Broken Lines

by Jo Bannister

  Mrs Watkins owned the paper shop. Over the door it said ‘Paper Chase’but throughout Castlemere it was known as Muriel’s. The only thing that had been there longer was the castle. Mrs Watkins was sixty-three now, and had bought the shop before she was thirty. She still opened seven days a week at seven o’clock, which meant arriving at six-thirty in order to take in the deliveries, sort the orders and organize the paper rounds.

  As the first person up and about in Castle Place, Mrs Watkins had seen some things in her time. She had picked her way over snoring drunks in her doorway. She had crabbed in sideways to avoid noticing cars with the front seats reclined bouncing up and down beside the kerb. She had found unwanted dogs tied to her railings, and unwanted curries plastered across her glass.

  She had never before found an armed robber waiting patiently for her to open up.

  Her first thought was that he was a dosser who’d slept in her doorway, though with only an anorak and a woolly hat for protection the icy tiles should have stolen the life from him during the night. Then she thought he might be an early customer. ‘I don’t really open for half an hour,’ she said; then, relenting, ‘But if there’s something particular you need—?’

  There was, but it wasn’t something she sold. As she unlocked the door he followed her inside, and when she turned to serve him she met the blank stare of a gun.

  Mrs Watkins had never been held up before. Paper Chase wasn’t the sort of high turnover business that attracted thieves; not ambitious ones, anyway. Perhaps it was the sort of business that novice robbers cut their teeth on. Taken aback as she was, Mrs Watkins could hardly fail to notice how the gun shook in the gloved hand.

  ‘Empty the till!’ said the man, and his teeth chattered with cold and nerves.

  Muriel Watkins eyed him in disbelief. ‘It’s six-thirty in the morning. There’s nothing in the till.’

  ‘What?’ It simply hadn’t occurred to him that robbing a shop first thing in the morning he was unlikely to get more than enough loose coins to change the first ten pound note. He had to think quickly. ‘Then open the safe.’

  ‘I don’t have a safe.’

  Kevin Tufnall, for it was he, felt sweat break out under the pulled-down brim of his woolly hat and wiped the back of a hand across his brow, coming within an ace of shooting himself in the eye. It was vital not to panic. All right, armed robbery was a new departure for him, but how difficult could it be? Luck had presented him with a weapon to use – as he understood it, you pointed it at people and they did as you said. They didn’t, particularly if they were little old ladies with grey hair scraped into a bun, stand there looking you up and down as if you were something the cat dragged in.

  He looked round desperately. Paper Chase was a tobacconist as well as a paper shop: his eye lit with relief on the shelves of cigarettes. There was a ready market for those, wasn’t there? ‘All right. All right. I’ll take the smokes; Put them in a bag.’

  Mrs Watkins knew that no one with any sense argued with a man pointing a gun. So what if she lost a few hundred pounds worth of tobacco? – that was what insurance was for. No one would expect her to have a go at an armed robber. She was sixty-three and five-foot-one, and a stiff breeze made her tack across Castle Place like a sailing dinghy. She was the perfect muggee, except for one thing. The small spare frame of Muriel Watkins contained the heart of a lion, and a bad-tempered lion at that. Her very eyebrows bristled. ‘Certainly not. And you can stop waving that thing in my face as well!’

  What happened next depended on who you asked. According to Kevin, she leapt on him like a fury, snatched the gun and flung it across the shop, then beat him about the head with her bony little fists. According to Muriel, she knocked the weapon aside and Kevin dropped it, and as he went to recover it he banged his forehead on the edge of the counter. Either way, the great paper shop robbery ended with the robber sitting on the floor nursing his head while the robbee phoned the police.

  When Liz heard there’d been a stick-up in Castle Place and the perpetrator had been arrested, her first thought was that Mikey’s accomplice was going solo. Her hopes soared. Armed robbery was not so common a crime in Castlemere that the odds were absurdly long. If he was also responsible for Mikey’s present condition and she could charge him, she could get word to The Jubilee and Donovan could come home.

  All that evaporated when she saw the name on the charge sheet. ‘Kevin Tufnall? He’s doing armed robberies now?’

  ‘Not very well,’ said the Custody Officer. ‘Muriel Watkins beat him up.’

  The facts of the case were simple enough, and except for precisely how he was disarmed Kevin did not dispute them. Liz thought he was glad to be off the street and in a warm cell. What did concern her was the gun.

  ‘Where did you get it, Kevin? You’ve never carried a gun before.’

  ‘I found it.’

  It wasn’t a very original defence. What was novel about it was that, this time, it was probably true. Kevin hadn’t the money to buy it or the nerve to steal it. ‘Found it where?’

  Kevin gave her a hunted look. ‘Don’t tell him.’

  ‘Tell who?’ She wasn’t trying to trap him, she was genuinely having trouble following this conversation.

  ‘I didn’t steal it, I only borrowed it. I was going to put it back/ before he wanted it again. Only now—’ There was no point in finishing the sentence. Clearly the gun would not be put back now.

  ‘Whose is it, Kevin? Where did you find it?’

  Kevin heaved a vast lugubrious sigh. ‘That garage in Brick Lane. Where he keeps tools and stuff. Where he used to keep that dog. It was sleeting down, I was that bloody cold, and he hadn’t locked up properly and I thought I’d get in out of the weather. I knew he didn’t keep the dog there no more. There was some dust-sheets and things and I was going to sleep there. Then I thought’ – the eyes came up, shiftily – ‘there might be something to eat, so I had a bit of a look round. And I found that.’

  He hadn’t been looking for something to eat, he’d been looking for something to sell. What he’d found was something that would help him steal something to sell.

  Liz still didn’t know what garage he was talking about, though she was plainly supposed to. Had the gun been secreted on a Dickens property after all? Had Roly double-thought them and put it where they’d assume he’d have more sense than to put it? ‘Which garage, Kevin? The lock-ups in Brick Lane? Which one – who rents it?’

  Kevin couldn’t decide if she was being dim or devious. His whipped-dog gaze took on a faintly irritated cast. ‘He shouldn’t have had that, Mrs Graham. You’re not supposed to have them, not unless they’ve been Issued. And even if it was, it shouldn’t have been left lying around in a garage where anyone could find it.’

  ‘Anyone capable of breaking in, anyway,’ amended Liz absent-mindedly. ‘Kevin – who exactly are we talking about? You’re right, it shouldn’t have been lying around in a garage, but whose garage in particular should it not have been lying around in?’

  He was going to answer, he was just working up to it; but before he got there Liz knew what he was going to say. The garage – the tools – the dog that wasn’t there any more – the gun that should have been Issued … He wasn’t talking about Roly Dickens. He was talking about—

  ‘Donovan’s?’

  Half-way through conveying this latest bit of bad news Liz realized Shapiro wasn’t reading the same things into it that she was. It was nothing he said, just the expression on his face at different points. He wasn’t worried enough. At times he seemed grimly amused.

  She frowned. ‘What? What have you spotted that I’ve missed?’

  He had the grace to look faintly apologetic. ‘Sorry. But isn’t it stretching probability a bit thin to blame Donovan for every crime in town?’

  ‘I’m not!’ She blinked. ‘Am I? I’m not saying he held up Muriel’s–I’m saying Kevin Tufnall did it, using the gun he found in Donovan’s lock-up. And he’s right, Donovan has no business keeping
a gun there. Or anywhere else, come to that.’

  ‘What makes you think it’s Donovan’s?’

  Her eyebrows lowered suspiciously. ‘What makes you think it isn’t?’

  ‘You only think it might be because you also think he might have hit Mikey with a baseball bat. But if he had a gun we knew nothing about, why did he need the bat at all?’

  ‘You think Kevin’s lying? Frank, I don’t think Kevin Tufnall has the mental capacity to lie.’

  ‘On the contrary, I’m sure he found the gun where he said he did – rooting around in Donovan’s garage. Which wasn’t locked properly. Does that sound like Donovan?’

  He kept the motorbike in there, and the national collection of sprockets. ‘Not really,’ admitted Liz. ‘But then, nor do some of the other things he may have done recently.’

  ‘Fair enough. So let’s think about it. If the gun isn’t Donovan’s, who do you think it might belong to?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Mikey?’

  ‘And who might have put it there?’

  ‘Roly?’

  ‘And why?’

  ‘Because it’s the last place in town we’d think of looking for it!’

  Shapiro smiled. ‘That’s my girl. And that’s why Kevin was able to get into the garage: Roly forced the lock first. This gun – I imagine it was pretty well hidden? – he wouldn’t want Donovan spotting it while he was doing an oil change or something.’

  Liz nodded cautiously. ‘It was in a biscuit tin at the back of a cupboard behind a stack of old biking magazines. Kevin only got it out because he thought it might still have some biscuits in it.’

  ‘We’ll have to see what Forensics come up with. But if, as I hope, it still has Donovan’s blood on the muzzle end, it’s the one used in the robbery. Now, I suppose it’s just about possible that Donovan picked himself off Kumani’s floor, hurried out to his bike and caught up with the van in time to see Mikey, or his mate if he had one, sling it out of the window. Then he stopped and hunted for it – and it was dark, remember, and it probably ended up in the long grass or the ditch – and after he found it he got back on his bike and caught up with the van again in time to see the immediate aftermath of the crash in Chevening. But if I went to the Crown Prosecutor with a story like that he’d laugh in my face. It isn’t enough that it could just about have happened, with a following wind and a great dollop of luck. If it isn’t what would happen then it isn’t what did happen.’

  Liz was still trying to work out what having Mikey’s gun meant. They’d looked so hard for it, then resigned themselves to not finding it, now she couldn’t quite remember what they wanted it for. Oh yes: tying Mikey to the robbery. It seemed a bit academic now. ‘Maybe they’ll turn up some fingerprints. If Mikey’s are on it he was at least a willing partner.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky and find someone else’s too. Roly’s, perhaps, though I don’t hold out much hope – I can’t see an old pro like him handling it without gloves. We may have a better chance of getting something from Mikey’s partner.’

  ‘If he had one.’

  ‘If he had one,’ agreed Shapiro. ‘But think about it: they’re two young men, or just possibly a young man and a girl, planning their first armed robbery. This may be the first gun of their own that they’ve had: it’s the most natural thing in the world that they’d be passing it between them, admiring it, getting the feel of it; pretending to shoot one another, for pity’s sake. It would get their prints all over it. All right, so they’d wipe it down afterwards. But there are a lot of surfaces to a gun, if we’re lucky they put on a couple more prints than they got off.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘And if we’re unlucky—’ He stopped.

  Liz raised an interrogative eyebrow. ‘If we’re unlucky?’

  ‘If we’re unlucky, we’ll find one of Donovan’s.’

  Chapter Eight

  It was a little after eight when Donovan came off the motorway at the Castlemere exit. Apart from an hour at an all-night transport café, where he’d fallen asleep over a pot of coffee and nobody’d fancied being the one to to wake him, he’d been riding all night. Despite his leathers he was chilled to the bone. He needed a hot breakfast and a hot bath.

  But the other thing he needed, which was a sense of perspective on what was happening to him, seemed somehow to have crept up on him unnoticed during the dark hours. He no longer resented Shapiro’s decision to suspend him, saw that he had little choice. He hadn’t the heart to go on hating Mikey either: whatever he’d done he’d paid for. And if he wasn’t ready to extend the same indulgence to Mikey’s solicitor, still felt both used and abused over that, he was within striking distance of seeing the funny side of it. He’d been made a fool of by a clever, unscrupulous woman: that wasn’t high tragedy so much as farce. He’d get over it.

  He’d get over all of this. Perhaps right now he couldn’t see the way through, but there had to be an explanation and Shapiro would find it. None of this was random. Someone wanted to destroy him, wanted it enough to sacrifice another man in the process. That wasn’t a casual dislike: it was deep and personal, and it came from somewhere. Somewhere there was some record of how he’d occasioned that much anger, and Shapiro would find it. Donovan believed that absolutely. He had to.

  He found himself thinking about Mikey. Mikey wasn’t worried about what was going on. Mikey was unlikely to worry about anything ever again. Presumably, whoever did this could have done it the other way round, could have split Donovan’s skull and framed Mikey for it. In a very real sense, therefore, it was a privilege to be the one doing the worrying. Almost, Donovan felt a sense of obligation to Mikey Dickens.

  Which must have been why he turned on to the ring road instead of heading into town, and two minutes later was parking the bike in the Staff Only part of the Castle General car-park.

  He knew his way round this hospital better than some of the staff. The Intensive Care Unit was at the back of the building, on the first floor. No one challenged him: they recognized him, assumed he had business here. His disgrace was not yet a matter of public knowledge.

  They had Mikey in the corner. He knew it was Mikey only because of the name on the graph. His head and most of his face were swathed in bandages; there were pads over both eyes. One arm and both hands were in plaster, and there was a cage under the sheet covering his legs. Between the dressings, where Mikey himself was visible, great splotches of multi-coloured bruising spread like a sunset across his arms, shoulders and ribs. He lay on his back in the middle of the high hospital bed as if he hadn’t so much as twitched since they put him there. A forest of metal had grown up about his head, stands carrying drips and monitors and ventilating apparatus. He was dwarfed by it all. There wasn’t a lot of Mikey Dickens at the best of times: now he looked like a battered child.

  There was a chair by the bed. Donovan hooked it out with a foot, dropped on to it half sideways – as if he didn’t want to look he was staying long. As if he didn’t want to be mistaken for a relative or a friend, or anyone to whom Mikey’s condition was of particular moment. But apart from the ward sister who nodded at him, no one was taking any notice. Nobody cared what Donovan was feeling.

  Freed of the need to feign disinterest, Donovan finally looked at the injured youth not with a policeman’s eyes, gauging the degrees of damage, toying with the unworthy thought that he’d brought this on himself, but with ordinary common humanity. This was a nineteen-year-old boy, and someone had taken away all of his life that was worthy of the name. All right, Mikey Dickens was never going to be a great violinist, a creator of beautiful or important things, even a decent hard-working husband and father. But he’d been vital, quick and sharp-witted, and now there was only the slow pulse of the bulb in the ventilator to say he belonged up here rather than down in the morgue. The only valuable thing about Mikey – the uniqueness of his personality – was gone, stolen, squandered, and the enormity of that crime struck Donovan as if for the first time. A breath of a sigh escaped him and he gave a weary, in
credulous shake of the head.

  The ward sister was at his elbow. ‘You’re not hoping to question him today, are you?’

  Donovan twitched her a sombre smile. ‘You reckon I’d be better coming back tomorrow?’

  ‘I doubt it. Or next week either.’

  ‘He’s not going to make it, is he?’

  With relatives she was more circumspect. Policemen counted almost as honorary staff – except when it came to parking spaces – and she could afford to be honest. But the regret was genuine. ‘I don’t think so. Not the way you mean. The equipment may keep him ticking over but I don’t think it’s going to bring him back.’

  ‘How long do you wait?’ asked Donovan. ‘Before turning it off?’

  ‘That’s something the doctors will decide in consultation with the relatives. His father’s been here almost since he was brought in, I think he knows what the position is. The only real question is whether they wait a week or two, a month or two, or longer.’

  ‘Roly’s a realist,’ said Donovan. His tone of voice rather surprised him: it sounded like respect. ‘He won’t want the kid lying around like this once there’s no hope left.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Well, we’re not quite there yet. Miracles do happen – actually, more than you might think. Maybe young Mikey’s got one coming.’ She found a bit of bare skin on his arm and gave it an encouraging pat.

  After she had gone about her business Donovan continued looking at the wreckage of Mikey Dickens with a compassion that had nothing to do with self-interest. If Mikey woke up, and brought with him some recollection of the events of that night – why he went to Cornmarket, who he met there – he could very much simplify the task facing Castlemere CID. If he could only remember bits of it he would still be the best witness they had. But that wasn’t what Donovan was thinking. He was sorry. He was sorry for the mess Mikey had made of his life when he had it, and sorry he’d never now get the chance to do better.

  A little while later the sister came back, and for a surreal moment thought the policeman was bent over the bed praying. She was surprised but rather touched. Of course, he was Irish and perhaps that made a difference. But moving closer she realized her mistake. He wasn’t praying: he’d folded his arms on the edge of Mikey’s bed, lowered his head on to them and fallen asleep.