Left You Dead

15

On their way out to the car, Alldridge stopped by the bin and raised the lid. Among the smelly detritus lying inside he clocked an empty bleach bottle, but said nothing until they were back in the car.

‘Nice man — not,’ Little said quietly, after making sure the car windows were closed. ‘Cat litter?’ She shook her head.

‘Bleach bottle in the bin,’ Alldridge murmured.

‘Who’s the house-proud one, then?’ she quizzed with a wry smile.

He nodded.

A rust-bucket of an old Vauxhall Viva with no apparent silencer shot up the road at high speed, two youths in it, baseball caps the wrong way round. Ordinarily they would have pulled out and stopped it, but not now.

‘It’s usually the small things people have the biggest arguments about, isn’t it?’ Holly said.

‘Tell me about it! Barbara whacked me over the head with a pillow the other night because I was snoring! And last week I was trying to sleep in on Saturday morning after being on nights and she decided to hoover the bedroom!’

‘Hannah and I had a row a couple of weeks ago because I’d put half a tin of baked beans in the fridge instead of pouring them into a bowl and covering them. Apparently, the tin reacts with them, so she said.’

He scratched the back of his head. ‘I was scene guard on a house, some years back, where a guy had bludgeoned his wife to death with a cricket bat because she’d rearranged his sock drawer without his permission.’

They sat in silence for some moments. ‘What do you think’s really going on here?’ she asked.

‘Clean skirtings, smell of bleach and empty bottle? Has his wife disappeared — done a runner — or did he kill her, is that what you’re thinking?’ Alldridge asked.

‘Aren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘Her passport missing might be significant, don’t you think?’

He didn’t reply straight away, then he said, ‘Yes, but perhaps not in the obvious way.’

‘Meaning, John?’

‘That he wants us to think she’s gone away, perhaps?’

She nodded. ‘Good point. Your time as a detective wasn’t entirely wasted!’

‘It did open my eyes.’

‘And anyhow,’ she said, ‘I’ve never been able to trust a bloke who appears to resent his wife’s wealth.’

Alldridge concurred. ‘Let’s move away from the house.’

‘Food?’ she asked. ‘Try for breakfast again?’

‘Good plan.’

Half an hour later, with the residual reek of curry from the last crew out in this vehicle replaced by the much more appetizing aroma of egg and bacon sarnies, they were both feeling better. Parked on Church Road, in front of the cafe, they ate hungrily in silence. Alldridge finished ahead of Little, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and suggested they inform Golf 99 — the duty Inspector at Brighton nick — of their concerns.

Little agreed.

Alldridge radioed the Control Room and was told, to his dismay, the day’s duty Golf 99 was Andy — ‘Panicking’ — Anakin. In his long experience, Anakin was the last person you’d want to involve in a crisis, but all the same, he had no option. The Inspector wasn’t always totally useless, just mostly.

Moments later, they heard his voice, a little too high-pitched and highly strung, through their radios. ‘Inspector Anakin.’

‘It’s PC Alldridge and PC Little, sir.’

‘What is it? I’m in the middle of a situation.’

From the hysteria in his voice, it sounded like he was the man, at this moment, single-handedly responsible for keeping Planet Earth on its axis and preventing it from spiralling off and sending all its inhabitants into oblivion.

Alldridge was long enough in the tooth to not take any crap from his superiors. ‘We have a situation, too, which we need to discuss with you, sir,’ he responded calmly and firmly, giving him a brief outline. From Anakin’s response, it didn’t sound like he’d absorbed much of what he’d been told.

‘I’m at the cell block doing a vital custody review, I can’t do anything at the moment — I’m dealing with a matter of national security.’ Then, turning more antsy, he said, ‘Surely you know normal process for a misper is not to do anything until a twenty-four-hour review, John, unless there are other factors?’

‘I do, sir,’ he replied, trying to be as respectful as possible to someone he considered a total moron. ‘But neither PC Little nor I think this is a matter for normal process. We need to step it up now proportionate to the risk.’

Anakin’s voice increased in pitch again — the human race was clearly in severe and imminent peril. ‘If that’s your assessment and you need to action now, call the duty DI — it’s Bryce Robinson today. I’ve got to go.’

The radio went dead.

The two PCs looked at each other, shaking their heads. ‘Know about the Peter Principle?’ Alldridge asked her with a grin.

She frowned. ‘The what?’

‘Some guy back in the 1960s or 70s came up with a theory that sooner or later in any hierarchy people get promoted to the level of their incompetence.’

Holly laughed. ‘Oh my God, so true about him!’

‘Just a shame that Anakin doesn’t rhyme with wanker.’

‘That doesn’t stop him from being one, though, does it?’

‘Nope.’