‘Good thinking, darling, they’ll wolf them down.’
As Christopher Freeman was washing dishes at the sink, Alice introduced herself to him and he extracted a hand from the soapsuds to shake hers.
‘I didn’t know you people attended funerals, too, but thank you for coming.’
‘We usually do, sir, as a mark of respect, you understand. Also we’ve had such difficulty in speaking to you, we need information if we are to find out who killed your brother. I’ve phoned your house numerous times but…’
‘I know, I know,’ he interrupted, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been busy making arrangements… you know, like funerals, wakes, that kind of thing. I did say after I’d identified the body, that poor Mop woman being well nigh hysterical, that I’d get back in touch with you.’
‘I appreciate that, sir, and I really do apologise for intruding at such a time…’
‘Don’t worry, you’re not “intruding at such a time”, actually, but Sandra and I really do have to go. I simply cannot speak now, we’re off to a dentist’s appointment, and before that this place has to be cleaned up. You can come to the house, tomorrow, say at three o’clock. You’ve got my address in Frogston Road West, right?’
‘Yes. Thank you, sir,’ Alice said wearily, eager to leave and not in a position to object.
DI Manson lay sprawled across his chair, hands clasped behind his head and feet crossed on the desk. He had just returned from the forensic laboratory, where he had learned that despite the murderer’s attempts to clean up after himself, traces of the Sheriff’s blood, tissue and hair had been found adhering to an enamelled truncheon retrieved from Moray Place. He snuffled idly in his bag of crisps, examining the crevices for any further salty crumbs to extract, and then licked his fingers. He was bored, unwilling to rise and annotate the white board with the new information.
‘Alice, dear, would you do me a favour?’
She looked up from the statement that she was marking, nerves on edge from the very word ‘dear’. Little he said to her was not topped or tailed by ‘dear’, ‘love’, ‘pet’ or some other term of affection-used, she was convinced, to belittle her or deliberately irritate her. And as he had calculated, she had never remonstrated with him, feeling the slight to be too intangible, petty even, so he used the terms freely, watching as his little jabs went home.
‘Sir?’ At least she did not sound rattled.
‘Would you write on the clean board some information for me? Under “weapon” put “truncheon”-ironic or what-and then add “traces of the deceased’s hair, tissue and blood”.’
‘Anything else, Sir, before I sit down?’ She knew his tricks.
‘Well, yes, Alice. Put in “Alien DNA (A) on two doorknobs: drawing room door-external and internaclass="underline" front door-external and internal. Within the house Alien DNA (B) present throughout the house”.’
She resumed her seat, picked up her marker pen and began to re-apply her brain to the paperwork. Just as she was again lost in concentration DI Manson spoke, once more breaking the spell, his timing perfect to annoy.
‘By the way, Alice, I’m coming with you tomorrow. To Frogston Road, I mean. It’s been actioned by the boss. I don’t know why, you could have handled it yourself,’ he paused, ‘…I expect. Mind you, he’ll be twitchy. Two weeks gone already and sweet Fanny Adams to show for it. Nothing will be left to chance now.’
The pool car had all the signs of being unloved, nobody’s car, the passenger floor littered with sweet-wrappers and the air freshener, a little set of traffic lights, overwhelmed by its task, unable to cloak the smells of stale smoke and body odour. DI Manson was at the wheel, displaying his usual mixture of unprovoked aggression and unexplained hesitation, and Alice mused on the conclusions to be drawn from the way a man drives to the way he’d make love. Only a ghastly experience could be anticipated from this quarter; no thoughtfulness, no smoothness, no rhythm… the list of ‘nos’ was endless. And then, as if reading her thoughts, the inspector said casually: ‘Has the vacancy been filled yet, Alice?’
‘Which one, Sir?’
‘Don’t be coy, dear, you know very well. The “Tall, slim young lady, cultured, intelligent, GSOH, seeks… anything male”.’
She attempted a good-natured laugh, playing for time as if no answer was called for, but he persisted.
‘Well? I hope you don’t mind me asking…’
It was all too close to the bone. Attack might well be the best form of defence.
‘You seem strangely well acquainted with the vocabulary of the Lonely Hearts columns, Sir. Mrs Manson back from her Easter holiday yet? I heard it’s another long one… she left in, must have been February, wasn’t it?’
DI Manson brought the car to a sudden halt, using the handbrake for the final few inches of momentum, and Alice was hurtled forwards; they had arrived at their destination.
The front door was opened by the woman Alice had seen collecting sandwiches at the funeral, and two black standard poodles rushed out of the bungalow to greet the visitors. They jumped all over the Inspector, dark eyes invisible in their black fur and their unclipped tails waving like mediaeval banners in a strong breeze. One of them then scampered across the pavement and began leaping up to the window of a parked Volkswagon Polo. The white car was unwashed and decorated with stickers on the back window proclaiming allegiance to the RSPB and support for ‘Vertenergy-Wind Power for a Clean, Green Future’.
‘Off our car, Pepe, come on, sweetie,’ Mrs Freeman cooed in an unnaturally high register, her Essex origins still discernible in her voice, and, unexpectedly, the poodle’s claws clattered off the vehicle as it rejoined its mistress.
If the furnishings of the house at Moray Place looked as if James Freeman had inherited them from an unbroken line of well-heeled ancestors, the furnishings in his brother’s bungalow looked as if they had been acquired, cut-price, at a warrant sale of household goods. But in amongst the bric-a-brac a discerning eye would have detected some anomalous pieces. A solid silver Georgian sugar bowl sat on the Formica-topped kitchen table, an ornate-framed pier glass hung on a wall in the narrow hallway, and in the sitting room there was a bureau-cabinet veneered with satinwood, empty now of Meissen or Dresden porcelain, filled instead with slant-eyed kittens rolling balls of wool and be-hatted donkeys pulling carts, all made in China.
Christopher Freeman seated himself at the kitchen table beside his wife, leaning towards her as if to inhale the smoke from her cigarette. Against one of the walls a pile of carrier bags, full and from Jenners, John Lewis and Hamilton and Inches, lay waiting to be unpacked.
Taking the initiative, DI Manson pulled out a seat and gestured for Alice to do the same.
‘Mr Freeman, thank you for seeing us.’
‘Major Freeman, Inspector.’
‘Well, sir, Major, what we need is information, just general information about your brother. Some indication as to the sort of life he lived, the sort of man he was.’
‘Mean,’ Mrs Freeman giggled.
‘Now, Sandra,’ her husband said, in a semi-jovial remonstration, before continuing: ‘My brother, Inspector, was… now, let me think,’ he paused. ‘Well, to be entirely frank with you, we didn’t see eye to eye. Haven’t for years. I used to see him at family funerals but rarely otherwise. He was a lawyer, moved in that sort of society, I think. He didn’t have much time-’
‘-for a feckless wastrel,’ his wife interjected, giggling again.
‘… for me,’ the Major continued, ‘or I for him or his kind.’
‘You never met him even socially?’ DI Manson asked.
‘No, we never met him at all,’ Mrs Freeman chipped in. ‘He didn’t like me, or Chris, for that matter. He’d got everything he needed, and that didn’t include us.’