Bob stepped up to the microphone. He looked nervous, Carol thought.
“What’s got loads of balls and screws old ladies?”
The room was silent.
“Bingo…because of the…Sorry. Hello. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Bob Beattie. This is DS Laura Welsh, and don’t worry…she’s not actually Welsh.”
Carol noticed her almost put her head into her hands.
DCI Beattie plowed on. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I just thought you might like a little joke. Sorry. Right. As you’ve all no doubt heard, one of your number, Sir Desmond Crisp, died yesterday.”
SirDesmond Crisp? Not surprising, really, considering the pedigree of many of the other residents, but what had he been knighted for? It occurred to Carol that she’d never asked what Desmond did.
“Now, the good thing is that at this point, if you were a younger group of people, I’d now probably have to say something about how counseling is available to anyone who needs it, but I won’t be doing that today because your generation just gets on with things, don’t you? You beat the Nazis. You’re not going to cry over this.”
“Most of us were actually born after the war,” said Geoffrey, from the audience.
“Oh? Is that right? Yeah, didn’t think of that. Yeah, I supposeyou were. I’m talking bollocks, aren’t I? Shit. Didn’t mean to swear. Fuck!”
“Get to the point, Bob,” said Laura, leaning across from the edge of the stage.
“Sorry. Right. Sorry, I’m really not used to public speaking. They had a course down the nick but I was off with gout that week. You’d think gout was gone now. I thought it was from the Victorian times, you know, but nope, you can still get it. Too much red meat, apparently. Fucking painful. Shit. Sorry.”
“Bob!”
“Should have let you do this, shouldn’t I, Laura? Problem with women is if you give them an inch, they take a mile. Am I right, fellas?I cannot stop!Right. Sorry. Okay.” Bob made a show of composing himself and adopting a professional mode. “We have reason to believe that Sir Desmond’s death may have been suspicious.”
There were shocked murmurs from some in the room.
“I know!” said Bob. “But that’s what we’re dealing with so—”
“Was it an illegal immigrant?” asked Agatha, one of the older residents, with a shaky voice.
“What was that, Mum?”
“Was it an illegal immigrant? Usually is.”
“Sorry, that’s my mum there. Agatha. I’m sure you all know her. We’re not going to reveal anything with regards to suspects just now.”
“Ah!” said Agatha. “So it was. I knew it!”
“As I say, well…Actually, I’m just going to nip that one in the bud. We have no reason to believe that it was an illegal immigrant.”
“They’re sneaky!” said Agatha, not letting the matter go.
Bob tried to get things back on track. “Okay. Well, what I wanted to say was this. If anyone has any information at all, if anyone saw anything suspicious—”
“There’s a black man who works in the restaurant,” said Agatha.
“Thank you, Mum. Uh…yep. We’ll, er, we’ll look into that.” Bob shook his head to indicate to the rest of the room that they wouldn’t be looking into that. “I’m going to leave you all one of these.” Bob held up a piece of paper.
“It has DS Welsh’s and my details on it. And if you have anything, anything at all…” Bob looked at Agatha. “Well, maybe notanythingbut, yes,” he turned back to the rest of the room, “do get in touch. We’d be very interested in speaking to you. That’s everything for now, I think. Thank you for your time.”
“I have a question.” Carol had her hand raised.
Bob, who had already started to edge off the stage, relieved it was all over, returned to the microphone. “Yes?”
“How should we protect ourselves? You’re saying there’s a murderer about, yes?”
