Bright Spark

by Gavin Smith

  He didn’t know it then but later it was as plain as the soil beneath his fingernails that he’d already made the decision. When dad’s phone burst into rude life, startling the birdsong into obscurity with another chorus of ‘Mr Bombastic’, he didn’t even look up from the tattered array of cabbages and spuds before him, wondering idly if they’d tap into the gear with their roots to bloom magnificently and briefly then transform into pale, emaciated, trembling vegetables that would prowl the allotments stealing from healthier plants until someone threw them into a deep composter to fester and stink. He shook his head and giggled some more.

  The sparks of irritation flying from his dad’s mouth as if he were a cutting tool only made Kevin crane his neck to stare, curious but not alarmed. Him talking to mum often started and ended in fury. He had a temper and she had the bruises to prove it. It used to make him uncomfortable, the violent words, the punches and kicks and the weeping, spitting aftermath, until he realised that she kept pushing his buttons, never learning, always asking for it; and dad was just as dumb for hanging around there, letting her goad him, not sorting her out properly or walking away. It’s not right to hit a woman, unless she screams in your face and jabs at you, then the law has to be laid down; but if it can’t be laid down properly, finally, once and for all, then what? He giggled again, watching the thoughts form with detached interest, not sure whose ideas they were.

  “You fucking stupid little tossbag!”

  The old man was striding towards him, face scarlet and knuckles pale and itching to be used, phone clipped shut and stuffed into a pocket to leave the hands free. Kevin hadn’t taken a beating for over a week now so perhaps this one was overdue; he felt his shoulders tauten in a flinching reflex and tried to force them into a shrug.

  “You kept it, didn’t you? You only fucking kept it.”

  “W-w-w-what?” he stuttered, finding his mouth gummed by an unbidden fear become habit.

  “Your little souvenir of the pub.”

  He drew closer, slowing his step so he’d have time to wind himself up properly, and work out how much damage he was entitled to do.

  “Pigs doing a warrant at my fucking home. Because you can’t keep your pretty, queer’s mouth shut. Because you want to shag little girls. Because you, you little piss-weasel, can’t get anyone your own age to spread their legs for you.”

  “I d-d-don’t know what…..”

  “The fucking recording box from the Friars’.”

  Keith Braxton dragged a hand across his face as if he could wipe something away, turned on his heel, turned back, jabbed a finger, threw down his arms, shook his head. Kevin felt his fingers tighten on the handle of the spade.

  “I shouldn’t have brought you on board. You ain’t got the balls or the brains. You only make a living from this if you keep the pigs from sniffing you out. If you act like a pro and let the fuckwit junkies get pinched without ever knowing you exist. What the fuck am I to do with you, Kevin? How will you ever learn if someone don’t teach you?”

  “I c-c-can l-l-learn,” he managed, dragging the words from his tightening throat, seeing the dry earth crumble as the spasm in his fist drew the spade from the earth inch by inch.

  “Fuckin’ right you can.”

  That should have been the cue for him to squeeze his eyes shut and take his medicine, to accept the blows that jerked back his head, dragged him off his feet, doubled him up in a gasping, puking convulsion, bulged black and red across his vision and fired off a final volley of flash-popping light. But this time the dynamo still held its charge. Inertia fired his limbs, arcing from the endless soil through the thick iron and wood in his hands, resolving itself in one movement and one word.

  “No!” he screamed as he lurched outside his dad’s punch, both hands clutching the spade as he dragged it from the soil, hefted it overhead and flung its blade down, both his feet leaving the ground as it bit into something.

  Then he was staggering, sweat or tears or both stinging his eyes, toes tingling where the spade had bashed against them, gazing into his dad’s eyes, strangely calm now beneath the gaping red crescent etched on his forehead. Then he slumped, face glossy with blood, sitting in the dirt, surprised to find himself there, scrabbling with fists and feet, unformed words no more than a bubbling in his throat.

  Kevin knew he could learn from his mistakes. He’d been childish, indiscreet and weak. How could he be the big man, the smart man, the geezer and the pro if he couldn’t stomach the big decisions? He caught himself sobbing while his dad squirmed in the dirt, looking for balance, groaning at the sudden wrongness of the world. Kevin knew he should be laughing while his old man wallowed; no sooner had he thought it then he exploded with mirth, heart pounding and fizzing again with the chemical energy he needed to make things right. So many problems could be solved with this spade, if he acted quickly, if he didn’t give in to craven doubts. It wasn’t like he had a choice; dad wasn’t a man you could safely leave half-dead.

  He danced away from his dad’s lunging grasp, planted his feet and swung the spade again and again, sometimes feeling the shiver of cracking bone on the flat of the blade, sometimes leaning into it to penetrate skin and sinew with the blade. It got easier once the clotted screams had subsided, once he’d embraced what he was, what he was always meant to be; the man his father had made out of the boy, hard brick from soft clay.

  Harkness gunned the diesel-engined pool car down Burton Road and took the Yarborough Road roundabout without braking. Slowey gripped the passenger seat as the car squatted on its offside wheels, shouting his directions above the squealing rubber and mechanical clatter. He glimpsed a puff of tyre smoke from a car that nearly t-boned them and a stuttering movement as something else hit its rear. He locked his eyes straight ahead, determined to see only what he needed to see from now on.

  “Left left,” he shouted, spotting the unmade access road to the allotments as the speedo ground past 50 mph.

  Harkness stood on the brakes and flicked the wheel. In a rear-wheel drive car, the manoeuvre might have worked straight away. In this sedate and safe front-wheel drive car, the rear wheels slewed sideways for a mere fraction of a second before the traction control kicked in and the front wheels set themselves safely and steadily at a garden wall. Harkness pumped the brakes then jabbed hard at the throttle, tearing the steering from its inertia and bouncing onto the dirt track with a brittle crack as the wall claimed a wing mirror.

  “Jesus wept,” said Slowey. “I’m driving next time.”

  “You love it. Best part of the job, this,” said Harkness, grinning wolfishly. “Didn’t you sign for this car?”

  He goaded the engine again, letting the car buck and scrape its way along the pot-holed track. Slowey scanned the allotment as best he could given the blurring, teeth-chattering momentum, looking for anything incongruous among the tangle of fencing and greenery. Then he found it, a brisk, cyclical movement as incongruous as an oil well in a wheat field.

  “There!” He jabbed a finger. “No, for Christ’s sake, just park up…...”

  Harkness glimpsed the figure of the youth, stripped-down to the waist, ruddy with exertion, streaked with something dark, labouring with a spade in the parched earth. He spun the wheel again, letting the wheels churn through cauliflowers and leeks, collecting bird netting on the grille. Then the car buried its bumper in a raised hedgerow and dragged up a mass of roots clumped with drying clay as it surrendered its inertia and Harkness finally bowed to physics and reason.

  The two men abandoned the car, brakes smouldering and engine ticking, at a gallop, slowing to a walk when it became clear that they had found Kevin Braxton, that he was aware of them and that he couldn’t care less. His hoarse wheezing might once have been laughter, tracks in the dirt on his face might once have been tears and the spatters of flaking rust on his tracksuit bottoms and skinny torso might once have been blood.

  Reading the scene, the two men split and circled Braxton, keeping a respectful distance. Slowey murmur
ed into his radio, ever the professional. Braxton had worked hard in the last few minutes, his father’s battered remains already covered with a thin layer of earth. It momentarily occurred to Harkness to summon an ambulance, assuming Slowey hadn’t already, whisk out his ‘resusci-shield’ and try to save Keith Braxton’s life. He dismissed the impulse as force of habit or wishful thinking; Keith might have had it coming, but the enquiry’s body count had escalated to a point beyond professional embarrassment. Besides, no body with any life left in it would remain wholly inert with soil and grit clogging its nostrils and clouding its unpeeled eyes.

  “Morning, Kevin,” shouted Harkness, trying too hard to be casual, betraying his fear. The youth stabbed the spade into the soil and sagged against it, limp and uncoiling. Yet he still deserved a respectful distance; Keith had been a highly proficient hard man and felling him must have taken some determination. “Let go of the spade. There’s a good lad.”

  “Look like a fucking nonce, do I? Fuckin’ working man, now, innit? Businessman, an’ all.” Braxton’s knuckles seemed welded to the spade’s handle, rooting his faltering body to the sod. His eyeballs gyred in his head, pinprick pupils flickering from side to side then drifting upwards, threatening to vanish into his skull until he blinked them back into focus. Hysteria vied with hilarity in his voice. “Who’s the hard man now, eh, wanker? Who’s the daddy?”

  “Kevin, are you in there mate? Can you hear me?”

  “You want some too, eh? Come on then, come get some, I’ll fucking rip you a new one!” Braxton took a step back, grabbed the spade with both hands and in one fluid and powerful movement uprooted it, tripped over his own feet and hurled it and himself flat onto the ground.

  Harkness quickly closed the gap, dropped his knees onto Braxton’s shoulders, feeling and hearing something crack in the ribcage, and shoved his head into the dirt. A fraction of a second later, Slowey descended on the youth’s legs before he could start to thresh. Harkness’s hand had found no hair to grip and the youth’s head twisted sideways to emit a spluttering bellow of rage and pain.

  “Don’t suffocate the daft bastard,” implored Slowey.

  “Give me your hands, Kevin,” shouted Harkness into the youth’s ear as he unclipped his cuffs.

  The youth bucked and twisted, whipcord muscles carving a shallow trench of his own but failing to move the bulk pinning him down. A siren throbbed, a spike in the city’s muted pulse of traffic noise, distant but drawing near. Something else snapped inside Braxton. With a familiar and creeping panic, Harkness thought he might have gravely damaged someone with his unsubtle physicality. Then he felt the shuddering rhythm of anguish and saw that the youth was sobbing carelessly into the dirt.

  “You want to do the honours, mate?”

  Slowey had managed to make straddling the youth’s legs look comfortable and had already produced and begun to write in his notebook. His skewed tie and un-tucked shirt were the only evidence that he’d done anything more dynamic than smoothing down a new page.

  “Just give me a minute, Sarge. I’ve got so many things to nick him for, I hardly know where to start.”

  “So pick your favourites.”

  Harkness allowed his gaze to settle again on the remains of Keith Braxton. Only the mound of his belly, the tips of his boots and his clogged nose and eyes now protruded from the soil that had claimed him. Harkness wondered what else he’d sunk into this ground and how long it would take to uncover it all. The discarded spade rested nearby, its once smooth blade now chipped and serrated save where a paste of hair, blood and skin blunted it. He waved at the approaching caged van as Slowey began to intone the offences for which Braxton was being arrested with the tired solemnity of a hanging judge.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Leaving Slowey to process Braxton into custody, Harkness sought out Brennan and Newbould, finding them together in Newbould’s office. The DI scribbled the latest developments onto the whiteboard that had now been augmented by two others on adjoining walls while the DCI practised his putting action with a club he occasionally used as a swagger stick.

  “Nice of you to drop in, Rob,” said Brennan. “Found me some drugs then?”

  “Not exactly, boss.”

  “No. Nothing so simple. Found me another body, didn’t you?”

  “That’s true. But we’ve got the killer so think of it as another detected crime for the books.”

  “Don’t take the piss,” said Brennan, flicking the club up to point at Harkness’s face. “Take a seat and wipe that smirk off your face, you lanky smartarse. And you can tuck your shirt in. And sort your tie out.”

  “For the record, Rob,” began Newbould as Brennan resumed his putting practice and Harkness adjusted his clothes using the grubby shaving mirror hanging on the rear of the office door. “What exactly have we got here?”

  “The warrant turned up no drugs at Braxton’s house,” began Harkness, slouching on a chair with what he hoped would be an irritating degree of insouciance. “But we did find the hard drive from the Friars’ Vaults. Mrs Braxton spotted us before we spotted her coming back from the shops. She tipped off Keith before we could stop her.

  “Keith and Kevin had a contretemps at their allotment. Before we could intervene, Kevin had polished off his old man with a spade and started to plant him with the spuds. Luckily for us, the abused schoolgirl’s mother had found the allotment and given Slowey directions. I left uniform minding the scene and turned out SOCO. We’ll need the Home Office pathologist again but I thought I’d leave that to you, sir.”

  “In my day, we delegated down, not up. What else?”

  “The site will need to be searched thoroughly once the murder scene’s been wrapped up. A drugs dog for sure. Pro-active are still chipping away at the house looking for hidey-holes but I think the allotment’s our best bet.

  “Then the connection to the Murphy murders has to be explored. Assuming we can substantiate it. But we’ve got a cast-iron connection between Kevin and the Friars’ Vaults job and a pretty good idea that Murphy and the Braxtons were more than just neighbours.”

  “Can we use ‘a pretty good idea’ as evidence?” asked Newbould.

  “I’m working on that. We’ve got a statement from inside prison about Murphy’s dealing. It mentions an allotment but that’s hardly a clincher and it doesn’t name names beyond Murphy and Firth. But the hard drive might give us something useful.”

  “So,” said Brennan, kissing a seamless two-yard putt into a coffee cup. “We need to crack on and interview this kid.”

  “He’s stoned,” said Harkness. “Hysterical. Traumatised. Perfect, really. Ready to pop.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting we subject him to a murder interview before he’s compos mentis?” said Newbould. “Have you ever read PACE?”

  “The sooner the better, subject to medical permission,” said Brennan. “As long as we stay legal, balls to his rights. Let’s get him while he’s rattled. He and his dad were a pair of bad bastards and this one’s got a lot to tell us.”

  “I always admired your instincts as a detective, sir,” said Harkness.

  “I’ll go and see the Super.” Brennan dropped his putter into the umbrella stand and reached for his jacket. “To make sure it all goes tickety-boo in custody. Oh, and with that in mind, Slowey will be running these interviews, Rob. You’re riding shotgun, taking notes and keeping your silly fat mouth shut. I’ll be watching. If you misbehave, I’ll have you interviewing Mrs Braxton and she’s uglier and scarier than either one of us.”

  Slowey had dabbled in neuro-linguistic programming, using language to charm or goad suspects into the truth. He had no delusions of expertise; his timeworn patter was based partly on his CID course and mostly on the biography of a TV illusionist.

  His were the techniques that middle-managers might pick up at corporate junkets, at least the ones who wanted to manipulate themselves or their minions into finding nirvana in the successful marketing of toilet tissue, or elitist pride in slee
ping in the office. Slowey had inverted the lexicon of positive reinforcement, seasoning his amiable questions with hints of guilt, shame and unworthiness. If he was patient and lucky, and the suspect was suggestible, they would eventually mirror both his harmless body language and his choice of words. Guilty secrets would then attach themselves to those words and float to the surface as confessions.

  If faced with a stronger-minded and belligerent suspect, Slowey would become an infuriating pedant, challenging the choice of one word over another and demanding definitions, forcing his victim to free-associate, confront the gaps in their logic, reveal their inner workings and either concede defeat or froth and fume like bad liars. If the less cunning suspect actually hated Slowey, that could be a boon; Slowey’s assertions about their character and motivation would leave them desperate to contradict him and incriminate themselves.

  He knew his limits and was frequently reminded that serious criminals with serious minds would never deviate from their two-word script – ‘no comment’ – unless it suited them to do so. The truly self-possessed would never allow themselves to care about him or his opinions. Nor did solicitors indulge his experiments, unless they loathed their client or fancied a nap on the government’s shilling. Other cops used humour, aggression, long and controlled silences or dousing themselves in sickly after-shave to tilt suspects off-balance. Slowey relied on patience, logic and a finicky exactitude he’d finally found a good use for.