MAJOR/MURDER INVESTIGATIVE TEAM, OR WHERE MARK REED PLIES HIS TRADE.

Part 2 of The Muralist, Episode 1 of The Muralist & the Inspector

MAJOR/MURDER INVESTIGATIVE TEAM, OR WHERE MARK REED PLIES HIS TRADE.

It was pissing down rain. 

Mark’s hair was still damp from having been caught in the downpour on his way into the office. His immune system already seemed locked in a battle with some pathogen, and having been soaked in the wet cold certainly wasn’t going to help matters. He’d spent the bulk of the morning trying to slash his way through the thicket of files in his inbox, and he was already flagging. 

Policing murders was dull. That was the dirty secret. The car chases and gunfights or any of that other rubbish you saw on the telly were vanishingly rare. Policing murders was ploughing through forensic reports and witness statements. It was putting together timelines and poring over phone records. It was staring at the same photographs for hours on end until you thought you might go blind because the last time you’d missed something and didn’t want to again. It was being told bald-faced lies by decent people who “didn’t want to get involved”. It was tedious, monotonous, stressful beyond comprehension, and put more than one detective into an early grave.

Policing was janitorial duty. “We only get called after the mess has been made.” That point still got hammered into all the recruits. And murders were the biggest messes, the biggest shocks to society’s system, impossible to clean up, really. It was the permanence of it, Mark often thought. In every other case, no matter how grisly, there was something that could be done for the victim, even if it was just allowing them to gain the distance brought by the passage of time. Murder was a terminus, and it was nearly always thoroughly unexpected.

Most people didn’t know anyone who had been killed. Mark’s life and thoughts, on the other hand, were full to the brim with the murdered. He had been called then chosen for this fraternity of the damned. They bore witness when the worst impulses of humanity exerted themselves.

All this paper, he thought as he signed another form. We need it to sop up all the blood. He slipped the document back into the file folder and put it on top of the small pile of work he’d completed and leaned back in his chair, trying to conjure a feeling of triumph. Small victories should be celebrated. 

A break was in order. 

God, it feels like there’s strip mining going on inside my skull. And my neck is killing me… He rifled through his desk, searching for a bottle of paracetamol. Eureka!

There was a knock at the door.

“Come!” Mark called out.

Detective Sergeant Janet Pike poked her head in the door just as he swallowed the tablets dry. “Under the weather?” she asked with a smile.

“I can’t seem to get rid of this headache,” Mark replied. “I feel like stepped-in shit.”

Janet chuckled in commiseration then took a closer look at him. He was clammy and seemed to be on the verge of beginning to tremble. Her face became more serious, and her eyes got softer. He’s so fucking handsome, she thought, flushing a bit. And there was something about him being slightly rumpled and unwell. He was usually so self-contained and unrelentingly professional. His vulnerability made him even more attractive. Janet straightened her skirt self-consciously, taking no pleasure in the knowledge that she wasn’t alone in pining after him. It was almost a rite of passage, having a schoolgirl crush on D.I. Reed. Even some of the blokes who’d never had so much as a flutter for another man had to sit and have a bit of a think after they’d worked with him. It wasn’t about sexual attraction, though, not really. He was so clever, so decisive, and so bloody good at his job that it made them all want to please him and earn his praise. They all wanted to be his favourite. He was also thoroughly decent – faithful to his wife by all accounts, and he always sidestepped any advances tactfully, allowing his suitors to save face. Winning his affection seemed insurmountable, but people always seemed to embrace the torment of wanting what they couldn’t have, didn’t they?

Janet was a young, pretty woman of colour – the trifecta of stumbling blocks. She had enough to wrestle with and was determined not to let something as ill-advised as an affair with a senior officer stop her climbing the ranks. Nevertheless, emotions didn’t flow from a controllable spigot. They just spilled themselves everywhere, and the best you could do was hope to mask them enough not to give yourself away. Does he know, she wondered. Of course he did, Janet realised as he returned her smile with a noncommittal but warm one of his own. He never really pushed any of them away. He stayed just close enough to keep them in his orbit. He liked the attention. “A bad flu’s going around,” Janet remarked. “Looks like you might be coming down with it.”

“I got vaccinated,” Mark replied with a frown.

“Some people still get sick, though. Maybe you should go home.”

Mark managed a small laugh at that. He made an ironic, sweeping gesture at the tower of files on his desk. “What?” he asked.  “And leave all this?”

Janet laughed. “I suppose not,” she replied.  

“Did you need something?” Mark asked.

“Yes,” Janet replied, remembering the errand she’d come to run. “Ferguson’s wife had the baby last night.” She handed Mark an envelope, and he slid out a large pink card. 

“Girl, then?” Janet nodded. Mark quickly scribbled a congratulatory message and handed the card back to her. Their hands brushed, and, against her better judgement, Janet allowed the touch to linger. Her cheeks heated, and she made the further mistake of catching his eye and was pinned in place for a moment. “Feel better,” she breathed, quickly gathering herself and leaving.

Mark was at somewhat of a loss for what to do about Janet. They were, after all, surrounded by detectives, and police officers liked a good piece of workplace gossip as much as anyone else. It wasn’t fair, but no matter how coolly he played it, word would make its way around and make things awkward for her. Their work was tedious enough without stirring that stiffening agent into the mix. He just hoped polite evasion wouldn’t have to become outright refusal. That always went pear-shaped. He sighed and got back to work. He picked up his pen but couldn’t stop his hands shaking.

LUNCH WITH MUMMY.

The restaurant’s décor mimicked that of a cosy neighbourhood bistro, but the linens were of the highest quality, the dishes were bone china, the flatware was sterling silver and there were no prices in the menu. Even if you had missed all those cues, the service would have tipped you off that this was an exclusive spot. The level of anticipatory attention the servers paid the clientele should have been suffocating, but it was so unobtrusive as to be nearly invisible at times. It was a place for people who were used to getting what they wanted without the bother of even having to ask. Miriam Pullman seemed like such a person, but appearances deceived. 

Thanks to Miriam’s father’s almost preternatural ability to sniff out trouble, her family had left Iran for England in the early 1970s, well before the revolution, and she began university soon after. Early in her second year, she met a young man called Terrence Pullman at a demonstration for women’s rights. He’d been a firebrand. He was handsome in an English sort of way – not beautiful in the manner of some of the men in her home country – but solidly attractive. He’d had long auburn hair and a heavy beard and always dressed in old blue jeans and worn t-shirts. He’d lived in a horrid, cramped flat with a rotation of unwashed flatmates. They’d fallen in love over the course of a long weekend, and a few months later he’d asked her to marry him. Imagine her shock when he’d brought her to meet his family and he’d driven up to a mansion that made her own family’s not insubstantial property seem like a hovel by comparison. He’d been an aristocrat. And he’d wanted to take a brown girl with a heavy Persian accent as his bride. It hadn’t exactly been a scandal, but it had caused its fair share of upheaval. Their marriage had been turbulent but mostly happy, and they’d had two children, the younger of whom was sitting across from her now.

Cormac.

They’d named him after Terrence’s great-grandfather, an Irish-American haberdasher, whose daughter’s dowry had saved the Pullman family fortune. He took after his father and had the same slight build and penetrating jade green eyes. Although his skin was pale, it had warm olive undertones, and he’d inherited Miriam’s thick dark hair. His aging, like much of his development, seemed stalled. Sitting there wearing a navy blue jumper over a white dress shirt, he looked more like a moody sixth former than a thirty year-old man.

He’s such a beautiful boy, Miriam thought, caught as she always was with him between pride and despair. She watched as he picked at his meal. He’d never had much of an appetite. “Cormac, darling, you really must try and eat more,” Miriam cajoled gently. She didn’t want to nag. “You’re as thin as a rail.”

“I’m sorry, Mummy,” Cormac replied. He took a small bite of his fish. “I’m just used to Swedish meatballs for lunch.”

Miriam’s expression turned stricken, like she may have made a terrible mistake. “I’m sorry,” she apologised, putting her fork down.  “I’m sorry… Perhaps it would have been better to have gone somewhere else.  You used to love this place before...”

“It’s all right, Mummy,” Cormac reassured her, wondering why he could never seem to say the right thing. “It’s just that I try to stick to my schedule.”

“Does it help?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Good. Maybe next time I’ll come over to your house, and we can have whatever you like.”

Cormac looked away and confessed, “I still don’t have any tables or chairs.”

Miriam was inclined to scold but decided against it. It was better he moved at his own pace and not be overwhelmed by all the demands of trying to live a normal life. “That’s all right, sweetheart. We’ll just do whatever you usually do, or sit on the floor and have a picnic.”

“Thank you, Mummy.” Miriam smiled. They ate in silence for a while. “Dr. Levine thinks I should get a housemate,” Cormac commented offhandedly.

It was all Miriam could do not to dance a jig in celebration, but she chose her words carefully. “I can see why he would think that. You did well in the group home. What do you want?”

“I don’t like having people around all the time. I like the quiet. I was that way even before.”

“Yes,” Miriam admitted. “You were.” He’d always been something of a loner even as a child, sensitive and eccentric. 

“The group home had rules, really strict rules about things,” Cormac went on.  “So I always knew what I should be doing, what everyone else should be doing.”

“You’re afraid a housemate might upend things.”

“Yes. They’ll introduce entropy.”

Miriam laughed fondly, and Cormac smiled. “Well,” Miriam said. “There’s nothing wrong with you setting out reasonable rules and asking anyone who would be living with you to adhere to them. I think it would be good for you to have your independence but not be alone all the time.”

“Maybe,” Cormac replied. 

At least he was giving it serious thought. She didn’t like the idea of him all by himself in that empty townhouse, but he’d insisted that he try to live on his own properly. After all he’d been through, he was owed at least the opportunity to try and fail.

THE FABERGÉ EGG

The buzzing in his head had gotten louder. He’d been trying to ignore it. He didn’t want Mummy to worry. She was pleased he was doing well. More importantly, he didn’t want to go back to the hospital. He didn’t think he could bear it. He took a bite of his chocolate soufflé. It had been perfectly prepared – light with a rich, molten centre. It tasted like aluminium foil. A wave of nausea broke over him, and he shut his eyes. When he opened them, sitting by his mother’s elbow was a vibrating, elaborately jewelled egg in the fabergé style. It was enamelled in a pale robin’s egg blue and decorated in a repeating filigree pattern constructed with red gold, pearls and yellow diamonds. The vibrations shook the table, and there was tapping and scraping coming from inside the egg. Whatever was inside it was trying to get out.

“Are you all right, dear?” Miriam asked in concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Couldn’t she feel the table rattling? Wasn’t she too being blinded by the brilliance of the gemstones? 

No. 

It was all inside his head.

None of it is real, he reminded himself.

Cormac tore his eyes away from the egg and forced a smile. “I’m fine, Mummy”. 

Miriam chose to ignore the obvious lie. She would live to fight another day.

They sat and finished their dessert. 

Miriam tried to banter gaily. 

Cormac tried to ignore the hatching egg.