Page 69 of Not That Impossible

“Nah. Ray asked the same. Tacked down, for sure. That’s normal. But this wasn’t tacks. This was like a sealant. It was all glued down. Now, my thinking is—” he ripped a croissant in half, then changed his mind and went for another muffin, “—that it was to keep in the smell. That’s my opinion, though. That’s what I reckon. Whoever put that poor bastard in the floor was gonna be paranoid someone would notice.”

I shifted on my chair. We were getting to the good stuff. “Kevin said something about a tub?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get to that. We’re talking about the carpet still. Kev gives it his best, but when he can’t rip it up, we have to start cutting into the seal. It was weird stuff. I’ve got a theory on that, and all.”

Another pause for dramatic effect.

I had to give him his due, Craig was delivering more than my breakfast bribe’s worth of entertainment. When it came to facts, he hadn’t given me anything I didn’t actually know already.

“I reckon it was homemade sealant,” he said. “Made by the murderer.”

“Huh.”

“You don’t get shit like that down at B&Q or Homebase, is what I’m saying.”

“Right. And…the body?”

“Yeah. By the time Kev’s got the carpet cut back from the wall it’s lunchtime and we go to the pub. We get back at what, Kev? Two? Half two?”

“‘Bout that,” Kevin said.

I made a note. “How did you actually discover the body? Who even thought to look? It was under the floorboards, and you were there to lay a carpet. How did you come to lift the boards in the first place?”

This was all a lot more boring than you’d think the discovery of a dead body would be.

“Ah,” Craig said. He grinned, and hooked a thumb at Kevin.

“Aw, Craig. Don’t say anything,” Kevin said. “Mr Underwood might have a go at me if he finds out it’s my fault.”

“Your fault?” I perked up. This sounded like an exclusive.

“Ray’s got one of those old steamer trunk things in his bedroom,” Craig said. “Vintage. And before you ask, I don’t know what’s in there, because it’s locked. Heavy as shit, though. Anyway, Kev and I got it up and were carrying it over to the other side, and Kev dropped his end. Near shat myself, I did. Thought it was going to go right through the floor and drop into the room below, land on Ray. His office is right beneath the bedroom.”

“Not good,” I said, scribbling furiously.

“I know. I’ve got insurance but I don’t know if it would get me out of manslaughter.”

It wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other. If he’d killed Ray, Adam would have murdered him.

Craig continued, “Like I said, Ray’s a nice bloke but he’s a bit of a fusspot. He noticed it right off. The boards, I mean. Kev damn near bounced the boards right off the beam, he dropped it that hard, and they creaked something awful when you put any weight on them. For a bit, I thought Ray was too nice to bring it up but when we got back from the pub he mentioned it, and I told him I’d fix it.”

Craig shoved the final bite of muffin into his mouth and held up a finger.

Kevin had already finished. He looked a bit wistful as the muffin vanished.

Craig dabbed his mouth with the paper napkin. “So we went to take the floorboards up. And this is where it gets creepy again.”

I waited eagerly.

“The nails,” Craig said, “were unusually loose.”

I continued to wait eagerly.

Craig raised his brows.

Oh. “And that’s creepy?”

“Yeah. Once you nail boards down, unless you pull ‘em back up for access to pipes and stuff, what you gotta to keep popping them back up for?Suspicious. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I got the boards up…”

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