by Jo Bannister
The gun came back from Forensics with as good a report as Shapiro could have wished. There was tissue and O-rhesus-negative blood residues on the left-hand rim of the muzzle; as if a right-hander had used it as a club. Mikey Dickens was right-handed; Detective Sergeant Donovan had O-negative blood.
Apart from those microscopic traces the gun had been wiped clean. There were no prints on the grip or the barrel. But Sergeant Tripp wasn’t born yesterday. Some jobs are awkward with gloves on, and loading a revolver is one. He’d dusted the caps of the unused bullets. He’d got several partial thumbprints, two of them good enough to use in evidence. They matched those filed under the name of Michael Dickens.
‘So Mikey loaded the gun,’ said Liz. ‘So he wasn’t hijacked. He was at least an equal partner.’
‘Or Donovan was right all along and he was on his own.’
‘Not according to Mrs Taylor.’
‘I know. But look. It was Mikey’s gun, he loaded it. He drove his van to Kumani’s garage, and when Donovan walked in there was someone small enough to be Mikey wielding the gun and nobody in the van. Pat Taylor is the only one who says someone else was involved.’
‘You’re saying she was mistaken?’
‘It’s possible. After all, she didn’t remember this passenger until you spoke to her on Monday. When you asked her last Tuesday she didn’t know.’
Liz shrugged. ‘Some time passed. She calmed down, was able to think more clearly.’
‘All right,’ nodded Shapiro slowly, ‘so there was a passenger. Probably. But not a hijacker: now we can prove Mikey was in on the robbery.’
Liz squinted at him. ‘But that isn’t the issue, is it? – it never was and it isn’t now. We always knew Mikey was lying, all that’s changed is that now we can prove it. But it’s a big jump from him having a partner to him having a partner who beat his head in and set Donovan up to take the blame!’
‘But unless Donovan really is responsible, somebody did exactly that. If Donovan was a total stranger instead of someone we reckon to know, I still wouldn’t believe he’d done everything he’d have had to for this to work. Not because he couldn’t, but because there was no need for half of it. The baseball bat: he could have left it at the scene or he could have disposed of it. But why on earth would he pretend to find it four days later?’
She had no answer to that. ‘What do we know for sure? – what do we have actual evidence for? We know Mikey was in on the robbery. We know he was driving the van when it crashed. We know that the gun had already been ditched, and that somebody found it and put it in Donovan’s lock-up.
‘We know that, five days later, Mikey went to Cornmarket in the middle of the night and somebody beat his head in with a baseball bat. We know Donovan was on the scene shortly afterwards, and four days later it was him who found the weapon. We know someone with small hands had put insulating tape around the handle.’
‘I can’t imagine any circumstances in which Donovan would have asked someone else to do that.’
Neither could Liz. ‘He’d have done it himself if he thought it necessary. He couldn’t afford for anyone else to know what he was up to.’
‘Unless it was purely to mislead us,’ Shapiro said reluctantly. ‘You could get a mystery print inside your sticky tape if you wanted it there. The girl next door – Lucy Cole? If he said he’d managed to stick the end of his roll down and could she get a fingernail under it, she’d have obliged and never given it another thought. Her prints won’t be on record anywhere, but they’d be just enough to cast doubt on Donovan as a suspect. I’m not saying he did that,’ he added hastily, ‘only that he could have done.’
‘Could have, might have, would have, wouldn’t,’ grumbled Liz. ‘It’s like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. What about the gun? Mikey loaded it, Donovan was hit with it, it wasn’t found at the scene of the crash but it turned up in his lock-up. Could Donovan have put it there?’
‘No,’ decided Shapiro. ‘He went straight from Chevening to the hospital, even if he’d acquired it somehow he couldn’t have held on to it. Besides, we’re pretty sure Roly’s search party found it. That’s what Billy Dunne said, and Mikey wouldn’t have been so cock-sure if it hadn’t been safe.’
‘All right; so Roly had it. And looking for a safe place to hide it he broke into Donovan’s garage and put it at the back of a cupboard. He wiped it down first, but he didn’t think to wipe the bullets. He thought it could be months before it turned up, and when it did there’d be nothing connecting it to him or to Mikey. That, and for a bit of a laugh, is why Roly hid it there. Now suppose Donovan had somehow both acquired the gun and held on to it. Would he have hidden it there?’
Again Shapiro shook his head. ‘Last place. If he attacked Mikey he did the rest as a smokescreen, to suggest an alternative scenario. But if he was a suspect we’d search his boat and his garage. If Kevin Tufnall hadn’t got there first we’d have found the gun and Donovan would have been sunk.’
‘And it was another risk he didn’t need to take,’ said Liz. ‘He didn’t need the gun. He didn’t use it on Mikey and he didn’t produce it as evidence against him, even when we were desperate to find it. He could have avoided that whole nonsense about the school, that left him with more egg on his face than a Chipperfields’ clown. That he was ready to resign over. Do you believe he let Jade Holloway humiliate him when he had Mikey’s gun in his possession? because I don’t.’
‘No,’ agreed Shapiro, ‘I’m satisfied Roly planted the gun on him. But Roly has no interest in framing him. Roly wants the real assailant, not a convincing substitute.’
‘But either Donovan did it or he is being framed,’ said Liz. ‘There are a lot of problems with him doing it. So suppose he didn’t: then someone else did, and that’s who’s framing him. It isn’t Roly; probably it’s this partner of Mikey’s, who either is a girl or has a girlfriend who helps out with the fiddly bits. Vinnie Barker has a sister, but Vinnie Barker has no reason and more sense than to take on the Dickenses.’
Shapiro was off on one of his lateral thinking exercises. ‘We’re assuming this was done by someone who hates Mikey; and so clearly if was. But he or she also hates Donovan. It would have been much easier to frame one of the dossers – any of them could have done it and not even remember. But it had to be Donovan, even if that meant the assailant hanging on to the weapon until he could be sure Donovan would find it. Why? Why did he not only want a scapegoat, but want Donovan as a scapegoat?’
‘Because he – or she – has unfinished business with him? Maybe it is a woman, and the grudge is personal.’ Her eyes sharpened on Shapiro’s face. ‘Frank, we know a woman who might want to hurt Donovan. Who knows Mikey well enough that he’d be happy to meet her somewhere quiet, and who has the physical fitness and the mental application to do what was done. Jade Holloway. Mikey’s brief; Donovan’s Nemesis.’
For once she’d got there first. Shapiro’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped, like a man doing ‘flabbergasted’for Charades. His voice was a stunned whisper. ‘God in heaven, Liz, you’re not seriously suggesting that the boy’s solicitor beat his head in?’
Though she’d made it, the proposition had also come as a shock to Liz. ‘I don’t know. Why not? All we know about her is that she’s a ruthless cow. And that she and Donovan had a very public, very savage bust-up on the steps outside. And she sent Mikey away telling him she’d see him later. What if she did? Frank, what if she did?’
They were prevented from following it much further by a call from the switchboard. ‘About your alert for DS Donovan’s motorbike. We’ve just had a sighting of it.’
‘Excellent,’ said Shapiro. ‘How far did the silly sod get?’
Even over the phone WPC Wilson maintained a straight face. ‘Don’t know, sir. But now the bike’s in the hospital car-park.’
‘Our hospital – Castle General?’ He wasn’t expecting that.
‘Yes, sir. PC Stark spotted it. He’s gone to find DS Donovan now.’
‘What’s he doing in the hospital?’ frowned Shapiro when he’d put the phone down.
‘Visiting Mikey?’
‘I can’t think what else. But then, I wouldn’t have thought of that.’
Liz returned to her own office, struggling with the idea of Jade Holloway as prime suspect. All her instincts told her it wasn’t possible; but the plain fact was, on what they knew right now, it was. One way or another, even at the risk of alienating half the legal profession in Castlemere, they would have to follow it up.
She was still pondering how, half an hour later, when Shapiro tapped and came inside, shrugging on his overcoat. His face was troubled. ‘I’m going to the hospital. We can’t find Donovan. The staff on ICU saw him there earlier, but not since about nine o’clock. Stark’s checked everywhere he could think of and there’s no sign of him.’
Liz stared. ‘And the bike’s still in the car-park?’
‘That’s what’s bothering me,’ admitted Shapiro. ‘I suppose it might have broken down or something.’
‘The way he looks after it? Besides, if it wouldn’t start he’d strip it down on the spot and fix it; and if he couldn’t fix it he’d push it away. Every joy-rider in Castlemere knows the hospital car-park is the best place to get your wheels. Donovan knows that too. If the bike’s still there, Donovan’s still there.’
‘But where? And why?’
Part Three
Chapter One
Donovan woke to a grip like a Sumo wrestler’s at the back of his neck and the prick of a blade at his jugular. Surprise and fear – because if he didn’t know what was going on he was fairly sure it was nothing good – convulsed through him and then he froze, breathing lightly through parted teeth, not grabbing for the hand or the blade, not driving an elbow into the ribs of whoever was standing behind him, not shouting for help or doing anything else that could get him killed. He knew only two things about the man behind him, and even that was one more than necessary. The first was that with hands like the grabs on a dock-side crane this was a big man, and the second was that he meant business. Donovan kept very still and very quiet, and offered no reason for even a big, serious man armed with a sharp blade to cut his throat.
Another moment and he’d have worked out where he was, whose bed he’d fallen asleep on the edge of and therefore who the big man with the knife was. But Roly Dickens saved him the trouble. He leaned close over Donovan’s bent body and murmured in his ear, and the voice, heavy and fruity as a Christmas pudding, was unmistakable. ‘And now, Mr Donovan, you and me are going for a little walk while we discuss some things.’
If there’d been anyone close enough to help Donovan would have risked raising the alarm – after all, if a man had to get his throat cut he couldn’t find a better place. He did not, he definitely did not, want to go anywhere with Roly Dickens.
There were things about Roly that an open-minded person could respect, even admire; but there were more that would scare him shitless.
At Queen’s Street they used the cypher ODC – ordinary decent criminal – to describe those who made a career of burglary and the like, who pitted their wits and skills against those of the police and took the consequences calmly if they lost. They didn’t carry guns because they’d rather do time than risk killing someone. They didn’t hurt old ladies or children, or anyone else if they could avoid it. It was just a job. They were working men: they didn’t do drugs, keep high-class prostitutes or order hits over their mobile phones. If a madder-than-average Home Secretary had decided to disband the police they’d have been as worried as anyone else. A man who works nights needs to know there’s somewhere his family can turn in an emergency.
But nobody who knew Roly Dickens genuinely considered him an ODC. Roly didn’t dislike hurting people: Roly rather enjoyed it. Not just anyone, but anyone who posed a challenge to him. Donovan had seen what happened to people who got in Roly’s bad books: they ended up on sticks, or avoiding mirrors, or trying to teach their guide dogs to shoplift. If Roly thought he might be to blame for Mikey’s condition, the last thing Donovan wanted was a long talk with Roly somewhere quiet.
But Roly had left him no choice. He’d waited, watching Donovan sleep, until the ward staff were occupied elsewhere. It was just the two of them now, and half a dozen people in various depths of coma, and if he’d decided to gut Donovan on the sister’s desk no one would have intervened.
But he had something else in mind. He hauled Donovan to his feet and away from Mikey’s bed, walking him out into the corridor. He draped one long arm amiably over Donovan’s shoulder and even if they’d passed anyone it would not have been apparent that by this means Roly Dickens was keeping the blade of a purloined scalpel against the carotid artery behind Donovan’s jaw.
Roly had lived in this building for four days, he knew his way around. He avoided the passenger lift which was in regular use and steered his captive instead to a utility lift in a little-used corner of the first floor.
While they waited for the doors to open Donovan risked speaking. ‘You’re making a mistake, Roly.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Roly stolidly.
‘Whatever you’ve heard, I’m not responsible for what happened to Mikey.’
‘Shut it.’ The pin-prick pressure of the blade firmed to the tiny burning sensation of parting skin. Donovan shut it.
The lift came, the doors opened, the steel box was empty. The two men stepped inside, and to all intents and purposes disappeared.
At the end of another hour Shapiro was as sure as he could be that Donovan had left the hospital. He’d had the bathrooms checked, and the side-wards. He’d had the nurses make sure they hadn’t acquired an extra patient when no one was looking: if Donovan had been riding all night an empty bed might have tempted him. He checked the waiting areas, the cafeteria, the domestic and managerial offices, even those operating theatres which were not in use.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for. Donovan might just be brooding the time away; he might have fallen asleep somewhere; he might have been waylayed and be lying injured behind a locked door. It had not escaped Shapiro’s notice that, with Mikey in residence, his family and friends were much in evidence, and these were the same people who had gone to Broad Wharf armed with bricks. Shapiro had the mortuary staff check their trays against a list of who should be there, in case some wag had thought that the best place to hide a tree was in a forest.
But they found nothing. Not Donovan, alive, dead or something in between. No sign of what had happened to him. The last sighting had been in ICU at around nine when the ward sister saw him buckled fast asleep over Mikey’s bed and resisted the urge to move him on. Next time she looked he was gone. She assumed he’d woken up and gone home.
And perhaps he had; or at least, set off for home. But he hadn’t got as far as his bike, which was still attracting acid looks in the staff car-park.
Queen’s Street was strangely quiet. Everyone there was trying to get on with some work and listening for the phone.
Liz too had wondered if Donovan had run into the Dickenses. But in spite of what happened at Broad Wharf she was not convinced that they would have snatched a detective sergeant in a public place. It might happen in gangland areas of London but not in Castlemere. Crime here was played by a set of rules, and one was that you out-witted the police or out-ran them, you didn’t declare war on them. The Dickenses and the Walshes might break one another’s legs with joyful abandon, but they’d think long and hard before manhandling a police officer.
But the rule-book may have gone out of the window when Mikey got his head beaten in with a weapon which, by the time it was found, had Donovan’s prints all over it. Nothing the boy’s father might do after that could be considered wholly rational. A jury would accept that, even if he was wrong about Donovan, he had thought this was the man who maimed his child. The longer Donovan was missing, the more likely it was that someone was holding him, and she could only think of one man with a reason. Liz was afra
id for Donovan’s safety, for his life, and afraid for all of them in the storm that was looming.
She tried to put it out of her mind and think about something else. Jade Holloway, for instance. Sooner or later she was going to have to grasp that nettle: she might well come away with a nasty rash but that wasn’t a good enough reason for avoiding it. If Holloway was involved, the quicker Liz found out the better. Wherever he or she was, finding Mikey’s assailant was the best service she could render Donovan right now.
If the woman had been anyone other than Mikey’s brief she’d have been in for questioning before now. But it wasn’t absurdly improbable: people who spend too much time with criminals, and this could apply equally to defence counsel as to police officers, ran the risk of absorbing their morality. It took a keen imagination to envisage Jade Holloway taking a base-ball bat to her client’s head, but solicitors are human too – if Mikey was capable of driving someone to murderous rage, why not her? Maybe she’d felt as strongly about what she and Donovan had, that Mikey’s antics had put an end to, as Donovan had. Maybe he made one smart remark too many and …
Ruefully, Liz acknowledged that it was an outside chance. But maybe she didn’t know everything. Maybe it was time she found out a bit more about Ms Holloway, starting with where she was on Friday night.
A clerk went to ask if she was available. After five minutes, which was almost but not quite long enough for Liz to start insisting, she was shown into one of the offices, all leather and wood panelling, of Carfax and Browne.
Jade Holloway was dressed as Liz had seen her before, in a sharp business suit with her hair tied back, the epitome of disciplined chic. Liz tried to imagine how she’d appeared to Donovan, in motor-cycling leathers with all that red hair tossing wildly about her face and the green eyes of a feral cat. Of course she’d bowled him over. She’d have knocked a more practised womanizer than Donovan for six.