17. THE MARKET

Two of the police team interview Denis Buttery at his market stall.

Brumpton Market was a busy mid-week affair with that mixture of beguiling calls in raucous voices and shuffling shoppers dragging their toddlers along behind them that marks markets everywhere. Pottery (last year’s designs) were being offered at I’m not asking for twenty pounds, not even a tenner, but you can have this set of plates/cups/bowls for only five pounds, and how they could afford to sell vegetables at that price was beyond understanding.

Denis Buttery was there despite his recent bereavement. Many a son would have surrendered a week’s income and stayed at home as a mark of grief and respect for the dead, but not Denis. He was up with the lark that morning and out at the crack of dawn. Money needed to be earned and if he was lucky and found his stall encircled by idiots he might make a killing.

His stall was less adventurous than most, and his advertising more muted because what he made his living selling was the kind of thing few people could be talked into buying. It was the kind of stall found at boot fairs and flea markets, with largely damaged and outdated goods, but he had enough regular customers on account of his competitive pricing to afford him a meagre income.

Sergeant Peter Jenson spotted him straight away, his rag-tag stall being on the edge of the market square and almost insultingly away from the bustle of the crowds, as if he was admitting to being a second-rate dealer of second-rate goods.

Fair enough. That’s what he was, second rate by virtue of his relative youth and hoping to climb up the marketeer’s ladder to a high pinnacle of respectability in the fullness of time.

“Mr Buttery,” said the sergeant, flashing his ID. “We’re here about your late father.”

“Can’t you see I’m busy?” demanded Denis, “if I don’t earn I don’t get a crust!”

Peter looked around at the absence of customers crowding round his stall.

“You seem to have a gap in the surge,” he said sarcastically, “and this is important. A murder’s been committed and it’s down to me to sort the wheat from the chaff and arrest the guilty party, if you don’t mind mixed metaphors.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” demanded Denis who didn’t know a metaphor from a full stop, re-arranging a display of plant pots until they looked more uninviting than ever.

“From your own account you were the last person to see your father alive,” murmured Peter quietly, not really wanting to draw a great deal of unnecessary attention to the drama being enacted on the fringe of a busy market square.

“Apart from the killer,” said Denis, “and that weren’t me. I never killed him, no how, so there!”

“Nobody suggested it was,” growled Peter, unable to sound sufficiently soothing, though he did try, “though if you put it that way it does make it sound as though you have something to fear.”

“He was my dad!” almost shouted Denis, his voice drawing a few raised eyebrows from passing potential customers. One old man paused to examine the re-arranged plant-pots, examining one minutely though clearly not intending to buy anything, but he was interested in what was going on.

“We know,” said constable Elena soothingly, “and we know how it must hurt you, having to go over the events once again.”

“So tell us about your sister,” coaxed Peter, leaping in where wise men might fear to tread, though he was no fool.

“My twin? What’s she got to do with it?” grated Denis, suddenly protective as though all that stood between the demise of the girl he’d spent his entire life as a foetus with and hell fire was himself as a defensive warrior, sword and shield at the ready.

“What’s she got to do with it? You may well ask, but he was her father too,” Peter told him.

“She’s a girl. That’s what she is: a girl.” came the slow reply.

“How did she get on with your father?” asked Elena. “They say that daughters get on better with their fathers than sons do. Sons might kick a ball around on a park with them, but daughters are something else...”

“Okay. She was okay with him.” growled Denis.

“Only okay?” prompted the constable.

Denis turned to look at her directly and then, after an inner battle that showed on the troubled lines on his youthful face, seemed to surrender to an unseen and unsuspected dread.

“Okay. Yes, okay. But you know, don’t you?”

“Know what, Denis?” asked Peter. Yes, he thought I do know and I don’t like what I know…

“It wasn’t right,” muttered Denis, “I knew it wasn’t right. But she fancied him, that’s what she did.”

The old man raised both eyebrows and took a very close interest in a trowel.

“Could you possibly be more explicit?” asked Peter, “I mean, what do you mean by fancied?

“What do you think I mean!” shouted Denis, making the old man take a step back for fear of overhearing too much. “And that trowel’s fifty pence,” he snarled.

“Too much!” the elderly gentleman told him, replacing the trowel and trying to merge with the crowds until he was almost (but not quite) out of earshot.

“Tell me,” soothed Peter, “it can’t have been easy for you … a sister you get on so well with being wooed by her own father, and not only her father, yours as well! Come on, best to get it off your mind while you can, then we can settle back and sort this business out once and for all.”

“I went back last week home, on Wednesday, which I don’t usually do,” muttered a suddenly subdued Denis, “I had this bloody awful headache and there was nothing doing on the market, like there’s not much doing today, and I needed to get my head down. I felt really rotten, and I saw dad’s car outside our place in Swanspottle. What’s the old man doing here? I asked myself, and I got out and went in the house to see. They weren’t downstairs, nobody was, so I went upstairs and put my head round the bedroom door. And there they were, thee two of them, my dad and my sister, my twin, disgusting, kissing and cuddling and doing stuff like that, he with his hands on her … her … chest, and she touching him too, ans slobbering over reach other.”

The old man had moved back in to the stall, and was peering closely at a teapot with a chipped spout, and Elena shook her head.

“I feel for you,” she said, soothingly, “what a dreadful shock! It’s no wonder you saw red!”

“Oh I didn’t see any colour,” he almost whispered, “I knew about it, of course I did, it’s been going on for years, I know it has, but I pretended it hasn’t, and I sort of guessed why. You see, dad really, really loved mum, but she turned herself off. Right off when we were born, like they say some women do, and Amelia’s just like mum used to be. I’ve seen photos. You’d think they were of Amelia, those taken when mum was young. Why, she even wears some of mum’s old clothes when mum’s not around, to look even more like her.”

“What did you want to do?” asked Elena.

“Me? Do? Nothing. What could I do, though I did think of killing the b*****d!” said Denis, his voice raised again. “You see … she might be my twin, but I love her...”

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 10.03.17