The Vacant Casualty (2 page)

Thus it was that when Mavis Ritter telephoned Fraxbridge Police HQ in some considerable distress two weeks after her original report, the missing persons case found its way onto the desk of
Detective Inspector Reginald Bradley. It arrived just as he received a call to tell him he had a visitor in Reception.

‘This isn’t ideal timing,’ he thought to himself, reading the report and starting to feel anxious. Bradley had never had a missing persons report. He had never had a report of
any kind at all. The truth is Bradley had until this point spent his entire seventeen-year career policing in a small village twenty miles south of there, and had only the shadiest notion (gained
from watching half an episode of
NYPD Blue
when he was fourteen years old, which he had switched off out of fright) of what ‘real policemen’ were like. The only exemplar to have
crossed his path so far was the hard-bitten cop who occupied the desk next to his, Detective Brautigan, a physically huge man, hard-packed with loathing and frustration, who could regularly be seen
punching the inside of his windscreen as the sports results were read out over the radio, and who sometimes chewed whole packets of cigarettes rather than walking seven paces to smoke outside on
the fire escape.

Bradley was not sure he could live up to this, this life of a cop in the ‘big city’, as he considered Fraxbridge to be, with its two betting shops, its amusement arcade and its
Wetherspoon pub. In fact, shortly before he received the written report of a missing person named Terry Fairbreath and the telephone call telling him his expected visitor (one Mr Sam Easton) was
waiting in Reception, he was wondering whether there was a chance that, after being promoted so suddenly a week before, he might be able to avoid ever getting any cases at all.

‘Perhaps if I take up smoking, I could always dart out for a cigarette whenever the phone rings,’ he had wondered, just as the phone had rung, and he had, without thinking, answered
it.

‘Sam Easton in Reception for you,’ said the voice.

Too late.

He rose from his desk and marched to the stairs, thinking that at least a missing person case would give him something to talk to his visitor about. As he went down into Reception he spruced
himself up in the reflection of one of the windows, and ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it onto his head.

He reached the reception area, somewhat anxiously distracted, and as he spotted his visitor, a slim youth in a hoody top, he waved. Unfortunately at that moment Detective Brautigan came into
Reception ahead of him. Like a furious bull fixing on a feeble matador, or some smaller creature it considers a natural enemy, he made a compressed grunting noise and charged over.

‘Detective Inspector Bradley?’ asked the young man, in a rather worried voice.

Brautigan, already travelling at thirty miles an hour, reared somewhat.

‘Bugger off, shithead!’

The youth thought about this for a moment and clearly decided it was some sort of joke, so he gave a high-pitched laugh.

There were probably many things you could do in front of the astonishingly muscular Detective Brautigan to escape an immediately violent response. Setting off a nuclear weapon, for instance,
might be one possibility. Escaping down a wormhole into another dimension in space and time could be another. Laughing, however, was not one. The large man picked the youth up, spun him round and
bounced his face off the window five or six times before saying into his bleeding ear:

‘Listen up, gobshite. My colleague Bradley here’s got a writer from London coming in to talk to him later. The last thing he needs is a fucking teenage reprobate getting under his
shoes and taking the piss, OKAY?’

Having smashed the youth’s face against the glass a few more times, he noticed that this had left a rather unpleasant smeary mark, so he deemed it advisable to wipe the face up and down to
try and buff the glass, and teach the lad a further lesson.

It was as he was judging that he had done a fair clean-up job that some other more urgent thought popped into Brautigan’s head. He dropped the youth, darted out of the room, climbed the
stairs and disappeared from sight.

Bradley felt somewhat awkward as he made his way over to the young writer, helped him to his feet, dabbed some of the blood from his nose, introduced himself and invited him to come upstairs for
a sit down.

The young man had not yet had the chance to recover fully, and simply nodded. As they walked, Bradley made an attempt to make light of the other detective’s behaviour.

‘That was an example of exactly the sort of thing which we
don’t
approve of here in the Fraxbridge police community. But my colleague has been investigating a number of
murders in the local area, and I’m sure you understand, at times of stress, tempers run high. I don’t think he could imagine someone as young as you being a writer. Here you go, sit
down,’ he said, before adding simperingly, ‘May I fetch you a coffee?’

The youth nodded, looking dazed.

‘Latte? Espresso?’ enquired Bradley, almost falling over himself.

The other cleared his throat and said a cappuccino would be great, and Bradley left him at his desk while he went to fill a cup with the foetid ash-grey froth that spewed from the hissing
machine in the corridor.

‘Is
that
a cappuccino?’ asked the writer dubiously, looking down at the cup he was handed.

‘It came from the machine after I pressed the cappuccino button,’ said Bradley, before conceding, ‘but that is far from the same thing. I certainly don’t advise drinking
it – the rats don’t touch that stuff. You’d probably get botulism or dengue fever or something.’

The writer nodded somewhat mournfully and contented himself with sniffing the drink instead, discovering that Bradley was in fact right. The revolting smell made him snap his head back up, which
sudden movement at least had a ghost of the revivifying effect that a bolt of caffeine would have done.

‘Again, I am most
dreadfully
sorry for my colleague’s earlier behaviour,’ said Bradley, leaning over the table. ‘It was most uncharacteristic.’

The writer shook his head to rid himself of the shock.

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘In fact, that was exactly the sort of behaviour I was hoping to come across.’

Bradley looked confused.

‘You see, I’m here to study cops. I’m just a lily-livered writer from the leafy suburbs but I want to get to know the real workings of the police force inside out. I’m
working on a novel – a gritty crime novel that I hope to make into a series of novels. And then, perhaps, one day, a really great, hard-hitting TV series.’

‘I see,’ said Bradley, whose eye wavered from the young man to the report on his desk, his mind rapidly trying to calculate which of these to pursue first for the least disappointing
outcome. He did not feel confident of either.

‘To have experienced police brutality at first hand – well, it will be very useful as a . . . a sense memory, if you will, when I’m writing. I’m Sam Easton.’ He
offered his hand.

The detective took it, looking as relieved as he was grateful, and drawing his chair in closer to his desk, he leant across once more and said confidentially: ‘You see, I don’t want
to disappoint you, but I’m not really that sort of policeman at all. I was only made a detective last week. I’m just trying to live up to expectations.’

‘Right,’ said Sam dubiously. ‘Whose expectations, exactly?’

Not even daring to point directly towards his fellow officer, Bradley indicated over his shoulder and Sam followed his gaze. There at the next desk sat that other detective, who had appeared to
Sam no more than a terrifying blur. Now he had a chance to take him in. He was a bruising hulk of a man, bald and with sweat patches sprouting from beneath his arms. There was a Chinese food carton
on one side of his desk, along with a half-eaten burger the size of a sponge cake. As Sam looked on, he gargled a hefty measure of brandy like mouthwash, and splashed the remains of the half-bottle
into his coffee cup.

‘Detective Brautigan,’ Bradley whispered. ‘He’s a
real
policeman.’

‘Maybe I should be following him around, then?’ suggested Sam hopefully.

‘You wouldn’t survive a week,’ said Bradley. ‘None of his partners ever do.’

‘God DAMN IT!’ screamed Brautigan from the next desk, making them both jump. They looked around to find that he was talking into his telephone and staring down, eyes bulging, at a
square open box that had just been delivered to his desk, his expression a mixture of fury and revulsion. When his voice at last broke forth, it sounded like a Formula One car coming out of a
tunnel at full pelt.

‘I said JAM doughnuts! NOT RING DOUGHNUTS! Get it right next time or I’ll punch your fucking nose out through your arse!’ He smashed the receiver back into place so hard it
snapped in half and, snarling, he pulled the line from the wall and tossed the whole pile of junk into a corner, where it landed on a heap of discarded telephones. Then he turned to the little old
lady sat primly in the chair next to his desk and pointed at her with a finger trembling with fury.

‘You sure it’s a Pekingese you lost? God damn it, give me the
truth
!’

The lady nodded mutely.

‘You better not be fuckin’ lying to me,’ he screamed, his voice becoming hoarse. ‘Okay, tell me – where did you last see the little motherfucker?’

‘Or, actually, maybe I would be better off with you after all,’ Sam conceded quietly.

‘Indeed,’ said Bradley. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here. The eleven o’clock snack trolley’s coming round and he always flips out when that happens. I’ve
got a missing person report to investigate and there’s only so much of him I can take.’

‘NO FUCKING CREAM BUNS!’

Brautigan’s voice followed them down the corridor as they left.

T
HE CAR JOURNEY
to the little town of Mumford, just five miles over the hill, was spent in thankful silence. When they arrived they found a conurbation
so small it consisted of scarcely more than a square with a large medieval coaching inn and a modest Town Hall at opposite ends, with two main roads running off it, and a small number of streets
spreading away, boasting a smattering of twee-looking shops.

They found Terry Fairbreath’s house down one of these quiet lanes, and waiting for them outside was Miss Mavis Ritter. She explained the situation in a good deal of distress and then
showed the two men through the house. From the first moment the detective had no apparent compunction in including Sam in every step of the inquiry – whether out of hope for his assistance or
sheer lack of the necessary presence of mind to ask him to remain outside, the young man could not tell.

As Mavis had predicted, the house showed no signs of disturbance, and in fact after investigation of the missing man’s effects, all of which seemed to be in perfect order, they still had
no evidence at all to show why he should have absconded so suddenly and completely from his life.

Standing outside and thanking Miss Ritter once again for her assistance, Bradley asked if she knew who else of Terry’s acquaintance they might interview. She sneezed twice, as was her
habit when being asked a question to which she did not immediately know the answer, and after elaborately mopping her face, said doubtfully that she did not know his friends, but that they might
speak to the members of the Parish Council, of which he was a member.

In fact, she said, looking at her watch (and sneezing once more), she understood that there was a Parish Council meeting going on this moment, at the rectory.

The men were not much sooner informed of this than they were knocking at the rectory door.

‘What do you think?’ said Bradley as they waited to be let in.

‘About what?’ Sam asked.

‘About the Parish Council,’ said Bradley. ‘Do you think it might throw up some hints?’

At being asked this, Sam started to have serious misgivings about placing himself with Bradley. For research into a novel about bumbling inadequacy, he was beginning to think, the detective
might be the perfect subject. But for a brutal cop drama that dealt with real problems, he was coming over a little like a wet fish. As a young man who had grown up reading books and dreaming of
being a writer, however, Sam knew a great deal about acting like a wet fish, and he felt a pang of sympathy. For his own selfish purposes, he wanted the detective to have a difficult case to crack,
which he could be in on, but for this rather plain and simple man’s own self-esteem he wanted it too. He began to think about fictional detectives he knew, from whom he could glean some
useful lessons to toughen up Bradley’s technique.

‘I’d say this might prove useful,’ he said. ‘You never know what matters get discussed in places like this.’

The bell was presently answered by the vicar’s lady help, a hunchbacked woman who showed no sign of human intelligence, but who merely blinked and led them along a dusty corridor towards a
room at the back.

‘Go on,’ whispered Bradley.

‘Well, you never know,’ said Sam. ‘In a little place such as this, the Parish Council can be a hotbed of secret motivations and simmering resentments that are generations old.
The sort of thing that could lead to murder . . .’

‘Next on the agenda,’ a man’s voice intoned gravely from within the room as the door opened before them, ‘something that has caused deep division among us . .
.’

Sam and Bradley exchanged a meaningful look as they passed into the room and made their way towards some spare chairs at the back.

‘. . . the use of Rich Tea biscuits with our refreshments. I refer to Mrs Bloodpudding’s request for a change to Custard Creams.’

The detective and the writer both looked rather depressed as a murmur of discord went around the room.

‘Bloody outrage,’ muttered a deranged-looking old man with a copper complexion and wearing half-moon glasses over an eyepatch. ‘We’ve been eating Rich Teas since 1964.
Thin end of the wedge. It’s like Nazi Germany!’ and he smashed the table with his fist.