by Peter Helton
Falling More Slowly
( Inspector Liam McLucky - 1 )
Peter Helton
Peter Helton
Falling More Slowly
Chapter One
The ghost of a scream echoed around him. McLusky sputtered into consciousness as he shot upright. He’d screamed himself awake. He hadn’t done that for a while, thought he’d stopped doing it. Damn. Blinking rapidly into the twilight while his hammering heartbeat slowed, he took a while to realize where he was. He groped around on the floor until he found his alarm clock, then brought the thing close to his eyes to read the time on the tiny display.
7.29. Nightmare beat alarm by one minute. His meeting with the super at Albany Road station was at nine, quite a civilized time to start a new job. Which he might do if he ever made it off this mattress.
Liam McLusky hadn’t slept well. He’d drunk at the Barge Inn, the pub across the road, until closing time then spent half the night lying on his mattress, sipping Murphy’s and listening to the strange creaks and groans of his new abode.
Propping himself up on one elbow he fished a cigarette from a pack of Extra Lights on the floor, lit it and inhaled deeply. He had stopped smoking after the attack because he’d been in a hospital bed for a whole month before learning to hobble around again. It had seemed too good a chance to miss when he was already one month ahead in the cravings department. He’d lasted six months without a single puff.
Yesterday he had started again. New city, new job, new pack of ciggies, extra mild. New first-floor flat, rented. He took a quick inventory of the bedroom: one mattress, floorboards. Zen-like simplicity though perhaps lacking the style. There was a built-in wardrobe with louvred doors the entire length of one side which, after he had flung his clothes into it, remained half empty; a minute fireplace where a gas fire had recently been removed — he could see the old gas pipe protruding from the floor; four empty cans of Murphy’s, one of which he was using as an ashtray. A bin-liner full of clothes in need of a wash completed the furnishings. He twirled the cigarette butt into the can where it died with a hiss.
He pushed himself upright. All his adult life he had slept in the nude yet since his release from hospital he had taken to wearing a T-shirt at night. He didn’t like looking at the long, curved post-operative scar. It still felt as though that part of his torso where surgeons had delved to repair the internal damage needed symbolic protection.
But really he was fine. He’d been declared fit. He was ready for duty, more than ready. The enforced idleness had been the most difficult part. A fresh start in a new town was what he needed but most of all he needed a start. In the bathroom he turned on the hot tap, opened the gas valve, struck a match and fed it into the mouth of the old-fashioned gas boiler just as the landlady had shown him. Gas hissed and caught with a loud bark that made him flinch. The shower consisted of two plastic hoses attached to the hot and cold taps of the bath and connected to a droopy shower head fixed to the wall. He could only just fit himself under it. It took a while to get the mix right but it hardly mattered, nothing really mattered at this stage. McLusky kept telling himself that. He sniffed the towel and decided it would need washing. Launderette just a couple of doors down, how good was that? He pulled on his socks, then polished his shoes with his right foot. It would do. Chinos, shirt and tie, black leather jacket. He’d considered the suit, first day and all that, and rejected it. Start as you mean to go on. Then he’d remembered he’d been wearing it when they ran him over. At the hospital they had cut the trousers off his blood-soaked legs.
No fridge in the kitchen yet but a gas cooker with three rings, grill and oven, the Newhome 45, its feet standing in small glass saucers to save the ancient lino. This was like stepping back into World War II. Looked a bit like a bomb had landed in here too. Boxes with his stuff stood everywhere. Every surface, and there weren’t that many, was cluttered with items that had nowhere to go. No furniture here either apart from a red 1950s kitchen cupboard with glass drawers. He’d seen a junk shop round the corner, it would take no time at all to kit this place out. Some old dear had lived in the flat for forty years and died in here too. He didn’t mind. These houses were old, of course people had died there. He liked old houses. He wanted to die in an old house too. What were the chances? He liked places with a history, that’s why he had rejected the modern flat in Cotham they had offered him ‘until he sorted himself out’; too new, too soulless. And since he would never spend enough time there to give it soul himself, he would have to borrow other people’s.
Apart from the kitchen there was only the big, oddly shaped sitting room and a spare room just large enough to accommodate a midget. All that could wait.
In the meantime there was the Italian grocer’s next door. He’d soon found out why the flat was cheap: noise from the pub until late and the women at the grocer’s setting up the vegetable stalls on the pavement at just after six in the morning, talking loudly in Italian. It always sounded like they were having an argument but they probably weren’t. Just loud and happy to be alive. The place also sold pastries and coffee to take away, of which he intended to take full advantage. The grey-haired woman behind the counter showed a strong family resemblance to his Italian landlady but he hadn’t yet worked out who was who, so many people seemed to work there. The woman furnished him with both coffee and a Danish and called him Mr Clusky. McLusky set off towards the centre of town. His new town.
Carl Spranger had spent the night asleep behind the wheel of his BMW and woke with a start and a groan. Shit. He had a raging headache and felt sick to his stomach. It was cold in the car, the windows had misted up with his condensed breath. Fucking bitch. Greedy stupid fucking bitch. He searched for cigarettes amongst the crumpled packets and crisp wrappers but knew there weren’t any left. He thumped the dashboard. Shit. Everything was shit now. The devious cow. She’d sent a private bloody detective after him to spy on him and Allie. Paid for with his own bloody money of course.
There was an inch of vodka left in the bottle on the passenger seat. Hair of the dog, always worked. He let the liquid burn down his throat. It was answered by a sharp stab in his stomach. He held his breath until the pain eased. Happened more and more often recently. Ulcer probably. Cancer maybe. And why not? What the fuck did it matter now? Twelve years and now she wanted a divorce. Screamed her demands at him. I want a divorce and I want this fucking house. The house. No one gets the house. One affair and she wanted out. She had it all planned already, his replacement waiting in the wings. A chiropodist, very refined, not coarse, like you. Refined, my foot, ha! He wound down the window, spat, wiped the windscreen. Right front wing had a wrinkle in it. He remembered dimly, he’d hit something in the dark. Large dog, small deer, whatever, he didn’t get a look at it. Where was this godforsaken place? Lay-by on the A road leading to the motorway. He’d just driven around, had got too drunk though, cars kept blaring their horns at him, letting him know, probably weaved a bit. Stopped here, slept it off. The house. He started the car and pulled out into the road doing a U-turn. Two cars braked hard, parping their horns. He stuck his head out of the window. ‘Fuck you too! I’m busy. Fuck you.’ The house. The house was practically all that was left. She didn’t know that, of course. Plant hire business was bad, had been for a long time. He’d had to sell off machinery lately simply to stay afloat. Just him running the place from a Portakabin, with Allie, who had started as a receptionist, manning the phone. Good at telling lies for him, now he was getting more calls from creditors than customers. Lying for him, helping him, consoling him. Allie had more sympathy in her little finger than … Working late together trying to make sense of the books, trying to salvage something. A friendly word, a hug, a kiss. He’d screwe
d her in the office. Twice. Twice! And now she wanted the house? She wanted the house for that? No chance. Not-a-fucking-chance. No one was going to get the fucking house.
‘You can’t miss it,’ the woman said while eyeing up his almond Danish as though she really fancied a bite. McLusky offered but she just laughed and walked away. Somehow he had managed to get lost, which wasn’t good, not for a police officer and not on his first day. Should have called a cab. He checked his watch. Plenty of time.
Of course he’d been to Albany Road station before but not from this direction. He’d looked it up on the A-Z. Easily walkable from his Northmoor Street flat and it would help him get to know the place. Should have brought the map of course. He was in the right district though. The warren of Bristol’s town centre had grown over centuries like a rich fungus, the mycelium of its streets stretching senselessly out across the hills behind the harbour area. Dark streets, bright streets, tightly wound streets, steep streets, allowing only brief, surprising glimpses of the harbour basin and the river. The city was built on nothing but hills it seemed. The Romans had vineyards here on the steep, south-facing slopes where the Old Town had grown up. Or perhaps it was a different hill; he’d read something about it in a guidebook. Some of the houses were tall and narrow timber-frame buildings, a lot of Victorian houses too, but the scars left by WWII bombing had been filled with drab utilitarian concrete buildings, some towering high above their more elegant neighbours.
The most noticeable thing however was always the traffic. These streets had not been built for it and the centre was too busy, too crowded to pedestrianize. Successive traffic schemes had failed. The ever-changing one-way system had become so unworkable half of it had simply been abandoned and the streets handed back to the chaos merchants. The result was a mess of Mediterranean intensity: noisy, polluted, crowded, dangerous and during peak times bordering on anarchy. Delivery vans driving over pavements, taxis going everywhere, car drivers desperate for a place to stop, the usual bikers and suicidal cyclists, the even more suicidal skateboarders, enough scooters for an Italian teen movie and pedestrians dodging the lot. Many cyclists wore dust masks, some wore actual gas masks, probably as a mark of protest against the dense pollution. He had been reading the local paper to get a taste of the place. A campaign was under way to stop motorized traffic coming into the city altogether with protests every Saturday morning, bringing more chaos to the streets. And how were emergency vehicles supposed to get through this, he wondered? How on earth did you move an ambulance through these streets?
McLusky hadn’t bought a new car yet, his last having been wrecked in the chase in which he’d been injured. He’d been promised the loan of a plain police unit until he ‘sorted himself out’ — so much sorting — but taking in this traffic chaos he thought that perhaps roller blades might well have the edge.
He asked directions again, this time of a grey, elderly man rummaging for something in his canvas satchel while pushing an electric bicycle along the gutter. The man looked up with a closed-off face and seemed to consider ignoring him, then pointed. ‘Albany Road station? Down those steps, then turn right. You can’t miss it, it’s the ugliest building in town. Wants dynamiting.’
‘Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.’ He crossed the street carefully, remembering too well the sound of his own breaking bones as they’d made contact with the car bonnet. He had no desire to repeat the experience. He didn’t really believe he could survive a second time. Or even wanted to. Perhaps this would go away or perhaps the feeling might never leave him. Or it might even help him live, the flat feeling that he no longer minded dying. He didn’t want to die. But equally he wasn’t sure he wanted to survive at all costs. Living and surviving were different things after all.
A shadowy network of alleys and worn, irregular steps connected some of the Old Town streets. Small shops and artisans’ workshops clung on here but the business rates and rents had driven many of them out, making way for the national chains that could afford to pay them.
He recognized the place instantly. The man had been right, Albany Road police station was quite the most unlovely building he had come across so far, something he hadn’t really taken in when he had come for his interview six weeks earlier.
Comparing the station with the surrounding architecture, a small eighteenth-century church and several well-kept Victorian houses, wasn’t really fair. It would be like comparing a plastic stacking chair with Chippendale furniture. This was definitely the stacking kind of architecture. He checked his reflection in the window of an electrical retailer’s, too late to worry really. Hair a bit wild though. He smoothed it down.
Reaching for the handle of the tinted glass door of the station he hesitated just a fraction — new job, new era, new life, new crew, new town, new day — then walked inside.
The desk officer buzzed him through the next door. ‘Morning, sir, they’ll be expecting you.’ Just the slightest hint of doubt in his baritone. ‘Will you find your own way …?’
He nodded and the desk officer gratefully returned to what he’d been doing, far too busy to nursemaid freshly minted detective inspectors.
McLusky remembered his way to CID from his interview though he hadn’t met many of his new colleagues at the time since most had been off sick with some sort of virus.
Inside, too, the station was undeniably sixties or seventies. Recently refurbished, the super had said. He’d just have to take his word for it. The place was busy, the stairs echoing like a tunnel with footsteps and voices. Eight forty: he was early, his meeting with Superintendent Denkhaus was not until nine. Straight into the CID room and he instantly felt at home. CID rooms were CID rooms: desks, waste baskets, computer screens, phones — several with detectives attached to them — maps of the force area and city centre on the walls, whiteboard, noticeboard, fax machine, photocopier and kettle. The windows were firmly closed against the noise of the traffic below. The place smelled of printer ink, cheap aftershave and deodorant overwhelmed by sweat.
One man looked up, frowned, then tried for a smile and got up. ‘Inspector McLusky, sir? I’m DS Austin.’ He stretched out a broad and darkly hairy hand. McLusky shook it. The whole man was darkly hairy and broad, probably worked out. Intelligent, open eyes, blinking fast. The soft Scottish accent sounded like Edinburgh to him, but he was no expert. ‘Welcome to Albany. Ehm, your office, sir, is just along here.’
His office. He’d never had his own office. He’d not been a DI long enough for them to even find one for him in Southampton before the bastards rammed him off the road. Then came back and ran him over as he staggered from his car.
Austin led the way back into the corridor and to a door right at the end. ‘You’re taking over from DI Pearce, it’s his old office.’
McLusky had read about Pearce, a bent copper, currently on the run with a goodly amount of drug money, probably in Spain. Enjoy it while you can. Spain was no longer a safe hiding place.
He walked straight in. It was about the size of the box room in his new flat — space for second midget here — and smelled aggressively of cleaning products. It contained a dented filing cabinet, two chairs, an empty bookshelf, a metal dustbin and a small battered desk. The window faced out the back overlooking graffiti-covered walls, chaotic pigeon-shit rooftops and the shadowy backs of houses. In the middle distance, between tall buildings, he glimpsed a sliver of the harbour. Apart from in- and out-trays, monitor, keyboard and phone he’d been furnished with a set of car keys sitting on a form for him to sign and an envelope lying across the keyboard which he knew would contain the gaff he needed to log on to the computer.
‘Thanks.’ McLusky shivered. He thought he could feel the dampness in the fifty-year-old cement bricks on the other side of the plasterboard, could hear the rustle of their slow crumbling. He pointed to the envelope. ‘This is precisely the amount of paperwork I can cope with. Can you see it stays like that, please?’
‘We’ll do our very best, sir.’ Austin’s lopsided grin a
cknowledged the avalanche of paperwork heading for the inspector’s in-tray.
The phone on his pristine desk rang. He took a deep breath then picked it up. Anyone could make a mistake. ‘DI McLusky.’
It was Area Control. ‘Sir, I know this sounds like a job for Uniform, but …’ The young male voice hesitated.
‘Go on then.’
‘The original call was made by a Mrs Spranger, sounded like a domestic at an address in Redland. We’ve sent two units so far and both have gone off the air. We always have reception problems in Redland. We’ve since had a mobile phone call from one of the officers and he seemed a bit incoherent. There was a lot of background noise …’
‘Okay, we’ll deal. What’s the address?’ He snatched up the keys, turned the form around and snapped his fingers for a pen. Austin unhooked a biro from his shirt pocket and obliged. McLusky scribbled down the unfamiliar address and hung up then pocketed the pen in his leather jacket. Austin opened his mouth then thought better of it.
‘Right.’ McLusky held up the paper for Austin to read. ‘Where is this place? We’ll take my car, just lead me to it.’
The car turned out to be a grey Skoda. ‘You sure you want to drive, sir?’ Austin doubted the wisdom of it but got in at the passenger side anyway.
‘Positive. Just give me clear directions and in good time. The sooner I find my way round town the better.’ McLusky avoided being driven if at all possible. He hated being a passenger, always had done. ‘Never driven one of these before, though.’ He pulled out of the station car park. It felt good to be holding a steering wheel again. Skodas used to be joke cars, now the police couldn’t get enough of them.
‘Go left here. The new Skoda. 180 bhp, they’re okay, actually.’
‘We’ll find out if you’re right in a minute. How long’ve you been at Albany Road?’
