Seaweed in the Soup (2 page)

“How about messy?” I suggested.

Bernie bared his teeth. When we straightened up after looking at the corpse, Bernie said, “You're Ricketts, right? Do you know who I am?”

Ricketts emerged from his trance and snapped to attention. “You're CDI Tapp, sir?” he answered uncertainly.

The ghost of a smile flitted across Bernie's face. “Twenty years ago I pounded the pavement with your old man, Ricketts,” Bernie replied in a consciously gentle tone. “Is this your first murder?”

“Yes, sir,” Ricketts answered. Pointing at the corpse, he said with a bewildered face, “Only, it kept twitching.”

“What kept twitching?”

“The body. Its arms . . . It's stopped now, but for a while earlier its arms and fingers kept twitching like it was alive. Like it was trying to stretch out and reach for something.”

“That happens sometimes. It's something to do with changes in the body's chemistry after death,” Bernie said, his arm going around Ricketts' shoulder. “The first time I saw it, it scared the hell out of me too. Are you going to be okay?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Have you or Bradley touched the body or anything else in this room?”

“No, sir.”

“Fine, I'm glad to hear that,” Bernie said, guiding Ricketts across the room to a window that overlooked the driveway.

“Easy does it,” said Bernie, unfastening the window catch and pushing the window wide open. “Take a deep breath and get focussed. When you're ready, tell us what went on. Pretend we don't know anything, which we don't. In your own words?”

Ricketts filled his lungs with clean fresh air. “The housekeeper found the dead man when she came to work this morning. She told us that his name is Ronnie Chew. He's the gardener-cum-handyman.”

“That's it? Mrs. Milton comes to work and finds a dead gardener?”

Ricketts moved his weight from foot to foot. Straightening his shoulders, he said with growing assurance, “Chief, a neighbour walking his dog this morning saw two young women on Collins Lane. They were walking, which aroused his suspicions. The neighbour thought that the women were Native Indians. After speaking to them, he called 911. Constable Bradley and I were in a radio car nearby and were the first to respond.”

“What time was that?”

“It was about a quarter to eight when the dispatcher's call came through. We were on Haultain Street, near the Jubilee Hospital. I was driving; we headed this way immediately. Going down Echo Bay Road, we saw two women who matched the descriptions we'd been given. When we stopped the car, the women fled into the bush. We gave chase on foot, but they had a head start on us and we lost 'em.”

“Two women walking along Collins Lane aroused a neighbour's suspicions?” I said, speaking to Ricketts for the first time. “Why? What were they doing exactly?”

“The guy who reported them said that they were just walking, but everybody knows there's a lot of money lives around here, so strangers get noticed,” Ricketts answered. “The women wouldn't or couldn't give a reasonable account of themselves.”

I said, “Let me see if I've got this right. You and Bradley followed the two women into the bush?”

Lightning Bradley—standing just outside the bedroom door—cleared his throat to let Ricketts know that he was listening.

That reignited Bernie's fuse. His face went very red. Going instantly into his raging-lunatic mode, Bernie lurched towards Bradley and poked his chest with a stiff finger. With ear-shattering intensity, Bernie roared, “You are suspended from duty as of this minute! If you talk to Mrs. Milton or to Constable Ricketts or to anyone remotely connected to this case without my permission, you're toast!”

The corners of Bradley's mouth sank towards his chin; his glance fell to the floor.

“You're a disgrace to the uniform!” Bernie ranted. “Give me your car keys and your notebook!”

Bradley was trembling when he handed them over.

“You're a brainless idiot!” Bernie yelled. “Now clear out of this house and wait for me in the driveway. Get out of my sight this instant!”

Bradley hurried out of the room. I usually share Bernie's opinions about sloppy police work, but Bernie was overreacting. I overcame an impulse to intervene. Bernie turned angrily towards Constable Ricketts. “Did you hear what I said? If you or Bradley exchange a single word with each other or with Mrs. Milton, you are toast, finished. I'll shoot the pair of you down in flames! Do you understand me?”

Too intimidated to speak, the young officer just nodded.

“Okay,” Bernie said, lowering his voice with an effort. “You and Bradley followed the women into the woods. Then what?”

Ricketts moistened his lips with his tongue. “We followed the two women into the bush, but they had a good start on us. To be honest, after they left the road I never saw them again. I saw something, but I don't think it was the suspects. It was probably a big bird, maybe some kind of an animal. Something. When it became apparent that we'd lost 'em, Constable Bradley thought he'd better go back to the car.”

After a pause, Ricketts added gamely, “It's not fair to blame Constable Bradley entirely, sir. It's as much my fault that the women got away.”

“Stop apologizing. You're supposed to be a cop, not a goddamn Boy Scout,” Bernie snapped. “Just tell me what happened.”

“After you leave the road, the brush is very heavy in places along there. A jungle of firs and cedars and salal bushes. Blackberry clumps everywhere. I poked around for a while after Bradley went back to the car and I ended up going down some steep ground to the beach. I guessed that the women would probably go north, so I headed that way myself. I was just level with this house when I heard a woman screaming. It was Mrs. Milton. She had just found the dead man and had fled from the house in a panic. She was in a terrible state. It took me a while to calm her down. By then I figured the suspects were long gone, so I used my cellphone to call Constable Bradley and tell him what was going on here. After Bradley showed up at the house and had had a good look at the dead man, he told me to stay with the body. ‘We've got to secure the crime scene,' is what Bradley told me.”

I said, “This thing that you saw in the woods. You thought it was a big bird or an animal. Can you describe it more precisely?”

“I only glimpsed it from the corner of my eye,” Ricketts said after some hesitation. “Something moved very suddenly, although I didn't hear any noise. When I turned my head, all I saw was a large isolated boulder. The thing that I saw wasn't human. I don't think it was human. Seeing it kind of sudden like that, it gave me a bit of a shock. Anyway, I didn't see anything more until I reached the beach.”

“Have you written up your notes yet?” Bernie asked the young constable.

Ricketts shook his head.

“Give me your notebook.”

Ricketts took a small spiral-bound notebook from a pocket and handed it over.

After glancing inside the notebook briefly, Bernie said, “I'll keep this for the time being. Go upstairs and find yourself a pen and a nice big sheet of paper. Write a detailed report of this whole incident, including the things that you've already told us. Then wait for me; I'll look at your notes later and will probably have a lot more questions.”

Ricketts looked sick when he went out.

Bernie looked at me and said, “Okay, Silas. Time for me to go to work.”

We were alone for the first time in several minutes. I said, “ The work can wait for a minute. What the hell's going on with you?”

Bernie stiffened. He leaned towards me, his chin out, breathing hard. This was a man at the end of his tether. He was ready to step over a line that would change things between us forever. His hands, dangling by his sides, balled into fists. Then all the fight drained out of him. His eyes closed, he relaxed visibly and jammed both fists into his pockets. His eyes opened. Instead of answering my question, he said, “Forget it, Silas. I'd appreciate a little help the next few days, that's all.”

“Because two Native women might be involved in this mess, and I happen to be a Native? Or is there some other reason?”

Bernie relaxed, grinned, took his hands out of his pockets. He punched me lightly on the shoulder and said, “Because I need your help, pal. That's all.”

That was enough.

In addition to the dead man's bed, the room's furnishings included a six-drawer tallboy, a seven-drawer oak desk and a large mahogany wardrobe. An old-fashioned washstand with a water pitcher and bowl stood in an ell beneath a small second window. A good-quality lightweight wool sport jacket and a pair of green pants, a white shirt and a pair of boxer shorts were draped carelessly across a ladderback chair standing beside the head of the bed.

I went through the dead man's pockets and found about two hundred dollars in twenties, tens and fives, in addition to a Swiss Army knife, a woman's white handkerchief edged with red lace, and a flat brass Yale key. When we checked it later, the key fitted the back door of the house. Among the items in the desk was a child's exercise book containing a multitude of names, initials, phone numbers, circled dates and a lot of writing in Chinese characters. We didn't find the dead man's wallet: there was absolutely nothing either in the room or in his pockets to tell us what his name was.

Bernie worked his cellphone while I checked the wardrobe.

A pair of freshly laundered brown coveralls, along with other pieces of the dead man's work clothing, dangled from hangers incongruously alongside a large assortment of Italian silk suits, an Abercrombie and Fitch overcoat, a couple of Harry Rosen sport jackets, shirts and designer jeans. Expensive dress shoes, workboots, and a pair of bedroom slippers stood on a shelf at the bottom. Beneath the shelf were deep wide drawers containing neatly folded underwear, T-shirts, socks and sweaters.

Bernie was staring at the corpse. “A snappy dresser,” Bernie observed. “And look at the polish on his fingernails.”

I grinned. “Looks like he was doing okay, for a gardener.”

We heard a vehicle come to a stop outside the house. Looking out the window, I watched another snappy dresser dismount from an unmarked police-edition Crown Royal. It was Inspector “Nice” Manners. Turning away from the window, I noticed a man's highly polished black shoe partly visible beneath the blankets heaped on the floor at the foot of the bed. The shoe was a size eight with a black silk sock jammed inside it. When Bernie and I carefully moved the blankets out of the way, we found a matching shoe and the other sock.

Footsteps sounded along the passageway, and Manners came into the bedroom. The last time I'd seen him, Nice Manners had been clean-shaven. Now he was sporting an RAF air-ace moustache. He was wearing a blue blazer, a white shirt with a faint blue stripe in it, tasselled loafers, and chinos. To the casual glance, he looked like a fading porn star or a polo-playing gigolo with his best years behind him, but Manners is actually one of Victoria's senior detectives. Nice Manners is about five-ten. When I'm around, he pretends to be five-eleven. His moustache twitched when he sniffed the blood-tainted air. He said hello to Bernie, ignored me, hunkered down beside the corpse for a minute, then he stood up and put his hands in his pockets. He then looked me up and down with a smile devoid of warmth.

Bernie brought Manners up to date. “Lightning Bradley's been very helpful,” Bernie observed icily, adding, “When we got here Bradley was in the kitchen, watching the housekeeper destroy valuable evidence.”

Manners raised his eyebrows.

“She'd just finished washing several glasses, cups, plates and a bunch of silverware. A ton of DNA and fingerprints going down the drain, and there's Lightning, smoking, drinking coffee and telling jokes,” Bernie elaborated. “What the hell are we going to do with him?”

“How about a vertical transfer? Bump him to sergeant and ship him to the Oak Bay detachment, he'd fit right in,” Manners suggested derisively, articulating the popular fallacy that Oak Bay's police force consisted of sleepy underworked seat-warmers.

The cellphone in Manners' pocket buzzed. He turned his back on us and spoke to someone in a low voice. Bernie was calmer by then. He seemed neither curious nor impatient. After finishing his call, Manners pointed at the corpse and said, “He's supposed to be Ronnie Chew, a gardener, but look at his clothing. Look at his polished fingernails; if you ask me they've just been manicured.”

Gravel crackling under wheels in the driveway told us that Serious Crimes was arriving.

“Get on with it, Nice,” Bernie said. “Get this man's fingerprints taken ASAP, and put them on the wire. We'll need the K-9 team here as well.”

Manners doesn't like it when people call him Nice. He said sullenly, “It's all arranged. Nicky Nattrass is on his way in the muttmobile.”

Bernie handed Manners the exercise book that we'd found in the desk. “There's what looks like Chinese writing in this. Get it translated; there may be things we can use. I'm going back upstairs. I'll hold off questioning the housekeeper while you look around, then we'll talk to her together.”

Bernie was heading for the door when he remembered something. Turning back he said, “Who's the duty ME?”

Restlessly, Manners folded his arms. This caused the collar of his blazer to ruck up behind his neck. Manners may have been conscious of this, because he put his hands back in his pockets immediately. “Dr. Tarleton,” he answered. “There was a hit and run on Courtney Street this morning. The doc says he'll get here as soon as he can.”

“That's not good enough, Nice,” Bernie retorted. “I want the doc here now, for the body temp. I want to know what time this man died.”

Taken aback by Bernie's hectoring tone and attitude, Manner's transferred his annoyance to me. Glaring at me like the god of thunder, he said gruffly, “There's something I need to discuss with CDI Tapp. You can go.”