by Peter Helton
A black Mercedes four-wheel-drive gleamed. It was parked in the pool of light from a streetlamp, which wasn’t good but the car was so shiny it was practically screaming out for the treatment. Putting the bike on its side-stand he took a half-rotten orange from the left pannier and rammed it expertly up the car’s exhaust. The second pannier held two containers made from sawn-off petrol cans. The mud really was nearly finished yet he managed to scrape together one more ladleful. The splat across the windscreen was also expertly executed, without getting a single drop on his clothes. As he reached for the leaflet in his jacket the door of the nearest house opened. From it a man came charging towards him, swinging a walking stick like a weapon. ‘What the fuck are you doing to my car?’
Chris jumped on his bike and pedalled off furiously while the man gave chase. Christ, he looked quite fit, if he caught up he’d be in trouble. The road climbed uphill here and it was difficult to get any speed up on this boneshaker, another skip-find. At last he was pulling away from his panting pursuer. ‘Just delivering an important message!’ He shouted it across his shoulder when he was sure he was getting away. The man issued a stream of insults that echoed along the street, then he hurled the walking stick after him. It fell short.
When he reached the safety of the next street corner and realized he had lost his pursuer Chris laughed. It was the laughter of relief. He’d have to be more careful from now on, or his one-man campaign could easily come to a premature end.
McLusky left the Polo unlocked at the first parking space he found and walked briskly down to the Barge Inn. Another couple of drinks would see the day out in agreeable enough fashion. It was Rebecca’s night off. The pub was busy but he found a stool at the corner of the bar and was soon sipping a pint of Guinness served by the bald landlord. He found it difficult not to think about his work. It was his case and he was responsible. There would be another bomb, therefore he was already responsible for the next victim because it was up to him to stop the bombs. But you couldn’t work twenty-four hours a day, even though it felt like you were. Especially at the very beginning of a murder investigation there was pressure to work non-stop for the first forty-eight hours which is when a result was most likely. Of course most murders were committed by the victim’s nearest and dearest or by rival criminals, so you had a pretty good idea of who to look for to begin with. Not here, not this time.
He suddenly felt ravenous and ordered a double portion of chips from the landlord. It arrived together with another pint and a hefty bottle of ketchup. He was warming to this pub. As he glugged ketchup over his chips a group of men detached themselves from the bar and headed for the exit. Through the gap they had left he spotted Rebecca. He could tell it was her day off since she was wearing her paint-spattered multi-coloured art student gear. She sat very close to a boy of about nineteen or twenty, their legs entwined, hands on each other’s thighs while they talked. When the girl looked up her eyes met McLusky’s. She acknowledged him with a brief smile and a nod. Then she bent to the boy’s ear and spoke a few words. The boy laughed.
‘That’s a lot of ketchup, my friend.’ The landlord blocked his view. ‘Might have to start charging extra.’
McLusky looked down. His chips had drowned in a red sea of sauce. He suddenly felt tired and no longer hungry. While the landlord collected glasses behind him he picked up his pint, hid it under his jacket and stole out of the front door. He would drink it at his place and bring the glass back some time. As he crossed Northmoor Street furtling for his keys a sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him look right. Nothing. Yet his mind filled in the blanks and furnished him with an after-image of a figure standing by the corner, now vanished. He wanted to run to the corner but was hampered by the pint he was carrying. By the time he had speed-walked there and looked down the road there was nothing suspicious to see, a few cars, a few people walking. Nobody he recognized.
Chapter Nine
‘With respect, sir, since I can’t go anywhere near Ady Mitchell I might not be the best officer to work on the muggings.’ DI Fairfield sat very upright in front of Denkhaus’s desk. From somewhere she found the strength to control her expression and keep her voice calm. Any betrayal of emotion, any sign of anger, and the superintendent would put it down as hormonal. In this environment a woman had to be careful not to react in any way that could be construed as ‘typically female’. If you could make people forget you were a woman, if you made them believe you were one of the lads, then you would be taken seriously and get ahead.
‘Nonsense, Fairfield, you have it back-to-front. We found no evidence that Mitchell is dealing in stolen goods. These days you can make a fortune selling crap to morons on eBay without having to break the law. You had a shot at him and nothing turned up. Now concentrate on the guys who are doing the actual mugging. Because in the absence of any evidence — ’
‘Mitchell does have — ’
‘Please don’t interrupt me, DI Fairfield. If you know what’s good for your career then you’ll leave Mitchell out of it and catch the scooter gang, preferably red-handed. Because that’s the kind of headline the force needs right now. That’s what you’ll concentrate on, Fairfield.’
‘We’ve simply been unlucky, sir.’
‘Since when does intelligence-based policing rely on luck? Our statistics prove that whenever resources are targeted in the correct …’
Fairfield just nodded and nodded. She would never convince the super. He had already told her she had to make do with the resources she had, which was basically DS Sorbie, since everyone was working on the beer-can murder or buried deep under their own caseload. The quicker she agreed to everything the sooner she’d be out of his office. To make matters worse she had heard this morning that DCI Gaunt wasn’t coming back for at least another fortnight. The chief inspector would surely have backed her up and shielded her from this continuous pressure from the super.
‘… and we simply have to learn to live with it.’
It sounded as though Denkhaus had talked himself to the end of a treatise. Quick, before he jumped on the next passing hobby horse. ‘Yes, sir, of course. Will that be all, sir?’
Denkhaus supposed it was. Fairfield had to learn to be flexible and get results with the resources available. She was too ambitious and so took things personally. ‘Yes, that’s all.’
Fairfield left the super’s office with as much grace as she could muster and closed the door with exaggerated care. Ten minutes later she was in her office, sipping the blackest espresso from the tiniest cup. As the bitter fragrant liquid revived her spirits she managed to raise the ghost of a smile. One day she would sit where Denkhaus was now and all this would be nothing but a footnote in the ancient history of drudge.
McLusky hammered away at his keyboard while issuing sporadic bulletins of bitching that others had already learned didn’t want answering. ‘Of course one good reason for having an incident room in the first place is that without it the amount of useless misleading dead-end crap information murder generates would bury a detective and his desk so deep in dross you’d have to get a dog team in to dig him out …’
At a desk opposite him Austin had another crank caller on the phone, the third one so far to claim responsibility for the beer-can device. ‘And you packed it with TNT you bought over the interweb?’ There was stifled laughter among the computer operators.
McLusky wasn’t in the mood. Austin had been talking to the moron for ages. ‘Get rid of the wanker.’
Austin covered his mouthpiece. ‘No, this one’s a special wanker, he’s calling from a landline. It’s an address in town so I’ve sent a note down to Uniform, they’re on their way there to read him the riot act.’ He uncovered the mouthpiece. ‘Is that your door bell I can hear, sir? I think you’d better answer it. There’ll be a couple of officers there to explain the meaning of wasting police time, okay? And the same to you, sir.’ He returned the receiver to its cradle with a flourish. ‘This call has been recorded for training purposes. Righ
t, what’s next?’ He pulled a file off the pile beside him and started flicking through witness statements, or witless statements as he liked to think of them. And if he ever found the microsoftie behind the phrase ‘paperless office’ he’d add ‘justifiable homicide’ to the man’s vocabulary.
McLusky had had enough and logged off. There was a whole world of madness waiting for him outside, with spring sunshine to go with it. He would walk. It was Saturday and nearly lunchtime. The Saturday Traffic Protest should still be going and he wanted to see for himself what it looked like.
Every Saturday, to maximize attendance and optimize disruption, protesters met on the Cathedral Green before spreading out into the traffic arteries near the council offices and around the harbour. Every Saturday the place came to a virtual standstill. From where he was walking now he could see that traffic across the Old Town was hardly moving at all. Most drivers sat talking on the phone or fiddling with their sat navs and radios: there was little else they could do. In this otherwise picturesque one-way street, he came across a new development. Traffic here hadn’t moved for a while. The narrow street was solid with stationary vehicles. One driver of an ancient Fiat had got out of his car in front of a cafe with small tables on the pavement. He was now sipping coffee in comfort and nibbling on a biscuit. Since then traffic in front of his car had moved by a couple of car-lengths before grinding to a complete halt again. It was enough to get the drivers who were waiting behind his car agitated. A uniformed police officer was engaged in an argument with the man at the cafe table. As McLusky passed the scene the officer stopped him. It was lanky Constable Pym. ‘Ah, Inspector McLusky, I’m glad it’s you, sir.’
To McLusky this was such an unusual sentiment that his face expressed severe doubt. ‘What is it, Pym?’
‘We got a call from one of the drivers behind here, the second one along, I think. You see, sir, this gentleman here is the driver of that Fiat, which he simply abandoned in the street.’
The driver, a hungover-looking man in his thirties, shook his head. ‘I have not abandoned it. The keys are in the ignition and it’s unlocked and I’m having a coffee. Look, it’s gridlock, or as near as. I forgot it was Saturday or I wouldn’t have come into town at all, it’s always like this.’
‘I’ve been trying to tell the gentleman that it is a violation of the highway code to leave a vehicle unattended in a place where it is likely…’
The man raised a hand in protest. ‘It’s not unattended, I’m right here, I’m attending it, but I’m attending it while drinking coffee.’ He demonstrated this by taking a sip of frothy coffee and fixing his eyes on his car.
Pym scratched his neck with the pen from his notebook and turned to McLusky. ‘You see, sir, the problem is, if he refuses to go back to his vehicle I’ll have to arrest him but if I arrest him who’s going to move his car?’
‘Arrest him? I’m not sure you can force people to sit in their vehicles, unless they’re actually in motion. At least I think so, though don’t quote me on that. Well, I mean look at it …’ He swept an arm in the direction of the cars stacked up the hill. ‘Nothing’s moving, and somehow you’d think they’d turn their engines off …’
Somewhere in the queue someone gave an impatient blast of the horn. Several others joined in for a short concert. A shout of ‘Get a fucking move on’ came from somewhere. McLusky turned to the owner of the Fiat. ‘Is that cappuccino you’re drinking, sir?’
‘So?’
‘Is it any good?’
‘It’s not brilliant but okay, I guess. You do get a biscuit with it.’
‘Amaretti?’
‘I think that’s what they’re called. Has a sort of almond taste. You could always ask the waitress.’
Constable Pym couldn’t believe his ears. Out there a riot was brewing and the inspector was discussing the quality of coffee.
McLusky noted the name of the cafe, Carlotta’s. ‘Well, finish your cappuccino by all means, sir, but after that pull your car forward. With any luck there might be another cafe further along.’
The man grinned. ‘Yeah, there is actually. Okay then.’
McLusky widened his eyes at Constable Pym: and where was the problem?
‘But, sir, we might get a public order situation in a minute.’ He nodded the back of his head at the snarled-up traffic.
‘No we won’t, ’cos you’re here. Talk to them. Have a chat. But don’t let them pee in your helmet, however desperate. You’ll be fine.’ He moved on.
Pym watched him saunter down the road. McLusky. Where on earth did they find him?
Wherever McLusky went it was all the same: traffic crawling or stationary, and short-tempered drivers using their horns with un-British frequency and ferocity. Cyclists still squeezed through some streets, many no doubt feeling that their day had come, and pedestrians walked freely between the cars and into the path of the unexpected cyclists. He followed the fingerposts towards the cathedral, through narrow alleys and down uneven flights of steps, and soon got to the heart of the chaos. He stopped next to a grey-haired sergeant from Traffic who was standing in his viz jacket by his car parked on the broad pavement. Showing his ID, McLusky explained that he was new in town and they both watched the spectacle for a while.
It had the air of a carnival. Many of the protesters had dressed up in bright costume; a great number of them wore dust masks or gas masks. Whistle-blowing and drumming syncopated the slow march. There was a surprising number of elderly people too. A few children, some wearing Hallowe’en death masks, were being pulled along in soap-box-and-pram-wheel carts shaped and painted to look like coffins.
The earlier protest marches along the main arteries had been judged illegal because of their disruptive quality and the damage done to city centre businesses. These new tactics by the protesters were simple but just as effective. Strings of protesters simply crossed and recrossed strategically chosen streets at the centre of the traffic system in a continuous loop. The zebra crossings they had chosen were all within sight of each other. Many protesters worked the pavements too, giving out leaflets to pedestrians. The braver ones stuck them on windscreens.
‘Looks like we have all types of people here.’
‘Yes, it’s quite a disparate group, concerned citizens as well as the usual lot. There’s a few students, cycling clubs, Green Party activists, Friends of the Earth, old hippies, skip divers, concerned citizens. Not so many parents of school-age kids of course.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘They’re mainly the ones in the cars, sir. Everyone thinks it’s the other people who should drive less.’
According to the sergeant there was nothing they could do about the zebra crossings. In fact police were now employed in stopping irate car drivers from trying to simply barge their way through the crossing protesters. ‘Clever and simple. But we’re not so worried about the fact that the traffic comes to a standstill, that’s a matter for the council to address. Because frankly, a few more cars and you won’t need a protest march to have gridlock on a regular basis. We had real gridlock once already, one Saturday, last year. We analysed it. All it took was the crowds from the kite festival trying to get home, a drunken fight in the middle of Park Street, a broken-down tourist bus just over there,’ he pointed to the junction, ‘and an abnormally wide load arriving from the motorway, delivering a boat. Oh yes, and some big football game on telly so the pubs were filling up. For several hours nothing much moved. You couldn’t get emergency vehicles anywhere. Even the motorcycle ambulance came a cropper. One arsonist could have levelled the town centre, we’d have needed bucket chains to put it out.’
McLusky stepped into the road and picked up a couple of discarded flyers. One had the picture of a dog wearing a gas mask on it — an image he seemed to remember from a book about the blitz — and carried stark warnings about the health impact of car fumes, especially on children. The second flyer concentrated on the contribution of car traffic to global warming.
‘These aren’t
the ones we’re worried about, sir. I have two children myself and my youngest has asthma. They have a point about the pollution.’ He reached into the car and took out a blue folder, flicking it open. ‘But these have started appearing now.’ The leaflet in the clear plastic sleeve was simply produced on a computer’s printer and exhorted in large letters: HELP SAVE THE CITY, DISABLE A CAR TODAY. ‘That’s clearly going beyond legitimate protest. We’re trying to catch who’s been distributing them but we’re too late for today, I think. We do video the protests of course but we’re not exactly MI5, our cameras can’t tell one flyer from another.’
‘Is there any indication that people might follow this advice?’
‘There is indeed. Nothing too drastic as yet, just a spate of motorists finding all their tyres let down. Sometimes it’s a whole street and of course nobody’s got four spares so it is quite effective that, if you want to stop people from driving. Then there’s that nutter sticking fruit up people’s exhausts and splattering mud all over 4?4s.’
‘Yeah, I heard about that. Our super’s had his 4?4 treated thus twice.’
The officer’s face briefly brightened. ‘Denkhaus? I’m not saying a word. But the mud they use is very dark and sticky. We were wondering if perhaps we could get the mud analysed. Maybe if we knew where it came from we might be able to catch the little toerag.’
McLusky sadly shook his head. ‘Not a snowball’s. Oh, you can try sending in a sample, only by the time it comes back from Chepstow the internal combustion engine will be a distant memory. You’d have a better chance with a poster saying Have You Seen This Mud?’