Denise Davison wife of Reg, eager-beaver sales manager of Wimbles Agri was watering the plants in the front bay window when the police car pulled into the street. She was filling the saucers under the cyclamen, being very careful not to wet the corms. As she watched the car go by she overflowed on to the windowsill, and as it turned round at the end of the cul-de-sac and began to creep back towards her she irrigated a Capo di Monte figurine of a shepherdess that Reg's parents had given them as a wedding present eighteen years earlier.
The police officer climbed out of the car, looked the front of the house up and down, and opened the gate. Mrs. Davison wiped her hands on the front of her dress and waited for his knock. She opened the door instantly.
"Yes?" she quavered.
"Sorry to trouble you, ma'am. Are you Mrs. Davison?"
"Yes."
"Ah, good." He introduced himself. "Could you tell me if Mr. Davison is at home?"
Her eyes opened wide in her pale face. "No. I mean… you mean …"
"Mean what, Mrs. Davison?"
"I thought… I thought you'd come to tell me… Perhaps you had better come in."
She led the young PC into the obsessively tidy sitting room and gestured towards the settee. He sank into it while she sat on an upright chair opposite him.
"Now, Mrs. Davison," he intoned, 'what is it you want to tell me?"
"Nothing," she whimpered. "I thought you'd come to tell me about Reg … Mr. Davison."
"Tell you what about him?"
"I don't know… That you'd found him…"
"No, Mrs. Davison. I'm just making routine enquiries of all owners of blue Volvos. You may have read about it in the papers. We're trying to trace one that was involved in a hit-and-run accident several weeks ago. I think you'd better start at the beginning. Why should we have found Mr. Davison?"
She looked confused. "He… he didn't come home last night," she stammered.
"I see. Has this ever happened before?"
"No. He often works away, he's a sales manager and has to stay overnight sometimes, but he always lets me know."
"Have you reported him missing?"
Mrs. Davison shook her head. "No. I thought he was doing it to hurt me. Things have been… strained between us these last few weeks."
"Strained? In what way?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "It's hard to say. He's seemed so touchy lately. It's his job; he has a lot of responsibility."
"I see." The PC was enjoying this. He was amazed how compassionate and responsible his own voice sounded, and Mrs. Davison did have rather shapely legs. "When did you last see your husband?" he continued.
"Yesterday morning. Tuesdays I have an evening class in word processing I have a part-time secretarial job but I'd like to try for something a bit more permanent. I left Reg a meal ready to warm in the microwave, like I usually do, but he never came home for it."
"What frame of mind was he in when you saw him last?"
"Annoyed. We were arguing. He stormed out in a mood."
"Right. Well, my guess is that he's just cooling down somewhere and will come back when he's ready. You can formally report him as missing, but I have to tell you that the police will take little action. I'm afraid the law regards it as a person's privilege to go wandering off if they so wish. As there is no suspicion of a crime, our hands are tied."
"I expect you're right," she sniffed.
"I'm sure he'll back soon," he added comfortingly, as he watched her uncross her legs. "Now, about the car. I presume your husband does still own a blue Volvo?"
"Yes, well, it's the company's."
"I see. And he's taken it with him?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Does he normally keep it in the garage?"
"No, out on the drive."
"Right. In that case I will have to call back in a few days to see Mr.
Davison, presuming he returns home." And if he hadn't? Well, in that case she'd need a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, wouldn't she? He'd always fancied older women.
The PC got to his feet and started towards the door. He was hoping that he would be offered a cup of tea, but perhaps the circumstances were too fraught for that. Next time, perhaps. He hesitated, trying to second-guess the sergeant he would have to answer to when he returned to the station after a fruitless mission.
"Have you checked to see if the car is in the garage, Mrs. Davison?" he asked, after a rare burst of inspiration.
"Why, no."
"In that case, do you mind if I have a look now?"
"If you insist, but I can't imagine Reg putting it away and then going off somewhere he drives everywhere." She took a key from a hook just inside the kitchen door and handed it to him. "This fits the side door. Just leave it in the lock when you've finished."
The side door to the garage evidently wasn't used much. It was seized with paint, and some gardening tools were leaning on the inside of it.
He pushed and the tools fell over as the door creaked open and the evening sunlight spilled in.
The blue Volvo was there. So too was Reg Davison. He was hanging from a roof joist by a length of electric flex. It had bitten so deep into his flabby neck that the skin had met around it. There could be no doubting his determination when he'd kicked the buffet from under himself, but he'd soon changed his mind as the wire cut into his throat. The boot of the Volvo bore the scratches his flailing feet had made as he desperately tried to get them back on something solid.
Our valiant PC looked at the grotesque face, like a fermenting pumpkin, and was promptly sick in the corner. It would come to visit him many times in the next few months. He relocked the garage door and walked slowly to his car, wiping his mouth. After radioing for assistance he sat quietly for a few moments, composing himself and a short speech to the long-legged Mrs. Davison, informing her that she was now eligible for a widow's pension.
Inspector Peterson's parents, May and Joe, had been desperate to give their first born a name to remember. Something with style. A few days before the birth they saw Citizen Kane at the Tivoli and decided on Orson. He grew up hating the name. Throughout his school years he was known to children and teachers alike as Orson Cart. In 1962 the musical genius he shared a surname with came to town and someone accidentally called him Oscar. He made no attempt to correct them and it just grew from there. His wife, Dilys, had thought this was his name until two days before their wedding, when he realised that a before-the-altar revelation might be his undoing. Even so, he distinctly heard gasps of surprise from his friends in the pews behind as the vicar addressed him.
None of the detectives he was now deep in a brainstorming session with knew his secret. The warbling of the internal phone interrupted them and a DC answered it.
"Yes, sir." He pulled a face, pointed upwards with his index finger and passed the instrument to Peterson.
"Yes, sir, right now." Peterson put the phone back in its cradle.
"Excuse me, gentlemen, but the Screaming Skull wants me to go up and check if his parting's straight."
A minute later he knocked on the door of Chief Superintendent Tollis's office and went in.
"Come in, Peterson, and sit down. This won't take a minute. First of all, any new developments in the Reverend Conway case?"
"No sir, not since our morning meeting."
The morning meeting had concluded less than an hour earlier, so the chances of further revelations were slim.
"Quite. Right then, let me show you what I received in today's mail."
The Superintendent picked up a large manila envelope and drew its contents out on to the top of his desk. There were three large cuttings from newspapers. One described the death of the Reverend Gerry Wilde, who had fallen down his church tower; the next told of the brutal murder of Father Harcourt; and the third was a front-page splash from a tabloid describing the last moments of the Reverend Conway.
"Obviously some crank, cashing in on other people's misfortunes," stated the Superintendent. "Can't think why he's sent them to me, though."
Maybe it's because you've let all the press know that you're the officer in charge, thought Peterson. He didn't dwell on the thought.
He would have been delighted to hand over this investigation to anybody who wanted it. He could see his retirement date slipping away, like a pair of taillights receding into the motorway fog. This was going to be a big one, and he needed it like the Super needed a comb.
He sat there, transfixed by the three cuttings. Neatly pinned in the top left-hand corner of each was a picture of a mushroom, similar to the one found in the Reverend Conway's top pocket.
"No, sir," he said eventually. "It's not a crank. We've got a fuckin' loony on the loose."
Up to then the investigation into the murder of Ronald Conway had been a parochial affair. Everybody who'd known him was in the process of being interviewed. Detectives were knocking on doors, working outwards from the vicarage in an ever-widening circle. Questions were being asked and people encouraged to gossip. There was plenty of gossip about Reverend Conway.
Enquiries with Criminal Records showed that he'd received a caution for an unspecified sexual assault when he was seventeen.
"I don't believe any of the dirt that's coming up about him," asserted DI Peterson in one of the morning meetings. "It's all hearsay. OK, so maybe he flashed in the park when he was a kid. That doesn't mean anything. From then on it's been handed down, following him around like a starving dog. If he'd been a member of some paedophile group, or into SM, we'd have found out about it by now. All the evidence is that he was a decent, devout, happily married bloke. It's not the angle we're looking for."
"I'm not so sure, Peterson," stated the Superintendent. "The leopard can't change its spots. That sexual offence must show what type of man he is."
"With respect, sir, there are only two types of men."
Eight pairs of eyebrows shot up. The Super's went so high they'd have vanished into his hairline, if he'd had one.
"Wankers and liars," the DI explained.
Now the murder was linked with the other deaths the scope of the enquiry widened. Peterson visited Norfolk and obtained the relevant files. The evidence that Father Harcourt was knocked off his bike by Reg Davison was fairly conclusive. The jack in his car boot had almost certainly been used to finish the priest off. To Reg, the archetypal salesman, appearance was everything. He'd topped himself because the hopelessness of his situation, and the disgrace that would follow, were more than he could bear. Gerry Wilde could have fallen down his tower accidentally, but he could have been pushed. It didn't make sense, but murder often doesn't.
There was still a mood of discontent in certain branches of the Church of England over the ordination of women priests, but they hadn't resorted to terrorism yet. And investigations showed that Conway was in favour of them, Wilde almost certainly against. Any Roman Catholic movements in that direction were invariably aborted immediately after conception.
Possible unification of the C of E and RC churches raised emotions to a level that were completely beyond Peterson's grasp. He sent a lone officer down this avenue, as he did with the sexual and anti-women theories. The bulk of his team were dedicated to following the hypothesis dictated by the feeling in his bile ducts: that they were looking for a loony; a loony with a mission.
"Take a look at this, guy," said one of the DCs when Peterson arrived back in his office. He placed a large but slim hardback book in front of the Inspector. It was called Mushrooms and Toadstools, by Jacqueline Seymour. When Peterson had read the title the constable flicked the book open to page five. In a corner was a colour picture identical to one of those sent to Superintendent Tollis.
"See what it's called." He ran his finger down the text until it was under the name.
"Good God," muttered Peterson. He riffled through the pages of the book and said: "Is this yours, Trevor?"
"Yes, guy. Well, my daughter's."
"Are any of the other pictures in here?"
"No. I've had another look at them and reckon they're three different pictures of the same type of mushroom. Or toadstool, to be precise it's poisonous."
"Mmmm. I'm not surprised, with a name like that. So he must have cut the pictures from three different books."
"It looks like it."
"And where would be the best place to do that?"
"The library?"
"Just what I'm thinking. Get your coat; let's educate ourselves in matters fungoid."
They intended walking the quarter of a mile to the library, as they knew it would be difficult to park nearby, but it had started to rain.
Fortunately a police car came into the yard at the opportune moment, so Peterson hijacked it and had the driver take them there.
The library was a purpose-designed building, constructed when the town centre was redesigned about fifteen years previously. It was airy and pleasant, and well used by all sections of the community. The Inspector was surprised to see shelves and racks filled with videos and CDs, as well as books. It was a long time since he'd had the time to visit a library.
"First," he said to DC Trevor Wilson, 'let's just see how many books we can find on fungi."
They located one each, in the section marked Natural History. A short while later DC Wilson found another on a shelf for books that were oversize the ones filled with glossy photographs and normally described as Coffee Table, because they cost about as much as one. All three were intact no pictures had been cut from them. They asked an assistant if they could see the chief librarian.
She disappeared through a door marked Staff and came back a few seconds later with a tubby little man wearing rimless spectacles and a blue suit.
The two detectives produced their ID cards. "This is Detective Constable Wilson and I'm Detective Inspector Peterson. You are…?"
"Oh, goodness me. I'm Mr. Treadwell. This is most unusual. Er, what exactly can I do for you, gentlemen?"
"First of all, could we sit down somewhere, sir?"
"Oh, yes, of course. You'd better come through into my office."
Treadwell's office was small but surprisingly lacking in clutter. There were two desks: one obviously for a typist, who wasn't there, and the other presumably his. On it were two silver frames containing family portraits. Peterson noted that Treadwell was the proud husband of Khrushchev's widow and father of two gnomes.
Maybe he just has the pictures there to warn him to keep his hands off the typist, he thought, sitting in her chair and swivelling it to face inwards. DC Wilson perched on a corner of her desk and wondered what she looked like.
"We won't keep you long, Mr. Treadwell," Peterson began. "First of all, do we call you chief librarian?"
"Oh, no. I'm a group librarian. I'm head of this group. That's this library and seven branches." He listed several local small towns.
"I see. Now, we have a problem, and we're wondering if you will be able to help us with it."
"Oh, well, if I possibly can, Inspector." He relaxed, now that he knew that they were here to call on his expertise, and not to relay some trouble at home or with the staff. "What exactly is it you want to know?"
The Inspector spread the three books on the desk. "Somebody," he stated, 'is going round cutting photos of mushrooms from books like these, presumably borrowed from libraries. We need to catch that person, fast. Is there any way we can circulate a message to all librarians?"
"Goodness gracious, this is good news!" Treadwell said. "You'd never believe the amount of malicious damage that people do to them. I sometimes wonder what the world is coming to. And it's not just the youngsters, you know. Why, sometimes ' "Ah!" interrupted Peterson. "I think I may have misled you. Serious as the vandalising of books might be, that's not our principal interest in this character. He also has a nice sideline in murdering people.
That's why we'd like to meet him, but you can have him after us."
"M-m-murdering people!" stammered Treadwell, immediately assuming that 'people' meant group librarians.
"Well, just one person that we're certain of, and so far it's just a theory we're exploring." Peterson thought that perhaps he had been too blunt with the nervous Mr. Treadwell, but then he glimpsed the family photos and decided that the man was made of sterner stuff. He went on:
"So, is there any way in which I can circulate every library in the country and ask them if they can check their books on fungi for missing pages?"
Treadwell looked perplexed. "No, not from here," he replied. "I could only circulate my group. You'd have to contact every group individually."
"What about head office, sir? There must be a libraries HQ somewhere."
"Well, yes. There's the Library Association."
"The Library Association? Where do they hang out?"
"London, Ridgmount Street."
"Who's in charge there?"
"Er, the chief executive."
"That sounds rather grand. Is he a figurehead or does he work for a living?"
"Oh no," asserted Treadwell. "He's a librarian, come up through the ranks."
"He'll do then. Have you his number, please?"
Treadwell, having a tidy mind, knew exactly where to find it.
"Do you mind if I use your phone, Mr. Treadwell?" asked the Inspector, adding: "You can always invoice us for the charge, if you wish."
Treadwell, fascinated, gave his gushing consent. He didn't mind if they conducted the entire enquiry from his office. What a story he'd have to tell Edwina and the boys when he arrived home.
After several transfers, the Inspector found himself addressing Olga Friedland, Chief Executive of the Library Association. He introduced himself, confessing to being called Oscar, and made a daring joke about their names. Treadwell listened open-mouthed as this coarse copper flirted with someone he'd never spoken to in thirty years of service flHl HI and regarded as remote as royalty.
Peterson told her how helpful Mr. Treadwell had been, but how, unfortunately, his powers were limited. He outlined what he would like to do. Ms Friedland informed him that each of the one hundred and sixty-seven local authorities ran its library service independently.
She could provide him with address labels for all their chief librarians. Alternatively he could have access to the full list of twenty-five thousand members.
Peterson thought for a moment. "This is an enquiry into a very serious crime, Olga," he told her. "I want to act as quickly as possible. If I get a letter to you, would it be possible for you to circulate it to the hundred-and-sixty-odd head librarians and then invoice the police for your costs?" This time he meant it about the charges.
Treadwell attracted his attention. "You can fax it in from here," he hissed.
"Mr. Treadwell has kindly suggested we fax a letter to you from here,"
Peterson said. He listened for a few seconds, then added: "That's very obliging of you, Olga. We'll have it with you as soon as possible."
"What a pleasant woman," he declared, replacing the receiver.
"Er, yes, er, Olga is, er, very pleasant," replied Treadwell, who had never realised that O. Friedland, his chief executive, was, in fact, a woman.
"Right, Mr. Treadwell," said the Inspector. "If you could possibly loan us a pad and put up with us for a few more minutes, we'll draft a letter."
"Yes, yes, right away, be my guests," he replied, producing a brand-new A4 pad from a drawer and handing it to Peterson. The Inspector passed it straight over to DC Wilson and stood up.
"Sit here, Trevor, and earn your keep," he said.
Treadwell realised that he was no longer wanted. "Well, gentlemen," he said. "I've got things to do, so I'll leave you to it, if you don't mind."
"Thanks for your help, sir. We'll only be five minutes," Peterson told him. He was a great believer in charm when he didn't have the authority to kick butts. He sat quietly in the chair vacated by Treadwell while the DC exercised his literary skills, and resisted the temptation to turn the two photographs to the wall.
"How about that, guy?" asked Wilson, after a while, handing the pad back. After the introductions the message read:
Will all librarians check, as soon as possible, any books they hold on the subject of fungi (i.e. mushrooms and toadstools) to see if any pages or photographs have been removed. If you find any such books will you please report this information to Detective Inspector Oscar Peterson at… It finished with the words:
This is an enquiry into a serious crime, so will you therefore treat this and any other information with the utmost confidentiality.
"It'll do," said Peterson, after crossing out the Oscar. He didn't want anybody thinking it was a practical joke. DC Wilson smiled with satisfaction that was the deliberate mistake he'd included.
Treadwell came back and agreed to type it and fax it to Olga. He smiled at the thought of adding a conspiratorial covering note of his own. Peterson said he'd call in tomorrow to pick up a copy, but really he just wanted to make sure it had been forwarded.
When they'd gone, the Group Librarian set to work on the word processor, secretly pleased that the typist had taken the day off. He wasn't happy with the letter and felt that the Inspector should have written it himself, instead of delegating it to a junior officer. That was something he would never have done. He studied the finished document on the screen, but couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong with it.
He ran off a copy and studied it some more. Then he realised where the error was. He tore the sheet into shreds and dropped them into the bin. Turning back to the screen he rattled his fingers expertly over the keyboard for a few seconds and examined the result. After Peterson's address and telephone number he'd added the words: 'or your nearest police station'.
That was better. Now it looked professional. He tapped the keys again and the printer zipped away at another copy.