by Peter Helton
Perhaps he had better talk to a grown-up. ‘I see. Who runs this place?’
‘Spike.’
‘Spike who?’
‘I don’t know, just Spike.’ His tone suggested this was an unreasonable question.
‘Is he in? Can I talk to him?’
‘Sure, he’s on the course. Through those doors and then the next. You can’t miss him, no one else wears yellow after all.’
‘Why’s that?’ McLusky suspected some arcane rule of skateboarding.
‘Do you wear yellow much, inspector?’
He thought the kid might have a point. By the next set of double doors a sign instructed him to take off his street shoes before entering the echoing hall and he complied, carrying his shoes and feeling slightly ridiculous. The arena was an artificial landscape of ramps and pipes and rails, flights of steps and curves. It was a big place. He wouldn’t have called it busy but it still surprised him how many people had time and money to skate around here on a weekday.
A spiky-haired man in what looked like a yellow romper suit made from shiny synthetics was chatting to a diminutive girl. When he spotted the unlikely-looking intruder he came rolling over, flipping up his board as he stopped in an automatic gesture. ‘Help you?’
‘McLusky, CID. I’ve already been told by your receptionist, no motorized skateboards here.’
‘Certainly not. Why d’you ask? Someone making a nuisance of themselves?’
The place echoed to the sound of rubber wheels and grinding boards and the rain drumming on the giant roof. ‘I’m looking for someone who rides one, he could be a witness. Spiked hair, skinny, same age as you perhaps, mid-to-late thirties. Wears denims, scarf, shades. He rides a skateboard with a little two-stroke engine and wire control.’
‘Yup. It’s for idiots. A gimmick. You won’t find anyone using them here, that’s for sure.’
‘What, because of the noise or the pollution?’
‘Nah, that’s not the point. It’s like bicycles and motorbikes, right? It just don’t mix. And you can’t really do a thing with ’em.’
‘So what do people do in here?’
‘Well, as you can see, we’ve got the lot. You don’t skate, I take it?’
‘You’re very astute.’
‘You’d be surprised. We get all sorts here. Well, there’s basically two types of skating, there’s street skating and ramp skating. In street skating you could for instance jump up on a bus-stop seat or suchlike and do grinds and board slides, tail grinds and stuff. In half-pipe skating you go up and down the ramp and do tricks on the ledge. Over here we’ve got a couple of half-pipes, a jump ramp …’
The man got into the swing of it and McLusky let him carry on without really taking in much. Spike seemed to talk in a different language and each sentence contained at least three words that appeared to be English but which McLusky had never heard before.
At the opposite end of the hall a skater coasted quietly towards the exit. He didn’t like the look of that man who had just come in. He had seen the suit show some kind of ID and somehow he didn’t look like a health-and-safety guy. It might have nothing to do with him but he’d make himself scarce anyway. As he slipped through the doors while the copper’s back was turned he thought that perhaps it was just as well they made you wear helmets in here. Spiky hair was too conspicuous. He’d change it, slick it back from now on. Not bothering to shower and change, he just cleared the things from the locker and went straight to his van. He stowed his gear in the back, next to his brand new motorized board, still in its box. Electric, rechargeable, much quieter and even faster than the two-stroke one. And environmentally much more sound, mustn’t forget that, of course. Apparently it had a range big enough to get you right across the city. He saw himself skating silently, magically, across town. Stealthboard. But first it needed to be charged. Then he could use it tomorrow night.
The Polo was still there. Ah well, give it time. Somehow the musty interior managed to feel colder than the outside. What McLusky had learned from Spike seemed to fit with what he himself thought of the bomber. A motorized skateboard was regarded as uncool and according to Spike you ‘couldn’t do a thing with it’. No tricks. Whoever the skater was he wouldn’t be hanging out with kids at the half-pipes in the park. Motorized skateboards were for nerds and dweebs. For loners. Spike had in fact suggested that anyone using one might be more interested in fiddling with small engines than skating. Someone with engineering skills.
While he fought his way back towards the centre through lunchtime traffic the rain began to fall more slowly and then abruptly stopped as the sun broke through the clouds. After weeks of relentless rain and monochrome dreariness the brightness of the light seemed Mediterranean in its intensity. Colour returned to the city and patches of blue sky were reflected in the long kerbside puddles. All this light made McLusky hungry.
The Albany Road canteen served a type of food specially designed to minimize the chances of police officers enjoying their pensions for too long. The chip-fat and wrinkly-sausage smells that pervaded the neon-lit basement cavern reminded him of school dinners, as did the hubbub of voices albeit an octave or two lower now. Standing in the queue behind a young constable with unusual BO he surreptitiously surveyed the room, conscious that as the new kid on the block some diners would be checking him over. He spotted DI Fairfield sitting by herself and decided to join her. Things had been so hectic there had never been time to get really acquainted.
When it was his turn there was little left to choose from in the beige-and-brown section under the heat lamps. Something called ‘cauliflower bake’ looked the least lethal. As he carried his food on a tray in the direction of Kat Fairfield the DI looked up. Spotting him she drained her glass of water and, leaving her tray on the table, made for the exit on a tortuous route specially chosen to avoid him.
Someone waving attracted his attention. It was Austin, also sitting by himself in front of a mug of stewed canteen coffee. The DS shrugged his shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t take it to heart. I’m certain DI Fairfield is a great admirer of yours, she’s just shy and retiring.’
‘I’m sure.’ He drove his fork through the dried crust of industrial cheddar into the anaemic concoction beneath and faltered. ‘Is today a special occasion or is the food always crap?’
Austin waggled his head. ‘It’s a bit late, the best stuff disappears quickly. The food’s not so bad as long as you strictly avoid anything with “bake” in its name.’
‘Ah.’ McLusky put his fork down and pushed his plate aside. ‘Thanks for the warning. I take it nothing’s come up to get us any further in the Frank Dudden murder?’
‘Not really. Did you go out to the skating park?’
‘Yup, nothing. I was given the impression that no one would admit to owning a motorized board anyway, if they ever came there at all, and the description didn’t seem to ring a bell.’
‘Well, after what the old guy said about the skateboarder I had a look at the map. Around the harbour basin, the Floating Harbour and out Ashton way are tarmac paths he could use. There’s also the cycle paths. One cycle track runs from here all the way to Bath along the river. He could be running around on that.’
‘Do a lot of people use that path?’
‘No one with any sense. We had loads of problems along that path. People got kicked off their bikes left right and centre. They’d rob them, take their bikes and then ride off on them.’
‘Why don’t they close the paths then?’
‘I wish they would. Unfortunately you can get a lottery grant for making cycle paths but not for getting rid of them. It’s anarchy down there. It’s where St Paul’s kids take their stolen mopeds to ride and the glue-sniffers hang out there. Closer to the access points you get the prozzies using it if it isn’t raining. We had people grow cannabis on the verges. Last year one guy tested his home-made jet-engine down there. Strapped it to an old children’s go-cart. Hadn’t thought of fitting brakes. He fell off and the jet went on and
set fire to everything it passed. It’s pretty much nutter country so our skateboarder should fit right in. We have stepped up patrols.’
‘I’ll check the place out.’
‘Don’t go alone after dark is my firm advice. Oh yes, I was told to remind you about Frank Dudden’s autopsy.’
‘What time is that?’
Austin checked his watch. ‘In about fifteen minutes, actually.’
‘Then what are you sitting around here for? Get going, DS Austin.’
Austin’s face fell. ‘Me? I thought you … Oh, right. Okay.’ He took a gulp of his coffee and rushed off, clearly indignant.
McLusky reached for Austin’s abandoned mug. If police work were a popularity contest he’d never get anything done. He sipped the coffee. It tasted appalling and he knew it would give him heartburn. As a kind of penance he drained the mug anyway.
Five hours later the heartburn was still with him as he wrestled with paperwork at his desk. Whatever had happened to ‘freeing front-line officers from unnecessary red tape’?
Not even a nano-second passed from the perfunctory knock to his office door opening. Denkhaus, back from the press conference, filled the frame.
‘Where the hell is that report on the written-off Skoda? The ACC is asking. And as if I didn’t have enough to contend with, Phil Warren needled me about that very escapade at the press conference.’
‘Who?’
‘Reporter on the Post. Never mind that, where’s the damn report? I thought I’d asked for that days ago!’
‘And I went straight to work on it but I kept getting distracted by the noise of explosions.’
‘Don’t get distracted, McLusky. If I ask for something I expect DIs to deliver.’
McLusky nodded his head at the computer screen in front of him. ‘I’m actually working on it right now. Nearly done.’
For a moment it seemed as though the superintendent was going to walk around the desk to take a look at it. Had he done so he’d have found that McLusky was frowning at a fish-tank screensaver with the bubbling sound turned off.
But Denkhaus just grunted. So far he was singularly unimpressed by the new DI. He sniffed the air. ‘Has someone been smoking in here? You realize the entire station is a no-smoking zone?’
McLusky made a show of sniffing and nodded. ‘This office always smells of smoke. My predecessor must have smoked heavily.’
‘That he did.’
‘The smell got into the furnishings.’
Denkhaus seemed satisfied with the explanation. He gave a curt nod with his chin towards the computer. ‘Get on with it. I’ll be in my office. Waiting.’ He closed the door heavily behind him.
McLusky breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Denkhaus in the corridor bark at his next victim.
Around four o’clock Austin returned from witnessing the autopsy. As it turned out it had been his first and he hadn’t enjoyed it much. He had been berated by Dr Coulthard for being late. The pathologist had been expecting a DI and showed his displeasure by treating Austin as though he suspected the DS had suffered brain damage on the way to the morgue. Even though the viewing area was separated from the theatre by a glass wall and he had been spared the smell of the mutilated corpse, Austin had felt his stomach churn. The pathologist dug up no surprises. He pronounced that in life Dudden had been a slightly overweight middle-aged man with a troubled liver and straining kidneys who, had he not picked up a booby-trapped beer can, might have had another ten years’ drinking in him before his own internal time bomb put an end to it. Austin reported to McLusky in short sentences then quickly disappeared to the incident room.
To McLusky it only confirmed his belief that going to autopsies was a waste of time and put one in a bad mood for the rest of the day. ‘I wonder who else I can piss off on this shift.’ He pushed the other bumf aside and pulled his keyboard towards him. How I destroyed a good-as-new Skoda fifteen minutes after it was issued to me and how it was unavoidable by Detective Inspector Liam McLusky…
When after one hour and three drafts he eventually brought the sober report to Denkhaus’s office Lynn Tiery, his steel-eyed secretary, knew all about it.
‘Ah yes, the super’s been waiting for this.’ She put it on a pile of papers on her desk and went back to clacking on her keyboard.
‘You’d better take it in to him then.’
She smiled up at him without slowing her typing. ‘No rush, the super went home an hour ago.’
While McLusky had been buried under his fast-accumulating paperwork the return of the sun had worked a transformation on the city. The late sunshine softened the architecture. People looked brighter, happier, moving more slowly. As he walked along Albany Road he caught a glimpse of the old harbour between two buildings. A tall ship was moored down there and the old harbour ferry chugged across the brightly mirrored water. The footbridge looked like a spindly limb in black silhouette against the sun. In this light the sprawl of the city felt mysterious to him, so large, full of the unknown, full of new people, the promise of a new life. For a brief moment he was visited by a feeling he had last experienced as he first arrived by train in Southampton. Then he had looked across the busy harbour and thought the place must contain everything a man could possibly want from life. Now he snatched at the feeling, wanting to own it again, but it escaped him like the tail end of a dream. He blinked it away and walked on. It was of course all an illusion, there was nothing mysterious about cities. With all those people climbing over each other like so many ants the only mystery was why the pavements were not stained with blood more often.
A few turns left and right brought him to Candlewick Lane. He stopped opposite the Green Man. It was a CID pub and he should go and make himself known, drink, socialize, talk shop. Not tonight. There was plenty of time for that, preferably with Austin in tow and when he was in an indestructibly good mood. Tonight all he wanted was a quiet pint. Or perhaps more than one. He turned down several steep flights of uneven medieval steps between narrow timber-frame houses, getting into a rhythm and letting his feet make all the choices. It brought him close to the harbour on Ropemakers, a surprisingly quiet one-way street with cars parked on either side. Just as he scanned its low brick buildings the sun dipped behind clouds and the lights of a pub sprang to life. The illuminated pub sign proclaimed this to be the Quiet Lady, above the picture of a woman in a yellow dress carrying her own head under her arm. Inside, it was an unreconstructed drinking hole, just the way McLusky liked it.
‘Have you got a garden or somewhere I can smoke?’
The landlord set a carefully poured pint of Murphy’s before him. ‘Upstairs. The room marked Private. You can kill yourself there.’
‘Ta.’
Everything about the room was small. A couple of logs smouldered in a tiny grate, rickety tables for two stood in front of three slits of windows and a skinny bench opposite the fire completed the furnishings. The room was empty. Just what the inspector had ordered. Sitting by the window closest to the fire he drank and smoked. Below him lay the warren of the Old Town and beyond that the harbour basin. The sun soon set over the wasteland on the opposite shore, briefly throwing disused loading cranes and a few surviving structures into silhouette against the sky.
Somewhere out there the next episode was being planned. Somewhere out there a man, surely a man, was dribbling gunpowder into a harmless object, turning it lethal. Out there his next victim walked unawares. Unless …
Footsteps outside, then the door opened. The invasion force consisted of just one woman in her forties. She was carrying a drink in a tall glass and lit a long cigarette already dangling from her lips. Her hair looked an unlikely shade of brown and was held in a tight twist at the back of her head. She acknowledged him with a nod and sat facing the window at the next but one table, sucking greedily at her cigarette. ‘Can’t smoke at work, can’t smoke on the bus, can’t smoke in the bloody bar. This country is beginning to piss me off.’ She spoke not to him but at the window in a hoarse, aggriev
ed voice.
McLusky nodded and lit another cigarette himself.
After a minute’s silence she turned to him. ‘What about the bloody bombs then? Did you hear the copper on the telly? We’re all supposed to go about our business and stay calm but vigilant. They’ll ask us to dig for victory next.’ She snorted smoke through her nostrils.
That sounded like Superintendent Denkhaus had been rolling out the spirit-of-the-blitz platitudes. But what else could he have said to them? He nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, I wouldn’t go around picking up things off the street. Gold compact, can of beer or whatever. God knows what’ll blow up next.’
‘It’s human nature though, isn’t it, you find something interesting, you wouldn’t just leave it. You don’t look at a can of beer and think, That could blow my hand off, do you?’
‘Perhaps people should from now on.’ Of course a lot depended on where you found the thing. Unless …
She took a long gulp from her glass. ‘Now tell me this, though. What’s the motive? Who’s behind it? What kind of person does such a thing?’
He shrugged. ‘A coward. Also someone quite mad. It doesn’t look political so I guess it’s personal. Psychotic bastard would be my guess.’
‘D’you think they’ll get him? Any time soon?’
‘I doubt it.’ He realized that he very much meant it. ‘He’ll be difficult to find. He might be living quite a normal life otherwise. People compartmentalize their minds. When he’s not making bombs he’s probably Mr Boring of Sleepy Street and kind to birds.’
McLusky didn’t really feel like talking. When the table between them was taken he took the opportunity to leave the room. He drank another pint downstairs where the place had filled up, mainly with men drinking in groups or by themselves. He wondered whether the name of the pub kept most women away.
By the time he made it back to the Albany Road car park he reckoned he had worked off a sufficient amount of alcohol to drive home. Via another drink at the Barge Inn.