An Individual Will Read online

An Individual Will

  Copyright 2013 J.G. Ellis

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  Chapter One

  He was young, handsome – foppishly so – and, most importantly, quite dead. A thin, long-limbed boy with curly dark – Roman? – hair and something of privilege and the public school about him. A nascent artist, an actor perhaps, the sort who might have fantasised or versified about his own death – though surely such Wertheresque musings would not have included an end such as this; for it was hardly a poetic or Romantic end, though it was distinctly possible it was a parody thereof. He had been cast adrift – on a boating lake, and not a very large one at that. The boat, a recreational rowing boat, had beached itself on an island of turf or sod that would just about have provided standing room for a single person or a small dog. Adrift and beached, indeed, without a scull or paddle. It was ten-fifteen or thereabouts on a sunny Wednesday morning in May.

  He had – and we had to bring him back to shore to establish this – been tied in, into, a sitting position. Coloured scarves of a silk or satin material had been used to effect this. A black scarf had been tied to his right wrist, red to the left, and a longer mustard-yellow one had been looped around his neck; the other ends of the scarves had been secured to the oarlocks and prow respectively. I wondered at the significance of the colours. I was thinking of the German national flag. It was quite an elaborate arrangement. Care had been taken, effort made. Someone, or someones, had gone to a good deal of trouble. And to add insult to terminal injury, a white placard had been hung around his neck with the word “ARSE” painted on it in surprisingly neat black letters. Someone, again, had gone to the trouble. In the top stud-buttoned pocket of his shirt, we found a 16-25 rail-card identifying him as Mr A. Mansfield.

  So a dead young man “sitting” on a boat with a placard about his neck declaring him an ARSE: what did it mean? Or represent? Or suggest? Murder with malice aforethought, or an elaborate prank gone horribly wrong? Something about the way his head was hanging – down but slightly to the side with the mouth open – made it seem as if he were chortling goofily, or chortling goofily had been his last act. He had, incidentally, also been reported missing – by someone prepared to go to some lengths to ensure that we, the police, took notice.

  “Do you know who I am?” Well, no, not quite that. Nothing so straightforwardly crass. Desperation had played its part. What she had actually said was “I don’t want to have to resort to who I am,” and she was almost crying when she’d said it. Who she was, then, mattered in the sometimes tiresome business of getting things done, or so she hoped – the local MP’s daughter, or so she claimed, a fact – assumed at first, and then confirmed – of sufficient interest to accelerate news of her arrival up the ranks.

  It had, at the time, seemed like a disproportionate degree of worry for someone gone rather less than twenty-four hours. The desk sergeant had made the point, but she was adamant, and threatened to make a scene. She wasn’t about to leave the station until she was sure something would be done. She didn’t care if they locked her up. Her eye-liner was running again by this point, and it was already well-smudged. Her concern – misguided or not – was certainly genuine. Curious, though, that such a short absence should excite such extreme emotion.

  Her name was Lisa Markham, and she was nine weeks short of her twentieth birthday. Darkly attractive, wavy hair worn long and untethered, there was something of the gypsy about her, though doubtless this was a look and mien carefully cultivated.

  She said, “I want to see someone who matters.” Imperiously, through tears.

  “I like to think I matter, ma’am,” the sergeant replied. He would have smiled had she not been so upset.

  The obvious question or questions: Why are you so upset? What do you fear’s happened to him?

  The sergeant had asked the question – directly and in a roundabout way – the latter having to do with being sensible of and sensitive to her emotional state. And, it being an obvious and reasonable question, she had answered it after a fashion. He – the missing he – had stood her up, and he wouldn’t do that. Not without ringing or sending a text, and he had done neither. Something had to be wrong. The sergeant was polite but unimpressed. Police officers come across lots of things people do that people who care about them are pitiably certain they wouldn’t do, going missing being the least of it.

  The sergeant asked another question, one that gets asked a lot: “Would you like a cup of tea, madam?” Since, in this case, it followed the impression, distinct if routine, that something was to be done, and done quite quickly, the answer, on the crest of a sigh, was “Yes – thank you.”