Acts & Monuments Read online

  “I bet it’s Maxine, isn’t it? I really hope it’s Maxine. I mean, it would have been great if you’d got it, but we really need to get a strong black woman on the exec team, and Maxine would be perfect. She really knows her stuff; everyone respects her.”

  Barry felt the need to stamp on Taneesha’s obvious enthusiasm straight away before her wild guess reached the status of widely accepted fact.

  “Actually, it’s Langley, Taneesha. They’ve given it to Langley.”

  From behind him Barry heard a couple of wild whoops, and a “Yes, top result!” followed by what sounded like high-fives. From this he concluded that Area Team A were not unduly disappointed to be losing Langley as their manager.

  Taneesha and Lucy, however, were both looking at him in open-mouthed horror. “You have got to be kidding me!” Taneesha said. “How can you sit there so calmly when they’ve just appointed that bumbaclart as your boss?”

  “Sorry,” said Barry again, “but that’s what they’ve told me the decision is.” He didn’t know what a ‘bumbaclart’ was, but he sensed from Taneesha’s manner that it wasn’t intended as a compliment, so, whatever it was, Barry was pretty confident that Langley probably was one.

  “How can they give it to him? What does he know about anything?” she said.

  “I can’t really say,” replied Barry, although he wanted to. He wanted to say that no matter how glaring his deficiencies were to his colleagues, Langley excelled in the one skill that really was essential to get on at Monument (but that, ironically, was mentioned nowhere in the list of essential criteria for the post): he sucked up to the exec team and told them what they wanted to hear. Principally, this was that the job of front-line staff was easy, and the reason that Monument never hit any of its targets was not because the targets were unrealistic and the resources allocated to meet them inadequate, but because the people Monument employed on the front line were all lazy and useless, and needed to be kicked harder in order to get them to achieve what they were paid to. Or, failing that, fired. And the reason they were all useless was because they lacked knowledge of the basic private-sector disciplines of cost control and income generation. Langley had spent three years on the Debenhams’ Graduate Management Training Programme and so he knew all about this. His favourite phrase when confronted by a missed target or a declining key performance indicator was “This would never have been tolerated at Debenhams.” Fortunately, however, Barry’s phone rang before he could be tempted to offer his opinion on the reasons for his new boss’ unlikely elevation.

  “Hi, Barry? It’s Lee. I’ve been called out to Neville Thompson House. I think you need to come down here. It looks like we’ve got a problem.”

  “A problem…?”

  “With flat twelve. He’s not responding. The neighbour phoned to say she hasn’t seen him for a couple of weeks; his post’s not been collected from his postbox. And now there’s a smell…”

  “Flat twelve? Who’s that?”

  Lee tried to keep his fears locked up inside his mouth, but they sneaked out through a shiver in the momentary pause he left before answering. “Chris Malford.”

  Oh God, not him, thought Barry. Christian Malford was a young man with a troubled history, and his behaviour could sometimes be erratic. It was possible, therefore, that his absence wasn’t anything more sinister than one of his periodic disappearances; one that would be followed by an equally inexplicable reappearance. But that troubled history stirred a sense of sickness in Barry’s expansive stomach. “Have you spoken to the police?”

  “Yeah, they’ll get someone over as soon as they can. But we might need to go in. I just thought you might want to be there…”

  Barry normally hated going out on site to tidy up situations that his housing officers should have been able to deal with by themselves, but Chris Malford was different. And besides, at that particular moment he was keen to avoid further probing from Taneesha on the issue of Langley’s appointment. So, rather than continue with his usual raft of questions, Barry just picked up his keys.

  “I’ll be right over,” he said, before grabbing his jacket and heading out. “Sorry, ladies, but Lee’s got a problem. I’ve got to go over and help him out.” He added a theatrical roll of the eyes to try to indicate that he didn’t really want to go. He felt this would stand him in good stead when he phoned up later and said that he didn’t think it was worth his while trying to get back.

  Going home early would be an uncharacteristic act of rebellion on Barry’s part. A small one admittedly, which (like most of Barry’s actions, it seemed) would pass unnoticed by Monument’s hierarchy.

  But rebellions, of course, can grow.

  Two

  As is often the way when you mention the words ‘dead body’, the police miraculously found someone from somewhere to attend the scene fairly expeditiously. Barry had tried to make sure that he wouldn’t have to wait for hours for someone to turn up by offering just the slightest hint that foul play might be involved. “The neighbour says she heard a commotion late on Thursday night a fortnight ago and then someone leaving. But she’s seen no one go in or come out since. It could have been an argument, I suppose,” he’d ventured in an attempt to join up the dots for the police call handler.

  Sure enough, a mere forty-five minutes later, a police car had pulled up and two officers had got out. One of them was so young she looked to Barry like a schoolchild who’d grabbed a police uniform out of the dressing-up box in response to the question “Now what would you like to pretend to be today, children?” Her colleague, by contrast, was older, fatter and more world-weary in appearance.

  They both dawdled across the car park, appearing to be in a rather perverse race to see who could arrive at Barry’s outstretched hand last. The older one lost. He shot a look over to his younger colleague to indicate his displeasure.

  “Hullo. Mr Todd? I’m PC Molloy. And this is my colleague PC Rathbone. I understand you have reason to believe that there may be a body in one of your flats?”

  A gust of wind sent a whisper of papery leaves scurrying around Barry’s Hush Puppies as they headed toward the entrance of Neville Thompson House. It was the kind of unprepossessing 1970s, low-rise development that housing associations had flecked across the country when land was cheaper and the grant to build them was more plentiful. It was an entirely unremarkable building from a time when being unremarkable was something that social housing aspired to be. They entered the lobby as the last smear of autumnal daylight slipped through a gap in the slate-grey sky, the scent of effluent and decay murmuring of a creeping menace, of things not being as they should.

  The moment they forced the door the smell of death rushed at them, as if escaping the horror inside. Barry recognised that smell. He’d smelt it before: Christopher. A tiny bubble of sadness rose from the pit of his stomach and burst into his heart.

  It wasn’t quite the same – there was a putrescence to this one that he didn’t recall – but it was undercut by the same sickly sweetness. It hung ominously in the air, like a spirit. Behind him, Barry heard Lee retching on the landing.

  They found him in the lounge, sitting on the floor with his back against a threadbare sofa. He was motionless, like a movie still; his head thrown back, eyes wide open in a ferocious and unforgiving stare. But his mouth was gaping wide in a look that was almost blissful. The scene took Barry back to his days at Dudley Art College; with his hoodie up, the body reminded Barry of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. But there was no angel and no shaft of light from heaven, only a corpse with what looked suspiciously like drug paraphernalia at his side – a spoon, some foil, a cheap lighter and a small black case. An empty Jim Beam bottle lay disconsolately on the floor a few feet away. There may have been no angel, but there was a spear, and it was sticking out of a lifeless arm.

  Barry was transported back thirty years to Dr Potter’s Understanding Religious Art class. He remembered S
t Teresa’s description of her encounter with a spear-wielding angel:

  “The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.”

  It probably wasn’t all that different to what had been going through Chris’ mind at the point that he’d stuck the needle in his arm. It’s funny the things that come back into your mind at the points of greatest stress in your life, thought Barry.

  “Well I never,” said Molloy, “Chris Malford. I thought he’d given all this up. Just goes to show…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but the implication was clear.

  Barry was never one to succumb to fatalism about human nature. He liked to believe that people could change, could overcome their demons and improve themselves. He’d always seen Chris Malford as one of the proofs of that theory. It was fifteen years since he’d taken a chance on Chris, and had offered him a flat and some support in dealing with his drug problem. There’d been plenty of people who’d said he shouldn’t have bothered; that ‘people like that’ were more trouble than they were worth. Admittedly, Chris’ life had not been a straight line of success, but the one thing that Barry had held on to amidst all the ups and downs was that at least he had stayed clean and stayed alive, neither of which were givens when he first turned up at The Solihull Homeless Young People’s Project looking for help. And yet, now, here he was: dead with a needle in his arm. Apparently, it did indeed “just go to show”.

  Barry felt defeated, like a little piece of him had died. We hang on to our triumphs by so little, he thought, yet the grip of our failures is so firm and unrelenting. And, in that moment, he felt the full sadness of knowing that.

  “OK, Bones. Let’s get this sorted,” said Molloy. “Have you had to deal with one of these before? I can’t remember.”

  “No. It’s been mainly break-ins and anti-social behaviour so far.”

  “Right, well, we really ought to treat this as a potential crime scene,” he said in the manner of someone who regarded such procedural niceties as tiresome, “so the whole area has to be kept clear of contamination. Get some police incident tape from the car and put it across the front door, would you? I’ll radio for paramedics so they can confirm the poor sod’s really dead.”

  “What about forensics?”

  “Probably be good practice. But, to be honest, I don’t think they’re gonna find anything to indicate a crime, so it’s just a matter of whether they’ve got anyone free. In the meantime, everyone has to stay out; nothing in, nothing out. Although it’s pretty obvious what’s happened, we don’t want to get on the wrong side of the coroner’s office, and we don’t want to give them any reason to send it back to us.” He fixed Gemma with a hard stare. “This is a straight ‘death by misadventure’ – got that?”

  “Are you sure? I mean, they always taught us we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

  Molloy sighed the kind of sigh that was only possible after eighteen years of following procedures that you felt were largely a waste of time. “That might be what they taught you at Hendon, Bones, but that don’t mean it’s true. I’m telling you, I know a ‘death by misadventure’ when I see one, and this is definitely a ‘death by misadventure’. One hundred per cent. So we can get this one off our desks straight away and on to the coroner where it belongs.”

  “I guess we’ll still have to inform the next of kin though, won’t we?”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you? I’ve nicked this guy before. He was in care,” said Molloy, as though that explained everything. “Mother dead of an overdose. Dad not even on the birth certificate. No siblings.”

  Barry knew from his dealings with Chris over the years that PC Molloy was right. Chris Malford had been released from council care on his sixteenth birthday with only a named social worker for company. He had a solicitor, a probation officer and a tenuous link with a resettlement worker at the prison, but he didn’t have a family or even a reliable friend.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lee, after checking the tenancy file on his tablet, “but we don’t seem to have a next of kin on record.”

  Molloy’s face broke out into what looked suspiciously like a half-smile. “Told you. We can pass this one on to social services to sort out. Go and get that tape would you, Bones?”

  Gemma dutifully headed back to the car.

  Barry felt, not for the first time that day, deflated. The lack of a next of kin meant that responsibility for arranging Christian Malford’s funeral would indeed fall to social services. They dealt with the funerals of all the unwanted and the unloved, but, unfortunately, this was generally not a quick process. However, it was only when they were satisfied that there was no next of kin who could inherit the tenancy that they would issue the official notification allowing it to be terminated. Until then, Monument had to keep charging rent, but the council’s housing benefit team would have no obligation to pay it, so the reality was that Monument would lose several weeks of rental income on flat twelve. Barry shuddered at the thought of Langley’s reaction. It was, he felt sure, the kind of anachronism that would not have been tolerated at Debenhams.

  Gemma returned from her brief visit back to the car with the tape. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to seal the scene up now,” she said.

  Barry took one last look around the flat. He wanted to see what the condition of the property was and how much it was likely to cost to get it back into a lettable condition. He stopped at the bedroom door and looked in. Loneliness hung over the room like a pall: an unmade single bed, next to which there was a small cairn of scrunched-up tissues partially obscuring the cover of a porn mag. Drawing pins held up an old sheet at the window. Some clothes hung disconsolately from a bar across an alcove. And there was a second-hand dresser.

  Chris had never struck Barry as a particularly organised person, but there was a filing system of sorts on the dresser. Barry wandered over out of curiosity, to see if there was anything that might help social services to speed up the whole process. Chris’ most recent rent statements, along with a number of other personal papers, were all shoved rather roughly in and around a single box file. It would probably be quite useful, mused Barry. After all, it also appeared to contain bank statements and a number of other things that would probably help social services discharge their duties more quickly.

  Barry knew, of course, that he should just leave them all on the dresser. But it was entirely possible that the police wouldn’t be finished in the flat for a week or more – during which time rent would continue to be due, housing benefit payments would stop and social services would be unable (and not just unwilling) to progress matters.

  If, however, social services had access to Chris Malford’s papers (and could see for themselves that he had a grand total of £8.52 in his bank account) it might ‘focus minds’ on shutting down the tenancy quickly and getting the flat cleared of his personal possessions. However…

  “We really ought to treat this as a potential crime scene.” That’s what PC Molloy had said. “Nothing in, nothing out.” That included the box file, presumably, so Barry understood that he really should just leave it in situ. Any other course of action, however well intentioned, could technically be seen as a crime.

  But, of course, the police hadn’t seen the box file and so would have no reason to know it had been removed, which was perhaps why Barry then did something that he would never have dreamt of doing normally. Something that, if he’d caught Lee doing it, would have led to his instant dismissal. Barry tidied up all of the papers and tucked the box file under his arm. He then walked along the corridor toward the front door of the flat. The two police officers remained in the lounge on their radios, summoning assistance.

  Barry popped his head – and only his head – round the door. “Right, well, I’d better get off then. Just drop the keys round to our offices when you’ve finished everything.”

 
Molloy lifted an arm to indicate Barry was OK to leave, whilst trying to continue a conversation with someone back at the station. So Barry sauntered out of the flat and into the lobby where Lee was waiting, all the time thinking to himself – as if trying to force the idea into his mind – that as long as no one knew what he’d done then nothing could go wrong.

  He had almost reached the stairs when he heard footsteps behind him.

  “Excuse me! Hold on a minute!” PC Rathbone called. Barry felt his heart perform an adroit somersault and leap into his mouth. He felt like a nine-year-old caught in a teacher’s glare.

  “Have you got a business card I can have? I just need to check your names and contact details so we can include them in our report.”

  “Oh, of course. Sorry. I’m Barry Todd and this is Lee Marston. My details are on my card,” said Barry, fishing a business card out of his jacket with his one free arm with as much nonchalance as he could manage under the circumstances.

  PC Rathbone seemed placated. “That’s great. We’ll be in touch if we need anything,” she said, before turning and heading back into the flat.

  Barry paused for a moment. He felt his heart slowly unfurl and return to his chest.

  It was odd. Barry had never knowingly broken the rules before – he was one of the good guys, after all. And yet, without even trying that hard, he’d completely out-foxed the police. It felt strangely liberating, but at the same time disconcerting. After all, if he could pull the wool over the police’s eyes that easily without really thinking about it, what could he achieve if he actually set his mind to it? Barry didn’t answer that question, but it did flit through his mind for the briefest of moments.

  He didn’t consider himself to have done anything criminal though. Not really. That was at the end of a very long road. But it was a road down which he was now inadvertently travelling.