A Bleeding of Innocents

by Jo Bannister

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  Contents

  Jo Bannister

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Jo Bannister

  A Bleeding of Innocents

  Jo Bannister

  Jo Bannister lives in Northern Ireland, where she worked as a journalist and editor on local newspapers. Since giving up the day job, her books have been shortlisted for a number of awards. Most of her spare time is spent with her horse and dog, or clambering over archaeological sites. She is currently working on a new series of psychological crime/thrillers.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Funerals were almost the only thing left that still made Frank Shapiro feel Jewish. He was not a religious man, had not had a religious upbringing; he did not eat pork but told himself this was because he did not like it; he did not attend synagogue and even the main holidays always took him by surprise. Apart from his name there was nothing in his personal or professional life that singled him out from the bulk of the British people who were at least nominally Christian, except this. He could never get used to the idea of signifying respect by uncovering his head. So at funerals he tended to look as if his mind was elsewhere. Occasionally somebody jogged his elbow and nodded, and then he smiled gently and explained. But for the most part the funerals he went to were those of colleagues or friends where his sturdy figure in its dark coat was easily recognized and his undoffed hat passed without comment.

  Alan Clarke had been both a colleague and a friend, and his wife would think nothing of Shapiro’s hat. Watching her with deep compassion from under the brim, he doubted she would have noticed if he had taken the hat off and withdrawn from it a rabbit or a string of silk hankies. Her face was grey and drawn in deep lines, her eyes vast and remote. She had a strong son at each elbow: without them Shapiro thought she would have swayed. She was not crying, was still too shocked to cry. She looked at the coffin as if she did not know what it was doing there. Twice Shapiro saw her glance distractedly round the mourners and felt sure she was looking for Alan.

  His death, coming out of the blue as it did, had stunned her like a physical blow. Shapiro had gone to the house to tell her about the accident, had driven her to the hospital and sat with her for four hours while they waited for news. He was still with her when her husband died. She had not cried then either. At first she seemed to think there was some kind of mistake, looking up quickly when anyone passed in case they had better news for her. Later, when she accepted that Alan was gone, she began looking for someone to blame.

  In part she blamed the job, which was why Detective Inspector Alan Clarke did not receive the full panoply of a police funeral that his service entitled him to.

  Shapiro didn’t blame her for her anger. She was entitled to it. It remained to be seen whether the job was the cause of Alan’s death, but the police force was big enough to carry the can until the individual responsible, the man driving the car, could be found. What Shapiro did regret, though he understood this too, was the way her anger had focused on Donovan. After four days it still was not clear exactly what had happened or why but Marion Clarke knew who she blamed. But for Donovan Alan would have had his feet up in front of his own fire that night. The driver of the car that broke him in a hundred pieces would have roamed the streets in vain.

  That was why Donovan wasn’t here, was probably hunched over the bar of a local hostelry instead, drinking fiercely and showing few signs of intoxication. Marion had told Shapiro that she would make a scene if he came, and Shapiro had had to tell Donovan. He had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, that the hospital would hold on to him till after the funeral. But he went there yesterday and found Donovan had discharged himself. Then he had to go to the man’s home and tell him he wouldn’t be welcome at his DI’s funeral.

  The pity of it was, Marion was cutting herself off from someone with whom she could have shared her grieving. Donovan had been Clarke’s sergeant for two years. It was an unlikely partnership – Clarke a comfortable middle-aged golf-playing family man, Donovan a saturnine Celtic loner – but it worked well. The two men thought in complementary ways that did wonders for the clear-up rate, despite some blazing arguments. Over those two years professional respect had grown to personal friendship so that the Clarkes were the closest thing Cal Donovan had to family.

  And now when they should have been grieving together Marion had chosen to end the friendship. It was the shock, of course, and in time she would see how unfair she was being. Meanwhile Donovan was hurting perhaps as much as she, and without the benefit of someone else to blame.

  Except that Donovan too had his scapegoat. Donovan didn’t believe it was an accident. He couldn’t afford to believe that. If it was only random misfortune, if in prowling the back streets in the middle of the night they had by merest chance encountered someone who, because he was drunk or because he panicked, drove on after hurling them into a brick wall, then that – because being there was his idea – was at least arguably Donovan’s fault. The alternative, that it was a deliberate attempt to murder them both, lifted that burden. If as Donovan believed they were marked men, sooner or later, in one dark street or another, that car or another or a man with a gun would have been waiting for them.

  Shapiro did not as yet either support or dismiss the theory. If they could find the car he would have a better idea whether DI Clarke died because of the case he was working on or because he failed to look both ways before crossing a road. He wanted evidence and there was none.

  The service was coming to an end as a symbolic few handfuls of earth, soft with the rain of the last few days, pattered on the coffin-lid. The vicar read a last passage and closed his book. When other people stepped forward to offer Marion their condolences Shapiro did the same. Soon he would want to talk to her, to find out what she needed, how he could help, but this was neither the time nor the place. She was barely hanging together. The boys were watching anxiously and as soon as they could steered her to the car and took her home.

  Shapiro had been asked back to the house. He wondered if it would be better not to go. Then he thought of Alan’s sons waiting to receive his friends and no one coming, and decided that the best thing was to spend a little time here, give the family a chance to get their breath, then drop in but not stay. When he glanced round he saw that everyone else had come to the same conclusion.

  He exchanged a few words with people he knew, then with a man who was putt
ing flowers on a new grave a few plots along from Clarke’s. From the pushchair parked beside him Shapiro surmised the grave was his wife’s and wondered who he would blame for being left alone while he had a child to raise. At least Marion’s sons were grown. But the man looked up and smiled over the flowers in his hand, and his eyes were composed.

  Then something on the periphery of Shapiro’s vision struck him as at once familiar and out of place, and peering at the little knot of saplings in the corner of the cemetery he picked out a figure almost as slender and tall as the young trees. He sighed and, excusing himself to the man with the pushchair, walked over.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

  Donovan did not look at him. His eyes brooded on the middle distance. ‘I said I wouldn’t be at the funeral. I wasn’t. Sir.’ He always, but never more than now, tacked that courtesy on to the end of his sentences as if he’d found it stuck to his shoe.

  ‘No,’ agreed Shapiro softly. ‘Well, it’s a big cemetery. And a public one, of course. And Marion – well, she’s away home now. She’s not herself, lad. You can understand that.’

  Donovan’s eyes flicked at him like a whip, inky in the pallor of his thin face. He looked as if he should still be in bed. The car that hit Clarke hit him too: youth, faster reactions, perhaps mostly luck had let him off with concussion and bruising the length of his body. There was a row of stitches in a purpling gash on his temple, one eye was blackened, and when he moved it was cautiously, like an old arthritic horse, easing his body under his clothes. But he had escaped essentially uninjured from the incident that killed his DI, and it was there in his eyes that that hurt more than his head.

  As to whether he understood Marion Clarke’s reaction, Shapiro could not know. Donovan was not an easy man to read. He had been variously accused of letting his heart rule his head and of having no heart at all. Shapiro suspected he was a young man who could be disturbed by the power of his own emotions; but the only one who could have said with any confidence was Alan Clarke. Clarke had picked Donovan out when he was a raw new detective constable with the hungry eyes of a young wolf. He had taught him, moulded him, used Donovan’s restless energy and street-wise intellect to counterpoint his own different talents so that the combination was greater than the sum of its parts. But even Clarke might have hesitated to claim knowledge of how Donovan felt, and the rest of the division regarded him warily. That was before the accident. Shapiro had no idea what he would do with Donovan when he wanted to work again.

  ‘The family’s gone now, everyone else is drifting away.’ He ventured cautiously, ‘If you wanted to go and drop a clod on him—’

  Donovan barked a silent laugh, his face in profile drawn down to the bones. ‘I think they may have a more dignified name for that part of the ceremony.’

  Shapiro smiled down at his polished shoes. ‘Probably. Well, whatever they call it …’

  Donovan shook his head. ‘I’m not bothered about the formalities. I just needed to be here at the end.’ He glanced at Shapiro. ‘I wanted to see him in the hospital but they wouldn’t let me. He was already dead when I came to.’

  Shapiro knew. When Alan’s sons had arrived at the hospital to sit with their mother he had slipped away for a spell to see Donovan. He wanted very much to know what had happened, what they’d been doing round the back of the gasworks, what Donovan had seen before the car sent him reeling. But Donovan was unconscious. The doctor said he was in no danger, he’d wake up in the next few hours. But while Shapiro was there all he did was mumble and make loose, uncoordinated pawing gestures at his bandaged head.

  Then a nurse came to say he was wanted in the intensive care unit and a woman still in theatre greens broke the news that they’d lost DI Clarke. They’d done all they could but realistically his injuries were too great for him to recover. Shapiro took Marion and the boys home, and stayed as long as he was needed, and when he returned to the hospital Donovan was awake and already knew about Clarke.

  Shapiro rather regretted that. He had not been looking forward to the job but Clarke had been a copper and Donovan was a copper and he should have heard it from another copper not a doctor who, however well-meaning, could not understand the kind of relationships forged on the streets where men routinely saved one another’s skin. In two years at the sharp end Clarke must have owed his life to Donovan, and Donovan his to Clarke, perhaps several times over.

  Shapiro said, ‘I don’t suppose.…’ and stopped.

  Donovan looked at him, the dark eyes haunted. ‘What?’ The Irish accent was always more pronounced when he was tired. Today he sounded as if he had just got off a potato boat.

  ‘That anything more’s come back.’

  Bitter and somehow ashamed, Donovan’s gaze licked his face before returning once more to the middle distance. ‘There is nothing more. I told you. Do you think I’m lying?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Shapiro. ‘But a bad concussion can leave your memory disjointed for a while. If you keep going over it, sooner or later you may find something else. You’re a detective, for God’s sake, you know that.’

  Donovan nodded. He went through it again. There was nothing new. It was told in a few sentences. He spoke the words as if they tasted bad. ‘We went on foot from the railway depot. I watched our backs: nobody followed us. We went under the viaduct and suddenly there was a car behind us, headlights full on, coming fast. I don’t know what make: light coloured, but you know that from the paint chips.’ He meant the ones picked out of Clarke’s flesh. ‘Anyway, it’s no help: it’d be stolen specially for the occasion.’ Shapiro said nothing.

  ‘We were in close to the wall, there was plenty of room for him to pass. But he hit us. Then he stopped the car and walked back. I didn’t see his face, just the movement against the tail-lights. He walked to where DI Clarke was lying. Then he stood over me for a couple of seconds, then he went back to the car. The reversing lights came on. Then another vehicle came into the tunnel behind us and he drove off. Then I passed out.’

  Shapiro nodded. The first time he’d heard this Donovan had been shaking, whether from shock or fear or fury he couldn’t tell. ‘I know you couldn’t move. But when the man was standing over you, what could you see?’

  ‘Striped trousers, leather shoes, knee-length coat. Smart.’

  Still nothing new. ‘What did he say?’

  Donovan frowned. ‘He said something? I don’t remember.’

  Shapiro shrugged. ‘It’s likely he said something. If it was an accident he’d be shocked, that can make people babble. And if you’re right and it wasn’t an accident he maybe wanted to crow a little. For his own satisfaction, you know? He couldn’t know you were still conscious. He probably thought you were both as good as dead.’

  The edge on Donovan’s voice sharpened. ‘He didn’t think I was dead. He thought he had to run over me again to be sure.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ allowed Shapiro. ‘Or maybe he hit reverse when he wanted second gear. Have you never done that?’ Perhaps Donovan never had. ‘Well, I have. Without being in shock.’

  Donovan was still frowning, his brows drawn together under the rather long black hair that the wind was whipping in his face. The autumn day was swinging between Indian summer and bleak midwinter depending on whether the sun was breaking the clouds. ‘He could have said something,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t know. He stood over me and—’ Then his face cleared, surprise smoothing the skin. He had thought there was nothing more to remember but there was. ‘He rolled me over with his foot. And he said … And he said …’ But it wouldn’t come.

  Shapiro caught his breath. ‘He kicked you?’

  ‘No, not really. I was on my face, and he stuck his toe under my shoulder to turn me over.’

  ‘And he said something?’

  Donovan’s profile was hatchet-sharp against the scurrying clouds. There would be no more sun that day. He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘Yes, I think so. I don’t know what he said. But I can – you know – hear
his voice almost. I just can’t get a grip on it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Shapiro. ‘Just give it some thought. If it’s in there it can be got out. It may not help, but you never know. Whoever he was, whether it was an accident or not, I want this man. I don’t like burying my officers, and I particularly don’t like doing it while those responsible are still at large.’

  Donovan said, ‘Has anyone been to see—?’ and Shapiro cut him off in mid-sentence. That was not a matter he wanted Donovan taking an interest in.

  ‘Yes,’ he said shortly, ‘I have. He has an alibi.’

  Donovan’s eyes kindled. ‘Of course he’s got an alibi. He’d have that fixed up first! You can’t believe a word he says. He knew we were on to him, there’s nobody in this town had a better reason for turning Alan Clarke into hamburger!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ snapped Shapiro. More gently he added, ‘I do know the background, Sergeant. I know the kind of man he is: he’s a liar and a thug, and I’m not going to rule him out of the enquiry just because he throws up his hands in well-feigned horror. But I’m not going to try and fit him up either. Before I charge him I want some evidence, because if you’re wrong and this was just a happy accident for him I could end up losing both of them: the one through trying to frame him for the wrong crime, the other – the driver – through not looking for him at all. Trust me, Donovan: I’ve been in this business a long time, I know how to do it.’

  He looked at his watch then and it was time to make his appearance at the Clarke house. ‘Look, I have to go now. And you should be at home. Can I drop you?’

  Donovan had been leaning, string-thin, against one of the young trees with his hands fisted deep in his pockets. Now he pushed himself upright and shook his head. ‘I’ve got the bike outside.’

  Shapiro shuddered. ‘Do as I say. See if you can coax up any kind of memory – what he said, something about how he looked – from that half-minute before you passed out. Call me if you think of anything. Otherwise, try and get some rest.’