Falling More Slowly ilm-1

by Peter Helton

  The angles on the cameras covering the entrances were shallower and allowed number plates to be read. The time counter helped him to synchronize the footage. Any person walking in or out who could have simply dropped the booby-trapped compact he tracked from camera to camera. Those that walked out he tracked backwards, those that came in he tracked forward. Some people of course merely used the car park as a shortcut but most were coming from or walking to their cars. He then noted down the appearance of the people and the make and age of car and laboriously tracked the vehicle back to when it arrived or left, noting the index number if possible. Nobody however could be observed placing the bomb by the entrance or dropping it, though the camera might not pick up such sleight of hand. The area was just outside the picture, perhaps by less than a yard, he estimated. After two hours of this he reminded himself that he was acting on the assumption that what he had seen in the original footage was indeed Maxine Bendick bending down to pick up the glittering find that later claimed her face. His headache had got steadily worse. Time for a break. He stopped the playback and called the hospital.

  Sitting on the sill of the open window he was glad of its unprestigious view over the backs of houses, away from the eyes of punters, colleagues and superiors, because it allowed him to defy the smoking ban. While he was waiting for a doctor at Southmead Hospital to come back on the line there was a knock at the door. It sounded like Austin’s knock but you could never be sure. Just in case it wasn’t he hid his cigarette by balancing it on the window frame behind him. A slight breeze made it roll off and fall into the void.

  ‘Shit. Come in.’

  It was Austin. ‘Shit come in? Charming. Or did you think it was DCI Gaunt? I forget, you haven’t met him yet.’ Seeing that his superior was on the phone the DS sat down. He produced his own cigarettes and lit one with a silver lighter. Not before time, McLusky thought — the man’s addiction had been costing him a fortune.

  Austin frowned at the tower of TV sets. ‘Why didn’t you use the computer, you could have had all three on a split screen?’

  ‘Really? Now he tells me.’ The doctor came back on the line, armed with files and superior advice, no doubt, to refuse his request.

  McLusky had expected no less. ‘Dr Thompson, I said interview. I have no intention of interrogating Miss Bendick. She’s a witness and a victim of crime. I only need to ask her a few questions.’

  ‘Not for a few days, I’m afraid.’

  ‘One question? I tell you what, doctor. You ask her one question for me and I might not have to interview her at all, how’s that? Would you do that? It might just help stop more cases like Miss Bendick coming through your door.’

  A short pause during which McLusky rolled his eyes for Austin’s benefit.

  ‘I can’t promise you anything. It might depend on the question. She needs rest.’

  ‘It’s a simple question. Just ask her where she got the powder compact.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Oh no, I’ll hold.’

  ‘You’re a suspicious man, inspector.’

  Too right. Waiting for people to call back, being abandoned by operators in little-explored corners of the switchboard, phantom messages left with imaginary people and all things ‘in the post’ were part of an officer’s daily round and high on McLusky’s list of spirit-draining nuisances.

  He wedged the receiver between ear and shoulder, stretched his legs out along the window sill, folded his arms and turned to Austin. ‘You found nothing, I take it?’

  The DS had just returned from supervising a search of Colin Keale’s locker at the distribution depot where the man drove a fork-lift at night. ‘Nothing relating to bomb making. An overall, a newspaper and a vacuum flask that had whisky in it.’

  ‘Whisky? Mmm. Glenfiddich, by any chance?’

  ‘I don’t have your nose, Liam. I could tell it was whisky but not which one. We’ll send it off for analysis of course.’

  ‘And wait four weeks? Bollocks to that. Give me one sniff, Jane, and I’ll tell you if it is. What time does his plane land?’

  ‘16.55.’

  ‘We’d better get a move on soon. Is the flask still here? Then go and get it.’ While he waited for Austin to return he fluted bored invective down the line where Dr Thompson and Southmead Hospital were offering him nothing but static.

  Keale’s Turkish holiday was over and he was flying back into Bristol Airport this afternoon. It would be good to have at least something to scare him with when they questioned him. Of course an awful lot of people drank Glenfiddich. Few stuffed the tin it came in full of gunpowder and shoved it under a park bench.

  ‘There you are, impress me.’ Austin handed over the red plastic flask. It was scratched and grimy.

  McLusky unscrewed the plastic cup and popped the old-fashioned cork stopper. He inhaled the fragrance deeply and was instantly troubled by a strong desire to put the half-litre flask to his lips and empty it. ‘It’s Glenfiddich all right.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Can’t be a hundred per cent sure without tasting it, but we can’t go around drinking the evidence.’

  ‘Am I bothering to send it off?’

  ‘Pointless at this stage, it wouldn’t prove a thing. We’ll wave it under his nose first during the interview and ask him. Then we’ll send it off.’

  ‘Because you’ve been known to be wrong?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  The receiver against his ear crackled to life. ‘Inspector?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Miss Bendick told me she found the compact at a car park that day. Is that any help?’

  On the contrary. ‘It is. Thanks for doing that, Dr Thompson. I must ask you to keep that detail to yourself for the time being. It’s important it doesn’t become public knowledge at this point in the investigation.’ He returned the receiver to its cradle with exaggerated gentleness.

  ‘Is it what I think it is?’

  McLusky slid his jacket on. ‘Yup. Let’s go.’

  By the time they had arrived at Austin’s car the implications were sinking in. ‘Bastard. Now what do we do?’

  McLusky strapped himself into the back seat as conscientiously as someone about to loop-the-loop in an open-cockpit plane. ‘You have my permission to panic. Meanwhile we continue to have every available bod explore every possible avenue. How are we doing with the fireworks sales?’

  ‘We’re nearly through them all. Nothing. No one reports any suspiciously large sales or people coming back for several purchases, though that’s very hard to keep track of if you have several staff. If our bomber has any savvy he’ll have gone round lots of shops anyway.’

  ‘Quite. I expect he did. What about people licensed to handle gunpowder?’

  ‘We’re still checking those too. There’s not many in our area. The licence conditions were tightened up several times recently, Prevention of Terrorism Act etc. Did you know you only need a lightning conductor if you are storing more than 500 kilograms of the stuff?’

  McLusky frowned at the traffic. ‘Fascinating, Jane. And what a shame, otherwise all we’d do is look for a suspicious lightning conductor and make a quick arrest. Are we going to make the airport on time?’

  ‘Yeah, no sweat. I’m using a shortcut.’ Austin swung the car through a couple of roundabouts and dived into the suburbs where he could avoid much of the traffic that was building up again on the more obvious routes. One day soon they would experience gridlock in the centre again. Last summer it had only taken a few simultaneous incidents and the city had ground to a complete halt.

  He was keen to discuss whatever little progress they had made, the angles they had already covered, while he skilfully negotiated the network of streets and lanes that would spit them out near the airport. The DI on the back seat however did little more than grunt and for the most part stared past him out at the narrow lanes as though their final doom lurked just around t
he next corner.

  New security arrangements at the airport meant they could park nowhere near the entrances but it didn’t matter, they had arrived in time, thanks to Austin’s shortcuts. McLusky never had much faith in shortcuts and was impressed. They hadn’t got stuck in traffic once and that was a rare experience. Still, being driven was a nightmare. ‘You’ve got to show me your shortcut on the map.’

  ‘I’ll photocopy you a map.’ Austin checked his watch. ‘He’ll land in five minutes.’

  Colin Keale was going to do no such thing. At this very moment he was looking out from his window seat at the duvet of cloud obscuring his view of the Mediterranean. His departure from Dalaman had been delayed by two hours. But that didn’t worry Keale. What worried him was whether or not he was going to get the contents of his holdall through British customs and what would happen to him if he didn’t.

  ‘Didn’t you think to check before we set off?’

  Austin rolled his eyes. ‘I was going to but I got distracted by the whisky thing. Airport police should have let us know really, they’re the ones tracking him. Are we going back to Albany or are we waiting?’

  ‘God no, we’ll wait.’ Shortcut or not, under no circumstances did he want to do the journey three more times. ‘And since it was you who got distracted by the whisky thing you can distract me with a cappuccino thing.’

  They installed themselves in one of the cafes in the arrivals lounge, but not before McLusky had colourfully expressed his displeasure at not having been informed of the delay to the airport police sergeant supposedly in charge of picking up Keale.

  When Colin Keale at last arrived he simply couldn’t believe it. How had they known? They hadn’t even looked inside his bag, just scooped him up in customs and frog-marched him out through a side door where these two CID clowns were waiting, and he knew CID clowns when he saw them.

  McLusky put his ID away. ‘You know why we are here?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Keale looked tired and deflated. Apart from his nose, which had caught too much sun, he looked pale. He hadn’t gone to Turkey to sunbathe, that seemed obvious.

  McLusky was surprised but never looked a gift horse in the mouth until he had got it home. ‘In that case, Colin Keale, I’m arresting you for causing explosions, attempted murder, causing actual bodily harm …’

  ‘Wa-wa-wait!’

  He didn’t let himself be interrupted and finished the caution: ‘… something which you later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

  The man looked incredulous. ‘No, I fucking don’t.’

  ‘Well, we can talk about it down the station, Mr Keale.’

  Which is what they had done now for the last hour in this depressingly neutral interview room at Albany Road. Spread out on the table stood part of the contents of Colin Keale’s holdall, the reason, he had assumed, for his arrest. There were several plastic nets and paper bags full of what had at first looked to McLusky like onions and shrivelled potatoes, and a carrier bag stuffed with packets of plant seeds, some of them in little brown envelopes with Turkish handwriting on them. And a litre bottle of whisky. It wasn’t Glenfiddich. None of this looked like a major breakthrough to the inspector.

  ‘I suppose this contains Glenmorangie too?’ He produced the thermos flask from a carrier but thought he already knew the answer.

  ‘Where the hell did you get … did you break into my locker at work?’ Keale was brimming with righteous anger but struggled to keep it in check, in view of the contraband on show on the table in front of him. So he had been stupid once and built some pipe bombs. They’d been glorified fire crackers really, just something to piss people off with. Now they were talking about blowing people up. And he hadn’t even been in the country. He had made one mistake, one error of judgement, and from here to eternity they were going to arrest him every time a car misfired in the city. He hadn’t been well, had gone through a period of mental instability, you might say. He was better now but of course to the police it had to be him if some bastard started blowing up people. He hadn’t really wanted to hurt anyone, he just wanted to make them look stupid. What a fucking mistake that had been. ‘Yes, yes, it’s Glenmorangie. I suppose you told my employers and lost me my job as well now? That’s great. That’s dandy. It wasn’t easy getting any sort of job with my history. And you’ve no idea how cold it is in those bloody warehouses in winter. A couple of tots get me through the night shift.’

  Austin had brought in a photocopy of a leaflet produced by the Plant Health and Seed Inspectorate. McLusky read it. He was getting bored with all this. They’d been over Keale’s movements on the day before the explosion countless times. He cited his neighbour as an alibi and McLusky had little doubt that it would check out. The man was just a plant nut. The things on the table between them were bulbs and corms, he wasn’t sure where the difference lay, and there were enough seeds in this one carrier bag alone to keep a garden centre going. He hadn’t brought in anything illegal, he swore it, just far too much, he admitted it. Everything was so cheap there. He wasn’t doing any harm, was he?

  McLusky checked his watch. He was already over an hour late, the play had started a while ago and he had no idea if Dr Rennie had got the messages he had left for her.

  And now, since he had whisked Keale away before his bags had been checked at customs, he had more or less helped the nutter smuggle these things into the country. He didn’t feel much sympathy for Keale. The man was a creased, slightly greasy-looking type. Perhaps it was the plane journey that had shrivelled him or maybe it was finding himself back inside an interview room at Albany. He was just another slightly strange, unhappy man who liked growing stuff in a basement. What did it matter? This was all a waste of time.

  ‘Right, you can go. But don’t leave town, as they say, we might want to talk to you again.’

  Keale crossed his arms in front of his chest. ‘What about my bulbs and seeds though?’

  ‘None of these are …’ McLusky picked up some of the shrivelled-looking things. ‘None of these are dangerous? Or endangered and what have you?’

  ‘No, as I told you, I just went a bit overboard.’

  ‘Well, then pack them up and get out of here.’

  Keale sprang into action. In less than a minute he had cleared the treasure into his holdall and rushed away. In his eagerness to be out of there he left his duty-free whisky behind.

  Back in his office McLusky found a place for the litre bottle of Glenmorangie in the bottom of his desk, making a mental note to get a couple of glasses from the canteen.

  A fine drizzle began to darken the pavement as he waited for his taxi.

  On the other side of the river in the Knowle West district of the city Frank Dudden was pissing in the street between two parked cars while shouting at the bastards in the George and Dragon behind him. ‘Fascist wankers! If you won’t even let me piss in your fucking stinking toilet then I’m pissing right here!’ He half turned to look at the pub from which he had just been evicted and splashed urine against the back of a car, over his shoes and one knee as he swayed backwards. ‘Fuck.’ He buttoned himself up, wiped his hands on his trousers and steadied himself. Wankers, all of them. As he passed the pub he aimed a kick at the door through which he had been propelled by the landlord. His kick glanced off the slick woodwork and hurt the side of his foot. ‘Fascists!’ Dudden steadied himself against the wall before steering an approximate course down the pavement. First they sold you the drink then they told you you’d had too much. What was the world coming to when a man couldn’t even get pissed in peace to drown his sorrows? What was so bad about that? It was any decent and honest Englishman’s right to get rat-arsed if his girlfriend of seven — seven! — years ran off with his month’s takings. Which, okay, he should have banked earlier. Still. Running off with it. Without him. Because of one bloody scuffle. And to Spain! Toremo-fucking-linos! Just how tacky was that?

  Dudden reached his car at the street corne
r and stopped to focus on the object standing on its roof. ‘What the fuck?’ A can of Special Brew. An unopened can of Special Brew. You’re hallucinating now, Frank, because you’re thirsty. He looked around him. There were people walking on the other side of the street, cars driving by, but nobody in the immediate vicinity. Well, if it was standing on his car he’d fucking have it anyway. He reached across and picked it up. Heavy. It really was full, unopened. ‘Well, thank you, very thoughtful of you, whoever you are, Mr Special Brew delivery person.’ He sniffed, hawked and spat viscous, slow-travelling mucus between his feet. Having fumbled the car door open he let himself fall behind the wheel and pulled the door shut. ‘Manna from fucking heaven. No offence.’ He tilted the ring-pull up with the long nail of his index finger and pulled.

  The confined explosion knocked Frank Dudden against the roof while separating him from his left hand and most of his genitals. Sprays of blood from his multiple injuries blinded the ruined remains of the windows. His lungs had been crushed empty by the force of the blast. By the time Dudden managed to suck up enough breath to scream he was already too weak to do so. Instead, a pink bubble escaped from his mouth and popped while his heart pumped his blood into the upholstery.

  The play wouldn’t finish for ages yet. He wasn’t really dressed to mix with a theatre crowd either, though the Tobacco Factory didn’t look all that posh. Like many cultural venues in the city a theatre had found a home in one of the many rundown commercial Victorian buildings that had once served the busy port on the river Avon. Cigarettes were now made in China, no doubt. He wondered if one day Chinese tobacco factories would turn into fashionable theatre venues.

  Webster, so that’s who the play was by. He studied the poster behind the glass door. One of those ancient plays performed in modern dress, presumably to show how relevant it was to the present. Or perhaps because it saved money on the costumes? He probably would have hated it anyway. Two people stood outside, smoking, twelve feet apart, having nothing in common but their craving. He entered the lobby. The place was quiet. It had been immaculately restored and looked modern and cheerful. McLusky hated the nursery school of architecture. The man behind the reception desk barely registered him.