Look Through Any Window (Bring Out Your Dead series - Part 50)

Continued from Episode 49 - 'Pick Up The Pieces'

The story so far (you can read from the start at 'Episode 1 - Board Stiff!'):  Josiah and Archibald, our two Undertakers, have been on a mission to Spain to collect the mortal remains of Sir Lewisham Carnock.  Now all our characters are in situ, ready for a quick departure, all should be well but, unfortunately, there's been a development in the form of a 'neat little man' knocking on Amber's passenger window:

 

“Can I help you at all?”  Amber asked, with a sense of foreboding.

“You may recall, we met back in Santander?” The neat little man suggested, timidly.

“Yes, of course” Amber nodded and smiled, weakly.

“Only, I saw the hearse just now and I wondered if everything was alright with your friend?”

“Oh yes, he’s erm…fine” Amber frowned, “the hearse is nothing to do with him”

“Oh, that’s good!”  The neat little man beamed, “I was only saying to Deirdre, wasn’t I Deirdre?” He turned for confirmation to the neat little woman, standing in the same, apologetic manner, just behind him, “I said, ‘I hope that hearse doesn’t mean something unfortunate happened to that young man that I saw’ I said that, didn’t I Deirdre?”

“You did, Eric” Deirdre confirmed.

“I thought, I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t ask and make sure” Eric nodded.

“It was good of you to be concerned, but there’s nothing to worry about” Amber smiled, and then, with a touch of inspiration, “in fact, he’s driving that hearse!  Must be going, lovely to talk, bye!”  She rapidly closed the window and said to Josiah, “Can we get going, please?”

“Indeed, we should be pressing on” Josiah nodded and eased the limousine away to follow the hearse.

Eric frowned as he watched the cortege glide out of the car park, “That’s not right!” He muttered to himself.

“What’s not right, dear?” Deirdre looked at her husband with concern.

“That chap, driving the hearse.  He’s not the person I saw, he’s the one who was manhandling him with her!”  Eric scratched his head and wandered along behind the slowly departing limousine.

Just then, a car horn blasted right behind him, causing him to jump several feet into the air.

“Can you get out of the way please, sir?” A harsh voice yelled.

“What?”  Eric spun around to see a tiny blue car, impatiently revving its engine at his heels.

“Police business, sir, can you move out of the way?”  D.I. Wood thrust his warrant card out of the window.

“Police?  Oh, you’re just the people I need to talk to!”  Eric said, with relief.

“Not us, sir.  You need to talk to your local constabulary if you have a problem” D.I. Wood shook his head and began rapidly winding the window back up.

“No, no, this concerns you!” Eric insisted, knocking frantically on the closing window “it’s to do with that ship we’ve just come from.”  He yelled, pointing at the docked ferry, “You see, there was someone unconscious and they were putting him in a van!”

D.I. Wood wound the window back down again, slowly.

“What did you say, sir?”

“You see that lady in that limousine and the chap driving the hearse?"

"Yes, sir" D.I. Wood responded, tersely.

"Well, back in Santander they had this person who was unconscious and they were trying to get him out of a car and put him in a bright yellow van” Eric explained, in a rush, “I thought it was a bit odd, at the time, but she said he’d been drinking, because he didn’t like sailing, and he’d overdone it”

“And you were concerned because…?”  D.I. Wood asked, cautiously.

“Well, you see, I couldn’t get it off my mind, could I Deirdre?”

“He hardly slept a wink!” Deirdre confirmed, mournfully.

“So, when I saw her just, I thought I’ve got to ask if her friend is alright, and she said yes and that he was the one driving the hearse, but that doesn’t make sense because it’s not the same man!”  Eric looked even more concerned, if that was possible.

“Oh, flaming hell!” D.I. Wood groaned, “get your notebook out, Stoney, it looks like we’re going to have to take a statement”

* * * *

“Well, we’re on the road at last, eh Archie?” Chantelle grinned at her companion.

Archibald nodded and kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead.

“Lovely vehicles these, aren’t they?” Chantelle persisted in her attempt to kick-start a conversation.

“They’re alright” Archibald shrugged.

Chantelle took a deep breath and drummed her fingers on the dashboard.

“I imagine this funeral will be a rather grand affair, eh?”  She tried again.

“Dunno!” Archibald contributed.

“And we get to meet a real-life member of the aristocracy, Lady Lewisham!”

“I won’t, not if I can avoid it” Archibald said, grimly.

“Why ever not?”

“I keep away from widows” Archibald stated.

“You can’t imagine they’ve all got designs on you?” Chantelle spluttered.

“Nah, it’s not that” Archibald shook his head, “it’s more what you can catch off them”

“Catch off them?  What, you mean widows?”

“Oh yeah” Archibald nodded and looked at her with a serious expression.

“Such as?”

“Parasites”

“Parasites!  Why would you ever think that Lady Lewisham would be host to parasites?”

“Mites!” Archibald stated, flatly.

“Mites?”  Chantelle looked at him in disbelief.

“Nasty little things, burrow into your skin, I don’t want none of them, thank you very much!”  Archibald said with finality.

“Mites?” Chantelle frowned and shook her head, and then a thought struck her, “Hang on, you mean you’ve heard about the ‘widow’s mite’, is that what you’re talking about, Archibald?”  She ventured, with a grin.

“Yeah, that’s it!” Archibald nodded, “you don’t want to get none of them, now do you?”

“I imagine not” Chantelle turned away so that her companion couldn’t see her shoulders heaving with laughter.

* * * *

 

“That was a rather odd conversation, Mrs. Hamble?” Josiah ventured as they headed out of Portsmouth.

“Yes, he’s a rather odd person” Amber laughed, “Your colleague and I met him in the car park at Santander”

“Who was it that he was so concerned about?”

“I don’t know” Amber lied and blushed slightly.

“Only, you seemed to imply that it was Archibald” Josiah pointed out.

“Oh, that was just to get rid of him, I couldn’t think what he was talking about”

“Very strange!” Josiah shook his head and frowned.

“My father used to say ‘they’re not all locked up, yet!’” Amber glared at Lawrence, who had looked as if he was about to join in the conversation.

“He may well have had a point” Josiah nodded.

* * * *

 

Back in the car park of the Port Terminal, D.I. Wood was pacing around, deep in conversation on his ‘phone.  D.S. Stone, still in the driver’s seat, was leafing through his notebook.

“Right, Stoney!” D.I. Wood announced, as he prised himself back into the passenger seat.

“Did you speak to the boss then, sir?”

“Eventually, when he’d calmed down a bit” D.I. Wood parked a cigarette between his lips, lit it and took a deep drag, “Now he’s heard it all, he agrees with me, we’ve got reasonable grounds” he said, exhaling with satisfaction and filling the tiny car with smoke.

“Erm, you do know you’re not supposed to do that in a work vehicle, sir?” D.S. Stone ventured, but, silenced by an evil glare from his superior, decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and changed the subject. “So, can we get a look inside that coffin now, do you think?”  He asked, between coughs.

“Ah no, the gaffer’s not keen on that” D.I. Wood shook his head, “he doesn’t want to upset the toffs.  But he says we can follow them, seeing as how it’s on our way home anyway.”

D.S. Stone looked puzzled.

“He’s told me where they’re going!” D.I. Wood grinned, “This funeral, it’s going to be at Merkin-Under-Heathwood crem.  He’s got an invite, him and the Chief Constable!  The beauty of it is, that it’s right on our doorstep!”

“Oh well, that’s easy enough” D.S. Stone looked relieved, “I hadn’t much fancied trying to track them down, not now they’ve got so far ahead of us”

“Well, he still wants us to be on their arse” D.I. Wood took another drag, “’cause we don’t know what they might get up to on the way, now do we?”

D.S. Stone started the engine, again, with some difficulty, and eased out into the traffic.

“What did you make of what that bloke said, sir?” He asked.

“Bloody odd, wasn’t it?”  D.I. Wood prised a tobacco remnant from his lip and inspected it, critically, “Still, at least it gave me something to tell the Governor” He said, cheerfully, flicking the remnant onto the floor, “Somebody hauling, what he reckoned was an unconscious body around, is pretty good grounds for investigation.”  He took another drag on his cigarette, “Just as well,” He reflected, “cause without that, we would have been right up whatsit creek without adequate means of propulsion”

“What I don’t understand is why Lurch and that hysterical woman would have been messing about with somebody who’s out of it, in the first place!”  D.S. Stone shook his head.

“Well, yeah, if he’s telling the truth” D.I. Wood nodded, “I agree, it don’t make no sense.  Unless…”  He shifted in his seat to face the Sergeant, “let’s say that it wasn’t some drunk, what if it was the body that should have been in the coffin and they’d got something else in the coffin and needed him out of the way until they’d shifted it” He mused.

“What, you mean you think she’d got the corpse in her car?”  D.S. Stone looked puzzled.

“Could be, couldn’t it?”  D.I. Wood shrugged, “she's got form, she was the one with a corpse in her room!  Still, your guess is as good as mine.  All we know is that the coffin’s definitely got a body in it now and we’ve got to make sure it stays that way, so let’s get a shift on Stoney and see if we can catch them on the motorway”

“I’m not hopeful, not in this, sir” D.S. Stone replied, gloomily.

“Nil desperandum, Stoney,” D.I. Wood boomed, patting his colleague on the shoulder, forcefully, “Onward, and don’t spare the horses!” He pointed, dramatically, toward the windscreen, “let’s get the bastards, every mother’s son!”

Now read Part 51