A seagull settled on the roof of a manky little Fiat, wings stretched out pterodactyl style. Pterodactyl size, too. Eyeing them.
Finally the voice was back again. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Steel. Not heard from you in ages.’
She looked up and waved at a security camera, mounted above a cracked vent. ‘I’m no’ joking, Haddie. Me and your mum have a lot of catching up to do.’
A sigh, then the left-hand door buzzed and popped open a crack.
‘Good boy, now get the kettle on.’ She pushed inside.
Tufty checked the pterodactyl wasn’t following them and slipped in after Steel.
Down a short hallway to a set of solid-looking metal doors, the kind of doors it took hours to batter through with a Big Red Door Key. It even had a speakeasy hatch set into it.
The hatch clicked open and a pair of bespectacled eyes stared out at them. ‘Is this all of you?’
‘No.’ Steel stuck her hands in her dungarees’ pockets. ‘I’ve got three hundred crack officers out there, a firearms team, and the force helicopter circling overhead. And we all want tea and biscuits.’
The hatch snapped shut.
Some clunks and rattles and scraping sounds, then one half of the big metal doors swung open, revealing a short, round man in blue overalls and dress shoes. A proper soup-strainer grey moustache and a few straggly wisps of grey hair poked out from beneath a tweed bunnet. Skin so pale it was almost blue in the flickering fluorescent lighting.
Steel sauntered past him. ‘Constable Quirreclass="underline" Elinsworth Fredrick De Selincourt, AKA: Fish-Fingered Freddy, AKA: The Haddie. As in, “Have you seen thon big pile of nicked DVD players The Haddie’s flogging the day?”’
‘Oh I can assure you, Detective Chief Inspector, I indulge in no such practices these days. I’m a reformed character. I restrict myself solely to the pursuit of house clearance and estate sales.’
‘Aye, right.’
Tufty wheeched through the metal doors into a long, low warehouse-sized room. It was stuffed with boxes and crates. Piles of things and heaps of stuff — solid and dusty between the pillars that held the ceiling up. A group of grandfather clocks ticked out of time with each other, making a background hiss like a thousand snakes eating ready-salted crisps.
Steel had a rummage in a tea chest. ‘We’re needing a favour, Haddie.’
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’ He grabbed the massive handle on the back of the door and hauled it shut with an echoing clang. Snibbed three deadbolts into place, threaded a thick length of chain through its eyelets and over a hook bolted to the wall, then wedged a metal bar between a slot in the floor and another in the door.
Never mind a Big Red Door Key, you’d need a tank to get through that.
He folded his little arms over his massive chest. ‘And what favour would that be?’
Tufty held up a hand. ‘I need an urn. Something nice.’
‘Hmm, I see. And you felt it was appropriate to come here?’ Haddie shuffled off between the stacks. ‘And I take it you weren’t close to the deceased, Constable Quirrel? Well of course you weren’t. You wouldn’t be looking for a pre-loved urn for someone you actually cared about.’
‘It’s not for me. It’s for a little old lady with no cash. Someone beat the living hell out of her and microwaved her dog.’
Haddie stopped. Turned. ‘I’m confused, is the urn intended to hold the lady’s remains or her dog’s?’
‘Yorkshire terrier called Pudding.’
‘Well, there’s no accounting for taste.’ He reached into his pocket and produced a Stanley knife, clicked out a fingernail’s width of blade and ran it through the brown packing tape holding a cardboard box shut. ‘Here lie the mortal remains of... Well, I have to admit that I’ve rather lost count.’ A thick dark urn, sort of bowling-trophy shaped, appeared in his hand. ‘One thinks, when one dies, that one’s ashes will be treasured by our loved ones. That they’ll be handed down through the generations as venerated objects. That in this way we’ll never truly die.’
He sighed and pulled out another urn. This one squat and brutal. ‘Instead of which we end up in a job lot of Granny’s old things, sold off at a car boot sale as soon as she’s gone.’ The next three urns were more like Thermos flasks. Then another trophy-style one. A couple of ornate vase-type ones. A wooden box with a brass butterfly on it. ‘Stop me when you see something you feel reflects the deceased’s personality.’
Tufty did a slow three-sixty. Boxes and crates and more boxes and more crates and the snakes-eating-crisps grandfather clocks... ‘Did all this come from estate sales?’
‘Sadly, when most people say something has immense sentimental value, what they really mean is they can’t be bothered dusting it any more. Ah, here we are.’ Haddie straightened up, holding out a blue enamel jar with golden swirls across it. ‘The brass plaque says, “David Fairbairn, 1935 to 1994, beloved father and husband”, but you could put a sticker or something over that. And, as it’s for a good cause, you may have it on the house.’
Tufty accepted the urn. Cool in his hands. Heavy too. ‘Erm... Is David...?’
‘In residence?’ Haddie’s eyebrows popped up. ‘Oh, very much so.’ They sank back down again. ‘Ah, I see. Of course, how insensitive of me. Please.’ He held out his hands and Tufty gave him the urn back. ‘I will be but a second. Feel free to browse.’
He turned and bustled off between the heaps.
Steel wandered up. ‘You’re no’ going to put a sticker on it, are you?’
‘Could go to that key-cutting/engraving place on Rosemount? Get them to do up a little plaque to glue over David’s one?’ He turned in place again. ‘So much stuff.’
‘I’m hungry. Are you hungry?’
‘All those lives... You slave away, you save up, you buy stuff, and it ends up here.’
The muffled roar of a vacuum cleaner sounded in the distance.
‘You know what I fancy? Noodles. No, ribs! Or maybe chicken?’
Tufty picked his way between a stack of oriental carpets and a rack of framed hunting prints. ‘Hidden away in a warehouse, waiting for what?’
‘Ooh, I know: Chinese.’ Steel rubbed her hands together. ‘We can go to the Manchurian, down by Mounthooly.’
A herd of bicycles, stacked on top of each other. A flock of standard lamps. Deeper and deeper into the gloomy recesses. ‘You know what I think? I think Mr De Selincourt is fooling himself. He’s banging on about your ashes ending up in a car boot sale, cos no one cares. What about all this stuff? Who’s going to come in here and impulse buy a...’ Tufty pointed, ‘a treadle sewing machine from the Dark Ages, or a banjo with no strings? All this stuff’s going to sit here growing dust till he snuffs it, then it’s back to the car boot or off to the tip.’
The hairy grey layers on top of the boxes got thicker the further back Tufty went. An upright piano was almost mammalian with its pelt of fur.
‘They do the most spectacular dim sum there. And the chicken wings! Oh God, the chicken wings...’ Steel made a Homer Simpson gargling noise.
‘Thought there was a buffet waiting for us at the Flare and Futtrit.’
‘Aye, no’ till half three, though.’
And right at the back, the most forgotten stacks of alclass="underline" books. Hardback and paperback, leather-bound and slipcovered. They looked like they hadn’t been touched in eons. Pompey was buried under a thinner crust of grey than they were.
Well, not quite right at the back.
There were a couple of boxes tucked in behind the books. Completely and utterly dust free.
‘See, Tufty, when you’re off on the lash with your fellow officers, it’s important to get a nice thick lining on your stomach first.’