Eutopia (First version)

Chapter 20

Paul Rose peered with little interest out of the bay-window from the chintzy armchair he sat in, looking out at the rain. It had begun to fall at a heavier, steadier pace since he’d driven the job car to a little suburb just outside of London accompanied by the Detective Constable that had been assigned to him.

DC Jonathon Jefferies, or ‘Joffa’ as most of the CID knew him as, was a tall and gangly young man who had recently passed his CID exam. This was his first major enquiry as a CID officer as the DI had thought it would be good practice for him to observe one of the older and more tenacious officers, pairing him up with Rose who had grumbled vocally to the other officers and to Joffa, though not to DI Mason himself, about not being paid enough to babysit. As it was, Joffa seemed a nice enough lad, with his easy Northern twang and irrepressible babbling about the latest football league tables as they’d driven through the damp streets of London to interview Mr Harold Shakeshaft, the driver of the Saab that had been assaulted by their unknown murder suspect.

Joffa was helping himself to his second lemon and poppy seed muffin as Mr Shakeshaft entered the room bearing a tray laden with a silver tea service and four delicate-looking china cups, complete with flouncy saucers, closely followed by a bird-like woman, petite and blonde, in a pale pink apron emblazoned with the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Eat a Cupcake’ beneath a white printed crown. The woman set a dense fruitcake on the coffee table that lay in the middle of the living room like a raft cast adrift on the swirled blue carpet. The room was bright enough with the large bay-window and light coloured paint, but cluttered with various knick-knacks and ornaments on almost every surface so that it gave the impression of a stuffy second hand shop, like the ones that Rose’s ex-wife used to drag him into many moons ago in Portobello Road when they had first been married.

‘I just couldn’t believe it, Sergeant, when my Harry told me what had happened. I told him at the time; I said ‘You need to report that, you can’t let that man get away with assaulting you like that,’ but he never listens,’ Mrs Shakeshaft was saying, twitching at her apron and fluttering her hands over the table to straighten the cake stand and plate of muffins that Joffa had been munching his way through. ‘Tea, Constable?’

‘Yeah, please. Milk and three, thanks.’

‘And to think! Him, assaulted by a murderer! I hate to think what could have happened; my heart goes all a-flutter when I think of it.’ She carefully poured the tea into one of the little china cups, plopped in three little white sugar lumps from the silver dish on the table and handed it to Joffa, who brushed the muffin crumbs off his fingers and on to his trousers before accepting it.

‘Tea, Sergeant? Cut the fruit cake, Harry, I think the officers might like a nice slice of that, won’t you boys?’ she beamed at the two men; DS Rose settled deep in the flowered armchair by the window and the much taller floppy haired DC trying to fold himself up at the end of the sofa to make his long legs fit comfortably beneath the low coffee table in front of him. Joffa grinned.

‘Yeah, thanks.’

DS Rose cleared his throat and leant forwards to take the tea offered by Mrs Shakeshaft.

‘No cake for me please, Mrs Shakeshaft,’ he said gruffly, with a look at the DC, who was eagerly devouring the thick slice of fruit cake that Mr Shakeshaft had handed him on a little china plate, as though he hadn’t already eaten two of the muffins they had been plied with since their arrival ten minutes before. ‘We’re actually rather short on time and need to get a statement from your husband with regards to this assault.’