20. Not How Raymond Chandler Would Have Gone About Things

Inciting incident almost over and down with

Friday, when the night is just the night and nothing more

Dead. Dead?

Alden nods an eyebrow to them both.

“What do you mean dead?” says Vardaman.

“A rare unambiguous word, in fairness, Vardaman,” Moses says. Vardaman gives him a stare.

“They found him on the tracks,” Alden says.

“The tracks?” says Moses.

“Fuck,” Vardaman says, and he glares into the middle distance. He lifts his pint to his mouth slowly.

“What happened?” Moses says.

Alden shrugs. “You know what the rumour mill’s like. We won’t get any sense of it for a while.”

“What are the rumours saying?” Vardaman says turning his attention to Raul.

“Rumours are saying murder and his body was dumped on the tracks,” Raul says.

“Doesn’t sound unlikely,” Moses says. “All things considered.”

The four of them stand there in silence for a few moments.

Med walks up with a tower of empty pint pots cradled in her arm.

“You heard the news?” she says.

“Nice to see you,” Moses says without really meaning to say it out loud. He almost snaps the sentence off at the last word.

“Lucky bastards.” A passing voice. Moses and Vardaman both spin round and about but neither can see exactly who said it. Raul is cackling again.

“Have the police not seen you yet?” Med says unstacking the pint pots from her arm into the curtain of steam from the open glass washer.

Vardaman and Moses exchange glances.

“Why would they speak with us?” Vardaman says.

“Because you obviously did it,” Raul says. Cackle.

They ignore him.

“Just stands to reason,” Med says. “They’ll want to talk to people who had been with him in the last twenty-four hours. Have I just been watching too much TV?”

She looks at Alden.

“No, that sounds like the way it would go,” he says to her.

Moses gulps.

“But he never caught up with us,” Moses says. “We went to Vardaman’s for a smoke and we fell asleep so he never caught up with us.”

“I’m talking about last night,” Med says.

“Last night?” says Moses.

“Didn’t you go back to his sex flat?” Raul says. Cackles.

“We’re not calling it that,” says Vardaman.

Moses blows wind hard through his closed lips. “We didn’t have anything to do with it,” he says.

“But they’d want to ask you about it,” Med says. “He might have said something you don’t even recognise as pertinent.”

“Listen to Cagney and fucking Lacey over here,” Raul says. Cackles. He’s loving every minute of this.

“That doesn’t even make snese,” says Med. “How can I be two women coppers? Is that the only women off TV you can think of?”

Raul cackles again and mutters under his breath, “Cagney and Lacey hahaha.”

 “We barely talked,” Moses says.

Med stops what she’s doing for a moment. “Why are you being weird?” she says.

“Hey, we just found out our friend died,” says Vardaman.

“He was your friend was he?” Alden says.

“Well, mate. Whatever. You know what I mean. It’s a shock,” says Vardaman.

“You weren’t all that shocked when Milo threw himself off the roof of Sainsbury’s,” Med says.

“That was different,” Vardaman says. “Kind of inevitable with Milo, poor sod.”

“And Milo never had anything you wanted,” Med says.

“No need for that,” Moses says. “Milo was a mate, and his death was a tragedy.” As perfunctory as perfunctory gets.

“Aaron the drug dealer, who everyone hated, was your friend,” Med says, that sarcastic smile at full mast. “And poor old Milo who never did anyone any harm, who made crap jokes and a couple of times pissed himself at the bar, he was just a mate.”

Moses and Vardaman both grow half-smiles at the memory of Milo pissing himself at the bar, but Med catches them. “You two are real wankers,” she says, and she goes down the other end to serve a customer.

“No idea why she’s comparing Milo to Aaron,” Alden says when Med’s out of earshot. “She’s right about the cops, though. They’re bound to want to talk to you.”

“Did you do it, boys?” Raul says. “Did you throw him off the bridge?”

Vardaman and Moses and Alden ignore him.

“Honestly, though,” Moses says, “There’s nothing he said or did last night that will shed any light on any of this.”

Vardaman puffs out his cheeks.

“I reckon he ratted to get out,” he says.

Alden looks at Moses. They all know they are on the precipice in this place, the very edge of the chasm of gossip and speculation that will create a reality for a short while until the facts are established. But tonight, the sport is decided upon: Aaron’s death.

“We don’t know anything,” Alden says, and he heads down the far end of the bar to serve.

Raul cackles again and necks the last three fingers of his pint. “I have to go across the road and see a man about a dog. Don’t get arrested before I come back and you tell me everything that happened.”

He stands there until the boys promise him they won’t get arrested, and then he says good and he says tatty bye, fuckheads, and marches off through the pub.

“Big coincidence, though,” Vardaman says now it’s just the two of them. “Aaron’s dead certain he’s going down, then he gets off at the last minute, and later that same day is found dead on the tracks. All fits. He gave up some names to get off and someone’s been sent over to do him.”

“Sent over?” Moses says.

Vardaman shrugs slightly. “He gets his gear from contacts in Bristol.”

“He told you that?” Moses says.

“Hersh told me. He knows about this kind of stuff.”

Hersh, the great conversationalist, a farmer who carries a bit of weight when it comes to this sort of thing ever since a fella’s body was found on his land, dumped and set fire to in an Austin Montego about five years before, hands tied to the steering wheel. He’s something of an expert on premeditated murders.

“We could do with him here,” Moses says.

“The Hersh brain,” says Vardaman.

Alden is back, but he’s acting strange, having his back to the boys and putting money in the till, but talking over his shoulder to them, closed, cloak and dagger. “Someone else looking for you,” he says. “She’s got copper written all over her. I told her you were in the toilets.”

Vardaman starts looking down the bottom end of the bar, which is the busiest part of the pub, people coming in and going no further for service than that bend.

“Who?” says Vardaman.

“Grey jacket,” says Alden. “Blonde. Big mouth.”

Moses is looking now too. Neither of them very inconspicuous.

“Did she say she was a copper? I can’t see her,” says Moses.

“I’ve just bought you a minute to decide if you want to talk to her or dip out,” Alden says, still with his back to them. “But you go out the front way this time or you’re fucking barred.”

“We are genuinely sorry we pushed ourselves up your back passage earlier, Alden,” Vardaman says.

“Twats,” Alden says. “I should just dob you in.”

They’re thinking about it. Vardaman is wide-eyed. He’s scared. He looks like that time he took too many eccies at Reading Festival and groaned for five hours that he was certain his penis was going to explode. Moses has dry mouth. He’s thinking over and over again that this is a bad weekend so far. One of the worst. They look at each other and they finally say something and they speak over one another. Moses says, “We should go.” And Vardaman says, “We should talk to her.” It’s like they’ve locked horns and for a few seconds neither of them move, and then they realise Alden is right there and he’s saying, ”Uh, boys…” and he’s gesturing with his eyes. The woman, the copper, she’s right next to them, waiting to be noticed. Moses and Vardaman both turn to her. She’s six inches shorter than Moses, who’s three inches short than Vardaman, and she has dirty blonde hair, and she does have a big mouth just like Alden said, and it’s smiling at them. “Hi boys,” she says. “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Samantha Waingard. Could we talk?”