14. Haunted

The DI decides to dig in Tanie's neighbour's back garden...

“Now who can that be?” growled Kevin Beaufort as he tried to concentrate on the finer theme that was dominating his favourite soap opera, and somebody had rung the doorbell.

“Don’t worry. I’ll go and see,” muttered Tania because she was in the same room as him, he was watching her television (it had belonged to her parents so it was far from being new, but she had inherited it along with everything else in the house, and Kevin knew that.) He could have been upstairs in his own bedroom where he had a television set all of his own (even older, though) but in a very contrary way he still liked Tania’s company. Or rather, the sight of her legs in that tiny frock she was wearing, and if that wasn’t enough her long and very glossy hair made his heart skip the odd beat as well.

So Tania went to see who had rung the doorbell and her own heart sunk a little when she saw that it was that dreadful Detective Inspector Glumpy together with the pretty young detective Constable, Amelia Pincher, who she rather liked.

No sooner had she got the door open than Kevin’s voice came from the front room, “Who is it, then?”

“Just the law, and it’s bound to be for me,” Tania shouted back, “I’ll take them into the kitchen and I’ll bet they won’t mind if I put the kettle on.”

His lack of a reply meant that he had heard her and didn’t know what to make of her answer to his enquiry.

“Can I help you?” she asked the DI who was staring at her as if her every move might give her away so that he could arrest her for as many crimes as he could think of pinning on her off the top of his head.

“Just a question or two,” he replied, “if you don’t go running straight to the local papers, that is, and tell one and all before I get a chance!”

“As if I would,” she scowled, “at this time of night! Come in, then. We’ll go into the kitchen if you don’t mind slumming it.”

“Where you mentioned you might have a kettle,” smiled Amelia.

“So I did. Come on, then, and get your questions off your chests before my ex husband decides to do a bit of investigating of his own!”

She led the way into the kitchen and invited them to sit down. She sat as far from the DI as the furniture would allow. “So fire away,” she suggested.

“You did tell us that the young man next door was seen to be digging a hole in his garden?” smiled the DC, “and we wondered why it was so worth you mentioning. I mean, was it odd?

“Was it odd?” came Kevin’s voice from the doorway, leaving the closing signature tune to his soap opera playing to itself, “I’ll say it was odd and at that time of night too!

“Thank you Kevin for interrupting,” said Tania in what was intended to be a withering tone, “but yes, as my ex says, it was late at night.”

“Did the man say why?” asked the DI.

“He did mention that he was planning to grow some potatoes and wanted enough loose soil for them to thrive in,” explained Tania, and then eyeing Kevin and feeling spiteful, she added “he worked so hard at it that he ended up being stripped down to his underpants, which caught my eye!”

“Disgusting,” growled Kevin.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the house at the moment,” said the DI, “you must have heard us hammering on the door next door, surely!”

“He has the telly turned up so loud,” grunted Tania, “when he could be deafening himself up in his bedroom and leaving me in peace.”

“Maybe if you told him via the pages of the Gazette he’d get the message,” said the DI quietly. Clearly her previous threat to him had rankled, which made her smile.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she replied quietly.

“As the place seems to be deserted, could you show us exactly where he dug his hole?” asked Amelia, “then we’ll get out of your hair,” she added, flashing a smile at Kevin.

“Then, maybe we might take a peep at your kettle?” added the DI, “It’s thirsty work, being threatened with the local rag!”

“And so is being accused of three murders,” murmured Tania, “and therein lies the reason why there’s nobody in next door. The couple who lived there, not the teacher who was a lodger, though he called them his parents, are among the three corpses you want to pin on me.”

“You know that?” asked the DI. “We’re still trying to positively identify the woman in your bin…”

“I told the officer at the time,” sighed Tania, “don’t you lot ever talk to each other? The woman in my bin was most certainly the lady who lived, until her sad demise, next door. And rumour has it that her husband was tipped out of a different wheelie bin onto the the little park that the council is so proud of, you know, where the rubbish tip used to be…”

“So there won’t be anyone in next door?” sighed the DC.

“Unless the potato gardener is at home, you know, the teacher,” suggested Kevin, still standing by the door and looking perfectly comfortable there. Then he added, “so you reckon my lovely ex is the killer?” he asked, “because if you do that’s the daftest thing I’ve ever heard and convinces me that you lot couldn’t sort an orange Smartie out of a tube of brown ones!”

“Could I ask you, do you mind, but why do you refer to each other as exes? Living in the same house?” asked a curious Amelia.

“Because we are just that,” said Tania before Kevin could answer, “and we’re living in the same house until Kevin by the door over there can find an affordable place of his own. That’s all there is to it.”

“It’s a matter of convenience,” added Kevin.

“Then will one of you accompany us to next door and show us where the teacher or whatever he is was digging?” asked DI Glumpy.

“This way,” directed Tania, and she led them out of the back door and to the bottom of her own garden, then out onto an unmade pathway and into the neighbouring garden. It was beginning to get dark, though there was still plenty of natural light for them to see by.

“Just here,” she pointed at a smooth patch of soil with a small pile of fresh earth next to it. “It looks as if he dug more out than he put back in,” she added, pointing.

David had left the spade with which he had laboured the other evening, propped up against the nearby fence, and the DI grabbed hold of it.

“Constable, I’m afraid that there might be a dead body in here,” he said, “and I’m going to dig it up before it starts raining and spoils it by washing away any evidence.”

“Er, yes sir,” mumbled Amelia.

He started digging and it looked to be quite easy moving the already loosened earth, but none-the-less he went cautiously. After a while he slowed down as it seemed that he had hit something solid. Then he jumped into his excavation and started scrabbling around with his hands.

“Ah,” he muttered, “this is terrible… it’s a child…”

Tania didn’t want to look but couldn’t help herself.

The DI was almost in tears as he gazed down at a soiled and very dead face. It was a child and he seemed to know instantly who it was.

“Shaun Taylor,” he muttered, “went missing a few weeks ago and presumed kidnapped by a pervert… and quite clearly dead. Poor little sod…”

Tania couldn’t help it. She turned away and vomited quite copiously onto an undug patch of garden. It was a moment that would haunt her on and off for the rest of her days.

© Peter Rogerson 02.06.24