by Gavin Smith
On the odd occasion that Harkness had driven a truly desirable car, he’d understood how an assemblage of metal, rubber and fossil fuel could be more than just the sum of its parts. The sleek BMW he’d wangled as a courtesy car when Hayley’s Mini had been in dry dock had been a symphony of opulent power, with no discordant notes to detract from the melody. By contrast, the Mondeo left him in no doubt that only an increasingly fragile chain of grating, metallic linkages kept him in motion – every instrument in this vaudeville orchestra pit was comically grating and mistimed.
The tortured grinding of metal on metal and the hacking rattle from the exhaust drowned out the noise of the traffic stacked up on Yarborough Road in the thickening heat of early afternoon. For Lincoln, he knew he cut a fascinating figure – a half-wrecked car driven by a singed, hulking ape in a suit was an awfully long way from discreet. The car’s undercover days were certainly over.
On Burton Road, the Mondeo crabbed past the car that had struck Firth, beached on the pavement with a ‘police aware’ sticker across its spangled, bowed windscreen. A face from the crowd that had surrounded Firth loomed, pointing, over the shoulder of the local rag’s stringer, who spun to photograph Harkness as he passed. Seconds too late, he smoothed away his angry frown and clamped shut his gaping mouth; Neanderthal cop in a stock car was just the type to brutalise a vulnerable suspect in a provincial paper anxious for spicy copy.
He shrugged and rued the curse of clumsiness. Ham-fisted and handy with his fists seemed to be inseparable concepts in the eyes of many of his peers, besides plenty of suspects and their lawyers. Impulse-control, a psycho-therapist had flippantly suggested after his first divorce and last ever marriage, was not a way of manoeuvring spacecraft in low-earth orbit.
Things not entirely meant kept happening anyway; and the intense concentration required to persuade his long limbs to catch a ball or not smash pricy china mugs was akin to the effort needed to avoid speaking his mind to a solicitor, flooring a spitting, hateful criminal or turning down any sexual opportunity, particularly the unlooked for and destructive ones. Perhaps he should just resign himself to his reputation and allow himself to be feared; after all, it was nearly the truth and a close enough cousin to respect to be useful in his job.
The Ermine estate stewed in the torpor that had sealed the city into its own nacreous sphere. The better cars gleamed, outlined by tarmac bruises where soapy water hadn’t quite evaporated away. A waft of burning meat found him, no longer an aroma and forever a stench, an intimation of heat, idiocy and the corruption of flesh. A lean child wearing only football shorts, flesh flashing white and scarlet and alone save for a bull terrier panting under a bush, forlornly tried and failed to keep a football aloft on a square of dead grass. Somewhere, as ever, dance music thumped, this ground’s very own seismic pulse.
Queen Victoria Road meandered through a landscape of near identical blocks of flats and semi-detached houses. The sign for Pemberton Court had once again been torn from its mounting but the police Sprinter van marked the spot nicely. Harkness kerbed the Mondeo and killed the engine, putting the car briefly out of its misery.
He rolled up his sleeves and surveyed the scene. There seemed to be a studied quality to the calmness that greeted him. A police van parked here would generally provoke some smirking and jeering from the balconies above, and the volume of the nearest music system would be cranked up to eleven. Instead, nothing stirred and little could be heard save faint birdsong and the diesel drone of the Sprinter.
He’d got into the habit of pinpointing the nearest CCTV camera when he visited the estate and waving at it to see if the operators at City Hall had found time to watch their screens between yawning, scratching and brewing up. It took him seconds to spot it this time, and he had to look upwards from its concrete roots to where it sat, rotating periodically and blindly within a garland of sycamore leaves. Intimate footage of the life-cycle of spiders would not help his case, but at least the local drug dealers would benefit. He had a good mind to write to the council.
Had the crew of the Sprinter started without him? He peered through the driver’s window; the front seats were unoccupied, the key was in the ignition, the engine was running hot with its radiator fan spinning and the air conditioning dial was fully on. Shaven heads above hunched shoulders bobbed in the passenger compartment and he made out a low murmur of conversation.
The van shook as someone stood up sharply, flinging playing cards into the air and hitting their head on a luggage rack. Harkness found the crew door and yanked it open. Four pairs of eyes stared back at him. Four cops sat at a folding table, hands of cards spread out before them amidst a jumble of crisps, sweets, loose change and bank notes. One stood, rubbing his head and biting his lip. A pair of scuffed para boots were propped on the door frame at his eye level, their owner peering at him through bifocals over a Dan Brown novel as he lounged on a camp chair. All wore the black polo shirts and utility trousers of the Operational Support Unit.
“Can we help?” said the reader, dropping his feet and leaning forwards to show the stripes embroidered onto his sleeves.
“I’m the toss-off police. You’re all nicked. Unless I get a cut of your winnings.”
The black-suited cops exchanged glances, used to being insulted but unused to foregoing some form of retaliation. The sergeant hopped down onto the concrete, yawned, adjusted his crotch and faced Harkness with hands on hips.
“You’ll be DS Harkness then?” he said, making it sound more like a challenge than a question. “I was told to look out for a lanky twat with a Hiroshima tan.”
“And I expected Sergeant Bilko without the charm so neither of us is disappointed.”
“Hello then, Rob. Nice to see you again.”
“Hello yourself, Graham. Long time no see. Sorry I’m late but you know how it is. Paperwork and so forth. See you managed to fill the time.”
“Couldn’t start without you. Now you’re here, you should know we booked on at seven in the a.m. and we’ve only got minutes left before we have to drive back to Boston. Unless you want to get into overtime.” He sniffed and drew a hand across his nose which left behind a smirk.
“I remember when a simple desire to get the job done mattered more than money,” said Harkness, mock wistful.
“We are they boys to get the job done. Just tell us what to do and make sure we get paid according to the regulations.”
“I suppose I’d be wasting my time asking to check your pocket books for book-on times.”
“Not at all. They’d all be up to date and consistent.”
“Like I said. A waste of time.”
Both men shrugged, resignation mirroring indifference.
“Ok,” Harkness began, clearing his throat and raising his voice, “I’ll sign off on as many hours’ overtime as it takes to get this job done.”
“And get some grub and get back to base to book off,” interjected the sergeant.
“Provided,” said Harkness, nodding and holding up his palms, “that you do a proper job without pissing me about and I’ve got something to work with this evening when you’ve all gone home a bit richer. In fact I’ll stick a couple of hours on the end if you give me what I need without lumbering me with admin you should be doing. I intend to be hands off on this one.”
Arms were uncrossed, sunglasses came off and pens and notebooks came out. The sergeant pouted and minutely nodded his approval as if making a last minute, grudging auction bid. Harkness gave them the bare bones of the story, little more than he’d typed onto the search form earlier but with a few emotive insights from the post mortem to keep them engaged. A show of hands and a few minutes of bickering gave him his searchers, a log-keeper and two bodies for house to house. The last two seemed to positively relish the prospect of hostile responses from the local pharmaceutical suppliers.
“Let’s be clear, my overtime offer does not include avoidable arrests. Any irrelevant collars will be passed to uniform. After all, we can’t waste your spec
ialist skills on such mundane matters.”
With a few muted boos and groans, the team unloaded their gear, locked the van and followed him into Pemberton Court. It was a shame, he reflected, that their card game at the nick had been interrupted. A briefing there, out of sight of the natives, would have given them an element of surprise and minimised the risk of evidence being tampered with, should Firth have any friends. Perhaps any new sergeant should set aside a small, smoke-filled room and invest in a green baize table.
He let the stockiest cop lead up the staircase to the first floor landing. He carried the ‘enforcer’, a three-foot long cylinder of thick steel which, if swung with enough commitment, would eventually punch through the hinges or lock of most doors. The rest of the team filed up the opposite staircase, apart from the sergeant who walked to the back of the building in case anyone exited through a window.
The stocky cop halted briefly in the stairwell exit until the others began to cross the balcony towards them. They arrived outside number seventeen in a gaggle and spaced themselves out on either side of the doorway. The stocky cop frowned and let the enforcer dangle by one handle as he gestured to the doorway and gently prodded it with one finger. It moved slightly ajar, the mortise lock dangling from splintered wood, the door frame warped and fractured.
“Looks like we’re late,” he said. Harkness nodded, shrugged and knocked at the door. It gave more ground, releasing a musty warmth both sweet and sour.
“Knock, knock,” he shouted into the shadows. “It’s the police. Warrant to search the premises. Coming ready or not.”
Harkness stood aside and nodded to the stocky cop. He dropped his enforcer, turned with a diffident shrug, gripped the door frame with both gauntleted hands and plunged a size-12 boot into the door. Hurled open, the door jammed itself on a well-trodden layer of newsprint and window envelopes. The cop lunged into the flat, shoulders bunched.
The team sauntered in behind him, someone muttering, “drama queen.” Harkness followed, allowing his eyes to adjust to the half-light. No recent tenant had found a use for curtains yet the sunlight still seemed muted, a dusty gloom pervading the place. The air had a texture as well as an aroma, so thick with sweat, grime, burnt electronics and ganja that it was almost visible.
“Clear,” shouted each of the four cops from different corners of the flat. Two cops exited to start their canvassing, exchanging paperwork and smirks with their sergeant as he entered. Adjusting his crotch once more and lowering his bifocals, the sergeant produced an already dog-eared search log and stared at Harkness. Harkness stared back and eventually took his cue.
“You’re the professionals,” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m going to gad about like a TV detective while your guys do the real work.”
“Fine. At least you’re honest. But while I’ve got this here book open, remind me what you’re after and then give me your signature.”
“Why, in case I sue?”
“I hate going to Crown Court. Gives me a nervous rash in a delicate place.”
“What, your wallet? Fine,” he said, taking the book and well-chewed pen and reciting slowly as he scribbled. “Here we go then. Anything capable of yielding trace evidence, such as footwear, clothing, gloves that suspect could have worn while committing offence. What else? Oh yes. Accelerants or anything they could be carried in. Matches, lighters and the like. Pertinent paperwork giving us a relationship between suspect and victim or a motive. Including computer files. And not forgetting anything that might prove the suspect actually lives here. That do you?”
“Smart arse.”
“Thanks. And I thought these trousers were a bit baggy around the seat. Come to think of it, maybe if yours were a bit less fitted, that rash wouldn’t trouble you so much.”
Harkness stretched a pair of disposable gloves over his hands and inspected the flat, making his own rough notes, giving the searchers space. The lounge’s focal point had been brutally shifted. The flat-screen TV that might have been the most valuable thing in the flat had been ripped away from the plywood box, on which its base had been outlined in dust, and used to wedge open the side window that overlooked nothing more than a blank sandstone wall and a side alleyway of cracked stone, weeds and torn mesh fencing.
There was a shallow but distinct wedge-shaped gouge in the thick plastic of the screen, as though the machine had been rendered useless before it had found a new role. Had rage or clumsiness killed it? Hot as it was, why use it to wedge open a window when the nearby galley kitchen was strewn with strips of MDF that had once belonged to cheap drawers and cupboards.
Harkness peered out of the window, but the concrete below told him nothing. A sudden thought made him move his grip to the vertical frame, away from the window ledge. Were they faint scuff marks in the sandstone five feet or so below him, from the flailing feet of someone who didn’t want to let go?
“Graham.”
“Yes, master.”
“When SOCO roll up, ask them to dust the outside of this windowsill as well, would you?”
“Your word is law,” said the sergeant, pointedly underlining the comment in the search log with his tongue between his lips.
One ancient sofa squatted in the centre of the room, squarely facing the gap left by the TV with the wedged-open window a short lunge to the right. It exuded grime and a faint lustre of grease made it seem like a living, sweating creature. A pattern of burn marks and a midden of crushed cans, overflowing ash-trays and mouldering food suggested the sofa’s usual occupant was left-handed.
The flat boasted one bedroom, one bathroom, no attic and little storage. There was little room for personal history, and what there was couldn’t easily be hidden. The one intact kitchen drawer overflowed with essential paperwork, some of it protected by manila envelopes with the return address of Fitch, Brown & Snelling, all of it in alphabetical order and bearing the particulars of Nigel Firth.
Birth certificate and NHS and National Insurance cards were held together, stained and creased but intact. Laminated bronze and silver swimming certificates won by Firth in the late eighties lay encased in plastic sleeves like holy relics.
A free, fold-away wall-poster, illustrating with telescopically expanding images the mind-bending scale and structure of the universe, had been taped at the creases but the corners were unmarked suggesting it had never been pinned to a wall. At the microcosmic end of the scale, the poster showed electrons whizzing around nuclei in a blizzard of unfixable, chaotic energy. In a sudden confusion of nostalgia for his university days and fellow-feeling for Firth, Harkness felt an under-used part of his brain itch.
A blurred photograph of a grinning woman with a bouffant perm raising a glass of wine to the level of her red eyes lay face down at the bottom of the drawer. Someone had used it to coax a pen back to life, leaving faint scratches and scrawls on its rear. One corner had been rippled and blackened by a flame that must have been started and extinguished in the same impulsive second.
A probation officer’s business card had been paper-clipped to a PNC convictions print that Firth couldn’t have had unless a cavalier solicitor had passed it to him. Someone had ticked each and every offence in red ink, awarded low marks for summary offences and high marks for indictable offences, then written a tally on the front page with the comment, ‘must try harder’. Shoplifting scored badly. Arson with intent to endanger life scored well, particularly as it had been reduced on appeal. Maybe it wasn’t Firth’s handwriting. Maybe it didn’t mean a great deal. Gallows humour had outlived the death penalty. Needles prickled behind Harkness’s eyes and his grip on objectivity slackened.
“Let’s nail this bastard,” he thought, belatedly realising he’d proclaimed it to the world.
“Erm, ok, let’s do that. Fight the power!” replied the sergeant, looking up from his notes and raising a clenched fist to his temple.
“Bag all this carefully. Exhibit each document individually. I’ll want them sealed but viewable in interview.
”
“Aye aye, cap’n.”
There had to be better paperwork than this. Firth was literate, Firth cared about the past. Firth had stationery from the city’s most aggressively litigious lawyers. Firth also embossed his mementos with emotion. Harkness turned and considered the bin bag that bulged and reeked in a corner, leaking beer bottles, open tins, fungal remains in foil trays and shreds of paper.
“You’ll like this,” he said to the sergeant, who joined him in the kitchen.
“I promise I won’t.”
“Oh, yes. Needs specialist search expertise, that bin bag does. And I’m not getting my last good suit near it. Separate out the paperwork he’s ripped up and binned. Watch out for needles.”
“Right. Fine. I’m happy to delegate that. Still, if it wasn’t a murder, I’d tell you to fuck right off.”
Wandering back into the living room, Harkness once again noticed the mound of mail and newspapers jammed under the door. He almost slapped himself. Dropping to his knees, he began sorting the mail into piles of potential gold and obvious trash. The bulk of the mail came from bottom-feeding finance houses, loan sharks with VAT registrations, offering astronomical interest rates on easy terms to the feckless and dispossessed.
The remaining pile of potentially useful mail was further divided. First, there were thrifty manila envelopes from the benefits agency, probation service and other public sector monoliths that had been lumbered with Firth. Next were mid-range white envelopes, most from utility companies demanding money, with a handful from a local supermarket bearing a handwritten address. Finally, four business envelopes in ivory, no doubt with heavy grammage and a watermark, once again embossed with the address of Fitch, Brown & Snelling.