“It’s cosy,” noted Eve, as she followed him along a corridor rough-plastered with the same off-white render she’d noticed outside. She gave the owners a mental tick for interior design skills, nodding approvingly at the clever placing of mirrors opposite the arches of the small cottage windows: doubling the light in an otherwise dark, oppressive space. The stairs had creaked like the beams of a longboat as they made their way up the dog-leg stair, passing potted plants polished to a waxy gleam.
“In here,” he’d said, unnecessarily, as he opened the dark wooden door and led her into a bedroom so murky that the walls and furnishings seemed to swallow the light. Eve had been pleased to see an Oriental, high-backed chair by the door to the bathroom, plonking herself down immediately and looking up at tobacco-coloured ceiling beams – the same dark staining as the floorboards, upon which a vintage green and pale pink Chinese wool rug has been vacuumed flat. The big four-poster bed faces the window - three arched panels of glass exuding a church-like air: a triptych of fell.
“I’d have thought you’d be at the Sharrow Bay,” says Eve, taking off her wet suede jacket and removing her glasses to wipe the drops away using the hem of her baggy blue jumper. “Times hard, sir?”
Millward crosses state to the windowsill and takes a bottle of brandy from behind the pleated curtain. He pours a measure into a glass from the bedside table and hands it to Eve, who takes it with a nod of thanks. He clinks the bottle against the glass and takes a swig from the lip. Eve takes a sip. It’s good quality but it’s not her favoured tipple. The lads all think she’s a hardened drinker but she’s always been happy with a Malibu and lemonade; maybe a packet of nuts or two. She’s a long way past doing whatever it takes to fit in with the men – quitting smoking because she couldn’t stand the taste of it and wearing clothes built for comfort rather than catching the boss’s roving eye. She’s comfortable in herself. Knows who she is. Most of that is thanks to Derrick, her mentor and champion. She’s never seen him drink from the bottle before. She only drinks the brandy out of solidarity – a way of showing him she doesn’t judge.
“I’m getting by,” says Millward, in response to the question Eve has almost forgotten she’d asked. “I thought about staying somewhere a bit posher but what’s the point? Depressing walking up those stairs to something that looks like the bridal suite when you know you’re only going to be hugging your pillow.”
Eve stays quiet while he removes his jacket and pulls a cardigan from a suitcase on the floor. He takes a towel from the rail by the window and tosses it to Eve. He pushes back his hair and sits down on the bed, looking at her with a likeable smile on his pinkish, waxy face.
“You’ve done well, Eve,” he says, at last. “Going to be a DI, I hear.”
“Fingers crossed, sir,” says Eve, wondering who he knows at the Nick. “We’ve had some good results.”
“We?” asks Millward, settling back. “You need to learn to take the credit. It was you, from what I hear.”
Eve rolls her eyes, deeming the flattery unnecessary. “We’re not having much luck with Arthur Sixpence,” she says. “You have an interest, sir?”
“I think ‘Derrick’ is all right now,” he says, raising the bottle to his lips. “I’m retired.”
“And a bona fide private detective, so I hear,” says Eve. “You always did like your detective stories. Who are you channelling, Marlow or Spade?”
“I reckon I’m more Miss Marple,” says Millward, wrinkling his nose. “I think you might have the wrong idea about what the job entails. I reckon I did too. It’s mostly legal work. Donkey work, if you like. Finding people who owe money, property searches, investigations into errant heirlooms and more probate than anybody should have to look into. I’ve got two staff but I’m not good at letting people do things I should be doing myself. I’d have a secretary but I’d end up making her coffee, I’m sure.”
Eve grins, remembering her boss’s reputation for being soft as cream with his underlings and hard-as-frozen-butter with suspects.
“It’s Blackpool that you’re based, still?”
He nods. “No shortage of clients and it pays to be somewhere that you have a few contacts and where people remember which favours are owed.”
“I’ll bet,” agrees Eve.
“Last April a woman came to see me,” says Millward, looking to the ceiling as if about to impart something that will tax him. “Siobhan Pearl. Wife of Deaghlan.”
“Irish?”
“What gave it away?” he asks, smiling.
“Sorry, I’ll shut up.” Eve mimes locking her mouth shut while he takes another drink. She glances at his neck as he reclines against the headboard. He doesn’t look well. His skin looks like butcher’s paper, the veins in his neck as clear as A-roads on a map.
“They own fairground rides,” he says. “Settled Gypsies, if you go back a generation. They’ve done well. A lot more money than the taxman knows about. They’re not people to be trifled with, if you’ll forgive such an old-fashioned phrase. Deaghlan and Siobhan live in a great gaudy castle of a place overlooking the beach at Lytham-St-Ann’s. I got to know them well during my time with Lancashire Police. Daddy’s solid. Fair. I trust what he says.”
Eve waits for more.
“They have a son. Cormac.” His hands tighten on the neck of the bottle. “Difficult boy. You might say he was troubled. Sometimes it happens, I suppose. You give a kid every advantage and it doesn’t matter - they’re just bad right the way through.”
“How so?”
“I reckon Siobhan knew it from the first. Said he was born with teeth and talons and I don’t know if she was joking. Either way he was a big brute of a lad. Walked early, talked early, a real early developer. By the time he was a year old he was big enough to swing the cat around by its tail.”
“Boys will be boys…,” begins Eve.
“He had visions,” says Millward, flatly. “Heard voices. They’d find him sitting talking to nobody and then he’d have these seizures where his eyes rolled back in his head like a shark. Mum and Daddy did all they could on the medical front. Doctors, specialists, but it was the things there didn’t seem any cure for that caused the problems. He was vicious, that was the truth of it. Liked to hurt things. He was a charming little sod when he wanted something but if he didn’t get his own way then all bets were off. When he was six he broke the back of the family dog. Jumped on the poor thing with both feet. They’d find him in the stables, setting traps for mice but he’d twist the hinge so that it only caught them, didn’t kill them. Daddy found him with a magnifying glass roasting one in his palm, happy as you like.”
“Jesus…,”
“Well, that were another bone of contention. Family were devout but he’d have none of it. Screamed like he was Damien in The Omen if they tried to get him into his Sunday best. And at school he was always getting sent home for playing too rough with the other children., Took a pair of scissors to a little girl in his class because he wanted to – and I’m quoting directly – ‘swap bones with her’.”
“Sounds delightful,” says Eve, wishing she’d savoured her drink rather than downed it. She could already use another.
Millward purses his lips, as if what he is about to say will be an effort. “When he was eight, he hurt somebody very badly. There was a knife. She’d be dead if Mum hadn’t heard the squeals coming from the stables and even then he’d already had his fun. Left her striped like a bloody zebra.”