9. Cigar Smoke

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

Jonny searches his memory for anything he can report concerning the person who attacked him

It was next morning. Angela was still in bed, recovering from a terrifying experience, Jerry was taking an hour off before starting work because he had something more important than work to do and the twins were clattering down the stairs.

They poked their noses into the dining room which was always everyone in the house’s first port of call and Jerry was sitting at the table with a cup of something streaming in front of him and a troubled look on his face.

“Ah, boys,” he said with enforced jollity, “I wanted to have a few words, Jonny.”

“Do you want me to go back upstairs, dad?” asked a surprised Jack.

“No, son, not at all,” smiled Jerry, you’re most welcome to stay and hear your father’s pathetic apology to your brother.”

“Why, dad, what have you done?” asked Jack.

“I have neglected you, Jonny. I saw you quite a few time when you were tiny, but that was over a decade ago. And you were much too young to understand who I was even though I changed a heck of a lot of nappies when you filled them! But what with my work taking such a lot of my time I couldn’t be around enough and eventually had to move away with Jack because he was the first alphabetically. You were called Jonny and Jack was called Jack, a joint decision between your mother and me before she passed away, and when your grandparents said they’d help me out by caring for one of you I had the twin who came first alphabetically and they had the other one. Not that you could tell any difference. You were both identical back then and, golly, you still are! I mean, look at you! But back then you each had a wrist thing with your names on.”

Jack decided to say something before his dad went on too long, something that in his opinion he was prone to doing. “That’s why when I saw Jonny lying on that hillock in the woods I thought it was me, dead,” he said, “it was quite a shock for me because at the same time I knew that I was alive!”

Jerry smiled at him. “Very much alive,” he murmured and was going to continue with a more profuse apology to Jonny for not being there for him when he arrived from his home in Brumpton, admittedly unheralded, when the door bell sounded.

“That’ll be Florence,” he said, “she told me she wants to see if Jonny picked up any interesting evidence when he was clocked on the head.

“It’s hard tp pick anything up when you’re fast asleep on the ground,” muttered Jonny as Jerry went to answer the door.

Jerry opened the front door and greeted DI Florence Winthorpe who was in the company of the Detective Constable.

“This is DC Beverley Anderson,” she said with a smile, “and you be warned, Jerry: she’s the prettiest creature this side of the North Pole and bright enough to melt all the ice between there and here just by looking at it!”

The detective constable, thought Jerry after a glance at her, was certainly a treat for the eyes with a smooth peaches and cream complexion and long blond hair that was piled on top of her head in some sort of very complex knot.

“We’ve come to have a word with Jonny,” added Florence, “if he’s recovered from the attack on him. I thought he might feel more comfortable speaking in his home rather than being carted off to the station.”

“Of course: please come in,” grinned Jerry, who was actually expecting them, and he led them into the kitchen where the twins were still devouring raspberry jam on toast for breakfast together with cups of tea.

“Hold on, it’s the cops,” joked Jack.

“For your information this is Detective Inspector Florence Winthorpe with Detective Constable Beverley Anderson,” said Jerry glaring at Jack, “and if she doesn’t like the cut of your jib she can lock you up in a dank dark cell for the duration,” he added.

“Really, Mr Newby, I can do nothing of the sort unless I suspect them of murder,” said Florence, “and you know that, do you not.”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” quipped Jerry, “anyway, forgetting that, please ask Jonny what he saw.”

“This isn’t easy,” sighed Florence, “I’ve already spoken to Jack, and yet I’m facing what appears to me to be two Jacks, so I guess one of you must be Jonny…?”

“That’s me,” said Jonny, somewhat shyly.

“Good. Then can I ask you why you were alone in the woods where you got bonked?” asked the DI

“Because I decided to run away from home and come and visit my dad,” replied Jonny. “I was supposed to be coming yesterday and then I wasn’t, they’re always changing their minds. I wanted to see my brother and my dad, so I caught a bus to come here, but they weren’t in, so I thought I’d have a look around.”

“And did you see the man or woman who knocked you out?” asked Florence.

“I don’t know. I might have but can’t remember. All I know is I heard a little noise behind me and smelt the horrible smell of someone smoking a nasty pipe. Then nothing until I woke up with a cut on my head and blood on my face. I forced myself to walk off and sfter a minute or two I thought the person I could see in front of me was me… I wondered if I was dreaming or dead or something like that. And there was an old man, all horrible and threatening…”

“Baz Juniper,” Florence told him, “but that was after you were bashed over the head. You mentioned the smell of smoke, like someone smoking a pipe?”

Jonny nodded. “It wasn’t very nice, but it was behind me and I’m sure I didn’t see who was smoking it. I’m sorry. I wish I’d seen more.”

“It’s probably a good thing you didn’t or the blow on your head might have become a blow on your face,” soothed DC Beverley Anderson/

“Or worse,” added Jerry. “Is that all, Jonny? Absolutely everything you know? Because if nothing else we’ve got to find out who did it. To you. We can’t have boys of your age being mistreated like that, can we Detective?” he asked Florence.

“That we cannot,” agreed the DI, “but you have added one clue to the pot. The smell of pipe tobacco. We didn’t know that.”

“One of our teachers smokes that sort of nasty stuff,” Jonny said, “that’s how I recognised it.”

“But sadly it can’t have been that teacher,” smiled Jerry, “because he teaches school in Brumpton and here you are in Midcomfort.”