Four Below

by Peter Helton

  McLusky’s delight about forensics backing up his wild hunches was short-lived. If anything, it seemed to highlight just how little had been achieved and how much the investigation was in danger of bogging down. He’d been here before. Many murder investigations that dealt with an unknown perpetrator went through a phase like this, where they all worked flat out following up witness statements, interviewing witnesses, hunting around on computers, hanging on the phone for tedious hours with nothing tangible to show for it apart from having eliminated the obvious, like the man upstairs, the irate neighbour, the ex-boyfriend, the disgruntled customer. This phase was not McLusky’s forte; this was not where he excelled. He performed adequately, but it took a more organized mind to do it reliably well. He admitted it quietly to himself, tentatively to Austin, never to anyone else.

  Breakthrough. It was what everyone hoped for, but no one even used the word, since it implied that until then, you’d been staring at a brick wall. What he was staring at right now was a room full of less-than-enthusiastic detectives. He was acutely conscious of the problems ahead, and opted for a mix of optimistic spin and pushiness. ‘We can now say with some certainty that all four victims were killed by the same perpetrators. We are most likely looking for more than one person, since all four appear to have been snatched, probably held prisoner for a while and systematically murdered. All were severely beaten, but three also had been stoned.’ He tapped the forensics report. ‘In case you were wondering what lapidation meant. The two Leigh Woods bodies and the woman. Many of the injuries were caused not by blows, but by some bastards throwing stones at them. It is, of course, a good way of delivering injury without getting close, without getting your hands too dirty, without getting blood on your own clothes. The victims were tied up while this went on. I’m told that some of the missiles used were brick, and that these three had brick dust embedded in their skin where they were hit, not by whole bricks but probably by bits of broken bricks. Brick dust was also present in Mike Oatley’s hair. It means all four were taken to the same place to be killed, then their bodies were disposed of elsewhere.’

  A young DC raised a hand. ‘But broken bricks are everywhere, sir. They could have been killed in all sorts of locations. A brick’s a brick, innit?’

  ‘No it ain’t, though until a couple of hours ago I’d have said the same. I called forensics about it, who put me on to a guy at the university who convinced me otherwise. And if anyone’s interested in a forty-minute lecture on the fascinating history of brick-making, I can give them his number later. The ingredients of bricks have changed, and these are early nineteenth century. That’s sufficiently old to narrow down the location even in a city like Bristol.’ There were optimistic murmurs. ‘Bearing in mind, of course, that brick has often been recycled.’ Disappointed groans. ‘But we might be looking for a derelict nineteenth-century place somewhere. There aren’t many left; everything is being developed now.’ He patted the handle of his walking stick with the forensics file for emphasis. ‘There’s further evidence that the murders are connected: we have two partial footprints, of a trainer, one on Oatley’s hand and one on Deeming’s trousers, in the groin area, in case you were wondering.’ Several male officers pulled a face. ‘Both prints came from a Nike trainer, probably size ten. Questions.’

  French started it off. ‘The victims are so different, though. We know the Leigh Woods bods had drug-dealing in common, but the cycle-path bods hadn’t. And the disposal is so different.’

  ‘Horses for courses. The dealers ended up in Leigh Woods because they’d been “disappeared”. The cycle-path bodies landed where they did because they were meant to be found. They were both left right next to the river. The obvious thing would have been to at least dump them in there, just a few feet away. With a good weight on them, they might not have been found for quite a while, if ever. So killing those two had a different purpose. Mike Oatley and Deborah Glynn have things in common; have to have. For a start, they were both unemployed.’

  French piped up. ‘Glynn had just got a job.’

  ‘True, but that’s splitting hairs. She didn’t live to start it. They were both working class, piss-poor, Glynn had been unemployed for ages, both lived within a couple of miles of each other on this side of the river, and their bodies ended up on the other side of the river. There must be more things they have in common.’ A civilian had quietly entered the room and handed him another forensics report. McLusky nodded his thanks while carrying on. ‘They connect to each other or the killer in a similar way; perhaps to both. Find that connection. We need to work on the location, too. Find that, and we’ve practically nailed it. Right, go.’

  McLusky stuffed both files under his arm and left, while detectives returned to their workstations, picked up phones, logged on to computers.

  Dearlove opened the Bristol Herald on his desk and quickly turned to page three. Another grainy slice of the mystery picture. He tore it out, then laid the others he had saved next to it. They didn’t add up to anything; he was sure they did that on purpose so you could only see it when you got to the very last bit. A gimmick to sell more papers, obviously, but hey, if it took his mind off file-sifting and form-filling for five minutes, then he didn’t mind. Anyway, he liked pizza, and on his pay, a free pizza was a glittering prize. He slipped all three cuttings under his pencil jar.

  McLusky managed to lever open the warped door on his desk with a knife purloined from the canteen, and at last regained access to his private kettle. ‘Progress of sorts,’ he informed his empty office. The litre bottle of Glenmorangie had also been liberated, but he ignored that, since only disaster and triumph deserved to be toasted with it. Once you told yourself that the hard, dull grind of detective work that lay at the centre of a murder investigation needed the fuel of single malt, then you might as well install an intravenous drip. He stirred whitener into his mug of instant and opened the forensics report he’d been handed in the incident room. People were beginning to get used to the snow now, and more or less normal service – i.e. excruciating slowness – had resumed at forensics, though things were about to get speeded up by the government cuts. The cuts meant that far fewer tests were commissioned now, and detectives spent their time arguing with their superiors over what they were allowed to send for analysis. Murder still enjoyed a certain priority, but McLusky wasn’t brimming with optimism.

  He took a sip of instant, pulled a face and turned the page. After reading a single paragraph, he smiled, picked up the file and abandoned all thoughts of drinking instant coffee. This report wasn’t quite Glenmorangie stuff, but a cappuccino matter, surely. Further down the corridor, he gave a cheerful knock at Fairfield’s door.

  ‘I’m just on my way out,’ she told him. McLusky ignored her, closed the door behind him and let himself drop heavily on to a chair. ‘By all means, Liam, make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘Is that coffee machine hot?’

  Fairfield looked over her shoulder and saw with annoyance that the red light was on, meaning it was ready for action. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘Cappuccino, if you can manage it. Oh, this.’ McLusky waved the report. ‘This just arrived. We found the source of the contaminated heroin. Just a dusting of cinnamon for me, please.’

  God, the man was annoying. ‘You didn’t find it,’ Fairfield said when McLusky at last handed over the file in exchange for his cup. ‘You stumbled over it when you poked around in Bice’s lockup.’

  ‘I didn’t even do that; I never set foot in it. It was forensics who found traces of heroin, and when they got around to analysing it, they found it was contaminated with anthrax spores. I’m afraid it won’t really help you, though. Bice is dead and the stuff is gone. Are they still dropping like flies?’

  ‘They’re not, actually. We only had one more case last week, nothing since. Perhaps the message did get through.’

  ‘I doubt it. I have another theory altogether …’

  Less than an hour later, he found himself explaining it to
DSI Denkhaus in the super’s office. ‘Bice, if he wasn’t actively involved in drugs when he skippered for Fenton, would have been in an excellent position to find out about Fenton’s deals. He had to have known something about it anyway, Fenton wouldn’t have trusted a complete outsider. I went and looked over the yacht. It’s massive in terms of boats, but not so massive that you couldn’t overhear any business talk if you wanted to.’

  ‘I see. Bice knows of a couple of kilos of heroin, but before it has a chance of going anywhere, Atrium strikes and they all get scooped up. Bice is the only one who walks away without getting a lengthy custodial. He waits for the dust to settle, picks up the drugs and finds himself a buyer. Do you think he knew the stuff was lethal?’

  ‘Hard to tell. My guess is not. You don’t sell on contaminated heroin and then hang around for the complaints to arrive. That would be suicide, and Bice knew that. You might sell it and run, but there is no evidence that he had his bags packed. I think he sold the heroin to whoever is the new big noise and got bumped off when it turned out to be killing people. After all, it’s not good business practice to poison your own customers. And whoever parcelled up the stuff for street distribution could well be dead and buried now too. Inhalation is lethal.’

  ‘What about Bice’s son? How is he involved?’

  ‘Not at all, as far as I can see. He really does work in a cake-decorating shop with his mother. If he denied any knowledge, then we’d have a problem proving that he even knew the money represented proceeds of crime. I doubt the CPS would run with it.’

  ‘Shame, though it saves us a lot of work. At least it looks like my press conferences worked and people are avoiding the stuff now,’ Denkhaus said, more upbeat. ‘No more deaths for a few days.’

  Because whoever had bought a couple of kilos of it had stopped selling it on, McLusky thought but said nothing. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to question the miraculous properties of a Denkhaus press conference. ‘True, not from contaminated heroin. But there was another overdose from pure heroin, saw it flagged up earlier.’

  ‘I know. Not for you to worry. I got Fairfield on the case.’

  At least, McLusky thought, there was no more snow forecast for a couple of days. After the public outcry over unpreparedness and tardy road clearing, the Highways Agency and city council were catching up. Most roads and pavements were now more or less passable, even to a cripple walking with a stick. Using it was by now second nature, so much so that, he noticed with a kind of shock, he had developed new mannerisms around it. He used it to pull things towards himself, twirled it when thinking and stomped it when impatient. If he wasn’t careful, he’d end up shaking it at car drivers and children.

  Broadmead traders tried to make the most of the snow by alleging that Christmas was imminent. The absence of new snowfall, however, meant that slowly the stuff turned grey and brown and lumpy where it had been shovelled into piles and ridges, leaving permanently wet and gritty pathways for the shoppers. If you’re fit enough to hobble to work, then you’re fit enough to take me out, had been the message from Louise. Tomorrow night you can take me to the Primrose Café, then it won’t be far for you to hobble me home. Not wanting to expose himself to more ridicule by wearing the same clothes again, McLusky went shopping.

  Avoiding clothes shops was the closest thing he had to a hobby. Each time he did go shopping, he did so with the firm intention to buy enough clothes to last him for several years so that the odious experience needn’t be repeated too soon, but patience usually deserted him after finding a single pair of invariably black trousers. So it was today. There was nothing worse than having to spend hours shopping for stuff like clothes. He grabbed a likely looking dark blue shirt and a handful of black socks on his way to the till, and fled the shop. Operation Smart Casual had been completed in twelve minutes. It had felt like for ever.

  Late afternoon. He had left his car at the station and started walking with his purchases towards Albany Road when he heard a shout of dismay behind him. When he turned, he saw a woman on her back in the snow and a tracksuited teenager running in his direction, pursued by a community support officer. She’d never catch up with the kid, who was barging through the shoppers, shouting, ‘Get out of the fucking way, get out of the fucking way, get out of the fucking—’ McLusky stepped out of the teenager’s fucking way, then flung his walking stick between his legs. He crashed face first into the dirty snow with a satisfying thud. McLusky put his best foot forward and stood firmly on the fallen kid’s ankle. A second later, the support officer arrived and made sure of the runner. McLusky showed his ID.

  ‘Oh, excellent, sir. He’s just robbed a couple of school kids of their mobiles.’

  ‘Then, allow me.’ He turned to the now silent street robber. ‘I’m arresting you on suspicion of robbery. You don’t have to say anything …’ Community support officers had no powers of arrest, which in McLusky’s view made them purely decorative. Fortunately a patrol car came into view even before he had finished the caution. ‘Genius. Here’s the cavalry.’ He retrieved his walking stick, stomped it on the ground a couple of times and walked away. A few feet further on, an old man stood smiling broadly, nodding approvingly and waving his own stick at him. The man carried a library book, and his upper jaw was devoid of teeth. McLusky nodded too, and waved back at him in a brief moment of walking-stick solidarity with his customer base.

  Chapter Twenty

  At last. Five times he had called the council about it. We are receiving a large number of calls at the moment. Well of course you are; it’s because you’re useless twits. Your call is important to us. Oh yeah? Then why don’t you pick up the bloody phone? When he finally did get through, they had tried to fob him off: it would take time, it was an unusual amount of snow… What was that supposed to mean? If it was three inches you’d be out there clearing the pavements, but because it’s eight you’re not bothering? Eventually he’d been told that the pavements in his street had been cleared.

  Yeah, right. Even without leaving the flat, he could see that the troupe of community-service trolls they’d sent had merely shovelled an undulating gangway barely wide enough for one person to shuffle along. He’d called them again. Did they even know how wide a wheelchair was? Did they have any idea how a wheelchair behaved on ice? How easily the little front wheels got bogged down in snow?

  He himself had found out the hard way. This was his first snow since the accident, his first snow since the chair. He’d been naive, of course, to go out when the first inch fell. He’d even felt something akin to excitement; he’d brought his camera, taken pictures of St Pauls in the snow. Only back at his building he couldn’t get up the ramp. Someone had scraped a path down the stairs, but the ramp had not been gritted. Worse, kids had tried sliding down it and compacted the snow into a shiny, slippery surface. In the end, a couple of teenagers had scraped some of the snow away with a plastic tray they’d been using as a sled, and with both of them pushing and pulling he had made it back into the house. Independent living. Thirty-six years old and depending on the kindness of strangers to get into his bloody flat.

  He was getting better at it. He had to admit it. They had said it would get better and some of it had. But most of it never would and much of it could only get worse. He still flew into rages, especially after a few drinks. There was so much anger, so much rage inside him, especially against the bastard who had driven the car, whoever he was. The police had never caught them. There were at least two in the car. The accident had been caught on private CCTV, but it was dark and the picture grainy. The camera angle didn’t show the number plates or the faces of the kids in the car – looked like kids – but it showed clearly what had happened. He had been able to watch his bicycle be hit from behind, watch how he was catapulted through the air, seen his back break across the lamp post, watch himself crumple in slow motion, over and over. In a few seconds of footage he went from whole man to half a man. They’d never even found the car. Probably not insured anyway. He was still
waiting for compensation. It wouldn’t be much. Even had they been caught, even had they been insured, the payout could never be enough. Nothing could make up for this prison. Nothing could pay for the way people looked at him now. The way women looked at him, the way women didn’t look at him. Not that there was anything wrong with his equipment, but he wasn’t bloody likely to get a chance to prove it. Women didn’t exactly queue up for sex with a cripple. Only one woman had so far shown the slightest interest, the one who had chatted him up at the harbour festival. And what a nightmare she had turned out to be; she’d just needed someone to mother. She’d wanted someone helpless. It had made him feel even more pathetic.

  Retraining. They were no longer talking about rehabilitation, they were talking about retraining now. But what was he good for? What qualifications did he have? A couple of GCSEs and a mini-digger licence. Fat lot of good that was. What were his interests? Rock-climbing and cycling. He had never actually done any rock-climbing, he had just said it to rub it in how crap everything was now, to staunch the relentless stream of positive bloody attitude they directed at him. He could add photography to his interests, since he’d gone on the course at the community centre. His social worker had got him to go. It was just down the road. Of course with the bloody cuts the next course had promptly been cancelled. Then someone had set fire to the van they’d used to go on their outings. And now some idiot had torched the offices. All the computer equipment that had been donated completely destroyed. Once, on the course, they’d gone up to Leigh Woods, the place where the dead bodies had later been found. They had gone up at sparrow’s fart, in that van, just a few of them, to take pictures at dawn. They’d bumped his wheelchair into the woods. It had felt amazing to be outside again, in nature, away from the tarmac that was now his prison. He had no longer felt like a bloody Dalek. But even there some weirdo in a posh car had come out of nowhere down the track and asked what the fuck they were doing there. He would never have taken any lip from people like that before, but if you were stuck in a wheelchair, things were different. You didn’t feel like a whole bloke. Because you patently weren’t. Any arsehole with working legs towered over you, had the automatic advantage.