Inspector Kirby and Harold Longcoat Read online

  Inspector Kirby

  and

  Harold Longcoat

  A Northumbrian Mystery

  Ian Martyn

  www.martynfiction.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Ian Martyn.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact via www.martynfiction.com

  Ian Martyn

  www.martynfiction.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

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  Inspector Kirby and Harold Longcoat. Ian Martyn - 1st ed.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Chapter Thirty Four

  Chapter Thirty Five

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty One

  Chapter Forty Two

  Chapter Forty Three

  Chapter Forty Four

  Chapter Forty Five

  Chapter Forty Six

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Chapter Forty Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty One

  Author’s notes

  About the author

  Also by Ian Martyn

  To the county of Northumberland where I was fortunate to spend my formative years. If true magic exists anywhere in the world then its here amongst it’s wild hills, magnificent coastline and castles.

  Acknowledgements

  As always to my wife Catherine and my sons Daniel and Jonathan who continue to believe in my writing. Neil Kirby and John Horton who always read those early versions. This time also Chris Seaward whose enthusiasm for this book has given me so much encouragement. Jaqui Thake who is still correcting my sometimes novel and original use of the English language.

  To all those who’ve read my books and expressed their enjoyment of them, thank you, it’s what keeps an author going.

  “Kirby was never one to dismiss someone on the grounds they felt things “didn’t feel right”. In his experience things not feeling right often led to things not being right. It didn’t feel right to him either.”

  one

  Inspector Kirby glanced at the Journal newspaper that someone had left on his desk while he’d been in the loo. They had even, needlessly, ringed the headline in red pen, “GOSFORTH GODDESS GRABBED, Lilly ‘Medussa’ Johnson was taken into custody at her home in Regent Avenue along with thirty-seven snakes stolen from pet shops and private collections”. There was a picture of him leading Lilly towards a police car. He had his head down. Someone had drawn a speech balloon coming out of his head with the words, “Oh hell, why me?” inside. Lilly was dressed in a long white gown, blonde wig and tiara. She was smiling for the cameras.

  Kirby frowned, the Super wasn’t going to like that. His frown deepened as he glanced at the clock, then turned back to the screen and the accusing blink of the cursor. It was nine o’clock, he’d been in for two hours and achieved two-fifths of sod all. Sometimes he felt that writing the report was harder than solving the crime, especially with the crimes that came his way.

  He pushed back his sleeves and readied his right index finger for another go at stabbing the keyboard. He glanced around the office and wondered about a cup of coffee. He dismissed the thought as just another way of putting off the onerous task. Back to the screen. He swore, the last sentence he’d written was all in caps. Why the hell did they have to put the caps key so close to the ‘A’? There were a few sniggers as he cursed at the screen. He swivelled his chair to the left. ‘Tell you what, Sergeant, I’ll dictate and you type.’

  Sergeant Vendatelli glanced around at his fellow officers who were now all very intent on their own screens.

  Kirby shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, you might struggle with some of the longer words.’

  ‘Er, thank you, sir.’

  Kirby knew that the younger members of the force liked to call him “Old School Kirby” or just “Old School” for short. And yes, when it was an option he did prefer to use pen and paper. Also, he called a phone a phone rather than a mobile. What’s more, his “rang” rather than play the theme from his favourite song. If it had have done, his choice would no doubt have provoked even more comments. Anyway, Louis Armstrong singing “What a Beautiful World” didn’t seem appropriate for a copper.

  He wasn’t a complete techno Luddite. He did admit that computer age policing had its uses; just that you couldn’t solve crimes by googling and tweeting. He still believed coppering was ninety percent slog, ten percent inspiration and ten percent perspiration. And yes, he did know that was one hundred and ten percent.

  He also knew that those same youngsters considered him a bit of a loner. He didn’t meet the others down the pub after work. He didn’t do the social club and avoided, if at all possible, any activity that included the words “team building” in the title. To his way of thinking, if you couldn’t feel part of a team as a copper with half the world against you then plodging around, in January, in Kielder Forest, knee-deep in a freezing cold stream, trying to build a bridge with a few sticks and bits of rope was not going do it for you either.

  Kirby saw himself as an ordinary police inspector trying to do his job in the way that he knew worked best for him. That’s not to imply that he thought a police inspector’s job was in any way ordinary. By most people’s standards it was anything but ordinary. He’d seen some extraordinary things, and often things that most sane people wouldn’t want to see.

  However, the downside of being viewed by some of both the junior and senior ranks as somewhat eccentric was that he ended up with the cases that leaned towards the stranger end of the spectrum of police work. The cases that other officers avoided. Which meant, a
s with this case, he was presented with the problem of reporting the facts while not getting himself hauled up in front of the Super for “sensationalism”. The Super took a dim view of “sensationalism” as it tended to find its way into newspapers, and newspapers being newspapers the result was rarely complimentary. He glanced back at the Journal, even United’s latest, miserable performance was preferable to the headline.

  The Lilly “Medusa” Johnson case had already had its share of press coverage. Over a period of three months there had been fifteen reports of snakes being stolen from pet shops and private collections in the area. Rumours were rife that it was Animal Liberation or even some strange – foreign, of course – cult. The papers loved it. They, lacking much imagination in Kirby’s opinion, had referred to them as the Snake Men, as in: ‘Slippery Snake Men Strike Again’ or the ‘Snake Men Crimes are Addering Up’ and ‘Snake Men Bring Hissteria to the Snake Community’.

  It turned out, to the disappointment of the local press, that the culprit wasn’t a fanatical group or exotic cult. It was one Lilly Johnson, who lived in a two-bedroom terraced house in Fawdon. They did cheer up however when they found out that she liked to call herself Medusa, insisted her house was a temple and had erected two, two-storey, polystyrene Doric columns on the front of it. A fact that didn’t seem to register as strange enough to report by those who lived nearby. The headline was just the start. Inside there was a two-page spread with interviews from neighbours and an artist’s impression of Lil appearing down the shops in a long, white gown with a gold, snake-shaped tiara on her blonde and curled locks. As for the neighbours, if anything those of a certain age had seen her originality and level of eccentricity as something to aspire to.

  When interviewed, Lil’s defence was that she was above the laws of men and refused to accept the validity of anything from mere mortals. Although Kirby noted that didn’t seem to extend to the tea and chocolate Hobnobs they kept supplying her with, which she insisted on calling her ‘ambrosia’.

  On digging, Lilly had ‘history’, as the police liked to put it, having been responsible for a series of more than thirty burglaries in the 1980s. The papers had then dubbed her Diamond Lil on account of her only taking jewellery, most of which was found stuffed into drawers and cupboards in her then small flat off Gosforth high street.

  He was just wondering about how to describe Lil without being “sensationalist” when the phone rang. ‘Kirby.’

  ‘Ah, sir. Would you happen to have an hour to spare?’

  ‘Why, Sergeant?’

  ‘It’s just that something’s come up and none of the other officers can be spared at the moment.’ Kirby knew that was Desk Sergeant Caruthers speak for, ‘It’s a bit weird and I don’t think anyone else will want to take it’.

  He was about to say, ‘Neither can I’, when he glanced at the screen. So instead he said, ‘Fine, give me the details.’

  It was mid-August and the air was already warming up as Kirby made his way out to the quiet and largely middle-class suburb of Jesmond with its red-brick Victorian streets. Seeing a patrol car he turned down the next side street, parked and made his way back onto Osbourne Road. ‘So what have we here then, Constable?’

  ‘Shoes, sir.’

  Kirby peered at the ground. ‘Well done, Constable, eight out of ten for observation.’

  The Constable raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘You omitted the colour,’ Kirby said as he looked down at the pair of flat pink ladies shoes. Canvas by the look of them. What in his younger days might have been called “sandshoes” or “pumps” by his dad. ‘Anything else?’ he added. The shoes had been left but not abandoned, sitting as they were neatly side by side.

  ‘Er, we thought we’d wait for you, sir.’

  ‘I bet you did,’ Kirby mumbled. ‘OK, do we know whose they are?’

  ‘They’re Sarah’s,’ a girl behind him answered. The constable looked relieved. ‘Sarah Cooper’s, I know because they’re brand new. She only bought them yesterday. It was the pattern that attracted her. Said she’d never seen anything quite like them before.’

  Kirby hunkered down to give the shoes a closer inspection. The girl was right, stitched into the canvas was an intricate pattern in varying shades of pink and purple that seemed to swirl in front of his eyes, to the point where he had to look away.

  ‘And you are?’ Kirby said as he stood up.

  ‘Susie, Susie Summer.’

  ‘And how do you know Sarah, Susie?’

  ‘I’m her friend and flatmate.’

  Susie was about the same age as his own daughter, Anna. She had reddish hair and was dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt. She had a bag slung over one shoulder. A student, he presumed, although it wasn’t term time. But then again his daughter had gone back to York early to help with a dig. Although he suspected it might also have something to do with being bored at home. He smiled at Susie and picked one of his preferred open, opening questions. ‘So tell me what you know, Susie.’ He didn’t like to guide people too much to begin with. It could be quite surprising and revealing where a story wandered and he could always drag them back if he had to. He glanced down at the shoes, which were still lined up at the edge of the pavement, as if waiting for their owner to return. Or, it occurred to him, ready to cross the road to the bus stop on the other side.

  ‘Sarah left the flat at about 8.20 to catch the 8.32 bus to uni. She poked her head round my door as she left, said she wanted to get to the library early so she could have the afternoon to herself. I slept in a bit and was walking to the bus stop when I spotted the shoes. I called Sarah’s mobile but it went to voicemail. I then phoned the library. They looked around but she wasn’t there. Hadn’t been seen.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have taken another pair of shoes with her?’

  Susie shrugged. ‘Then why leave these new ones here?’

  ‘Yes quite.’

  ‘Sorry, I was worried. Sarah and I are very close and this is going to sound silly, but it just doesn’t feel right. So I called the police. I hope that was OK?’

  Kirby was never one to dismiss someone on the grounds they felt things “didn’t feel right”. In his experience things not feeling right often led to things not being right. It didn’t feel right to him either.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Kirby said. Normally the station wouldn’t bother until someone had been missing for over twenty-four hours unless there were suspicious circumstances. Did shoes count? However, together the shoe thing, a single girl and Susie’s insistence, he presumed had persuaded the experienced Desk Sergeant that an exception should be made. ‘Quite right,’ thought Kirby. He smiled at Susie again. ‘She may well just turn up or call. We hope she does. Better to be safe though.’

  He stared down at the shoes as if willing them to tell him something. It looked as if Sarah had just stepped out of them and continued her journey. But that wasn’t right. The shoes were both laced up good and tight. Another puzzle. Why couldn’t life be simple? People always assumed that as a detective you lived for puzzles. Well he didn’t. Solving crime should be straightforward. The burglar caught with a bag marked “swag” in his hands, “You got me bang to rights there, guv, and no mistake.” Case solved.

  Kirby shook his head. Why would someone unlace their shoes, remove them, lace them up again and then line them up at the side of the road? Or, for that matter, why would anyone attack someone, then carefully take off their shoes, lace them up again and place them at the side of the road? He put the last theory in his mental wastebin. Even half-braindead commuters would have noticed a young girl being attacked or forcibly abducted at the side of the road in broad daylight. Although they might not have reported it, of course. However, someone would have filmed it, put it up on Twitter or Facebook or whatever was trendy this month in social media. He poked the shoes with his pen. They didn’t get up and run off. He frowned. What now?

  ‘Do you have a recent picture of Sarah?’

  Susie took out her mobile and
flicked through her photos. ‘Will this do?’

  Kirby took the phone. In the picture were two young girls who appeared to be having a good time – a “selfie” he presumed. On the left was Susie, on the right was a girl not unlike her. She was holding up a glass of what looked like white wine and smiling.

  ‘Sorry, it’s all I’ve got with me. I upgraded recently. I’ll have a better one on my laptop.’

  ‘No, that’s fine for now. Er, Constable.’

  ‘Yes, guv.’

  ‘Do whatever you do to get a copy of this picture and then get on to the bus company. Find the driver. See if he noticed her getting on his bus in just her, er, socks.’ He glanced at Susie, who shook her head. ‘Bare feet.’

  ‘Bluetooth?’ Susie asked the Constable, who got his own phone out.

  Kirby watched the two perform what to him might as well have been magic. ‘Does Sarah often take this bus?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Susie answered. ‘Says she likes to see where she’s going, rather than stare at nothing on the Metro.’

  Kirby nodded then turned back to the constable. ‘Maybe the driver’ll recognise her.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Oh and while you’re on, find out where it stops and what businesses are nearby so we can check if anyone else saw a girl with no shoes get off.’

  ‘Sir. No shoes, sir. Right away.’

  Kirby didn’t look at the constable as he was giving the orders. He didn’t want to see barely-hidden smile that suggested they were wasting their time. But he’d been a detective long enough and no, it definitely didn’t feel right.

  ‘Hmm,’ he mused to himself. ‘Tell you what, Susie, let’s go to the college just in case she’s turned up or someone’s seen her.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Kirby turned to the patrol officer. ‘Constable, before you go on your merry way, call the station and have a WPC, preferably WPC Barker, meet me there.’