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  With that, a glint of hope twinkled in Ralph’s eye and he shut the door.

  8

  Most Saturday or Sunday afternoons, back when Ned was fourteen, his dad would pick him up from his mum’s house and take him to their local multiplex cinema to watch whatever the hell he wanted.

  PG, 18, heck, even a U certificate, if Ned wanted in, Ralph would flash the zombie-looking ushers his police identity wallet and get his under-over-aged son into the screenings.

  They’d buy a wheelie bin sized bucket of sweet popcorn (salted popcorn made Ned thirsty and after he’d quenched that thirst with a litre of full sugar coke, he’d need a pee, but that would’ve meant missing a part of the film, and the last thing Ned ever wanted to do was miss any part of any film), then sit in the dark on stiff, red velvet upholstered seats that smelt of onions and munch their way through two blissful hours of pure, unashamed entertainment.

  Ralph had a fondness for action-thrillers... anything that featured gun battles and car chases, where hard-edged cops, vigilantes or wronged folk would crack wise when dispelling justice, and a few rounds of ammunition, into a range of unsavoury bastards that clearly deserved their bloody endings.

  Back when Ned was fourteen, it was pretty much any film starring Bruce Willis, Liam Neeson or Harrison Ford. Prior to that, Ned would watch his dad’s favourite action stars; Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris, kick the living shite out of bad guys or blow them through walls with hand bazookas.

  Ned loved seeing his father’s eyes light up and tight lips curl into a smirk whenever Charlie took down half a city block of bad-ass gangsters or Chuck high-kicked sadistic soldiers in the face. It made him feel closer to his father... connected to him... a part of Ralph’s club.

  Ralph’s love for Death Wish, Die Hard, Missing in Action and Rambo had clearly rubbed off on Ned and gave him the impetus to become a wise-cracking, hard-edged, cardboard box knocking down maverick cop that gave his Captain hell, just like his father. Or at least that’s how Ned’s young eyes saw Ralph.

  Their weekly jaunts to the local multiplex were Ned’s favourite memories. Whenever he thought about Ralph, he thought about their time together, sat on those hard seats, munching stale popcorn, watching dirty vest Bruce crawling through air vents to rescue his big-haired wife from European terrorists and Alan “There will not be a four” Rickman.

  But, as with most things when it came to Ralph ‘The Knack’ Kramer, work got in the way and their weekly trips to the cinema gradually dissipated, until every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, Ned would sit in his bedroom looking out of the window, hoping his dad would pull up outside and take him on another celluloid adventure. He never did.

  Now he was stood in his father’s ‘garage’ of a kitchen, making three mugs of bastard strong tea and getting growled at by Dixon. Why that dog hated him so much was anyone’s guess, but Ned had a sneaky suspicion it was because he wasn’t that fond of her master.

  He looked nervously down at Dixon, her teeth snarling back at him, and tried to shoo her away with a flick of his head, but she stood her ground and almost barked. “Bloody dog!” he thought as he stirred the mugs of tea with the only clean spoon he could find on the draining board.

  While Ned played reluctant mother, Ralph sat with Matilda at the kitchen table and violently munched on an apple like he’d not eaten in a week. Matilda could feel her stomach churning as apple sap dribbled down his chin, but smiled through her disgust.

  “He was a good bloke, your old man.” Ralph said with a mouthful of chewed up apple. “He always kissed my arse and made damn fine coffee.”

  Matilda laughed fondly.

  Ralph then turned his attention towards Ned, as he ambled over to the table like a geriatric waiter, trying not to spill tea all over Dixon. “So,” he asked severely. “What about the beepy people? Have you spoken to them yet?”

  Ned plonked the three mugs down on the table and shot Ralph a withering look. “No, we haven’t spoken to the... beepy people.”

  Ralph bit into what remained of the browning apple. “Why not?”

  “Because this isn’t our case, Ralph.”

  He hated Ned calling him by his name. “Please, call me dad.”

  Ned replied with a sneer that could chill the bone. “We shouldn’t even be here. I should never have come.” He glanced at Matilda. “Sorry.”

  But Matilda wasn’t having any of it. She’d finally managed to talk Ned into visiting his father. She wasn’t going to blow all that hard work now. She pleaded her case. “Ned, please – your dad, he wants to help.” She looked to Ralph for reassurance. “Right?”

  “God, yeah,” he barked. “It’s either do this or Sodoku.” He looked sincerely at Ned. “I want to help.”

  Matilda then reminded him of what they had to look forward to if he walked away now. “Wet feet and earache, Ned.”

  Ned sighed. He didn’t know what to believe or do for the best anymore. All he knew was that it would’ve been futile to argue with Matilda, especially now that she had Ralph fighting her corner.

  He scraped up a chair and sat down at the table between Ralph and Matilda and took a sharp slurp of tea. He grimaced. He hated tea. He bellowed a sigh and looked at his father. “Then help.”

  Matilda rubbed Ned’s arm. Attaboy! Ralph slurped on his tea, shuddered at the foul taste of it and looked at his son. “Talk to the beepy metal detector people. Find out what they know.”

  “What’s the point?” asked Ned. “They’ve all got alibis.”

  Ralph couldn’t believe how naive his son was being and made no bones about letting him know this. “Big diddly whoop. I’m going to live for another ten years.” He looked at Matilda and winked. “See how easy that was?”

  She widened her big brown eyes. “You think they’re all lying?” Then she tried to give Ned a boost. “Ned thinks that too.”

  Ralph coughed a laugh and pointed towards something over Matilda’s shoulder. “In that drawer behind you there’s a roll of foil. You can use it to make him a badge if you like.”

  Matilda snorted. Then, she frowned. Was she starting to feel sorry for Ned?

  Before she could figure out what she was feeling, Ralph piped back in. “If you’re going to commit a murder, what’s the first thing you make sure you’ve got?”

  “An alibi?” she said.

  “What I think is iffy is that they’ve all got one for the night Liam was killed.” Ralph narrowed his eyes and glanced at Ned. “We could be looking at a ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ here.”

  “I’ve not read it.” said Matilda.

  “I saw the film once,” said Ned. “Well... a bit of it. Well...”

  “Because reading a book takes effort, doesn’t it?”

  Ned glanced at Ralph and could see the look of disappointment in his eyes. He wanted to tell him to go fu....

  “I don’t follow,” frowned Matilda, stealing his thunder.

  Ned sighed and then looked at her, but his remark was clearly aimed at Ralph. “He thinks I’m lazy.”

  “No, not lazy,” Ralph said sharply. “Just...” He stalled. He wanted to lie, but. “Yeah, okay... lazy.”

  But Ned wasn’t in the mood for home truths and snarled back at him. “What are you having a pop at me now for? If anyone should be having a pop around here, it’s me!”

  “Because all this, what you’re doing... What you want to do... Want to be.” He turned his eyes towards Matilda. “Crime-fighters! Detectives! It takes work.” He looked again at Ned. “It takes the life from you.”

  For the first time in a very long time, Ned could see the regret in his father’s eyes. It flooded over him like a wave and was about to flow into him, when Matilda threw up a dam.

  “That’s okay,” she smiled. “We don’t have lives.”

  Ralph slurped on his tea and shuddered. Ned was curious and looked at his father. “So you think they all did it?”

  “When did I say that?”

  “Just now!” he barked. “You said
,”

  “No, I never,”

  “You did. You... What – you getting forgetful now in your old age?”

  “Hey,” snapped Ralph. “I’ve forgotten more than you two know put together.”

  “Then you must have forgotten loads!” joked Matilda.

  But it was no laughing matter to Ralph. “I didn’t say they all did it. I said they could’ve. Whatever the truth, they know more than we do about what’s happened to this Liam kid, and we have a duty...” He stalled, suddenly remembering that he wasn’t a copper any more. “YOU have a duty to find out what it is.”

  Ralph leaned forwards, as if about to share a dark secret and whispered, “I think it’s about time we had a chat with this metal detector lot.” He gave Ned a withered look and said, “And whatever you do, don’t tell ‘em you’re a copper.”

  Although he’d hate to admit it, and never would admit it to his father, this was music to Ned’s ears. He’d longed for this moment ever since he’d seen Point Break. “What,” he salivated. “You mean... go undercover?”

  Ralph said nothing and stood up. His back cracked in twenty three different places. He clocked Ned glaring at him like a puppy waiting for a treat. He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, if you like. As long as there’s beer involved, I really don’t give a hoot.”

  Ned tried to hide his smirk of excitement, as Ralph ambled off to look for something amongst all his clutter. “Now, where the ruddy hell did I put that - contraption?”

  As Ralph clattered and bashed around the house, muttering incoherent profanities, Ned looked sheepishly at Matilda. “Sorry about all this. He’s... bonkers.”

  “I think he’s fab!” she beamed.

  Ned rolled his eyes. “You would.”

  “I think you think that too.”

  Ned couldn’t believe what he was hearing, even though he knew, deep down, what she was saying was true. Well... true-ish.

  “You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, Ned. I know you pretend to hate him, but you love him really.” Then she said something that really made him shiver... and doubt... and wonder if he’d been too harsh on his father. “And he loves you.”

  Before Ned could muster up any kind of a retort, Ralph crashed back into the kitchen like a wonky shopping trolley, carrying a prehistoric and extremely chunky METAL DETECTOR.

  “Found it!”

  Matilda and Ned couldn’t help but smile. Ralph admired his toy and smirked at his two apprentice crime-fighters.

  “Let’s go undercover.”

  1

  There was something very ‘The Slaughtered Lamb’ about The Black Bull Inn; an ‘oldie’ pub tucked away down the seedier end of Cutters Road.

  Ramblers from far and wide could have easily mistaken it for that eerie rural pub in ‘An America Werewolf in London’, what with its dank lighting, heavy wooden beams with rusting horse shoes precariously nailed into them, tatty cardboard coasters, toilets no-one dared go into alone, fox hunting wall art, bizarrely named guest ales; “Old Fart”, “Sink the Bismarck”, “Mind Robber”, “Peculiar Mist”, equally bizarre regulars that looked like they’d not moved from their sticky wooden stools since 1984, and prerequisite pin-pricked to buggery dart board and broken pool table. Not that that mattered because all the pool cues had been snapped years earlier by a bunch of STAR WARS obsessed kids that’d used them as light sabres and had never been replaced by Alvin, the tight-fisted, tight-buttoned landlord; although Gavin Phillips and his rat-arsed mates once potted a few balls using a metal garden rake and the wooden handle of a broken sweeping brush they’d found ditched in a yellow skip left outside Mary Hudson’s house on Centurion Avenue.

  Still, what the Black Bull lacked in pool cues and branded beverages, sure as hell made up for with friendly banter and dirty jokes. Well, just so long as you’d been sat on one of those sticky stools since 1984 and were born, raised and remained in Harbridge until the day you were buried in St Peter’s cemetery or cremated and scattered in the beer garden.

  Not that Alvin was a big fan of his so-called ‘friendly’ locals. They’d often ridicule him about his weight and legendary fondness for ‘Russell’s’ steak and stilton pies. “Hey, Jabba,” they’d giggle. “A pint of ‘Something Fishy’, cheers.”

  The only thing that stopped Alvin from booting these cheeky gits out of his pub, apart from the fact that he’d probably drop down dead if he made any sudden movements, was they all spent lots of pennies drinking beer that tasted like bin-bag juice and were banned from every other pub in town. They, like him, were prisoners.

  It was Wednesday evening, around eight, and the ‘Detectorists’ were all tucked up together in the far corner of the pub, a stone’s throw away from the dirty jokes and foul language that oozed from the bar.

  They met in The Bull every other week, but had no idea why they went there or what they were supposed to do once they did; other than drink iffy named beers and find something other than metal detecting to talk about. But as the iffily named beers entered their blood streams and the dry roasted peanuts made them thirst for more, their tight lips would loosen and conversations would flow, until all they could hear was babble.

  That night, they were all there. Well, apart from Liam, who was... well, dead. “ZZ” was there, drinking a flagon of Peculiar Mist and looking very much the Viking as the heavy based glass vanished into his hay bale beard every time he took a mighty swig. Every gesture “ZZ” made was mighty.

  Sat next to “ZZ” was Ronald; although ‘squeezed up against the wall next to “ZZ”, struggling to breathe’ would have been a more accurate description, sucking on dregs of Peculiar Mist.

  Perched on a stool at the other side of “ZZ” was Trevor. He was a young, happy-go-lucky type of fella the other’s called ‘Gossip’ for obvious reasons, whose mousey brown hair matched his mouse-like features. For years he’d been trying to grow a beard, but just looked like he’d been attacked with a hedgehog.

  Sat on the other side of the large square table were Linda and Dean, yawning their way through the sporadic banter and ale swigging.

  Dean, as usual, was glued to his mobile; ironically being anti-social as he perused social media, while Linda bounced their baby daughter, Molly-Jane, up and down on her knee and took an occasional sip of lukewarm Chardonnay from a water-stained wine glass.

  They may have all been chin-wagging about the price of train tickets and who’d watched what on Netflix, but beneath the laughter and friendly ridicules, they were all thinking about Liam.

  “Evening all,”

  They all turned to look. Stood over them was an elderly man whose face had vanished behind a charming smile. He clutched a pint of ‘Mind Robber’ in one hand and a clunky metal detector in the other. Lurking behind him like two mischievous toddlers were a younger man and woman in trainers and jeans. They also carried pints of ‘Mind Robber’ and smiled.

  “Jesus!” whispered Ned. He shot Ralph an ‘I can’t believe you just said that’ frown and sighed; had his father not seen Serpico? They were meant to be working undercover for God’s sake.

  Ralph deflated his smile and took a step closer towards the table. “Evening,” he said again politely.

  They all grumbled ‘hello’.

  “Can we help you?” said “ZZ” with a curious leer. “What do you want?”

  Ralph waved his clunky metal detector at them and smiled. “We want to join your beepy group!”

  Matilda couldn’t help but snort a giggle. Ned wanted the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

  Yet “ZZ” was clearly offended. “Beepy group?!” he barked. “We’re not a ‘beepy’ group. We’re DETECTORISTS.”

  “Sounds like a seventies cop show!” whispered Ned.

  Matilda smiled. “I prefer ‘beepy’ group. It sounds more... fun!”

  Before any of them could think of what to say next, Ralph suddenly tried to squeeze himself onto the edge of the bench next to a baffled “ZZ”. “C’mon, you,” he ordered. “Udgy budgy up, there’s a
good lad.”

  “What are you doing?” barked “ZZ” as he was forced to shuffle over to make space for Ralph and pressed poor Ronald’s already squashed body deeper into the stone wall.

  Ralph inched his way onto the bench and plonked his metal detector down on the table, almost knocking the array of pint pots flying.

  He glanced around the group.

  Was there a cold-blooded murderer sitting amongst them?

  Were they all involved in Liam’s grisly demise?

  Why want Liam killed?

  Who’d dunnit?

  Then Ralph saw Linda cradling Molly-Jane. “Aw,” he smiled. “What a gorgeous little baby.”

  “Thank you,” she said proudly.

  “What’s his name?”

  Linda smirked. “Molly-Jane,”

  “Odd name for a boy is that, innit?”

  Linda smiled and glanced at Dean to share in the joke, but he was lost to social media. Either that or he was intentionally ignoring the rude arrival of Ralph Kramer?

  “She’s beautiful,” continued Ralph. “Cherish her. Really do! Time goes by so ruddy fast. Before you know it,” he glanced at Ned. “They’re all grown up and gone.” His eyes shifted back to Linda’s. “Cherish her to bits.”

  “I will,” she smiled warmly. She looked at Dean. “We do. She’s our world.”

  Ralph looked at Dean and waited for him to reply, but he was too busy ‘Tweeting’.

  Dean then felt something sharp digging into his ribs. He looked down and saw it was Linda’s elbow. He looked up and saw her sneering back at him. “Isn’t she, love?”

  He had no idea what she was talking about. “Huh?”

  “Is this the proud father?” asked Ralph.

  Linda tore her sneer away from Dean and looked at Ralph, trying her best to turn the frown upside down. “Yeah, it is.”

  Dean felt another jab of elbow in his ribs and narrowed his eyes at Linda.

  “Honey,” she snarled. “Don’t be so rude.”