After that, it was simply a matter of making sure we got our side of the story over to some not-very-gruntled boys in blue, who took our names, ranks, and serial numbers and then escorted Mr. Reid off the premises in handcuffs. Tallulah looked disappointed to see that me and Phil hadn’t been given the same treatment, so we decided it wasn’t the best time to stick around in the hopes of finally catching Oliver for a chat.
Then we had domestics over whether or not I should see a doctor. You can guess which side of the argument I was on. I’d made the mistake of admitting I was glad I hadn’t had that dessert at lunchtime, which my overprotective fiancé apparently chose to interpret as a symptom of possible internal bleeding, massive organ failure, and impending death.
“I’m fine,” I told him as we drove off from the Old Smithy, getting more narked about it by the minute. “It was just a punch. A punch.”
“That’s all it can take. We’re going to A&E.”
“For fuck’s sake, it’s not like I haven’t had worse.” For starters, I’d been shot, poisoned, bashed on the head, nearly strangled . . . Okay, reminiscing about all that really wasn’t helping me feel any better. But the point was, all that was serious stuff. Not a single punch in the gut.
“I don’t care if you’ve had worse. You’re getting checked out.”
“Jesus, would you stop treating me like I’m some delicate bloody flower?”
“Nausea’s a possible sign of internal bleeding.”
“You always have to know best, don’t you?”
“People have died from being punched in the gut, you stubborn bastard.”
“Name one.”
“Harry Houdini, heard of him?”
Not only that, I’d known how he died. But at this point in the argument, with my pride hurting almost as much as my stomach, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.
“Fine. Do whatever you want. You always bloody do, anyhow.” I folded my arms and stared out of the side window. I was going to feel a right muppet when the nurses laughed me out of A&E for coming in after the equivalent of a sodding playground fight.
Phil didn’t answer. It was probably just as well.
As it happened, the hospital staff didn’t laugh, but I still felt like it was a waste of their time and mine as they checked my blood pressure (fine) and gave me a scan (ditto). On the plus side, they gave me some painkillers, which were a godsend. Never mind the blunt-force trauma to the gut; after several hours on those waiting room chairs, my bum wasn’t talking to me anymore.
I’ll say this for my beloved: all through the whole sorry business, there was no trace of anything other than concern in his manner. Not even a smirk and a muttered I told you so as they gave me the works instead of telling me to piss off and stop being a crybaby. As the drugs kicked in and the pain receded, the guilt started to creep in, and I began to feel I’d been a bit of a git to Phil. After all, he’d only been worried about me.
It was just . . . It was humiliating, all right? Like I wasn’t man enough to stand up for myself. Like I needed Phil to rush in and save me, and then coddle me afterwards. The fact that if he hadn’t been there, I’d probably have needed a lot more than a few painkillers to get over Kelvin Reid’s attack only made it all the harder to swallow.
Most of the time it’s fine being a short-arse. No worries about banging heads on doors, and in my profession, the ability to squeeze into kitchen cupboards and under baths can come in pretty handy. But sometimes, I could wish I’d been more gifted in the physically imposing department. Like, say, a certain pigheaded private investigator.
The upshot was, when we got home—not, you’ll note, out to that pub where we’d been planning to go digging for info on our Mr. Parrot—I was in a foul mood.
“I’ll cook,” Phil announced as we walked in the door. “What do you fancy?”
“Not being treated like a sodding invalid?” I asked without a lot of hope.
“Not on the menu.” And yep, there was that smirk I’d come to know and . . . Oh, fuck it. Yeah, all right, love. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. “Pork chops do?” he went on.
“Great, if we had any.” I didn’t stomp into the living room, because that would have been childish. Merlin taking one look at me and shooting out of the room like he’d been turbocharged meant bugger all, the nervy so-and-so.
“We have. I went shopping.”
Huh. This was another thing that was taking a bit of getting used to. It felt weird, not knowing the contents of my own fridge. “Fine, then,” I said, and sat down on the sofa, which was something of a painful process. Funny how you don’t notice how much you use your stomach muscles until some great git with iron fists tries to punch your guts out through your spine.
Not that I was laughing. It would’ve hurt too much anyway.
“While you’re waiting, have a read of this.” Phil’s voice right behind me made me jump but, give him his due, he didn’t laugh, just handed me his tablet. There was a document open, and at the top of it a picture that was etched into my recent memory, although without the rabid snarl I remembered. Kelvin Reid. “It’s what I dug up on him so far.” He paused. “You might want to scroll down to the part about hobbies and interests.”
“What, are you writing his CV for him?” I scrolled and read. It was, as it happened, a lot like a CV, although more warts-and-all than I’d have been happy sending off to potential employers. When I’d finished, I put the tablet down. I didn’t turn round, because my stomach would not have been a happy bunny. “You’re still there, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” came a gruff voice from behind my left lughole.
“You know, you could have told me he was an amateur boxer. I might not have argued with you about going to A&E so much.”
“You, not argue? That’ll be the day. Besides . . .” Something about his tone as he trailed off made me twist around to face him after all, despite what my gut thought about it. “I forgot you didn’t know. Forgot I hadn’t showed you the file.”
I could feel the grin spreading over my face. “What, the great Phil Morrison admitting a mistake? Bloody hell, is the world coming to an end?”
“Shut up. I was rattled, wasn’t I? Don’t like seeing you hurt.”
The warm and fuzzies still had a bitter edge to them. “Yeah, well, I s’pose it serves me right for not watching where I was bloody well going.”
Phil leaned over the sofa back to put his arms around me. “He hit you with a sucker punch. It happens.”
“Ever happen to you?” I was betting it hadn’t. There’s a world of difference between five foot eight and six foot one when it comes to picking victims for your next mugging. And that’s leaving aside the fact that my fiancé tends to make your proverbial brick outhouse experience a sudden urge to go on a high-protein diet and get down the gym.
Phil surprised me. “Yes. Early days on the job. I was chasing down a shoplifter; he hid round a corner and waited for me to catch up.”
I cricked my neck giving him a sidelong look. “Ow. Did you feel a right muppet too?” I rubbed the skin over the pinched nerve.
Phil laughed, kissed it better, and nodded. “Took me months to live it down too. He was shorter than you. Or possibly she was.”
“You got decked by a little girl? A big strong bloke like you?”
“Did I say that? Our thief was assigned male at birth, but wearing a dress at the time. We never did clear up if that was a gender-identity thing, a fetish, or a disguise for when they fancied a bit of bargain hunting.” He let go of me and straightened up, which wasn’t a bad move. His back had to be killing him, leaning over like that, and the last thing we needed was both of us crocked. “Right. Food.”
I sat watching the telly and contemplating my own mortality until Phil brought a couple of loaded plates in. Pork chops and beans on toast. Plus half a grilled tomato each wobbling self-consciously on the side of the plate. Suddenly I was ravenous. Okay, it wasn’t what I’d have cooked, but it was good, solid comfort food. Just what the doctor ordered. “Brown sauce?” I asked hopefully, taking my plate.
Phil rolled his eyes and went to fetch it.
For once the gods smiled on us, and Dave Southgate didn’t turn up until after we’d finished eating and were kicking back with a beer in front of the telly. And yeah, I know, pills and alcohol. But it was one beer, and they weren’t the really good drugs. Even Phil had given in after a token moan.
“Thought we might be seeing you,” I said as Phil showed Dave in. Arthur gave him a hard stare and then slunk off to the kitchen. He’s not daft, my cat, and Dave didn’t look like he was in a cuddly mood.
“We’re all hooked up to computers now, aren’t we? Every time your name comes up in a report, I get an email alerting me and a bloody big klaxon goes off. Happens so bloomin’ often I’m going deaf in one ear.”
“Nah, that’s just the excuse you give to the wife when she asks why you didn’t get up for the nipper in the night. How is he, by the way?”
Dave’s face softened for an instant—then solidified to granite. “Don’t you change the subject. He’s fine. What’s this I hear about you kicking off with a murder suspect?”
“Oi, he hit me, not the other way around. And, I might add, because of that flippin’ mugshot your lot put out on the telly. I ought to sue. Defamation of character, adding injury to insult—”
“Don’t push it, Paretski.” Dave dropped heavily into an armchair with an oof. Good thing Arthur wasn’t still sitting there. “You all right, then? Seen a doctor?”
“Don’t you start,” I muttered as Phil came out with a suspiciously smug “Yes, he has.”
Dave gave him a dark look. “Christ, any more of that and I’ll start thinking you’re a good influence. So he’s been checked out?”
“Yes, he has,” I said pointedly. “And what’s this about Kelvin Reid being a suspect? You got anything on him?”
“Only statistics.” Dave must have caught my blank stare. “He’s the lover, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but he hit me because he thought I’d done it. So it can’t have been him.”
Dave turned to Phil. “And you let him out on his own?”
“Oi!”
“Hate to break it to you, mate, but sometimes, murderers aren’t honest.” You could have used Dave’s sarcasm to lag a pipe.
“Git. I know that, but . . . he seemed really upset.”
“You’d be bloody upset if you were facing a life sentence.” He didn’t ask what Reid had been doing up there in the first place, so I presumed Big Kelv had told the arresting officers the same story he gave us.
“Any news on the cause of death?” Phil put in.
“He died of thirst,” Dave said flatly. “No, wait, that was me. Newly minted DCI, cut down tragically in his prime by a fatal lack of hospitality.”
Whoops. My mum brought me up better than this. “Sorry, mate. Beer? Phil’ll get it,” I added, flashing a smile in the appropriate direction.
Phil muttered something I didn’t catch, but disappeared into the kitchen.
“You’ve got him well trained,” Dave said with a smirk.
“Too right. Want to see him come when I call?” I winked in case he hadn’t got the innuendo.
Dave’s shudder probably had seismologists miles away wetting themselves in glee. “You can leave your sex life out of it when I’m around. Oh, cheers, mate.” He took the beer Phil handed him.
“That was pretty nippy,” I told Phil approvingly as he sat back down beside me. “Worried you were going to miss all the good stuff?”
Dave snorted. “Chance’d be a bloody fine thing. It ain’t like on the bleedin’ telly, you know, with all their tame lab coats working through the night. Our lot clock off at 5 p.m. sharp, and half past three on Fridays. And they’ve got a backlog that makes NHS waiting lists look like the queue for the gents at a bleedin’ Women’s Institute jam-making workshop. No, we have not got any news on the cause of death. Forensics are working on it. Allegedly. So what the bloody hell did you say to Kelvin Reid that made him go postal on you?”
“Nothing. Literally, nothing. I didn’t even see the bastard before he hit me.” I frowned. “Which is what I told your flippin’ minions.”
Dave shrugged. “Yeah, but you can tell me the real story.”
“I told them the real story! Seriously, he recognised me off the telly. That’s all.”
“And where were you when all this was going on?” He turned to Phil with a suspicious air.
“Café.”
“Yeah, I never did get my coffee.”
“Right. You two just happened to stop in at Jonathan Parrot’s old workplace to get a cup of coffee and a muffin.”
“Well, no.” I glanced at Phil. “We’re investigating the murder. I mean, Phil is. Obviously. ’Cos that’s his job. I’m a plumber. Pure and simple.”
“Simple, maybe. But pure? Pull the other one, mate, it plays ‘God Save the Queen.’ Right. Who’s hired you?”
“Mrs. Parrot,” Phil told him before I could get a word in.
Dave gave him an assessing look. “Think she did it?”
“We’re keeping an open mind at the moment.” Phil’s face would make a professional poker player hang up his cards for good. You can take the lad out of the police force . . .
“Up yours.” Dave clearly wasn’t impressed with this reminder of my beloved’s gamekeeper-turned-poacher status.
“Nah,” I answered Dave’s question. “She might have had some serious delusions about the state of their marriage, but she wouldn’t have killed him.” An unpleasant thought hit me. “S’pose you’re going to say statistics are against her and all. Going to have to pick one and stick with it, aren’t you? Or do you reckon they were in it together, Lilah and Reid?”
Dave wasn’t fazed. “Stranger things, Paretski. Stranger things. So you interviewed the staff at the Smithy?”
“Kind of,” I said, as Phil gave a curt, “Yes.”
We exchanged glances. “Well, we didn’t get to talk to the Hobbit properly,” I explained.
“Who?” Dave’s look said he was starting to wonder if I’d been hit in the head, not the gut.
“Proudfoot. Young Oliver. He was busy with customers all the time. Popular lad. Had a natter with Lilah’s daughter, Hazel, though. She seemed genuinely cut up about it all.”
“Yeah, that’s what our boys and girls thought. Not that I’m discussing the case with you lot in any way, shape, or form.”
“Perish the thought. Did they happen to mention what they thought of Tallulah?”
Dave cackled. “Hoping we’ll do your job for you? Not a chance. You can form your own conclusions. Although strictly off the record . . .” He paused dramatically.
“Yeah?”
“Begins with B and rhymes with ‘snitch.’ But quote me on that, and we’re having words.” He glugged down the last of his beer and stood up. “Right. Some of us have got nippers to see to. Try not to piss off anyone else, won’t you?”
“Cheers, mate. We on for a pint next week?”
“Christ, yes. Jen donated all my beer to a bloody food bank. I told her, they don’t even want alcohol, but did she listen? Just dumped it all in the box with the cans of soup and instant noodles. She doesn’t like me drinking around the lad. Says it’s a bad influence. I ask you, how’s he supposed to know what’s in the bottle? He still thinks that’s what food comes in. No, don’t get up. I’ll see myself out. Again.”
He stomped off. I turned to Phil with a grin. “Think it’s his age, or has this second go at fatherhood finally mellowed him?”
Dave’s dulcet tones sounded from the hall. “Oi, I heard that, Paretski. You go round getting yourself half killed by any more murder suspects, and you’ll find out how much I’ve bloody mellowed.” The front door closed behind him. Quietly.
Phil smirked. “Definitely the kid.”