Broken Lines

by Jo Bannister

‘Get out of my way.’

  She left him no choice. Right around there persuasion turned into unlawful imprisonment. He stepped aside, opening the door for her as he did. A little flurry of sleet found its way down the companionway.

  But Jade stood where she was, her head to one side, eyeing him speculatively. The quick surge of temper had passed but she wasn’t ready to forgive him. She waited, expecting him to try again. When he didn’t, finally she vented an exasperated sigh. ‘Understand one thing, Donovan. I’m nobody’s bit of fluff. Don’t you dare talk down to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ mumbled Donovan. He was still waiting for her to elbow him aside and didn’t want to think what it meant that she was still here.

  ‘So why talk to me as if I’m a child? As if I couldn’t possibly have anything useful to contribute and it was rather presumptuous to think I might?’

  ‘That isn’t—’ Donovan shook his head and started again. ‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think that – don’t think it – didn’t mean to suggest it. I’m sorry. I say stupid things sometimes: ask anyone. Things don’t come out the way I want them to. People’ll tell you it’s because I’m Irish but I was never any good at talking to people at home. My brother Padraig, now, he could talk to anyone about anything. I think he got my share of the blarney as well as his own. He said—’ He stopped. Under the olive skin Jade saw the colour rising.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said, I seemed to think it was other people’s job to read my silences.’

  Slowly Jade smiled. ‘I think I’d like your brother. Can I trade you in and have him instead?’

  Donovan shook his head. ‘He died.’

  She put her bag down again and after a moment returned to the sofa. ‘Close the door, it’s getting cold. I’m sorry about your brother. You miss him, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s – what? – twelve years now, but I still miss him. I wish he was somewhere I could pick up the phone and say, “I’ve done it again. I met this girl, I really liked her, she even rides bikes. And I blew it.’”

  Jade’s eyes twinkled. ‘Was he older than you?’

  ‘Six years older. He was a policeman. He died in a car chase – he thought he was as good a driver as the guy in front, turned out he was wrong.’

  ‘And you followed in his footsteps. Any regrets?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing.’

  ‘In spite of the sleepless nights?’

  ‘At least it’s, something worth losing sleep over.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘You’re right: the important things are worth making sacrifices for.’

  Already he was in that position again. There was something he had to ask her, and it might send her heading for the door again. He’d rather have kept her and not known, but he had a duty. The important things were worth making sacrifices for. ‘What did you hear?’

  She didn’t understand. ‘What?’

  Donovan chewed his lip. ‘You said you got about, you heard things. You thought maybe you could help. I could use some help.’

  Her green eyes flicked at him and then away. ‘Nothing. Probably nothing at all.’ She gave an awkward little shrug that contrasted with her usual composure. ‘I just meant, in general.’

  He knew that wasn’t the truth: what he didn’t know was what to do about it. ‘Last night, in The Jubilee. You said you were visiting. Is that where you heard – whatever?’

  There was a dangerous edge on the look she gave him. Some sort of a war seemed to be in progress behind her eyes. He thought it was between staying and going. ‘It wasn’t a personal call, I was there on business.’

  He didn’t even know what business she was in. He hadn’t asked; he hadn’t thought it important. They’d talked about bikes, and canals, and now about his work, and he didn’t even know what she did. ‘Business.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Her tone made it clear he wasn’t to quiz her. ‘Look, Donovan, this isn’t something I want to talk about. I’m not a policeman and I’m not a police informant.’

  ‘But I am.’ There was battle in Donovan’s eyes too, between the need to do his job and the desire not to drive her away. He hated what he was having to do, was scared what it was going to cost him, but he never seriously considered stopping. ‘A policeman. I’m investigating a major crime right now. If you’ve heard anything …’ He drew breath. ‘You said you’d like to help.’

  Jade’s response was so long coming that he had to draw another breath and hold that instead. He watched her face for the first sign of what she was thinking. If she spat in his eye, that would be a clue.

  But she didn’t spit in his eye. Finally she managed a slightly wan little smile. ‘So I did. All right, Donovan, I’ll tell you what I heard. But I won’t tell you where I heard it, and I can’t vouch for those I heard it from. If you can use it, fine; but you didn’t get it from me, all right?’

  Donovan nodded. He couldn’t believe his luck. She was still here, and she was trying to help him.

  ‘All right. Well, you’re not the only man who thinks women are a separate species. A lot of men talk in front of women the way they talk in front of small children, not expecting to be understood. While I was in the parlour of this house, two men were laughing and talking in the kitchen. The door was open, I could hear every word. They were talking about you.’

  Whatever he was expecting it wasn’t that. ‘The police, you mean?’

  ‘You personally. I think: they didn’t use your name, but they’d seen you with someone on that corner where you tried to commit suicide under my front wheel ten minutes later so I guess it was you.’

  Donovan scowled. He didn’t like to think he’d been spotted talking to Billy Dunne, and not only for Billy’s sake. He thought that when he went walkabout at night he was next to invisible. He thought he took the alleycats by surprise. Knowing that the locals had not only spotted him but giggled about it in somebody’s kitchen was distressing. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘At the time it didn’t make any sense to me; but I’m wondering now if it’s the same thing you were talking about. The missing gun. Nobody mentioned a gun, but it could have been. They were talking about somebody hiding something.’

  Donovan was gazing at her as if she’d sprouted wings. ‘Did they say where?’

  ‘No; only that the last time this person was in a place of learning he was still in short trousers. Then they laughed and changed the subject, and at the time it meant nothing to me. Maybe it was nothing to do with your robbery.’

  Maybe it wasn’t, but Donovan had to believe that it was. He needed an edge, and this was the first glimpse of one he’d had. But he couldn’t make sense of it. He thought there was a good chance the men were talking about Roly Dickens hiding Mikey’s gun, but what did it mean? A school? There were several schools in Castlemere but none where you could wander in and hide a firearm. Even the Rosedale Academy wasn’t that progressive.

  He tried to forget about it, at least for this evening.

  Jade had abandoned all thought of leaving. Her coat lay forgotten over the back of the sofa; later, as the black stove raised the temperature in the saloon, her sweater joined it. Not long after that they were both shedding clothes as if global warming had reached Castlemere, but neither of them paid any heed to where they landed.

  They didn’t get as far as the bedroom. Need overwhelmed them and they tangled on the saloon carpet, sweating and grunting like sailors on shore leave, coupling like the first animals hearing the command ‘Be fruitful and multiply’from God’s own mouth. There was more urgency than grace to it, more intensity than refinement. But it was what they both needed, and if it left them exhausted and bruised from contact with the furniture it also left them replete.

  Then Donovan did it again. Having it all – cradling the naked body of a beautiful intelligent girl who rode motorcycles – wasn’t enough to keep his mind on the job. It suddenly flashed into his head what the men in the kitchen had been talk
ing about; and he hadn’t the sense to keep it there, in his head, until the formalities had been observed. As they gasped the air back into their lungs the first thing he panted was not her name, or veneration of her body or performance. It was, ‘The Chemical Street Elementary School!’

  Chapter Eight

  In his own heart he was sure. Even so he went there on his way to work on Thursday.

  Tucked away behind the gasworks, the black brick box in Chemical Street was originally built as a workhouse. Minimal changes in the late nineteenth century equipped it to provide a basic education for the children of Castlemere’s poor, and it survived as a school until after World War II when the town grew suddenly ashamed of it and put up a new Infants and Junior School behind Castle Mount. The Elementary School served for a time as a technical college, but demand outstripped its ability to supply and a new College of Further Education was erected on the ring road. After brief, unsuccessful incarnations as an auction room, a carpet warehouse and a discount furniture store, the building finally fell vacant in the mid-eighties.

  Donovan scaled the high spike fence round what had been the playground and looked for signs of recent entry. And signs there were: too many, every wino, under-age smoker, glue-sniffer and streetwalker in Castlemere must have used the premises as a base. At first he couldn’t imagine how half of them got over that fence. Then he saw that the side gate from Viaduct Lane was open, a rusty padlock hanging from a broken chain.

  Access to the building was through the broken panel of a door. It would have been a tight squeeze for Roly Dickens but he’d have managed. He’d have headed for the innermost part of the building, to hide the gun away from curious eyes. Donovan moved cautiously into the dim interior, the floor littered with rubble and rubbish, on a quest he increasingly recognized as hopeless. It would take ten men to search this place properly, and even they couldn’t be sure that anything they didn’t find wasn’t there.

  But actually he didn’t need to find the gun. Roly Dickens knew where it was – all Donovan had to do was make him fetch it. He needed to be confident it was here somewhere, that was all. He wandered the classrooms and corridors, no longer searching for the weapon, groping with his mind for some sense of the aptness of the place. If it was the sort of place Roly would have come. If there was any echo here of him stumbling over these same bricks and blocks and bits of broken furniture.

  It felt promising. Donovan might have jumped to the wrong conclusion – if he thought longer he might come up with an alternative – but he doubted it. Chemical Street was a good choice. There was enough illicit but essentially harmless coming and going that nobody would think to report an intruder; but if the gun was found it would be hard to prove who left it here.

  There were times when Donovan’s gut feelings verged on extrasensory, but this wasn’t one of them. Everything pointed to it being the right place, he thought it probably was, but he couldn’t be sure. He didn’t know whether to tell Shapiro or not.

  Then he glanced at his watch and found he’d been here an hour. So he’d have to offer an explanation and, for once, it might as well be the truth.

  Shapiro summarized the position. ‘We think Roly hid Mikey’s gun in the Chemical Street Elementary School. We could search, but we might not find it and even if we did we might not be able to connect it to him. Or we can give Roly a reason to fetch it and pick him up when he does. Suggestions, please – why would Roly Dickens, having successfully hidden the gun that can send Mikey to prison, suddenly decide he’d better get it back?’

  Liz didn’t have the answer, but she had the template for an answer. ‘If leaving it where it is would make things worse for Mikey.’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ said Shapiro. ‘As in, for example …?’

  ‘Suppose we let it be known that we’ve found a gun – and say something about where that’ll make him seriously uneasy without being sure. I know: workmen securing a derelict property behind the gasworks found it. Could be the school, could not. We say we’re running tests on it and expect to be able to tie it to the robbery at Kumani’s. Then we say we already know it was used in an earlier crime – something nasty, something carrying a life sentence. We can get something suitable off the computer: it doesn’t have to be this division, just local enough that Mikey could have been involved. Or maybe it was just the gun that was involved, in the hands of a previous owner.’

  The idea firmed in her mind as she followed where it led. ‘If Roly does nothing, waits to see if we turn up on his doorstep with a warrant, Mikey could be charged as an accessory to murder. Rather than that, he’d put his hand up for the robbery and explain that he didn’t have the gun that long. But if Mikey comes clean over the robbery only to find we were bluffing, we never had the gun, or it was another gun entirely, he’ll do time for something he could have walked away from. He needs to know whether we have his gun or not.

  ‘Roly won’t be panicked into doing anything precipitate. He’ll think it through; he’ll want to be damn sure Mikey wasn’t involved in a murder; but when he’s convinced of that he’ll have to check if the gun’s where he left it.’ Pleased, she sat back, awaiting congratulations.

  Shapiro nodded slowly. ‘Not bad. A bit more practice and you could be devious for England.’

  Her smile revealed dimples. ‘Coming from you, sir, I consider that a real compliment.’

  They drafted a statement for the local radio, to go out on the evening news. Shapiro chose a post office robbery in Peterborough the previous year in which an elderly woman customer was shot dead. It had to be a real case – Roly would check.

  Donovan was worried that he mightn’t hear the news. But The Jubilee was full of ears, if Roly missed it himself he’d know all about it within minutes. Sometime between ten and midnight – ‘The winos’ll give him some cover and Roly isn’t going to worry about muggers’ – he’d set off for Chemical Street.

  ‘And I’ll be right behind him.’

  Liz cleared her throat. ‘Actually, Sergeant, I’ll be right behind him. Except for the first couple of minutes. He’ll be watching for trouble. So we let him spot you and spend five minutes giving you the slip; with luck he won’t see me pick up the tail. I’ll follow him to the school, there’ll be back-up waiting near by, as soon as he has the gun we arrest him. Unlawful possession and concealing evidence. Then we charge Mikey with the garage robbery; and if we can get Thelma for aiding and abetting we’ll have the whole bloody family behind bars.’

  Donovan needed to be visible, but not so visible that Roly would suspect. He returned to the corner of Jubilee Terrace: apparently half the Walled City knew he considered it a discreet place to watch them from. A younger, thinner man than Roly might leap over the wall dividing the back yards of Coronation Row from those of Brick Lane; but age and girth were not Roly’s only reasons for coming this way. He couldn’t lose Donovan until he’d picked him up.

  Liz was sitting in her car at the town end of Brick Lane with a Bichon Frise in the passenger seat. She and Bubbles were old friends, they’d done stakeouts before. He belonged to Superintendent Giles’s secretary Miss Tunstall and was the perfect excuse for loitering in the street late at night. A man alone might seem suspicious, a woman alone might attract attention, but someone walking a dog was just someone walking a dog. If Roly was on foot she and Bubbles would, well, dog him and he’d think nothing of it. If he was driving they’d follow in the car. Bubbles enjoyed a good car chase.

  She didn’t know how quickly Roly would respond to the item on the news: somewhere between fifteen minutes and an hour was her best guess but it might take longer, particularly if Mikey wasn’t at home. At intervals she checked with Donovan on the radio but The Jubilee was quiet. After an hour Bubbles really did need to go for a walk.

  After two hours Liz was pretty sure this wasn’t going to work. She called DC Morgan, who was waiting at the school, but he’d seen no one. Even the glue-sniffers seemed to be having the night off. ‘We’ll give it another hour,’ Liz decided, ‘but
I don’t think he’s coming.’

  Donovan had reached the same conclusion, and was wondering if he should suggest calling it a night or wait for Liz to do so, when he heard footsteps. He’d melted back into the shadows before remembering he wasn’t meant to be invisible.

  But those weren’t Roly’s footsteps. The big man was fifty years old and seventeen stone, and he’d never had a light quick step like this. Also, he didn’t limp. Donovan waited, listening, and the footsteps reached the corner and stopped.

  ‘Don’t mean to disturb you, Mr Donovan.’ It was Mikey. Already he’d acquired another of those long, amorphous coats that made him look like a small banshee. ‘But my dad says it’s a cold old night, and if you’re going to be here much longer can we bring you a Thermos?’

  ‘They knew. Everything.’ It was Friday morning now, but Donovan was still so angry he spat the words. ‘Not just that I was watching them: they knew it didn’t matter if I was or not. Roly wasn’t going anywhere. He didn’t have to: he knew Mikey’s gun was where he left it. How?’

  Liz shrugged. She was tired and dispirited too, but she’d been unsuccessful often enough in the past that she no longer took it personally. ‘Maybe we were wrong about the school. Maybe he has it at home. Or maybe he got rid of it permanently.’

  ‘Then what were the men in the kitchen talking about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Liz said irritably. ‘Maybe they weren’t talking about the gun at all.’ She frowned. ‘You never did explain how you came to overhear that.’

  That was all he’d said – that he’d overheard it. He didn’t want to bring Jade into this: partly because of the sense he had that their relationship was valuable and delicate, and just a little bit because he was shy of admitting he had a girlfriend.

  The man and woman in this office were the people who knew him best in the world. It wasn’t exactly friendship but a professional relationship close enough to mimic it in all the essentials. They knew each other’s strengths and frailties. They counted on one another, for their lives if need be. And Donovan knew that if he admitted he was seeing a girl who rode a motorcycle, the Dickens case would go on the back burner while the best detecting minds in Castlemere concentrated on his sex life.