Dead Heading Read Free

otherwise known as a ‘Personal Development Discussion’. This was to be held with his superior officer quite soon. He hadn’t been told exactly when it would be yet but it wouldn’t do to jeopardise the interview by an unguarded response about a quite possibly disorientated old lady.
    ‘Because,’ went on the superintendent, the message flimsy still clasped in his hand, ‘the owner of the nursery would seem to have had very good reasons for sending for us for something like that. And since as you know we’re well under establishment these days …’
    Sloan privately decided that they’d better be very good reasons indeed or he himself would want to know why. Since technically all law-breaking in the market town of Berebury and its environs, excepting traffic violations,eventually landed on his desk, he automatically took out his notebook. ‘Just two open doors, did you say, sir, and a hole in a fence?’
    ‘That’s all that he seems to be complaining about. So far anyway,’ trumpeted the superintendent. ‘He said he’d tell us more when we got there.’
    At this Sloan sighed again, his superior officer being given to using the royal ‘We’ only when he had no intention of doing any of the work himself.
    ‘Right, sir,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘I’ll get out there straightaway.’ The distinction between open and closed doors as far as crime was concerned was one beloved by insurance companies but disliked by those whose duty it was to frame charges – ‘breaking and entering’ was only one of them – when doors had been closed. Doors left open were quite a different ball game when it came to insurers and policemen alike.
    ‘Two open doors and a broken fence so far,’ repeated Leeyes, ever the pessimist. ‘I’m told the man seemed a bit guarded on the phone.’
    Sloan cleared his throat and in carefully neutral tones asked his superior officer if the police had any further information about either case. There were other – and indisputably really criminal – cases on his own desk awaiting his attention that were – would seem to be, anyway, he added a silent caveat of his own – more urgent than open doors and elderly ladies on the loose.
    ‘Was there, for instance, anything stolen at the nursery, sir?’ he enquired.
    ‘No, Sloan, nothing at all.’ The superintendent gave the message sheet another wave. ‘It would appear frominformation received that theft would not seem to have been what whoever left the doors open had in mind since nothing would appear to have been taken.’ He sniffed. ‘What exactly was the object of the exercise is presumably too soon to say.’
    ‘I’d better have some names,’ said Sloan, taking a pencil out of his pocket and suppressing any references to gross carelessness that sprang to his mind. ‘And their addresses, sir, please.’
    ‘The missing person is an Enid Maude Osgathorp of Canonry Cottage, Church Street, Pelling,’ said Leeyes. ‘And man is Haines – a Jack Haines.’
    ‘Jack Haines? Not the nurseryman?’ Sloan’s pencil stayed poised in his hand above his notebook.
    ‘That’s him. At Pelling too.’ Leeyes, an urban man if ever there was one, sniffed. ‘Back of beyond.’
    ‘Ah.’ Detective Inspector Christopher Dennis Sloan, who was known as ‘Seedy’ to his family and friends, had lived in the small market town of Berebury all his life. In his spare time he was a keen gardener and thus knew most of the nurseries for miles around. This one was out in the far reaches of the Calleshire countryside.
    ‘None other. Proprietor of that big outfit on the Calleford road there.’
    ‘What sort of doors?’ asked Sloan, his attention now thoroughly engaged. This was different. Jack Haines was a nurseryman on a substantial scale, well known to professional and amateur gardeners alike and not above, when in a mellow frame of mind, dispensing his expertise to both. ‘I mean doors to where exactly?’
    ‘Greenhouses, Sloan.’
    ‘Ah,