A Good Way to Go

by Peter Helton

  He thumbed for the directory before realizing that all numbers had been taken off. His pink mobile showed no bars. McLusky dived into his car, started the engine and turned the big Mercedes around one-handed while thumbing his airwave radio. ‘Alpha nine, can I come in please …?’ When he was through to control he burbled away into his radio while spinning the wheel and bullying his way into the traffic on Stoke’s Croft. ‘I want every available unit to go to the David Lamb residence and his office. Lamb, the councillor. Contact him on mobile, landline, email. And send armed response, too. I believe there is an immediate threat to his life. Find him wherever he is and sit on him. I’m on my way to his house.’ He dropped the radio on the passenger seat and impatiently stomped on the accelerator. ‘Come on, come on!’

  He was still several miles from Barrow Gurney and the Lamb residence when he was told over the radio that the councillor was neither at his offices nor at home but had taken the rest of the day off and gone out, taking his car, without saying where. ‘Circulate description and vehicle details and keep looking.’ He saw that his mobile had coverage now, terminated the transmission and called Austin. ‘He called me. Bothwick was not the intended victim.’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘Indirectly. He said he let Michael Leslie go because he could not bear to make the same mistake twice. Bothwick was a mistake.’

  ‘We checked Lamb’s house and offices and called his mobile but it’s switched off. I sent a car round to Bothwick’s flat in case he went there to grieve but no reply. You think he’s going after him next?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure of it or he would not have mentioned that he made a mistake.’

  ‘If we can’t find him perhaps he might not be able to find him either,’ argued Austin.

  McLusky slowed down in the lane towards Lamb’s house and let the car roll to a stop before answering. ‘I have a feeling he does know,’ he said at length. ‘He was driving while he spoke to me. I think he was following him in a van.’

  ‘Shit.’ Austin had also been at the autopsy and remembered the state of Stephen Bothwick’s corpse. ‘If what he did to Bothwick was meant for Lamb then something quite awful is about to happen.’

  McLusky drove up to the Lamb residence where a patrol car was parked across the drive. Two uniformed officers stood by their car, having been told to stay at the address for the time being.

  McLusky asked: ‘Has anyone checked his love nest down the road?’

  ‘Don’t know anything about that, sir,’ admitted one of them.

  McLusky turned back to his car. ‘That’s what I love about being on the force, the team work.’ He raced down the narrowing lane from the house towards the cottage Lamb and Bothwick had used for their regular S&M sessions. He tried hard not to imagine them. He tried hard not to dislike Lamb to the point of not caring what happened to him. He had tried to see catching the killer as a job, a task, something Avon & Somerset constabulary were collectively engaged in as an agency but found it impossible. However he thought about it the thing always ended up back at his own feet. It had always been personal to McLusky, from the moment he had seen Barbara Steadman’s body emerge from the canal. The super had made it clear enough that he too thought it a test of his capabilities, that the ACC would be watching his performance closely. Now McLusky had spoken to the killer he had lost all distance from him. How could he maintain a distance when he had given the killer a private line to him?

  He was driving so fast he nearly missed the cottage, braked, reversed and stepped out into the lane. Lamb’s Lexus was not there. It was quiet apart from the nearby A-road soughing like wind in the trees. He deflated. The great urgency he had felt earlier evaporated. They were too late. Lamb was gone, his mobile was turned off and in his mind’s eye McLusky could see the Lexus standing abandoned, with the keys in the ignition and not a trace of foreign DNA anywhere on it. McLusky did not himself watch television but had been assured by his colleagues that on telly it was now forensic science that solved the crimes, usually within ninety minutes. He had yet to work on a single case where an unknown killer had been found through forensic work. Convicted, yes, found, never.

  There were a few more flowers coming up in the garden now. The mournful rotary drier still stood in a corner of the lawn like a leafless tree. He tried all windows, rattled back and front door. He lit a cigarette and smoked it, doing two rounds of the garden. He kicked a stray plastic flowerpot but found it too flimsy to satisfy his anger. He let his shoulders drop and strode back to the car in time to answer his radio. DSI Denkhaus wanted him urgently.

  David Lamb pulled his shoulders up to his ears and let them fall again as though he could shake off everything he had left behind him in Bristol as he crossed the city limits. He had left the office early and headed out of town into the Chew Valley. He needed breathing space, thinking space, grieving space, away from it all. Of course there were plenty of green spaces in Bristol where a man could walk and feel sorry for himself, but he would still feel surrounded by it all. And Chew Valley was different. Early in their relationship, before the cottage and before the flat in Clifton, he had come here with Stephen, walking by the lake, sitting by the lake, drinking tea and pretending they were far away and did not need to head back to work and reality. That was why he needed to go back here at the end. To get some kind of perspective on where it left him now. To tie up all the loose ends and all that would forever remain unfinished, undone and unsaid. Before Stephen he had had only casual relationships with men. Stephen had been special. And in the beginning, before the arguments had started, soft, yielding, attentive, adoring. Lamb had thought of it as permanent even, running parallel to his marriage routine, and there perhaps he had made his mistake, had begun to take him for granted, and Stephen had become resentful. Had he really been thinking of leaving him? He would probably never find out now.

  His speed crept up without his noticing. Why had Stephen been killed? And where? By whom? Those stupid police officers had seriously thought that he had killed Stephen himself, without a shred of evidence and never mind that he had no real motive. You didn’t go around killing people just because you thought they were about to ditch you or there would be carnage across the land.

  The lake lay on his right as he drove, glimpsed here and there through the trees. He found the entrance to the visitor centre, a single-track lane through the trees, easily missed, almost secret. In the summer the place often teemed with people, now there were only two cars in the car park and no one to be seen. It was about to rain, which would suit his mood. He stood for a moment looking out over the lake that lay dark under a darkening sky now; further to the south side three sailing dinghies made good speed in the strengthening wind. None of the tables outside the café was occupied and inside only one elderly couple sat writing postcards, not looking up. He took his coffee to a table outside despite the wind and the threatening rain. This view, this air, this mediocre coffee drunk at this damp picnic table reminded him more of Stephen and how he had felt about him than the cottage did where they had met many more times. It was here that he seemed to rediscover the emotions that had carried them along in those early days. It wasn’t the Italian lakes but he thought of it as their place and the memories of those days together rolled over him now, threatening to bring tears to his eyes again. He breathed in deeply and sat up straight. No, he was going to find something good in this somewhere, some kind of legacy, or even residue, that Stephen had left behind, that could enrich his life, not darken it. Only, until his murderer was found and his murder explained that would remain an impossibly hard task.

  A raindrop fell on to the table, then another. He drained his cup and rose. No, he was not going to walk melodramatically in the rain. He would take the resurfaced memories back with him and get on with his life and work. Especially, and more than ever now, his work. He returned the cup to the café and by the time he stepped outside again rain fell steadily. He jogged to his car but by the time he managed to slip inside his c
lothes were damp. For a moment he sat and looked through the windscreen at the reed beds and the lake. The dinghies had disappeared from view. No, he would not come to this place again. He would leave it all here. Lamb started the engine and drove up to the exit, another narrow one-way track through the trees. Half way to the road a van that had been stationary on the track suddenly reversed towards him. Lamb parped his horn to alert the driver that he was behind him. The van came to a stop only a foot from his front bumper. What was the idiot playing at? The door opened and a man in a dark jacket jumped out, a blue baseball cap pulled down deep into his face against the rain. He was carrying some sort of sack as he walked up to his window. Lamb let it down and opened his mouth to speak when the sight of the gun momentarily struck him dumb. The man shoved it through the open window straight in his face. His first impulse was to try and close the window again but it was too late. When at last he found his voice all he managed to say was: ‘Oh, no, no, please.’

  The man hissed at him. ‘Shut the fuck up and get out or I’ll shoot you right here.’

  ‘He could still turn up, of course.’ Denkhaus said without conviction.

  McLusky pushed out his bottom lip and shook his head. He tried not to imagine what might be being done to Lamb at this very moment by thinking of him as dead already. ‘No, Lamb was the killer’s target all along. The night Stephen Bothwick was taken and killed he had come with Lamb in his Lexus to his place in Barrow Gurney. But they argued. Not having his own car there and wanting to spite Lamb, Bothwick drove off in Lamb’s car. He had dyed his hair grey to annoy Lamb who had wanted him to make himself look younger. That’s what got him mistaken for Lamb and abducted. Once the killer realized his mistake he did away with him anyway.’

  ‘Bothwick is much younger than Lamb, though.’

  ‘True. But it was dark and in the heat of the moment it may not have sunk in. Only when he got him back to wherever he took him might he have realized his mistake. He killed Bothwick only to avoid being identified. That explains the way in which he was dumped. Our man has an agenda, that’s why he killed Barbara Steadman in the way he did and hence the elaborate way in which she was left for us to be found. Bothwick didn’t matter which is why he was dumped like garbage.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll accept that.’

  ‘If I’m right and Lamb is his next victim then we can expect to find his body in a public place again, like the canal.’

  They had both listened several times to the recording of the phone call and had earlier sent a copy across to digital forensics. ‘He’s definitely a local man,’ Denkhaus said. ‘He may be trying to disguise it or has had it educated out of him but it’s there in the background.’

  ‘Or he has moved here and his accent has taken on local colour. Neither gets us much further. And I’ll bet you a fiver, sir, that digi forensics will sit on the recording for a week and then come to the same conclusion.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. And not only that but they’ll charge us a fortune for it.’

  His plastic intercom squawked with the tinny voice of Lynn Tiery. ‘Traffic division have found Mr Lamb’s car. Abandoned, keys in the ignition.’

  Denkhaus gave him a hard, unfriendly stare.

  McLusky shrugged. ‘It was only a hunch.’

  McLusky and Austin took separate cars. This was not always a foregone conclusion but McLusky had barely looked at him and seemed to be keeping down a boiling fury as he strode across the station’s car park. Once outside the city the DS struggled to keep up with the inspector’s car on the damp roads and once, on a straight bit of empty A-road, the Mercedes pulled away from him so fast he guessed McLusky must be doing well over a hundred. When he caught up with him at the entrance to the visitor centre McLusky was reversing towards him since he had overshot, going too fast to stop in time. Even with the windows closed he could hear some kind of rock music pumping from the Mercedes as it stopped, turned, and shot forwards under the trees past a uniformed officer who took a step backwards. Austin was very glad to be driving his little baby-blue Micra. When he parked next to the inspector’s car, McLusky was already walking stony-faced towards the trees but then stopped, lit a cigarette and waited for him.

  ‘What was Lamb doing out here, I wonder?’ Austin said.

  ‘Feeding the bloody ducks, I expect.’ Two cars with local police from Chew Magna had arrived before them and a forensics van was now rolling into the car park. McLusky had driven here on a wave of fury but as soon as he arrived a flat feeling of futility had taken its place. Officers were fluttering police tape between trees now, stopping any more visitors from entering the place. He turned his back on it all and looked out over the wind-rippled lake, a fresh breeze snatching away his tobacco smoke.

  ‘Do you think he could have been lured here?’ Austin asked. ‘It seems an odd place to go, especially for a busy man on a work day.’

  ‘On the contrary, I think it’s perfect, though a bit of a drive. But yes, of course, it’s possible he was lured here. Check with the family if the place has any significance that they know of.’ He flicked his cigarette end into the wind. ‘Right. Witnesses …’

  The young woman who at this time of the year was running the café single-handed confirmed that Lamb had been on his own. She had seen him through the café windows drinking his coffee at a table outside. ‘And he brought his tray back in and said “thank you”, not like most people who just walk off, leaving it for me to clear up. What could have happened to him?’

  The only other witnesses were an elderly couple who had found the Lexus blocking the exit road. They had confirmed that they had not touched the car and were allowed to leave via the entrance road. McLusky was not in the mood to don a scene suit so kept his distance from the forensics team, eating a chocolate bar and following it with another cigarette, with Austin standing impatiently beside him. ‘They’re wasting their time,’ McLusky told him. ‘We’re wasting ours. There’s nothing here, there won’t be a speck of DNA to find. Lamb had enough of the lake but on his way out found his road blocked by a van, just like Michael Leslie had. Our man walked up to him, pointed a gun at him and invited him to step out of the car and into the back of the van.’

  ‘I’d rather be shot in my car than get into the van, knowing what’s going to happen next.’

  ‘Ah, but we didn’t tell Lamb how Bothwick died. We didn’t tell him about the botched electrocution and the beatings. We told him “head wound”. Hope springs eternal and if you have the choice of dying now or later you choose later, it’s instinct.’

  ‘You’ve given it some thought, then?’

  ‘Yes, plenty.’

  SOCO thought they had found tyre tracks on the damp ground that might give a clue to the type of vehicle used and took imprints of them. McLusky mumbled that they would probably tell them that they belonged to a van. It was getting dark by the time the operation was wound up, forensics had gone and the Lexus been taken away on the back of a police transporter. McLusky waved at Austin as he left in his Micra and had another look around when everything had gone quiet. He walked along the path, across the car park, looked out over the darkening lake.

  Nothing, he thought. Another one gone and nothing left at all. I hope it’s a short list you’ve got, you bastard.

  The atmosphere at Albany Road became tense, as though the entire station had taken its cue from McLusky’s mood. Extra civilian staff had already been brought in to expedite background checks and collation of the information McLusky demanded. Dearlove, who had an accurate premonition of what was coming had hastily stocked up on crisps and mushroom soup.

  McLusky was thinking likewise. In the canteen he stuffed his pockets with chocolate bars and balanced a cup of coffee upstairs, grunted at anyone acknowledging him and then steamed into the incident room.

  ‘I want all communications Lamb has had in the past three days, in case he really was lured there, including Post-it notes and writings in the sand. I want every scrap of information on Lamb on my desk by tomorrow morni
ng. How he made his original money, how he got appointed, what rivals he had, any lawsuits and disputes, reported threats or pub brawls going back to his teens. Who did he piss off? If he gave verbal to a traffic warden or said boo to a goose, I want to know about it.’

  McLusky knew he was asking the impossible. A Deputy County Councillor could in one stroke alienate thousands of people or whole sections of society, that was the nature of politics. He thought he himself would probably never make it into the realms beyond DI where police politics took up most of your working life. He left his office door ajar so people could come in and out without formalities. During his agitated speech a lot of his coffee had spilled and he greedily sucked it up from the saucer now. It was tepid and flavourless but McLusky barely noticed.

  It was not until the next morning that footage arrived from the protest marches against the cuts which, each time, had ended in chaos around the council offices and on College Green. McLusky and Austin watched it together at Austin’s desk in the CID room since it would have been impossible to fit both of them behind McLusky’s desk. They were both unshaven but while McLusky simply looked overworked, Austin’s dark stubble gave him a piratical look. They were eating jam doughnuts from down the road since mysteriously there had been no staff in the canteen when they went down to look for breakfast. Rumours of a strike were making the rounds, sending waves of anxiety through the ranks of the coffee, sugar and sandwich addicts in the station.

  The footage was of wildly differing quality, having been collated from various sources, TV stations, police surveillance, CCTV and mobile phones. ‘This is the second protest march and it was a lot more lively than the first,’ Austin said, tapping the screen with a sugary finger. ‘Although the hard-core trouble- makers only started up after dark when most people had dispersed.’