by Dan Laughey
‘What’s wrong?’ said Sant, gnawing on another toothpick, his way of alleviating bouts of anxiety. Like the one about to surface. A humble device, for sure, but it had helped him to kick the habit, and kept him off those ghastly e-cigs for good measure.
Gilligan cleared his throat, half-closing his eyes and folding his arms. ‘I’ve never had to say this to colleagues before, Inspector, Constable, though I suppose there’s a first time for everything. To be injured in the call of duty is one thing – but to lose one’s own life on the beat is tragic.’
Capstick spoke first, gaping mouth in unison with sinking shoulders. ‘You mean… Liam is dead?’
Gilligan gave a short nod and turned away, his eyes wetting at the corners.
‘But he’s off duty, sir.’
‘So I believe.’
Splinter snapping between his front teeth, Sant uttered the first thought that came to him. ‘An accident? Or otherwise?’
Gilligan unfolded his arms. ‘That much we don’t know yet, but the circumstances appear fishy to say the least. The official line, for now, is that Dryden has been involved in some sort of road incident whilst on board a bus. But going on what I’ve heard, this is no ordinary crash. Not by any stretch of the imagination. We should be getting along to the crime scene, gentlemen, if you don’t mind?’
Sant nodded, trying desperately to digest what he’d just heard. Thoughts of missing people and cocky young men were rubbed away in an instant. An officer – a damned good one – was dead. All other tasks were withheld for now.
The inspector binned what was left of his toothpick and walked out of Gilligan’s office, out into the black horror of every policeman’s nightmare.
3
Through a haze of floodlights and flash-photography, Sant ducked under the police cordon and cast his eye over a scene the like of which he’d never witnessed before. Not even in his dreams.
The vanishing point was the doors of the bus, jammed at right angles into the side of the wine shop. The stench of stale wine rose from red puddles strewn with broken glass. The first bobbies arriving on the scene decided to call in the fire brigade. As Sant attached a mask to cover his nose and mouth from the dust, he could just make out the golden sparks flying off a firefighter’s power-saw as it carved a colossal hole in the side of the bus.
His heart sank as he thought about what awaited him.
Half an hour later he sucked in all the air he could muster before crawling through that hole. The exterior of the bus looked bad enough, its bodywork battered and scorched by flames not long since extinguished. But the inside had to be worse. Much worse. He’d encountered the whole gamut of deadly road accidents during his stint as a traffic cop – the image of a biker’s head severed from the neck still troubled him – but it was plain this was no accident.
Jagged steel bit into his palms, scraped his sides, as he slipped in. The shattered windows on both sides gave Sant the eerie feeling he was trapped in some kind of mechanical spider’s labyrinth. The illusion was soon broken. Positioned under canvas tents designed to protect evidence was a scattering of bodies. He gently lifted one of the tarpaulin sheets and stared down at a young man, probably still a teenager. All the blood had leaked out of his head, giving his battered face a blue hue. A gunshot wound was visible just above his left ear, chin pressed into his shoulder by neck vertebrae arching in the wrong direction.
Sant breathed out steadily and peered ahead of him. Another tent was at the front of the bus, presumably housing the dead driver. A scenes-of-crime officer guided him around the tents and up the stairs. The bus had come to a stop at an acute angle. The climb to the top deck was a challenge of coordination. He tried to avoid placing his hands anywhere where fingerprints might be traceable, then thought, how many dozens of people had coated this handrail with their arches and whorls?
He reached the top and threw a quick glance at the forensic team, grabbing air in front of him, shoe catching on a protruding rivet. The team was scouring every square inch around the front window and seating. Below their serious faces, Dryden’s inert form lay in the foetal position. Unlike the bodies downstairs, Dryden’s was uncovered and, very possibly, untouched. His eyes were wide open, their final gaze upwards to the heavens, the poor soul’s knowing nod to his destiny.
Sant wasn’t queasy by nature, but the musty atmosphere brought on a bout of dizziness he couldn’t shake off. He muttered something to the officer who’d led him up the stairs, started to head back down. It was then that he noticed the splintered glass in front of Dryden.
While the rest of the window had been left to dry naturally, a small section of glass had been encased in plastic film in order to retain the moisture. Underneath this, Sant could make out a pair of numbers: 3 and 1. And then a gap of about three inches before another figure appeared. It looked like a 5. Unless it was an S.
3-1-5?
3-1-S?
A police photographer was busy snapping the rear of the vehicle. Sant waved her over and asked her to take some close-ups of the markings.
‘Already got ’em, matey.’
Photographers cared little for status or ranking, going about their job largely oblivious of who they were talking to.
‘Take a few more, just to be on the safe side,’ urged Sant.
She shrugged in reluctant deference.
The lower deck contained four tents compared to the two he’d noted halfway along the upper. That made six fatalities, not including DS Dryden. Seven dead in total. A bloody massacre.
Home Office pathologist Dr Grant Wisdom was crouching inside one of the tents, inspecting shot wounds and crushed bones with a jeweller’s attention to detail. Sant felt a crumb of comfort at Wisdom’s presence. A man of few words, he was the best in the business. The inspector knew better than to disturb him during these critical moments of scientific scrutiny.
The lights inside the bus had malfunctioned on impact. What little yellow glow could be thrown on the crime scene from police-issue spotlights was no substitute for natural daylight. The answers would come later. Just one question would suffice for now.
‘Any survivors?’
Dr Wisdom snapped on a fresh pair of Latex gloves, replied without looking up from his gory task. ‘Two men. In ICU at LGI. They were lucky.’
‘Lucky?’
‘That’s what I said, Inspector. Lucky they weren’t shot.’
Sant left the morbid bus and took shelter from the rain in the back of a video van. Shut the twin doors. A shiver buzzed over his limbs, relaxing the tension in his gut. He found a cup of something warm, took a peek at his knock-off Rolex and closed his eyes, straining to concentrate on his preferred escape-route at moments of dread like these.
Meditation.
A simple art. True. But to others, this daily ritual was the subject of ridicule. Even Sant had dismissed the idea at first. An old friend who’d migrated to India to become a Buddhist monk had suggested it to him. How to think right – that had been the goal. Now meditation was integral to his ways of coping with the work-life balance. A balance he’d never get close to striking without those twin virtues… watchfulness and mindfulness.
When Sant finally awoke from his cerebral trance and checked the time, he realised he’d snoozed for an hour – quite an achievement given the hubbub surrounding him. Blackbirds nearby tweeted the coming of dawn, wings thrusting them to the next patch of grass. Refreshed but frustrated, he felt those meditative powers had merely seduced him away from the harsh reality of a blood-soaked bus. All he could conjure up, for now, were questions.
What was Dryden doing on the bus? Where was he travelling to? Or from?
And why was he murdered? Why were the others murdered?
There was nothing to do but wait. Sit in a cold police van and await forensics, await the ballistic tests, await the pathology reports. It was these moments at the very beginning of a murder enquiry, with time so precious and the risk of error so high, when Sant became agitated beyond belief.
The comfort he sought in meditation often evaded him. So his other therapy was to eat his way out of the jitters. It was surefire, if unhealthy. He was a little overweight, but not out of shape. His height, all six and a half feet of him, kept away the middle-aged spread.
In his late teens he’d been an exceptional basketball player. If only he’d been born an American! Professional basketball didn’t exactly constitute a feasible career in a country where the sport had next to no following. He gave up the idea – no money in it.
As well as being big, Sant was unnaturally dark. He had black hair. Lots of it. Regardless of his fortysomething years, not a grey hair or bare patch could be seen. His frequent intentions of growing a beard always succumbed to changes of mind, leaving his face invariably speckled with dark stubble. Tufts of black hair on his massively broad hands added a touch of werewolf to the inky hue.
The other feature that stood out was his nose. It had an acute kink in the middle where it had been broken and re-broken. Meeting above the nose, his thin black eyebrows curled at their ends like out-of-place moustaches.
His dress sense was equally dark. Apart from a whimsical affinity for white cotton socks, he always wore a black suit, black shirt, black tie and black Grenson shoes, and in every season except the summer, a long black Mackintosh.
He hauled his burly frame out of the police van, shading his eyes from a gust that blew cold drizzle into his face. Slammed the doors shut. His stride was silent, observant, as he headed in the direction of the scenes-of-crime teams mulling around the disfigured bus. They looked like painters and decorators from a distance. It was only close up, breathing the air they breathed, that the picture changed. This was no exercise in decoration, but the undoing of destruction; the fine-tooth combing through irrevocable wreckage.
The Volvo B9TL Gemini-type double decker looked a shadow of its former self. The facelifted look of the front end was now crushed against the stone-fronted building. Over four metres high, ten metres in length and two and a half wide, it weighed twenty tonnes and contained a nine-litre engine capable of totting up two million miles. It could carry seventy-four seated and eleven standing passengers at any given time. Price tag: three hundred thousand pounds.
Graham Jones, a representative from FirstGroup, was doing his best to dodge a volley of questions from reporters skirting the cordon. He kept looking over at the battered shell of steel, the expensive write-off deepening lines around his mouth.
Sant signalled to him. ‘Which bus was this, Mr Jones?’
The man took a while to register Sant’s meaning, but then it came to him. ‘The number 33. From Otley. Last 33 of the night. The airport buses run later of course.’ He spoke slowly between deep intakes of breath, a blank disbelief haunting his crinkled brow.
‘What do you know about the driver?’
‘Name’s Brian Simpson. Experienced. Accident-free too. Checked my records just now.’
‘Was Simpson in good health?’
The man glanced down at the clipboard he was holding. ‘Should say so. Not a day off sick in four years.’
‘Of sound character?’
Another glance. ‘Nothing on file to say otherwise. You’re not suggesting… he might be to blame for this?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything, Mr Jones. All I know is that your driver was shot dead with a gun fired by someone on board. The killer somehow managed to get off the bus before it crashed.’
Jones shook his head. ‘I can’t make it out. How someone’s done that and got out alive...’
Sant asked the bus rep to show him the door mechanism. Jones’s blank look shifted to the driver’s guard. A large tarpaulin concealed what was left of Simpson’s head. Though his eyes began to water, he nodded, placed his clipboard under an arm and led Sant over.
‘If I understand you correctly, only the driver can open the passenger doors?’
Distasteful view out of sight, Jones regained his poise and nodded again. ‘You see up here.’ He pointed to a couple of buttons. ‘Normally these switches would activate the doors, but they’re not much use following a major incident like this.’ He pressed them a few times. ‘The circuits have been shot to pieces.’
Sant noted the position of the switches in relation to the driver’s cabin and the seats further back. ‘You’d need to know where to look for these buttons, I guess.’
‘That’s correct. Ninety-nine per cent of passengers have no idea they exist, never mind where they’d find them.’
‘So it’s likely the gunman commanded the driver to open the doors before firing at him?’
‘I’d say so, yes. The driver guard panel is designed to protect our employees from assaults and stabbings, but it’s no defence against a bullet.’
‘And the doors don’t shut automatically once the bus is in motion?’
‘No, these old Geminis come as standard driver-operated doors.’
Sant tossed the information around in his puzzled head. ‘So it would’ve been possible, would it not, for someone to fire a gun at Simpson immediately after he’d opened the doors for them, and then jump out of the vehicle before it picked up speed on its descent towards these shops.’
Jones shook his head a little less vigorously than before. ‘I suppose that’s what happened, but I – can’t exactly picture it in my head.’
Sant nodded. ‘Neither can I, though believe you me, the events leading up to most crimes stretch the bounds of credibility.’
‘He must’ve stopped the bus.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, if I read the situation rightly, the gunman has fired at the passengers first. Not the driver. The advice we give to all our drivers is to stop their vehicles promptly in the event of violent behaviour.’
‘And call the police?’ Sant scratched his nose.
‘Absolutely. They use a panic button. And if they carry a phone they can use that too, but I’m not sure – ’
‘I’ve already checked. No phone was found on Simpson. Is CCTV installed?’
The bus rep adjusted his stance, defence in his tone. ‘Not in these older models, I’m afraid. The unions want cameras on all fleets to protect drivers, though as with every issue, there’s a pay-off between benefits and costs incurred.’
‘One last thing,’ said Sant. ‘Show me the last stop this bus passed through.’
Jones obliged, more than happy to get away from the ghastly chorus of press cameras flashing. He pointed to a temporary bus-stop sign. About a hundred yards up the slope, it sat atop a wobbly red pole held upright by sandbags. Sant thanked him. The wet breeze swept up Jones’s sigh of relief as he headed to his car, head shaking like a top-heavy blancmange.
The lights of a nearby bakery flickered in the distance, the prospect making Sant’s stomach rumble with hunger. He was about to set off that way when Capstick approached looking like death warmed up.
‘Get much rest?’
‘Not a wink, sir.’
‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’
Capstick gave a slight nod, swallowing hard, trying to banish all recent memories. He’d been as sick as a dog. Food was the last thing on his mind. They decided to return to headquarters and grab a swift breakfast there, Capstick doing the usual honour of driving.
Back at the office, bacon butty in hand, Sant pointed to Dryden’s bare desk a few feet across from his own. The emptiness lent an eerie feel to the room.
‘We need to know what he was up to.’ He ate as he spoke. ‘He must’ve left some trace of where he was going and what he was doing. I say we start looking right here – in his drawers, files, computer, the lot.’
‘I’ve made a start,’ said Capstick. ‘No sign of any notebook. He had a work phone, but I doubt we’ll find it any time soon.’
Sant nodded. ‘I checked with forensics. He didn’t have it with him. At least, not after he’d been shot. But Dryden always carried a phone; was practically glued to it. Whoever killed him took his phone too. But why?’
‘To stop him calling for help?’
Sant let out a stifled hoot. ‘Would you know how to use a phone with a bullet in your brain? Put your thinking cap on, Capstick. The only logical reason the killer stole the phone was because it was in his interests to do so.’
‘That’s it!’ Capstick cried out. ‘Dryden was trying, before he was shot, to message something, some evidence, incriminating whoever then attacked him.’
‘Well, no-one got a message from him, though you’re right – the killer would take no chances on that front. But unless we find the phone in some far-flung gutter, there’s not much to go on.’
The door flew open and in strode Detective Sergeant Amanda Holdsworth, her permed brown hair dishevelled by the wind. She’d heard the news – it was harder to avoid it – and her flustered face spoke a paradox of dejection and determination. A single mother in her early forties, she’d suffered a lot of heartache in recent years, one more slice of bad news acting more like a jolt than a shock to the system.
She deposited a large bag on her desk, leaned on the side of it, placed her hand on her chin. It was a familiar pose and Sant felt reassured whenever she adopted it. She was a clever detective and not afraid to show it.
‘A penny for your thoughts, Holdsworth.’
She paused briefly before unleashing her stream of consciousness. ‘Okay, this is how I see it. Dryden gets on a bus, where and why we don’t know. He’s returning to town from somewhere. Why take the bus? Because he’s gone to meet someone who doesn’t wish to be identified. Someone he meets in secret. Dryden wasn’t even supposed to be at work. Which makes the whole affair shifty if you ask me.’
Sant chewed his toothpick. ‘Me and Capstick think his phone was taken by the killer.’
Holdsworth perched on her chair before swivelling ninety degrees towards Capstick and stretching out her stockinged legs. ‘It makes sense. The killer shadowed Dryden, overheard his conversation with this mysterious informant, followed him back to the bus, got on board with him, and soon realised Dryden was using the phone to record what he’d heard.’