A Good Way to Go

by Peter Helton

  ‘But this is when the wing nut thing happened?’ McLusky took a large bite from his doughnut, could feel jam escaping and leant forward to save his shirt, dripping bright red jam into Austin’s keyboard instead.

  Austin did not notice. ‘Yes. Lamb comes out to make a statement, hoping to calm things down. There he is, this is the bit you wanted.’

  This was footage from BBC Bristol and consequently of good quality. The council had previously announced that Lamb would address the protesters in front of the colonnaded council offices, in what the Bristol Herald later called a ‘monumental miscalculation of the public’s mood’. A crowd of over a thousand protesters, many carrying placards denouncing the draconian cuts to services, was gathered in front of the council offices and the green. Lamb stepped up to the public address system, soberly attired in suit and tie. He made calming hand gestures that had no effect on the noise levels. Against a continuous cacophony of jeers, taunts and chants from the crowd he launched into a speech that, according to the Herald, was low on content and high on platitudes. It was only three minutes into the speech, when Lamb suggested that ‘we will all have to make sacrifices’, when the noise of the angry crowd began to drown out his voice completely. A moment later the councillor recoiled as the wing nut hit him in the face.

  ‘Ouch,’ said Austin. ‘Just missed his eye, that. It was done with a catapult but from the back of the crowd so it did no lasting damage. We never caught the guy who did it. You’ll see him in a minute.’

  Lamb was now out of sight behind the crowd as he crouched down in pain. The camera zoomed in first to search in vain for more detail, then pulled back to take in the crowd. Austin paused the footage and tapped the monitor. ‘Here, it’s that bloke there.’ A figure in a blue hooded top and what looked like jeans was loping away at the edge of the crowd. When Austin restarted the recording the figure disappeared after less than two seconds in shot. ‘The CCTV shows him actually using the catapult.’ He found the footage and ran it, one finger poised to pause when necessary. The footage was in black and white and grainy.

  ‘I see him,’ said McLusky. The same figure, now in shades of grey, his face hidden by the hood of his top. He seemed to be balancing on the balls of his feet, his arms stretched out in front of him. He half raised them, then lowered them again. A moment later he took a step back and raised his arms and the catapult became visible. He pulled back on the elastic and shot over the heads of the crowd, though the projectile, a weighty metal wing nut, was almost impossible to see. Immediately after the shot the man hid the catapult and began to move away but he turned once more, flung an arm out towards the place where Lamb had stood and shouted. For a brief moment the lower part of his face was visible under the hood before he turned his back on the camera and jogged out of sight. ‘Did you see that?’ McLusky asked. ‘He was shouting something. Go back.’ Austin obliged and they watched it again. ‘There. You can clearly see his mouth.’

  ‘Clearly is not a word that springs to mind,’ Austin objected.

  ‘What is he saying?’

  Austin ran the clip again. And again. And one more time. ‘Nah, that could be absolutely anything, it’s too indistinct.’ He adjusted brightness and contrast but it made no difference to the clarity of the clip. ‘I can’t get it any clearer.’

  ‘But I know a man who might,’ said McLusky.

  Austin stared at the frozen image. ‘You really think this might be our killer?’

  McLusky drummed a nervous tattoo on the desktop. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘But he’s using a catapult, that’s kid’s stuff. Michael Leslie said he had a gun.’

  ‘Violent people always escalate. He graduated from catapult to gun. As a kid he probably chucked stones at cats. Now he’s got himself a gun and thinks he is someone. Dispensing justice. You can’t coerce someone with a catapult but a gun always does the trick. Anyway, we don’t know that it’s a real gun, could be an air gun or a replica. None of the victims were shot, not even Bothwick who he snatched by mistake.’

  ‘Guns make noise.’

  ‘So do people if you connect their extremities to the national grid.’ McLusky stood up. ‘Whoever he is he has a place where he can kill at leisure.’ He tapped the screen. ‘That’s our man and I’m going to get him. Give me that footage, I’ll get it cleaned up.’

  At Technical Support he handed it over to a perma-tanned technician in his twenties. At a messy workstation covered in empty crisp packets and drinks cans he showed the man the clip and the face of the suspect. ‘I need to know what he is shouting.’

  ‘Righty-ho. Leave it with us.’

  ‘I need it done yesterday. We think he might be our killer.’

  ‘I’ll send it across as soon as it’s done.’

  McLusky, whose technical expertise did not stretch much beyond on and off buttons, liked Technical Support.

  SEVENTEEN

  Fairfield knew it was nonsense and cost silly money, money that would better be put towards a new car or a holiday but retail therapy really did work. All her favourite shops were here in this mall, it could have been built for her. It was a terribly girly thing to do, too, or so Louise had kept telling her. Naturally, master chef and brain-of-Britain Dr Rennie would not consider spending a few hundred pounds in the cook shop, or the bookshop for that matter. It was the frivolous things Fairfield bought that had always attracted ridicule: bath bombs, lotions, skimpy tops, trinkets, novelty egg timers and place mats with pictures of songbirds on them. Louise had taken the joy out of that kind of senseless shopping. Acquiring things merely to cheer yourself up was considered bad form and vulgar. Merely! There was nothing ‘merely’ about cheerfulness; it was a rare commodity. University lecturers didn’t need cheering up as much as detective inspectors, that was clear. While she was seeing Louise she had tried not to indulge in any of it and now that she had stopped seeing her Louise still managed to ruin it. Of course, it’s me ruining it, by constantly wondering what Louise would have to say about it. It was over and it had to stop but as long as Lou still had keys to her house and left roses on her doorstep it would never be completely finished. So why hadn’t she called her to demand them back?

  She walked up to a quartet of benches surrounding a giant planter full of spring flowers and set down her bags. Why put it off any longer? She checked her watch: half past six, she might well be home by now. Fairfield swallowed hard as she pulled out her mobile, noticed that she had swallowed and said out loud: ‘You’re a detective inspector, Kat, be brave.’ A split second before pressing the button to call Louise Rennie, something in her peripheral vision made her look up; her thumb froze above the green button. She would not have to call Louise after all. She was right there, ambling towards her in her designer jeans and jacket, casting a lazy glance over the window displays. Fairfield stood like a rabbit mesmerized by car headlamps. Louise’s name was on her lips but the courage began to fail her and she simply stood very still and stared. Louise drew level with her and just when it seemed she might pass without noticing her she looked across and their eyes met. Rennie curved towards her as though reeled in by a lasso. She came very close before speaking to her. ‘Hello, Katkins.’

  ‘Lou.’

  ‘You weren’t going to stop me, were you? You weren’t going to say anything, you were just waiting for me to pass without noticing.’

  Fairfield’s resolve crumbled. ‘No, no of course not. You just took me by surprise. It was only the coincidence that made me hesitate for a second.’

  ‘What, the amazing coincidence that we both went shopping on the same day?’

  ‘No, because I was just this minute going to call you.’ She held up her phone in evidence, which showed Louise’s number and smiling photograph.

  Louise reached out and cupped her hand in hers, gently turned it and kissed her wrist. ‘Speak to me then,’ she said gently. ‘Or would you prefer me to stand over there somewhere so you can call me? What was it you were going to say?’

  Despite the kne
e-weakening effect of Louise’s closeness and perfume Fairfield at last found her courage and blurted out: ‘Actually I was going to ask you to stop leaving roses on my doorstep and to give me my keys back.’

  Rennie’s eyes widened. ‘Roses! Your keys you can certainly have, I have them here.’ She produced a large bunch from her handbag and slid the two Yale keys off the split ring. She handed them over. ‘There you are, free at last. Only I didn’t leave any roses. What colour were they?’

  ‘Red,’ said Fairfield thoughtfully.

  ‘That should have told you it wasn’t me. Tacky language-of-flowers rubbish. I’d have left you an orchid.’

  ‘What do they signify?’

  ‘Nothing at all, with any luck. Looks like you have another admirer. It’ll be a chap, though,’ she said and turned away. ‘I’d be wary of him,’ she added over her shoulder, ‘bound to have limited imagination.’ Rennie strolled away and resumed her window-shopping, with Fairfield watching her, keys in her fist, until Rennie drifted from sight.

  If the rest of the team thought McLusky was walking around like an unexploded bomb it was nothing to how McLusky felt about the mobile phone he had given over for the exclusive use of the killer. He would sit and stare at it, willing it to ring. He had developed an obsession with checking the status of the signal strength and the battery, peering at it at every half hour or so and feeling for its presence in his jacket pocket whenever he was on the move.

  It came as a relief when the cleaned-up footage arrived. The note accompanying it, however, was not encouraging. It read: ‘Best we could do. None of us can make it out, though.’ It was signed ‘F’. McLusky had no idea what it stood for and didn’t care. He found Austin who had just connected a different keyboard to his computer, complaining that the old one had developed sticky keys. Together they watched the footage, staring at the movement of the mouth, rewinding, repeating.

  McLusky was unimpressed. ‘This is an improvement?’ He had pinned a lot of hope on the clip. ‘Play it again … there, it looks like three separate sentences he’s saying there.’

  Austin scratched the tip of his nose and squinted as the footage ran again. ‘I’ve got it, it’s agadoo, doo doo, push pineapple …’

  ‘Very funny, Jane. We might be looking at the bloody key to it all. OK,’ he said lightly, ‘if we can’t do it then what we need is a forensic lip-reader.’

  However, after having convinced Denkhaus of the necessity of bringing in a lip-reader he soon found that forensically trained ones were thin on the ground. When he found one who might be available he realized that picking up the phone was not an option since the lip-reader was deaf herself.

  There was a whole day’s delay before she arrived at Albany Road, escorted up to McLusky’s floor like an invalid by Sergeant Hayes. He knocked on the inspector’s door and when he heard McLusky’s ill-tempered ‘yes’. Hayes opened the door for her and shouted: ‘There you are, Miss, you can go in!’

  McLusky apologized for Hayes and offered her a chair. ‘Sorry about that, that’s how he talks to people who don’t speak English, too, loud and slow.’

  She shook her head. It didn’t matter, she was used to it. McLusky looked at her and found himself thinking ‘She can’t be deaf, how can she be deaf?’ and even while thinking it realized the absurdity of the thought. He had simply responded to the woman’s extraordinary beauty. She was in her early thirties and everything about her seemed perfect, her features, gas-blue eyes, a heart-warming smile revealing perfect teeth and very blond hair. How could someone this perfect be deaf?

  ‘You’re Inspector McLusky? I’m Claire Henderson. I believe you have some video footage you want me to analyze?’ Her voice, to McLusky’s ears, had a curious pitch, almost foreign, and even that he found disturbingly attractive.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘erm, we’d better go to the incident room, it’s a bit cramped in here.’

  ‘Yes, it is a bit on the cosy side. My bathroom is bigger than this.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind coming next door.’

  ‘Will there be other people?’

  ‘Yes, it’ll be full of people but we’ll borrow someone’s desk.’

  ‘Then I’d rather we made do in here, I’m not completely deaf but rooms full of people all talking becomes confusing to me. Background noise, that sort of thing. Perhaps we could manage in here after all?’

  ‘Yes, sure, if you prefer, erm …’ He pushed his chair to the side to make room behind his desk.

  ‘Perhaps it would be an idea if you turned the monitor around and came out from behind there, there’s more space in front than behind your desk, Inspector.’

  ‘You’re right, of course.’

  Henderson stood up and gave McLusky room to fluster and clatter about until he had set it up. ‘That’s more like it,’ said Henderson. ‘Let’s make a start.’

  McLusky found the way that Henderson never took her eyes off his face vaguely unnerving. ‘Can I get you anything? Watery tea, economy instant?’

  ‘You make it sound very tempting but let’s just get started.’

  He ran the footage and for the first time her eyes left his face as she scrutinized the images on the screen. ‘The resolution is rubbish,’ she said. ‘There goes the catapult. He must be a good shot.’ The footage ran on, the shooter turned, gestured and shouted. ‘How do I control this?’ McLusky surrendered the mouse and Henderson spooled back to the beginning of the sequence with the suspect turning back towards the camera. ‘Shouting is usually easier than talking,’ she told him, ‘people enunciate more clearly, the mouth gestures are more pronounced but this is very unclear. ‘The first bit is “I’ll” … yes, it’s “I’ll get you”.’

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘He’s taking a breath and then it’s “I’ll get” again. “All over”? No, “all of”. “I’ll get all of you.”’

  McLusky’s scalp tingled. ‘Makes even more sense.’

  ‘You wanker.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘He says “you wanker” and that’s all.’ She gave him a blue-eyed smile. ‘Economy instant, please.’

  It was while he walked Claire Henderson towards the canteen in the hope of finding better coffee than the CID room instant that his phone chimed and buzzed in his jacket. McLusky gave a start, scrabbled it out of his pocket and blurted: ‘I’ve got to take this,’ before answering it. ‘McLusky.’

  Traffic noise, not inside his van, but rather standing or walking by the side of the road. McLusky registered it even before the killer spoke. ‘You got some more fresh air at last, down by the lake. Nice down there, I must go back soon, have another look around. You don’t get enough fresh air, the furthest you ever seem to walk is the pub opposite your house.’

  McLusky went cold. He had been followed. It was easy, he was on the electoral register, his name had been in the paper. He felt the balance of power threatening to shift and had to fight the urge to tell him about the CCTV footage. He needed the killer comfortable, needed him to feel safe, blasé even, superior. Then he would make mistakes. Keep calm and play stupid. ‘What have you done with Mr Lamb?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a temporary guest with me at the moment.’

  ‘Temporary? You mean you’ll let him go?’

  ‘To a better place. I don’t think he’ll last much longer, he’s in quite a bit of discomfort at the moment.’

  McLusky turned his face away from Henderson and took a few paces down the corridor. ‘You’re a sadistic swine as well as a moron.’

  The voice remained unmoved. ‘Why upset yourself about him? He’s not a friend of yours, is he? He’s just a rich wanker, I don’t think even his family will miss him. Got to go now. I’ll deliver his remains to you soon.’ The line went dead. Quickly he checked that the call had been recorded, then turned to Henderson.

  ‘Bad news?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. No, just something I need to deal with. One moment.’ He jogged back to the incident room and handed the phone to Austin. ‘Get the las
t recording analyzed and get it back to me as soon as possible. If it rings do not answer it. I’ll be having a quick coffee with the lip-reader in the canteen.’

  But he did not. When McLusky and Henderson entered the canteen it was deserted and the counter unmanned. A stark placard in black on white explained it: the canteen staff were ON STRIKE.

  Despite the pressure on housing and workshop space there remained a surprising number of empty properties in the greater Bristol area; officers visited them all, looking for signs of break-ins, trying to find the place where Lamb was being held, but to no avail. ‘It’s not completely fruitless,’ said Austin in an attempt to cheer up McLusky, ‘uniform turned up a cannabis factory. They were stealing their leccy from the repair workshop next door.’

  McLusky did not even look up from his paperwork. ‘Any arrests?’

  ‘Scared them off.’

  ‘Marvellous.’

  When it arrived they eagerly studied the analysis of the last phone call. The background noises had been enhanced and the Digital Forensics had drawn attention to a public address announcement in the far background, but it was too faint to make out any words. It was further suggested that the phone call was made from a roadside with busy multi-lane traffic. ‘We are creeping towards the bastard,’ McLusky said grimly.

  The canteen strike over a change in pay and conditions meant that Albany Road station had to cast about for alternative sources of nourishment. McLusky revived an earlier tradition: living over Rossi’s, the Italian grocer’s, meant he could stock up on sticky pastries on his way out. Additionally he would then buy fistfuls of chocolate bars at the newsagent’s around the corner before driving to work. The crisp- and soup-vending machines emptied in a single day. The rubbish bins at Albany bore witness to the sad fact that the nutrition of most officers now lay in the dubious care of the Cup-a-Soup and Pot Noodle companies while hundreds of triangular sandwich boxes attested to the popularity of the double ham-and-cheese combo. An opportunistic sandwich seller with her wares in a basket somehow found her way into the station and nearly sold out before getting arrested by her customers for not having a trading licence or health certificate; the arresting officer ate the evidence and she was released without charge. It wasn’t long before pizza smells began to waft through the station. ‘You can smell pizza everywhere,’ complained Austin. ‘The prisoners in the cells can smell it all day long and they’re not getting any. They say it amounts to torture and they’re going to sue.’