divisional police officer. So...?’
A slow smile dawned as the penny dropped.
‘He’s living with a cop. Some spod in uniform’s boyfriend is the Blackburn Womble Whacker!’ Steel hauled out her phone and dialled, puffing away. ‘Come on, come on, come— Ernie? How many uniform we got living in Blackburn?... Uh-huh.’ She looked up at Tufty. ‘He’s got three.’ Back to the phone. ‘How many off duty tonight?... Two? Oh Ernie: you’re a sexy wee fish, you know that, don’t you? Now give me a name and address for the one who’s working.’
The house wasn’t as big and grand as the last one they’d visited, but it’d been squeezed out of a similar mould. Grey harling, stonework features around the windows, grey tiles on the roof. They’d put the effort in and planted a tree right in the middle of the teabag-sized front garden, though. It didn’t look healthy.
Steel thumped her car door shut with a flourish. Then held her arms wide, beaming. ‘Isn’t it a lovely night?’ She swaggered up the path, leaving a trail of vape behind her that glowed in the moonlight.
Woman was insane. But Tufty followed her anyway.
At the front door she gave a couple of hoppity-skippity dance steps then swept into a curtsey, one hand gesturing at the letterbox. ‘If you would be so kind, my dearest Constable Quirrel?’
Completely crackers.
He rang the bell.
She rocked back and forth on her heels. Hands in her pockets. Grin on her face. ‘Oh, the excitement!’
A shadow moved on the other side of the frosted glass pane set into the middle of the door. Then a muffled mushy voice joined it. ‘Hello?’
Steel pressed the doorbell again.
‘This better not be Jehovah’s Witnesses! I told you lot last time.’ The door opened and there was Mr Parka, only he’d ditched the jacket for a Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt, boxer shorts, and slippers. He had a bag of frozen sweetcorn in one hand, holding it over his nose and mouth.
He took one look at them and his bloodshot eyes widened. ‘Oh...’
Steel grinned at him. ‘Mr Corbet? Mr Alan Corbet? Your wife’s at work tonight, isn’t she? Pounding the beat, while you’re out pounding your meat.’
He lowered the sweetcorn, showing off two swollen lips and a pair of nostrils with toilet paper sticking out of them — bright red where it disappeared up inside his head. He licked his top lip, setting a crack bleeding again. ‘It...’ A deep breath, then Mr Parka stuck his chest out, chin up. ‘Have you found my dog yet?’
Steel’s grin got even wider.
Steel whistled a happy tune as she swaggered her way out of Interview Room Four, paused on the threshold and cast a wink back at the room’s remaining occupants. ‘I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone for a minute. No inappropriate touching though, this is a family show.’
Alan Corbet sat on the other side of the interview table, the skin around his eyes darkening to a lovely shade of reddish-purple. Bottom lip trembling. Shoulders quivering. He reached up with cuffed hands and wiped tears from his cheek.
Sitting next to him, his solicitor sighed and dug a hankie out of her suit pocket. Handed it over as Tufty closed the door.