Charisma

by Jo Bannister

  The cinders whispered again to the pressure of footsteps. His first thought was that Brady had forgotten something. But it wasn’t Brady, who would have come straight in. Someone was searching the line of wagons: looking for him.

  He couldn’t think what that meant. It was far too soon for it to be finished, for Scoutari and Kelso and as many of their associates as couldn’t outsprint a fit policeman to be telling their lawyers they’d been framed and for Brady to have sent someone to free him. It could be someone sent by Kelso to keep an eye on him while Brady was away.

  Or perhaps someone at Queen’s Street had finally realized he was missing, that the man on the phone was an impostor and his last genuine contact was with Shapiro twenty-four hours ago. If they asked at the hospital they’d be told he had never gone there. They’d get no answer on his phone; someone calling at Tara would see a light but find no one aboard. Then they might think to search for him, and they just might come here.

  Friend or foe? He couldn’t tell. He levered himself half upright against the timber wall, drew a breath to shout with. Then he thought better of it. If it was the police they’d find him and the extra minutes would make no difference. If it was someone else they’d find him too, but an extra few minutes might make all the difference in the world.

  From the shunting yard to Broad Wharf was a fifteen-minute walk for a man who was also trying to think. Brady had worked out the details hours ago, and gone through them time and again while the day passed. He thought he was on top of the situation, that he had all the likely eventualities covered. But he’d been doing this job too long to think that likely eventualities were the only possible ones. He spent these last minutes trying to foresee the unforeseeable and planning how to deal with that too.

  He didn’t have long to wait for the first eventuality he hadn’t foreseen. It came stumping towards him as he reached the wharf: Kelso, his kitbag over one broad shoulder, strong legs bustling his massive body along. There was a grim unease on his granite face that hardly softened when he caught sight of Brady. ‘Damn. I hoped I’d catch you before you left.’

  Brady’s eyes scanned his expression like radar. ‘I thought we were going to the castle.’

  ‘Change of plan,’ grunted the Geordie. ‘Not my idea, Scoutari’s. I had to agree, he wouldn’t go ahead otherwise.’

  ‘So where are we meeting now?’ Brady was afraid he knew.

  ‘Same as last time, an hour from now. Only I wanted to see you first, see what you make of it. Is he taking us for a ride? We could just not show. If he wants the stuff he’ll have to play ball sooner or later.’

  For a moment Brady was thrown. ‘We need to get it wrapped up, then I can – you know.’ A thought occurred to him and he sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Does Scoutari know about the copper?’

  Kelso’s gaze shifted defensively. ‘I had to tell him. He wanted to know why we were bringing the deal forward: he thought we were in trouble, he was going to pull out. So I told him. He’s happy enough now he knows it’s under control.’

  All his careful planning performed a stately backflip in Brady’s head. It was falling apart before him. His people would be at Castle Mount while the action was proceeding at the shunting yard. Nor did he believe he had fifty minutes to sort something out. Scoutari had changed the arrangements at the last minute because he wanted Donovan to himself for a while.

  When they reached the yard Scoutari would be waiting. Control of the meeting place gave him an advantage: it didn’t mean he intended to cheat them but it would make it easier. As Kelso said, they could just not turn up. But that meant leaving Donovan at the mercy of a man who needed first his information and then his silence. For all Brady knew Donovan was already dead. Nor was there any way of knowing what information he might have parted with first.

  ‘Terrific,’ Brady growled softly, looking away because although he could keep the despair out of his voice he didn’t want Kelso to see his eyes.

  7

  Brian Graham got home and found nowhere to park in his drive. From his car he watched in mounting surprise as two detective constables followed by DCI Shapiro followed by his wife emerged from his front door and hurried towards the offending vehicles. None of them saw him until he called out, in equal measures of puzzlement and unease, ‘Liz? What’s going on? Where are you going?’

  She turned at his voice, and for a moment her expression was distracted and irritable, as if a child had come plucking at her sleeve while she was trying to get on with something important. The way she looked at him he thought she was going to slap him down: Not now, Brian, I’m busy. Just in time she stopped herself and came over. She looked strained. Her eyes were hollow.

  ‘You are not going to believe what’s been going on here. I’ve had Lothario on the patio and Lady Macbeth in the shrubbery. I’ve lost my shoe in the canal. Listen, I have to go. I’ll give you the gory details when I get in. All right?’

  It was a rhetorical question: no answer was required. He knew that if he said, ‘No, stay here, tell me now,’ she’d have shaken her head and gone anyway. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. He was not a man to make a scene but such ready compliance bespoke defeat. ‘You’ll be back later?’

  She gave a harassed shrug. ‘It might be a lot later.’ Then she hurried to Shapiro’s car, the little convoy sped away down the hill and she was gone.

  Michael Davey drove to Broad Wharf in a passion that was half fury, half desolation. He knew now that what he felt for Liz Graham had never been more than half real, a fever-flower rooted in a heady compost of one part empathy to two parts normal healthy lust. She was an attractive, intelligent woman, the sort of woman he would have chosen for a soulmate; but now the dream was over he couldn’t think what had possessed him that he had gambled his future on her and expected her to give up hers for him. Liz Graham didn’t love him. There was no reason she should. He wasn’t sure he loved her so much as his image of her, a custom-built perfection superimposed on her bones like a hologram. A mannequin. He’d created a mannequin to love, and been wounded to the heart when it failed to love him in return.

  Now the dream was over, but he couldn’t go back to what he had before because the reality was destroyed as well. He’d been willing to give up his God for Liz Graham: now he’d been rejected how could he ask God to take him back? After all he’d done, all he’d worked for, he was going to end up with nothing.

  Then there was Jenny. What had Liz Graham been saying about her, that he’d been too upset and embarrassed to listen to? That she loved him. Not admired him and loved their work together: loved him. Also – No. He’d got that wrong; or Inspector Graham had. It was nonsense, bizarre and in execrable taste. Jennifer Mills was a good woman. He’d be lost without her.

  At the wharf people were already crowding into the tent. But Mills wasn’t there. He found Kelso handing out hymn-sheets and told him to stop. ‘There’ll be no meeting tonight.’

  The ganger didn’t remember Davey cancelling before, even once in France when ‘flu so thickened his accent that he was totally incomprehensible. ‘What am I going to tell all the people?’

  ‘Say that I’m indisposed,’ Davey said savagely. ‘Say that tonight their salvation is in their own hands. Say that in the interests of economy the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off. I don’t care what you say. Get rid of them.’ He heaved himself out of the car and into his chair and lurched away, bent almost double, the massive shoulders thrusting him forward and the following stares spurring him on.

  He wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just getting away from all the tent represented. If nothing had come to stop him he would have continued at the same muscle-cracking speed along the towpath to Doggett’s Lock: the same route he’d taken, at a more leisurely pace on a happier day, with Liz Graham. If he had he might have been surprised at what he found.

  But he didn’t get that far. As he rumbled past the alley between the timber yard and the garden centre, both now closed and quiet, someone
said his name softly and he braked, spinning the chair. ‘Who’s there?’

  The sun was low and the narrow place in shadow. He could just see the bulk of the skips, the pile of timbers. No one moved towards him but the voice said again, ‘Michael,’ softly, and this time he recognized it.

  ‘Jenny?’ He wheeled himself into the shadows, towards the sound.

  There was no need for introductions. Donovan had never had the satisfaction of arresting Jimmy Scoutari – though Shapiro had – but they’d moved too long in the same circles for there to be any point trying to bluff it out. ‘Good evening, sir – I am a police officer in pursuit of my duty – how fortunate I am that you happened this way while taking your daily constitutional …’ Instead he sniffed dourly and nodded.

  Scoutari nodded too. ‘Sergeant.’ His face was expressionless, his voice flat. Whatever his antecedents Scoutari was born two miles from here in the maternity wing of Castle General: his accent was the local accent. But there was a slight distinctive thickness to it that was not part of the local argot. ‘Aren’t you going to ask what I’m doing here?’ he said, almost but not quite deadpan.

  Without looking up Donovan gave a humourless little snort. ‘I know what you’re doing here.’

  Scoutari shook his head in ill-feigned dismay. ‘You’re doing this all wrong. You’re supposed to say I’m the last person you expected to see, and how relieved you are I came along to save you from the wicked men who tied you up.’ He squatted, lithe and muscular as a cat, his face level with Donovan’s. His voice dropped a tone. ‘Because if I thought you suspected me of being here about, for instance, a supply of stuff’ – like most people to whom drugs are part of daily life Scoutari rarely used the word – ‘I mightn’t want you going round saying so.’

  It would have taken a simpler man than Donovan to think Scoutari was doing anything more than amusing himself. It wasn’t a genuine offer: Scoutari couldn’t afford to negotiate. He’d known Donovan was here, and what it meant, and had already decided what to do about it. He might leave town. He might kill Donovan and brazen it out. There were advantages and drawbacks either way, but whichever Scoutari had settled on he wouldn’t be swayed by pleading now. Donovan preserved his silence and his dignity.

  Scoutari was disappointed. He’d had his share of aggravation from Castlemere CID over the years, had fantasized about having a detective at his mercy. The problem was, Donovan knew he didn’t have any. He could be scared, he could be hurt, but he couldn’t be teased. With a sigh Scoutari straightened up. ‘Don’t go away.’ He headed for the door of the wagon.

  Before he got there a thought occurred to him and he turned back as if there were something he’d forgotten to do. Without explanation, without even catching Donovan’s eye, he wheeled like a footballer and kicked him in the face.

  Donovan’s head cannoned off the wooden wall and he crashed along the floor. Pain ricocheted between his jaw and his brain; a filigree of fire radiated at the speed of thought along his facial nerves. Blood and mucus ran from his nose. He moaned in his throat.

  Scoutari watched him; only a moment, then he continued to the door. The track was rusty, it only opened a couple of feet. He stood in the gap and spoke to someone outside.

  Donovan could hear the words, was too dazed to make sense of them. He knew they concerned him – probably arrangements for the rest of his life – but all he could do was wait: for his brain to stop reeling or someone to cut his heart out, whichever came first.

  Brady ran, leaving Kelso breathless in his wake. If he’d still had Donovan’s mobile he’d have stopped it there and then, calling in all the help he could reach and never mind who heard him. He already had enough to put those involved behind bars. On the debit side he’d blow his cover wide open, this might have to be his last round-up; but that was a small enough price for a man’s life.

  If he’d still had the mobile. But apart from having to fight Donovan off it he’d been afraid of being compromised: if Scoutari was nervous enough to frisk him, the last thing he wanted found in his possession was a police-issue mobile phone.

  He’d already discovered how far you could go looking for a call-box. He believed that if he took the time to summon help it would come too late. He wasn’t sure what he could do alone and unarmed, but he’d promised Donovan he’d keep him safe. Liam Brady was a man who’d broken his word more often than he’d broken wind, but it mattered to him not to break this one.

  Scoutari had come to the first meet with only his driver for company. That was what they’d agreed: two men each side plus look-outs at the tow-path and Brick Lane. The same rules were to have governed the exchange at Castle Mount, but the rules went by the board when Kelso let slip that they’d snatched a police officer. Scoutari might have brought a football team complete with substitutes. In one way it hardly mattered. Whether they were three or thirteen, Brady’s only hope of controlling the situation was to take a gun off someone else. That wasn’t as tall an order for Liam Brady as it would have been for most people, but it would still take some doing.

  By the time the police reached Broad Wharf Kelso had left – and been glad to, happier to deal with Castlemere’s new drug baron than with a hoard filled with missionary zeal and deprived of their missionary.

  For a while they had waited patiently for Davey to return. They’d seen him wheel away down the wharf, didn’t expect he would be long, didn’t believe the granite-faced Geordie who told them the meeting was cancelled. But after fifteen minutes patience was giving way to yawns of boredom and rumblings of discontent. These were not, after all, natural churchgoers. They were here not because of God but because of Michael Davey. Their expectations had invested him with a kind of divinity, but not enough that they would forgive him for wasting their time. Stirred to passion three nights before some of these same people had helped burn a man alive. There was an ugly side to their devotion.

  So the first task conironting the police when they arrived and were told by a nervous young roadie that Miss Mills hadn’t showed up and Mr Davey had been and gone, and the people in the tent had been waiting anything up to fifty minutes and wouldn’t go home, and periodically someone struck up a threateningly cadenced ‘Why Are We Waiting?’ to the tune of ‘Come All Ye Faithful’, was to disperse the crowd peacefully.

  They succeeded but it took a little time. It was dark before the wharf was cleared: searching all the walkways and alleys and derelict buildings backing on to the canal would be a major undertaking. Davey’s chair mightn’t prove hard to find, there were so many places it couldn’t go. But if they found it occupied by the corpse of Michael Davey, his throat slashed ear to ear by the single stroke at a rising angle that was diagnostic of her handiwork, finding Jennifer Mills among the shatter of crumbling brickwork would be quite another matter. It would take lights and manpower, and in the time needed to set it up she might give them the slip again.

  But there was no alternative to trying. Shapiro called Queen’s Street from his car. As luck – and it was no more than that – would have it, Superintendent Taylor was in his office. ‘I need every man you can spare at Broad Wharf, as soon as they can get here. Mills may try to slip away with the departing faithful.’

  When he put the phone down there was a momentary hiatus in all the activity that swallowed up the scene in an almost eerie silence. It just so happened that for an instant nobody was talking, clattering over the uneven cobbles or slamming car-doors, and the quiet breathed like a living thing, touching them, daring them to break it.

  In another moment someone would have said something – probably Shapiro, issuing instructions – or DC Scobie would have tripped over something with a curse, or DC Morgan would have trotted heavily up the cobbles to investigate the shadow of a stray cat, and the magic silence would have broken up as if it had never been.

  But before that a sound as slight and sinister as any they could remember reached out to them from the darkness, a tiny inhuman whine, repeated and repeated, echoing off the rottin
g brick so that no one could be sure where it was coming from. They looked uneasily at one another, peered into the gloom, failed to see anything, failed to reach any conclusion except that it was coming closer; slowly, that tiny wail like an anguished metronome ground out at each hesitant step.

  It was Liz who finally recognized it, though recognition did nothing to reduce the tension building under her breastbone. She had to force herself to speak aloud. ‘The wheelchair.’ The unoiled bearing squeaked with every slow revolution as the thing came towards the lights.

  8

  She stayed where she was, silent, ambivalent, cloaked in a shadow that was more than just the setting of the sun. He peered for her as if through fog. ‘Jenny? That is you, isn’t it?’

  Finally she spoke. ‘It’s me.’ Her voice was as strange as her manner, seeming to reach him over a distance.

  He kept wheeling towards her, as if it were a distance he could reduce. ‘What’s the matter, Jenny? Why are you hiding?’

  It was a figure of speech, he didn’t mean it literally, but she answered as if he did. ‘I’m waiting.’

  He was puzzled. ‘For what?’

  ‘For you.’

  He thought then that she must have heard his outburst at the tent, had come to remonstrate with him. It was typical of their relationship that he still thought of her only as an adjunct to himself. ‘I’m not going back, Jenny. I’m not talking to anybody tonight. I don’t know about the future yet. I don’t know if I want to go on doing this or not. Tell them to go to the pub. Tell them to go to the cinema. You can tell them to go to hell for all I care. This time I’m putting me first.’

  There were a lot of things she could have said to that. By accident or design she picked the most hurtful. ‘This time?’