by Jo Bannister
‘To be honest,’ said Brian, ‘she was a bit drawn before. Problems at home. She and the husband – Clifford, you met him at the school fête – have split up.’
‘She really isn’t having much luck, is she?’ Liz remembered Clifford Taylor, who ran the bottle stall next door to her white elephants, well enough to be surprised. ‘He didn’t strike me as the type.’
‘What type?’
‘The bimbo-chasing type. You know: “Dear heaven, my wife’s nearly forty, if I don’t replace her with a newer model people might notice I’m forty-five.’”
Brian chuckled. ‘I don’t think bimbos were involved. I don’t know what the problem was – I don’t actually know anything – but the staff-room gossip reckons it was more of a growing apart. Wanting different things. Clifford moved out before Christmas. Edwards in Physics, who plays squash with him, says he’s taken a flat in one of those big Victorian houses in Rosedale Avenue.’
‘I wonder if he knows about the accident.’
‘I expect so. Clifford’s a decent sort, he won’t have severed all communications. If she needs help, he’ll be there for her.’
‘Except with the decorating,’ grinned Liz. For an art teacher, Brian was notoriously bad with more paint than you could put on a palette.
When the phone went Brian let her answer it. The chances of it being for him were too long.
Liz came back with an odd expression, forked up the last of her rissole and pulled her coat on. ‘I have an assignation,’ she said. ‘With someone who wishes to remain amominous but was with Mikey Dickens the night he was attacked.’
They met at the house in George Street. Thelma answered the door. Before she went through into the parlour Liz said quietly, ‘Thanks for this, Mrs Dickens.’
Mikey’s grandmother shrugged. ‘I want to know what happened. You’re my best chance of finding out.’
Liz nodded slowly. ‘I understand that. But – you will leave it to me to deal with, won’t you? Even if it turns out to be – well, someone you know.’
‘Walshes,’ said Thelma baldly. ‘It won’t be. They wouldn’t be that stupid.’
‘But if they were?’
‘Mrs Graham, I’m too old for going out late at night with a violin case under my arm. If you can find whoever knocked seven bells out of our Mikey, I’m happy for you to deal with it. But I’ll tell you now, his father won’t be. Nothing you say and nothing I say will make him feel differently. You figure out who did this, you’d best collar him fast. Or find some excuse to bang Roly up for a day or two. There’ll be blood on the streets else.’
Inside, a nervous young man screwed round on the sofa when she opened the door. He was about Mikey’s age: spots and the pale shadow of a moustache he shaved about once a week, mostly for the practice. Liz took a moment to put a name to him. Barker – Vinnie Barker. No form to speak of: a couple of convictions for joy-riding but round here that was the minimum necessary if you wanted people to talk to you.
‘I want to remain amominous,’ he said again.
‘That’s fine, Vinnie,’ said Liz ingenuously. ‘What can you tell me about Friday night?’
He’d been expecting an argument about his anonymity; relieved, he relaxed a little. ‘I’m only here’cos Mikey’s gran said so. I don’t grass on no one for nothing.’
‘You know who hit Mikey?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Then you’re not grassing, are you?’
‘Er – no,’ he agreed after a moment. He sounded a shade disappointed. ‘Then what—?’
It was like talking to an idiot child. Compared with Vinnie, Mikey Dickens was a Napoleon of crime. Liz hung on to her patience. ‘You may be the last person who was with Mikey before he was attacked. You can tell me what time you were together, where you were, whether he had any plans for later. The more I know about his movements Friday evening the closer I get to whoever put him in the hospital.’
‘We weren’t doing nothing,’ said Vinnie defensively. ‘Just hanging out.’
‘Hanging out where?’
‘Down The Fen Tiger.’
‘About closing time?’ Vinnie nodded. ‘Helping people out of the car-park?’ Liz was being kind. What they were doing, as she very well knew, was playing Car-Park Vigilante. You targeted someone who was over the alcohol limit and offered to guide him out of the car-park. It didn’t matter if there was enough room to three-point-turn an articulated lorry, if he didn’t want you making an anonymous – amominous – phonecall to the police he’d accept your assistance, however grudgingly, and hand over a five pound note. If he was well over the limit he’d produce a tenner.
‘What happened then?’
‘Nothing. About half eleven I said I was heading home. It was freezing, my mum doesn’t like me sitting on the bollards when it’s cold, I might get a chill.’
Liz wanted to scream. ‘So you parted about eleven-thirty. Do you know what Mikey was going to do then? Was he heading home too?’
Vinnie shook his head. ‘He said he’d got somebody to see first. He said he’d head up the towpath and go home from there.’
Hope quickened under Liz’s breastbone. Finally they were getting somewhere. ‘He was meeting someone at Cornmarket? Did he give you a name?’
‘Nah. Just—’ He stopped.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
It wasn’t true. She’d come back to that later. ‘So at eleven thirty he was fine, he was heading up the towpath and he was going to meet someone. That was the last you saw of him?’ Vinnie nodded. ‘Was he worried about this meeting or looking forward to it?’
‘He wasn’t expecting to get beat up, if that’s what you mean!’
‘But it wasn’t a friend he was going to see.’
‘Hardly.’
Liz leaned forward in her chair. ‘You know who it was, don’t you? Mikey told you who he was going to see. Tell me. Right now it’s all you can do for Mikey: tell me who he was meeting.’ Still the youth hesitated. ‘It doesn’t mean that person beat him up. Mikey may never have got there. Or they might have talked and then separated, and Mikey was attacked after that. But until I talk to this person the suspicion has to be that he’s responsible. If you’re trying to protect him, for whatever reason, think about this. You can keep his name from me, all I can do is charge you with withholding evidence. But Mikey’s dad can take you apart.’
Vinnie wriggled unhappily but all three of them knew it was true. When he looked to Thelma to deny it she looked away. His hands spread helplessly on the sofa cushions. ‘I don’t want no trouble. Mikey’s gran asked me to help’ – from his tone Liz guessed Thelma’s request had been almost as hard to refuse as Roly’s would be – ‘but I don’t really know nothing. I know what Mikey told me, that’s all. If I tell you what Mikey said I’m going to have you on my case, and if I don’t I’m going to have his dad. None of this is my fault,’ he whined, ‘I don’t see why it all comes down to who’s going to dump on me!’
Liz didn’t understand. ‘Vinnie – why do you think I’m going to dump on you? All I want is the truth. Tell me who Mikey was expecting to meet and we’ll all be happy.’
‘Wanna bet?’ said Vinnie Barker glumly.
Shapiro had sandwiches at his desk, and after that he rested his head on his hand and shut his eyes for a moment. It was a puzzle to him that, when his phone went a minute later, half an hour had passed.
‘DI Graham for you, sir,’ said the switchboard.
By the time she came on he’d had time to work out what day it was and get the blood flowing in his fingers again. ‘Liz? What’s up? Where are you?’
‘I’m on my way in,’ she said, ‘I’ll be there in five minutes. I wanted to make sure you’d be there.’
There was something very odd about the pitch of her voice that was explained neither by the cell-phone signal nor his own post-prandial doziness. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Yes,’ she replied briefly, and made no attempt to el
aborate. ‘Where’s Donovan?’
‘I sent him home,’ said Shapiro. ‘After the business with the bat I didn’t feel I had any option. You need back-up? – I can get Morgan for you.’
‘No, I don’t need back-up. But I think you should get Donovan in again. Oh God, Frank, I don’t know how to say this. But I found a friend of Mikey’s that he spent Friday evening with. They parted a bit before midnight because Mikey had to meet someone at Cornmarket.’
Shapiro’s voice was wooden. ‘Go on.’
‘He didn’t call Donovan by name but I don’t know who else he could have meant. He said The Filth wanted to talk to him again, and he hoped it would be as entertaining as last time.’
Chapter Five
‘There’s no sign of him at the boat,’ said Liz, flopping on to Shapiro’s chair, ‘the bike’s gone and his phone’s switched off. But the dog’s still on Tara so he’ll have to be back by tonight. I left a note for him to call when he gets in.’
‘What will you tell him?’ asked Shapiro.
Liz threw him a hunted look. ‘That we need to talk. That there’ve been developments.’
‘Will you tell him what?’
‘Not till he’s safely in here, no.’
Shapiro elevated an eyebrow. ‘You think he’ll make a dash for the nearest port?’
‘Of course not,’ she said shortly. But she didn’t know what to expect instead, and however Donovan reacted it would be easier managed inside the police station.
‘Liz – honestly – do you think he did it?’
She almost said, ‘Of course not,’ again; but that would have been her heart talking and she needed to focus on the facts. ‘Frank, I don’t know. Vinnie Barker wasn’t lying, it was too much like pulling teeth getting it out of him. But Vinnie telling the truth doesn’t necessarily mean Donovan’s lying. He and Mikey may have met and parted, or they may never have met. But a meeting was planned, and I’m desperately worried that Donovan didn’t see fit to tell us about it.’
‘So you do think he did it.’
‘No,’ she demurred, ‘I’m not saying that. But he’d better have a bloody good explanation for keeping quiet about it even when Mikey turned up half-dead. All right, he wanted it off the record: that I can buy. He wanted to mark Mikey’s card without being constrained by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. Inappropriate but understandable. He was angry and he was hurt. Maybe he meant only to give Mikey a piece of his mind. Maybe he came back with his lip, and Donovan lost his temper and—’
‘And?’
‘And hit him.’
‘Having first asked him to turn round?’
He could have asked but Mikey would hardly have obliged. ‘Maybe he waited till Mikey went to leave.’
‘At which point Donovan produced a baseball bat he happened to have handy and smashed Mikey across the back of the head? And went on hitting him after he was down? That’s not a temper tantrum, Liz, it’s attempted murder.’
They regarded each other for some time without speaking; then Liz shook her head. ‘It doesn’t work, does it? However angry he was, I can’t see Donovan planning it like that. Going equipped. He might hit out with his fists, if Mikey had been knocked down and cracked his skull I could accept it. But not that Donovan planned it, and not that he waited till Mikey turned his back.’
‘So you don’t believe he did it.’
She was tired of doing all the work. ‘Never mind what I believe. Do you think he could have done it? Like that – the way it was done?’
Shapiro was silent, clearly thinking. Liz found that more shocking than almost anything he could have said. They were talking about a colleague, a man with whom they shared a close professional relationship, and Shapiro was wondering whether he’d plotted the murder of a nineteen-year-old boy. In a way, it hardly mattered what he decided now. Liz was glad Donovan wasn’t there to mark that hesitation.
Shapiro came at his answer tangentially. ‘I’ve been in this job too long to think only certain people commit crimes. In the right circumstances, any of us can do just about anything. The question is not whether Donovan could do this, but in what circumstances would he do it? To save his own life or someone else’s? – of course, it wouldn’t even be a crime. For money? – no. That I wouldn’t believe. But in a state of utter rage, because Mikey had made such a fool of him he’d thought he had to quit a job that means everything to him? Liz, I’d give my right arm – I may actually mean that – to be able to say no. But the truth is, I don’t know either.’
His gaze left her and wandered round the office, finding the framed photographs of his children on the windowsill. David had taken the one of the girls; probably Shapiro had taken the one of David, because he was scowling as if he was doing it wrong. ‘I’ve a lot of time for Donovan. He drives me mad, I never get through a week without shouting at him in a thoroughly unseemly fashion, but in a real emergency there’s only you that I’d rather have beside me. Despite that shifty tinker facade, I’ve always thought I could count on him. I’ve trusted him, and he’s never betrayed that trust. Until maybe now.
‘And now I don’t know if I misjudged him; or if he’s changed; or if he was just pushed too damned hard this one time, and he’s ruined Mikey’s life and his own because of it. Is it my fault? Did I give him too much rope? – because that was how he got his best results. But I owed him better. Should I have realized he needed closer supervision, that something like this could happen if he got too far out on his own? If you make people think it’s results that matter, isn’t it your fault when they start thinking that any means are acceptable?’
Liz’s hand crossed the desk and closed on his wrist. He wasn’t a bony man, but in his tension she could feel the bone and the tendons knotted over it. ‘Frank, that’s nonsense. Nobody could have had a better teacher or a steadier guide. Nobody else could have made a detective of Donovan, would have put up with him long enough to see the potential. If he has gone off the rails – and we don’t know that yet, we’re worried and we may be making too many assumptions – it’s not your fault.’
He appreciated her saying it, even if he wasn’t convinced. ‘It’s just – such a pity,’ he stumbled. ‘He’s a good copper in so many ways. And then something like this happens and even those of us who know that can’t rule out the possibility that he did exactly what it looks he did.’
‘Anyone can be framed.’
Shapiro shook his head. ‘For a frame to work it not only has to be possible, it has to be credible. It has to be more convincing than the truth. Someone could say you beat Mikey Dickens’s head in, but people would think it was a sick joke. Say the same thing about Donovan and you have to take the suggestion seriously. That may not be fair, but it’s a reflection of the fact that you and he are different types of people. He gets angry and you don’t.’
‘Of course I get angry,’ snapped Liz, proving it. ‘The main difference between Donovan and me is that he shows it and I don’t. You said anyone could do anything in the right circumstances: well, I could have beaten Mikey. All I had to do was take him by surprise. And I’d have got away with it because I’d have more sense than to threaten him beforehand. Donovan’s tragedy is that, in a world where the opposite is the norm, he’s a better man on the inside than he seems on the surface.’
Shapiro’s expression surprised her. The pain in his face had given way to a sombre smile. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘But I think we’re both saying we could see this happening, just, if Donovan momentarily lost control of his temper; but not if he had to plan it and arm himself first. Yes?’
Liz drew in a long breath and released it before answering. ‘Yes.’
‘Then he didn’t do it, and he is being framed.’
‘But then, why didn’t he tell us about the meeting?’
‘Tell you what,’ said Shapiro. ‘When we get him in here, I’ll ask him.’
Liz didn’t miss the significance of that. ‘You want to talk to him yourself?’
; ‘It’s probably better. One way or another he’s made a damn fool of himself, he’ll probably find it easier to confess to me than to you.’
That was part of it. Liz thought the other part was sparing her an interview that would leave a legacy of resentment. If, when everything was known, Donovan still had both his liberty and his job, the fences between him and his superintendent would be easier to mend.
‘What do you want me to do?’
Shapiro said pensively, ‘I wonder if Vinnie Barker knows the other man in the van.’
Liz frowned. ‘Why would he?’
‘If he was a genuine hijacker he probably doesn’t. But if he was a partner, maybe he does. Vinnie must know most of Mikey’s friends. Now he’s started talking you might be able to get him to say more.’
‘Maybe,’ Liz said doubtfully. ‘I don’t see how that helps Donovan.’
‘Actually,’ said Shapiro, peering down his nose in gentle reproof, ‘clearing Sergeant Donovan of a crime he may in fact have committed is not the primary function of this department. I don’t propose to put everything else on hold until we know whether Donovan actually brained Mikey or only thought about it.’
Liz ducked her head, chastened.
‘Though to be honest,’ admitted Shapiro, ‘it might help Donovan too. We can guess why he wanted this meeting with Mikey – to warn him off. That’s why Donovan went to Cornmarket; but why did Mikey go? Donovan’s twice his size, and he must have suspected it could get physical. But he not only went, at night and alone, he dropped his guard long enough to get decked. After the week he’d given Donovan I can’t believe he’d make that mistake. Why risk it? – it wasn’t an official request. What did he stand to gain?’
Liz shut her eyes for a moment. That was why he had Superintendent on his door while she had Inspector on hers. The way he thought reminded her of one of those before-the-tigers acts in a travelling circus, where someone kept plates spinning on top of canes. She’d never known anyone who could keep so many ideas in play at one time. ‘But he told Vinnie—’