21. Unconscious

DI Glumy starts to be aware that things might go wrong for him

21. Unconscious

Tania was furious. She was in a pickle, but not one of her own making. Sitting at a rather crude table in what they called an interview room with a surly DI opposite her and a bored looking constable near the door

Hitherto she had rather respected police officers and, in truth, the only relationship she’d had with them was of polite helpfulness even that time years ago when she had run away from home in a teenage tantrum because her dad had implied that she was doing something very rude with a boy. She wouldn’t have minded but the boy was one she particularly disliked, and in a fit of anger she’d run away. Not far, to be truthful, and she’d no way intended her disappearance to be permanent because she rather enjoyed her home and even loved both of her parents. But if her father actually believed that she would do any such thing (and it was unspecified, which added to her confused anger) then he deserved to be worried about her running away and where she was.

The police sergeant who had found her (hiding in a hollow tree where the hollow was by no means big enough for a girl of her age, and she had been thirteen and not particularly big for her age). He had been a kindly sort having a teenage daughter of his own, and with a big smile he obviously understood, so genuinely that it relieved her when he said he would take her home and give her father (better known as daddy) a piece of his mind.

She didn’t know what he had said to her dad, but it had worked to the point that a father who would never do anything of the kind actually apologised to her for upsetting her.

And everything else to do with policemen had been harmonious. When a woman was caught shop-lifting at the supermarket years after the runaway incident and the police were called in, the officer as good as took the side of the thief as he walked her out to his car, and the episode had warmed her heart.

But now: this man who called himself a detective Inspector was cut from a different cloth. He assumed things, and those things were alien to Tania. Like he assumed she had actually put the woman who lived next door into her own wheelie bin, that she had actually taken the boy Shaun from school and done unimaginably evil things to him on account of her having no boyfriend of her own age before sticking him through with a kitchen knife to stop him telling tales, and then burying him in next door’s garden while the people who lived there were out. And when she brazenly asked him who he meant when he suggested the ones that she had killed already as a means of making sure that there would be nobody in the way when she murdered the poor little boy, he rattled off with a snigger a few names. And when she suggested that the teacher who lodged in her neighbour’s house might look more likely if he really needed to arrest somebody he told her that educated men don’t kill, only stupid and badly educated young women do.

“You see, young what’s your name, Miss Beaufort, I’ve had a good bite of life and can see things that many another is blind to,” he said with a grimace, “and I see something that might come as as a shock to you and that is a whole long and miserable life for you behind bars which might be reduced a tad if you confess here and now to the dreadful crimes I’m accusing you of…”

“You mean, you want me to own up to things I would never dream of doing, not even in my worst nightmare?” she demanded.

“Go on, play Miss Innocent, it’ll never fool me, I’ve been around long enough to see through even the most cleverly constructed lies, and you’re not bright enough to tell whoppers like that. So tell me: why did you stick a blade into your sweet elderly neighbour, Mrs Claire Beachus? And why dispose of her poor body in your own wheelie bin? A clumsy double-bluff, don’t you think?”

“I think you’re mistaken in just about everything you say,” she replied, “and would better serve the people of Brumpton if you were out there looking for the real killer. You know, the man I just managed to wriggle away from because he was after me with a blood-stained knife in his hand, the so-called intelligent teacher at the Academy!”

DI Glumpy shook his head and half-smiled. “I do believe you’re asking for a whole life tariff with no remission ever,” he said wearily, “when all you have to do is honestly tell me that you did it. You don’t even have to tell me why: we’ve got expert psychiatrists who can fill that in.”

She looked at him grimly. So this, she thought, is the rotten side of the law. Well, I’ll show him, that I will.

“I believe I’m entitled to representation,” she said.

“You can have the duty solicitor when he can be bothered to turn up,” he said, “I have put out a call for him.”

“I don’t mean him,” sniffed Tania, “I mean my uncle.”

“I’m afraid the only reason for you to have a family member supporting you would be if you were under age or mentally disturbed, and in my judgement you’re neither of those things.”

“So you’re saying Uncle Denis can’t help me? Not even my mother’s younger brother, the one who qualified as a lawyer a decade or two ago and who is well known as being really good at his job as a defence solicitor? Uncle Denis Saunders, with more letters after his name than a simple girl like me could ever hope to remember?”

Suddenly DI Glumpy seemed to go pale and as she mentioned her uncle something rang a warning bell in his mind.

“Who did you say?” he almost stammered.

“My uncle Denis. Denis Saunders with letters after his name. That’s who,” she said, noting suddenly the change in the man in front of her, as if the mere mention of a name had given his cause to rethink just about everything.

Then he shook himself. She could almost read his thoughts as his expression rapidly flickered along with his attempts at proving to himself that he was perfectly right in his assumptions and that the very fact that he had no real evidence against the girl in front of him wouldn’t matter if she admitted at least one little thing. But that one little thing should never involve Denis Saunders, a name that carried with it a great deal of fear for policemen trying to build a fragile case and make it ready for court.

Then he shook himself and glared at Tania. He could see her nastiness, the very deceitfulness that was written all over her offensive face and deviant long hair. And the way she crossed her legs whilst wearing that offensively short skirt. Yes, in his mind she was guilty of All sorts of things, including amongst them mass murder.

“Where did you pick that name up from?” he asked, “as if Denis Saunders would have anything to do with a slovenly creature like you?”

She smiled as sweetly as she could, which was really very sweetly indeed. “My late mother was Doris Saunders, and her younger brother was Denis,” she said.

The DI stood up, and the mute constable who had observed the proceedings with amusement, stood up and walked to the door, ready to open it for his senior officer.

But the DI didn’t make it to the door.

He was aware of something swelling up somewhere inside his consciousness whilst simultaneously the interview room seemed to grow dim and wobbly, and a strange little drama in his head, one in which a blind woman swore she’d seen the killer even though her eyes didn’t work any more, and a far too pretty Detective Constable hovered around mouthing I told you so…

And in response to all that going in inside his head he slowly sunk down and with the name Denis Saunders being cruelly whispered by devils just out of sight, he slumped to the floor.

© Peter Rogerson 09.06.24