Day 169 - Upside Down- Chapter 17 - (2063 words)

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UPSIDE DOWN, BACK TO FRONT

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 17

After

“You don’t say?” The detective was getting frustrated with this old woman, she had been talking about everything else except the reason he was here. She was the Maxwell’s neighbour and had told the uniforms that she had heard Ivan threatening someone only a day or so before the shooting.
So now they were back to follow up but she had wanted to chat more than she had wanted to help. Was she going to have anything useful to say ata ll? It was hard to know. She certainly lapped up the attention, he could interrupt her and ask her to get on with it but that hardly seemed fair. She was obviously lonely and missed her late husband dearly.
The way she talked about him was so endearing, it felt wrong to cut across that, a few more minutes and then gently lead her back to the subject matter.
She had started another story, one about how they had met. Dear god, I hope this is not as long as the last one. Perhaps I could get the subject matter back to the Maxwells?
“So about your neighbours, the Maxwells? You had told…”
“Yes, my husband never trusted them, never.” And then she was off on a tangnt again. At least the origin story of how they had met had disappeared, he’d have to be careful not to reignite that one. She seemed easily distracted and maybe have trouble focussing or remembering things? How valid would any information she had be? Not that it mattered for a court though, Mr Hansen had confessed, this was beging thorough. Defence would try and paint a rosy as picture as possible of the defendant and demonise the victim too.
Not that would be a hard job, he thought not for the first time.
I mean the look of that guy, poor scared small guy against this goliath of a man, with a bit of a history for… let’s say roughness shall we? The thought amused him and he chuckled out loud, wishing he hadn’t immediately.
The older lady didn’t regsiter and just kept talking over whatever he may have said or noise he may have made. The dectective got the feeling that little would make it through and that which did would have little to no impact.
Wait? Did she just call me Insector Morse? Did I hear that right?
Behind him a door opened. The distracted detective turned in his seat looking to see who had let themselves into the house. A relative perhaps a family member checking on her? Maybe they could help focus her on the subject matter.
An much older man walked through the door.
A brother perhaps? Or a neighbour? Perhaps he knows something too?
“Oh hello, I didn’t know we had company dear.”
We? Dear? What is this?
“Oh John, this man was just here. We wanted to know about the Maxwells and about you.”
“Oh? And you are?”
“Confused. I’m sorry are you this lady’s husband?” Detective Sherry was very confused. He had assumed, no he was sure she had said he was dead.
“Yes, and you?” The man looked between the two of them suspiciously.
The detective finally remembered his procedures and flashed his ID and identified himself.
“I’m sorrry but the way she talks, it was … I assumed you were … you had passed on.”
“Oh don’t be silly dear. He was always alive, he never died. Whatever gave you that idea.”
“You… everything you said, was in the past tense?” Was it now? This was confusing, and all he wanted was to hear about the Maxwells, but now he had tea, cake and a weird idea about a man who was never dead in the first place.
The husband shook his head and touched his wife on the shoulder. She was still chatting away as if the men were listening to her and not conversing with anyone but her.
“Yes thank you dear, I’d love one.” The old lady stopped in her tracks at his touch and stopped talking while she processed this. A swicth seemed to throw behind the haze descending in her eyes at the interuption and then she perked up again and bustled off to the kitchen.
“Sorry about that, Detective Sherry did you say?”
“Yes, uh am I imagining something or does she think…”
“It’s a thing, at our age, things just happen. You adjust I guess, I adjust. She’s always had an issue with tenses, with memory past and present.”
“Alzheimers?” Sherry guessed with what he thought was some delicacy.
“No.”
A raised eyebrow.
“As I said, age. It comes for us all.” The man glanced at the window that opened the view of the Maxwells driveway, and the detective came back to his original line of questioning.
“Some sooner than others.”
“Yes. I guess you want to know about the fight the other day, the one with that lad the one that… well you know who he is.”
“Yes, were you there?”
“We both were, Agnes told me she had spoken to the police. I wasn’t really expecting you to be honest. I was going to call later today and tell you all about it, I didn’t want to bother you too soon, I’m sure your busy. Usually when she tells her stories, well people thinkn they are just that. Stories. But they’re not, they’re memories and they come to her upside down and back to front. It all make sense when you see the big picture with her.”
He sat down.
“You need to take the longer view, you see more that way and you realise that it’s not just a story it’s a puzzle, you put it together and figure out what happened when. Then it makes sense. Then she makes sense. I gave up trying to re-order her when I realised. That’s just the way she sees, the way she talks and it does’t hurt to learn to listen for all of it.”
“Right. Kind of like my job.”
“I would suppose so. Just without the death.”
Again he looked sideways at the Maxwell’s.
“Usually. Usually…”
“So what can…”
“Oh yes, yes, sorry. It was the day before the … incident. We had just come in and only heard pieces of it as Ivan as shouting. We didn’t hear what James, that was his name yes? I saw it in the papers, and I had seen him here before. He was with that Indian fellow, the big one. Her brother.”
“Samir.”
“Yes. Very quiet, but I liked him. He came in and reprogrammed the VCR for us, she kept forgetting how to set the timer. He was very patient and had tea with us if he had the time”
“Milk and two sugars.”
Agnes had returned with two cups of tea, both earl grey with lemon as the detective had had previously. She had already spoken at length about how her husband used to love his tea the same way when he was around.
“Um, yes.” He looked at the tea and then at Agnes.
She looked him quite directly up and down as if he was stupid in some way.
“Milk and two sugars, he was a big lad I don’t think the sugar did him any harm.”
Ah, it was Sam’s tea she was referring to. He had know way to know that this was right or wrong. He was sure though that it would be. When you stepped back and took that long look, perhaps she was sharper than she looked. Sharper than most others even.
“Anyway, the day before that night?”
“Yes, it was late in the afternoon, it must have been after 4:30 as we were coming back from dancing.”
Another activity he had loved to do when he was around, teach Sherry to assume too much.
“Ivan was talking loudly about something, we thought it was about money.”
They didn’t really have money, so why were he and James arguing about that? Though the more he thought it was more often the lack of money that caused fights wasn’t it? Money truly did not buy happiness, but the lack of it could easily buy misery and despair.
“What makes you say that?”
“What?”
“That they were arguing about money?”
“Oh, isn’t it always about money? The kids these days.” Cliché had lead him to the concusion, not any particular clues. “Anyway, yes. Ivan, he was nice enough. He was very determined to do well. When we spoke it was always about business and family. It was never chit chat, he seemed very driven to protect his family, provide for them.”
“So he’d not be the type to hurt them?” This was different, other views had painted a very different picture.
The man looked at his wife and she was staring out the window, away in a memory of her own. In a room where they were not present. Her fingers were dancing in the air in front of her.
“I don’t believe that’s what I said detective.”
“Then what?”
“Well, then he said it. Very loud and very clear. I’m going to kill you. Do you hear me? I will … kill you if you don’t.”
“If you don’t what?”
“I don’t know? He obviously realised that he could be heard because I could hear voices, muffled but just as violent, just as intent – just not as loud or clear. We looked out the window and there he was. He had a knife to the poor boy’s throat.”
“Why didn’t you call the police then?”
“He put the knife away and tried to make like it hadn’t happened. But that poor boy, he fled, white as a ghost. I think maybe Ivan knew he was being watched and wanted to put on a show. I was not sure, and Agnes, she had stopped watching what was happening in the present when the shouting got to the death bit, she wanders you know. Not physically.”
“You could have called and let …”


“I could have, yes. But I did not, Ivan has a bit of a temper, he raises his voice and he drinks quite a lot, but I didn’t think this boy was a real threat to him though, so we said nothing.”
“But perhaps he was a threat to the boy, Ivan I mean?”
“No, I don’t think so, or I didn’t think so. I meant what I said, he was so intent on protecting and being the guard in his family. The law in his four walls, and to anyone who came into them. I had always said he would do anything to protect what was his, his family and home. Anything. You would not want to get involved with him if you were a threat to his world order, his home order.”
“Did you ever feel threatened by him?”
“Me? No, heavens no. Why on earth would I be a threat to him? Like I say he was not an aggressive man. He was a defensive one.”
“So what did you hear on the night?”
“Nothing, we were not here. We came home to see the lights and the police, come to think on it? Weren‘t you there? I seem to recall your face that night. You had on a trenchcoat, very Inspector Morse like we thought.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Yes, we saw you taking that young man away. That’s when the nice men in blue came and asked us what we knew. Agnes started telling the whole history of us and the Maxwells, she mentioned the fight in there somewhere, in no great detail. I’m surprised that he remembered it. He was very nice as I say, but he looked like he was humouring her. Serves me right for assuming about him eh?”
Indeed thought the detective.
“You know what they say about assume-ing don’t you?”
“No? What do they say?”

Oh dear he thought. How do I get myself into these situations?