A Good Way to Go

by Peter Helton

  Richard Leslie seemed unhappy at the prospect and only reluctantly turned back towards the house. McLusky took his time approaching the shed. Diplomacy had never been his strong point but DI Denkhaus was probably right about treading gently. He peered into a half-blind plastic window but could see only dark shapes that could have been anything at all. He did not knock but stood in front of the door, listening for a moment; all was quiet. ‘Mr Leslie? Hello?’ No answer. ‘I’m Detective Inspector McLusky, we’ve briefly met before.’ He could hear small noises inside now but no answer. ‘How are your ribs? Does it still hurt when you breathe in?’

  After a moment’s pause the door was opened as though by a very ancient person. Michael Leslie did not look at him but shuffled away again to sit on a stool in the furthest corner in front of a potting bench. The shed was well stocked and almost pathologically tidy, with all the tools in their place and a large lawnmower taking up much space. The place smelled darkly of vegetative growth, with a hint of petrol fumes from the mower.

  McLusky closed the door behind him. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked. Leslie shrugged which McLusky decided to take as consent and lit up. ‘I don’t want to make you cough, I know what cracked ribs feel like, the last thing you want to do is cough.’ Leslie looked as though he wanted to respond but changed his mind. ‘Have your teeth stopped feeling shaky?’

  Leslie nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  McLusky took his time, lit his cigarette and exhaled smoke away from the hunched man. ‘I like sheds. They say every man over forty should have a shed. That leaves me a bit of time to find one. And a place to put it, of course,’ he added almost to himself. He let a pause develop before he said: ‘You were extremely lucky, Michael.’ Leslie looked up at the use of his name but made no answer. ‘He could have killed you. He has killed before.’ Leslie stirred on his seat but looked straight ahead at the stacks of black plastic flowerpots under the bench. ‘How long before he recognized his mistake?’ Leslie seemed to squirm under some kind of internal pressure, either to tell or to contradict him, but he remained silent. ‘It was your brother he really wanted but there’s a strong family resemblance and of course you were driving his Jaguar. Did he even know Richard had a brother? No, you’re right, how could he have known, you are not part of this set, are you? You despise riches. You would give it all to charity. But there you were, driving a luxurious sports car and got mistaken for your filthy-rich brother. Did you tell him straight away? Or only when you knew he was going to kill you whatever you did.’

  Leslie’s voice was small and worn rough from crying. ‘When I knew it was not a ransom thing. When I knew he meant to kill me. That’s when I told him.’

  ‘And you denounced your brother, you disowned him.’ Leslie’s eyes welled up and he gave tiny nods of his head, his hands clamped to the sides of his seat. ‘You told him you despised his wealth. You told him why you had been driving the car.’ Leslie still nodded. ‘And he let you go. Where had he taken you?’

  ‘I don’t know, it was dark in the van and he put a bag over my head and tied my hands. I screamed for help but he hit me until I stopped.’

  ‘What kind of van was it?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t remember that. All I remember seeing is the gun.’

  ‘What kind of a gun?’

  ‘A big silver thing. Like an automatic.’

  ‘Did you get to see his face?’ When no answer was forthcoming McLusky almost blurted the next, the all-important question. ‘Why did he want to kill you? Or your brother? Did he say why? You must have asked!’

  Leslie’s nostrils flared, in anger at the questions or at the memory of it all. ‘I can’t tell you anything. Don’t you see?’ He suddenly looked up at McLusky. ‘I had to promise!’

  ‘He is a killer. And he wants to kill your brother. Surely a promise to a man like that does not have to be honoured.’

  ‘He won’t kill my brother now. Not unless …’

  ‘Not unless you talk to the police.’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not telling you anything, I can’t tell you anything that will help you catch him. I want you to go away. Please go away. What if he finds out I’m talking to you?’

  ‘Do you know anything that would help us catch him?’ Michael remained silent. ‘Surely you must want to help us put him away. We can protect your brother. And you. And once we have the killer in custody your brother will be safe, everyone will be safe.’ McLusky wanted to shake the man by the shoulders, shake the answers out of him but instead sucked so furiously at his cigarette that it made him cough. He nearly missed the next thing Michael said.

  ‘I cannot break my promise. Don’t you see?’ He looked up and sought McLusky’s eyes. ‘If I broke my promise then I would have bought my life with a lie.’

  ‘Sometimes it is necessary to lie in order to deceive the enemy and win the war.’

  ‘I am not at war with him. And I did do more than just make a promise.’ Leslie’s head sank down almost to his chest, crushed.

  ‘You did what?’

  It took him a long time to answer while his face worked with the difficulty of the next sentence. ‘I swore on the bible. That bible.’ He nodded towards a book on the workbench, a pocket edition of the bible with a worn leather cover. ‘If I hadn’t had it in my pocket I don’t think I would be alive now.’ With a sudden burst of energy he stood up, no longer crumpled, grabbed the bible and stuffed it in his back pocket. He spoke with a clearer, stronger voice now. ‘I swore on the bible and that’s an oath I cannot break. And he accepted that. So there is no point talking to me. You’ll have to find another way of catching him. Excuse me.’ He squeezed past and out of the door.

  McLusky watched him walk awkwardly across the lawn, hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, his little bible clearly outlined in his back pocket. All the answers to your life in your back pocket, McLusky thought. All you’ll ever need to know, all your protection against the evils of the world in a handy pocket edition. He flicked his cigarette end into the lawn. ‘Marvellous.’

  At last. This was it, she could feel it. Tonight was the tipping point, she was sure of it, both for her mood and the season. Every winter her mood took a dive, she wouldn’t quite call it depression, didn’t want to call it that, the word scared her, oppressed her, but her mood definitely took a dive around November and would not lift until spring was in full swing. Lindsey Goodall stuck her arm out of the window to feel the rain that was falling in the darkness on to her little urban garden, the earthly paradise attached to her ground-floor flat that made all the difference between balance and health, being connected with the seasons, and going stark raving mad staring at the wall or a TV screen. Spring was here, it had deceived them with false starts but this was genuine spring rain, it came from far south, you could almost smell it, all the way from the Azores and you could not possibly resent it like winter rain, which was hateful and hideous and made you want to do nothing, nothing, nothing, not even work, and Lindsey loved her job at the university.

  From now until the arrival of the next dreadful November she could sleep with the window open again. She had mentioned it in the refectory today and it turned out it was nearly fifty-fifty, straight down the middle: half slept with the window open and half with the window closed. Closed? But how could you? With the window closed she felt as though she was slowly being suffocated, separated from the world of nature, the smells and sounds cut off by double-glazing.

  One of her colleagues had looked at her as though she were babbling mystical nonsense. But then Lindsey knew she lived in a fourth-floor flat that had plug-in air fresheners in every room so she would never have to open her windows at all. It still made her smile even now as she got ready to go to bed, how two people, working beside each other in the same library, could have such completely different ideas about what was important. She turned out the main light and undressed by the rosy glow of her bedside lamp; no one could really see in, the big tree and the laurel at the bottom of the garden took care of
that. It was true, the place would be much warmer if she kept all her windows shut but she was no wimp. Naked, she padded to the bathroom, stuffed her hair under a shower cap and turned on the water. Lindsey made herself step under the shower even before it had warmed up. I’m not a city softie yet, she told herself, but she was grateful when the short burst of cold was replaced by beautifully hot water, sluicing away the cares of the day. Her late-night showers were to her like the crossing of a river, from which she emerged on the other side cleansed, with the day that had just passed left behind her on the other shore. As she replaced the soap bar on to its ceramic shelf she thought she saw a flash through the half-open door, like lightning, yet there was no thunder following it.

  She towelled herself dry and shook her dark hair from the shower cap. No more jim-jams either; from tonight, she would sleep in the nude again, between clean crisp sheets. She sniffed: a strange smell in the air. Almost like one of her colleague’s synthetic air fresheners. Could it be the new soap she put out earlier? She hoped not.

  She knew he was in the room even before she turned around; there was a strangled sound coming from behind the door as she entered the bedroom. There he was, tall, menacing, his face distorted by the dark stocking he wore over his head. She screamed. ‘No!’ Her scream was not directed at him, it was directed at her life. ‘No!’ This was not allowed to happen in her life. He lunged at her, grabbing at her breasts, but in a fumbling, uncertain way, like an afterthought. She slapped his hands away and kicked out at him. ‘Go away, you creep!’ she yelled at him.

  And he did. Turned and fled, climbed out through the window and again he made that strange strangled sound, almost as though he was trying not to cry as he dropped down into the garden and disappeared into the dark. Lindsey closed the window, drew the curtains and ran back into the shower, letting the hot water run all over her again. Wash it away, wash it away, wash it away, please just wash it all away.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘Incompetent?’

  ‘Inept. A bungler.’ McLusky had just watched DSI Denkhaus ruin his coffee with too much sugar and cream but it still smelled enticing. ‘Apart from being a sadistic murderous swine, naturally.’

  ‘You’re not going to say that!’ Denkhaus protested.

  ‘Of course not. But a bungling idiot. And I’ll mention that Michael Leslie, a devout Christian, is honour-bound not to give us any information. That might help keep him and his brother safe.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure we can’t get him to talk?’

  ‘Not without putting extreme pressure on him. And he is a victim, in all senses of the word. I’d like to try the fake interview first.’

  Denkhaus swivelled in his chair and squinted out of the window. It was raining but just then a ray of sunshine pierced the greyness and glittered through the wet city. ‘Do you not think Michael Leslie might change his mind in time? No? Nevertheless, we can’t afford to give up on him. Give it a few days then work on him again. On Richard Leslie, too, perhaps he can persuade him. Or perhaps Michael already told him and he can be persuaded to pass it on.’

  ‘And the interview? Phil Warren would be delighted to set it up for us. The Bristol Herald would give someone’s right arm for it.’

  ‘Provoking him could backfire, you know?’ Denkhaus was leaning forward on his desk now, playing with his gold pen, tapping it against a notepad as he spoke. ‘There’s no guarantee he’ll contact you, or anyone else.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve seen him twice, now. He went back to the canal and went back to the railway cutting. He is chewing on it, whether it’s his conscience or whatever it is, he’s knee-deep in it. It’s all that matters to him. He works alone and he’s lonely. He cannot talk about it to anyone. Each time I saw him I thought he was making a rude gesture, giving me the finger, or two fingers but he wasn’t making rude gestures, he was counting on his fingers. Number one, number two. He is communicating already, and calling him an eejit in public would make him want to justify himself somehow. He has some kind of a set of morals or he would have just killed the wrong brother and be done with it. He thinks of himself as a moral being, he thinks he has standards. Letting Michael live was taking a big risk.’

  ‘Yes. So was drowning the woman in the middle of the canal. That was quite daring or insanely stupid, depending on your point of view. And therefore it must have been important.’ Denkhaus hesitated again. ‘Number one, number two … there’ll be a number three, won’t there? I’ll put it to the ACC. Even so, you do realize that I will have to be seen to haul you over the coals for this? It will have to be your personal opinion that’s expressed in that interview and I’ll be dragging you in here threatening disciplinary action etcetera to make it convincing.’

  ‘Does that mean we’re not telling the Herald either?’

  ‘No, no, of course not, they can’t be trusted. You know Phil Warren well enough now, go for a drink with her, unburden yourself and she’ll do the usual and print every word of it and invent some more. She’s a menace that woman but a predictable one. Exploit her. She’ll get her story, that’s enough. Use them. Lie all you like to them but don’t bring the force into disrepute.’

  ‘Try not to, sir.’

  ‘Try hard, McLusky, try very hard. I can’t shield you if you go overboard.’

  They met at The Eldon House. It had been Phillipa Warren’s choice and McLusky’s first impression was that it was yet another gastro pub he was going to hate. But he changed his mind when he saw the array of real ales on draught. McLusky liked traditional pubs but found that increasingly they only sold indifferent mass-produced beers and lagers while the new breed of pub often served carefully selected beers, like this Bath ale he was now sipping with his back to an enormous potted palm. Phil Warren, who like him had arrived by cab, was also gulping beer from a slender pint glass. Her hundred-millimetre cigarettes were on the table and he knew from experience that she would nip outside four times an hour to smoke, come rain or shine.

  Warren was forty, had wiry hair dyed an absurd shade of brown and spoke with a permanently hoarse voice. She was not beautiful but possessed of a strong sexual aura and was aware of it. Tonight she was wearing a short black skirt, patterned purple tights and a purple top with a deep lace neckline showing the swelling tops of her breasts. ‘You did say you wanted off the beaten track,’ she growled, ‘and I can promise you I have never seen a copper in here, so you can stop scowling at my breasts.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ said McLusky, rearranging his face. He had been unaware that he had been scowling or staring at Phil’s breasts. He let his eyes travel elsewhere and told himself that he really liked the wooden floorboards. And the tables. Though skylights and palm trees in pubs were not really his thing. He leant back out of the orbit of her breasts. ‘Never seen a copper in here? You know them all, then?

  ‘CID? Pretty much, yeah.’ She smiled sagely. ‘It’s usually me chasing you.’ It had taken McLusky two days to get hold of her. ‘So what’s up?’

  McLusky gave her a harmless look. ‘Just beers, I thought. Cheers.’

  ‘I would actually be quite pleased if I believed a word of it. Have it your way. You’ll tell me eventually, I expect.’

  They drank, talked, drank. To make an unburdening of the heart even remotely plausible he would have to appear to be quite far gone, which was why he pretended to have had a few already and now drank quickly. When Warren excused herself to go to the ‘little girl’s room’ he managed to feed nearly a whole pint to the potted palm behind him. McLusky had packaged his story inside a general rant about work, everything from the relentless cuts, and constant restructuring to tedious paperwork. He flowed straight on into the case. ‘The man is a complete idiot. He is completely out of his depth and has no idea what he is doing. A fumbling bungler. He snatched the wrong man from a car simply assuming that the driver was the owner. In fact it was his brother. He nearly killed him before he let him go. We’re protecting the brother now, of course.’ McLusky kept working the idiot a
ngle. ‘Our killer is an incompetent twit.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Phil appreciatively and surreptitiously nudged her phone a bit further across the table. McLusky was pretty sure she was using it to record the conversation, which was not good because it meant she could prove he had really said it all, but he did not want to spoil the mood by challenging her. ‘So do we have a description at last?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not. The brother did not see him clearly and anyway is refusing to cooperate. He promised, you see? He’s very religious and he swore an unbreakable oath.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as an unbreakable oath.’ Phil scoffed and gulped more beer.

  They argued about that for a while. It was pretty clear that Warren’s morals were even more flexible than his own. ‘Are you telling me,’ he asked, ‘that there is nothing in your world that would make a promise from you unbreakable?’

  Phil pulled a face, briefly glanced up at the darkening skylight for inspiration, then shook her head. ‘No, nothing. Oh, fear of prosecution, of course. I’d probably tell the truth under oath. Then again I might want to tell the truth anyway. But if lying to someone gets me what I need then I’ll lie, cheat, break promises, sneak and cajole.’

  ‘You mean threaten.’

  ‘Lean on someone. Look, I’m a journalist. You don’t get a good story by asking nicely. Without investigative journalists who would expose the scandals? You’d all be eating horsemeat sandwiches if it weren’t for the likes of us.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with horsemeat.’

  ‘That depends on the drugs the beast had inside it, but you’re welcome to it, I’m a vegetarian myself.’ She impatiently waggled her glass at him. It’s your round. Get them in while I nip out for a quick fag. Back before you know it.’ She grabbed her cigarettes and crossed the bar room, several pairs of male eyes following her figure to the door.

  McLusky picked up Warren’s phone, found the recording app, stopped the recording and deleted it, then returned the phone to where it had been and went to get more beers.