by Jo Bannister
He watched Donovan walk away, stiff and slow, his thin shoulders hunched in the black leather jacket, his head down, no sign of the restless energy that had irritated Shapiro so often in the past. Two thoughts competed for his attention. One was that Donovan didn’t look well enough to ride a bus, never mind a 750cc motorcycle.
And the other was that while anyone might have an accident, and almost anyone might panic and hurry away, there was a degree of deliberation about turning an injured man over with your foot that gave a sort of credence to Donovan’s conspiracy theory, after all.
Chapter Two
Mr Wilks claimed there was a thief in the nursing home who had stolen his left slipper. Mr Prescott and Mr Fields agreed: Mr Prescott’s right slipper had disappeared, as had the twelve-foot rock python which Mr Fields had left watching Neighbours on the dayroom television. Sister Page faced the challenge of solving the crimes before she left for the weekend.
The python problem was readily disposed of. There was no snake; or rather, though it was perfectly real to Mr Fields it remained obstinately invisible to everyone else. Kerry Page asked gently if Mr Fields had thought to look in the bathroom; and when she saw him a minute later there was a seraphic smile on his well-scrubbed face and she supposed the python was back where he wanted it. Mr Fields spent his boyhood in India and had kept snakes there. Now he was over eighty and living in a geriatric home. His wife was dead and his children lived at the far end of the country; when they did manage to visit half the time he did not recognize them. So it was to those sunny far-off days he turned for respite from the dreariness of old age. The imagined python was his security blanket.
The Great Slipper Theft did not detain her much longer. She looked in Mr Wilks’locker, then in Mr Prescott’s. She gave Mr Prescott the slippers she found there and he, rather shame-facedly, gave the slipper off his left foot to Mr Wilks. She wished them a pleasant weekend and said she’d see them on Monday.
In the office she completed her paperwork before handing over to Sister Kim. But there was still no sign of the blue and silver 4x4 in the car park so she settled on the edge of the desk for a bit of a gossip while she waited.
‘Where are you going this weekend?’ asked Sister Kim. Kerry Page had arranged to leave early; she assumed there was some reason.
‘Oh, only down to the cottage,’ said Kerry. ‘But David said he’d be finished by three o’clock so we thought we’d make an early start and miss the traffic.’
‘Traffic?’ exclaimed the Chinese nurse. ‘I didn’t think they had roads down there.’
‘I meant, getting out of town,’ smiled Kerry. Actually there was a perfectly good road to the cottage. The 4x4 was an affectation.
‘One day, when I’m old and rich and married to a jet-setter,’ sighed Kim, ‘I shall have a cottage in the country. In the mean time I’m trying to persuade my landlord that hot running water is not a passing fad.’
Kerry grinned. She had visited her colleague’s flat often enough to know it was perfectly comfortable. ‘I keep telling you, David is not a jet-setter. He flies a plane for a living. It’s a very small plane. It’ll take three passengers if they’re good friends. Cabin service consists of one packet of crisps each and a supply of paper bags.’
Kim sniffed. ‘If my husband was a professional pilot I’d weekend in Monte Carlo.’
A soft-throated rumble reached them from the car park where the blue and silver car was turning under the trees. Kerry stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder. Then she looked at the Chinese nurse with a serious expression and a twinkle in her eye. ‘If your husband was an aerial taxi-driver, and you’d been married less than two years, and he was younger than you and hadn’t yet got over the thrill of being able to stay up all night without his mother getting on his case, you’d want to spend the weekends somewhere a lot closer than Monte Carlo.’
Brian Graham stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly on his heel and shaking his head. It had been described to him as a studio flat but Graham had been at teacher-training college: he knew a bed-sit when he saw one. ‘You need more space than this just to empty your briefcase.’
‘I shan’t be working here. I shall be sleeping here. There’s the bed, there’s the wardrobe, there’s the cooker, and the bathroom’s through there. It’s all I need. I shan’t be here long.’
‘How long?’
‘I told you, I don’t know,’ said Liz. ‘A fortnight, maybe a month. Until they get themselves organized. It’s a big blow to a small division, losing a DI and having a detective sergeant put out of action in the same incident. All I’m doing is filling in till they can make a permanent appointment.’
Graham sniffed. ‘It sounds a bit irregular to me.’
Liz smiled at his petulance. It wasn’t like him, She thought with a warm glow of satisfaction that he was missing her already. ‘It is irregular. At least, the way it was arranged was. But I’ve known Frank Shapiro for ten years, he’s been more help to me than anyone else in the Force, it really isn’t asking too much for me to step in and help him now. It’s not as if I’ll be missed. There are DIs coming out of the woodwork at Headquarters but Alan Clarke was the only one Frank had. I can put up with’ – lacking a word for it she waved a hand round the comfortless room – ‘for a month if it’ll help him out.’
‘But you’ll be home weekends?’ Inflected as a question, it was actually a statement of intent.
Liz sat on the bed beside him and linked her arm through his. She was a tall, good-looking woman with a lot of fair hair that for work she wore in a French pleat but which at present hung down her back in a thick girlish plait. ‘Exigencies of service permitting’ – it was the formula which said that effectively police officers were on duty any time they were needed – ‘I’ll be home at the weekends.’ Her smile turned impish round the corners. ‘If not, you can always come up here on Saturdays for a bit of how’s-your-father. You could sleep on the sofa.’
Graham looked at it. It was a typical bed-sit settee, two-seater if one was anorexic, an adequate put-you-up for a dwarf. Graham was six feet tall. He gave Liz a censorious frown. ‘What, and miss the Middle School soccer friendly?’
Graham unpacked her things while she changed, then she drove him to catch his train – they’d left his car at their local halt – and went on to the police station. She’d promised to let Shapiro know when she arrived. She wasn’t sure if she’d find him in his office on a Saturday but someone would give her a cup of tea and show her round.
Shapiro was not only in his office, he’d been watching for her. The desk sergeant showed her up but Shapiro met her on the stairs. His eyes were warm with welcome. ‘Liz. I’m glad you’re here.’
They had known each other for more than ten years. In another division, almost it felt in another life, she had served as DS to Shapiro’s DI. He was the first to treat her as a police officer rather than a police woman. Everyone else complimented her on making sergeant not in Community Relations or Traffic Branch but in the male-dominated world of CID, but Shapiro encouraged her to take her inspector’s exams, and to take them again when she was initially denied the promotion. He wanted her to show results that would shame the board into giving her her due. He knew she was a good detective: if the police force could not recognize a good detective when it saw one it wasn’t as good a police force as it ought to be.
Liz blossomed under his tutelage but there were inevitable disappointments and she could not always swallow them cheerfully. ‘It’s hard,’ she’d complained wearily to him one day.
‘You think being a woman detective is hard?’ Shapiro had said. ‘You try being a Jewish detective.’
Now the Jewish detective was a chief inspector and the woman detective was an inspector, and but for the precise circumstances they would have been delighted to be working together again. As it was they settled for a warm handshake as Shapiro showed her to his office.
She was sensitive to the fact that the world had moved on since they’d la
st worked together: she waited for an invitation before sitting down. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry about Alan Clarke. He was a good man, he’ll be missed. Do you know yet what happened?’
Shapiro gave a distracted little shrug. He’d thought of nothing else for four days and three nights. There were blue rings under his eyes and tiredness was grained into his skin. Today for the first time Liz got a glimpse of how he would look when he was old.
He said, ‘He was, yes. And no, I’ve no more idea why he died than I had on Wednesday morning. I still can’t say whether it was an accident or murder.’
Shapiro’s secretary brought them some coffee.
‘Wasn’t there a witness?’ Liz asked.
‘Yes and no,’ sighed Shapiro. ‘Alan’s sergeant was with him, it was his snout they were meeting. But the lad was hit too – head injury, he was unconscious six hours. He’s told me what he thinks he remembers but it’s hard to know how accurate his memory is and also whether there’s more stuff locked up in it than he can get at. There may be: he came up with something yesterday that he hadn’t remembered before. If it was how he thinks—’ He shrugged, spooned sugar into his coffee.
‘What?’
‘Donovan thinks it was deliberate – murder. That may be colouring his recollection. But he thinks the man who hit them stopped the car, walked back to check them, and when he saw that Donovan wasn’t badly hurt returned to his car to have another go at him. It was only the lights of an oncoming vehicle that made him change his mind. If it did happen anything like that we’re not dealing with an ordinary hit-and-run.’
‘Donovan,’ said Liz, thoughtfully. ‘Haven’t I heard of him?’
‘Probably. Oh, there’s not a lot wrong with Donovan. Normally, I mean. He’s a bit keen sometimes, and sometimes he’s a bit unconventional, but he’s a better copper than most people give him credit for.’ Shapiro scowled then, wrinkling his nose as if he’d bitten into a lemon. ‘Actually, Liz, there’s something you can do for me. As soon as he’s half-way fit Donovan’s going to come in here wanting to be in on the investigation. I can’t use him but I’d rather not have to fight him off. Can you keep him busy? I want to run this enquiry but you’ll have Alan’s caseload to cope with plus anything new that comes up. Even if we get a quiet week or two you’ll still be short-handed. I mean to get to the bottom of what happened under the viaduct, and I’ll need most of the department to do it. Donovan could be useful to you. If—’
‘If?’
‘If you can get him to concentrate on his job instead of trying to do mine.’
He was at the end of his strength and still he was running. He couldn’t feel the road under his feet. All he could feel was the great wet patch on the front of his shirt that was cold against his skin with the chill of the autumn night. He no longer knew where he was running, only what he was running from.
It was a clear, almost frosty night brilliant with moonshine so that although the road was not lit he could see where he was going. Further back, stumbling among the trees, he had fallen again and again: there was leaf-mould in his hair and sticking to his shirt. Remotely, in some portion of his brain where he could still think coolly, he supposed that was why no one would stop for him. Lurching along the road in his shirt-sleeves, with a great patch of wet blood on his chest, he must have looked like an axe murderer.
The water-meadows were a local beauty spot; this road was busy on sunny Sundays in summer. At two in the morning in mid-October it was all but deserted. He must have run a mile from where they parked the car but only two vehicles had passed him, one in each direction. Too much time was passing. He needed help.
He was about ready to drop when more headlights slashed round a bend at him. Not a car; higher, further apart, maybe a lorry. Little old ladies out driving alone could be forgiven for taking one look at him and pumping the accelerator but lorry drivers should be made of sterner stuff. This could be his last chance: any time now exhaustion would sweep the legs from under him and roll him in the gutter and it would be morning before anyone found him.
It was a lorry and it wasn’t wasting time: he could hear the big diesel bearing down on him. Desperation made him reckless. Shielding his eyes against the light with one hand he stumbled into its path, flagging it down. A long hollow siren of a horn warned him off and the lights moved into the far lane to pass him.
The driver must have cracked muscles to make it swerve like that, like a fast snake coiling across the road. The black bulk of the load swayed against the diamond-dusted sky as the wheels went one way and the weight the other. He watched it swerve and sway, and knew it could not stop before it reached him.
The front mudguard missed him by inches but the slipstream hit him a blow like a sledgehammer, pitched him off his feet and threw him down hard on the shoulder of the road. He rolled twice then hit the verge and lay still, face down, his limbs splayed like those of a rag doll.
Ray Bonnet the lorry driver had had a bastard of a day and it didn’t look like getting better even now it was tomorrow. He’d had a breakdown, he was in trouble with his hours, now he’d run down some lunatic clog-dancing his way home from the local pub. It wasn’t his fault. All he’d seen was the white shirt lurching across the dark road in front of him, spinning into the gutter behind. But it was scant comfort. He thought he’d killed someone.
As soon as he could he stopped the lorry and turned on the hazard lights. Snatching his torch he dropped to the ground and ran heavily back to where the flash of white had gone spinning in his mirror.
When he found the body spread-eagled by the side of the road, Bonnet looked for some moments and did not touch it. He was only a youngster: in his mid-twenties perhaps, his face still a boy’s face, smooth and unweathered. There was a graze and a smear of road dirt on his cheek. As Bonnet leaned over him he opened his eye. The pupil shrank in the light of the torch, leaving a great blank blind-looking blue-grey iris. His lips moved.
Bonnet leaned closer. ‘What’s that, son?’
The young man seemed more stunned than injured. He got his hands under him, levering his face off the ground, and Bonnet gently eased him on to his side. As he twisted the great gory splash on the front of his shirt came into view.
The young man blinked his eyes into focus and fixed them on Bonnet’s face. His voice was quiet and frail, breathy with effort but absolutely distinct, as if all his energies were directed into making it so, as if conveying this message was now the most important thing in his world and easily worth risking his life for. ‘You have to help me. My name is David Page, and somebody’s shot my wife.’
Chapter Three
Liz’s first reaction was to wonder why Page had run for help, up a deserted road miles from anywhere in the middle of the night, leaving a perfectly good car parked among the trees overlooking the water-meadows. When she saw inside she understood.
The bloody ruin that had been Kerry Page was in the driving seat. Her husband could have moved the body, and if there’d been any chance of saving her presumably he’d have done so and too bad if it complicated matters for the police. But Kerry had been hit at close range by a shot-gun and the blast had taken her full in the face. All that was left of her above the waist was bloody garbage: he got her blood down his front when it toppled sideways against him. Moving her from the driving seat would have taken a strong stomach.
When Liz walked towards the blue and silver car one of the young constables who was having trouble holding on to his supper moved to intercept her. But Shapiro put a weary hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s all right, son, she’s one of us.’
His face was grim, his greeting apologetic. ‘Talk about being thrown in at the deep end! It’s not always like this, you know. People in Castlemere do occasionally find something to do of an evening besides killing one another.’
Partly it was the shock talking. He had seen more and messier bodies than most men but the sight had never lost its power to appall him. Facetiousness was a defence.
Liz twitch
ed a little smile and nodded. There were lights set up round the car. She tilted her head towards it. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’
A thinness in Shapiro’s voice warned her what to expect. ‘It’s a bit of a shocker. We’ve designated that bush over there as a throw-up zone.’
In fact she did not find devastation on this scale as horrific as lesser injuries to living flesh. There was no question of Kerry Page having survived, even momentarily, the blast that took her face away. There was no need to wonder how much she had known, how bad the pain had been and how long it had lasted. One moment she was alive and well, the next dead meat. She was beyond reach of their help, beyond need of their sympathy. All she asked of them now was to find her killer.
The forensic pathologist was already on the scene, immediately identifiable by his composure amid the shambles. The police worked in the same surroundings, and many of them had seen things which would have been kept decently out of sight at a family butcher’s, but they lacked this easy familiarity with the biological basics. To a policeman, a person was a person until another person tore the back off the watch to reveal the surprising mechanism. To a pathologist, a person was a cardiovascular system governed by a nervous system hung on a skeleton for mobility, and the surprise was that this intricate mechanism thought of itself as a unique individual.
The pathologist was a tall, rather plump man with ginger hair. He had been in bed when the police called: Liz glimpsed pyjama stripes in the neck of his thick sweater. Soon he would be going back to bed because he was almost finished here. Jars and envelopes, carefully labelled, ranged across the bonnet of the car. The pathologist straightened up with a sigh, absently wiping blood off his tweezers with his handkerchief.
Shapiro introduced them. The pathologist’s name was Crowe.