Xx: Chapter 11

Xx: Chapter 11

Due to one farmer’s unfortunate decision to start a village on a piece of swampy land one thousand years before, it was raining in Queenford. Raining, perhaps, is not the most appropriate word—it was pissing like a drunk on a half-time loo break. So, due to one farmer’s poor knowledge of real estate selection, it was pissing in Queenford, on the heads of several slightly miffed police officers. They mulled around in the town square, with only the giant tablecloth to entertain them. It wasn’t succeeding too well.

“I ‘ate this type of case,” Officer Salisbury said, scratching at his gritty moustache. “Far too much work.”
“I agree,” Officer Gherkin replied. “It’s a real pity, seeing the village like this. They haven’t seen a crime in years, and the first one ‘round blows up the whole damn pub. It’s an ‘orrible shame.”
“Aye,” Salisbury nodded, pensively. “Anyone can kill a crowd full’a people—who ‘asn’t?—but you’ve got to be a real sick fucker to tear up a pub. It’s the ‘eart of the British community.”
“Oh, it is.” Gherkin reached a fat hand into his jacket pocket. “Care for a fag?”

They smoked under the awning of a nearby building, letting the fumes waft around their faces and out into the street, where they were pounded down by sadistic, obese raindrops. The two shared an unspoken friendship, partially as a result of their years upon years in the force together, but partially as a result of their regrettable surnames. A bond of names is a hard one to break.

“Oi! Steak and pickle! Get over here, you load of moldy bollocks!”
It’s a bond forged in fire, really.

With a sigh, they dutifully extinguished their smouldering nicotine, and trudged over the cobblestones in the direction of the others. About a dozen officers of the Norfolk service were on the scene, a few squad cars, and one disgruntled police horse named Daisy. Constable Calvin, the one who’d done the shouting, was screaming like a hyena in heat (although not quite as attractive.)

“What can we do for you, sir?” Gherkin said, standing at attention. Salisbury rubbed Daisy’s nose.
“What can you do for me? What can you DO for me? I’ll tell you what you can goddamn fucking do: you can do your fucking job, instead of standing around like a sack of soggy condoms!” His blood pressure was directly proportionate to the vulgarity of his similies. “We’ve what could possibly be the worst mass murder in all of Norfolk, if not all of Britain, right under your shit-sniffing noses, and you haven’t done a damn thing about it! Get with the program, dildo-faces!” He stopped, if only to take a breath.

“Cunt!” He added.

“Well,” Salisbury ventured, without moving away from the horse, “Maybe we could see if there are some witnesses? Maybe someone knows something about this?” This seemed, to him, to be a perfectly reasonable proposal, if not an excellent one.
“Witnesses? Witnesses!” The constable laughed, bitter as the second-place pageant mum. “You think I haven’t thought about that? We’ve asked every sane person in this diseased shithole if they knew anything about the victims, or the murders. You want to know what they said? Do you?”
“...Yes?” Gherkin thought it might have been a trick question.
“They looked me square in the eye, and they said: ‘What victims?’ Can you believe this cock-buggering madness?!? Half the goddamn village is dead and festering in their own blood and sick at the local pub for three full fucking days and no one even stops to notice?!?”
“That does seem rather odd,” Salisbury admitted. “This is a rather tight-knit community, after all.”
“Have we spoken to everyone?” Gherkin wondered, “I mean, it’s a lengthy process, but there’s only four ‘undred someodd people ‘ere, right?”

At this, the Constable transcended his mortal rage and expanded into something far larger, and more substantial.

“You fucking think I didn’t stop to fucking interview every fucking fucker in this shithole of jizz and fucking bollocks? I’ve spoken to the farmers, the shift workers, the children, the tarts and the wankers who stand outside their bedroom windows and shout lewd things at them all night so their poor parents can barely get a wink of fucking sleep. I’ve had a chat with every breathing thing in this town, and no one seems to have an even rudimentary fuckin’ understanding of the fact that half their fuckin’ populace is dead on the cobbles!”

He stomped off into the rain, cursing and kicking lose stones. Gherkin looked at Salisbury who shrugged, and Salisbury looked at Gherkin, who shrugged in return. They had no reason to be upset at the Constable’s behaviour—he was the byproduct of council housing, fast food, cheap lager and systematic abuse from the people he tried to assist. There was no use getting your feathers all ruffled over a bit of shouting; he’d feel better shortly.

“Somethin’ don’t add up,” Gherkin said, pushing under the police tape lines.
“Yeah?”
“Well, if no one knows fuck all, how did we find out about this? I’s not as though we patrol through ‘ere regularly, you know? Someone musta said somethin’ ‘ere.”
“Perhaps we ought to ask ‘im?” Salisbury gestured over toward Calvin, who was in the midst of a small heart attack. This was a fairly typical event, bimonthly at the very least. “Granted, we could figure it out ourselves, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” he echoed.

They trundled past the squad cars and the police horses to a collection of officers, who were drinking tea out of styrofoam cups and discussing the previous night’s football game—Arsenal versus Chelsea—standard fare. Beside them, wrapped in a gritty brown blanket, the kind you give out to kids you’ve rescued from frozen ponds, was a middle-aged man, looking shaken and mad.

He was about forty, a pretty wretched forty, produced by a life of commuting into the city on trains that left too damn early in the morning, and coming home too late at night to see your kids grow up and ask them how their days were, and frozen dinners with notes attached left by wives (who had to work too) that were too tired and too pissed off at you to stay up and watch you eat them. It was the forty built by shouting matches with your mother over the phone, by days spent on a rainy beach in Brighton, by the sludge the average human being has to endure over hours and hours and hours of life. He was an old forty.

“You all right, mate?” Gherkin said, leaning in with a steaming mug of tea.
“I’d like to see my daughter.” He said, looking nowhere. “I’d like to see my daughter now.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting him gently on the shoulder. “We’ll make sure you do.”