"Morning, Sir. Have a good weekend?" Detective Sergeant James Hathaway was unusually cheery for a Monday.
He drew a suspicious glare from his superior officer, Detective Inspector Robert Lewis.
"Why?"
"No offense intended, just trying to be friendly."
"It was alright. Watched too much football on the box. Didn't get much done. No injuries, no natural disasters, no telegrams bringing bad news, so I suppose it was a good weekend."
"Do people still send telegrams? I should think they'd be extinct by now."
"I'm surprised a youngster like you has even heard of them. Do you also know what a typewriter is?"
"I do indeed. But I'm pretty well-read in history."
Lewis just rolled his eyes.
"Oh, Inspector Lewis." Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent popped her head around the corner.
"Ma'am?" Sinking feeling. She obviously wanted something.
"This Thursday night, is your diary clear?"
"Thursday? I'll have to check." He stared off into space for a half second. "You're lucky. It just so happens I'm not doing anything." He glared at Hathaway's snort.
"Oh, good. I've been invited to the Lord Mayor's party that night and I absolutely cannot go unescorted. Mister Innocent has been called out of town unexpectedly and won't be returning until very late Thursday night." She smiled benignly.
He was already shaking his head. "Oh, no. Don't look at me. I'm hopeless at anything involving people with titles. I wouldn't know what to say to the Lord Mayor."
"Don't be silly, Lewis. There will be at least a hundred people there. You probably won't even meet the Lord Mayor personally. But it's imperative that I make an appearance there. And it would be helpful if you did the driving."
"What, drive my humble Vauxhall to the Lord Mayor's party?"
"Of course not. We'll be using my husband's Aston Martin."
Hathaway could see Lewis's eyes widen and his nostrils flare slightly. That is actually an incentive for him.
"Not your Volvo?'
"Certainly not. The seats are covered in dog hair."
"Ah."
"Great then, seven o'clock Thursday." She swirled out the door, but then stopped and turned back for a moment. "Oh, and it's black tie."
"Ma'am, black tie?" A particularly pained expression.
"Do you have a problem with that, Lewis? You do have a dinner jacket, don't you?"
He looked a bit shamed. "No, Ma'am, I don't. Er, not one that fits me." He tried to conceal his hope that this would get him out of it.
She gave him an exasperated glare. "Fine. Come." The last was an indisputable command. She turned and left the office.
Lewis scrambled up after her. "Ma'am? Where are we going?"
"We are going, Lewis, to Mister Innocent's bespoke tailor. You're getting a proper tuxedo."
"Ma'am, I can hardly afford --"
"I'll pay for it, Lewis, don't worry about that. I need you to look good for this."
Behind her back, Lewis managed a serious grimace. "Good luck with that project, Ma'am."
He was back at the office shortly after lunchtime. Hathaway assumed the tone of nosy concern that Lewis found detestable and, at the same time, hard to resist.
"So, how did it go?"
"How did what go, Sergeant?"
"Your fitting. What does your new tux look like?"
"It's black, okay? Like every other tux. Innocent and the tailor ran around holding bolts of fabric up to me and I just stood there and let him put his hands all over me in unspeakable places while she watched. It was damned unnerving."
"It wouldn't bother you if you'd had your suits made since you were old enough to wear them."
Lewis appraised his sergeant's attitude. "Well, I haven't. And I'm glad I haven't, come to that. It's not something I care to get used to."
But Lewis didn't have much time to stew about it. Not long after, they were called to a crime scene. A body had been found at a scrap yard.
They arrived in a spray of gravel, the SOCOs crew looking up, startled, as Lewis brought the Vauxhall to a skidding stop.
"Sir? Is there some reason we're stunt drivers today?"
"I'm practicing for the Aston Martin. You have a problem with it?"
"No, I'm fine."
"Hathaway?"
"What?"
"You can let go of the dash now."
They approached the taped-off crime scene, and the pathologist, Doctor Laura Hobson, met them halfway. She did a quick check to gauge the mood between the two. Not all is well. But she couldn't quite tell what was amiss.
"Your victim is Samuel Ferris, apparently the owner of this scrap yard. He has been strangled, probably with bare hands, sometime between six and ten last night. Sorry I can't be more precise at the moment." She checked the mood again, and continued.
"It looks like he struggled a bit, but his assailant overpowered him." She pointed out the signs.
While Lewis examined the contents of the man's wallet, Hathaway slunk up to Hobson, a smirky smile on his face.
"James. What naughtiness are you up to?"
He kept his voice low. "I thought you'd like to know. Inspector Lewis is taking the place of Mister Innocent at a fancy do later this week."
"Is he? I'll bet he's looking forward to that."
"No doubt. Fierce competition, that Mister Innocent."
"What are you two whispering about?" Lewis was trying not to look annoyed.
Laura couldn't hide her smile.
"Hathaway tells me you're representing Mister Innocent at a social soirée. How do you play an imaginary man?"
"He's not imaginary, he's just . . . I dunno. Busy."
Hathaway snickered. Hobson chuckled.
"What?" Lewis was losing his patience.
"Nothing." Hobson wiped her face blank.
"Nothing." Hathaway looked absolutely cherubic.
"Riiiiiight."
By half past four they were done at the site. Hathaway collected the computer, which appeared to be the storage device for the CCTV, and they headed off to the address they had identified as Ferris's home. Lewis drove quietly; the bad news he was bearing weighed on him, as it always did.
Julia Ferris took the news hard, crying copiously and loudly. She was almost pretty, Lewis thought, but had a bit too much of a harshness he found disturbing. She appeared to be considerably younger than her now-deceased husband.
"Where were you last night, Mrs. Ferris?" Lewis had a way of asking questions that sounded as if he were doing so out of friendly concern.
"I had parent-teacher conferences all evening. I teach geography to sixth form students."
"Would you have a list of the parents you met with, and the times?"
"Certainly." She turned to the open bag on the table, sorted through several papers, and pulled out a single sheet on which the parents had signed in and noted their times of arrival. The meetings started at six and went until nine.
"And after this, did you come straight home?"
"Yes, I had a headache by then. Took some tablets and went right to bed."
"You didn't notice your husband missing?"
"Oh, he stays late at work fairly often. I didn't think about it at all."
Hathaway took a turn. "What about this morning, when he wasn't here either?"
"Again, it's not unusual." Her eyes welled up. "I went through the whole day thinking nothing was wrong. Poor Sam!" She was sobbing again.
Hathaway put a hand on her shoulder and spoke quietly. "Mrs. Ferris, we need you to do something for us, if you're up to it."
Lewis got a constable to drive her home after she identified the body. As they walked back to their office, Hathaway could tell Lewis was deep in thought. But he said nothing until they were sitting at their desks.
"I don't believe her." Lewis began the conversation without any introduction. Hathaway knew exactly what page he was on.
"Why not? You think our victim is someone else?"
"No, not that. I don't believe her tears. I think she was acting."
Hathaway knitted his brow, thinking about the encounter they had with the newly widowed Julia Ferris.
"People react in their own ways."
Lewis stared at him for a moment. "I do know that, Sergeant, thank you. And I think by now I might have a bit more experience than you at telling a genuine reaction from one that is not."
"Sorry, Sir. But if these parents confirm her story, she's alibied to the hilt."
"I'm aware of that. I didn't say she was the killer, I'm just saying I don't think she's as torn up as she appears. Okay?"
Hathaway didn't answer. He knew he couldn't win any points, and things would probably get worse the closer it got to Thursday evening.
They were able to contact almost all of the parents on the list. Each one confirmed that he or she had met with Julia Ferris the night before, and the only gaps between the meetings were short ones. Except for the last. According to the list, Margaret Fisher had arrived at a quarter past eight. But her telephone was out of service.
"Hathaway, get contact information from the school tomorrow and maybe we can visit her in person. If there was no meeting, that would put Mrs. Ferris well within the six-to-ten time frame."
Hathaway worked at getting the CCTV footage from the computer and Lewis began combing through the scrap yard's business books. A few hours later, Doctor Hobson called them over for her post-mortem report.
Lewis was nearly trotting as he entered her lab. "So? What do we have, Doctor?" Hathaway smiled to himself as he noticed that Lewis was more cheery than he'd been all day. The Hobson Effect.
"Well, he was definitely strangled, I'd say by a man. Not easy to fell a man this size. Could be a woman, but she'd have to be bigger than I am, and quite strong. Maybe if she surprised him she could do it."
Lewis put his own hand up next to the marks on the dead man's neck to compare the size. "These hands were bigger than mine." He held his out, as if it were a sample.
"There are women who would qualify, Inspector. Your hands aren't all that big." She matched her slightly smaller palm to his, and Hathaway suppressed a smile.
She continued. "There is one other thing remarkable about your corpse. He apparently had been healthy in almost every way, except he suffered from hyperprolactinaemia."
She knew it would stump them before she even said the word.
Lewis's lips moved as he said it over to himself. "And in English, we say . . .?"
"He was sterile. Biologically unable to produce sperm cells."
"Ah. Been that way for a while, do you think?"
"Hard to tell, exactly. But hyperprolactinaemia often goes untreated for some time in men because they may not notice any symptoms." She looked at Lewis directly. "Especially those who are not sexually active."
Hathaway turned away sharply, exercising all the self-control he had in him and drawing a slight frown from Lewis.
"Other than that, I have nothing more to report. I can narrow the time of death a little, I'd say it was sometime between six and nine last night. I'll get the written report over in the morning, if that's soon enough. I need to clean up here yet."
They compared notes back at their office.
"Well, the books are a bit irregular." Lewis pulled open a ledger. "For one thing, nobody does this on paper any more. And he'd been in trouble with the VAT a couple of times in the past, most recently only a few months ago. Looks like he got it paid up though."
"How far behind was he?"
"Well, with the penalty and interest, looks to be about sixteen thousand pounds. Paid it in one payment. I'd like to know where he got the cash."
"Yeah, so would I." Hathaway then shared his own findings. "I checked out the CCTV of the yard, there was some unusual activity around eight, if the clock is correct on this. I stopped it running at that point. Haven't gotten a good look yet at what all happened."
Hathaway pointed to the screen and clicked the Play button. The images were grainy and jumpy from the time-lapse. A man appeared, looking much like the victim. He was crossing the yard at a steady pace when another person jumped out from behind a car body and grabbed him from behind. They watched in silence as the first man was killed. The second ran off in the direction of the gate. It was impossible to tell the killer's gender or to make out any facial features.
The two men found it sobering to watch the murder, and not long afterward they were both ready to call it a night. They knew each other well enough that no words were needed as they packed up their work, shut down their computers, turned out the light, and headed for the car park, side by side.
