by Peter Helton
McLusky drained the bottle and left.
At Albany Road, he collared Austin and shooed him into his office. He played him the recording.
Austin listened, staring a hole into the wall. ‘If that’s really Darren Rutts’s last three minutes, then that’s really creepy.’ But he looked worried. ‘He only says three words, though.’
‘It’s him. I talked to him earlier, apropos of nothing, and heard him say “behind” and “car”, and it’s the same voice.’
‘It’s thin, Liam.’
‘I don’t care how thin it is, I want to know everything about him, and about the Boat House; I want to know who he associates with and what he has for breakfast.’
‘D’you think Denkhaus will authorize surveillance?’
‘Probably not.’
Twenty minutes later, McLusky was proved right. DSI Denkhaus started shaking his head while he was listening to the recording, and never stopped. ‘Because you heard someone utter three words on a muffled recording made on a phone? You didn’t really expect me to authorize a surveillance operation on the strength of that?’ Denkhaus ejected the disk from his computer. McLusky tried to interject, but Denkhaus cut across him. ‘Every Turkish man in the country would have pronounced those words the same. Do you know how many Turks we have living in Bristol?’
‘No, how many?’
‘Well … a substantial number, I’m sure. First find something on the man. But I don’t want you to neglect any other lines of enquiry just because you have another bloody hunch.’ The trouble with DI McLusky’s hunches was that some were inexplicably brilliant but most led to expensive nowheres.
McLusky limped back towards his office. He was perfectly capable of walking without the stick now but felt reluctant to let it go. It had become his favourite tool for expressing his impatience as he stomped along the corridors and in and out of the incident room.
Austin caught up with him outside his door. ‘Well, he’s here legally; entered the country two years ago in January. Drives a silver Toyota, address in Shirehampton.’
‘How quaint.’
Austin noted that the DI knew it to be a northern suburb of Bristol and no longer needed to ask where it was.
McLusky lit a cigarette and tested his kettle for water, then flicked it on. ‘Nothing else?’
‘No phone registered to him.’
‘Rubbish, must have if he owns a bar; you can’t rely just on mobiles. And you’ll need internet access.’
‘Oh, yeah, I meant his home address. And he doesn’t own the bar, he’s just managing it.’
‘Who’s the owner?’
‘A James Cullip. He’s clean, too. Owns quite—’
‘Wait, name rings a bell. Cullip, quite young, curly hair.’
‘Yeah, he’s thirty-four, though it doesn’t actually mention hair styles on—’
‘Shut up, Jane. I had lunch with him, at the Isis. When I got roped in by Denkhaus. You know, concerned businessmen, et cetera. And Cullip’s from London. So is the other speaker in the recording. Where’s that disk …?’ McLusky played it again. Out, then go find the bitch.
Austin scratched the tip of his nose. ‘That’s so indistinct, it really could be anyone.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘And who’s the bitch?’
‘The bitch is Ellen Carrs. She ran the photography course they all attended. Have we found her address yet?’
‘Oh yeah, no answer.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought I had.’
‘Why did it take so long?’
‘She’s not on the electoral register.’
‘You sent someone round?’
‘Patrol swung round there, no answer. Neighbours said she’s not been back since going off on her jungle assignment.’
‘No, I still don’t like it. If I’m right, then she’ll be next. Get Deedee to check if she’s entered the country recently. Then we’ll go and have a look at her place. Where is it?’
It was a sky-blue terraced house in Ashley Down, not far from the college. There was no answer to either bell or knock. ‘Locksmith?’ Austin asked.
‘Not yet. According to Denkhaus, I am costing the taxpayer a fortune. And if we get the locksmith to get us in, then we’ll have to change the lock, and when the girl comes back she’ll find herself locked out because her key won’t fit.’
The next-door neighbour opened the door. She had her hands full trying to stop a tiny dog from escaping the house while the baby in her arm tried to gouge one of her eyes out. ‘Yeah, sure, go through the garden. Close the door so I can let go of the dog. You think there’s something wrong at Ellen’s place? We had the police around earlier asking about her.’
‘Nothing to worry about. We just want to make sure she won’t find any nasty surprises. Through here, is it?’ McLusky walked ahead through the kitchen and let himself out at the back. From the centre of the little lawn a melting snowman looked at him with stony eyes, his carrot nose sadly drooping. At the fence, McLusky pointed out an upstairs window above the kitchen extension of Ellen Carrs’ house. ‘See that sash, Jane? It doesn’t look fully closed to me. I think it’s your turn for the acrobatics this time.’
‘You want me to climb up there?’
‘Well you can pole-vault if you prefer, as long as you get in. I’ll wait out the front.’
‘And what if the window isn’t open?’
‘Then open it, DS Austin.’
By the time Austin had pulled himself over the fence and escaped the evergreen shrub on the other side, he was already scratched and less than happy. At the back of the house, he stacked recycling boxes on top of each other, then used the drainpipe to pull himself high enough to get a knee on to the sloping tarpaper roof of the extension. Mindful of DS Sorbie’s recent breakthrough, he proceeded on hands and knees. He could see the window had been levered open and not shut fully. It opened easily on to a small room. The telltale signs of burglary were everywhere.
‘Someone was here before us,’ he told McLusky when he let him in. ‘There’s an office up there that’s been ransacked. No sign of her.’
McLusky made straight for the kitchen and opened the lid of the swing bin. It was empty. ‘The window was forced? Then it wasn’t them. I don’t think they’ve got her.’ Upstairs he looked in the bathroom, felt the soap, searched in vain for a toothbrush. Next door he contemplated the office space, squinting, trying to see what wasn’t there. ‘This was a real burglary. Looks like a lot of photographic stuff went walkies; there’s plenty of space in that drawer, but there’s filters left in there.’
‘Perhaps she took all that with her.’
‘You see those rectangles where there’s hardly any dust? I reckon there was a big photo printer there; you don’t lug that through the jungle. This is different from the others. Coincidence, I guess. She’ll have a great homecoming, won’t she? House burgled and a homicidal bastard waiting for her.’
‘Are you convinced of that?’
McLusky stirred the mess on the floor with his walking stick. ‘I’m not convinced of anything, Jane, I just have a crap feeling about this.’
‘What about Kaya and James Cullip? Are we going after them?’
McLusky looked out of the window at the grey, dripping neighbourhood. ‘I’m going after them. But you carry on as if your DI was normal.’
They secured the upstairs window and left a note in the hall for Ellen Carrs to contact Albany Road police station as a matter of urgency.
McLusky was disappointed. James Cullip’s house in Lower Failand was large and set in a fair amount of gardens, about half an acre, he guessed, but it lacked ostentation. Being only twenty minutes’ drive from Bristol, it would probably fetch a million, but it looked quietly expensive. In his experience, drug-dealers loved to show off their money, drive flashy cars, impress people. All people, all the time. Cullip’s car was a silver Mercedes S something-or-other. It probably cost several times McLusky’s annual earn
ings, but it wasn’t shouty. Right now it was sensibly parked on the slushy tarmac drive outside the double garage of this sober Edwardian house.
It was day two of his unauthorized surveillance. With his airwave turned off, McLusky had parked his own car on the verge of the narrow lane, close enough to observe the front of the house in detail through his binoculars. The more he thought about the place, the more his disappointment grew. He’d had a good look around, making sure anyone at the house knew he was there. There was a wrought-iron gate, yet it stood wide open. It was less than man height, so merely symbolic. The property was surrounded by hedges, not fences, and there was no CCTV in evidence and no goons patrolling the place.
Earlier, he had spent two hours sitting in his car outside Kaya’s house in Shirehampton, a bland, unassuming place, and had followed him into town. Kaya had parked in a multi-storey close to the harbour and walked to work. Now McLusky had been freezing his toes off outside Cullip’s place for three hours, sometimes in the car, sometimes walking about in the melting snow. A middle-aged woman in a little VW had arrived earlier and parked at a respectful distance from the Mercedes. She was dressed in jeans and a grey jacket and disappeared around the back of the house. The age of the car spelled poverty, and McLusky had her down as a cleaner. Another hour, and a man in a Vauxhall estate arrived. He carried what looked like sample books to the front door and was greeted and admitted by Cullip himself. He stayed for half an hour and drove off slowly the way he had come. McLusky noted him down as a soft-furnishings salesman.
Cullip ran his multi-strand business from home. McLusky could see blond smoke rising from two chimneys, and imagined the heat and fragrance of the log fires as he tried to fumble a cigarette from the pack without taking his gloves off. He managed to extract one with his teeth and lit it. Only one left. Cullip’s legitimate business interests, as far as he’d been able to establish, included bars and restaurants in England, several fur shops in France as well as a second-hand car dealership in Wales. This was the only cheerful note McLusky had heard chime so far. Fur shops and second-hand car sales lent themselves particularly well to laundering money. Fur shops, especially, often did no business for weeks, then turned over large amounts in a short time.
The front door opened. McLusky picked up his binoculars again. It was James Cullip, wearing a black overcoat, scarf and gloves. McLusky got ready to follow his car, but Cullip walked past the Mercedes, came out into the lane and straight towards him. He stopped briefly a few paces away from McLusky’s car, produced an iPhone and took a picture. When he got close to the car, he took another picture, shooting from the hip. He halted for a moment to sneeze, then stood close and rapped on the driver window with gloved knuckles.
McLusky let the window slide down. ‘Mr Cullip, what a surprise. Is that your house, or were you just visiting?’
‘Cut the crap, Inspector. What the fuck are you doing outside my house?’
Out, then go find the bitch. ‘Freezing my arse off,’ McLusky said cheerfully.
‘This is the second day you’ve been parked up here. Limping about in the lane. Along the field behind the house. Sitting in your car.’
‘You noticed. Well, I know how concerned you and your friends are about crime. I’m helping to keep Lower Failand crime-free.’
‘I’ll help you to a career in traffic management if you don’t find something else to do.’
‘Yes, Mr Kaya said something similar a few days ago.’
‘You’ve been harassing my staff at work, you’ve been following Mr Kaya around; now you’re harassing me at my home …’
‘You feel harassed?’
Cullip bent down to bring his face close. It was flushed now, and his breath smelled of whisky. ‘We can do this several ways, McLusky. I’d normally try persuasion first, but from what I hear, you’re not the sensible type. I’ve already had a word with your superior, DSI Denkhaus. He was suitably apologetic, and if you go to see him now, he will tell you what he thinks of you making a nuisance of yourself. But if that doesn’t prove sufficient, then I’ll consider other options.’
‘Like giving yourself up?’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about, Inspector.’
‘You see, that’s where the charade falls down: a normal person would have asked what he was suspected of.’
‘Your DSI seems to think you frequently go off on absurd tangents. This is obviously one of them.’
‘There’ll be DNA, you know,’ McLusky said conversationally. ‘There always is. A hair, perhaps, or a sneeze is probably enough these days.’ Cullip abruptly straightened up and walked away. McLusky called after him: ‘Was it you who did the killing? Probably more Kaya’s style, eh? Did you hang around to watch, though?’ There was the smallest hesitation in Cullip’s gait, but he kept going.
McLusky got out and considered following him up the drive, provoking him some more, but he changed his mind and just stood and watched Cullip disappear into the house. Then he got back into the car and lit his last cigarette. He wouldn’t last long without buying more after this one, but he didn’t want to give Cullip the impression he was leaving because of what had been said. He smoked slowly, planning to stay for at least another half-hour.
He had only just taken the last drag of his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray when the patrol car pulled up behind him. McLusky pretended to ignore them but watched the two officers leave the vehicle and approach the driver door of his car. He didn’t recognize either of them. One of them tapped on his window. McLusky slid it down three inches.
‘There’s been a complaint, sir,’ said the officer, bending down, one hand on the roof of the car.
McLusky opened his ID wallet. ‘I’m a police officer.’
‘Yes, we know. The message from control is: turn on your airwave and return to Albany Road immediately.’
McLusky sighed. ‘Okay, tell them you delivered your message.’
‘We’re supposed to follow you in, sir.’
McLusky used the drive back, closely followed by the patrol car, to formulate responses to the rocket he was likely to receive when he fell into Denkhaus’s clutches, but he’d have found ample time for it in the superintendent’s outer office. For once Lynn Tiery’s eyebrows gave nothing away. Denkhaus kept him waiting for nearly half an hour, but remarks about wasting police time would probably fall flat. When he was finally admitted, he didn’t get much time for remarks of any kind.
Either Denkhaus had used the last half-hour to read the relevant sections, or he was displaying a remarkable memory when he quoted at length from the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.
‘You are this far away from a suspension,’ he said, holding two fleshy digits a hair’s breadth apart. ‘In fact if DCI Gaunt wasn’t off sick, I’d be seriously considering it, so count yourself lucky. As it is, you will receive a written warning. Even if your idea of James Cullip as the mind behind this killing spree wasn’t completely unsubstantiated, your flouting of PACE would seriously jeopardize any chances of conviction anyway. Fortunately all it’ll jeopardize is what is laughably called your career. The ACC plays golf with the man, for Pete’s sake. I’d have thought you’d have learnt when a bit of tiptoeing is required. As for turning your airwave off,’ he held up a hand to cut off McLusky’s prepared speech, ‘and claiming no doubt that it was malfunctioning or whatever, that’s the kind of nonsense I expect from a DC, not a detective inspector on my team.’
When McLusky was free to go, he used his stick to lever himself up and felt as though he really needed it. After a brief exchange with Austin in the incident room, he buried himself in his office.
He doubted very much that the ACC would oblige and ask Cullip if he awfully minded giving a DNA sample next time they played a round of golf. It was time to rethink the whole thing, to review the entire case, revisit every location, read through every report again, look at every photograph and statement twice. He stood in the middle of what little floor space there was in his office, took
in the collapsed piles of files on the floor, the overflowing bin, the mess on his desk, the condensation on the window. The fan on his computer terminal had acquired a rattle and the radiator had started gurgling again. He gripped the handle of his walking stick hard. Smashing the place up wouldn’t help, he tried to tell himself. It really wouldn’t. But the urge remained strong. He sat down instead, blew the dust from a drinking glass and poured himself a large measure of Glenmorangie. He swirled it around the glass, inhaled the complex fragrance, then dribbled it back into the bottle, put it away and pulled the first file towards him.
It was mid-afternoon and getting dark in the office. He switched on the lamp, counted his cigarettes. Ridiculous, that had been a full pack only a few hours ago. The phone rang.
It was Sergeant Hayes. ‘We had this phone call, sir, from an Ellen Carrs.’
‘Why didn’t you put her through? I said I needed to talk to her urgently.’
‘Well it’s like this, sir, she never finished the call. I think you’d better come and listen to the recording.’
‘I’m on my way.’ McLusky surprised himself with the speed with which he could move. On the way down the stairs, the stick never even touched the ground.
‘That was quick, sir.’
‘Go on, play it.’
Hayes and McLusky both donned headphones, standing next to the civilian operator who answered all calls to the station. The recording sounded tinny in their ears. ‘Albany Road Police Station, how can I help?’ ‘Yes, hello, I’ve just come back after a few weeks away and found my place has been turned over and there’s a note in the hall that says it’s from Detective Inspector McLusky and I should call this number and—’ A door bell could be heard, quite loud, insistent. ‘It’s all happening at once, there’s someone at the door, can you just hang on for one second?’ Retreating footsteps. After several more seconds there was a distant thump.
Hayes took his headphones off. ‘There’s nothing more, just the operator going “hello, hello”. What do you think to that … sir?’
