No Birds Sing

by Jo Bannister

  ‘The last driver must have split soon after the job at Rubens ’cos they’ve been sitting on their hands ever since and that’s not how he works it. Mostly he hits a town two or three times in quick succession then gets the hell out. Losing his driver spiked that so he’s still here. I think he wants to do another couple of raids, quick as you like, and then skip town.’ He frowned. ‘What?’

  Shapiro was smiling; but it didn’t last long. It wasn’t Donovan he’d had this argument with, it was Liz, so there was scant satisfaction in being proved right. Just for the record though… ‘Where’s he from, your Mr Gates?’

  Donovan shrugged. ‘North, north-east? English accents all sound the same to me. Even without the green fedora and the curly wig he’s as queer as a nine pound note, but he talks like a ship-builder.’

  ‘The Tynesiders. They came here so Gates could fight his dogs, but after one raid they lost their driver. If they hadn’t they’d have shown up Monday night or Tuesday morning and my name wouldn’t be mud with the Son of God. Is Gates going to call you or what?’

  ‘He wants to see me drive. I’m meeting him at the wood at midday.’

  Shapiro looked at his watch. ‘You haven’t left us much time. Still, it won’t take SO19 to arrest a ramraider in a green felt hat. All right—’

  ‘Er,’ mumbled Donovan. ‘Do you want to arrest them? Now, I mean.’

  The superintendent dropped his nose to look at Donovan over glasses he didn’t wear. ‘Don’t I?’

  ‘If I’m on the inside we can get them in the act. The full crew, not just Gates, and no chance of them persuading a jury they were only recruiting stock-car drivers and I got it wrong.’

  Shapiro was tempted. It had seemed a good idea when Liz suggested it but then there was no way in. Now the opportunity had presented itself almost like a gift. A man on the inside could learn more in a few hours than a skilled interrogator in days or weeks. Things dropped in casual conversation – earlier jobs, jobs being planned, contacts, fences. And a water-tight case. And really, not much risk, particularly with out-of-towners. People who knew him found it hard to believe Donovan was a policeman; someone who’d met him at a dog-fight wouldn’t even wonder.

  ‘If I said yes, how would you do it?’

  Donovan grinned wolfishly. ‘Go to the meet, scare them shitless with some handbrake turns, wait to hear from them and call you. Then drive them into an ambush.’

  ‘You may not get the chance to call me. They won’t be too trusting for your first outing.’

  ‘I’ll find some way to attract attention. Lights. I’ll use the wrong lights – headlights if it’s daytime, sidelights if it’s dark. Chances are no one in the car’ll notice. Put out the word that something big and fast and carrying the wrong lights is me – don’t stop me, tail me and get on the radio.’

  ‘You won’t get carried away and ram somebody’s shop-front? In the interests of authenticity, as it were.’

  ‘Try not to,’ Donovan promised solemnly.

  ‘All right,’ decided Shapiro, ‘we’ll do it. But look after yourself – these chaps are pros, put a foot wrong and they’ll have you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Donovan, unconvinced. ‘Funnily enough, he’s not a bad sort. Weird, yes, but not – nasty. You know? It’s almost as if he’s in it more for the fun than the money. I think he gets a kick out of planning it, leaving us with egg on our faces.’

  ‘Check the national computer, see if there’s anything on him.’

  ‘I will; but I don’t think there will be. He told me with great pride the only time he was ever questioned by the police was when he witnessed a mugging. He was quite indignant – said he gave the best description he could, that lager-louts grabbing old ladies’ pensions were the lowest of the low.’

  ‘Honour among thieves,’ Shapiro ruminated. ‘There is such a thing, only don’t count on it. Just because he has a soft spot for little old ladies doesn’t mean he’ll feel the same way about you if you blow your cover.’

  ‘About the dogs—’

  Shapiro had reached the same conclusion. ‘We’ll hold off till we have Gates under lock and key. I don’t want to make him nervous: a man who enjoys intellectual challenges might put two and two together.’

  ‘And Brian?’

  Shapiro’s mind went first to Brian Graham, the colour washed from his cheek, holding his wife’s hand as a child holds the string of a balloon, for fear it will float away if he relaxes his grip. ‘Oh – your dog.’

  ‘I’ll need to keep him for a bit. If they come to the garage and the dog’s gone they’ll wonder why.’

  ‘All right. Try to keep him from killing anything.’

  Awkwardly, Donovan said, ‘And the boss?’

  Shapiro vented a sigh. ‘I don’t think there’s much we can do for her just now. But if we get this business wrapped up we can concentrate on finding her attacker.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll come back to work?’

  ‘I don’t know, lad. It’s a hell of a thing to come to terms with, she may not want to work, with people who know. Or maybe by the time she’s got over the shock and the anger she’ll be wanting her friends. The one thing I’m sure of is she’ll have to set the pace herself. We mustn’t impose on her our expectations of how she should feel.’

  Donovan shook his head in a kind of brooding wonder. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how she feels. I don’t know—’ He stopped.

  ‘What?’

  Embarrassment made it hard to express himself. A sort of flagellatory urge drove him on. ‘Maybe she shouldn’t come back. I mean, how are any of us going to deal with that? How do we talk to her – what do we say? Do we act as if it never happened? Do we ask how she’s feeling, as if she’d had flu? I don’t know how to deal with it.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Shapiro sharply. ‘You don’t. This is your problem, Sergeant, you work out a solution. But I’m telling you now, let it become a problem to Inspector Graham and you’ll have my reactions to worry about as well. Now.’ He checked his watch again. ‘Time you were off. And listen: be careful. However much of a card your Mr Gates is, these are not nice people and you’re going to be out of touch for a lot of the time. Your first priority is to not get hurt. Don’t play the hero. I don’t want to find you dead in a ditch.’

  Still stinging from the rebuke, Donovan said woodenly, ‘Caution is my middle name’ – a lie so outrageous that it left Shapiro temporarily speechless.

  He went again to the little car-park above the water-meadows. As soon as he turned in among the trees he recognized the high-stepping 4x4 with its bull-bars and its black paint retouched at the front end. They’d been scrupulous about making repairs. Bull-bars or no, it was hard to believe those four headlamps had survived repeated encounters with security grilles; but anything broken had been replaced, anything dented had been knocked out and anything scratched had been repainted at the first opportunity. They weren’t going to be stopped for a cracked headlight or because their vehicle appeared to have been in an unreported accident.

  Donovan got out of his van, waited for Gates to do the same. He didn’t mind being thought a suspicious sod – in this line it was a good reputation to have.

  The little dog got out first. Gates plainly took it everywhere. It reminded Donovan of one of those deeply sinister ventriloquist’s dummies that seem smarter and more animated than the man operating them, leaving you to wonder who’s pulling whose strings. Maybe the dog had Gates on the end of the pale blue lead.

  Gates gave Donovan a smile of recognition that was probably no more than that. But Donovan was naive in many ways and uncomfortable around homosexuals. He relaxed only when the driver got out on the other side of the 4x4. He was about twenty-two, slim and fair, and the look Gates gave him was frankly proprietorial. Donovan mocked himself inwardly. If that was what Gates liked, Hugh Duggan’s virtue should be as safe as houses.

  Gates introduced them. ‘Hugh, this is Andy.’ The V-shaped smile on his pointed face broadened satirically. �
�Hands off, he’s mine. Andy’ll be a good driver before long, but he still has some things to learn. Maybe you can teach him. I, on the other hand, drive like an old lady – but I know how I like to be driven.’ A tilt of one eyebrow, so perfectly shaped it could have been plucked, invested the comment with sexual overtones. Donovan’s expression made him chuckle.

  Though they’d spent time together at the dog-fight this was Donovan’s first chance to weigh up his prospective employer. For obvious reasons, the lighting in the barn was to show up the fighters, not the punters. Now the policeman made a conscious assessment of the man before him in terms that would mean something to other policemen.

  Height, about five-eight; weight, somewhere under ten stone; age – probably mid forties though in the right light he could have passed for thirty. Light brown hair, cut just long enough to curl; high forehead but no sign of balding. Eyes, an odd pale hazel that at times looked almost amber. Face, a narrow heart-shape defined at the jaw by the V-shaped mouth and at the widest point by sculpted eyebrows. Voice – Shapiro was right, it was a well-modulated version of a Geordie patois, all the vowels sounded, many of the consonents slurred. Dress – depended how much he wanted to be noticed: green fedora and burgundy coat if he did, jacket and designer jeans if, like now, he didn’t. Constant companion, a dog like a skinned rabbit. If he took it to a dog-fight and he brought it to test-drive a wheelman who might be all mouth, Donovan assumed it went everywhere.

  With a patient air that reminded Donovan of Shapiro’s, Gates said a second time, ‘Hugh? You want to show us what you can do with this?’

  Sulkily, the boy climbed into the back as Donovan took the wheel.

  He’d done the Defensive Driving course. It hadn’t taught him as much as a Lammas market in Glencurran, when herds of steers and tinker-boys on trotting horses could erupt from any side-street at any moment. But he had no great interest in cars – for pleasure he chose bikes every time – so in fact he wasn’t well qualified for the job Gates wanted him for. All that got him through the audition was his ability to suspend his sense of self-preservation.

  By taking corners at seventy that better drivers would have taken at sixty, and doing it with no sign of fear only a cold wolfish grin, he was able to fool Gates that he had control of the situation when in fact he was barely on nodding terms with it. The great old trees along the woodland rides came hurtling at him from unexpected directions and veered off just in time, mud and leaf-mould spraying from under the big tyres. High and heavy, the vehicle bucketed along the rough tracks leaping from rut to rut like a novice’chaser. In the back the boy clung to whatever he could get his arms round, sucking his breath through his front teeth like draining a milk-shake.

  In the front Gates hung on to his seat-belt with one hand and his dog with the other, his amber eyes flicking between Donovan’s face and the track in mounting wonder. Momentarily he expected the car to lose its grip on the amorphous surface and roll, or side-swipe a tree, or hurtle over a thirty-foot cliff into one of the half-hidden sinkholes. But it kept not doing, and the more he studied the driver’s face the more confident he grew that it would not. He knew more about men than cars, and a man who could enjoy himself in these circumstances, whose dark face betrayed only grim humour and determination, was a man you’d allow to drive you into hell because he’d probably manage to drive you out again. Had he but known it, Donovan had the job before he threw his first handbrake turn.

  Had Gates but known it, Donovan had no idea what the car could and couldn’t do. He’d read somewhere that 4x4s performed differently to road cars; in his ignorance he thought they were probably more stable. He knew what he could have done on two wheels, worked on the assumption that he should be able to do twice as much on four. If one of these trees didn’t get out of his way in time he’d know better. The icy enjoyment that impressed Gates so much was a hybrid of detachment, because he needed to do this and couldn’t have done it if he’d been thinking about the consequences, and real if faintly hysterical amusement because he did occasionally enjoy being frightened half to death.

  At length, surprisingly calmly, Gates tapped him on the arm. ‘You’ve made your point.’

  As soon as the car stopped the back door opened and the boy swung out, his delicate face flushed with anger. ‘You’re not going to let him drive? He’ll kill us all!’

  Gates clucked gently. ‘He knows what he’s doing, Andy. There isn’t a scratch on this car. Tell him, Hugh – you know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ Donovan echoed obediently. His eyes swivelled back to Gates and sharpened. ‘At least, I’m going to. I want to know exactly what I’m getting into. I’ve earned that.’

  Gates considered for a moment, then nodded. ‘All right. Let’s go back to our place, I’ll tell you what we do and how we do it. Only one thing, Hugh. If you come back with us now, you’re in. Too many people have too much to lose for you to start getting cold feet.’

  Donovan looked at Gates, at Andy, at the tops of the trees emerging from a nearby sinkhole. Then he nodded. ‘I’m in.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Gates travelled in Donovan’s van, the dog on his knee. Donovan didn’t wish to seem inquisitive but even if he weren’t a police spy there’d be things he’d want to know. ‘How many are involved?’

  ‘Six is the optimum figure,’ Gates said willingly enough. ‘We can do it with less but it takes too long. Any more and you start tripping over one another.’

  ‘Six in the 4x4?’ Donovan couldn’t see it. It would take them but there’d be no room left for swag.

  ‘Oh, no. We use two cars: the second to get me away – I’m the look-out – and for back-up if things go wrong. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m a Scout at heart, I like to be prepared. For the record, a breakdown would be considered your cock-up. I take it you’re familiar with engines? Check that one over, make sure it’s reliable.’

  Donovan was better with engines than behind the wheel. He gave a brief affirmative nod. ‘That what became of your last driver? He wasn’t much of a mechanic?’

  ‘He was an excellent mechanic,’ Gates said sadly. ‘What he wasn’t so good at was taking orders. Above all I need to know that if I tell someone to do something, or to do nothing, that’s what he’ll do. Can I count on you that way, Hugh?’

  Donovan met his sidelong gaze, saw the leprechaun twinkle, recognized that beneath it the man was in deadly earnest. ‘I’ll do what I’m paid for.’

  Gates was satisfied with that. ‘Fine.’ He pointed a manicured forefinger. ‘Turn right here, we’re home.’

  Lost at the end of a lane bounded by high banks was a cottage.

  A sign offering it for rent was propped against the side wall. When they left it would go up again.

  ‘Cosy,’ sniffed Donovan.

  Gates smiled. ‘We have to stay somewhere and we’d attract more notice in an hotel. As far as the estate agents know I’m alone here.’ He gave the dog on his arm a quick hug, added coyly, ‘Apart from Chang.’

  ‘Where do you keep the big ones?’ asked Donovan. ‘I don’t want to open the bog door and find myself eyeballing two pit-bulls.’

  ‘There’s a piggery at the back, I’ve got them in there.’ An enthusiast, his pixie face brightened. ‘Do you want to see them?’

  ‘I already did.’ The younger of Gates’s dogs competed in a graduate match that left its opponent in much the same state as Brian Boru left his. The older dog made a kill.

  Gates chuckled at the look on Donovan’s face. ‘I’m not sure you’re cut out for the fighting game, Hugh.’

  ‘Convince me,’ grunted Donovan. ‘I was only there because I met this guy in the wood and he took a shine to Brian. Which reminds me: I’ll have to be back in town by six to feed him.’

  ‘Move him down here with us. Andy’ll come with you, give you a hand, make sure you find your way back. You can collect your gear at the same time.’ He climbed down from the van, headed for the back-door of the cottage.


  Donovan followed slowly. ‘I wasn’t thinking of moving in. I have somewhere to live.’

  ‘Then think again,’ Gates said pleasantly over his shoulder. ‘I thought I made it clear: we’re a team. We live together, work together, and when we’re finished we move on together. What’s the problem? You said you live alone, you’ve no commitments, there’s only the dog to consider and he can come with us.’

  Donovan had to remind himself that he was playing a part, he wouldn’t have to do anything he agreed to. ‘I’m used to being on my own, is all.’

  The warmth in Gates’s smile appeared to be genuine. ‘So now you can get used to being part of a family.’ He led the way inside.

  If anything, the cottage was more run-down inside than out. Mostly the furniture was old and worn; where things had worn out entirely they’d been replaced with new cheap ones that were even nastier. The place smelled of neglect. Somebody’s old mum had lived here, Donovan surmised, with a cat for company and somebody fetching her shopping once a week; enough to keep the old soul alive, not enough to keep the lane from getting overgrown. When she died, or went into a home, the cottage was rented while the family decided what to do with it.

  ‘Go on through,’ Gates said, ‘say hello to Charlie while I give Chang his lunch.’

  Charlie was a heavily-built man in his thirties shoehorned into a little-old-lady-sized chair, chewing on a pen and studying the back page of a newspaper. Donovan supposed he was picking racehorses, but what he was doing was the crossword.

  ‘I’m the new driver,’ Donovan offered, along with his assumed name. He looked round critically. ‘There doesn’t look to be room for six.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Charlie agreed in another of those impenetrable northern accents. ‘There isn’t room for six legless dwarves suffering from insomnia, let alone six working men who like to get some sleep from time to time. Don’t go looking for a room, the best you’ll do is a chair and a blanket If there really were six of us you’d have to take turns at the chair.’