The Aden Vanner Novels

by Jeff Gulvin

  ‘You seem very sure, Guv.’

  ‘That’s because I am. He’s winding us up. I can feel it.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Don’t know. He knows me though. Too much familiarity in the way he speaks to me. I just can’t place the voice that’s all.’

  ‘If there’s form we’ll pick him up.’

  Vanner nodded. ‘At least I’ll find out who he is then.’

  Jo Hawkins looked over at the misshapen figure of Billy Mason, sitting slumped in the chair beside the television set. Drunken fat bastard. Hawkins grimaced at him, despising himself for the quality of the company he was keeping. He sat forward. ‘Wake up, Billy—it’s your round.’ Mason jumped and looked at him.

  ‘Uh. What?’

  ‘Nothing. Go back to sleep.’

  Billy wiped his eyes with his fists. ‘Beer in the afternoon. No good to me.’

  ‘Giro day, Billy. Bloody Giro day.’ Hawkins flexed his muscles, and glanced down at the paunch that was beginning to slip over his belt. He got up and reached for his dumbbells.

  ‘Should you be doing that—what with the beer and that?’

  Hawkins leered at him. ‘If I fall over, Billy. You can pick me up.’

  Mason half-smiled and started to get up. ‘I ought to go. What time is it?’

  ‘No time.’ Hawkins lifted the weights. ‘Besides. Where do you have to be?’

  Mason thought about that and then grinned through rubbery lips. ‘Nowhere I suppose.’

  He sat back again and looked at the army photos on the wall. ‘You enjoyed that didn’t you.’

  Hawkins followed his gaze. ‘Every bloody minute, Billy. Real job. Real men.’

  ‘You fought in the Falklands?’

  ‘Course I did.’ He put down the weights and picked up the soft maroon beret. ‘Killed my first man there, Billy. Queen and country. Queen and bloody country.’

  ‘Why’d you leave?’

  Hawkins darkened, fingers twisting the beret into a knot. ‘I didn’t leave,’ he said quietly. ‘They left me. Government cuts, Billy. They left me.’

  Walking into the hall he stepped outside the front door onto the balcony. Night was falling across the estate, edging the stiff concrete corners into a pliancy that belied the reality. Below him teenagers gathered in huddles about the swings meant for children. He leaned on the balcony, bare-chested, running his fingers over his tattoos.

  ‘Little bastards,’ he mouthed. ‘Look at them, running around till God knows what time of night.’ Turning suddenly he walked back inside. Mason stood looking at the photographs. Hawkins shoved past him and went into his bedroom. From under his bed he slid out a cardboard box and removed the lid. Carefully he lifted out a bulky object bound in oilcloth. The pistol weighed heavy and cool in his hand. He carried it out onto the landing. Mason moved at his elbow.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jo.’

  Hawkins smiled and aimed the gun at the teenagers, laughing below. ‘Look at them—worthless little shits. Give ’em a year and they’ll be stealing cars and running down old ladies with them.’ Pointing the gun, he made the sound of an explosion. He looked coldly into Mason’s whitened face.

  Mason was still staring at the gun. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘I just got it, Billy.’

  Mason stepped a couple of paces away from him and Hawkins looked round, the disgust barely held back from his lips.

  ‘Scared, Billy?’ He waggled the gun between his fingers. ‘It’s not loaded. I’m a soldier, remember. I’ve been trained.’ He laughed then, head tipped back, showing the pink of his gums.

  ‘But where did you get it?’

  ‘Souvenir.’ Hawkins stuffed the gun into the belt of his jeans and went back inside.

  ‘I’ve got to go now, Jo. I’ll see you.’ Hawkins ignored him.

  Vanner watched Sarah Kennett across the room, back to him, bending low over the desk with Nicholls at her side. Berry was watching her too. Vanner was suddenly filled with a yearning, born of an emptiness; something unfulfilled. He half-wished he had not walked away. The phone rang on his desk. Everybody suddenly looked round at him. For a moment Vanner looked down at the phone and then he switched on the tape.

  ‘Vanner,’ he said, lifting the receiver. For a moment there was silence then the same harsh voice in his ear.

  ‘No form.’

  Vanner listened. ‘What?’

  ‘No form. I have no form. That’s what coppers call it, isn’t it. Form? Previous? I’m a crusader not a criminal.’ He laughed savagely. ‘I watched them, the boys in blue at the phone box. It won’t tell you anything.’

  Vanner was thinking, remembering. The voice. He almost had it.

  ‘I don’t even know why you’re chasing me.’

  ‘We’re not,’ Vanner said. ‘You haven’t done anything.’ He hung up.

  McCague sat across the canteen table from him, steam rising from his coffee cup. Grey hair, grizzled around his jowls where they hung over his jaw like a bulldog. He stirred the coffee viciously with a massive, meaty fist.

  ‘Why’d you hang up on him? You should have kept him talking.’

  ‘He hasn’t done anything.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ McCague sat back. ‘I mean how can you actually say that?’

  ‘Because I know.’

  ‘God, you’re an arrogant bastard.’ McCague drank his coffee noisily. ‘I’ve got the whole damn Home Office breathing down my neck and you sit there making assumptions.’

  Vanner’s face closed. ‘He’s having a go at us, Sir. Having a go at me.’

  ‘Who? I mean you tell me you recognise the voice but you haven’t got a name.’

  ‘I’ve known a lot of people.’

  ‘Maybe you just think you know him.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Vanner lit a cigarette. ‘That doesn’t change the fact that he’s a hoaxer. Our man wouldn’t phone us. He’s had his publicity. He signs for his work once and once only.’

  ‘The letters.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ian Glenn’s opinion?’

  ‘Mine too. Any thinking person’s. It makes sense. His statement is made, his action justified. He’s too careful to phone us. He doesn’t want to be caught. As far as he’s concerned he’s the law.’

  ‘Good God. You’re a copper, Vanner. You’re supposed to eliminate logically. Have you listened to yourself lately?’

  ‘I know I’m right, Sir.’

  ‘Yes. So right you haven’t caught anybody.’

  McCague finished his coffee and pushed back his chair. ‘I want that caller found and brought in, Vanner. Even if only to eliminate him.’

  ‘For the Home Office?’

  ‘Don’t push me.’

  Morrison closed the file and switched off the lamp. The Incident Room outside was empty. He stood up and placed the file on top of the others. Vanner had been very sure, back in the summer with the phone calls. How come he was so sure? Even McCague was irritated by it. He shook his head and wondered. Arrogance. That was what McCague had called it. He was wrong. It wasn’t arrogance. It was knowledge.

  Vanner drove into the village, turning right at the white gate and easing the car softly along the crisply tarred road that meandered to the green. In summer there was no more idyllic place. Many times in years gone by he had sat on Michael Kirston’s front lawn and looked out over the tranquillity of England. The slumber that was Norfolk, with its characters and its incomers; the clack of a cricket ball on the top green; the sound of laughter from the benches outside the pub. His headlights illuminated the green now, which sparkled with the promise of frost. The black width of the sky rang with stars long since dead, the fragments of light the only testimony to their passing.

  He parked his car outside Michael Kirston’s house, and walked up the drive. The door was at the side, lit by a single bulb under the porch that adjoined the garage. He could see bands of soft light creeping from curtains that snuggled the window frames. He allowed himself a smile.

>   They ate dinner in the flat, low kitchen, with the table raised on a half-height floor under the gaze of the windows. They made small talk for a while and then Kirston touched his wife, Kathy, on the shoulder and sat back in his seat.

  ‘You stay away too long, Aden.’

  Vanner nodded, sipping red wine from a wide bellied glass. Kathy smiled at him, chestnut-coloured hair moved over her shoulders. Self-consciously she flicked it back.

  ‘How’s your father?’ Kirston said.

  ‘Grizzly as ever.’ Vanner shrugged. ‘I think he worries about me. Wonders how I ended up like I did. Blames himself.’ He looked between them, eyes thin. ‘Nature of fatherhood I guess.’

  ‘Are the press hounding him?’

  ‘They have been.’ Vanner sipped more wine. ‘Vicar’s son suspended for whacking a suspect.’ He looked at the tablecloth. ‘Must make a hell of a feature.’

  ‘He can handle it though.’

  Vanner nodded. ‘He’s seen worse. Twenty years an Army chaplain: it must have taught him something.’

  They moved into the lounge where a fire glowed in the hearth. Vanner had to stoop to get in the door.

  ‘Break my neck,’ Vanner said. ‘You always were a rustic bastard.’

  Kirston grinned. ‘It’s why I moved back from London. Andrew’s still there …’ Sudden pain, familiar, burned in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was insensitive.’

  Vanner waved the comment away. ‘No it wasn’t. I’m over it. It was years ago.’ He paused. ‘Are they still together?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  Vanner sat down, close to the fire, cupping his brandy glass between both hands. ‘You know, I don’t even know where they live.’

  ‘Chelsea.’

  ‘Figures. She always did have expensive tastes. Still, I suppose he can afford it. Who’s he with—Kleinwort Benson or someone?’

  ‘Re-insurance. Property, that kind of thing.’

  Later, after Kathy had gone up to bed, they sat together, Vanner in an armchair, Kirston squatting on the floor with one leg tucked under him.

  ‘For what it’s worth I think it was a shitty thing to do.’

  ‘Forget it. It was a long time ago.’

  Kirston looked up at him. ‘Are you okay? I mean this charge you’re on?’

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘Will it go to court?’

  ‘It would’ve done, Daniels—that was the kid I thumped, he dropped the charges against me.’

  ‘You’re in the clear then.’

  Vanner shook his head. ‘It’s up to CIB. They can still send the file to the Crown. At worst I’ll have a disciplinary hearing.’

  ‘What will that mean?’

  Vanner sat back. ‘Who knows? They could fire me. Demote me. It’ll take a while to happen. In the meantime I stay suspended.’

  ‘Take a holiday. You look as though you could do with it.’

  Vanner shook his head.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’d only sit and brood.’

  For a moment Vanner looked in the fire, the darkness of the chimney beyond the crush of the flames. Dark night, dark streets. He looked directly at Kirston. ‘Have you ever …’ he started.

  ‘Ever what?’

  Vanner pursed his lips. ‘Ever wondered about yourself—what you’re capable of?’

  Kirston lifted his eyebrows. ‘What d’you mean?’

  Vanner took a breath, felt in his pocket for cigarettes. Again he looked in the fire. Dark night, dark streets. ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said.

  Kirston poured more brandy and Vanner rolled it around his glass. ‘I enjoyed it, Michael.’

  ‘Enjoyed what?’

  ‘Hitting that suspect. I enjoyed giving him a smack.’ He leered into the flames. ‘It’s funny—we rationalise things, don’t we. I mean we pretend at civilisation. We’re compassionate, give people the benefit of the doubt. But we need vengeance. Some kind of retribution. If you lose somebody. Killed, whatever. You want something, need something. Some kind of justice. Not the crass kind dished out by the courts, I mean real justice. Eye for an eye kind of justice.’ He smiled. ‘Sound like a bloody Fascist, don’t I?’

  For a few moments Kirston just watched him. Vanner made a face.

  ‘Listen to me. A copper and all. I can’t deny it though, Michael. I wanted to hurt that kid. I mean, I really wanted to hurt him.’

  ‘Was he a kid?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Old enough to know better.’

  Vanner curled his lip. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘What happened—d’you just lose it?’

  Vanner looked at him. ‘I can’t tell you exactly. She was somebody’s mother. In a stupid kind of way she reminded me of my mother. I never knew her, but if she’d’ve lived she’d have been that woman’s age.’

  Kirston watched flames in the grate. ‘What about this other Watchman murder? We interviewed Judge Staples you know. More than once.’

  Vanner nodded. ‘He freed a bloke who ran down a kid in a stolen car. Two years’ suspended sentence.’

  ‘There was an outcry.’

  ‘I remember. I was part of it.’

  ‘Are there no leads?’ Kirston said. ‘The Watchman. Obviously I’ve kept tabs on it.’

  ‘Your job.’ Vanner sighed. ‘No, there aren’t leads. Whoever it is, they’re very very clever.’

  He pinched his eyes with his finger tips. ‘Everybody fancied Jane you know. Every bloody cadet in Sandhurst.’

  ‘How come she picked you?’

  ‘That’s just it, I think she did pick me. You know what I’m like, Michael, never been keen to chase where every other bugger’s sniffing. I ignored her. At first I thought she was just a spoiled little brat. You know, typical horsey type. Army officer’s daughter.’

  ‘She wasn’t though.’

  ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  The fire dimmed low, Vanner could feel the intensity of the ashes across his face. ‘It’s ridiculous. It’s been ten years. But even now, I keep trying to see where it went wrong. One moment she was mine. We were happy. I thought we were happy. I wanted a child. I thought she did. Then I got a letter in Belfast. You know, a “Dear John”. She told me she was leaving me. Andrew Riley. My best man for Christ’s sake. I mean, of all the bloody clichés!’ He shook his head. ‘I came straight home. I got on a plane there and then. We had a Herc’ flying in. I think I was home in something like three hours from the time I got the letter.’ He half-shut his eyes. ‘Before I went back to Ulster that last time,’ he shook his head, ‘we made love you know. Passionately. I mean desperately. I was so much in love with her. I thought she was pregnant. I really did.’

  Kirston poured him more brandy.

  ‘I came home. I said, what about the baby? She said—what baby? I’ve got my period.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Words. Something like that.’

  After a while Kirston said, ‘Like you say—ten years, Aden.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Vanner looked up. ‘I should move on. Do they have kids—her and Riley?’

  Kirston looked away. After a moment he said, ‘Hasn’t there been anyone else since then?’

  Vanner shook his head. ‘I can’t love anyone, Michael. Not any more.’

  ‘What about girlfriends though?’ Kirston grinned at him. ‘You don’t have to love them.’

  Vanner thought of Sarah. ‘There’s one woman. I work with her. I should say worked with her on the investigation. We had something, but I broke it off.’ He stopped talking and thought back to just last night, the fire in the hearth and the heat against his skin. Her breath, her flesh. ‘She came back recently. She said she didn’t care about love.’ He grinned. ‘She says she’s just using me.’

  ‘And is she?’

  Vanner shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m using her.’

  Later Kirston said: ‘Why did you leave the Army, Aden?’

  Vanner looked across at him. ‘You know everyone asks me that.’

>   ‘Sorry. I …’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He thought of Morrison, every step of his career, how he had felt that man’s scrutiny from afar, as if somehow he knew, even then. ‘I’ve been out for years. I’ve almost forgotten.’

  ‘Wasn’t there some speculation about you?’

  Vanner nodded. ‘Seems to trail round after me. My poor father.’ He smiled. ‘Rumours, Michael. Nothing more than rumours.’

  Morrison leaned his elbow on Vanner’s desk and yawned. Nobody else was in yet. He glanced at his watch and frowned. He looked at the phone, then back at his watch and shook his head. Then he turned the page in front of him.

  Hawkins drained his glass and laid it carefully on the table. Next to him Mason swallowed and belched. Hawkins ignored him. He was watching a bunch of skinheads playing darts. One of them kept looking at him. Mason rattled his glass on the table. Hawkins said: ‘Get the drinks, Billy.’

  Mason picked up both their glasses and picked his way to the bar. He came alongside the darts players and one of them stepped into his path. Mason faltered, hitched at his sagging jeans with his elbow.

  ‘Can I get by please,’ he said. The skinhead, tall and thin with a circle of gold in his ear looked at him for a moment and then moved aside. As Mason went past the skinhead glanced at his mates.

  ‘Fat bastard,’ he muttered. His mates started giggling. At the table in the corner Hawkins half-closed his eyes.

  Mason waited while the pints were poured then he spilled his change onto the bar. Hawkins watched him, his bulk, the way he waddled between the other drinkers with the brimming glasses in his hands. When he came to the darts players the tall one stepped backwards, heel sticking out and Mason went sprawling into a pool of broken glass and lager. For a moment he stayed there, like a bewildered pig, scrabbling about on his knees with his belly dragging to the floor.

  ‘Oh, mate.’ The skinhead shook his head, grinning. ‘You spilled your drink.’

  Mason got up and started dabbing at his soaking trousers. He looked across at Hawkins. ‘He’s pissed himself.’ The darts players fell about laughing. Mason stood there, then he turned to the tall one, looked as if he was about to say something and then faltered. Again he looked towards Hawkins.

  ‘What’s the matter, mate?’ One of the skinheads taunted. ‘Couldn’t you hold it?’ Again, laughter: loud raucous laughter. The other drinkers were watching them. Mason stood there. For a moment his face seemed to crumple as if he was fighting with tears, then he stumbled back to the table. Hawkins looked beyond him to the darts players, still giggling together like women. Mason sat down next to him. ‘Sorry, Jo,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ve got no more money.’