#1 - Detective Inspector Burton and the Death on the Grand Union

Detective Inspector Burton loved his parents dearly but, when he inherited their narrowboat, he could have killed them.

His parents had named her Additional Cargo. He’d never really thought about it but he often pondered why, considering his father had been less than five-six and his mother less than five-foot, he’d ended up at six-eight – with size fourteen feet.

He stood on the stern deck and looked down into the cabin. All he could see was a bed – a small bed. He took a breath and squeezed down the four steps, grimacing as he bashed his head on the hatch. Standing in the bedroom with his shoulders on the ceiling, he thought about his parents’ disappointment when he kept declining their invitations to join them. They’d been getting on a bit and the physical exertion needed to manage the boat had been difficult for them. They’d wanted him to work the locks, open and close the swing-bridges and do some maintenance. And now, here he was, having to learn it all from scratch without his parents’ guiding hand while handling the physical exertion of switching on a light with his chin on his chest.

Sell it. Made sense – he’d get about thirty or forty grand for it. He couldn’t – it had been his parents’ passion.

Except for a walkway no wider than nine inches, the double bed took up the entire bedroom. The walkway was made narrower still by a radiator and the inward sloping wall.

Just past the bedroom was the bathroom. As he squeezed past, he looked in – and winced.

Just past the bathroom, the cabin seemed to open out – he couldn’t really tell as his chin was still pressed into his chest. He was now in a sort of kitchen, then there was a sort of dining area and then there was a sort of living area with a stove.

This might be the chance, he thought, to change his name to Gulliver. He loved his parents dearly but had they really loved him?

‘Burton is such an ordinary name – we’ve spiced it up,’ his mother explained when he was seven years old.

‘But…’

‘It’ll make a man of you,’ his father matter-of-facted.

‘But…’

‘The other children will make fun of you…’

‘They are…’

‘…and it’ll strengthen your character. If you can take it, you can be anything you want.’

‘I can’t…’

‘Can’t is for the other boys and girls. No such thing as can’t for our little Gonfra.’

And he cried.

Somehow, beyond all expectation – beyond all sense of… well, just sense – and driven by his love for his parents, he’d vowed never to change his name. For Detective Inspector Gonfra Burton, a vow was a promise and promises were to be kept. Now, with his parents’ deaths, that promise no longer held meaning. But, changing his name just didn’t seem right.

Like selling the narrowboat didn’t seem right.

And something about the stove didn’t seem right either. He knelt and opened the sooted-up door, finding eleven candles of varying shapes and sizes and three tea lights. He stood up, bashing his head. That’s not right, he thought. Using his phone, he took a photo. The candles and tea lights were sitting in an inch of ash. He removed them and laid them out on the dinette table. Back to the stove. The drawer beneath was full of ash. He frowned.

He stood, bashing his head, and headed to the loo. He sat on the toilet with his head pressed up against the shower. On boats, wasn’t the toilet called the head? When done, he stood, bashing his head, cursing the lack of headroom and wondering whether he was ever going to get the word head out of his head. The flush had two options: eco and normal. He looked down into the toilet bowl and selected normal, waited, and selected normal again – and again.

Mildly curious about where it had all gone, he scrunched his way back down to the front and the candle-burning-stove. This stove wasn’t right.

After bashing his head again, he went to the hob. It looked the same as a normal gas hob. He lit a burner. It worked! The kettle was empty. Pivoting on his shoulders, he turned to the sink and opened the tap. An electric pump whirred somewhere. Just outside the window above the sink, a swan and four cygnets had gathered.

‘Got nothing for you, my friends,’ he muttered pivoting back to the hob. He found a mug in the cupboard under the worksurface. He found some instant coffee and sighed with relief when he found some teabags.

The milk in the fridge had solidified and he washed it down the sink. A commotion grew outside the window. The adult swan was deterring the cygnets and forcing its way between them and the floating white gelatinous chunks slowly spreading from the side of the boat. The cygnets retreated with something like humiliation in their demeanour, the adult swan harrumphed away and DI Burton sat at the dinette table with his mug of black tea while rubbing his head which he’d bashed three further times during his tea-making manoeuvres.

The stove was still irking him – it wasn’t right. Those candles. He prodded one of them. His father was sending him a message. And the message was not: don’t light the stove – too obvious.

‘Helloooo.’

The voice came from outside and was accompanied by knocking on the cabin roof.

‘Helloooo.’

DI Burton made his way aft – bashing his head twice on the way, dislodging the curtain rods outside the bathroom and dislodged the set in the bedroom as he replaced the ones outside the bathroom.

He pushed open the back doors and, looking up, saw a young lad who seemed a bit stressed.

‘Ah. You must be Detective Inspector Burton.’

DI Burton climbed the four steps up onto the stern deck and looked down at the visitor who was one of the Canal & River Trust volunteers in his snazzy little lifejacket.

‘I was told to come and find you.’

DI Burton leaned closer over the CRUST lad.

‘Something terrible has happened. The police are there and they asked if anyone knew where you were.’

DI Burton picked a dead leaf off the CRUST lad’s shoulder, studied it from under his bushy eyebrows and flicked it into the canal.

‘They’re at Bridge 53. About three miles that way,’ he pointed up the canal.

The CRUST lad was pointing in the same direction Additional Cargo was pointing and even DI Burton knew that was fortunate.

‘A boater has been bludgeoned to death!’

DI Burton looked from the CRUST lad to the towpath and back to the CRUST lad.

‘He fell in the canal and his boat carried on without him.’

DI Burton looked from the CRUST lad to the towpath and back to the CRUST lad.

‘The boat went under Bridge 53 and just after that there’s a bend but the boat carried straight on and grounded and its stern spun round and now it’s stuck across the canal and no one can move…’

DI Burton picked the CRUST lad up by his snazzy little lifejacket, popped him onto the towpath and started the engine. He pulled the tiller towards him and then pushed it away. Nothing happened.

‘You must put it in gear,’ said the CRUST lad from the towpath. He leant forward to move the gear lever but stepped back when DI Burton raised his hand.

Watching the CRUST lad, DI Burton rammed the boat into gear and drove straight into the boat in front.

‘I’ll push your bow out,’ said the CRUST lad walking down to the front.

With a little help from the CRUST lad, DI Burton was on his way figuring out how the tiller steered the boat. It was odd pushing the tiller to the right and the boat steering to the left. Three miles, he thought. No locks. He’ll be there in an hour. But what was really occupying his mind was how they knew about him and, worse still, how to find him.

~

The emergency run to a serious assault, possibly a murder, would give him plenty of time to ruminate over recent events. Upon receiving news of his parents’ deaths, his superintendent had granted him compassionate leave. His parents had died horrible deaths. They were being entertained in another couple’s boat when the chimney caught fire. It seems that none of them noticed because they were all completely pissed. Indeed, he was passing the burnt-out hull at that very moment.

The police were still running their investigation. For DI Burton, the coroner’s verdict was a foregone conclusion. The solicitor holding his parents’ will and taking it all through probate had told him what he was due to inherit. The solicitor had also said, ‘As the will’s executor, you, Gonfra Burton, is that really your name?’ DI Burton had stood up and stepped towards the solicitor who continued hurriedly, ‘That you, Gonfra Burton, as the will’s executor…’ DI Burton had to… he couldn’t remember exactly what he had to do. He had to liquidise his parents’ estate or something.

Passing under Bridge 51, he bashed the hull against something.

‘I’ll get your cases re-assigned,’ the superintendent had said. ‘Take as long as you need.’ The Met were big on HR. ‘Keep your phone handy.’ Not that big.

Then a phone call had come. They needed an experienced detective on the canals. He was to consider himself seconded to the Canal Police. The what? ‘It’s very new,’ the superintendent had said.

Passing under Bridge 52, he lost his chimney.

The Canal Police. DI Burton had googled it. There used to be a Canal Police. Then it came under the jurisdiction of the British Transport Police. And now it’s been devolved to the local police. He didn’t even know which constabulary he was in. Bucks. Or was it Berks? Of course – Berks. The investigation into the death of his parents and their friends was being run by Berkshire Constabulary.

And, as he bounced around another bend, he saw the scene. Some blue and white tape had been strung up across the canal and the towpath and there was a uniformed officer standing by it.

Behind the tape was the boat just as the CRUST lad had described.

Beyond that was the bridge – Bridge 53. On top of that was a police car with its blue and red strobes flashing away. He had one of those magnetic revolving blue lights in his desk back in the office. He’d kept it as a memento from his days in the Robbery Squad. He made a mental note to collect it.

‘FOUR!’

DI Burton looked in the direction from which he’d heard the shout and recognised that the canal was passing by a golf course. Fore, then. There was a splash by his boat. Holding onto the rail, he leant over and scooped it up – he hadn’t realised that golf balls float.

He moored near to the towpath and waved the uniformed constable over. After scrutinising the badge on his helmet – it was Berks – he threw the constable a rope. The constable pulled him in and DI Burton stepped onto terra firma.

‘You must be DI Burton,’ the constable said to DI Burton’s back. ‘You can’t go in there, it’s a crime scene,’ the constable said as DI Burton ducked under the tape.

DI Burton found the duty officer.

‘You must be DI Burton,’ the duty officer said.

DI Burton leant over the duty officer.

‘It’s a mystery. But we’re doing our best to preserve the scene for you. Golden hour and all that. Well, golden six hours. We haven’t moved the body or anything. We even managed to get a pathologist here.’

As if on cue, a man in a wetsuit emerged from the canal and waddled up onto the towpath, flippers and all.

‘You must be DI Burton,’ he said, removing his snorkel and snapping his visor up. ‘Blunt force trauma to the head. Whatever it was, was very round. Right parietal bone. The victim was struck from above. Difficult to say what kind of instrument.’

DI Burton lobbed the golf ball he’d fished out of the canal to the pathologist, turned and headed back to Additional Cargo saying, ‘For fu…’