by Jo Bannister
‘Make the most of it, champ,’ muttered Donovan, ‘your fifteen minutes of fame have been and gone.’ He intended Brian Boru would never set foot in a fighting pit again. He didn’t have to: he’d already achieved all that was required of him. He left the dog to enjoy his victory meal, cutting through the entry that took him home.
At six o’clock it was too late to go to bed and still get to work at a decent hour; instead he made a hot drink and took it into Tara’s saloon. He kicked his shoes off and dropped on to one of the long couches to review the night’s events. The next thing he knew it was ten o’clock and he had congealed cocoa among the bloodstains on his shirt.
Late or not, he was looking forward to seeing Shapiro. He parked his bike in the back yard and took the steps two at a time, so intent on his mission that he hardly noticed who was on duty downstairs. ‘Chief in his office?’
The title was an anachronism now but everyone knew who he meant. ‘No.’
Then the atmosphere hit Donovan like a forearm in the kidneys, making him break his step. His eyes filled with alarm. ‘What’s happened?’
Sergeant Tulliver was on the desk, a solidly constructed man on the run-in to retirement, a safe pair of hands and an unflappable manner expressed in the peaty old Fenland accent. ‘Don’t know, lad, we haven’t been told. Not officially. Unofficially, I think your governor’s been in a scrap.’
‘DI Graham?’ Before the words were out he knew what had happened. She’d gone ahead regardless. Without Scobie and Morgan, because the Son of God had pulled them, and without him because he’d gone dog fighting, she’d pressed on alone with a plan designed to draw out a rapist. It sounded as if she’d succeeded. But if she’d made an arrest the mood should be a lot lighter even if she got thumped in the process. ‘Is she all right?’
Tulliver lifted mountainous shoulders. ‘I don’t know – honest. Dr Greaves has been to see her and Mr Shapiro’s there now. But she’s at home, not at the hospital. That must mean something.’
Marginally reassured, Donovan hesitated on the second step. Then he swung round and headed back the way he’d come. ‘I’m going out there.’
But as he reached the back door Shapiro came in, and for a second as their eyes met Donovan was shocked to see a tired old man wearing his superintendent’s overcoat and broad creased face.
Shapiro saw Donovan at the same moment, the dark eyes hollow with dread, the long sinews of his narrow body bow-string taut, the quick staccato movements. The hand which took Donovan’s arm above the elbow felt a tremor of apprehension; he walked on without a word, taking the younger man with him. On the stairs, once they were alone, he said quietly, ‘She’s all right. Dr Greaves has looked her over and there’s nothing to worry about. Come upstairs and I’ll fill you in.’
Shapiro’s office was at the top of the building, looking down on the Northampton canal. There were no boats moored here, the waterway was wide enough to keep traffic moving but not for it to stop. On summer weekends all this stretch was a two-way procession of cabin cruisers and narrowboats chugging along at a steady three miles an hour. But in the week, except at the height of the holiday season, there were only dourly determined anglers and small boys with dogs to disturb the stillness of the towpath.
Today Donovan wasn’t interested in the view. ‘What happened?’
There was no point talking round it. Shapiro parked his ample seat on the edge of his desk and gazed at his sergeant over folded arms. ‘She was raped, lad. This morning, while she was feeding her horse. She’s all right – I mean, she’s not injured; a mild concussion, that’s all. She sent you a message. This didn’t happen because of anything you did or didn’t do.’
It was the last thing she said before he left her alone with her husband. It made no sense and he put it down to the hysteria she’d held at bay so long, but when she explained he understood.
Donovan’s Luck. Before she came to Castlemere it was a standing joke at Queen’s Street; or not so much a joke as something they laughed at because it made them uncomfortable. Donovan was lucky in the sense that his share of bad luck fell on others. They used to say that if a maniac sprayed the canteen with a Sten gun, Donovan would catch the one dud round. Donovan’s lucky, they used to say, but not for the people round him. He had no family left, and even the people he worked with got hurt. His last DI died of Donovan’s Luck.
For two years Liz Graham had seemed immune; for most of that time Shapiro hadn’t even heard the words. He expected to hear them again now. That was why she’d wanted the word put about. She’d been the victim of a vicious criminal, not Donovan’s Luck. Yes, they’d had an arrangement; and yes, he’d cancelled it. But the attack on her wasn’t a consequence of that. It would have happened whether they’d walked the dogs or not. Donovan hadn’t let her down; in no sense was he responsible for what followed.
For the briefest of moments, gone so quickly that if he’d blinked Shapiro would have missed it, Donovan seemed to shrink. The blood drained from his face, his eyes glazed and he swayed; just once. A wordless moan slipped between his teeth. Then he sucked in a lungful of air so hard Shapiro heard the unsteady whistle in his throat, and blinked his eyes back into focus. ‘Is she all right?’
Shapiro pushed a chair towards him. ‘Bit of a stunner, isn’t it? Well, I’ve talked to her and I’ve talked to Greaves, and both of them say she wasn’t hurt. A bit of a knock on the head, and then … But physically, nothing to worry about. Emotionally? – I imagine all right is a bit ambitious in the circumstances. But she’s a survivor, she won’t be beaten by this. For one thing she’s got Brian; for another she’s got us. Leave it today, but I think by tomorrow she’ll be glad to see you.’
Incredulity drove from Donovan a snort half of laughter and half despair. ‘Me? Christ Almighty, she won’t want me within half a mile of her!’
Shapiro eyed him with compassion. ‘This was nothing to do with you. She was in her own back yard.’
Donovan was shaking his head in a fractional, repetitive gesture of disbelief. ‘How did it happen?’
When she’d fed Polly and made up the day’s feeds she walked round to the lean-to where the hay was kept. She was reaching for a bale when movement flickered in the tail of her eye and, before she had time to react, a blow to the side of her head sent her sprawling in the litter.
Stars exploded between her and the faceless shape that bent over her. Her first vague notion, that she’d fallen and Brian had come to pick her up, foundered on two rocks: he slapped away the hands she raised to him, and he dropped heavily on top of her, hauling at her clothes and his own, in silence but for the fast rough breathing behind the white scarf tied over his face.
Too stunned for fear or horror, too stunned to resist, she felt his body against hers, his hand pinning her wrists, his swift penetration and mechanical rhythm as if she weren’t there at all, as if he were doing this by himself. Before she had taken in the fact that she was being raped it was over: he was off her and gone.
For minutes longer she lay in the straw, separated from her emotions by an impervious transparency like plate glass. She could see through it but it cut her off from everything she knew. Beyond lay the common world of home and work, of people she loved and others she respected and who respected her; but the screen, for all that light went in and out, was solid and she could not do the same.
Then, as the mists began to clear, she worked out what she had to do and began doing it, mechanically, performing the actions though a sheet of glass separated her from the consequences. From habit she checked that the horse was all right. Then she went inside and called Frank Shapiro.
Donovan had some deep scratches on his left wrist. Unconsciously he traced them with the fingers of his other hand. As Shapiro talked, without knowing it he dug deeper with his nails, raking the long weals savagely until the blood started and Shapiro leaned forward and physically pulled his hands apart.
He looked up at the superintendent with his face flayed, the emotions pooling
on the surface. ‘It was my fault. If we’d been out till one o’clock she’d still have been in bed at seven!’
‘Then he’d have waited,’ Shapiro said patiently. ‘There was nothing random about this: he knew who she was and where to find her, if he hadn’t got her this morning he’d have got her another time. None of us could have anticipated or prevented this.’
On the face of it they had very little in common: men of different generations, races, perspectives and priorities. But they cared about the same things. It took something like this, and seeing the impotent fury in his own breast reflected in the turmoil in Donovan’s eyes, to bring that home. ‘But it still hurts, doesn’t it?’
Shakily, Donovan nodded. His voice was low. ‘I feel like I want to break something.’ Repressed violence surrounded him like an aura.
‘Keep it together, lad,’ growled Shapiro, ‘for her sake. She needs to be able to rely on us. She does not need us under sedation in a back ward at Castle General.’ After a moment Donovan nodded again.
‘All right.’ He gestured at Donovan’s bloody wrists. ‘Er – how did that happen?’
Donovan stared at him blankly. For a second he couldn’t remember. Even when he did it seemed too trivial to dwell on. The morning’s events had diluted his triumph to nothing and he threw away his hard-earned information in a couple of sentences. ‘I was at a dog-fight last night. I’ve been offered a job driving for the ram-raiders.’
When everyone else had gone they sat side by side on the sofa, holding hands. Brian wanted to put his arm round her but instinct warned him now wasn’t the time. The last man who held her gave her no choice. However kindly he meant it, however much they both needed it, he risked raising echoes of that trespass. He had to make himself wait until she was ready, until she came to him. He didn’t know about the plate glass in her head but he knew there was something, some door that only had a handle on the inside.
He phoned to say he wouldn’t be at school, didn’t say why. He made coffee. He ran her another bath. She’d had one as soon as the doctor finished but she wanted another when they had the house to themselves. He hoped she’d ask him to stay, to help her, to wash her down like a weary horse as he had so often when she’d come home tired, sore and dispirited. But she said nothing. Neither did he; he left her to the steam and the smell of soap, and knew that in the privacy of the locked cell she would scrub the memory of her assailant off her skin but only deeper into her mind. He didn’t know what to say or do to comfort her. He made more coffee.
They drank it side by side on the sofa. Her skin was pink and new, as if energetic use of the loofah could erase what had happened. She wasn’t crying, hadn’t cried from the start. First she was stunned, then shocked, then she was busy dealing with it; now what she felt was a hollow unreality. After a while she ventured, ‘You know, this wasn’t the worst that could have happened.’
‘I know,’ Brian said thickly, his hand gripping hers. ‘I could have lost you.’
Liz smiled at him. Almost, she seemed the same as always. Almost, that was more shocking than anything else. ‘Oh, no. Not for some little shit who can’t keep his fly done up: it’ll take more than that before you’re rid of me.’ She leaned against his long side, fitting into the curve of his body. He held his breath and let her settle there, let her drape his arm around her. ‘No, I mean—’ She struggled to express what she was feeling. ‘It’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be the most devastating thing that can happen to you – short of massive physical injury, or losing your wits, or losing your husband or child. Well, none of those things has happened to me so this should be the worst. But I don’t feel devastated.
‘I’m angry, oh yes, I’d like to smash his face in. I feel – soiled. And frustrated, because I had my hands on the bastard and I was too groggy to do anything about it. But I don’t feel – diminished. I don’t feel he’s taken anything away, or even left anything behind that alters who I am. It’s like the time I had my nose broken. Of course I resented it. It hurt, and the guy who did it had no right, and for a time it shook my confidence – it was visible proof that I’d failed to control the situation. I felt I’d failed professionally because I let his fist too near my nose.
‘But nobody else thought that. There was some sympathy, a few jokes, and three months later my nose was fine and his was up against the bars for eighteen months. Well, this is the same. It’s not my fault. I haven’t done anything wrong. I was unlucky, but it doesn’t say anything about me. It doesn’t leave me with any fences to mend.
‘I won’t feel humiliated. What was taken from me has no value unless it’s given freely. He’s none the better for having it, I’m none the worse for losing it. The bruises will fade and I’ll still be who I always was. I’ve coped with worse than this.’ She sighed, a little shakily, sought out his eyes. ‘Am I shocking you? I think a lot of people would be shocked. In a crazy way I almost feel relieved. Because it’s over and I’m all right. Because this should be the worst and I know I can handle it.’
He didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know if it was normal, even if the word ‘normal’had any meaning in this context. Anyway, it wasn’t how it seemed to him that mattered. If she’d found a way of dealing with it that didn’t put her on the rack, that didn’t reduce her to ashes from which she’d have to rebuild herself flake by flake, he wasn’t going to argue. He wasn’t going to complain because it should have torn her apart and hadn’t. He held her against him. ‘We can deal with it. Together.’
She patted his hand where it lay across her belly. ‘Mm.’
Brian tried to believe, almost convinced himself, that the tremor that ran through him then was a hybrid of love for her, terror at how near disaster had shaved them and an upsurge of the desire to protect her, though Liz was stronger and infinitely tougher than he. But that friendly pat, like patting her horse, far from bringing them together had driven the tip of a wedge between them. She hadn’t rebuffed his support, she’d just put no value on it. She wanted to deal with what had happened alone, declined his involvement as kindly as if he were a child. He could feel her warm fresh skin, smell the soap mingled with the scent of her, but in every way that mattered they were on opposite sides of that handleless door. The shudder that ran through him was presentiment.
Chapter Eleven
Shapiro pursed his lips. ‘What do you mean, you’ve been offered a job driving for the ram-raiders?’
Half an hour before, Donovan’s head had been full of it. Between that and the dog-fight he’d had a good night – good enough to make up for some of the times he’d pushed his luck and his authority further than they were designed to stretch.
It was a gamble. The harder he pushed, the more chances he created. He staked his time, his reputation, often enough his neck and occasionally his job, and hoped for enough success to disarm his critics. As long as he came out ahead most of the time, blind eyes would be turned to his precise methods. He didn’t compromise the integrity of investigations. He didn’t trample suspects’rights and get cases thrown out of court. When a gamble failed he paid the price himself.
But he walked a perpetual tightrope between risks and results. He thought he hadn’t enough liquidity to see him through a lean time, was only as good as his record. So two successes for the risk of one was a bonus. It meant he wouldn’t face awkward questions about Brian Boru and why he didn’t get prior approval for his actions. He’d looked forward to giving Shapiro his report. Now it hardly seemed worth the trouble of telling.
‘Er – yeah. At the dog-fight. The guy with the skinned rabbit came over for a chat. Seems that’s not his only dog – he’s got a couple of bruisers he travels round the fights with. Seems there’s a whole network of pits scattered across the country. Ours is new – that’s why they came here instead of keep moving south, he wanted to try it out. I’m not sure where it was but given a bit of time to root around I’ll find it.’
‘And the job?’
‘OK. So this guy’s ma
king small-talk, about the dogs mostly, but he keeps not going away. And I know who he is, of course, so I don’t hurry him. He wants to know what I do for a living, and I tell him anything you don’t have to pay tax on. He likes that, and soon afterwards we’re talking about what he does for a living. Not in so many words, but he’s happy enough for me to know it’s not altogether legal. Well, everybody in that barn’s into stuff that’s not altogether legal.’
‘You too,’ murmured Shapiro, and Donovan eyed him warily and couldn’t be sure if it was a joke.
‘Right,’ he agreed cautiously. ‘Only he’s down a driver. Don’t know how – lost, stolen or strayed, walked out, got sacked or what. I know he didn’t get arrested but I can hardly tell him that. Gates. That’s what he calls himself – Tudor Gates.’ That note of derision would have been more seemly, Shapiro thought, in someone who wasn’t named Caolan. ‘So he’s looking for a driver and he wonders if I might be interested.’
‘What did you say?’
A slow smile slid across Donovan’s saturnine features. ‘Ah, come on now, chief, what do you think? I told him I’d very likely be available.’
‘Why you? For all he knows you can’t drive to save your life, you stall at junctions and cry if somebody takes your parking place.’ Shapiro’s eyes narrowed. ‘Or has he some reason to think differently?’
Donovan shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I told him I’d done driving work before. As for bursting into tears …’
‘Ye-es?’
Donovan sighed. ‘He saw me stop the fight.’ He explained what had happened.
‘You got into a pit and separated two fighting dogs with your bare hands,’ mused Shapiro. He paused for confirmation, one eyebrow raised, and Donovan gave a rueful nod. ‘Now I understand. He’s looking for madmen and he found one. What else?’