Dying Fall

My boss loves press conferences. Just hearing the word
Crimewatch
gives him a hard-on.’
    Sandy laughs. ‘We’ve got a few like that here. Same everywhere, old-style coppers are dying out. They’ve all got degrees now.’
    ‘You’re not wrong there.’
    The WPC comes back with tea in proper cups and even a couple of Kit Kats. Nelson thanks her, thinking of the response he’d get if he sent Judy or Tanya out for refreshments. The word Kit Kat reminds him of Katie.
    ‘How’s the lovely Michelle?’ asks Sandy. He had been a guest at their wedding, twenty-odd years ago.
    ‘Champion. She manages a hairdressing business. Nice little set-up.’
    ‘And the girls?’
    ‘Both at uni.’
    Sandy groans. ‘My boys too. Don’t know why the hell they have to go. Costing me an arm and a leg and all they do is get pissed in Thailand.’
    ‘How old are your sons?’ Nelson remembers them as little boys in identical Blackpool strips. He can’t remember their names.
    ‘Tom’s nineteen. He’s at Sheffield reading engineering. Ben’s just finished at Birmingham. God knows what he wants to do. Advanced piss-artistry perhaps. He’s living back at home, driving Bev and me mad.’
    ‘It’s tough, isn’t it,’ says Nelson. ‘Just when you thought they were off your hands.’
    It’ll be another eighteen years before Katie is off his hands, he thinks. That is, if Ruth continues to let him be part of her life.
    ‘So, Harry,’ says Sandy. ‘What brings you to these parts?’
    Nelson is so surprised to be referred to by his first name that he almost doesn’t answer. Somehow, in Norfolk, everyone calls him Nelson, except Michelle, that is. Ruth had even called him Nelson in bed.
    ‘I’m on holiday,’ he says, at last.
    Sandy laughs again, the folds of his face turning upwards. ‘A holiday in Blackpool! Things must be bad.’
    ‘I wanted to spend some time with Mum,’ Nelson says, not entirely truthfully. ‘She’s getting on a bit.’
    ‘We all are, cocker,’ says Sandy. ‘I’m going to put in for early retirement in a few years.’
    ‘You’re joking.’ Nelson doesn’t know what shocks him more: that a contemporary of his might soon be eligible for early retirement or that Sandy Macleod, whom he has always considered the ultimate coppers’ copper, would ever want to quit the job.
    ‘I’ve had enough,’ says Sandy. ‘Too many bloody graduates, too much paperwork. Do you remember the old days? Drinking after hours in the Red Lion? Sid the Greek? Fat Bernie?’
    ‘I remember,’ says Nelson, though Sid the Greek and Fat Bernie are just names to him now. He’s sure that every police station has their equivalent. Suddenly he feels rather sad.
    Sandy, though, seems to pull himself together. He sits up straighter, brushing chocolate crumbs off his paunch.
    ‘That case you mentioned, the fire. Professional interest, was it?’
    ‘Not really,’ says Nelson carefully. ‘Woman I work with, forensic archaeologist, victim was a friend of hers.’
    Sandy groans. ‘Don’t talk to me about forensics. Every Tom, Dick and Harry’s a forensics expert these days. Put on a paper suit and you think you’re God.’
    ‘This woman’s OK,’ says Nelson. ‘Bit of a pain sometimes but OK.’
    ‘Well, we’re definitely treating her mate’s death as suspicious,’ says Sandy, pulling a sheaf of papers towards him. Nelson tries not to wince at the state of his friend’s intray. Though he’d never admit it to Sandy, Nelson quite likes paperwork and his desk at King’s Lynn is always immaculate.
    ‘Emergency services called at one a.m.,’ says Sandy, reading from a sheet. ‘Alerted by a neighbour. Arrived at one-twenty. Front door was locked, victim was just inside the door, looked as if he’d been clawing at it, traces of wood under his fingernails. Cause of death, smoke inhalation.’
    ‘Door locked from the outside?’
    ‘Yes. The key was still in the lock. No attempt to hide it. Seat of the fire was in the hallway. We found pieces of material just inside the front door, doused with petrol. Looks as if they’d been pushed through the letterbox.’
    ‘Jesus.’ Nelson is silent for a moment, thinking of Ruth’s friend – Dan Whatshisname – trapped in a burning house, clawing at a locked door. What a way to go.
    ‘Did you find anything else?’
    ‘No,’ says Sandy. ‘We had the bloody forensics buggers in there, sealed the place off, went over everything with a fine tooth comb. There were a