Falling More Slowly ilm-1

by Peter Helton

  He clattered back down the ancient steps and approached the locus of the explosion. An inner circle had been taped off here, covering the area of scattered debris. A lone CSI technician wearing a coverall was still or again going over the scene, this time with a metal detector. He looked up, annoyed at seeing him approach. ‘Can you stay beyond that case, please?’ He pointed to an aluminium case standing on the path.

  McLusky stopped dutifully by the case and brandished his ID. ‘DI McLusky.’

  ‘Makes no difference, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Point taken. Anything in particular you’re looking for today?’

  ‘You should get a preliminary report sometime this afternoon.’ He hesitated. ‘But yeah.’ The man came over to him, carrying an evidence bag. He held it up for him to examine. It contained a very small piece of metal that could have belonged to some kind of mechanism. ‘The device contained a timer, inspector. They used a wristwatch. A mechanical one works best for this kind of thing. Tick tock, a real ticking time bomb. I’ve come back to see if I can recover more of the pieces. I’m not saying we’ll get it back to work but the more of the pieces we have the greater the chance that Forensics can come up with a make. If it was a new watch then it will probably turn out to have been Russian.’

  ‘Russian? Why’s that?’

  ‘Real wind-up watches are relatively expensive but the Russians still make cheap ones you can buy here and there. You would probably not go and buy a precision Swiss watch just to blow it up. So unless you had an old one hanging about you’d probably buy a crap Russian one from a catalogue showroom. It’ll last just long enough to do the job.’

  ‘I see.’ He looked at his own wristwatch which was a cheap battery job from a catalogue showroom. ‘So if it had a timer that means it wasn’t radio controlled or anything? Not set off remotely by someone watching for his victim to get near it?’

  ‘That’s correct. It was a very simple device, anyone could have built it. It’ll say so in the report, I’m sure.’

  ‘So if you’re using a wind-up watch how long in advance can you set the bomb to go off?’

  ‘Twelve hours. Enough time to get to the other side of the world, inspector.’

  Or Turkey. ‘Thanks. Good hunting.’ Or whatever one wished people who hoovered grass for a living. Anyone could have built it? McLusky was sure he wouldn’t know where to start. His understanding of things explosive began and ended with the kind where you put a match to a fuse and retired to a safe distance. He ducked out of the perimeter on the other side. He called Austin on his mobile. ‘I’m in Great George Street. Bring the car. No, your car.’ He smoked two cigarettes before Austin crept up on him in a minute Nissan. Not really a convincing car for a big hairy DS, thought McLusky, even in blue.

  The car park at Blaise Castle Estate out in Henbury had plenty of space this cold April lunchtime. The man at the estate office glanced at their IDs and gave them directions without asking what they had come about. They had to walk back along the road they had come and long before they got to the nursery McLusky wished they had taken the car. The signs on the gate declared No Parking and No Public Access. McLusky and Austin weren’t public. They pushed through and walked up between long propagating houses and through an open door into a large shed with a concrete floor. There were wooden bays containing various composts and more empty flowerpots than seemed possible. By a still-steaming kettle stood two young men in green dungarees and green T-shirts, chomping sandwiches.

  One of them swallowed down a large mouthful, looked like he regretted it for a second, then challenged them. ‘Help you gentlemen?’

  They showed IDs. McLusky looked around. ‘Boss about?’

  ‘On her lunch break. It’s about the bomb, is it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘We’re putting in for danger money.’

  ‘Good thinking. You wouldn’t of course have any idea who would want to blow up a shelter in Brandon Hill?’

  ‘Not the foggiest, and we’ve been thinking hard.’ He reached up a hand as if to scratch his head but changed his mind. His thin hair was ineptly spiked into a ridge that ran down the centre of his head like a flailed hedge.

  The other man spoke with a strong Bristol accent, modified by sandwich. ‘We hope it’s no one with a grudge against the park, since we’re out there all the time, like. We was planting bulbs around there only the other day, all round that shelter.’

  ‘Well, last October actually.’ The thin-haired gardener gave his colleague a pitying look.

  ‘A grudge against the park? Or the parks department? Has anyone left under a cloud recently?’

  They looked at each other for a split second, seeming to come to an instant agreement on the matter. ‘Yeah, Three Veg did.’

  ‘Yup, got fired.’

  Austin’s brow furrowed. ‘Three veg?’

  ‘Nickname. His real name’s Tim. He’s a veggie, so at school when others were having meat and two veg he used to ask for three veg. It stuck.’

  ‘What did he get fired for?’

  The first man had at last dispatched his sandwich. ‘What didn’t he? Just about everything.’

  The two gardeners slipped into their well-rehearsed double act. ‘Being late.’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘Skiving.’

  ‘He’d be out there, like, supposed to plant up a bed and he’d be standing by the fence watching the girls instead, leaving all his stuff lying about.’

  ‘Smoking in the greenhouses.’

  ‘Borrowing power tools …’

  ‘Driving the minivan through the park like a maniac.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that was on his second day here, nearly got fired for that then, didn’t he?’

  McLusky had heard enough reminiscences. ‘So he got the sack. When exactly was that?’

  ‘Last summer. September? Yeah, it was September.’

  ‘End of September.’

  ‘You seriously think he’s behind it? Building a bomb? Three Veg couldn’t do it, he hasn’t got the brains.’

  Rapid shakes of the head from the first man. ‘Too thick.’

  ‘Apparently it doesn’t take much brains. And we have to explore every avenue. Does he have a surname?’

  Hedgerow Hair nodded his chin at a door in the back. ‘They’ll have that in the office, won’t they?’

  They did. Timothy Daws, twenty-eight years of age. An address in Bedminster. The admin worker wasn’t taking a lunch break. She was eating salad from a plastic container at her desk. ‘Yes, we had to let him go in the end. He was charming but a compulsive liar and never did any work. When he did turn up for work at all.’

  ‘Did he have any redeeming features? Was he mechanically gifted, perhaps?’

  ‘We thought so at first. He seemed to be so good at repairing things. Machines appeared to be breaking down as soon as he was supposed to take them out on a job. He would then say, Oh, leave it to me, I’ll fix it, and he would, eventually. Only it later turned out there was either never anything wrong with them in the first place or he’d been the one to sabotage them. He’d just sit around smoking, doing nothing. It was another way of delaying the start of any job you gave him.’

  McLusky thanked her and walked out the other end between the propagating houses full of row upon row of plants growing in plastic pots. Two more gardeners working at this end looked up from what they were doing and gave him a friendly nod as he passed. One even smiled. People enjoying their work, whatever next? On the way back to the car park he called Albany Road. ‘Have we got the search warrant for Colin Keale yet?’

  ‘Still waiting.’

  ‘All right, can you run a name for me? Timothy Daws, as in jackdaw. He got fired by the parks department for being a waste of space.’

  ‘Won’t be a tick.’ The officer didn’t take long to come back over the phone. ‘Timothy Daws, yup, petty theft and one caution for cannabis possession, nothing recent. Hardly a career criminal, sir.’

  ‘I don’t care, it�
�s all we’ve got. I have an address out in Bedminster, wherever that is.’

  The DC compared it with the one on the computer. ‘Yes, same address he gave then.’

  ‘Right. Chase the search warrant.’ He slipped his mobile back in his jacket. ‘We’ll pay Mr Three Veg a little visit.’

  Austin drove south and west. ‘Does he look like a candidate for our Bench Bomber to you?’

  ‘Not really but who does? If he’s a long-term pothead then he could have gone paranoid. Apparently he’s a lazy bastard so I wouldn’t have thought he’d go to the trouble of learning to make bombs. Also, if you wanted to take it out on the parks department surely you’d bomb the parks department.’ McLusky sighed. ‘Unfortunately there’s no “surely” with these nutters. So we’ll go visit.’

  The address turned out to be at the end of a dispiriting terrace of small grey post-war houses. Tiny front lawns had mostly been tarmacked to provide parking, since the street itself was too narrow to accommodate the collection of low-budget cars. Only a few front lawns struggled on, some full of the brightly coloured impedimenta of child-rearing, some full of broken white goods. Daws’ address fell into the struggling-lawn category. Water from a split downpipe was leaking into the stonework. At the windows the remains of squashed flies dotted grey net curtains. Austin went round the back to stop Daws from disappearing through the garden.

  There was a door bell but McLusky ignored it. He squatted down and peered through the letter box. A narrow hall, steep stairs on the right, a tangle of mountain bikes on the left and at the back of the hall what looked like a kitchen. There was movement there. He straightened up, rattled the letter-box lid and pounded on the door.

  After a minute the door opened a crack and the pale spotty face of a young man appeared in the gap. ‘Yeah?’

  McLusky pushed the door wide open and the kid staggered back. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Always put the chain on before opening the door to strangers, son.’

  The young man looked alarmed. ‘There isn’t a chain.’

  ‘Then fit one. You Timothy Daws?’ He already knew he couldn’t be. This specimen was too young and had all the charm of a damp dish cloth.

  ‘No. And it’s not my house. Tim isn’t here. What do you want?’

  McLusky waved his ID. ‘Police. Mind if I come in?’ He hefted past the skinny youth. ‘Thanks. Who are you?’

  ‘Innis Cole.’

  ‘You live here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You a friend of Timothy’s?’ Innis Cole, McLusky decided, was barely twenty and nervous. Probably nothing more serious than an eighth of blow in his bedroom, though.

  ‘Not really. He’s a housemate. Well, landlord, really.’

  ‘Let’s go into the kitchen, Innis. So he does live here?’ He allowed the spotty kid to lead the way. Cole stalled however when he noticed Austin trying the half-glazed back door. Austin flattened his ID against the glass. McLusky gave Cole a playful push from behind. ‘That’s all right, he’s with me. Go let him in.’

  Austin sniffed as he entered. The place smelled of sour washing and stagnant water. The kitchen was a mess.

  Now that he had two officers to put up with the youth appeared even more nervous, looking from one to the other.

  McLusky pressed on. ‘Where’s Three Veg then?’

  The use of Daws’ nickname seemed to worry Cole. ‘Don’t know. He doesn’t tell me where he goes.’

  Austin positioned himself behind him. ‘When did you last see him?’

  The youth turned around. ‘I, er, don’t know. Couple of days ago?’

  ‘Three?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  McLusky flicked through a small pile of letters addressed to Daws. None of them were personal. ‘Does he often disappear for several days?’

  Cole turned around again. ‘From time to time, yeah.’

  ‘But he doesn’t tell you where he goes.’ He picked up a chopstick and used it to poke around between the collection of empty takeaway cartons and beer cans on the table.

  ‘What does Mr Daws do for money?’ Austin wanted to know.

  Innis rolled his eyes and sat down at the encrusted kitchen table. He wasn’t going to whirl around any longer. ‘I don’t know. I think he’s signing on at the moment.’

  Austin ran a finger through the grime on the half-glazed door, then inspected it and looked for somewhere to wipe it. ‘This is a council place, right?’

  ‘Think so, yeah.’

  ‘But you pay rent to Daws.’ Austin wiped his finger on the margin of a local free newspaper.

  ‘Yeah.’

  McLusky waved a couple of benefit cheques he had found among the letters. ‘While Daws claims rent for the entire place from housing. And hasn’t bothered cashing these. Curious, wouldn’t you say? Can’t be short of cash then. When did you last see him, Mr Cole?’

  ‘Is that what this is about? Benefits?’

  ‘Could be. Doesn’t have to be. I’m not really interested but I could always take an interest if I got a bit bored.’ McLusky gave him a warm smile, which seemed to unnerve Innis Cole considerably. ‘So?’

  ‘A few days.’

  McLusky scissored the cheques between his fingers.

  Innis tried to count them. ‘Two weeks?’

  ‘And where’s he gone?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me. He’s got a job on, is all he said.’

  ‘A job on. What kind of a job?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something to do with gardens. He works with someone else sometimes. Or for someone else, I’m not sure which.’

  ‘Does he have a car?’

  ‘A van. And it’s no use asking me what kind, it’s white and quite clapped out. He was given it, I think.’

  ‘Right. And what do you do, Mr Cole?’

  ‘I work at the video shop.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the high street.

  ‘But not today?’

  ‘I’m on a late, we’re open till ten thirty.’

  McLusky turned on his avuncular voice. ‘Okay. Now we would like to talk to Mr Daws about this and that. You might want to give us a call when you see him. But don’t worry, we’ll pop in from time to time. Whenever we’re in the area.’ He nodded reassuringly at Cole. As the two detectives left the narrow house Innis Cole did not look reassured.

  McLusky sank into the passenger seat. ‘Do you realize this is a girl’s car, Jane? The baby blue colour won’t fool a soul.’

  ‘I know. Eve made me get it. She loves the things.’

  ‘Married? Girlfriend?’

  ‘Ehm, girlfriend, well, fiancee, sort of …’

  ‘Sort of? That doesn’t sound like you went on your knees and offered up diamonds. It was her idea then.’

  ‘Yes, but not a bad idea for all that. We’ve been living together for a year now. It really makes sense.’

  ‘Aha?’

  ‘Well, it does when she explains it.’

  ‘Do you love her, Jane?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I do. How about you?’

  ‘Me? I never met the girl. Am I attached? No, not at the moment. I thought I was. Until … the accident and me in hospital. It was the last straw for Laura.’ He realized that this was the first time he had said her name out loud since the break-up and the shape of it threatened to fill the entire car. He lit a cigarette and found the ashtray crammed with sweet wrappers. ‘Any thoughts about Mr Cole?’

  ‘The guy was far too nervous.’ Austin navigated the car back on to the main street and pointed it in the direction of Albany Road. ‘He was trying to cover up for Daws not being there, so Daws probably told him, “If anyone asks I’ve only been gone a few days.”’

  ‘Get on to the DSS, see when he last signed on and whether he missed an appointment. And also find out when he signs on next, we can easily collect him then.’

  ‘You think he’s a possible?’

  ‘He’s all we’ve got, so we’ll pull him in.’

  ‘We could always get a search warrant and have
a look in his garden shed. It’s certainly big enough for a bomb factory.’

  ‘Is it? I didn’t see it. Why didn’t you say? Turn around, let’s have a look at it.’ McLusky threw the cigarette out of the window and sat up in his seat, impatiently working an imaginary gas pedal.

  Austin slowed, looking for a place to turn round. ‘Shouldn’t we get a search warrant first, sir?’

  ‘Sir, is it? You can call me Liam, even when you disagree with me. Go on, Jane, make the turn.’

  Austin obliged. ‘I tried the shed, it was locked and the window was blocked up.’

  ‘Blocked-up windows I like. Mr Innis Whatsisname could be on the phone to Daws this minute, telling him we’re looking, or he might already be clearing out the shed. Shit, Daws could be living in it for all we know.’