by Peter Helton
Austin had appeared behind him. He had taken one look at the carnage and since then studiously avoided the corpse. He felt guilty now, seeing what time the inspector took. But as far as he could tell, what had happened here was quite obvious.
Paramedics had crawled all over the front and back of the car, their uniforms more red than green when they finally gave up, no doubt giving Forensics a headache. They had found the shredded remains of a can of lager that had contained the device. The smell was gross. What was Liam studying so closely? ‘Booby-trapped beer can. Found anything else?’
McLusky broke off his vigil. Failure is what he had seen. The picture of the dead man had imprinted itself on his retina. Perhaps they should allow the press in, allow the TV cameras close and make them transmit this on the news in fine detail. Could the bomber really have wanted this? Would the bomber look at this and think he had done well? Would he be shocked? Or was he too weird, too far gone to care? Perhaps it was a stupid question. People had been blowing each other up quite happily ever since explosives were invented. ‘Has Denkhaus named a crime scene coordinator?’
‘Yeah, me.’
‘Right. No, I didn’t see anything special. Just brewing up a good head of resentment. So, tell me about it.’
‘Victim is a Frank Dudden, a small trader at St Nick’s Market, sells T-shirts with your own designs printed on them, that kind of thing. Got thrown out of the pub because he could hardly stand up straight. We have an eyewitness for what happened next. The old boy who lives in … number fourteen, across there.’ He indicated the little grey house across the street where every window was lit up. ‘A Mr Belling. He keeps a diary of all the nuisance in his street so he can complain to the council about it. He heard shouting and came to the window. Saw the whole thing. ‘
‘Right, let’s talk to him.’
‘He’s already given us a statement. He saw the can of –’
‘I want to hear it myself.’ He marched off and Austin followed in his wake.
They found the front door ajar. McLusky announced himself. ‘Hello, police. Can we come in?’
A man appeared at the end of the corridor. ‘Oh yes, in here, if you will.’
They stepped into the brightly lit hall and squeezed past an electric bicycle to get to the back. The witness was at home to visitors in his kitchen. Mr Belling was a small wiry man in his late sixties. He wore a thin steel-grey sweater over a pink shirt and thin grey tie. His wrists were encircled by two wristwatches, one on each side.
PC Purkis was enjoying a mug of tea at the kitchen table and Mr Belling was glad of the policewoman’s company. The thing had been quite a surprise. He also hadn’t enjoyed this much attention since he broke his collarbone five years ago. And here were more people coming.
McLusky showed his ID and introduced Austin. They gratefully accepted the offer of refreshments.
Belling fussed over the tea for the newcomers and when everyone was settled around the table McLusky invited him to repeat what he had seen. Belling made himself comfortable on his chair. His was the one with the cushion. McLusky suspected that Mr Belling spent many hours sitting on that cushion, writing letters to the council in blue biro.
Belling took a sip of tea first. ‘I had of course spotted the tin of lager on top of the car earlier but I had assumed it to be empty. These days people chuck their rubbish wherever they like. For instance, you are only supposed to put your bin bags out on a Tuesday but sure enough every week the people in number twenty …’
McLusky drank his tea and let the man get there in his own time. It was dry and warm in here.
‘It was the shouting that made me look out this time. I was upstairs so I could clearly see him standing outside the pub, shouting. Well, I say standing but he was swaying. You could tell he was drunk, he had that leery kind of voice they get. Then he urinated right there outside the pub, between the cars, that’s usually a good indication of drunkenness, I find. Then off he went, nearly fell over twice before he made it to the car. I couldn’t read the number plate, even with my binoculars, because of the angle. But I was going to call the police right away if he drove off, because he was obviously dangerously over the limit. He picked up the tin from the roof and I thought he was going to throw it away, which would have been typical of his kind, but he took it with him when he got in. I was waiting for him to start the engine but instead the car just exploded. Just like that. Bang. Except it didn’t sound at all like it does on the radio, it sounded much nastier. All the windows blew out, stuff all over the place. It rattled my window and set off every damn car alarm in the neighbourhood. I called for an ambulance straight away, of course.’
McLusky thought he knew the answer but asked the question anyway. ‘What did you do after that?’
‘Well, I went back to the window, of course, to see what would happen next.’
‘You didn’t go outside to see if you could offer any assistance?’
‘Go outside? A bomb had just gone off! I was hardly going to go where I could be blown up. Everyone in the street had to have heard it, some of them would go, no need for me to go outside.’
‘Quite. Let’s go back a little. You said you had noticed the can of beer on the car roof earlier. How much earlier?’
‘Oh, now let me have a look in my journal. I keep a journal, you know, of all the happenings around here. You’d be surprised what goes on. It’s upstairs, I’ll fetch it down.’ Belling disappeared.
The three police officers exchanged glances. Austin nodded ironically. ‘Very organized.’
PC Purkis agreed in a low voice. ‘Everything in this house is very proper and in its rightful place.’
McLusky looked around the kitchen. Everything was. Immaculately straight, spotlessly clean, nightmarishly tidy and neon-lit. He already knew the old man would tell him to within two decimal points what happened when. CCTV had nothing on Mr Belling.
He returned with a brightly coloured child’s exercise book. ‘Here, you see, I did note it down. I came to the window because number seventeen were having a fresh row, shouting at the top of their lungs as usual, but the tin wasn’t there then. Then I came back to the window because the motorized skateboard was coming through again with that awful two-stroke noise.’
McLusky perked up. ‘Motorized skateboard?’
‘Yes, trailing blue smoke too, as if there wasn’t enough pollution in this city, now they have to fit engines to their skateboards.’
‘Do you think you could describe the skateboarder for us, Mr Belling?’
Mr Belling could. ‘One of those chaps who dress like a child even though they are clearly over thirty. Spiky hair, you’d think they’d wear a helmet, wouldn’t you, but I suspect that would spoil the image. He does have gloves and knee protectors. A red scarf and sunglasses, even when there is no sun, of course. Yes. Now … 19.04 p.m., that’s when I noticed the tin. And the explosion occurred at 20.15 exactly.’
It was exactly midnight when McLusky left Albany Road by taxi. The rain had stopped but the snakes of traffic hadn’t. Hordes of young people, wearing surprisingly little considering the weather, were pressing through the narrow streets and alleys of the Old Town, shouting, some staggering, some drinking from cans and bottles. He spotted two teenage boys pissing side by side against a shop window, talking happily while the urine sloshed around their trainers. Flying insults, laughter, angry argument, excited howls. Twice the cab stopped for drunks swaying across the street, the driver muttering under his breath but keeping his opinions to himself, for which McLusky was grateful.
Reams of statements had been taken during house-to-house inquiries and from the landlord and patrons of the George and Dragon. McLusky had spoken to the landlord himself. The man was visibly shaken by the death of Frank Dudden, who had been a regular. He had thrown him out that night ‘for his own good’ as he had believed. Now he felt that somehow he had sent him to his death and felt responsible. He had neither heard nor seen a motorized skateboarder, ‘not today, not ever
’. Not that kind of pub, he had assured him.
Belling’s description matched exactly those of the residents of Berkeley Square and Charlotte Street who had been annoyed by a skateboarder prior to the first bomb in Brandon Hill. Could it be a coincidence? McLusky didn’t like coincidences.
Only two other residents in the immediate area remembered the skateboarder but neither had seen or heard him recently. The proliferation of underpowered scooters howling up and down the streets probably meant that the sound was too unexceptional to be noticed around there.
A description had now been circulated force-wide and he was sure they would pick him up eventually. Was he the bomber? He’d certainly like a chance to ask him.
If the skateboarder was connected to the bombs then he wanted to be caught – why else make yourself conspicuous? – and McLusky would oblige. And when he caught up with the bastard he’d better be wearing his knee-pads.
Chapter Eight
McLusky had overruled Austin’s decision to set up an incident room near the scene of the murder. Austin had tried to argue but McLusky was adamant. ‘This won’t be the last. The devices are going off at such close intervals we’ll still be stuck out here in Knowle West when the next one blows.’
Secretly Austin had been relieved. There would have been very few facilities out there and setting up at Albany Road was always far easier and quicker. And closer to the canteen.
McLusky had been impressed by the speed with which things had materialized – tables, chairs, phones, terminals, printers, monitors, civilian IT staff, fax and kettle. It couldn’t really be called ‘well rehearsed’. The murder rate in the city was so high rehearsal was unnecessary. It was now simply routine.
This morning, as McLusky looked at the civilians and officers talking on phones or clacking away on grey, battered keyboards, he felt panic beginning to bubble on the floor of his stomach. But why? What was different this time? Precisely nothing apart from the fact that the victim had died. It would be no easier or harder getting a lead. Strikingly different was the effect the bomb had had on the media. The press was making much of beer, booze and bomb alliteration. The unusual packaging of the bombs had attracted the national press too. Everyday items like powder compacts and cans of lager were not supposed to explode. There was much speculation about the choice of item. The beer can was surely aimed at drunks and the powder compact at the vain. Yet the more intelligent writers did spot what McLusky had said from the start, that anyone might have picked the items up and become a victim. That didn’t mean of course that there was no connection in the mind of the maniac behind the bombings.
He noticed several of the computer operators sit up straighter which meant Superintendent Denkhaus had once more appeared in the open door behind him. A desk facing away from the door had been a bad choice. The super appeared at his elbow and without comment added another national paper to the pile already there. He managed to see Deadly Drink in the headline before Denkhaus leant a fleshy hand on it and bent close to him. ‘I’m giving a press conference at half eleven. Have you got any pearls for me that I can throw before the lions or are you sending me out there naked?’
A moment of metaphorical bafflement made McLusky hesitant. ‘Ehm, no. I mean, nothing new since we last spoke, super. We have the skateboarder near two of the incidents but I’d rather you didn’t use him to protect your modesty. So to speak. Just … following your metaphor, sir. I don’t want him to know we are looking for him. He can easily unspike his hair and float the skateboard down the river.’
Denkhaus shrugged heavily. ‘On the other hand someone must know who he is. If your friend or neighbour rode a skateboard with an engine on it you would know about it. We could be looking at an early arrest …’
‘I doubt it, sir. The man’s a loner. He makes bombs, so he’s unlikely to sit on the pub quiz team. He’s too busy hating someone, something. His neighbours might have no idea he’s got a motorized skateboard. I imagine he takes it in the back of his car. He drives to a car park, puts on the gear and gets on the skateboard. Then off he goes. The same in reverse. If he has a garage his neighbours might never know.’
‘Someone will have seen him take the thing out and start it up.’
‘Sure. It’s what I’m hoping but I don’t want to spook him. As long as he’s using the skateboard he’s conspicuous. I’ll find him.’
Denkhaus didn’t like the way McLusky said, ‘I’ll find him.’ Police work was team work. He knew the McLusky type. They thought they’d invented detective work, thought that it was all down to them and that they could bend the rules. Cocky guys full of ‘I’ when the going was good. When it all came to nothing it was back to the collective ‘we’. I succeed, we fail. ‘Do you really think he could be our man?’
‘He’s all we’ve got at the moment.’
‘You were quite sure about letting Colin Keale go. You don’t want to pull him in again, apply a bit more pressure?’
‘Not until we’ve exhausted everything else. Not until I’m getting desperate.’
‘Don’t worry, McLusky, I’ll tell you when you’re getting desperate.’ Denkhaus straightened up and squinted at the window. Rain clouds hung low over the city. ‘I hate going out there fielding questions without having anything positive to feed them. There’s no progress on the muggings and no progress on the bomber. All the press are ever looking for is incompetence or negligence. They’re forever trying to blame us for what’s happening out there. In fact what gives the media the biggest hard-on is resignations, hounding someone until they are forced to resign. Makes them feel their crummy little lives are worth living. I’m already getting my ears chewed from upstairs about this. They’re afraid the bomber might cause a panic. If people start panicking then we really aren’t doing our job properly. What’s happened to the spirit of the blitz? All it takes is one little …’
The phone on the desk rang. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He answered it. It was Lynn Tiery, the superintendent’s secretary. She had the Assistant Chief Constable’s office on the line for Superintendent Denkhaus. ‘It’s the ACC for you.’
Denkhaus suppressed a groan. ‘I’ll take it in my office. Keep me informed. About every detail. Whether there’s progress or not.’
When Denkhaus was out of earshot the civilian computer operator at the next desk looked up from the lists on his screen. ‘No pressure then.’
‘Not yet. Is it me or is it bloody freezing in here?’
A cheerful chorus answered his question. ‘It’s bloody freezing in here.’
‘Can we do anything about that?’
‘Nope. The heating shuts down automatically on this day every year irrespective of the actual temperature. Centrally managed. It would probably take an Act of Parliament to get it changed.’
‘Marvellous.’ If he had to be cold he’d rather be cold out there where he could do something useful. Footage from the car park where the compact was left was still being sifted. A check on all identified vehicles was being done. It would take time to cross-check if any of the registered owners had previous and those would end up on the top of the list to be interviewed about their movements. Endless man-hours. Of course it had to be done but McLusky was almost certain it was a waste of time. Unfortunately he had nothing rational to base this conviction on so could do little about it. What he could do was get out of here.
Damp humanity crowded the lobby. An entire minibus-load of day-trippers were reporting all their possessions stolen, including their bus. A couple of pale, thin-haired teenage boys were being processed, the evidence of their thieving in a clear plastic bag on the desk: CDs and DVDs. They wore nothing more than jeans, T-shirts and trainers and looked like they’d swum there. The rain appeared to do little to dampen the public’s enthusiasm for mayhem. Theft, shoplifting, burglary and naturally all crime connected to drugs continued unabated. Domestic violence rose slightly. Only the figures for indecent exposure were significantly depressed by cold, wet weather.
McLusky turned on the
windscreen wipers of the Polo. They were useless. It was even colder in the car. The lack of heating meant he had to drive with the window half open to stop the windscreen fogging up completely. He kept wiping a patch so he could peer through. The route to Forthbank Industrial Park in the east forced him to battle through some of the worst traffic snarls in the city. Wedged between two articulated lorries in his underpowered car and barely able to see through the spray kicked up by other vehicles he darkly pondered his transport problems. When the sign to the industrial park appeared out of the gloom he gratefully pulled off the busy A road and through the open gates. Among a monkey puzzle of signposts McLusky found what he was looking for.
The place looked like an enormous upturned mushroom punnet, appearing to have practically no windows, and advertised itself with three-foot comic-strip lettering above the entrance: Blackrock Sports Park. He was about to lock his car when he changed his mind, checked that the glove box was empty and left the Polo unlocked.
In the lobby he showed his ID to the man behind the counter. The receptionist looked about fourteen. ‘Are you looking for someone?’
‘Could be. This is a skateboard arena, right?’
‘Skateboarding and rock climbing.’
‘Do you ever get people with motorized skateboards here?’
The kid laughed. ‘No fear. Total no-no. Anyway, they’re crap.’