Everything in Its Place

Four weeks after the quay, the rain had found a new gap in the Bell Street guttering and Sergeant Rook had found you. He stood on the mat with his hat in both hands, dripping onto the lino like a man making a small, apologetic confession. On the glass of the door behind him, the white paint was still tacky from the night you’d lettered it: Everybody is playing a part. I find out who wrote the script. Rook read it backwards, the way he read everything in the first minute.

“Hollis Crane,” he said. “Owner of Crane’s Cannery. Found at the foot of the iron back stair at six this morning, the morning after Thrift Day, and the third day of a walkout over a pay cut. The Chamber of Commerce says a fall. A sherry too many, wet iron, a man of sixty-one who’d been on his feet since dawn.” He turned the hat a quarter-turn. “The Chamber also says Tom Rudd, who runs the strike, threatened him in the Sentinel. Everyone would like that to be the end of it.”

“And you?” you asked.

“Nobody’s asked me to look any further, Dr Voss,” said Rook. “That’s what bothers me. In my experience a town that tidies up that quickly has something under the rug.”

Jonah Pike already had his coat on. Three weeks into the job, and he had learned the sound of a case arriving: it sounded like a man not quite asking for help.