Fallen Idols

by Neil White

  Bob saw the American’s hand sweep through the air. He was holding a gun, and it seemed to go so slow that he could hear the wind brush against the barrel. Bob tried to move, but he couldn’t react, couldn’t do anything. His eyes tracked the slow arc, but his body slowed down as well, so his legs felt leaden as he tried to step away. His arms felt strapped together as he thought about his baton, his instincts slowly kicking in.

  The cold metal pressed against his forehead. His eyes widened. His legs started to react, his body starting to turn so he could get away. His hand started to come up to knock the gun away.

  There wasn’t time. It was all too quick. There was an explosion. It echoed, his ears bursting with noise. His forehead felt on fire. Then a hammer blow, hard and heavy, knocked his head back, no chance to scream or cry for help. There was no time for that. No last goodbyes.

  He began to fall backwards, his eyes rolling, the stars coming into view, burnt by an image of the American with his arm out, smiling, pulling the gun back in recoil. The stars blurred as he fell, the dots of light rushing together, making a bright sunshine, a spotlight, a beam that began to pull away from him fast, crowded out by darkness.

  The last thing he felt was the rain on his face as he arched backwards.

  He was dead before he reached the ground.

  The American looked down, the gun in his hand. He was still smiling as he watched the rain drip onto the cigarette. The red ember slowly sizzled to black ash, and, once gone, Bob Garrett lay as still as Annie Paxman had done ten years earlier.

  The American wiped the gun and put it down next to Bob Garrett’s hand. He stepped back, turned around, and then walked away.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I got the knock in the middle of the night.

  I didn’t know the time, but the solid darkness told me that it was still a long way from morning. I knew what the knock meant as soon as I heard it. It’s born from a fear that stalks everyone close to a police officer. It’s a fear of that cracked-out burglar, or that gone-wrong domestic, or those wrong-place wrong-time crazed psychos. As soon as I heard the knock, I knew it was my turn.

  I ran down the stairs still dressed in my boxer shorts, my mind jerked awake, skipping steps, my mouth dry. I tried to compose myself as I got to the door, hoping to put off the moment long enough so that it would never arrive, but as soon as I flung open the door and saw two policemen there, I took a deep breath and steadied myself against the doorframe.

  They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. There were two of them, one male, one female. He was there to break the news. She was there to break the fall.

  I looked away and pushed myself off the doorframe before walking back into the house. I left the door swinging and I heard them follow me in. My knees didn’t feel strong so I sat down.

  I don’t remember much else, apart from snatches of emotion. I remember the female officer putting her hand on my shoulder. There were no tears then. It was too soon. I felt many things rush at me, assaulting me so hard that I lost all sense of my surroundings: the nausea, shock, disbelief. But there were no tears. Not yet.

  I think the female officer might have been crying. I can remember her mumbling words of comfort, but she wiped her eyes and sounded embarrassed. She was there for me, although maybe she didn’t realise that it helped me to know that I wasn’t alone, that other people felt a loss. I realised that they were my father’s friends and colleagues, and that their loss might mirror mine. I’d lost a man I loved, my father, but he was a man I didn’t really know. They had lost Bob Garrett, fellow officer, friend, someone much like them, facing the same risks as them. Maybe they saw themselves lying there.

  I asked them what had happened, and I was told that he had been shot, but nothing more. But what more did I need to know? He was gone, dead. I felt deserted, desolate, nothing left, the last real connection with my childhood had disappeared.

  The guilt set in next. It came at me in unforgiving waves. I felt guilt for leaving him and going to London. Guilt for not seeing his side of things enough, like I might have let him down too often. Guilt for not trusting him as a father, for not believing that he might have loved me whatever my faults were. Wasn’t that what parenthood was all about? Unconditional love. Why can’t a son’s love be unconditional? Why had I fought him so much, as if I had always wanted him to be different?

  Guilt was eventually submerged by an overwhelming sadness and time became a blur.

  The police were gone before daybreak. There was nothing else for them to do. I wasn’t speaking. I was just sitting on the sofa, staring into space, buffeted by flashes of my father, the father from my early years, not much older than myself now. My head was full of giggles and movement and colour, my father smiling, looking trim and young, happier, my mother in the background. It was a million times removed from the cold and empty house I sat in.

  I’d expected more whenever I’d thought about this moment. As a reporter, I’d often had to speak with grieving relatives, intruded on private pain. I’ve seen people scream, collapse, be sedated. I never thought I would go that way. My mother’s death had taught me that life does carry on, that pain does become manageable, but I still expected more. All I had was a sudden emptiness, which is just a nothing, a blank, so all I could do was curl up and let the sounds of the house take over. The refrigerator hummed into life occasionally, competing with the occasional creak and knock of the house as it settled and cooled. A clock ticked, relentless, time slow-marching itself in light metallic knocks, each tick pushing me further away from when I last saw my father; from our last conversation, when I had questioned him, asked him to justify himself. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance.

  It was the growing daylight that hurt the most. The room became lighter and I began to hear birdsong outside. Each dawn always felt like a new start, and it was that which made me realise that I was moving into a new stage of my life; a day had started that my father would never see.

  That’s when the tears came.

  The tears wrung me out and so I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up and felt empty and cold. The house was lonely and bare, and I wondered whether my father had felt the same way every day when he woke here, my mother gone and me in London.

  There was no warmth in the house at all. It lacked all those touches that my mother had brought, those artistic flourishes, flashes of colour. I glanced over to a photograph of my parents on the wall and felt another rush of sadness when I saw her smiling face. I wanted her back at that moment more than any other time. I’d forgotten the cancer years now. The woman I remembered was the one before the illness, the one who would hug and kiss me and call me her treasure. If she knew that my father had been taken away too, that I would be left all on my own, she would be heartbroken. Then I wondered whether she did know, whether they were together again and could look after me together once more, keep a constant watch.

  That comforted me at first, but the more I looked at the photograph, the more I realised that this was it. There was no one watching over me. My parents had gone and it was all down to me now.

  The short sleep had helped, though. It had somehow built a paper wall between the news of my dad’s death and the start of the next phase of my life. It was only a few short hours since I had found out, but the news didn’t feel new any more.

  As I came round, I was surprised to find that I was angry. Not at anyone, just at the injustice of it all. A man like that just cut down. All he was doing was earning his pay, just like most other people in town. I had a flash that I wanted to do something about our recent indifferences. That thought made me feel stronger, so I nurtured it, grabbed at it like a drowning man at a sliver of air. I thought about the need to mark the man’s life, so that somewhere, somehow, he could watch me and know that what had once been there as a birthright, unconditional love, had never really gone away.

  I remembered the conversation we’d had about David Watts. I wasn’t going to write about that, but I remembered my
father lamenting his wasted police career. I could do something about that. I knew he’d been a good policeman. He didn’t have the stripes, but I knew he had the town’s affection, and that must somehow count for more.

  I decided to mark his life in the only way I knew how: I would do all I could to get a front-page tribute to him. His death would make the front page of the Post. His life might as well join it in the headlines. The town owed him that much at least.

  TWENTY-NINE

  As daylight broke, the American lay on his bed in the hotel room, a country hotel on the road into Lancashire. The air-conditioning was a constant hum, a faint draught.

  He closed his eyes. He thought about the dead cop and smiled. It had been too easy. A quick flash of a stolen warrant and the man had wandered to his death like he was going outside for a smoke.

  That was just part one of the plan. DI Ross would complete part two, although he didn’t know it yet. The American had Ross’s numbers and he thought about calling him at home, but he knew Ross would be at work, his heart rate a drum solo, anything to keep himself moving and not thinking.

  The American rolled over and checked his watch. Seven thirty. Time to book in.

  He reached for his phone and called David Watts. It rang twice, but then a drowsy ‘yeah’ told him that his client was at least sleeping.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Watts. Did I wake you?’

  He heard movement and then David’s voice sounded more alert. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’ A pause to collect his thoughts, and then, ‘How are you doing? Are things going okay?’ His voice was a mixture of panic and enquiry.

  ‘It’s going well, Mr Watts. The inspector is being very co-operative, although one cop was making trouble, had worked it all out.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘PC Garrett.’ He smiled. ‘Not one of your fans.’

  ‘Shit. What’s he saying?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr Watts. It seems he died during the night.’

  There was silence at the other end. He thought he heard a faint gasp.

  ‘Mr Watts?’

  There was another pause, and then a quiet voice said, ‘What the fuck have you done?’ The dryness of David’s mouth came through thick and clear.

  ‘What you asked me to do,’ he replied, his voice full of mock-innocence. ‘You want me to shoot the messenger. Sometimes, there’s more than one messenger.’

  ‘You’ve killed a policeman.’ David sounded breathless. ‘You’ve killed a fucking policeman. Oh Christ.’

  ‘Wrong, Mr Watts. We killed a policeman, not me. We. Do you get the drill?’

  David Watts was silent for a moment, and then he asked, ‘What now?’ His voice was low and scared.

  ‘I have a plan. We’re only a day or so away from the end of your problem. It might even end sooner if the inspector does as he’s told.’

  ‘What does he have to do?’

  The American paused, then answered, ‘Let’s just say that PC Garrett sought to unburden himself before he died.’

  And with that, he clicked off David Watts. Then he dialled Glen Ross’s office using his direct line. When Ross picked up the phone, he whispered, ‘Wakey wakey, Inspector. Meet me in an hour.’

  He smiled to himself when he sensed the tension in Glen Ross.

  ‘What do you want?’ was all Ross could say.

  ‘Just be patient, Inspector. Meet me in an hour and you might find out something to your advantage.’

  ‘What like?’

  ‘Be patient. Eight thirty. What was that dingy little place I passed on the way into town? I’ve worked up a real hunger overnight.’

  ‘The Sunshine Cafe?’

  ‘That’s the place. One hour, Inspector.’

  ‘I’m going to arrest you,’ Ross snarled down the phone. ‘You killed a police officer, you bastard.’

  ‘Okay, whatever you want. If you want to find me, I’ll be in the Sunshine Cafe at eight thirty. Send your boys along.’ He paused, smiling, enjoying Glen Ross’s anger. ‘Hey, some of them might recognise me from my trip to your office yesterday.’

  There was complete silence from Glen Ross.

  ‘Be there, Inspector, or I’ll come and find you.’

  And then the American clicked off. He laughed to himself and got up off the bed. He checked his watch again.

  Time for a run before breakfast.

  *

  Laura was at home, a four-day stretch of no work ahead, a mix of rest days and accrued overtime. She’d spent the previous day trawling through the undetected street robberies, trying to match descriptions to see if they were isolated incidents or part of a gang. She’d made some progress, and thought she had worked out the description of the main offender in the West End. But she had been working on her own, everyone else on the Dumas case, so the day had dragged and she felt ready for the time off.

  Bobby was with his father, part of the arranged access, heading out to a zoo or some other treat. He’d be dropped off at the end of the following day, and that would be it for another two weeks. Bobby would miss his dad, but there’d be no more calls. Just the everyday routine of living with his mother, as she frantically fitted everything in around her job. The trips to the supermarket. The childminder pick-ups. The arguments over bedtime.

  She was lying in bed, watching breakfast television, thinking how to occupy herself, how to take her mind off the thought that Bobby wasn’t with her, when the news came on about the shooting of Bob Garrett in Turners Fold.

  She sat up quickly.

  There was only one place she was going now. She was going to Jack.

  David Watts stayed in bed after the call. He lay back and looked at the wall. His apartment was silent.

  He felt sick, tense, edgy. He wanted to get up, walk around, but he felt trapped, events moving too fast, out of his control. He couldn’t get hold of Karen. Every time he called, her phone just rang out. The weekend games had been postponed, the football authorities worried about a shooting live on television.

  He should have gone to the police, to the London police, but he hadn’t. He had been a coward, thought only of himself, and now more people had died. He knew now that he had to see it through, he had gone too far to go back.

  He felt his forehead go damp. He needed to get through this, to make his life right again.

  He remembered the bag of cocaine. He knew that would help. Just a bit more, just until this was all over. He could put it all right later. Maybe do more charity work, put something back. His Trust Fund did some of that, but perhaps he ought to expand it. He could work on his relationship with Emma, maybe get her to cut down on the travel.

  He took out the cocaine. It would be over soon and he could throw this away, start over.

  THIRTY

  Glen Ross parked his car at the back of the Sunshine Cafe. He was wearing his best suit, a press conference expected, but his face was ashen, as if he hadn’t slept. As he went in, all eyes turned towards him. He saw some familiar faces. One or two nodded, the news now through that a policeman had been killed overnight, but it seemed like no one knew what to say. They returned to their food and conversations, the noise level quieter.

  The cafe was busy. He looked around hopefully; he couldn’t see the American at first. But then he noticed the black shirt, the bald dome, at a table in the corner, his face turned towards the window.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  He turned around and looked blankly at the waitress. He thought she sounded quiet, looked upset, but then he remembered Bob Garrett had breakfast here most days. He flicked a hand towards the menu on the board behind her. ‘Just a coffee.’

  He waited for his drink and then he walked over to the American, who didn’t look up until he sat down, the vinyl seat squeaking as he shuffled across to the window.

  ‘Good morning to you, Inspector. Working solo this morning?’ he mocked.

  Glen Ross took a deep breath. He wanted to throw his drink over the bastard, hear him scream.

  ‘Don’t be
a smartarse,’ was all he could muster, hissed through gritted teeth.

  The American pointed at his plate and said, ‘Good food,’ but then he patted his stomach and glanced around. ‘Doesn’t do much for the waistline, though. Maybe I’m used to some city finesse.’

  ‘It’s nice and simple,’ replied Glen Ross, his voice terse. ‘It’s how we like it round here.’

  The American smiled and nudged the plate further away. ‘I’m sure you do. Now, on to business.’

  ‘Just you wait there,’ Ross snapped, reaching forward and gripping the American’s hand. ‘You killed a police officer last night,’ he whispered. ‘You will go to prison for the rest of your life if I take you in.’

  ‘If, if, if. You’ve got your head so full of negatives, Chief, you can’t see the positives.’

  Ross gripped the hand harder. ‘There aren’t any positives, you cop-killing bastard. You murdered a man I’ve known for years.’

  The American sat back, leaving his hand on the table inside Glen Ross’s grip, and smiled. ‘Don’t create a scene, Inspector. It doesn’t look good in public.’

  Glen Ross started to squeeze, trying to get a reaction. The tendons in his hand stood out like dorsal fins, his mouth set in a grimace.

  The American took a drink of his coffee. He looked at his hand as an afterthought and said, ‘You move your hand now, or else I’ll pin it to the table with a knife. You’ve got ten seconds.’ A pause. ‘Ten, nine, eight…’

  Glen Ross thought about keeping it there, but something in the American’s eyes told him otherwise, so he pulled his hand away and sat back. His complexion was red and hot. He flexed his fingers, his face flushed with suppressed anger, and looked at the table. He was losing control.

  ‘That’s better. Now, more coffee? I’ve finished mine.’ The American looked up and caught the eye of the waitress, asking for another. He noticed a few people were watching. When the waitress came over, her hips rolling, he thanked her loudly. When she’d gone, he took a sip and said, ‘This is a good town for me.’ When Glen Ross glanced up, he continued, ‘No one knows who I am, but the accent stands out like a tree on the prairie. Better than London, where I’m just another tourist. Here, I could get myself a profile.’