The Dentist, page 18
When she saw him sitting alone in his office or leaving at the end of the day, looking like some Day-Glo advertisement for a council cycling safety course, she felt a terrible pang of guilt about the man. So she had no suitable response to Debbie, after she’d made the mistake of confiding her pity for Cross to her, when she asked if they could have him round for Sunday lunch. No good reason to say no. In fact she found herself, such was the effect this child had on her far too often, thinking why on earth hadn’t she thought of it in the first place?
‘I can’t,’ Cross had replied without even thinking.
‘Why not? It’s a week Sunday, not this one,’ she said.
‘I see my father, Raymond, on Sundays.’
‘I know who Raymond is. Bring him too.’
‘He doesn’t like going out.’
‘You take him out all the time. My kids want to meet you.’
‘He’s no good with children.’
‘Oh stop it now.’
‘What?’
‘That’s rubbish and you know it.’
‘It’s not rubbish.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Why would I lie?’
‘Because it’s you who doesn’t want to come.’
He was never quick enough in these social situations to maintain a pretence. The conversation was a little too fast for him to process. So he did what he always did, and just clammed up. Ottey recognised the tight-lipped expression; she’d seen it many times before. So she pressed on.
‘Which I think is a little rude.’
‘I have no intention of being rude,’ he said.
‘Well this is one of those situations where you think you’re not being rude, but in point of fact you are.’
‘Should I apologise?’ He asked.
‘No need. Just accept the invitation.’
‘No.’
He walked away and then wondered if that was rude. He had no idea, but it was one of those situations where it wasn’t how he’d said what he’d said so much as what he he’d said. He was unable to distinguish but knew he didn’t want to upset Ottey, so to make sure he hadn’t offended her he turned on his heels, went back to her and said.
‘Thank you.’
She wondered for a moment whether that was a change of mind and thereby an acceptance of the invitation before quickly realising it wasn’t. One thing she knew about her colleague was that once he’d set his mind on a course of action he would not be deterred from it.
This awkward moment reminded him that he had forgotten that he was trying to work on being more socially aware at work. Other things had been on his mind recently. He was aware that his time on the Leonard case was limited, in that Carson would only allow him a certain amount of slack before he reined him in, and this was a pressure which made him concentrate on getting to the bottom of it, more than worrying about how his behaviour was being perceived in the workplace.
He noticed Mackenzie working away at her computer. He hadn’t formed an opinion of her yet. He didn’t have enough data to make a fully-informed judgement, but he thought she was diligent and quite hard working. Virtues he appreciated. But he remembered what Ottey had said to him about making more of an effort with their new staff member; taking more of an interest in her and showing her some encouragement. He felt that now was probably the appropriate time for his planned gesture. That she’d been there long enough for it not to be interpreted, in any way, as inappropriate or too familiar.
So he made his way to the office kitchen and made two cups of coffee. Over the last couple of weeks he had observed and listened as Alice had made herself coffee, in preparation for this moment, and so knew how she liked it and, he thought, on balance, which mug she preferred. On the eighteen occasions he’d seen her perform this operation she’d used the ‘I am the office mug’ cup on three occasions, the blue patterned one on seven occasions and the Somerset and Avon police one eight times. He therefore chose the latter, despite the fact that he had to wash one up. He then walked through the open area and placed one of them on her desk.
‘Alice?’ he said.
She carried on working. Then he noticed the sound buds in her ear. Why did young people insist on listening to music while they worked? You could never get their attention from across the office, and how on earth were they able to concentrate?
‘Alice?’ he said again. She looked up.
‘Yes?’ she replied.
He indicated the cup he had put on her desk. ‘Coffee. Quite strong as is your preference, sweeteners rather than sugar and shortbreads instead of digestives.’ She looked at them, completely unsure how to react.
‘Um... thank you?’ she said.
He then rolled off a series of questions, almost robotically like a call centre worker going through a script and not really listening to the answers.
‘So how are you finding it here?’ He asked.
‘Good, um...’
‘Do you live locally?’
‘St Paul’s.’
‘Are you from Bristol?’
‘No, Camberley. Surrey.’
‘Graduate?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alma mater?’
‘UCL.’
‘Have you always wanted to join the police?’
‘Um...’
‘Interests, outside of work?’
But before she could answer, he was summoned by Ottey who had witnessed all of this.
‘Cross?’ she said.
‘Would you excuse me? I have to go,’ he said to Mackenzie, relieved that this ordeal was over though quite pleased with the way it had gone. He then walked past Ottey leaving a perplexed Mackenzie to wonder what just happened. Ottey followed him into his office.
‘Not too much?’ he asked.
‘No, no, not at all. A little too much interrogation perhaps, but the coffee was a nice touch,’ she said.
‘Good. Do you need something?’
‘No, no, rescue mission complete. I’ll be on my way.’
He watched her leave, thinking to himself that there were times when he simply didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
Perhaps it was a slight sense of self-satisfaction with his exercise in management with Alice that afternoon that prompted him to ask her to accompany him to the three major Jaguar dealerships in Bristol and Bath. This was, of course, in part because he wanted to be driven, but also because as she had done all the work, she’d be in possession of all the relevant information about them. They drove in silence, with Alice practising her new discipline of not speaking to him when he didn’t speak, and thereby maintain a modicum of self-respecting dignity. At the first dealership, the manager said they didn’t keep a log of damage to vehicles because it was such a rare occurrence. The second one had changed ownership ten years before, and no-one had worked there at the time of the murder. They did keep a log of damage but, frankly, it seemed a good idea at the time of the suggestion, but the log was virtually empty – new cars with trade plates were never driven great distances, which might explain it.
‘That was discouraging,’ she said.
‘On the contrary, if it rarely happens then surely someone would remember the amount of damage done to the car. Questions would be asked,’ Cross replied.
‘Unless whoever was driving it was the boss.’
‘Good point. But I still think it’s more helpful than not.’
The third garage was the biggest of the three, on the outskirts of Bath. Again they didn’t keep a log. They also didn’t log when the cars were driven or collected with trade plates and by whom. When asked why not, the duty manager asked what was the point? They didn’t log test drives, why would they log car collections? There had to be some paperwork, Cross presumed, from when the cars were collected. That was true. They did have paperwork, and they did have paperwork that went back to the date of the murder. But he’d only been there six years and if they wanted to speak to the owner they ‘d have to come back the following week when he’d be back from his holiday. He knew one thing for certain. If anyone had damaged a new car, Brendan, the boss, would’ve been rid of them immediately. He had an incredibly short temper. Cross picked up on this.
‘Is he not a good person to work for?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no, of course he is. I wouldn’t be here otherwise. But he’s a self-made man who’s achieved all this through hard graft rather than an education. You know what they’re like - as he’s more than happy to remind anyone who’ll listen,’ said the duty manager hastily.
‘Is there a large turnover of staff?’ Cross asked.
‘Not especially, it’s a good place to work. You get rewarded for good work and taken to task for bad.’
He pointed to a cheaply framed picture of an employee on the wall, a smartly dressed young woman with the caption: ‘Sales rep of 1st quarter 2018’. ‘See, do well, you get your picture on the wall, a £250 bonus and the use of Brendan’s Rolls on a weekend of your choice. Win the rep of the year and you get a week at his villa in Corfu. In the off-season, obviously.’ said the manager.
‘Has he always let people have the use of his car as a prize?’ asked Mackenzie.
‘I think so, yes.’
When they left in the car, Cross turned to Alice as she was reversing out of the car park and asked her if she thought her question had been relevant.
‘Who knows?’ she replied.
Which, to his mind, was exactly the right answer. You often had to act on your instinct, and he was also glad that she hadn’t fabricated a false reason for it.
‘I thought the same thing,’ he said, ‘briefly. Then I remembered the trade plates.’
‘Of course, that would seem to rule it out, thinking about it.’
Chapter 30
What Josie didn’t appreciate, or wasn’t aware of with Cross’ condition, was that it didn’t simply just make him awkward and reluctant to join in social situations outside of work. It meant that those situations actually caused him great anxiety. He didn’t go to the pub after work or at the successful conclusion of a case, not only because he didn’t drink alcohol – he found the effect confusing and frightening – but he couldn’t tolerate the noise of so many people talking and shouting over the music. Nor could he deal with so many speedy social interactions in such an environment. His choice not to participate was part of his survival strategy. Not just to avoid the stress that they inevitably invoked in him but also the upset he knew his behaviour would cause to others when it all became too much for him. Which it invariably did.
The prospect of having lunch with Josie and her children actually alarmed him. He knew that, at the best of times, children found him strange and were wary of him. People thought that he didn’t like children but this was far from the truth. They made excuses for him, saying that he didn’t understand them. On the contrary he found them easier to understand, much more so than adults. He liked their honesty and their straightforward view of life. Their ability to speak their minds. To say what they thought. It had something in common with his inability at times to do anything other than say what he thought, however inappropriate. The prospect of eating, sharing a meal, at a table with people other than Raymond genuinely terrified him. He knew he had an odd thing about food. He’d been told it was a form of OCD which had possibly been either instigated by or certainly exacerbated by his Asperger’s. Raymond referred to his eating habits as his “little peccadillos”. But it was more than that. It wasn’t just the way he needed the different foods on his plate not to touch, or the fact that prominent clashes of colour offended him – carrots and peas were a no-no. Most of all he couldn’t cope with the way others ate. Specifically the noise they made when eating. He found it intolerable. At times he found it difficult to eat noisy foods himself, unless he was on his own, lest it offended people around him. Children were, of course, the worst offenders. No fault of theirs, he knew that, but that didn’t make it any easier for him to tolerate. In the past he’d had to leave a table abruptly because it was either that or bursting out with an offensive plea to those at the table to stop making so much noise as they ate.
None of this information was he comfortable sharing with Ottey or anyone else. It was simpler easier to turn down any invitations to dinner or lunches and so avoid the possibility of any unpleasantness; which was why he had no intention of accepting her invitation to lunch.
He arrived at his father’s flat as usual that Thursday night with their Chinese takeaway. But Raymond wasn’t in the living room. He called out and heard a muffled greeting returned from upstairs. He went into the kitchen, put the food down then went through the weekly ritual of clearing away the newly-accumulated detritus from the table. He got plates and cutlery, checking carefully they were clean, and unpacked the food on the table. He called out again. No answer. He went into the hall.
‘Dad?’
‘Could you come up here and give me a hand?’ Raymond shouted from upstairs.
He navigated his way up the stairs, carefully avoiding the magazines and books piled on either side, as well as other miscellaneous, useless objects held onto, that “might come in useful one day”. Raymond was somewhere in the middle of the spare room, hidden by a vast pile of junk.
‘Dad?’
Raymond’s head popped up.
‘Hello son,’ he said.
What are you doing?’ asked Cross.
‘Here, can you take this? It’s in need of a little TLC.’
He passed over a tombstone shaped wooden object. George took it and turned it round. It was an ancient Bagatelle board, in terrible condition, dusty and rust-covered with several of the nails missing.
‘The food is getting cold.’ Cross complained.
‘Just a minute, I’m just looking for a tin of, oh, here it is.’
He emerged with an old tin in his hand and rattled it as if to prove the existence of something vital inside. His face was filthy and sweaty. He had obviously been looking for the board for some time.
They ate in customary silence. Cross was thinking about the case and hoping that Brendan Davies would have something of use to tell them the following week. He’d sent Mackenzie back to the first two garages to see if she could find any documentation for the delivery and acceptance of brand new red Jaguars, saloons, from fifteen years before. If she came up with nothing and Brendan was a blank, then he’d extend the search further down south into Somerset, north up to Cheltenham, west to Cardiff and east to Swindon. He was convinced the car was the most promising lead they had; the only one in fact.
He would also have MacDonald in again but wait till he had more information to arm himself against the inevitable flack that would come his way. Why had he lied about seeing Leonard? He thought of Badger and wondered what it felt like to be incarcerated for something you knew you hadn’t done. (Badger had become as clear as he could about the night in question and was now convinced, as was Cross, that he hadn’t killed his friend.) It troubled him that he was being put through all this when it was wrong. But what troubled him more was the fact that if he hadn’t solved Hilary’s case before Badger’s trial it was more than possible that he could be convicted of a crime he hadn’t committed.
After they’d finished eating Cross quickly cleared up. Raymond took advantage of the cleared table and put the bagatelle board on it. Cross remembered that years ago, as pub games went out of fashion – “the invasion of the Space Invaders” Raymond had called it – his father had travelled around the country collecting pub skittles, push halfp’ny boards and pub billiards. He tried selling them without success, until the arrival of ebay when he’d made quite a tidy little profit. The ones that had needed a little more work, like this Bagatelle board, had gradually become swamped in more recently acquired rubbish.
‘Why the sudden interest in Bagatelle?’ asked Cross.
‘It’s actually Parlour Bagatelle, smaller than the full version. I’m going to restore it,’ said Raymond.
‘Why?’
‘It’ll make a nice gift, don’t you think?’
‘For whom?’
‘I’ll take it apart, sand it down, re-varnish, replace the pins. It’ll be good as new. Should be ready by Sunday week with a little effort.’
‘Why Sunday week?’
‘For lunch. I’m giving it to Carla and Debbie.’
‘Carla and Debbie?’
‘Josie’s children.’
‘I’m well aware of who they are.’
‘I think they’ll love it, don’t you?’
Cross thought for a moment. How did she get hold of Raymond’s number? His personnel file of course - next of kin. But it was inconceivable that she would’ve gone behind his back and invited them to lunch through his father.
‘We’ll need to get a taxi,’ said Raymond.
‘We won’t need to do anything as we won’t be going,’ replied Cross.
Chapter 31
‘Might I have a word?’ Cross said, as politely as he could.
‘Sure, go ahead,’ replied Ottey.
But Cross was already on his way to his office. She got up and followed with a slight mischievous smile at his profound indignation.
‘You invited my father to lunch,’ he said.
‘I invited both of you actually,’ she replied.
‘But I had already said no.’
‘True.’
‘So why would you do that?’
‘Because I think it’d be nice.’
‘I don’t.’
‘Well, thank you.’
‘I told him we won’t be coming.’
‘I know, he’s already texted me.’
‘Good.’
‘He’s coming anyway.’
‘What?’ said Cross, appalled.
‘He wants to meet the girls and get to know me. He’s so sweet.’
