Also, Constable Miller’s looks made the younger officers feel seriously inadequate, so they’d nudged Ben towards approaching PC Tanaka.
“What, is that…？ Are you asking me?”
“We are,” Ben said.
Constable Tanaka cleared her throat, got to her feet, then opened her mouth to speak. “So…” she began, before a thought struck her. “Do I have to stand up?”
“Only if you want to,” Ben told her.
She gave this some further consideration, then sat down again.
“So, Bernie is a well-known local figure,” she said. She sounded a little robotic, like she was reading off a cue card.
Ben nodded encouragingly, while Hamza sat with his pen hovering above the notebook he had balanced on his knee.
“Go on,” Ben said.
“Um…” PC Tanaka’s gaze shifted left and right, like she was looking for the next card. “He’s… male. Mid-forties to early sixties, I’d say.”
“That’s quite a wide range,” the DI pointed out.
“Yeah, he’s hard to pinpoint. Got one of those faces.”
“Last name?” Tyler prompted, trying to help her out. He recognised that look of growing panic. God knew, he’d felt it himself often enough when put on the spot like this.
“Last name. Last name,” the constable mumbled. She shrugged. “We just knew him as Bernie the Beacon. Because of, you know, the newsletter thing.”
“You don’t know his last name?” Hamza said.
“No. Never asked.”
Ben frowned. “But I thought there were complaints about him from the health centre, or whatever it is?”
“Westerly Wellness.”
“Aye. I thought he’d been spoken to. In an official capacity, I mean.”
“Well, I mean… that depends on your definition of ‘official capacity,’ I suppose,” Suzi replied. “We had a word in his ear. Told him to stop playing silly buggers.”
“And you didn’t take his name?”
“No.”
“Or his age?”
“No.”
“Or his address?”
“Well, he lives in a tent, doesn’t he?” the constable said. She looked around at the shocked faces. Even Tyler, who’d been fully willing her to succeed, was apparently fighting the urge to cringe. “What you’ve got to understand is that things are a bit different out here. It’s a small community. You can’t just go wading in. It’s a balancing act. You try to keep everyone happy, and not rock the boat too much.”
Hamza looked down at his notebook, and the still completely blank page. “So, we don’t know anything about him?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Constable Tanaka retorted. “We know he believed in space lizards, or whatever it was. We know he didn’t get on with… well, most people, really, but he had a particular dislike for politicians, health practitioners, and anyone from an ethnic minority background.”
“He was racist?” Hamza asked.
“Oh, very much so. Very much racist. I’d go so far as to say he was extremely racist. Not in a screaming in your face sort of way, more in a general, low-level sort of contempt. He was not a big fan of mine, for obvious reasons. First time he saw me, he said I was worse than the Nazis in the Second World War. Aye, not the Japanese of the time in general, me specifically.”
“And what did you say to that?” Ben asked.
The PC took a moment to recall her exact words. “Something like, ‘Away an’ bile yer heid, ye mad auld bastard,’” she said, her accent becoming a guttural Glaswegian rasp. “Which, I have to say, fairly caught him off guard.”
“I can imagine, aye,” Ben said, chuckling.
“Most people round here won’t necessarily know that about him, of course, seeing as most of them are, well, white. I doubt they’ll have seen that side. But he was.”
“Noted,” Hamza said, tapping his pad. “So, we’ve got his first name, we’ve got that he believed some wacky shite about lizards, that he disliked most people, and that he was racist.”
“And that he was mid-forties to mid-sixties,” Tyler added.
“I said early sixties,” Suzi corrected. She shifted her weight a little uncomfortably. “Though, he could be mid-sixties, I suppose.”
“I’ll just put ‘adult male,’” Hamza suggested. “It’s not a very detailed picture we’re building up here.”