A Dog's Life (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 4) Read online

  A Dog’s Life

  The Fourth Romney and Marsh File

  Oliver Tidy

  Copyright 2014 Oliver Tidy

  Find me at http://olivertidy.wordpress.com/

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any persons without the permission of the author.

  Oliver Tidy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ***

  This book is dedicated to those readers who have enjoyed a Romney and Marsh File, or three, and then taken the time and trouble to let me know about it. My sincere thanks and best wishes to them all.

  ***

  The Romney and Marsh Files now number four. They don’t have to be read in order; they do all work as stand-alone novels. However, to get the most out of each it is recommended that they are consumed in the order in which they were prepared, a bit like the courses of a good meal. (Who wants to eat ice-cream before a bowl of soup?)

  The first R&M File, Rope Enough, is permanently free to download as a try before you buy offer.

  Here are the books of the series in order with their Amazon.co.uk links.

  #1 Rope Enough http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enough-Romney-Marsh-Files-ebook/dp/

  #2 Making a Killing http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Killing-Romney-Marsh-ebook/dp/

  #3 Joint Enterprise http://www.amazon.co.uk/Joint-Enterprise-Romney-Marsh-ebook/dp/

  #4 A Dog’s Life

  ***

  Table of Contents

  Chapter1

  Chapter2

  Chapter3

  Chapter4

  Chapter5

  Chapter6

  Chapter7

  Chapter8

  Chapter9

  Chapter10

  Chapter11

  Chapter12

  Chapter13

  Chapter14

  Chapter15

  Chapter16

  Chapter17

  Chapter18

  Chapter19

  Chapter20

  Chapter21

  Chapter22

  Chapter23

  Chapter24

  Chapter25

  Chapter26

  1

  With the skills and stealth of a seasoned snooper, Detective Inspector Tom Romney slipped in through his front door. Closing it gently behind him, he stood alert, breathing heavily. His senses acutely attuned, his head cocked like a hunting dog, he listened for signs of disturbance. But it was his sense of smell that was first to detect the alien presence in his home; something was burning. He gritted his teeth and worked the muscles of his jaw. His already taut bearing was strung tighter still as his adrenaline began to flow. There was no sound of movement, but he could hear voices coming from his front room.

  Silently, he crept forward. He glanced through the open kitchen door and took in the mess that hadn’t been there when he’d left. He clenched and unclenched his fists, took a deep breath and burst into the living room.

  The television was on. Detective Constable Peter Grimes was sitting on the sofa with his bare feet up on the coffee table, remote control in one hand and slice of blackened toast in the other. Grimes made no move to alter his position. If his senior officer’s entrance had been calculated to surprise and embarrass him his senior officer had, once again, underestimated the big man’s shame threshold.

  ‘That was quick, gov,’ said Grimes, through a mouthful.

  ‘No, it wasn’t. That’s what happens when you spend your life in front of the idiot’s lantern – you lose track of time. Talking of which...’ Romney was breathing more easily now. His system was recovering quickly from his three-mile early morning jog. The sweat was drying cold on his exposed skin.

  Grimes glanced at the clock in the corner of the widescreen television Romney had bought only two weeks before to make the most of his film and football interests. ‘Shit. We’d better get a move on. Don’t want to be late today, do we gov?’

  Grimes pushed himself up from the furniture, threw the remote down where he’d been sitting and padded out of the room with his plate. Romney watched him go, dressed only in his voluminous boxer shorts and a baggy, misshapen T-shirt advertising Harley Davidson motorcycles. Romney believed that Grimes was wearing the same underpants he’d been wearing the day before.

  Grimes had left the television on. Romney never had the television on in the morning. He didn’t like the television being on in the morning. Grimes had taken food into his bedroom. Romney never took food into the bedrooms. He didn’t like food in the bedrooms.

  Romney reached down to retrieve the remote. He was freshly dismayed to find traces of both butter and jam between the buttons of the keypad. He took it to the kitchen to wipe it properly with a damp cloth.

  He surveyed his kitchen worktop. A jar of strawberry conserve with the lid off, a tub of butter with the lid off, a loaf of organic bread sitting on the breadboard with the bread knife discarded next to it. There were crumbs everywhere. The loaf looked like Grimes had tried to hack slices off it with a blunt axe instead of carefully sawing it with the serrated edge of the knife to leave a uniform end for the next person who might like some.

  It took Romney two minutes to put everything away in its proper place and wipe the surface down with a dishcloth. Other than crack the kitchen window, he could do nothing about the stink of charred bread.

  Romney rarely breakfasted at home on workdays. He preferred to collect proper coffee and a pastry from the little bistro around the corner from the station. It saved on the tidying and washing up.

  Not for the first time, Romney experienced the heavy weight of burden regarding his houseguest. He checked his watch. He’d have to find time to speak to Grimes later. Remind him of a few house rules. They couldn’t go on like this. He couldn’t go on like this. But today was an important day at the station and Grimes was right: they shouldn’t be late.

  Romney put his running trainers away and moved quickly through the living room into the hallway beyond. He came to a stop outside the bathroom. His bathroom. The bathroom he needed now. He didn’t feel the need to try the door handle as he stood listening to the power-shower going full tilt and Grimes’ horrible tuneless singing.

  *

  Romney was late to the station. Grimes, taking his own car, had left while he was in the shower.

  The small conference room was as full as the staff of the Dover outpost of Kent police could make it. CID in their civvies blended with the outnumbering forces of uniformed officers. Members of the civilian staff swelled the numbers.

  The double doors shrieked on their dry hinges as Romney entered talking loudly on his mobile phone. Several heads turned to look at him. The woman at the front of the room who had been addressing her attentive audience paused to look up and over the top of her reading spectacles at the intrusion. She did not look pleased about the disturbance and his lateness.

  Superintendent Faulkner, standing off to one side, caught Romney’s eye, raised his eyebrows, surreptitiously tapped his wristwatch and didn’t look pleased either.

  Romney shuffled up beside a filing cabinet, stuffing his phone back in his pocket. He placed his take-away coffee and pastry on top of the cabinet and surveyed the room. Grimes had a
good seat next to Detective Sergeant Marsh down near the front.

  Marsh must have sensed that Romney’s gaze had settled on her back because she turned a little to meet his stare. She smiled a greeting and turned back to the speaker.

  ‘...but all good things must come to an end. People move on and make way. No one can go on for ever...’ Romney hoped that she wouldn’t; he wanted his breakfast. ‘...It is the natural order of things. All anyone can ask of someone is that when one gets one’s chance one does one’s best. What matters is not being applauded when one arrives, but being missed when one leaves.’ Romney’s brow furrowed with that on two counts. He was sure she’d stolen that from someone else and made a mental note to look it up when he was back at his desk. He also found it a rather cryptic remark and therefore could not trust its intentions. He caught one or two others fidgeting on their seats and exchanging raised eyebrows and this pleased him.

  ‘...And let us spare a thought for Mrs Falkner by remembering that a retired husband is a usually a wife’s full-time job.’ Those who didn’t know the super’s wife had suffered a debilitating stroke two months previously laughed politely. Those who did cringed.

  Romney glanced over at his departing senior officer – the station’s commander for the last decade. He didn’t look particularly happy. Actually, he looked like a man who didn’t have a long time left to be happy. But it had been a particularly difficult year. Falkner looked to have shed some of his bulk; he looked smaller. His uniform, immaculate as always, seemed not to fit him as snugly as Romney remembered. He had lost more of his hair and gained a few lines and shadows. He looked tired. He looked ill – and Romney wondered again at the real reasons behind the changing of the station guard.

  ‘...and so, without further procrastination from me, on behalf of all those present and all those who are on duty helping to continue to keep the streets of Dover and district safe, I would like to wish Superintendent Falkner a long, happy and full retirement and present him with this token of our esteem for all his efforts and sterling work over his time here.’

  As Falkner made his way forward to take the outstretched hand of his replacement and accept the gift to a decent round of applause, Romney reflected on the ridiculousness of the tradition for presenting retirees with clocks. It seemed a perverse irony to him that just when you reach a time in your life when, in theory, time should no longer be a dominating and controlling influence, you’re given a ticking reminder of the ebbing away of life’s precious seconds.

  Romney studied his outgoing senior officer’s features for a trace of the feelings he had expressed privately when news of his decision to retire had been given to him by Area. Like the consummate old-school professional Falkner had always striven to be, there was none. He accepted the handshake and the timepiece with good grace, despite the giver being the co-author of a damning report that had to have been instrumental in removing Superintendent Falkner from the helm of what had been described as ‘a rudderless ship’. Falkner felt it added insult to injury that his replacement should be the woman he viewed as one of the architects of his downfall. Dover police station needed an injection of new blood at the top, he had been told – someone with fresh ideas. A new perspective was needed and a figurehead who could smoothly bring the station and its practices more in line with Area’s idea of modern policing. It was a job for someone younger, they said.

  And in truth the attention that Dover’s finest had received in recent months from national media and the upper echelons of Kent police had been neither encouraging nor flattering. Violent deaths were up. Complaints from the public were up. Arrests were down. Convictions were down further. In the last year there had been two separate incidents of serving police officers – both CID – being directly involved in the deaths of two members of the public. The report had made grim reading for those on the panic button side of the police counter.

  And, lo, the new broom had been unveiled. Romney’s spirits had plummeted with the revelation: Superintendent Vivien Vine.

  Romney and his new boss had already met. They had crossed paths and swords when the then Chief Inspector Vine had been involved in an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the death of an old and confused hammer-wielding Dover pensioner who had carried out a sustained campaign of damaging vehicles in the town. Detective Sergeant Wilkie – working directly under Romney at the time – had gone off the procedural piste in his desperation for a result. In a late night covert operation of his own devising, he had physically attacked the old woman while arresting her hammer-handed, with disastrous consequences. She suffered a heart attack at the scene and died in the ambulance on her way to hospital.

  The shit flew out of that particular fan to soil and taint reputations and working practices faster than one of the town’s Pencester-park-drinkers necked the first can of super-strength cider of the day. Few involved escaped the fallout. The reputation of Dover police station had come under the spotlight. It had been tarnished and heads had to roll. It was the way of things. Accountability was its name.

  Superintendent Falkner stood almost rigidly to attention as he prepared to deliver his farewell address. From his pockets he took his half-moon spectacles and a neatly folded sheet of paper. The room fell respectfully silent. Romney’s stomach growled and a pretty, young PC turned to look up at him. He smiled his apology and his stomach immediately intensified its need for attention. Two more heads turned in his direction and he ignored them. In a bid to give his insides something to do other than embarrass him, he reached for his pastry. He pulled awkwardly at the stubbornly elastic substance. At the end of its stretching tolerance it tore without warning. Unable to curb the momentum of his efforts quickly enough, the back of his hand collided with his Styrofoam coffee cup, sending it flying from the top of the filing cabinet to explode on the back of the head of the pretty PC sitting just under it. She screamed as the scalding liquid drenched her scalp and her shirted back.

  *

  ‘No need to apologise again, Tom,’ said Falkner. ‘Truth be known, you saved me from a bloody awkward speech that my heart wasn’t in and probably wouldn’t have meant anything to anyone five minutes after I’d made it.’ Falkner sat behind his desk looking deeply disconsolate and Romney felt freshly abject for spoiling proceedings and his senior officer’s moment. Then, in a rare show of mischievous levity, Falkner added, ‘Besides, there was always the risk that I might have said something about my replacement that I would live to regret.’

  Falkner stood and walked to the window. His hands linked behind his back in his customary pose, he looked out over the domain he had ruled for the last ten years and sighed heavily.

  ‘Got any plans for the immediate future, sir?’ said Romney, in a bid to lighten the mood a notch.

  Falkner sighed heavily again. Still with his back to the room and Romney, he said, ‘Ann was so looking forward to my retirement. She wanted to travel. See the wonders of the ancient world. We could have done it, too. Money wasn’t going to be a problem. Now all she can manage is to sit in that bloody chair all day staring out the window and dribbling down her front. Life can be so cruel, Tom.’

  Romney was aware of movement to his side. Superintendent Vine was standing on the threshold of the office. He got quickly to his feet and made a mental note to be mindful that she had the talent for sneaking up unnoticed.

  Falkner was still speaking: ‘Did you hear that stupid woman’s joke about my wife?’

  Romney felt a light sweat prickle his brow. He looked at his new boss’s face to see whether she had understood she was the stupid woman. Clearly she had. She cleared her throat loudly. Falkner turned back to the room.

  ‘Will you be in here much longer, Superintendent Falkner?’ she said. ‘The decorators are here and they want to get on.’ Sensitive as well as sneaky, thought Romney.

  Falkner drew a deep breath and for one horrible moment Romney feared that the man was going to bellow at her, but he breathed out again quickly and quietly. He indulge
d himself with a last and lingering look around the space that had been his home from home and said, ‘No. Actually, I’m just leaving. It’s all yours now.’ He didn’t wish her luck and he didn’t offer his hand.

  The departing senior officer picked up his regulation cap and moved to his cardboard box on the table.

  ‘Let me take that down for you, sir,’ said Romney, more for an excuse to get away than out of any great charitable sentiment.

  ‘Thank you, Tom. I’d appreciate that.’

  Falkner adjusted his hat in the office mirror, straightened up and fixed a proud look to his face. He marched out of the room without another word or glance in the direction of his successor who had wandered in.

  Romney gathered up the box, said, ‘Ma’am,’ and went after him.

  The short journey down to the car park was an uplifting experience. On the staircases, in the corridors, in the foyer and even outside, every officer they passed offered Falkner their best wishes or a kind word for the future. Falkner’s step developed something of a spring by the time they got to the bins.

  The superintendent lifted the plastic lid on one of the station’s industrial refuse receptacles. ‘In there, please, Tom.’ Romney hesitated. ‘Come on. Nothing I want now.’ Romney heaved it in and Falkner let the lid fall with a loud symbolic crash on the pathetic remains of his long career, ruffling Romney’s hair with a waft of foul-smelling air in the process.

  They shook hands once more at Falkner’s Jag. ‘Good luck, Tom. You’re a good detective and a good policeman. I’ve enjoyed working with you.’ He hesitated and then said, ‘A word to the wise?’ Romney nodded. ‘Prepare to change. We bent the rules at times. We did it because that’s where we came from. We did it because we had to to get results. And results are what matter most to coppers like us. But those days are over. She won’t tolerate our kind of policing. It’ll be by the book. Her way or the highway. Short-cuts and sharp practice are things of the past. Mark my words, Tom. She’s got that rock she calls a heart set on higher offices than mine and woe betide anyone that looks to foul up her chances of that, deliberately or otherwise.’