Cherringham--A Fatal Fall Read online

  At this distance, Ray’s characteristic stoop, a posture built around a lifetime of hiding his cigarette with one arm curled behind his back, was unmistakeable.

  He watched Riley race on ahead to greet Ray. Since Jack had moved here a couple of years back, Riley and Ray had become pals and there was nothing Jack could do about it.

  Jack suspected that Ray fed Riley all the treats that Jack denied him on grounds of health.

  But he wasn’t going to take Ray to task.

  Ray had a good heart, and Jack was glad to have him as a neighbour. A permanent fixture on the river who knew this stretch of the Thames like the back of his nicotine-stained hand. And he also knew the villains, the locals to watch, the village secrets no one talked about …

  Jack guessed that Ray had a few secrets of his own, that he had been into all sorts of dodgy things in his long and mysterious life.

  These days though, he professed to be just another poor old pensioner, an ex-hippy smoking and drinking his way through his 'golden years.'

  Jack stepped through the little gate that separated the meadows from the towpath, then shut it carefully behind him.

  “Morning Ray.”

  “Jack.”

  “Up early.”

  “Maybe.” Ray grinned.

  Jack smiled, then walked up the gangplank and onto his boat. He picked up Riley’s water bowl, filled it from the hose and put it down on the deck. Riley ran over and began gulping down water.

  Jack turned and looked at Ray.

  “Course … maybe I ain’t been to bed yet, detective,” said Ray, taking a drag from his cigarette.

  “Good point,” said Jack, laughing.

  He unlocked the wheelhouse and waited for Ray to explain himself.

  “Anything I can do for you, Ray, or is this just a social call?”

  “Come on, Jack. Fella can’t just drop by, say a friendly hello to a neighbour?”

  “Ray Stroud, in all the time I’ve lived here, I’ve seen neither sight nor sound of you before midday on a Sunday,” said Jack.

  He watched Ray nodding to this eternal truth.

  “So what’s up?” said Jack.

  “You know that thing lawyers have? Priests too?”

  “Not sure I do, Ray …”

  “Yes you do. That — what do they call it in the films — client privilege, yeah, that’s the name of it …”

  Jack was beginning to see where this was going.

  “I’m not a lawyer Ray. Or a priest. But I do understand confidentiality.”

  He watched Ray mull this over.

  “Thing is, Jack, I don’t want to get into trouble. But I seen something, something I shouldn’t.”

  “And you feel like you want to tell someone about it?”

  “Got to, Jack, got to. It’s not sitting right on me.”

  “Well, you can tell me. I’ll listen.”

  “And you won’t tell the cops? Tell them anything and they think I did somethin’!”

  “I can’t promise you that.”

  “But you might not, right?”

  “Sure. I might not.”

  Jack watched Ray as he weighed the pros and cons.

  “I think I seen a murder, Jack,” said Ray, flicking his cigarette across into the dark, flowing river. “And I ain’t happy about it.”

  Jack stared at Ray. The ageing stoner was a rascal. But he was an honest one — and he’d knocked around the world a bit.

  If he thinks he’s seen a murder, thought Jack, maybe he has.

  “I’m about to make some coffee,” said Jack. “You want to join me?”

  “Might just do that, Jack,” said Ray. “Um, you had your breakfast?”

  “Was going to fix some bacon and eggs.”

  “Fried?”

  “Scrambled.”

  “Now doesn’t that sound great? Don’t mind if I do,” said Ray. “Very kind of you.”

  And Jack watched him head through the wheelhouse and down the steps into the boat. Riley scampered straight after him and the two of them disappeared inside.

  Pair of them’ll be on my bloody sofa already, I bet, thought Jack.

  Then he too went down into the Grey Goose to cook breakfast and talk murder.

  *

  Jack watched Ray wipe his empty plate with a piece of bread, then eat it.

  “My compliments to the chef,” said Ray, licking his fingers.

  “You’re welcome,” said Jack, still only halfway through his own breakfast.

  “Course that’s not really scrambled eggs.”

  “No?”

  “No. That’ll be your American version, very nice mind, very nice. But not proper scrambled.”

  Jack smiled and carried on eating.

  “So,” he said. “Go on then. You were saying — about the building site?”

  He watched Ray take a slurp of coffee and reach for his roll-ups — then decide against them.

  “That’s right. About three weeks I been working up there. Labouring, you know. Money’s not bad — not good either — but the foreman pays me cash in hand. Handy with Christmas coming, you know how it is.”

  Jack nodded patiently.

  “Anyhows, they don’t have the best security and sometimes I spot something going to waste I really could do with back on the boat here. Bit of timber. Nice shovel. Box of nails. You know how it is.”

  “I can imagine, Ray.”

  “So what I do is, I hang around come knocking off time, site empties pretty sharpish, wait till the boss is doing the paperwork, then I just … what’s the word … liberate … the aforementioned unwanted item and pop it in a mate’s van and home I goes.”

  “You steal it, Ray.”

  “No one the wiser. Victimless crime, Jack.”

  “No such thing, in my experience …”

  “Fella building them homes — Charlie Winters? — he’s got millions. Heard he doesn’t mind screwing his workers over for a few quid. Doubt he’ll lose any sleep over a box of nails.”

  “So it’s a blow for the workers?”

  Ray smiled. “For this worker it is.”

  Jack pushed his plate to one side and poured himself another coffee.

  “Okay — so what’s this about a murder?”

  He watched Ray lean forward, as if even here on the Grey Goose there might be listeners …

  “Here’s the thing, Jack. Friday night, come half four, everyone clocks off, and I’m sitting in one of them empty houses in the dark, freezing my balls off, just waiting to pick up a few bits of timber for my deck. And just as I’m about to help myself, blow me — the site office opens up and young Dylan heads out with his gear still on and goes over to one of the houses and starts hefting tiles.”

  “Dylan?”

  “Dylan McCabe. Irish guy. Nice kid. Sociable. Been around. Good laugh.”

  “So what was he up to? Stealing?”

  “No, not stealing. He was legit — working. Overtime on a nasty Friday night. Looked like he was setting things up for the tilers. Taking tiles up and stacking them round the roof on the scaffold.”

  “Just one guy, working late?”

  “Happens. Though it’s dodgy in the dark. ’Specially when it’s icy. And on your own. But it’s no big deal.”

  “And what happens then?”

  “Well, I’m waiting and waiting for him to finish. Half hour goes by. Then an hour. Then I see someone else. Keeping low, like. Out of sight. Creeping around. First thing I think, obviously, is — that bugger better not be after my timber or I’ll have him.”

  “But he wasn’t?”

  “No. He crouches down and he goes across to the house where Dylan’s working, and I sees him going up one of the ladders at the back into the scaffolding.”

  “Did you recognise him?”

  “Too dark. I mean, there’s still a couple of the lights on, so you can see shadows moving — but not so’s you’d see a face properly, you know. Anyways, I see him up on the scaffold — and he’s moving timbe
r around. And I’m thinking — what’s he up to? Didn’t make sense.”

  Though Ray could be pretty loopy … Jack had to admit … this was suddenly interesting.

  “Then what?”“Anyway, I sits back on an old bit of sack waiting for both the lads to go. Brass monkeys it was, I can tell you.”

  Ray paused, and Jack could see his cup was empty. He poured him another coffee and watched Ray drink.

  “Then I heard it. Not a scream — a shout really. And a thud. I knew that sound. I’ve heard it before. God, it’s a bad sound. Someone falling. Wallop!”

  Ray banged his right fist into his left palm.

  “So I gets up — then I’m thinking, shit, what do I do, I’m not supposed to be here, they’ll have me, won’t they? I looks over at the site office — nothing. No movement. Not a dicky. Then I looks back at the house and I see a shadow, someone running. But not to the house. Away from the house. Know what I mean?”

  “Bad situation.”

  “Tell me about it. So I goes over, bent low, like. And there’s Dylan, lying under the scaffold. Stone-cold dead.”

  “You sure?”

  “Oh yes. Eyes open. Poor kid’s a goner. He’d landed on all the rubbish, see. Reinforcement mesh for the concrete. Gone right through him. No way back from that.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What do you think I did Jack? I scarpered.”

  “You didn’t phone the ambulance?”

  “No point.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I went home. Opened a bottle.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “Not a soul. Till now …”

  “And what about Dylan?”

  “Last night, I went up the Ploughman’s. Bumped into some of the lads from the site. They said Dylan was found in the morning. They reckon he was trying to rush — slipped on the ladder. Police say it’s an accident. Case closed, Jack, case closed …”

  “But not for you. Because of what you saw …”

  “Yeah that, but … I tell you, that kid knew what he was doing, Jack!”

  “Might have just slipped; it was an icy night. Accidents do happen …”

  “Okay. Sure. But then who was up there with him? Hiding?”

  “Someone like you maybe? After a few tiles?”

  “No. No way you need to go up the bloody ladder. They was stacked below.”

  “Maybe a pal of Dylan’s helping him out?”

  “What kind of pal leaves you to die in the dirt?”

  Jack sipped his coffee, declining to remind Ray that was exactly what he’d done.

  But Jack began to think there was something here.

  Something about this didn’t play right.

  And he knew Ray wouldn’t be here now if he wasn’t convinced there’d been dirty work going on up at that site.

  “Okay … what do you want me to do about it Ray?” he said.

  “Investigate of course! Find the killer. Bring him to justice. Isn’t that what you do?”

  “Easier said than done,” said Jack.

  “Seen you operate, Jack. If anyone can do it … it’s you. NYPD, eh? And I guess you’ll bring that nice Sarah in? Smart one there too!”

  “Expect so,” said Jack.

  “She’ll probably want to interview me, I reckon.”

  Jack knew Ray had a soft spot for Sarah.

  “Think I can get what we need to start, Ray. But if she does, I’ll let you know,” said Jack. “You might want to have a shower first.”

  Ray nodded seriously. “Hmm, yeah. Good advice. Thanks.”

  Jack got up, went to his desk, and took out a notepad and pen. Then he returned to the table and sat down again, facing Ray.

  “Now, let’s go through this from the beginning. Times, names, everything you can remember, Ray.”

  And Jack opened a new page in his notebook and wrote the words ‘Dylan McCabe’ at the top while Ray told his story all over again.

  3. The Official Story

  Sarah walked into Alan Rivers’ office with Jack. They had arrived unannounced but the police officer had no problem seeing them.

  Despite a rocky start, over the past year Alan had gradually realised that the unlikely pairing of she and Jack could be an asset to life in Cherringham.

  They had solved crimes, and Alan knew it.

  But did he still hold out hopes that he and Sarah could be more than just friends?

  She hoped not — but she knew torches could be held for a long time.

  And dating was something she still didn’t see in her immediate future. She had the kids to raise first — time was going so fast! — and her work at her web business, and …

  Well, there was this.

  Working with the former New York detective who seemed to have dropped out of the sky into Cherringham and her life.

  Jack was more and more a part of everyone’s world here, even if he still struggled with the odd euphemism or local custom.

  “Alan,” Sarah said as the police officer looked up, jacket off, a pile of papers stacked in front of him.

  Like everything in the village, the Cherringham police station ran on a tight budget.

  There had to be a lot of desk work for the village’s one officer to deal with.

  “Sarah, Jack … come in. I’m absolutely buried in paperwork here. Making me think I should think twice about handing out parking tickets. Seems hardly worth the time.”

  “Bane of every police officer from here to LA,” Jack said. He took a seat. “That’s one thing I do not miss about the job at all.”

  Sarah took the other chair facing Alan’s swamped desk.

  She felt that the two of them — a single mum, the retired New Yorker — had grown to trust each other so much. Amazing that they could work so well together …

  Jack had called her soon after his chat with Ray.

  Was she interested in paying a call on Alan Rivers about an accident that — if you believed Ray — was no accident at all.

  And after sending a client some brochure layouts for a new restaurant in Chippenham — very upmarket — she said she’d call and see if they could grab a few minutes with Alan.

  On the way, Jack briefed her about what Ray had said.

  What he claimed to have seen.

  Now they were here to get the official story.

  “So, you two. I’m always interested to hear what you’re up to. What can I do for you?”

  Jack looked at her and she took the lead.

  “It’s about that accident, Alan. Dylan McCabe?”

  Alan nodded. “Nasty one, that. Funeral on Friday I believe. Just before Christmas. Not nice.”

  “Yes. So you’re sure it’s an accident?” Sarah said.

  Alan looked at her, perhaps sensing a surprise coming.

  “From everything that could be seen it was an accident. Working when it was dark, icy. Slipping off a plank. Might have survived if all that steel mesh hadn’t been stacked below him.”

  “Yeah,” Jack finally said. “That mesh. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “Right,” Alan said.

  While both Sarah and Jack liked Alan, they had talked in the past about how the Cherringham officer didn’t seem to be gifted with any special deductive insights … or even the basic level of suspicion that the job demanded.

  He tended to take things at face value …

  Probably a result of needing to move cases quickly from his inbox to his outbox. From the looks of things it seemed that police work — here at least — was still very much stuck in the twentieth century.

  “So,” Jack said. “What if it wasn’t the wrong place?”

  “Hmm … not sure I follow?”

  Jack looked at Sarah. A smile. A moment that she knew he relished … when he told people things they didn’t know — and just watched their reaction.

  “What if someone wanted that mesh there, just where Dylan McCabe fell?”

  “Then — that would be murder. You’
re not saying …”

  Another look, and now it was time for Jack to tell Alan about his chat with Ray Stroud.

  *

  Alan sat back, at first just listening to what Jack said Ray told him, then — grabbing a yellow pad — taking a few notes.

  “Well. I don’t know what to think.”

  Sarah could guess what was making Alan pause.

  “I mean, it is Ray Stroud we’re talking about. And I can’t remember ever seeing him when he wasn’t bleary-eyed from a mixture of smoke and drink. They really let him work on that site?”

  Jack laughed at that. “Apparently.”

  Sarah knew that Jack liked Ray. But she had to admit that Ray wouldn’t seem to be the most reliable witness.

  Then she saw Jack lean forward as if having an intimate chat with Alan, elbows on knees, hands folded together.

  “But here’s the thing Alan, what if he was right? What if someone had been there, what if they had done something? Then this was no accident. You’d have a murder.”

  Alan nodded.

  Probably not words that the Cherringham cop wanted to hear.

  “Okay. Well, I’ll have to talk to him.”

  Jack looked at Sarah.

  Ray wouldn’t like that.

  “Would he be in trouble?” Sarah said. “I mean, if his story checks out?”

  Alan hesitated for a few moments. Then: “He came forward. Late. But he came forward. That’s the important thing. I can check out his story … though with Ray, who knows what he sees or doesn’t see.”

  “True fact,” Jack said.

  Then Alan looked at them as if signalling — meeting done, and he’d follow up.

  But as planned, Sarah knew they weren’t done.

  *

  “Alan, since it’s still officially an accident … you don’t mind if we, well, look into things?”

  “Hmm, is that what you two call it?” He grinned. “Looking into it? I must say, you do a pretty good job of that. So fine. Go ahead — there’s no worries on my part. Just don’t get everyone all worked up, at least not till I can talk to Ray myself. And even then, well …”

  A look right at Jack.

  “You know enough to be careful about such things, right Jack? The powers that be, and all that.”

  “That I do.”

  “Great — thanks Alan,” Sarah said. “So …”

  And now it was her turn to whip out a small reporter’s pad and pen.