He did, in fact, turn away when the first copper came out of the gateway, near the old cannon from Sevastopol, and he saw it was Steve Britton, station sergeant at Ludlow – no hair left but still a few years yet to serve, and even then they’d probably keep him on as a civilian.
But Steve had seen him.
‘Andy?’
Mumford kept on walking, figuring Steve would think it was a case of mistaken identity or that Mumford hadn’t heard him. But then he heard footsteps – not merely footsteps, police boots – clattering across the empty square, and Steve Britton was shouting now.
‘Andy!’
So he had to stop and stand there, waiting wearily, in front of Woolworths, staring down at the pavement, steeling himself for what was coming: Andy, mate, I’ve only just heard. Free at last then, eh? Look, I get off in an hour, we’ll have a couple of jars.
But when Steve Britton drew level with him it was different.
Steve’s long melon face was damp with sweat and his eyes had a look that Mumford recognized straight off. A look he’d probably had on a few dozen times himself over the years, carrying out just about the worst chore you ever got saddled with as a copper.
Confusing, though, on account of he’d never faced it before.
Never actually been on the receiving end, feeling that sharp, flat punch of dread – a punch deep to the gut, right where, a few minutes ago, the volcano had been simmering.
Andy couldn’t say anything. He just stared at Steve, and at his uniform. Wobbling slightly, experiencing, for the first time ever, what the sight of that uniform on your doorstep meant to the average person with no drugs in the house.
‘Andy…’ Steve getting his breath back. ‘You been down to your mother’s tonight?’
‘Not yet.’ His mother? Andy felt his own breath catch. ‘Something happened? Something happened, Steve?’
Far from bloody imperturbable, the way that came out. Realizing how scared he was now, how exposed, the streets spinning.
‘Yes,’ Steve said. ‘Something’s happened.’
Walking with Steve Britton back to the castle.
The castle, of all places. Christ.
The castle was ruined but pretty big, a lot of it left. You couldn’t see much from here, the town side, but from down below, across the river, it was still massive and imposing and had been dominating Ludlow for most of the last millennium.
Mumford had probably been in there just twice in the whole of his life, and never in the last twenty years.
But Robbie practically lived here when he was staying with his grandparents, which was every school holiday since his mother moved in with the toe-rag. Robbie, the history buff. Quiet, likeable boy, covering up for his gran, day after day.
Please God, not Robbie. This’ll destroy her.
Couldn’t be, anyway. No logic to it.
‘How’d this boy gain access, Steve?’
‘We figure he stayed in. Hid somewhere after they closed the castle for the night. There’s a hundred places to hide… inside these little passages, the towers… it’s a bloody honeycomb.’
It actually looked like a honeycomb, all yellow and orange in the evening light. The main gates were wide open, a young uniform Mumford didn’t recognize guarding the entrance.
You forgot how big this castle was. Inside the perimeter walls there was a green open space where they had sideshows and medieval-type displays in summer, and then the Christmas Fair. From here a stone footbridge took you over the moat, which was all dried up now, leading into the main fortification with this huge gatehouse tower that had been the old Norman… keep, was that the word?
Robbie would know.
Couldn’t be. One fourteen-year-old boy looked much like another – trainers, baseball cap. This would turn out to be some tourist kid larking around.
Mumford went back to being observational, like he hadn’t retired two days ago and this was still his job. Some part of him knowing that if he was to keep from losing everything that had ever meant anything in his life, he needed to start off how he meant to go on, and that was not as just another member of the bastard public.
Walking with his uniform counterpart, Sergeant Steve Britton, towards another…
… another death scene.
Just another death scene. Nothing to do with him. A mistake.
Red spears of sunlight were bouncing off the ambulance parked near the footbridge. A couple of paramedics were bending over the edge of the dried-up moat.
‘Visitors can go right to the top, see,’ Steve said, talking rapidly, a bit hoarsely. ‘Good… good views.’
‘Robbie Walsh knows his way blindfold, Steve.’
The square tower seemed awful high now, the size of a big block of flats in this part of the world. A St George’s flag was hanging limp up there against the amber sky. The stone bridge had a wooden handrail, and even from here Mumford could see there was blood on it, like a splash of spilt creosote. Should’ve been taped off.
He could see into the moat now, something humped and twisted on the bottom, the fact that they’d left it down there saying everything.
‘Must’ve come down on the handrail, bounced off,’ Steve said.
‘Broken neck?’
‘And the rest.’ Steve swallowed. Likely never had to do this before to one of his own. ‘Andy, I… I hope it’s not. I hope I’m mistaken, that’s all.’
‘Sure t’be,’ Mumford said. ‘Let’s get it over.’
‘We used to see him all over town. Walking up Broad Street, and down Old Street, and past the station. You’d think he’d get sick of it, same streets, day after day.’
Steve making it clear he knew what Robbie Walsh looked like.
‘He never got sick of it,’ Mumford said. ‘Always finding new things, so they reckoned. He loves it here. History-mad. Goes to all the lectures, all the exhibitions. Has some kind of season ticket for this… for the castle. So he can come in and out.’
‘People knew him, Andy. All the local people and the shopkeepers knew him. Always polite. Not like most of the little sods.’
Steve keeping up this street-corner chat routine to delay the moment, prepare Mumford for the worst. One of the paramedics was on his feet now, talking to the cops and shaking his head, likely telling them what they already knew.
‘Witnesses?’ Mumford said.
‘Feller seen it from over the river, top of Whitcliffe. Artist bloke. Paints pictures of the castle. Watching a buzzard through binoculars. Said it was… Ah, you don’t wanner know this stuff…’
‘I wanner know everything.’
‘Just make sure first, eh?’
‘I wanner know everything,’ Mumford snarled, knowing that he was shaking like a civilian.
That night, Angela, his sister, did some screaming.
The Hereford boys had finally found Ange and her partner in the Orchard Gardens, the city’s most misnamed pub, out on the edge of the Plascarreg. So it was getting on for midnight when they got to the Community Hospital, and Ange must have drunk a fair bit, which didn’t help.
In the hospital mortuary, Mumford, for all his experience, had turned away, biting his lip. Lying there, with only his not-too-damaged face exposed, the boy had looked all of eight. Ange had taken one quick glance and then it was the full hand-wringing dramatics: It’s him, it’s him… oh shit, shit, shit, look what they done to him!
During this performance, Mumford had found himself watching the scumbag partner, Lennox Mathiesson, hunched up with his hands in his pockets, nodding his head, half-fascinated, ear-trinkets clinking. It sickened Mumford that Angela was three months pregnant with this rubbish’s baby.
Tomorrow morning, the body of her first child would be taken to Shrewsbury for the post-mortem. Tonight, outside the hospital, Ange shelved her grief and set about doing what Mumford reckoned she’d been doing since before she could walk, which was generously apportioning the blame so that there was none of it left for her.