The Vacant Casualty (9 page)

The major (or doctor) saw them to the door, closed it and then watched with amusement through the spyhole as Sam ran to one side to avoid being ungrateful to his host and vomited a violent
gutful of grey custard onto next door’s lawn.

‘It’s not yet twelve, so we’ve still got a good while to go before the emergency Parish Council meeting this afternoon,’ said Bradley. ‘How’s the
hangover?’

‘Pretty awful,’ said Sam, then gargled with water from a bottle. ‘Surely we’ve done enough of these old duffers for a morning? Can’t we go out into the
country?’

Bradley looked at his watch. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said. ‘Who do you think we should speak to, then?’

‘The druid. They say she lives up here on the Hill.’

‘Okay, then,’ said Bradley, nodding, and just at the same moment he spotted his police car up the road where he’d left it the night before, clicked the button to turn off the
alarm with a triumphant gesture, danced a little jig and trotted up to it.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said Sam, following twenty yards behind.

‘What?’

‘You shouldn’t ask me where we should go next, for starters. But you certainly shouldn’t do a little dance when the car alarm release goes off, like you’re on a game
show.’

‘Oh what
ever
,’ said Bradley, unlocking the door.

There was a sudden loud boom from nearby that made them both stop speaking, and look to where a plume of smoke was rising from the grounds of the school. No ordinary smoke, however, because this
was green and giving off showers of blue sparks.

‘My God,’ said Bradley. ‘Some sort of terrible explosion at the school!’

‘Don’t worry,’ said a voice, and they spotted a schoolmaster further down the lane. He was looking particularly bedraggled, his trousers hanging in shreds and his face covered
in soot. ‘Just a, uh, just a science experiment!’ he called out, sounding rather nervous. ‘No need to come and investigate – none at all! Good day! Oh dear . . .’

And with that the strange man (who bore a remarkable resemblance to the actor Jim Broadbent) tottered out of view, back into the school grounds.

‘Is there
anything
that doesn’t explode around here?’ asked Sam, and both men walked slowly off towards the car, casting suspicious glances over their shoulders as they
went.

S
AM WAITED UNTIL
they had been driving for a few minutes before he raised the topic again.

‘I really think you need to be a bit more . . . you know,’ he said.

‘I feel I know what you’re getting at,’ said Bradley. ‘I should be more of a, er, a sort of . . . rough type.’ The detective had been leaning forward and clutching
the steering wheel nervously but now he forced himself to lean back into his seat and put his foot down, making the speed surge. ‘You were going to say I wasn’t enough of a man; that I
should be more aggressive.’

‘Hey, listen! When we’re alone in the car there’s nothing to gain by you being a macho cop – God damn it, slow down! I’m feeling G-force here. Mind that— My
God, did we hit it? Okay, that’s it, slower,
slower
. Okay, so the one thing I was going to say was, be more hardball in all your dealings with humans – apart from me.’

‘Define hardball,’ said Bradley, taking his eyes off the road and gunning the acceleration once more.

Sam was happy to give out advice, but in his current state (and in fact, in
any
state whatsoever) he was not content to have his life put at risk simply for the purposes of making a drive
in the country slightly more brisk. He made his feelings on this subject clear in words of one syllable.

‘Don’t take me as an example,’ he said. ‘But here’s my advice. Take no shit from no one, and refuse to believe what anyone says unless they’ve got cast-iron
proof to back it up. Beat the crap out of the strong and threaten the weak mercilessly, then toss them a few crumbs of relief afterwards for the illusion that you wouldn’t fuck them over next
time. Don’t trust your boss. Screw the system, and fuck being trustworthy except by your own twisted code – will you
stop
?’

Bradley braked sharply then came to a slewing halt in the middle of a car-park clearing in the centre of the woods.

‘That’s good,’ said Sam, puking out of the window. ‘You’re doing well. I’ve never . . . I’ve never praised someone while puking before,’ he added.
‘And I guess I’m all the more impressed for that fact.’

As Bradley went up ahead to the encampment on the top of the hill, Sam decided to remain seated on a tree stump in the woods, claiming he wanted to check for emails on his phone while still in
signal, but in fact (as would have been clear to anyone more experienced in life than Bradley), he had been badly caught short and was nervously watching passing traffic for an opportunity to take
an undetected toilet break in the woods.

As Bradley neared the crest of the hill, he was braced by a quickening breeze, and coming closer to the top he found that the grasses swept in the high wind like gentle waves. The treeline
parted, the bright sky broadened massively about him, and here, far away from the duties to which he was accustomed, and the life he knew, he suddenly and unexpectedly saw the beauty of the
landscape as if for the first time, which quite took his breath away.

‘Oh, it’s you, you twat!’ said a voice.

He turned and saw a middle-aged hag in thick boots trudging up the hill towards him.

‘Saracene Galaxista,’ he said. She stopped and he saw the reason for her bad temper and stooping gait. ‘Let me help you with that,’ he offered.

‘Oh, go on, then,’ she muttered, and handed over the twin pails of milk she was carrying. ‘Maybe you’re not that bad, despite being a pig. I’m only one of the order
of Sisters of Galaxista. We’re just over here.’

Bradley soon had cause to regret his largesse. For some reason when he made the remark it felt like holding open a door for a lady, a marginally meaningful gesture. Where had he assumed her to
be taking the milk to – a meeting with him upon this random tussock? In fact, it turned out to be the camp a quarter of a mile away over some decidedly squelchy uplands about which Mrs
Detective would certainly have something to say when it came to the effects on his Marks & Spencer brogues.

That is little, however, compared to the effect that it had on his state of mind. A hangover which had been largely in retreat now made huge gains in important areas of head pain, nervousness,
weariness, self-hatred and weakness to suggestion, and after Bradley had planted the milk down he passed out for a couple of minutes leaning against a goat, only waking to discover that Sam had
caught up with him.

‘You were crying in your sleep,’ said Sam. ‘That
is
a bad hangover.’

‘Where’s she gone?’ said Bradley. ‘Why is it wherever I go, I only get to talk to you?’

‘That’s the spirit.’ Sam punched him in the leg. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘that if I’m going to be stuck in this village or town, or what have you for
the next few days, I’m probably going to need whatever sustenance I can get to keep me going. I’m assuming you’ve never smoked weed?’

Bradley smiled as though this were a trick question, because to him the idea of a policeman taking drugs of any kind was a genuinely amusing idea – like a nun going to the toilet. It
simply didn’t happen. Meanwhile the woman they were there to interview came back from a nearby tent, smiled briefly at Bradley, turned her back on him and started a mumbling conversation with
Sam.

‘I’m not
made
of money . . .’ said Sam, followed by, ‘. . . Yes, that’s good. Okay, nice . . . No, come on, I’ve got to draw the line
somewhere
and horse tranquilizers is it . . .’

Some money changed hands and then they separated, both looking very pleased and placing things deep into their pockets, before they realized that the detective was watching them intently.

‘Thank God I found you,’ said Sam too loudly to the druid. ‘I don’t know what I would be able to do without my herbal tea remedies.’

Bradley looked the other two up and down.

‘How can I help you?’ asked Saracene Galaxista.

‘I want to know who would have wanted Terry Fair-breath out of the way,’ he said, bad temperedly.

‘That fucker? Everyone,’ she replied. ‘Come into my tent.’

S
HE SERVED
them both with a cup of tea in a tent that was, much to their surprise, far more like a tasteful ordinary British drawing room than Major
Eldred’s had been. Galaxista was hard to make out – she seemed half stupid, half bored and half stoned. And half
intelligent
, Bradley kept thinking to himself, but then he knew
that was possibly a stupid remark to make, even inside your own head, so he abandoned it.

‘They all hated him, as you say. The little old sisters, the stupid fat Mayor, the Reverend, Lord Selvington, even the librarian.’

‘The
librarian
?’

‘Yes. Miss Elvesdon, that decided weirdo. They became friends – study pals, bosom buddies – over something. I think they were digging up something from the past. Then when he
called it to a halt she was very hurt. You know, you should probably seek out the only heterosexual single male in the village, they would probably have a grudge against dear Terry. He was gay as a
cock-shaped kite on the Queen’s Jubilee, but women swarmed to him.’

Bradley nodded and took this in, but was not ignorant of the extended roll-up that was being passed around. He didn’t know enough about that sort of thing to make trouble, and he was still
reliant on Sam to tell him how to develop his act. And Sam was having most of the roll-up, as far as he could tell.

‘So, who wanted Terry killed, Sister Galaxista?’ he asked.

‘Sorry, love,’ said the sister, sitting back on a cushion next to him. ‘It’s more a case of who
didn’t
want him killed. By which I mean me,
I
didn’t. He was a sweetheart for us and our cause.’

‘And what
is
your cause?’

‘We started off objecting to the nuclear waste dumps they were planning here thirty-five years ago,’ she explained. ‘Then there was going to be a massive bypass right across
the hill, near the henge, and we said, like,
no
. No way! We got enough people and we rejected it.’

‘So you succeeded?’ Bradley asked.

‘Yes, but they keep on trying,’ said Saracene. ‘Their latest plan is to dump thousands of unused books here. A bunch of publishers had tens of thousands of those crappy
parodies – you know, when talentless half-brained hacks try to make a quick buck off the back of genuinely successful authors by writing things with similar titles and book covers?’ she
spat on the floor. ‘It makes me sick. Anyway, they have hundreds of tonnes of these knock-off books they want to get rid of, and they want to dig a hole in the hill here and bury them. But we
said no. We cannot let it happen. You understand?’

‘Yes, we understand,’ said Sam. ‘You really don’t want it to happen.’

‘No. It
can’t
happen. This is a place of outstanding natural beauty, of ancient wonderment. We will call all the land’s children here to procreate and worship beneath
the henge!’

‘Procreate?’ said Sam, starting to find his proximity to Galaxista uncomfortable. He sniffed suspiciously at his tea. ‘What’s in this exactly?’ he asked.

‘Just tea,’ she smiled.

‘And milk?’

‘Tortoise milk, of course,’ she said. ‘It’s full of complex proteins.’ He threw it on the floor with a shout.

‘Henge?’ Bradley was saying. ‘Oh, I see. It really is a place of crucial heritage.’

‘Stones came here from hundreds of miles away. This isn’t just a gathering of people who happen to be here and who reject modern technology. This is an ancient place of worship where
ancient rituals are enacted by present-day people. Big, important rituals!’

‘Right,’ said Bradley. ‘Sam, let go of my arm. Sorry, go on. So what do you guys do up here, is there some kind of ritual?’

‘Oh, yes. And look here,’ she pointed out of a gap in the side of the tent. ‘We have forty men, women and children working with wicker all day long. They are helping to make
our main piece for the great sacrifice.’

‘How remarkable. And it’s shaped like an enormous pole, almost like a man’s p— Sam! Stop tugging my arm like that!’

‘And here we have sixty others, digging the ceremonial trench . . .’

‘I see, I see. Almost like a woman’s . . . Yes, Sam. don’t worry, I’m coming with you. Let’s hurry along now. So long, sister! Put that cigarette down, now, Sam.
Run!’

S
AM SNOOZED OFF
the effects of his large cigarette on the way back to the town, and when woken up on arriving there, he insisted on getting some
lunch.

‘Not just
any
lunch,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some proper lunch.’

Detective Inspector Bradley soon gave up trying to suggest what a proper lunch might be, allowing Sam’s nose to follow itself until they stumbled across the Legume & Gastropod pub,
tucked away in a winding side alley.

‘Garlic mushrooms,’ said Sam, before his backside had even touched the bench. ‘Onion rings, deep-fried whitebait and a bacon-triple-cheeseburger. With onions, relish and
anything else that comes with it. And a Coke? I would come in and order with you but I’ve got a bad leg.’ He handed the menu back to Bradley with a twenty-pound note, fell back in a
swoon against the leather chair, turned his face to the window and relaxed in the hot sunshine.

‘Ordered,’ said Bradley, appearing sooner than expected.

‘Okay, man,’ said the writer, who, with the promise of large amounts of juicy fried food coming his way, surprised himself by snapping out of his reverie. ‘How do you think
this is going? I’m getting a big kick out of this, baby.’

‘I . . . I’m not sure,’ said Bradley, picking over his words carefully. ‘I’m concerned that you were dealing drugs with those crusties up there . . .’ he
began.

‘Good,’ encouraged Sam.

‘But then, I’m also slightly terrified that if we’d stayed up there long enough they would have sacrificed us to the sun god.’