The Vacant Casualty (8 page)

‘
What
?’ said the major, leaning out of an upper window.

‘We’ve come to see you,’ said Bradley.

‘Oh,’ said the major. ‘Right.’ He looked out over the countryside from his vantage point and squinted. ‘Nice day, isn’t it?’

‘Not really,’ said Sam.

‘Hmm, hmm. The cricket’s on later, you know?’

‘Is it really?’ said Bradley, clearly at a loss for anything else to say.

‘Can we come in, please?’ said Sam.

‘Oh!’ said the major, the idea clearly striking him as rather novel. ‘Er . . . yes.’ And he disappeared from the window, only to appear again a moment later, shouting,
‘LOOK OUT!’ as a bowlful of brown lumpy liquid fell directly at them.

They jumped apart and examined their trousers (although Bradley’s were already so daubed with brown slop, it would have been hard to tell if anything had been added to the overall design).
Then they looked up, in disbelief, to find the major’s face staring out at them.

‘Goulash,’ he pronounced shortly, before he disappeared again and descended the stairs, coughing violently. Then the door popped open and he said, ‘Come in, come in!’
ushering them cheerfully through the living room, which was full of dust, furniture piled up with old boxes, huge nineteenth-century firearms propped against the wall and (as far as Sam could make
out) a painting of a bison’s arse above the fireplace.

The kitchen offered few surprises – which is to say, it would have been a surprise had it been a clean, orderly and well-appointed place whose fittings dated from more recently than the
Falklands War. All around there were rusty pans hanging from nails – evidently unused, since there was a bird’s nest in one of them – and on the hob was a gargantuan stock pot
filled with a very large sheep’s head, marinating in what smelled like cider.

Sam sat at a solid old-fashioned cook’s table, whose top was marked with wild scratches and carvings, some of which included unpleasant words and simplistic imagery.

‘I’ll get you some refreshment,’ the major said, disappearing into his pantry for ten minutes, from whence emerged strange noises which they felt they couldn’t
investigate. At last the madman reappeared and plonked three bowls of custard on the table.

‘For my guests,’ said the major, and before they could respond he poured a bottle of crème de menthe into three pint-pots and handed them out.

‘We’re here—’ began Bradley, but not quick enough, for the major now stood, raised a bugle to his lips and played a shrieking rendition of the last post. Finally he sat
down again, wiping a sad tear from his one good eye.

‘Come on, sunshine,’ said Sam. ‘You can give it a rest with us.’

‘Eh?’ asked the major, twisting his face somewhere between a scowl and a look of utter incomprehension.

‘You’re not actually mad. Anyone can see.’

The major seemed determined to be affronted for a second, but then relented and relaxed, and said in a quite ordinary voice, ‘Oh, all right. But so long as you don’t tell anyone.
What gave me away?’

‘Well, you’re wearing your eyepatch on the other eye today, for starters.’

‘Hah! I knew I’d got something wrong. That’s the trouble with being startled by the doorbell – which is why I give it such a repugnant noise.’

‘And you’re three quarters of the way through this
Guardian
cryptic crossword here.’

‘I’m impressed. You’ve looked closely enough to see that the answers are correct?’

‘Well, no . . .’ admitted Sam, looking down.

‘Hah – now you’re wondering if the answer to sixteen across really could be “pissbucket”. But then, it is the
Guardian
. They’d probably run that as a
title to a children’s cartoon, just to confront old-fashioned attitudes to swearing.’

‘But I guessed that if you were going to fill the crossword with nonsense, why stop halfway through? And also, what self-respecting, warmongering retired major would be reading the
Guardian
in the first place . . .’

‘Fair enough,’ said the major.

‘And what about the sheep’s head?’ asked Sam.

‘It’s plastic.’

Sam started to look closer, but it was so convincing that in his hungover state he couldn’t bear to do so. ‘And the painting of the buffalo’s arse?’ he asked.

‘The
what
? You terrible bastard, that’s my
wife
!’

Sam didn’t have any idea what to say back and instead looked around the room, avoiding the major’s goggle-eyed stare.

‘So why the act?’ asked Bradley, intervening.

‘Oh well, you know. People around here are so
boring
. You were at the meeting. What did you see?’

The guests were unsure if they were really being asked to reply.

Instead the major quickly answered for himself: ‘Prudes, freaks, prats, bores, virgins, thickos, creeps and fucking
Tories
! No wonder I pretend to be mad. Last thing I want is them
charging in here and disturbing my peace. Talking of which, let’s not stay in this freak show of a room – this is just to put off someone who gets as far as the kitchen. Come on,
let’s go through here.’

He reached forward to a bookshelf at the far end of the room and pressed on the spine of
The Essays of Montaigne
, releasing a secret door. Within was a library-cum-sitting room, sparsely
furnished with a Mac on a table, an architect’s desk, a low sofa with a few chairs and several thousand books on dark-wood shelves.

‘You’re an architect?’ asked Sam.

‘It’s a hobby. Mostly small buildings for exclusive clients. I also write a blog about riverside wildlife and I’m a main player in the longest-running online game of
Dungeons and Dragons
in the world. Life’s pretty sweet sometimes, you know, when you’re retired . . .’

‘So why be on the Parish Council?’ asked Bradley, sitting down. ‘Surely that’s putting yourself into the lion’s den, so to speak? Or the lion’s mouth, do I
mean?’

‘Neither. The last thing I want is to hand the management of the community entirely over to these cretins. Well, you saw for yourself yesterday the kind of crap that they come out with. I
wanted to make sure I always vote for the most sensible course, and goad others into following me.’

‘Even if your reasoning seems insane?’

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘So you must be worried about Terry Fairbreath going missing. If you’re a Tory-hater he must have been an ally.’

‘Certainly he was. A nice normal fellow, always around except when he went to visit his mother once a month. He was an excellent chess partner too. And with this vote coming up . .
.’

‘So tell us what the vote’s about.’

‘They want to build a wind farm near here.’

‘And no doubt Lord Selvington’s saying, “Not in my back yard”?’

‘Yes, but literally, because it
is
in his back yard. They would look directly down onto his property and apparently take about three million pounds off its worth. Which, when
all’s said and done, is quite a lot. Don’t let the mannered pleasantness of the meetings fool you, there are matters of life and death at stake. Then there are the Miss Quimples . .
.’

‘Ah yes, we just visited them. They keep accidentally causing violence on each other’s gardens.’

‘That’s them. They’re opposed to anything new.’

‘What exactly do they class as new?’ asked Bradley. ‘Video games? Colour television?’

‘Bumming?’ put in Sam.

‘Bumming’s definitely out. But the Internet,
especially
the Internet.’

‘Ha!’ Bradley laughed. ‘Well, I don’t suppose they’ve had much luck in banning
that
.’

‘Don’t you believe it. China could learn a thing or two. There’s still no WiFi in the village.’

Sam toggled with his phone and realized it was true; he barely had any reception.

‘I don’t suppose that’s a problem for you . . .’

‘Are you kidding?’ the major frothed. ‘It completely fucks with livestreaming the fucking podcast. And with my online fucking poker. (It doesn’t exactly help my online
fucking, either).’

Sam blinked and pretended he hadn’t heard the last remark. ‘You, uh, you play online poker?’

‘’Course I do, how else is a pensioner supposed to make up his winter fuel allowance in Blair’s Britain?’

‘It’s not actually Blair’s Britain any more.’

‘Isn’t it? Oh well, whomever. Obviously things were better under Major. Just’cause of the name, you know?’ He winked at Sam, whom he clearly took to be a kindred spirit,
perhaps on account of the fact that he had brought both the crème de menthe and the bowl of custard with him, and was cradling the latter in his lap.

‘What’s their problem with WiFi?’ Sam asked, now taking a taste from the tip of a spoon of custard.

‘They said they thought it caused tumours.’

‘Who would know what causes tumours in these folks? They’re all a hundred and three anyway . . .’ said Sam.

‘We’re getting off the point,’ said Bradley, looking at his watch. ‘We’ve got other council members to get to. I just wanted to ask, Major—’

‘I’m not a major, actually.’

‘
Mister
Eldred, then . . .’

‘As a matter of fact, I’m a Doctor of Oriental Languages.’

‘Doctor, then. Do you know of any reason why anyone would want Terry Fairbreath to disappear?’

‘Six of them,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Would you please elucidate?’

‘One: there was a rumour he had an affair with – what’s his name? The artist. I can never remember it. Aloysius something.’

‘Walerian Exosius. He shagged that guy?’

‘No – his sister, so the rumour went. When she came to stay last spring.’

‘Is it true?’

‘No, no, no! Terry’s camper than the Brighton male all-nude self-raising tent Olympics. Unless it’s all just an act, of course, and he’s shagging prostitutes behind our
backs. Hah! But the artist doesn’t realize that he’s gay, so he swore revenge on Terry, based on rumour alone. Second reason . . .’ he counted them off on his fingers, ‘he
unknowingly picked Miss Quimple’s aubergines over those of her sister when he was a judge at last year’s flower show. He said they were remarkable – plump and firm and sensual,
and he wanted to put his hands all over them. But he said it to the wrong sister, you see. She nearly fainted. It was the highlight of my summer. Then he picked
that
sister’s melons
over the other and made the same mistake all over again. So they both hate him.’

‘As well as having access to explosives and firearms,’ pointed out Bradley. ‘What did he say about the melons?’

‘Oh, let me see, I did write it down . . .’ Both men smiled at his presumed joke, but then he produced a small black notebook and, flicking the pages back, said, ‘Ah yes, here
we are: “Squeezy, sumptuous – I want to have their juices running down my chin.” Yuck! He really was an unassuageable pervert. But then, who isn’t in this day and age?
How’s the custard?’

Sam nodded happily, a spoonful still to his lips.

‘Fourth on the list: the mayor. Another pervert. A man who is a pathetic, short-statured, poorly organized, self-aggrandizing, bad excuse for a public official, but who is really just a
twat . . .’

‘What do you mean by that, exactly?’ asked Bradley, paused with his pen over his notebook.

‘Sorry if I wasn’t being clear,’ said the major, clearing his throat, and flicking up his eyepatch. ‘What I meant was that he is . . . a
twat
.’

‘In this usage,’ said Sam from his seat behind the detective, ‘I think the word means a useless or risibly pointless person.’

‘I see,’ said Bradley. ‘What are the final two reasons?’

‘Reason five: he was in charge of the local movement to oppose military installations nearby.’

‘What military installations?’

‘They had a couple of thousand intercontinental ballistic missiles stationed about ten miles away until a few years ago and the locals revolted, got them out. The idea was to stockpile
about a thousand weapons beneath the great Hill at the top of town. Along with Saracene Galaxista, Terry opposed this and got backing from lots of people.’

Sam was halfway through sipping his bowl of crème de menthe-flavoured custard, which was filling his stomach with warmish velvety goodness (‘Like a crap hot version of
Baileys,’ he thought to himself), but he still made a mental note that he must try and persuade Bradley that their next interview should take place in the pub. For entertainment value, at the
very least. It then occurred to him that he was taking the matter of a man who was missing and possibly murdered very lightly.
Then
it occurred to him that he was drinking alcoholic
mint-flavoured custard from a bowl, and spilling some of it down his top, and he should try to deal with one thing at a time.

‘Final reason: he was sniffing around. He had been quite excited these last few weeks and months. He was the sort of chap who’d love to expose a miscarriage of justice, or a cover up
of some kind and he kept hinting at it. Not heavy-handed hints, you understand, but accidentally. He was foraging around in the library recently, and seemed to have a bee in his bonnet. This vote,
for instance – it was supposed to be passed six weeks ago but he kept having it delayed while he asked for extra time to look into something. People were wary enough of him already, but that
might have been what tipped someone over the edge.’

The two men were intrigued and excited by this last possibility.

‘What do you think he was looking for?’ asked Bradley.

‘I couldn’t possibly tell you,’ said their host. ‘Remember, I’ve only been here a few years – less time than him.’

‘We’ve got lots of motives to investigate, then,’ said Bradley. ‘I suppose we ought to speak to some of these folks as soon as we can. Thank you, Major – I mean,
Doctor.’

‘That’s okay,’ he said, getting up. ‘Good luck. I hope you liked the custard.’

‘It was pretty good,’ said Sam, wiping the last from his mouth with his sleeve. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Pleasure. Never met someone else who likes custard made from tortoise milk before. I’ll cook some more for you next time.’