Charisma

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Give him a piece of your mind instead,’ suggested Liz.

  ‘I did that,’ he said gloomily. ‘He gave me a piece of his in return.’

  Liz offered to drive them back to their hotel but they’d come by car: a specially adapted car which Davey drove. While he was getting in – he refused her help while Mills knew better than to offer – the women stood chatting by the boot; not as friends exactly but as people with something in common.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ said Mills. ‘Really, a good man. But he isn’t always an easy man.’

  Liz smiled. ‘You must have read my book.’ Mills raised an interrogative eyebrow. ‘“How To Apologize Gracefully For A Bad-Tempered Boss”.’ She was, Liz knew, being unfair to Shapiro but she was interested to see what she could learn about Davey by putting Mills at her ease. They chuckled together.

  ‘You wrote that? I keep a copy in my handbag. Seriously,’ Mills went on, ‘Michael does so much good. He gives people faith in themselves. He gives them the strength to stand up for what they believe in. When we leave somewhere, it’s a better place than before we came.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ murmured Liz, politely unconvinced.

  ‘No, truly,’ insisted the other woman. ‘Enough to affect local crime statistics.’

  Knowing something about crime figures, Liz was non-committal. ‘How do you decide where to go? I mean, what made you pick Castlemere?’

  ‘We try to go where there seems to be a need for us. I do a bit of driving round between stops – it’s easier for me than for Michael, so he stays behind to say goodbye and I go on ahead. I have to arrive in every town ahead of the tent anyway, to make sure the site we’ve been given is suitable and complete the paperwork, so while I’m on my way I look out for places we could go next time we’re in the area. I drive around, pick up the local papers, sit in on a church service, visit a pub. You develop a feeling for communities which are essentially strong and those which are in danger of breaking down.’

  ‘And Castlemere seemed to you to be breaking down?’

  Mills looked at her with surprise. ‘You doubt it? After this last week? Inspector, I was first here about six months ago. I thought then the place was in need of – well, let’s call it moral leadership. Then you had that business of the hospital killings, and I changed the question-mark in my diary to a tick. While we were on our way here this fresh business with the hookers started, and now there’s been a riot. Do you think Castlemere knows where it’s heading, Inspector Graham?’

  Liz frowned. ‘Charlene Pierce was a prostitute. Alice Elton wasn’t.’

  Mills dropped her gaze in swift apology. ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry. But you take my point. This is not a town where everything’s bumping along normally. Things have gone badly wrong with the social structure of a community before events like these start showing above the surface. You may not want Michael here; that doesn’t mean you don’t need him.’

  ‘How long do you plan on staying?’

  ‘It was going to be a fortnight. After this’ – she shrugged eloquently – ‘I don’t know. As long as he seems to be doing some good.’

  ‘How do you judge?’

  Mills smiled tightly. ‘That’s always the hard part, isn’t it? – knowing if what you’re doing is for the best. No offence, Inspector, but I’ve learned not to take the police view as law.’

  ‘That’s a coincidence,’ Liz parried amiably. ‘I’ve stopped taking the word of the clergy as gospel.’

  5

  Back inside Donovan was poring over the log-book by the switchboard. The left side of his face was discoloured and his right hand was wrapped in cling-film, otherwise he seemed to have got off lightly enough. But when he glanced quickly up at her and then back at the book she was aware of the tension threading through his long body like electricity.

  ‘Mr Shapiro’s looking for you.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll be up in a minute. I wanted to check something.’

  ‘What?’

  He stabbed the page with a savage finger. ‘This. Brady told me he’d call here while I got Carver out of The Jubilee. There was a call – anonymous – but it didn’t come in till ten-twenty. Now, I can’t say what time I left the wharf, but it had to be fifteen minutes before that. That’s a damn sight longer than it takes to get to a phone. What the hell was he doing that was more important than getting me some back-up?’

  ‘He’s a stranger here,’ Liz said reasonably. ‘It would take him longer than you or me.’

  ‘Quarter of an hour?’

  ‘Maybe.’ It seemed a long time to her too. It must have felt hellish long in the midst of a mob.

  He followed her upstairs. ‘Are you charging Davey?’

  Liz shook her head. ‘He didn’t do much to improve the situation but I can’t show that he provoked it.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been here.’ Anger vibrated in his voice; when she looked round he looked away rather than meet her eyes.

  Liz sighed. ‘Go see what Mr Shapiro wants. Then I have some phone calls for you to make.’

  That brought his gaze flicking back. ‘I thought I’d go see Liam Brady.’

  ‘Donovan,’ she said patiently, ‘he’s already thumped you once. That was when you had two good hands. I don’t want you leaving the office until you can deal with any trouble you meet, and I can trust you not to start any.’

  ‘But what about Brady?’ he demanded. ‘He’s supposed to be dead, and he isn’t. So what’s he doing here, and what are we doing about finding out?’

  ‘We will find out,’ she promised him. ‘I’ll tackle Special Branch this time, see if I can get a bit more sense out of them. I know it’s suspicious but it may not mean he’s guilty of anything. The car crash was obviously rigged. What if it wasn’t so much to mislead us as to mislead the IRA?’

  She’d succeeded in surprising him. ‘Why the hell would he want to do that?’

  ‘Maybe he’d had enough. Maybe he decided getting shot once was once too often and he didn’t want to risk it again. What would he do? Tender his resignation in triplicate and wait for his gold watch to arrive? You know these people better than me, but wouldn’t there be a lot of grief waiting for him if he said he wanted out?’

  He thought about it, nodded slowly. ‘Probably. His da being who he was, Liam’d know too damn much for comfort.’

  Liz shrugged. ‘So maybe he thought an accident was the simplest way out.’

  ‘You mean, even his da thinks he’s dead?’

  ‘He’d have to, for it to work. When he heard it from the NYPD he’d believe it, and everyone else would believe it from him.’

  ‘And that’s why he didn’t want me raking it up? He wasn’t scared of us, he was scared of word getting back to the boyos. So what? – he really is working as an evangelist’s roadie?’

  Liz shrugged. ‘Even an ex-terrorist has to live. It’s work he wouldn’t need too many papers for.’

  He looked at her with mingled doubt and admiration. ‘And the chief says I’ve an over-active imagination!’

  She grinned. ‘Yes, I know, it’s all a bit hypothetical. All the same, it would fit with what we know. Including the fact that he seems to have had some help from the FBI. They wouldn’t be taken in by a crash faked by the IRA to protect one of their own. They’d go through the wreckage with a microscope; if it wasn’t Brady’s body they wouldn’t tell Special Branch it was. But if Brady was trying to leave the IRA, particularly if he was willing to trade information for some help, that’s how they’d handle it. And in that case Special Branch know he’s alive, and know he’s no threat to us, and maybe they’ll admit it if I put it to them straight.’

  Liz was heading for her own office then but Shapiro heard their voices and called them both inside. ‘I’ve had an unworthy thought. I’d quite like somebody to talk me out of it.’ Liz sat down, and Donovan perched on the windowsill like an exotic houseplant kept more for its interesting habit than its attractive foliage, and they lis
tened.

  ‘Suppose,’ he began, ‘just suppose because I’ve no evidence for this, that it was Michael Davey who murdered Charlene Pierce and Alice Elton.’ He paused but was denied the satisfaction of a sharp intake of breath. They’d played this game together too often before. He sighed and went on. ‘He could have reached the scenes of both crimes – he can drive and the surface is hard enough both at the wharf and the bridleway to take a wheelchair. Neither girl would be scared of a man in a wheelchair. Alice would have got off her pony to help if he said he’d dropped something, for instance.’

  ‘What about the angle of the wounds?’ objected Liz. ‘They indicated somebody standing above the victims. Are you suggesting he can get out of the chair?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Shapiro, ‘though it’s a thought. But suppose he gets the girl to turn her back on him. Then he grabs her, pulls her backwards over his knee and cuts her throat. Wouldn’t that give you the same wound as with the man standing behind her?’ No one denied it. He continued with the hypothesis.

  ‘He’d have no trouble moving the bodies. Probably they died on top of him; if not, all he had to do was haul them on to his knees and carry them that way. He’s a strong man, remember, at least from the chest upward. Anyone in a wheelchair develops great upper body strength.

  ‘But he probably isn’t capable of rape. He can think about it, he can experience the urge, but probably he can’t carry out the act. Any gratification he wants that way he’ll have to get with his eyes. Hence the victim with her clothes round her ankles but no attempt at penetration.’

  ‘But – why?’ asked Liz, obviously taken aback but willing to consider it. ‘Because he can’t have relations with women?’

  ‘Perhaps. But there’s also a financial incentive.’

  She stared at him, appalled and disbelieving. ‘How can he possibly make money out of killing young girls?’

  ‘He makes money by filling that tent. If no one comes there’s no collection. Castlemere isn’t natural evangelist country, a week ago the only people at his meetings would have been there to laugh at him. Even after Charisma died there wasn’t any real interest, was there?’

  Donovan shook his head. ‘Monday night you could hear a loose screw drop.’

  ‘But the murder of Alice Elton on Tuesday morning put the fear of God into this town, and people turned to the warrior priest. Davey made a lot of money last night, and he gained a lot of credibility which means a big turn-out for the rest of his stay here. A cynic might consider that a motive.’

  ‘He’d have been seen,’ objected Liz. ‘Probably at the wharf – the place may be quiet after dark but it’s not deserted, somebody was bound to see a man in a wheelchair with a body over his knees, not even once but twice.’

  ‘It wasn’t him put her in the canal,’ Donovan proposed. ‘That was one of the roadies covering for him. The first time he was lucky, but he knew he couldn’t hang around and he knew he couldn’t go back. That’s why she had to wait a day before she could be disposed of. Once the trucks arrived and he had men camped fifty metres away it was easy enough.’

  ‘This would all depend on Davey travelling ahead of the trucks,’ Shapiro reminded them. ‘Do we know if he did?’

  Liz looked doubtful. ‘From what Mills told me, he’s the last to leave when they take the tent down. I suppose he might travel faster than the lorries – that’s obviously his car, it’s adapted for him. But would he get here a whole day ahead of them?’

  ‘And what about Mills?’ added Shapiro, picking holes in his own argument. ‘Does she travel with him? Because if she does his opportunities to go out looking for girls would be strictly limited.’

  ‘Usually she goes on ahead. Between stops is when she looks for new towns to target. So she must have her own car, so probably Davey does drive alone. I’ll find out when they arrived at the hotel, if they’d already got together or if Davey was on his own.’

  ‘Miss Mills could tell us a lot about Davey – what motivates him, what he gets up to between shows – if she would. Will she?’

  Liz shook her head. ‘Don’t count on it. She’s very loyal. We’d have to convince her first that he’d done this, and if we can prove that we won’t need her help.’ They had an understanding: just because they discussed something didn’t mean they believed it. This was pure hypothesis, a theoretical exercise. ‘But surely he’d have been seen at the park? The neighbours saw the girl on the pony, they saw the van and they didn’t see the bicycle that should have been there and wasn’t. They’d have seen a man in a wheelchair.’

  ‘A man in a wheelchair’s much lower than the other three,’ said Shapiro. ‘The houses facing the park have all got front gardens, hedges, fences; and there’s a bit of a hedge running along the edge of the park. Maybe he was too low to be seen.’

  Liz found herself nodding pensively. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. A man who doesn’t have a family, who spends his time imposing his opinion on strangers, who can’t have much of a sex-life – a man like that could build up enough frustration to want to kill the women he can’t have, and go for young girls because they’re easier to handle. But, Frank, it’s a hell of a suggestion. If we’re wrong we’ll make the Nine O’Clock News.’

  ‘That’s not a good enough reason for not looking into it,’ Shapiro said mildly.

  ‘Maybe it’s a good enough reason for you not to look into it, though.’ She caught his eye. ‘After what happened between you and him this morning, the less you have to do with this the better. Will you leave it with me?

  ‘Donovan, find out where Davey’s pitched his tent in the past. Ask if any deaths of young girls have coincided with his visits before. Mills claims the crime figures drop after one of their crusades: see if there’s any truth in that. And get on to the ferries, find out if he travelled through Dover about the time of the murder there.

  ‘And whoever you talk to, for God’s sake ask them to be discreet. I do not want to read about this in the Sunday papers.’

  The caravan was strictly for the use of the road crew. The preacher and his assistant had taken rooms – rooms plural, Liz checked – in the Castle Hotel, the only hostelry in town with any ambition to cater for the carriage trade.

  Liz saw the manager in his office, but she was almost no time there. She had two questions for him, and his answers were such as to virtually close the investigation on Michael Davey. His rooms were booked from Sunday night. Miss Mills arrived about teatime and Davey in the middle of the evening: two days after Charisma was killed and most of a day after she was put in the canal. That didn’t make it impossible for Davey to have killed her – he could have come to Castlemere secretly a few days before his public arrival – but it did make it unlikely.

  Especially when the answer to her second question quite cleared him of the attack in the park. Between seven-thirty and about eight-fifteen on Tuesday morning Michael Davey was taking breakfast in the hotel dining-room. The staff were able to be accurate about the time because, barring special requests, seven-thirty was when they started serving breakfast, and they appreciated Mr Davey’s promptness because it enabled them to help him to his table before the dining-room filled. They couldn’t be as sure what time he finished, but he waited until adjacent tables cleared so that he could wheel himself out unaided and that was certainly well after eight. To Liz there was no material difference between eight and eight-fifteen: Alice Elton had already met with her killer. She thanked the manager and went to leave.

  As she crossed the lobby a voice hailed her. For a moment, looking round, she couldn’t see him. Then, lowering her gaze, she found him at waist-level, the big man in the wheelchair. ‘Inspector Graham. Come to arrest me this time?’

  She gave him her most gracious smile. ‘Not at all. I wasn’t even looking for you.’ It was true, if misleading. ‘I thought you’d be down at the wharf, getting ready for tonight.’

  He raised a pale bushy eyebrow. ‘That doesn’t bother you – the fact that I’ll be speaking ag
ain tonight? You’re not afraid of history repeating itself?’

  They had come together in the middle of the lobby. Liz found it odd talking down to a grown man as if he were a child. ‘You’ve every right to go ahead and speak. After last night you don’t need me to tell you that passions are running high, that we’d rather see you calming things down than stirring them up.’

  Davey’s steel-blue eyes caught hers and suddenly she didn’t feel to be looking down at him any more. His voice was a sombre musical bass. ‘I didn’t mean to stir them up last night, Inspector. I didn’t even know there was a suspect, let alone that everyone in that tent bar me knew who it was.’

  ‘Gossip has wings in Castlemere. There’s no such thing as a discreet arrest.’

  ‘So I gather. I also didn’t mean to upset Mr Shapiro. The man was only doing his job, I don’t know why I let rip at him. If you would, I’d like you to convey my apologies. I’d call him myself but I’m afraid we might get started again.’

  Liz smiled, against all her expectations liking him. ‘We have to be able to cope with the odd frayed temper. We should be able to do it without our own unravelling but we too are only human, sometimes we say things we shouldn’t.’

  Davey nodded the lion head in assent. ‘The other thing I wanted to say only I lost my temper first was how sorry I was about what happened to that boy. I didn’t want it to happen, I don’t think I could have stopped it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry. I’ll always wonder about that: if I could have saved him. Well, both of them. There were two of them, weren’t there, Carver and another man?’

  ‘The other man was my sergeant. He lives in the area, he got wind of what was going to happen and tried to get Carver out. Don’t worry about him, he wasn’t badly hurt. He’s used to taking the odd knock.’

  A kind of agonized scowl twisted Davey’s face. ‘That’s a desperate admission, Inspector. I mean, we’re used to it, you probably more than me, it doesn’t sound so very dreadful. But it is. It’s a terrible indictment of our society, that the people tasked with the business of protecting it can’t do their job without exposing themselves to injury at regular intervals. Mr Shapiro mightn’t believe it but I have great respect for the police. It’s easy to find fault with anybody doing a difficult job. But you have to give credit for trying to do it in the first place.’