doesn't have keys.’
Most of the rooms were unused since Joseph Allcock's wife moved out with the family and two dogs. Though she did not live in, the housekeeper had kept the place in good order, curtains drawn against direct sunlight and furniture covered with sheets. But Blakey had an expertise not even Murleen Persuad knew about. The nose that had become so accustomed to the smell of battleground cordite could also detect perfume. The more steps he climbed up the tower, the more noticeable it became. This faint odour was light, expensive and the sort chosen by a young woman.
Tycho would have been impressed.
And then there was that other secret talent which he guarded even more closely. The ex-soldier was an expert jeweller, adept at spotting precious slivers that escaped into the workbench apron. On the top flight of stairs something tiny glittered by a skirting board. He knew it was a diamond before he stooped to pick it up. And this small stud earring could only have been discarded deliberately.
An expensive breadcrumb. But leading to where?
The top landing was panelled and door-less, yet the width of the tower and floors below meant that there must have been a room up here somewhere.
Blakey pulled out his phone. ‘Got a really intriguing one here, Murleen. Could use Tycho's nose. You free to leave at the moment?’
As he ended the call, Blakey detected an odd, sweet aroma. It was nothing like the expensive perfume and permeated the far wall where the uppermost room should have been. He took out a penknife and tapped his way around the panelling.
‘Looking for something?’ A voice on the lower landed enquired.
‘Where's the door?’
‘Not easy to find,’ Joseph Allcock called up. ‘It can only be opened from down here.’
There was a click and several panels slid aside.
Shelves of willow pattern porcelain lining the walls of the secret room were illuminated by light from a window in the high ceiling. Shattered pieces of the collection littered the floor as though a tornado had swept through.
Joseph Allcock came up the stairs. ‘Please go in.’
The hardly perceptible change in the man’s tone persuaded Blakey to surreptitiously jam his penknife in the doorframe so the panels could not close on him.
As soon as he stepped inside he saw them.
Two contorted young bodies were lying amongst the shards of willow pattern porcelain, smashed in their desperate attempts to escape whatever had killed them. There were no obvious marks on the bodies, but their expressions were frozen in horror, as though gasping for breath.
There could only be one reason why Blakey had been invited to witness the gruesome tableau, so he wasn't surprised when the door closed behind him. Immediately that faint aroma he had been unable to identify filled the room of death. This was the house of a chemist and he shouldn't have been surprised that his chosen method of murder was toxic gas.
The DC held his breath long enough to identify the vent it was hissing from, pull off his shirt and attempt to block the fumes with it.
The toxin was quick working. Everything began to swim and take on a life of its own. The willow pattern room metamorphosed into a vivid world of blue, white and every shade in between. The sensation was terrifying, but Blakey had encountered far worse in combat. He hurled himself at the door and wrenched it open.
Joseph Allcock had not been expecting this, and in trying to push him back was dragged inside by his victim. He may have created the hallucinogenic poison, but had no resistance to it.
While Blakey was plunged into a willow pattern world, his would-be murderer was attacked by the livid, fire-breathing dragon that encircled the ex-soldier's torso. Every ripple of his muscles as he blundered about his own blue and white hallucination helped set the astounding tattoo free to pursue an existence of its own, one intent on devouring Joseph Allcock. The man shrieked like a demented banshee as the fiery hallucination tore at his sanity.
Blakey was aware of standing on the bridge by a pagoda. His deranged attacker was trying to drag both of them into the fast-flowing river to quell the flames of the monstrous creature incinerating him.
The ex-soldier managed a lucid thought, ‘What the hell! I can swim!’ And he dived into the turbulent waters below.
But the current had supernatural force. He was carried to the waterfall at the end of the willow pattern world, the shrieking of the deranged Allcock ringing in his ears.
Blakey was falling, falling, falling as something seized his ankles and dragged him down jagged rocks.
Then he became aware of a huge, slavering monster standing on his chest.
‘You stop doing that Tycho! You found him! That's enough!’
Blakey was lying on a lower landing, shirtless. To his relief the huge, hairy monster bounced off in pursuit of a gibbering prey that dashed past them.
The detective's head was throbbing too much to make sense of what had happened.
Then the chill of reality returned.
‘How did you get me down here, Murleen? You're half my size.’
‘Tycho help. You see teeth marks and feel bruises tomorrow.’ But something else was consuming her admiration. ‘I knew you had a tattoo, man, but not that! That is incredible!’
Blakey had lived with the huge dragon encircling his torso for so long it had become part of him. The astonishment of others could be disconcerting, and since the rise of YouTube he had been careful not to take off his shirt in public.
‘Had it when I was stationed in the Far East. They know how to do the colours out there.’ Then he realised what was going on. ‘Where's that murdering..?’
‘Screechy fellow who dashed past us?’
‘Hope there was only one.’
‘Tycho, he chase him.’ Murleen added, ‘He not eat him, though. He's a good dog.’
At that moment Blakey didn’t much care one way or the other.
He pulled himself up. ‘Where's my shirt?’
‘I going to hide that.’
‘I need to put it on before backup arrives.’
‘No man! It's evidence now. Bodies of two young people in there - I ain't tampering with a scene of crime.’ She was helping him down the stairs as reinforcements came up them.
‘Two bodies in room at top. Killer out there somewhere.’
But the attention of the uniformed officers was mostly focused on Blakey's remarkable tattoo.
‘What's wrong with you? Ain't none of you seen a tat before?’ she scolded, a little too gleefully for her friend's comfort.
Outside, the milling emergency services were also momentarily distracted by Blakey’s remarkable dragon despite the murders inside and raving mad culprit being pursued through the grounds by Tycho.
As the chief superintendent stepped from his car, Blakey tried to report, but a paramedic clamped a mask to his face with instructions to breathe deeply. The rush of pure oxygen immediately cleared his head. The DC pulled the mask away and bounded off in the direction of Tycho's enraged howling, leaving the senior officer to wonder whether he was seeing things.
‘Tycho got man Sir!’ Murleen announced triumphantly. ‘He not harmed! Just crazy!’ Then she dashed after Blakey.
‘Get after them!’ he ordered a uniformed inspector. ‘I want that man to be arrested by somebody sane.’
Still hallucinating, Joseph Allcock had managed to scramble onto the roof of a derelict cottage. The effort of getting up there had jolted him back to reality, as well as the fact that Tycho was circling below, furious at not being able to get at him.
‘Good boy Tycho! You stop now!’ Murleen told him.
The dog immediately stopped yowling and came to heel.
Blakey fixed the murderer with a steely glare. ‘Why did you kill Kimberly and Sam, Mr Allcock?’
There was no point in denying the crime. His best plea would be insanity. ‘She would have destroyed the family business. Her and that dough-brained moron!’
‘If the death sentence for incompetence was mandatory, the UK's
economy would be catapulted into the black overnight.’
The inspector turned up in time to hear the interrogation and decided to let Blakey carry on.
‘The company should have come to me! I'm the chemist! That girl only knew how to wear perfume, not make it!’
Given the situation, there was only one other question. ‘Would you like to come down here and be arrested, or do I have to come up there?’
‘That roof not take your weight, Blakey,’ Murleen warned. She turned to the inspector. ‘Nor yours. I go up.’
‘No chance!’ The two men ordered together.
But the dog handler was already shinning up the iron drainpipe.
Joseph Allcock puffed himself up threateningly as the small woman picked her way across the crumbling roof tiles.
‘That no good! You not toad! You come down now or I push you off! Tycho need dinner!’
The police dog let out a penetrating howl that made the suspect reconsider his situation.
‘Now that's the way to do it,’ Blakey told the inspector.
‘Where the hell did she come from?’
‘Amazon rainforest I wouldn't wonder.’
Despite himself, the inspector cast a glance of admiration at Blakey's tattoo: it was tempered by disapproval. He hadn't been aware of what all the canteen gossip had really been about until then.
‘I keep a spare shirt in the car. Should just about fit you.’
‘Thanks.’
Joseph Allcock came down, was arrested and the crime scene cordoned off.
Murleen resentfully watched Blakey put on his borrowed shirt.
‘I could marry any man living inside a dragon like that,’ she admitted.
‘Fungus wouldn't stand for it,