FLINDER'S FIELD (a murder mystery and psychological thriller) by D. M. Mitchell Page B

stopped, and drunkenly searched around for something else to use. He found an empty beer bottle from a crate by the pub’s back door and tossed it at the van. It shattered loudly against the van’s side.
    ‘Uncle Gary! What the blazes are you doing? Stop that! You’ll get into trouble!’
    But he wouldn’t stop. He now had a bottle in each hand, casually throwing them at the van. A pile of glass began to grow like a coating of ice crystals on the concrete.
    ‘What the hell are you doing?’ a familiar voice screamed. It was the band’s lead singer, alerted to the damage being done to his van. He dashed over to Gary. ‘Stop that, you drunken bastard!’
    Gary Cowper responded as Cowpers through the ages had responded, and belted the singer with a meaty fist. He went down immediately.
    ‘That song was in bad taste!’ Gary yelled as George grabbed his uncle’s hand, trying to restrain him.
    ‘You’re mad!’ said the singer, rubbing his cheek. ‘I was asked to sing the bloody song!’
    ‘Who asked you?’ said Gary. ‘I’ll kill the bastard. Can’t people just let things lie?’
    ‘I’m not saying, you great buffoon!’ said the singer, getting to his feet.
    Gary was about to throw a bottle at the singer when George snatched it from his hand and dragged him away. ‘He’s drunk,’ George explained.
    ‘He’s dented my van!’ said the singer.
    ‘It was dented already!’ said Gary.
    ‘You’ll pay for this, you mad bastard,’ said the singer.
    ‘He’ll fix any damage he’s done,’ said George.
    ‘Like hell I will!’ said Gary, trying to fight off his nephew with little effect.
    ‘Come on, Uncle Gary, let’s get you home.’
    ‘It was in bad taste,’ Gary murmured, now allowing himself to be led meekly away.
    ‘What’s he been doing?’ said Robert coming to George’s side.
    George raised a shoulder. ‘I don’t know what’s gotten into him.’
    Robert shook his head. ‘Take him home. I’ll sort this out.’
    George supported his uncle out onto the road and they hobbled back towards the garage. Up ahead they made out Adam Tredwin’s distant form, looking like a forlorn spirit hovering in the dusky light.
     
     
    Later that night, Christian Phelps locked up the pub, said goodnight to the barmaid and went upstairs to bed. Gary Cowper ’s reaction had knocked quite a few pounds from his nightly takings, that’s for sure. Stupid man. And he doubted the Mud-Puddle Frogs would ever come back to play in his pub again after all that. All Cowper did was draw attention to himself. To what happened.
    ‘You should ban him,’ said his wife Carol.
    He thought she was asleep. But she wasn’t, she was very much awake and sitting up in bed reading some chic-lit or other. In spite of being a landlord’s wife she tried her best to keep herself and her life separate from the pub. She kept to their private quarters, never took any part in the running of the pub, though the brewery thought otherwise. Why she married him he never knew. She hated his damn pub – his father’s pub, as she loved to remind him – and he thought that she hated him but never actually said it. They’d been married so long now that to him it had all become a fact of life. It surprised him, though, whenever she mentioned anything to do with the pub she detested.
    ‘I can’t ban Gary, you know that,’ he said, glancing at the open window, the curtains pulled apart. ‘He’s a friend.’
    ‘He’s a Cowper,’ she said. ‘Why are people so afraid of the Cowpers?’
    ‘Don’t talk rot,’ he said. ‘I am not afraid of any Cowper.’
    ‘Hmmm,’ she said, flicking a page.
    He tried to decipher what lay behind the irritating noise but curled his lip at her when she wasn’t looking. ‘I can’t sleep with the window and curtain open,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
    ‘It’s too hot,’ she said.
    ‘Well I can’t sleep, and that’s that,’ he said, striding over to the window.
    He stood at the bedroom curtains