Charisma

by Jo Bannister

  ‘So what was I to do? Tell you I’d seen the girl when I hadn’t? Probably it wouldn’t have mattered, but it might have done. I couldn’t have seen the poor kid. All the time she was in the park I was in June’s bed.’ He looked up then. There was no shadow of guilt in his gypsy eyes. ‘You going to tell them at the Town Hall? You’ll break Daisy’s heart.’

  ‘I will?’ exclaimed Shapiro, taken aback. ‘You don’t think maybe it’s a bit late to consider Davy May’s feelings?’

  ‘We always considered his feelings,’ said Carver indignantly. ‘That’s why I arranged with Arnie, so he wouldn’t see me sneaking out.’

  After Carver had been sent back to his work, trying not to laugh Liz said, ‘What will you do? As an officer of the law and a tax-payer, I mean.’

  ‘Damned if I know,’ confessed Shapiro. ‘It’s nothing to do with the investigation, that’s plain enough – though we could have wasted a hell of a lot of time if June May hadn’t had the wit to come down here. Let them get on with it, I suppose. Though I may drop a hint to Mr Sedgewick that fiddling the time-cards is in fact fraud.’

  In the event he didn’t have to. In the event, Ray Carver never again enjoyed a bit of fun with June May while her husband polished the candlesticks in the Mayor’s parlour.

  2

  All Tuesday the streets of the housing estates and the gardens of the leafy suburbs remained disturbingly empty, and that night the frightened people of Castlemere turned to the one man who seemed to have something to say about the obscenity stalking the town. Their vehicles – for nobody walked to Broad Wharf through the stillness of Castle Place and down the dusky waterfront – were backed up along Brick Lane, blocking the pavements on both sides and narrowing the thoroughfare to the width of one careful car. By eight o’clock Brick Lane was solid and they were parking in Jubilee Terrace.

  It was hard to know what they hoped to hear from the man in the white suit. He was an evangelist, not a clairvoyant: nothing said about him and his presence here, even by himself, suggested he could toss a handful of mixed herbs at a flame and reveal the author of their distress. Yet it seemed to be something of that sort they were looking for.

  For comfort, strength or guidance they could have turned to their own churches, those who espoused one – for Castlemere was a working town with few pretensions towards piety. So it was something on the metaphysical side of moral leadership that they sought, even if they could not have explained quite what, something to do with the white suit and the rolling thunder of the voice and perhaps even the wheelchair.

  They seemed to feel it was more than coincidence that this stranger with his powerful personality and his crusade against evil should arrive in unpromising Castlemere at the one time anyone could remember that there was a job for him to do. They were looking for Merlin, for someone from another dimension to step into the chaos and say, ‘It’s all right, I have it under control.’ A Welsh cripple with a burnished voice and a patched tent was just the closest they could get.

  They came like children at first, shyly, shamefaced even, ready to remember urgent business elsewhere if anyone laughed. But the sight of so many others with the same idea, groping towards something they needed but could not have described, gave them confidence. They crowded together in the marquee, drawing comfort from their closeness long before the man in the white suit began to speak.

  And when Michael Davey hauled himself up on to the dais by the strength of his shoulders and wheeled to face his audience, the lights behind him shining through his energetic hair like a halo, a sigh whispered over the dense rows of seating. They might not have known, as they made their uncertain way here, just what it was they were looking for; but when they saw Michael Davey, particularly when he drew that first big breath and the words began flowing from him like slow fierce lava, they knew they’d found it.

  He filled the tent. When he let it go his voice soared into the eaves and wheeled around there like great birds. His voice made musical thunder like the roar in the hollow of a deep sea wave, rolling across the heads of his audience and crashing against the white canvas cliffs in a foam of pith and wisdom. His voice thrilled and quickened them.

  The dais was not high enough that a seated man could be seen easily from the far reaches of the tent. From half-way back people found it easier to stand. Near the back of the tent they stood on the chairs. Because many of them had scant experience of church it did not seem incongruous to them to clap and cheer and even whistle when his vibrant words struck chords of meaning in their hearts. They thought, That’s right! – that’s what I think! – about concepts they had never before considered.

  What did he say? What were the words that drew such fervour from frightened people? Reduced to letters on a cool page they would seem nothing very much, only a trite cocktail of moral certainty and righteous indignation. But how he used those flat words, those commonplace ideas! How his audience responded! How they fed each other with pain and anger and the thrill of marshalling themselves to strike back! When Davey spoke of confronting the Devil in the backstreets of Castlemere it seemed that at any moment someone would produce a sack of brands and a taper to light them with.

  More like lovers than a shepherd with sheep, drawing vitality from one another, clasped together like coupling bodies on a sweaty bed they rocked to the rhythm of his rhetoric. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. Life for life, burning for burning. No peace for the wicked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. Faith without works is dead.

  And what was it that turned the sensible, cynical people of Castlemere into a mob intoxicated with the cordite smell of a church militant? Only fear, that makes cowards and heroes of the same dust. They looked on the wine when it was red, and changes they did not understand came over them.

  Donovan had watched in disbelief as the throng swelled on Broad Wharf until the tent, all but empty the night before, could hardly hold them. He listened uneasily to the swelling voices, the disturbing unanimity of mood. He thought he should do something about it and didn’t know what. All his instincts told him something sinister was happening, but the only facts were that a gospel meeting had attracted a bigger turn-out than he’d expected. He didn’t know how Superintendent Taylor would react if Donovan phoned him at home to tell him that.

  He thought of phoning Shapiro instead, even though crowd control was no part of a detective chief inspector’s brief, but he didn’t know what he could say that would justify a police presence here. For a long time he stood undecided on Tara’s deck, feeling the electricity in the air grow even as the light faded. Then he made a move towards the tent. There was no longer much point in avoiding Brady and he’d have a better idea what needed to be done if he could hear what was being said.

  He never got there. As he moved across the dark wharf, doing nothing to attract attention to himself, a hand reached out of the shadows and hooked his elbow, swinging him into the alley where he’d found the body of Charlene Pierce. Another clapped over his mouth. He had a powerful sense of déjà vu.

  Brady hissed in his ear, ‘There’s going to be trouble here. They’re saying you had the man who killed those girls and you let him go. Is that right?’

  Donovan shook off his hand. ‘No. We talked to a guy but it wasn’t him, it couldn’t have been: he was in somebody else’s bed at the time.’

  ‘Well, the people in there have convinced themselves he’s the one. You know what folk are like in these situations: they don’t wait to hear the details. You people questioned him at the park after the little girl was found, then you sent a squad car for him. Did you think no one’d notice? That’s a public park, a dozen people must have seen you arrest him. Before you had him cautioned the experts in every bus queue and every supermarket check-out in town had him tried and convicted. And now they think you’ve let him get awa
y with it. There’ll be no trouble as long as Reverend Mike keeps talking. But he’ll be done soon and they’ll leave, and not all of them are going to go straight home.’

  Donovan stared at what he could see of the man in the dark. ‘You think they’ll go after him? Jesus Christ, he only lives off Brick Lane.’

  ‘I don’t know what they’ll do,’ said Brady. ‘But in that tent right now there’s a strong smell of hemp rope. If they start to move, and they know where to find him, you, me and a couple of wooden-tops aren’t going to stop them. You know where he lives. Get him away before they go for him.’

  Donovan started to say, ‘I’ll call Queen’s Street—’ but Brady interrupted. ‘There’s no time. I’ll call the police, tell them what you’re doing. But if you’re not away from here before they come out of that tent you’ll never get past them. And there’s nothing you can do from behind.’

  Donovan waited no longer. ‘I’ll take the motorbike.’

  He took the walkway up on to Brick Lane. Traffic was theoretically barred but a motorbike could squeeze between the bollards and Donovan judged the situation urgent enough to break a bylaw or two. He accelerated between the parked cars and did a dirt-track turn, his knee centimetres from the tarmac, into Jubilee Terrace.

  It was like entering a walled city. The six streets, all with classic Victorian names, formed an enclave to which the only way in was Jubilee Terrace. The dwellings were modest little back-to-backs with yards separated by narrow alleys, called in the local argot ginnels, but apart from Philip Pierce’s they were respectable enough and no one who lived there thought of the place they called The Jubilee as a slum. It was quiet, there was no through traffic, the kids could play in the streets – normally they could – and nobody complained if a man kept a few pigeons. For those with no great ambition it was an easy place to live.

  Donovan gunned the bike to a halt in front of Carver’s house and hammered on the door, dragging his helmet off as he did so. Best of all, he thought, was if the man wasn’t at home – was out celebrating with June May, for instance. But if he was here, the sooner he’d answer this bloody door the better.

  He was there. Donovan caught movement at an upstairs window followed by the sound of feet on the stair. The door opened and Carver peered at him suspiciously. He hadn’t met Donovan formally and didn’t recognize him. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Donovan, Castlemere CID. Grab a coat, you’re coming with me.’

  Carver’s gypsy eyes opened wide and he took a step back. ‘You’ve got it wrong. I was let go. I’ve got an alibi.’

  ‘I know. But there’s going to be trouble here. You’ll be safer away.’

  Carver stared at him. ‘Trouble?’

  For the first time Donovan’s resolution wavered. He was here on the unsupported word of a liar, thug and at least one-time terrorist. Apart from his general observation that a lot of people were at the crusade that night, and they were listening to the address with as much enthusiasm as Davey was giving it, he had no evidence that any harm was intended or likely. Now he thought about it, it seemed just as likely that Brady wanted him off the wharf for half an hour while he got on with whatever had brought him here.

  If there was a problem there was no time to waste; if there wasn’t, it didn’t matter. He decided. ‘Look, this may be a false alarm – somebody making a fool of me. But it’s possible some of the God-botherers from the wharf are going to come here when they’ve finished their meeting. They’ve got hold of your name, they know we questioned you about Alice Elton’s murder and don’t know why we let you go. I’d like to get you out of here before that meeting winds up.’

  Carver understood that. He was a man from The Jubilee, he didn’t share the middle-class faith in the power of rational persuasion. If men were coming here to accuse him of killing a child, however complete his defence he wasn’t going to stay and offer it when he could be on the far side of town. Subsequent vindication and abject apologies wouldn’t mend broken bones.

  Nodding at the bike Donovan said, ‘Have you done this before?’

  Carver’s response was scathing. ‘Can a fish swim?’

  Donovan held out his helmet. ‘Put that on, then nobody’ll recognize you.’ He mounted the bike and Carver climbed on behind him. Rather more sedately than he’d arrived, Donovan circled the block back into Jubilee Terrace.

  And they were there. At the end of the road, the cork in the bottleneck. It was hard to judge how many. They looked like a wall of people across the end of the street: there might have been twenty of them or twice that number. The Jubilee was sealed off.

  Half expecting them as he was, the sight shocked Donovan to the core. He’d seen mobs in Ireland but never in Castlemere. It wasn’t mob country somehow. But recent events had affected everyone in town, and especially those with children of their own. They weren’t natural go-to-meeting folk: they were young men who’d left their wives and children at home behind locked doors, who’d tramped the empty streets angrily and failed to find comfort in the pubs, who’d come then in a kind of cynic despair to see if the preacher had anything to offer.

  And the preacher had said, in essence, that the remedy lay in their own hands. If thine eye offend thee, and all that. The Old Testament passions worked on them like strong drink, and when the meeting had finished a significant number of them felt moved to confront the works of the Devil as they’d been told they must.

  To his credit, part of his brain continuing to function while the rest of it froze, Donovan did nothing to signal his alarm, either by accelerating, braking or throwing a quick turn. He continued at the same unhurried pace and turned left into the other half of Coronation Row, out of sight of the gathering in Jubilee Terrace. So far as he could see they made no move to follow him. They didn’t seem sure what to do next.

  At the top end of the enclave he stopped the bike. He knew the area but not like a native. ‘Is there a way out?’

  Defective street-lights didn’t get replaced as quickly in The Jubilee as round Belvedere Park but there were enough to show the pallor of Carver’s cheeks. He shook his head.

  ‘Even on foot,’ Donovan pressed him. ‘Is there a back wall we can climb over, a garage roof, anything?’

  ‘From Coronation Row.’ Carver’s voice was reedy, his teeth chattering as if the night was cold. ‘You can cross from the backyards of Coronation Row into the backyards of Brick Lane. We might get out that way.’

  Under normal circumstances perhaps: the need for a little breaking and entering would have deterred Donovan no more than any genuine resident of The Jubilee. But with a hostile gathering at that end of the walled city someone would see them, raise a hue and cry. They might conceivably reach Brick Lane but they wouldn’t get any further. Brick Lane was where these people had come from, where they were probably still coming from, where their cars were parked, where those who didn’t want to get involved but also didn’t want to miss much would be waiting.

  ‘We’d better get indoors. Round here somewhere, I don’t want those people to see us. Do you know anybody who lives here, who’d let us in without making a row?’

  Perhaps he did but Carver couldn’t seem to think. He peered anxiously from one front door to another as if trying to distinguish between them. ‘Never mind,’ said Donovan, ‘I’ll flash my card at them.’ He reached for the nearest bell.

  But no one came. The first couple of times he rang and no one answered Donovan thought he was being unlucky. He wondered if half The Jubilee was down at the wharf as well: from curiosity, he couldn’t see them going anywhere to pray. But when time and again his summons went unanswered, as he moved from door to door and no one so much as opened a window to look at him, he understood. These houses weren’t empty; not all of them. At some of them the inmates didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want to. And at some they knew exactly what was going on and, through fear or because they too believed in Carver’s guilt, wouldn’t raise a finger to stop it.

  ‘Yo
u miserable bastards!’ Black fury and gnawing fear ravelled together in Donovan’s mind. He didn’t know what to do. He could force an entry but he couldn’t do it silently and the sound of breaking glass would carry.

  That gave him an idea. There was no time to go through it in detail to judge if it was a good one. He waved Carver to the bike. ‘You take her. Don’t ride, push. Get round the far corner and stay out of sight till you hear a commotion. I’m going to break into one of these houses. One of two things should happen. Either I’ll find a phone and whistle up some help. Or the God-botherers’ll come after me. If they come up here to see what the noise is about, maybe they’ll leave the road open.

  ‘If that happens, get out of The Jubilee as fast as you can. Don’t stop for anyone. If they try and stop you, run them down.’

  3

  Sheer bad luck defeated him. He chose a house at random and stabbed his gloved fist through the circle of reeded glass in the front door. The glass was tougher than he expected: he hit it twice without result. When it did break the noise of falling glass shattered the uneasy quiet of The Jubilee.

  Protected by his leather jacket he fumbled for the catch, stumbled inside. But there was no telephone. A low-wattage bulb showed him a tiny hall, stairs and two doors. He tried the front room but there was no phone there either. He tried the kitchen. Finally he ran upstairs. He found an old man cowering on an iron bedstead in the dark.

  ‘I need your phone.’

  ‘I haven’t got one.’

  Donovan flung downstairs again and back to the street. He could hear them coming, the rumble of feet and voices mounting as they approached the corner. He had no idea what they’d do when they got here. Quite possibly nothing: they might eye one another in growing embarrassment for a few minutes and then shuffle off home. But unpredictability is inherent in any mass action, and the experiences of Toxteth and Broadwater Farm destroyed for ever the comfortable notion that, even when they were worked up, people weren’t animals and common sense would intervene before anything really nasty took place.