‘And no heroics! We know this guy’s dangerous.’
The rest of the team crowded into the narrow balcony, leaving Logan loitering on the top step, contemplating a strange little shrine, erected in the corner, outside Flat F – complete with joss sticks and drippy candles. Only instead of a Buddha, Madonna, or statue of Shiva, there was a plastic Gary Lineker being worshipped by a semicircle of garden gnomes.
Steel smacked a hand down on Harmsworth’s shoulder. ‘Dunt it.’
Everyone else shuffled back a couple of feet, giving him enough room to swing the Big Red Door Key.
The first blow boomed into the door, setting the whole stairwell ringing like a bass drum. The second rattled it in its frame. And the third swing smashed the whole thing free, sending it tumbling into the flat with a crackle of splintering wood.
Job done, Harmsworth collapsed back against the wall, breathing like a leaky space hopper as the team rushed inside. Followed by a very excited PD Branston and her hobgoblin handler.
Logan stepped away from the shrine as shouts echoed out from the ruined doorway.
Steel:‘POLICE! NOBODY MOVE!’
Barrett:‘YOU! ON THE FLOOR! ON THE FLOOR NOW!...COME BACK HERE!’
Followed by some enthusiastic barking.
Then an old lady’s voice screeching obscenities, somewhere inside.
Tufty:‘LEFT! LEFT! LEFT!’
Harmsworth wiped a heavy leather glove across his soggy strawberry face and grimaced at Logan. ‘When...when are...the sodding...Operational Support...Units...coming back...to work?’
‘When they’re feeling better. Now:’ making shooing gestures, ‘in you go.’
A groan, a droop, then Harmsworth dropped the Big Red Door Key, and staggered inside.
Tufty:‘SARGE! SARGE, HE’S IN HERE!’
Logan followed Harmsworth into a short hallway that probably hadn’t been redecorated since the Coronation. And not the latest one. Faded Union Jack bunting drooped in disappointed-grey strands, criss-crossing the ceiling, which gave the place a birthday-party-in-a-funeral-home kind of vibe, but really set off all the framed portraits of the late Queen on the walls. Some with Phil, some with other family members.
Not sure Her Majesty would’ve approved of the old-lady filth howling from the first room on the right, though.
Logan peered in through the open door, and there was Lund: standing in anAntiques Roadshowbedroom, complete with Union Flag duvet cover and a big photo of the King over the bed.
‘OK: it’s OK.’ Lund had both hands out, doing her best to sound calming and authoritative while being subjected to a torrent of OAP-flavoured abuse. ‘Everything’s going to be OK. I need you to put the stick down, Victoria.’
Victoria had to be in her mid-eighties, but that didn’t stop her swearing like a drunken soccer casual – swinging an NHS-issue walking stick about like Excalibur, trying to take Mordred’s head off. And you could tell she was up for the fight, because she’d rolled up the sleeves of her brown cardigan, exposing the thin, pale, tattooed arms beneath.
Down at the end of the hall, Steel’s voice was just audible between Victoria’s bouts of profanity and anatomically impossible instructions:‘So get him out.’
Tufty:‘Yeah, but the door’s locked or something.’
‘Then break it down! HARMSWORTH! Where’s that useless fat snudge?’
Well, it looked as if Lund had everything under control here – as the walking stick made another decapitatory attempt – so Logan left her to it.
He wandered past a small bathroom, and a galley kitchen, stepping into a living room even more old-fashioned than the hall, with antimacassars on the furniture and yet more royal portraits on the wall. A throw-covered armchair had pride of place in front of the telly, with a heaped ashtray balanced on one arm, next to a heavy, dark-wood sideboard that was home to a vast collection of china cat figurines. So the sweary Victoria couldn’t beallbad.
It hadn’t been a big room to start with, but cramming in four police officers wearing the full MOE kit; another in plainclothes; a scruffy wee ogre,andhis gargantuan Alsatian, made it seem positively minute.
Tufty was hauling at the doorknob through to what presumably was the flat’s second bedroom, twisting and turning it, heaving away to no avail while PD Branston had a jolly good sniff at the gap beneath the door. Making excited doggy noises.
Meanwhile, Steel glared at a sheepish Harmsworth. ‘What do you mean, you “left it on the landing”?’
A proper whine weaselled into Harmsworth’s voice. ‘Well, how was I supposed to know you wanted—’