A Public Body

by Raymond Flynn

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

One cocked hat, one red robe trimmed with black rabbit and one silver-gilt chain with a gold and enamel knobbly bit at the end... Eddathorpe's mayoral regalia has disappeared in the possession of Councillor William 'Klondike Bill' Lynch, a colourful drunk who has devised the perfect revenge on Eddathorpe's new mayor, his much-detested second wife Muriel. But the joke's not funny when Muriel Lynch turns up dead, with the regalia - and Klondike Bill - carefully arranged in the next room. And less funny still when Robert Graham's least-loved superior officer arrests Bill for a murder he probably didn't commit...

Release date: November 21, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 250

Sample

‘Surely you know him,’ she said, ‘Klondike Bill?’

I knew him all right: I tried not to show it, but, deep inside, I shuddered. William Lynch; Councillor William Lynch, if you wanted to be precise, piss artist extraordinaire, alias Klondike Bill, more accurately known in the Cell Block as Dirty Disgusting Bill.

‘Yes,’ I admitted cautiously, ‘we’ve met.’

The delegation sat back in their seats with a collective sigh and Mary Todd nodded in a self-satisfied sort of way; her favourite policeman hadn’t let her down. She sat back in her chair, crossing her long, elegant legs and smoothing her expensive Donegal tweed skirt.

‘He’s gone missing.’

It was the best news I’d had all day. The absence, preferably permanent, of Bill would probably bring the Brewery to its knees, but the rest of us were going to enjoy the break. Especially the uniforms, the lads who frequently extracted William from the gutter and dragged him home to his less than appreciative spouse.

And no, they weren’t making any subservient gestures in the direction of a prominent local politician; they had this simple desire to allow him to perform his bodily functions in the comfort of his own home. Or, failing that, to get somebody else to do the mopping up.

‘Oh dear.’

The Council delegation, with the exception of Mary, stared stolidly to its front. Nobody spoke, but their faces suggested that I might display a more adequate, more caring response. A little structured hypocrisy; just like theirs. The little glass cubbyhole I called an office bulged with suited, disapproving bodies. Not for the first time, I swore to find myself a bigger, better hole somewhere in the rabbit warren of empty rooms in echoing Eddathorpe nick.

Mary, centre left, glanced at her fellow councillors with the merest wisp of contempt. ‘It’s not so much Bill,’ she said, ‘although we’re all concerned, of course. But the Borough regalia is missing.’

‘He’s got it?’

Things were looking up: local government scandal. Manure deposited in the workings of the Eddathorpe Borough Council fan.

‘We’ve good reason so to think.’

I transferred my attention to Councillor Edwin Rooke. I didn’t know whether to admire his syntax or not, but he was making his bid for fame. A short, balding man with startlingly blue eyes, he was a fellow member of Superintendent Teddy Baring’s nonconformist outfit. Definitely agin’ the drink, among a multitude of other things. They were not, all credit to Teddy, I remembered, the best of friends.

‘Perhaps you could tell me about it, Mr Rooke.’

I’d got that one home all right. He gave me a look to curdle milk. I smiled my most encouraging smile; I had no intention of kowtowing to him.

‘The Council,’ he announced, ‘as you probably know, has a long and honourable tradition of electing the senior serving member each year, irrespective of party, as Mayor.’

‘Since formation, in 1974,’ said Councillor Flaxman, helpfully. An elderly, shrunken man in a blue suit; one of our three minority Labour members. I gave him a swift ocular pat-down for irony, but he stared innocently ahead. Generally speaking, I can do without politicians of any persuasion. I was, however, beginning to warm to him.

Edwin Rooke rose above that sort of thing. ‘This year we discovered, with, I must confide, a degree of dismay’ – he looked around for a demonstration of approval, only to be rewarded with an occasional uneasy, disapproving twitch – ‘that Councillor Lynch had become the, er, father of the elected members.’

Albert Flaxman muttered something under his breath. It sounded suspiciously like, ‘God forbid!’ Then he blew his nose. All circumstances considered, it was not the moment to display the big, vulgar grin.

‘Anyway,’ Rooke said hurriedly, ‘an inter-party agreement was reached that it would be in everyone’s best interests to elect somebody else as Mayor.’

‘They didn’t want to see him getting legless in public and falling down the Town Hall steps,’ translated Albert, bluntly.

Mary Todd pressed her lips together tightly and stared at the floor; some sort of internal eruption appeared to be taking place. She was a big, you could probably say abundant, woman in her late thirties; eminently fanciable though, in my opinion. It was quite a sight.

An Independent allowed himself a minimal snort. Edwin Rooke was a pompous, unpopular bore. The other Conservatives, making something of a collective effort, managed to remain impressively loyal. Albert, the sole representative of the Labour Party on parade, registered a defiant glare.

‘Come on, now, lady and gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil!’

Rooke scowled at him in a way that suggested he felt, as a regular chapel-goer, that Albert had stolen his line.

‘It’s a delicate matter. I do not approve of Councillor Lynch’s personal habits, but I would not wish us to say anything tactless. Anything we may have cause to regret.’

‘Naturally’ – it was my turn to intervene – ‘anything you say will not go beyond these four walls.’ It was the sort of nonsense Rooke would like. But nobody was going to sue for defamation, especially Dirty Disgusting Bill.

‘We thought,’ said Mary, ‘that is, the party groups met informally and decided that the best solution would be to elect Councillor Mrs Muriel Lynch as Mayor instead.’

‘His wife?’

‘Yes; she’s been a member for some considerable time, and the councillors thought it was time to honour a lady member. Keeping it within the family, too. It was hoped her husband wouldn’t object.’

Mary Todd was carefully distancing herself from the decision, I noticed.

‘Not by you, not by me, Mary, me love,’ said Albert Flaxman. ‘It was a ruddy awful idea. If there’s one person on God’s earth he hates, it’s her.’

‘I object to your tone, Councillor, and I do not wish to listen to you taking the name of the Lord in vain.’ Councillor Rooke on his dignity and on his favourite hobby-horse, both at the same time.

Three guesses as to the identity of the originator of the ruddy awful idea. He was unlikely to go down in history as the Machiavelli of the East Coast.

‘All right.’ His opponent waved one impatient hand. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we? And stop pussy-footing it around: Inspector Graham’s got better things to do!’

Albert and I could be friends.

Our Eddie declined the challenge. ‘To put the matter succinctly,’ he said, ‘Councillor Lynch did not take our decision well. Following the meeting on Monday evening, an altercation took place between him and his wife and shortly afterwards he left the premises. He was observed to be carrying a large, untidy bundle under his arm.’

‘Yes?’ I cut in, wondering if anyone had ever succeeded in getting him to talk like a human being instead of the speaking clock. I watched the faces of his colleagues; their eyes were acquiring this gentle, faraway glaze.

‘On Tuesday morning,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘on entering the Mayor’s parlour, the Town Hall Keeper found that a desk drawer had been forced, the cupboard containing the robes had been opened and so had the Mayor’s safe. The robes and the Council Chain and Jewel were missing: a clean sweep.’

‘You kept the keys to the cupboard and the safe in the office drawer?’

‘The locked drawer, Inspector.’

Thanks a bunch. I found myself wanting to take somebody’s name in vain. The idiot who thought of depositing safe keys in locked desk drawers.

‘So who saw him taking away the stuff?’

‘Our Minutes Clerk.’ Minutes? At an informal meeting? Something to do with the love, trust and mutual respect that existed between the various political parties, no doubt.

‘Didn’t he challenge him?’

‘She, Inspector. And it is hardly the place of a junior employee to go about—’

‘Quite. What’s her name?’

‘Miss Doreen Wright. And one must be accurate; she observed Councillor Lynch with a bundle. She cannot be absolutely certain of its nature. It is, of course, remotely possible …’

Teach your elderly female relation to extract the interior contents of hen fruit, old pal.

Another twenty minutes it took; and yes, they wanted the return of their stuff. Yes, Councillor Mrs Lynch was at home: she was very upset. Not, I was given to understand, over her errant laughing-boy. She just wanted to be a well-dressed Mayor.

No, Inspector, this is not a report of a crime. No scandal, please. We are merely doing our duty as citizens: poor Councillor Lynch is missing from home and once you find him you can clear this little misunderstanding up.

In the meantime I was getting these other, more interesting, vibes; subtle and dissident signals from Albert Flaxman (Labour) and the well-known conservative Councillor, Mrs Mary Todd. An alliance unlikely to have been forged in heaven, at a guess.

Angie laughed at me over my butterfly chop, while Joe, our uncertain-tempered, anarchistic Lakeland terrier, panted ostentatiously from under the table. The wife was back; domestic felicity restored, or something like that.

I gave her a burst of my idiot grin; if she found the antics of Eddathorpe Council amusing, who was I to argue? We were back together, albeit living in a poky, glorified wooden beach hut; and she was sailing around, seven and a half months pregnant, a bit like a sexy whale. But we were a unit, an item, a couple: soon to be a triple. I could afford to grin.

‘I love Eddathorpe, Rob,’ she said. ‘Charming little town. They all take themselves so seriously. Pinching the Mayor’s regalia: ha!’

‘Take it easy,’ I warned. ‘They might look like lovable eccentrics, but I’m beginning to know ’em. They go around in gangs, kicking the gold out of each others’ teeth.’

‘Metaphorically speaking.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’

She carried on laughing and I ate my lunch, donating bits of contraband fat from my chop to young greedy-guts panting away on the floor, while his three-month-old by-blow, Paddy, a predictable result of Joe’s liaison with Mary Todd’s Hunt terrier bitch, whined for his share. Our former slob-like bachelor habits were dying hard.

Officially, Angela had been on maternity leave since Easter, but neither of us gave the school where she’d formerly taught much chance of seeing her again. She wasn’t planning on commuting ninety miles, or living apart for the sake of her job. Not unless we parted brass rags for a second time, that is.

We’d split up with a bit of a bang the previous summer, after I’d hammered her boyfriend on Ladies’ Night at the Senior Officers’ Mess of my old force. Unfortunately, the boyfriend had been a Superintendent destined for higher things, while I’d been a lowly Detective Inspector. Not the best of career-enhancing options, as things turned out.

Never mind, I was quite enjoying the move from smoky city to neighbourly, back-biting seaside town. And Angie? Well, we were back together and her flight-of-fancy had moved on: a gofer for one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Constabulary; lost for ever and ever, I hoped, somewhere in the effeminate South.

And Angie’s bump? Well, mine and not mine, if you see what I mean; but we both knew whose name was going down on the birth certificate, all being well. Happy families, then, and only one other problem. Many, far too many old friends, enemies and colleagues could count up to nine. And gossip across force boundaries; I was waiting for that.

I ate my lunch, nibbled my chop bones in a disgusting manner and speculated as to whether Klondike Bill’s clean sweep of the Eddathorpe tinware and fancy dress had included the Council Mace. Not a priority, but in the midst of all the unparalleled excitement, I’d forgotten to ask.

‘Shouldn’t be difficult to find,’ offered George comfortingly.

George Caunt, my greying, bear-like Detective Sergeant, was perched on the edge of his desk, one foot swinging, the other toe on the floor, pontificating as usual. Two of the Detective Constables, Andy Spriggs and Malcolm Cartwright, waited. They were expecting a bit of a wind-up; but they were not exactly hanging on every word.

‘Go on,’ I said, ‘I’ll buy it: why won’t he be difficult to find?’

‘Well, if you were wandering about, dressed up like a Christmas tree and smashed out of your mind, I bet we could find you!’

‘Thanks; I’ll bear that in mind.’

Less than six months in the post and discipline, respect for a senior officer, was dead. There were times when I envied Captain Bligh.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ asked Andy, careless, single, callous and twenty-five. ‘Trace him and lock him up?’

He obviously fancied having a councillor’s scalp swinging negligently from his belt.

‘Nope.’ I tapped my roughly completed Missing from Home form. ‘Just find him and part him from the fancy dress. If you want him punished, you’ve only got to drag him home.’

‘Muriel Lynch,’ said Malc with relish, ‘now there’s a woman.’

‘Broke the mould when they made her,’ said Andy.

‘Thank Christ!’ George and Malcolm chimed in simultaneously, then they sniggered.

I knew what they meant. Muriel Lynch; blondish, fortyish, highly coiffured, with the voice and charm of a runaway electric drill. No thanks.

‘Tell me about Klondike Bill, George.’ I smiled at him encouragingly; he was my walking encyclopedia of local lore. If it walked, talked or took a coat of whitewash within five miles of Eddathorpe on Sea, George would probably be able to dish the dirt. His wife’s interest in scandal bordered on the obsessive; no need to waste money on informants while Mrs Caunt was around.

‘Dirty Disgusting Bill,’ said George, ‘formerly Klondike Bill. Started out thirty years ago with a rock and candyfloss kiosk at the bottom end – that’s the bottom end of the Esplanade; the bit by the floral clock,’ he added helpfully for the sake of the ignorant outlanders: me.

‘Scraped together a bit of cash and bought the Klondike Kascade Amusement Arcade on the High Street a few years later. Then he borrowed enough to open the Sefton Creek Caravan Park up the coast, about ten years after that. Married a local girl, Elizabeth; nice lass. She died about six years ago. One daughter, Marie.’

‘And?’

‘Remarried within twelve months. That’s when his troubles started: hitched up to Councillor Mrs Muriel Slater.’

‘Poor old sod,’ offered Malc Cartwright, feelingly. An expert on difficult marriages, so he should know.

‘Widow?’ I suggested.

‘Naw.’ Malc shuddered delicately. ‘The gay divorcee, boss. Slater could hardly believe his luck; he left town.’

‘Gay? Now there’s a word to conjure with!’

‘Clubs, pubs and how’s yer father,’ sighed George. ‘Not the other sort of gay at all.’

‘Any amount of the other,’ muttered Malc with an evil grin. ‘And she’s got this talent for chasing sixpence down a rat-hole, according to some.’

A ten-second silence; an entire CID department lost in admiration for the versatile Mrs Lynch.

‘Albert Flaxman and Mary Todd,’ murmured Andy helpfully, ‘now there’s a bit of the other: sleeping with the political enemy, if you like.’

‘Metaphorically speaking: they’ve got interests in common,’ said George.

‘Such as?’

‘Putting the skids under Eddie Rooke, for one.’

‘Why?’

I could rely on George and his gossip; the Todd family passed as biggish fish in our local, over-algaed pond and Mrs George was related to Richard Todd, Mary’s former, slightly promiscuous spouse. Sometimes, I thought a trifle sourly, Eddathorpe, permanent population forty-five thousand, was setting up as the scandal and marital-discord capital of the British Isles.

‘Albert and Eddie go back years. Local politics, personality clashes, religion even. Eddie called Albert an atheist at a Council meeting once, and Albert called him a sanctimonious, hypocritical old smarm.’

‘And Mary Todd?’

‘Dunno; playing her cards very close is Mary,’ said George. ‘Might be something to do with rumours about Councillor Rooke having a big, unbuttoned back pocket, if you follow my drift.’

‘Rumours!’ I said. ‘Folklore, you mean. Council corruption, sexual shenanigans, knock-off regalia, drunken missing-from-homes: nobody has a good word to say about anybody around here. Listen to the stories and divide by ten. Then, perhaps, we’ll be closer to the truth.’

‘Never mind, boss,’ said George, going for the last word, ‘at least it’s better than working for a living!’

Chartwell Heights was all its name implied. Large, landscaped and defiantly vulgar, it dominated the only piece of rising ground on the Retton Road. Built in the masonic hall tradition in bright red brick with a genuine pillared portico at the front, it should have sent any self-respecting Athenian groping for the hemlock. Erected in the late seventies with one screaming purpose in mind, it was designed to show that Klondike Bill Lynch and family had finally arrived! Which, perhaps, is just another way of saying there’s a little green-eyed worm burrowing away somewhere inside us all.

Few, however, would have envied Bill his wife. The word was formidable, but even this didn’t do her justice. Not just a nouveau riche caricature to go with the house: this one was smiling, marginally over-groomed, tough. A potential Businesswoman of the Year; the first female Chief Constable, maybe; better still, a Cosa Nostra boss. She’d missed her vocation when she settled for small-town Mayor-elect.

She was hoeing a flower bed in the front garden when we arrived, assisted, in a dilatory sort of way, by a skinny, anoracked youth with glasses; some sort of hired help.

‘I love my garden,’ she said, with the air of Napoleon posing for foreign ambassadors amidst his books. But the temperature and the diction took a turn for the worse once we mentioned her roving spouse.

‘Oh, William,’ she said with a dismissive shrug, ‘he’s cleared off before. He’ll turn up eventually. Hardly worth your while, reporting him missing from home.’

She’d led us into the house through a large, over-decorated hall, dominated by an elaborate staircase which had obviously been looted from some Gothic, turn-of-the-century extravaganza, and into an equally spacious sitting room, shedding an apron and a pair of unsullied gardening gloves en route.

‘He, er, makes a habit of leaving home?’

‘Little binges, followed by occasional big binges.’ She sat down, crossed her legs and leaned back in the burgundy chesterfield couch, smoothing the skirt of her green linen dress. ‘Not to worry; drunks always fall on their feet, so they say.’

‘Any idea where he’s gone?’ I sat down directly opposite, while George made himself comfortable out of the line of fire.

She shrugged again; I had to admit it, the gesture tended to concentrate the male mind on her more than adequate bust. ‘Ask his pals; they’re always covering up for him. Sleeping it off in a ditch, off with some tart, perhaps. Who cares?’

‘But he is missing?’

‘Two days, if you want to call it that.’

‘What would you call it?’

‘Spite. Nasty, malicious spite. Mayor-making on Friday, so he zooms off with most of the regalia. No costume; no Mayor. That’s the sort of mind he’s got.’

‘He was disappointed when he wasn’t elected?’

‘I don’t think he cared a damn,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘He always said the Mayor of Eddathorpe looked and sounded like something out of Comic Cuts. He just hates the idea of me taking his place.’

‘You’ve been falling out?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me, Inspector. Your boys in blue have been listening to William and his troubles for the past twelve months. Go on, you tell me what he’s been saying!’

I’d been embarrassed by experts in my time; I wasn’t taking that from her, gimlet-green eyes or not.

‘He says,’ I said with just a touch of the old irony, ‘that his wife doesn’t understand him. Basically, that is.’

‘Delicate, aren’t we? Well, my diplomatic friend, let me tell you; I understand him only too bloody well. He’s spent half a lifetime putting one penny on top of another and now he thinks it’s all passed him by. So he’s gambling, womanising, and getting rat-arse drunk to make up for lost time. He rues the day he ever married me, but he’ll fight tooth and nail against a divorce ’cos he knows it’ll cost him an arm and a leg. How’s that for an understanding wife?’

‘You seem,’ I admitted, ‘to have covered the ground pretty well.’

‘Not quite.’ She glowered across the room at George, seated comfortably in a high-backed leather armchair, determinedly admiring the rockery through the massiv. . .