To Dream of the Dead

sprog — so that was excusable, just. All the same, a touchy subject. Safer to keep this contemporary.

‘You know of any link between Charlie and the late Clem Ayling?’

Mumford found a short laugh.

‘Wondered how long it’d be before you got round to Ayling. I did hear your role in that had got a bit shrunk, mind.’

‘And you heard that from…?’

‘Pint with Terry Stagg. Funny arrangement all round, Terry says. Why would Ma’am set up an incident room within walking distance of Gaol Street?’

‘Only if she wanted a soundproof box,’ Bliss said.

‘Ah.’

‘He’s never liked me, you know that, Andy.’

‘Charlie? No, I don’t reckon he has.’

‘Not since I got too interested in the Frome Valley.’

No reaction from Mumford.

‘Where I won’t be going again, you understand. It’s history. I accept that.’

Best to underline it: no question of Mumford’s youthful indiscretion ever being exhumed.

‘All right,’ Mumford said.

‘But if Charlie’s name crops up on the edge of an inquiry I still get interested. And Charlie knows that, and Annie knows it.’

‘This connection with Ayling — that just the council?’

‘Goes a bit further. Charlie and Ayling’d both got themselves co-opted on to this quango think-tank thingy known as Hereforward. Which was Ayling’s last meeting. Walks out of it, never seen again attached to his head.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘You ever heard of Charlie doing… Charlie?’

‘Coke?’

‘Or anything.’

‘Charlie don’t like to lose control.’

‘Oh.’

‘Women’s Charlie’s thing. Young women. Always a charmer.’

‘Still?’

‘Older he gets, younger he likes them. Jumbo was telling me about a divorce case he was working, led to this isolated farmhouse in the Black Mountains where there was what you might call communal activities. Jumbo seen Charlie through his binoculars, once.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘I will tell you one thing, though, boss,’ Mumford said. ‘Charlie en’t a killer.’

‘That’s a firm statement, Andy.’

‘He’s a cover-upper, is what Charlie is.’

Bliss flicked the wipers again. Still no sign of life in Steve’s house. He switched off the engine.

‘And a bully,’ Mumford said. ‘Whatever he done, always he done it for the best of reasons and anyone who suggests otherwise he’s right in their face and they better watch their step, else they might not have a job for very long. If you see where I’m coming from.’

‘‘I hate that,’ Bliss said.

‘Power thing, see.’

‘Hate it, Andy.’

‘What I’m saying, unless you got something real solid, not an easy man to lean on.’

‘I realise that.’

‘On the other hand,’ Mumford said, ‘young Mebus, he thinks he’s smart but he en’t. So if you want somebody to talk to Mebus, on the quiet, like, civilian rules, I’m up for that. Don’t take this the wrong way, boss, but you was always good to me. Especially in the last days. And the business over Robbie. I appreciate that.’

‘That’s very civil of you, Andy.’

‘I expect you’d return the favour, any openings come up where you could put in a word.’

‘If there’s anybody left who listens to me.’

‘Bear it in mind, anyway, boss,’ Mumford said.

Bliss smiled into the darkness. Mumford’s subtext: anything… just get me away from the mixed corn.

‘I’ve gorra few problems, Andy.’

‘Aye,’ Mumford said. ‘I know.’

Bliss was finishing off the last Thai Prawn sarnie when his mobile went.

‘Not convenient to explain further,’ Eileen Cullen said. ‘But it’s as you said. All right? Have to go now.’

‘Thanks, Sister. I owe you one.’

‘You certainly do.’

So… the old bastard.

And it would go on, the eternal triangle of Annie Howe, Charlie Howe and Frannie Bliss, until one of the corners dropped off.

He thought about Mumford, a good detective lumbering through most of his career as a DC, kicked out with the digital camera and the inscribed tankard, facing the rest of his mobile years as a part-time PI, part-time corn salesman.

He thought of himself, young Frannie making a fresh start still in his twenties: nice country town, not many streets where you couldn’t see a hill. Nice, laid-back country people, not as sharp as Scousers, most of them, but not as bitter either. Thinking he’d have a fair chance of promotion and getting it, too, in the early years.

And then it stopped, and he was looking at a bunch of unexceptional DCIs five years younger than him, then seven years younger. Looking particularly at Annie Howe, acting superintendent. A crap detective. A frigging shite detective, with a dad who’d been a bent detective.

And a bully. All bullies were cowards. His dad was always telling him that when he was a kid. You didn’t give in to a bully.

The rain was heavier now, and he switched on the engine and the demister. In the old days, someone on the occupied part of the estate would’ve noticed a car parked without lights and come over to check it out. Not any more. Not with new knife-crime stats on the box every other night. They wouldn’t ring the police either, because they knew the police wouldn’t come, or maybe they’d drop by next day, if they were passing.

After about two minutes, Karen Dowell called and, for a while, Bliss brightened up.

‘It’s ridiculous, boss.’

‘Where are you, Karen?’

‘I’m at home. You see it on the box?’

‘I haven’t gorra box in the car.’

‘Man helping with inquiries?’

Bliss lurched in his seat.

‘They’ve pulled?’

‘Nah, it’s Wilford Hawkes.’

‘Karen.’ Bliss slumped back. ‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Couldn’t believe it either. I actually rang the school to confirm, talked to Terry. What happened, they turned over Hawkes’s place and found he’d just put a brand new chain on his twenty-year-old chainsaw. Cleaned it all up himself, like new. So now they’ve stripped his workshop, sent a vanload to forensic, and they’re asking him the same questions, over and over again, in the hope he’ll slip up, give some different answers. Which he does, of course, everybody does in the end. Poor little bugger doesn’t know what day it is.’

‘This is Howe?’

‘She’s had Brent at him now. Both of them, in fact.’

‘Ms Nasty and Dr Nasty. I suppose it’s occurred to them that Hawkes is half Ayling’s size and nearly as