The Day of the Jack Russell (Mystery Man) (27 page)

These were, admittedly, written in 1929 and could benefit from some updating – e.g. instead of no Chinamen, no Russians. But they are still pretty relevant, not only to crime fiction, but to the real, actual investigation of crime. They hauled me back to the plausible when my inclination sometimes allowed me to consider that aliens or Romanians may be responsible.

‘Aliens?’

‘Did I say that out loud?’

She shook her head. She looked out at the traffic. Then she asked if I’d remembered to take my medication. I had, because I’d recently been prescribed a pill that helped me to remember to take my medication.

‘When the baby’s born, I’m going to help you get off all that shit.’

She was so naïve. They would stop her. They wanted me controlled. What with what I knew.

The cremation service for Jimbo was scheduled to begin at three p.m. It was the last of the day. As we drove through the gates, Alison pointed out a plaque that said:
Cemetery of the Year
. The car park was not packed. Fifteen seconds after we parked, Greg pulled in behind us. He walked across behind us. The Roselawn crematorium was housed in a red-brick building with a large chimney. Outside the front doors and a little to the right there was a small group of men smoking and talking quietly to each other; they looked uncomfortable in their suits and ties; two of them had flecks of white paint in their hair. Just inside there was a sign that said:
Internet access available
. It was for relatives who couldn’t attend and wished to watch the service online.

The chairs were pinkish and so was the carpet. Pat was in the front row, being comforted by two women, who were probably her mother and sister. An elderly couple were not quite beside her, three chairs up. They looked nothing like her. Jimbo’s parents. There were possibly a dozen other men and women, plus two children, whom I did not recognise. There was the Chief Constable, five rows back, flanked by three other officers, all there in their official capacity. He sat, back straight, shoulders back. Cap in hand. There was Smally, with his two skinhead sidekicks, in the same row as the Chief, but on the other side of the aisle. There was Greg, taking a seat in the back row so he could keep an eye on us. Two rows in front of him there were two soberly suited men who kept glancing back at him, and one woman, who, despite boasting a different hairstyle and smarter clothes, we immediately recognised as the woman who had pretended to be Michael Gordon’s mother. DI Robinson was there, right at the back, leaning against a wall, repeatedly raising and lowering himself on the balls of his feet. To our right, once we had taken up our places to left of centre, and sitting rather awkwardly, were a dozen other spotted decorators in variations of funeral wear – black ties, knotted large, sports jackets with wide lapels, shoes that had been polished that morning, possibly for the first time since the last funeral. The doors opened again behind us, and Billy Randall came in, his remaining hair swept elegantly to one side, a black suit masking his portliness; his beefy minder Charlie was with him, also in black, cheaper-looking but harder. Jimbo was already in place, on the dais, awaiting kind words and hymns before descending into the furnace to be burned up at nine hundred and eighty degrees centigrade. He would be reduced to his basic human elements through flame, heat and vaporisation. Not ash, but dried bone fragments that would then be pulverised into a fine sand-like texture that could easily be scattered.

The minister, the Revd Delargey, was elderly and emaciated. The bagginess of his jowls suggested that he had once been hugely overweight but had lost it in a hurry. His mouth turned down at the corners, his nose was long and pointy. He had bags under his eyes like abandoned tea bags. A hundred years ago he might have found gainful employment as a mute, paid to stand around with his sad, pathetic face, inspiring misery everywhere he looked. To give him a hand we could have done with another professional whose time has been and gone, a professional mourner, a woman who could shriek and wail and tear her clothes and claw her face to encourage others to weep, because this gathering was curiously emotionless. Half of us were there for the Jack or for other professional purposes, rather than to mourn the poor departed Jimbo. But even those who clearly knew and loved him also seemed short of a tear or two. Perhaps they were all cried out – certainly the senseless manner of his death, his relative youth, the fact that he was so soon to be a father, even the delay before his body was released by the police, each factor would or should have had them reaching for the tissues. But no, everyone was quiet, restrained, respectful, but certainly not overcome.

I remember my own father’s funeral. The eulogies. How Mother would say under her breath, ‘balls’, ‘bollocks’, ‘hypocrite’ as each tribute was paid.

The Revd Delargey got the nod from a crematorium official, a linesman to his referee, and the proceedings got under way. He welcomed everyone. He talked about the difficult circumstances that brought us all together, but how we were not here to reflect on man’s capacity for violence, but to celebrate the life of an individual, James Collins, a much-loved son and fiancé, and shortly to be a father.

‘Jimbo,’ he said, ‘was a man of the people. He loved Pat, he loved his parents, and he loved his best mate Ronny, whose own life we will celebrate just a few days from now.’

I was wondering, seeing as how I was concentrating so hard on reading people, on weighing up the evidence, or deciding just how rash I was prepared to be at what was, after all, a funeral, if it would be impolite to open a Twix, as a kind of aide-memoire. It was in my pocket. I could be fairly subtle about it. I had also made a lifelong study of the genesis of the Twix. It was invented in 1967. There have been more than thirty different variations across the world. In 2008 there was a limited edition Twix Cappuccino bar, which was only available in Poland. I have one. I bought it on eBay. When it arrived, the wrapping was split and there appeared to be a bite taken out of it. I wasn’t sure if it was the vendor or the postman. I complained about both of them. To eBay and the post office. For a while my post was really late, but I never heard about the vendor. He wasn’t even Polish. He was another Twix collector. From Nuneaton. Which I thought was a clue.

Alison said, ‘Have you worked it out yet?’

I had to focus. We stood for a hymn. We sat. The Revd Delargey lectured us. He was some kind of a Presbyterian, and although he said it quite nicely, we were all apparently going to hell. Apart from Jimbo, obviously. He told us little bits about the deceased, things I hadn’t known and which were all duly filed away in the trivia bank. They were going to have a baby girl and had already decided on Britney-Christina. Jimbo and Ronny played in the same darts team. Even though he grew up in a tough neighbourhood, Jimbo never got into any trouble with the police, which seemed to make him eligible for sainthood.

Then the reverend nodded down at Pat, and she came to the microphone with a crumpled sheet of paper in her hand and began to read from ‘Desiderata’. Her voice was tremulous, her hands were shaking.

‘Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.’

I looked around the mourners, and I could see only two who were anywhere near crying. Alison, right beside me, and seeking my hand for comfort. And at the back, DI Robinson, still up on his heels, but glassy-eyed. All moved by tosh. It was a gross and manipulative poem. I had a musical version of it by Les Crane at home. I hated that as well. I had bought it to keep a run of serial numbers intact. Pat rattled on to the end.

‘With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.’

A representative of the decorators came forward and paid his faltering, nervous tribute. He said that if Michelangelo was good enough to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, then Jimbo was good enough to do the walls and perhaps the guttering. He was famous for the speed and quality of his work. Jimbo, not Michelangelo, who was a notorious slacker. There were a few giggles. I glanced at the Chief Constable as he said it, but there was no reaction either way. The decorator had been reading from some notes he’d prepared, but then he shook his head and balled them up and said, ‘That lad, he was just too young to go. When I looked down at his poor face, so peaceful, I could almost hear him saying, Billy, will you have a pint, ‘cos that was the type of him.’

The other decorators nodded along, and when Billy stepped down, they patted him on the back as he moved along to his seat.

The minister stepped forward again. ‘Now I think we have another eulogy. If Mr . . .’ and he consulted his own notes for a moment, ‘Mr Chandler would care to . . .’

For a moment there was no movement.

And then I stood up.

Alison hissed: ‘What are you
doing
? This is a
funeral
.’

‘No, this is a murder investigation.’

I stepped forward. It wasn’t exactly Dead Man Walking, more Walking Near a Dead Man. I was aware of everyone gawping at me as I moved down the aisle, especially Pat, who was looking confused and examining her own order of service. I had called the minister from home, asking to be inserted, seeing as how I was the deceased’s cousin, and he’d been most obliging, although he’d asked who was wailing in the background. Mother.

There was no reason for anyone to be upset. I was performing a public service. I was solving a crime.

I stood by Jimbo’s coffin. I placed a hand on it. I studied it. I took a deep breath. I turned and walked to the lectern. I nodded around my audience of mourners and conspirators and murderers and I sneezed.

‘Bless you,’ said the minister.

I smiled.

It was the final nail in the coffin.

But not Jimbo’s.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ I said, ‘I come not to bury Jimbo Collins – or I mean, I do, I mean, not bury him, burn him up, I mean, not like a Viking, but you know what I mean, cremate him – but to expose who is responsible for his murder.’

There were gasps all around.

As you might expect.

At a funeral.

The Revd Delargey flapped towards me, distraught. ‘This isn’t . . . this isn’t . . . ladies and gentle . . . I’m sorry, but . . .’

Jimbo’s mother said, ‘I don’t understand.’

Pat shouted, ‘What the hell are you playing at?’

Three of the decorators stood up. ‘Sit down!’ one shouted.

The Chief Constable sat immobile, body and face.

Greg leaned forward, resting his arms on the seat in front of him. The fake mother of Michael Gordon glanced back at him for instruction, but he kept watching me.

Billy Randall wiped sweat off his brow; Charlie stood beside him, his head darting about as if an attack was imminent.

Alison covered her face with her hands.

The reverend put a spindly hand on my arm. If he hit me with all his strength, he wouldn’t impact much, even with my brittle bones. In fact, I could probably have taken him. Elbowed him in the throat and dragged him down and kicked him.

But it was a funeral.

The decorators were definitely not happy.

‘Get off the stage, you head-the-ball!’

They began to shuffle out of their seats and into the aisle, even though it clearly wasn’t a stage, unless you considered all the world to be one.

‘Let him talk.’

It was DI Robinson, from the back. He was ignored until he moved forward and said it again, louder, holding up his warrant card at the same time. I hadn’t expected him to intervene. I had imagined that everyone would carry me shoulder high out of the doors into the car park.

Not everybody thinks the way I do.

For example, I was just noticing that the shoelaces in the Revd Delargey’s black brogues did not match. One was thick and one was thin, although both were frayed.

But DI Robinson’s voice was enough to return the crematorium to some semblance of calm. The decorators shuffled reluctantly back to their chairs. The minister wrung his hands and looked even more miserable.

DI Robinson said, ‘This is still a murder investigation, and I’d like to hear the man speak. I appreciate these are unusual circumstances, but I think we’d all rather know who was responsible. This guy has a pretty good track record, and I’m thinking he must have a reason to stand up, here and now, in the middle of a service, upsetting everyone.’

‘You would think that,’ I said. ‘You may not necessarily be correct.’

He glared at me. ‘I better be.’

A frigid kind of calm had returned to the crematorium.

‘Isn’t it interesting,’ I said, ‘that a humble painter and decorator like Jimbo Collins should attract such an interesting cross-section of society to his funeral. Yes, of course, he was murdered, that was a tragedy, but even so – look who we have here. The Chief Constable, sir, representing the police, although I’m quite sure you don’t go to the funeral of every murder victim. Several representatives of another Government agency – MI5, I believe. What possible interest could spooks and spies have in all this? And if poor Jimbo was so angelic, why would someone like Mr Biggs there feel the need to pay his respects? Even that other familiar face, Billy Randall. Here to check out that the cremation really does take place before he pays out on Jimbo’s holiday insurance policy? Did he not have a miserable time on one of your cheapo breaks and make a big claim?’

‘No,’ said Billy Randall.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘So why are you here?’

‘Because someone is trying to frame me for these murders.’ This had not become public knowledge, so there were immediate surprised whispers from the other mourners. ‘I wanted to show everyone that I’m not running scared, that I’m completely innocent.’

‘Hear hear,’ said Charlie.

‘Ah, Charlie. Your minder.’

‘My security adviser.’

‘With whom you paid a visit to Jimbo and Ronny just about the time they got murdered.’

‘Yes. We had a legitimate reason.’

‘Because they had made you the Cock-Headed Man.’ There were more whispers and nods. Right enough, they were thinking, it’s the Cock-Headed Man. ‘But it was all quite amicable, you and your minder, who incidentally has convictions for all kinds of violence. You just went and had a little chat about the fact that they had made you a laughing stock all over the world.’