by Jo Bannister
‘I know.’
‘I don’t want him wriggling off the hook.’
‘Yes, I know.’
When Donovan left Shapiro said, ‘You know what that was about, don’t you? He doesn’t want people thinking Mikey Dickens got the better of him with anything smaller than a howitzer.’
Liz chuckled. ‘Have you interviewed Mikey? What does he have to say for himself?’
‘Not a lot,’ Shapiro said ruefully. ‘I saw him in the hospital: by the time he was fit to see me he’d already talked to his brief and she’d advised him to say nothing at that time. I wasn’t too bothered, he wasn’t going anywhere with cracked ribs and a hole in his leg. He was discharged this morning, he and his solicitor are coming in later today. Maybe we’ll have the gun by then: that should help loosen his tongue.’
‘And if he’s still making no comment?’
‘He can stew for a while, but sooner or later I’m having him for this. He’s not getting away with it just by keeping his mouth shut, not when Donovan had him in sight pretty well all the way from Kumani’s to where he crashed. He can’t claim he was elsewhere when they picked bits of the van out of him on the operating table!’
‘No,’ agreed Liz, ‘he’ll have to come up with something a bit more imaginative than that.’
‘He held me up at gunpoint, Mr Shapiro,’ said Mikey Dickens, straight-faced. ‘He rushed out of the garage, jumped in the van and pointed a gun in my face. He said Drive so I drove. What else could I do? What would you have done, Mr Shapiro?’
Shapiro shut his eyes. He took two or three measured breaths. His broad face, which long ago learned to mask rather than portray emotions, became positively wooden. But when he opened his eyes again they pinned Mikey Dickens to his seat. ‘So Mr Kumani was robbed, and Detective Sergeant Donovan knocked down, by some other short, wiry individual with a liking for other people’s money and a propensity for violence?’
Mikey met his gaze with wide-open, innocent, baby-blue eyes. ‘Gee, Mr Shapiro, I don’t know. What’s a propensity?’
Sitting beside him in the interview room, the Dickens family solicitor dug Mikey in the ribs. The last thing she needed was him getting smart with Detective Superintendent Shapiro. Ms Holloway was new to Carfax and Browne, Attorneys at Law, but almost the first thing she was told was not to underestimate the town’s senior detective. ‘He only looks like a well-worn teddy bear,’ said Mr Carfax darkly. ‘He thinks like Machiavelli.’
Ms Holloway didn’t altogether believe it, but she took the precaution of elbowing Mikey under the level of the table at which they were all sitting. She must have forgotten his damaged ribs – he winced and whined and looked reprovingly at her, which even a teddy bear could hardly have failed to notice.
She cleared her throat. A woman in her late twenties, she hadn’t been in Castlemere long enough to switch her London lawyer’s power suit for the more casual version appropriate in the sticks. ‘Superintendent, you have my client’s statement. I understand this is a full account of the events of Sunday evening, but if you need him to elaborate Mr Dickens will be happy to oblige. He’s anxious to clear up any misunderstanding. He appreciates how things must have appeared to Sergeant Donovan, he has no complaints about his treatment, but he’s keen to put on record those events which occurred outside the Sergeant’s field of view aNd misled him as to the author of the attack on him.’
‘By the way, Mr Shapiro,’ interjected Mikey, ‘how is Mr Donovan?’
It was, so far as Shapiro could tell, a genuine enquiry and he answered in the same vein. ‘He’s fine, thanks, Mikey. He’s back at work, you’ll probably see him later.’
‘I was never so glad to see him as Sunday night.’
‘In the garage?’ Shapiro prompted innocently.
But Mikey didn’t need his London brief to field that one. He smiled impishly. ‘In the van, Mr Shapiro. After I crashed the van.’
Shapiro hadn’t really expected to trip him that easily. Mikey Dickens might only have been nineteen but he’d done this before. ‘All right, Mikey, tell it from the start.’
It was the cold weather, said Mikey; possibly also the springs on the van, which needed work, but mainly the cold weather that got to his bladder something rotten. He was only five minutes from home but he didn’t think he’d make it: he stopped on the garage forecourt, left the van running and dashed round the back. When he returned—
‘Much relieved?’ suggested Shapiro, and Mikey grinned.
When he returned, much relieved, he noticed a motorbike at one of the pumps; and when he got in the van he found his keys were gone. He was still wondering where they’d got to when someone in a long dark coat and a ski mask ran out of the shop, snatched open the door of his van and leapt in beside him.
‘You don’t keep the passenger door locked?’
Mikey was scathing. ‘Who’d steal a heap like that?’
‘Somebody making a getaway from an armed robbery?’
Mikey nodded thoughtfully. ‘Right enough, Mr Shapiro.’
‘This long dark coat,’ said Shapiro. ‘Anything like the long dark coat you were wearing?’
‘No,’ Mikey said firmly. ‘Mine was navy blue. His was a sort of charcoal grey.’
When he turned to remonstrate the first thing he saw was the gun; so Mikey thought he’d save the lecture on private property. The second thing he saw was his own keys being dangled under his nose. ‘I went where he told me. He said to get off the main road so I headed for Chevening. He had me scared shitless, Mr Shapiro, honest. I’m not used to guns.’
‘Not that end, anyway,’ murmured Shapiro.
He saw the single headlight behind him, had no idea if it was pursuit or just a fellow traveller. But the man beside him told him to go faster. He saw the white car enter the roundabout, but his passenger jerked the gun at him and told him to beat it. ‘I think he thought we’d make it but Mr Donovan would have to stop.’
‘You knew it was Donovan, then. When did he mention that? – this passenger of yours who was wearing a coat very like yours but in charcoal grey.’
Mikey shook his head patiently. ‘I didn’t know then it was Mr Donovan. Now I know that’s who it was.’
Everything after that happened very quickly but seemed to happen in slow motion. He couldn’t beat the white saloon across the roundabout, but he felt to be waiting forever for the crash. As the van rebounded into Fletton Road he saw the digger but there seemed to be plenty of time for the van to stop. Even the collapse of the front half of his cab seemed to happen slowly enough for him to get his legs clear. But when the van stopped the front doors were compacted to a couple of letter-boxes.
‘Thin chap, was he?’ asked Shapiro. ‘This passenger of yours with the gun and the charcoal coat?’
Mikey frowned, puzzled. ‘Didn’t really notice, Mr Shapiro.’
‘Only he seems to have got out through some aperture that wasn’t big enough for you to follow; and without wishing to be personal, Mikey, you’re not exactly Arnold Swartzer-whatsit yourself.’
Mikey’s brow cleared. ‘Oh, that. He got out before we hit the digger. I’m not sure if he jumped or fell, but the door opened and he was gone. I never saw him again.’
‘Oddly enough,’ said Shapiro, deadpan, ‘neither did anyone else.’
Mikey shrugged. ‘There was a lot going on, Mr Shapiro, and it was dark. And Mr Donovan was too busy trying to haul me out of there to be looking round. I don’t blame him for that,’ he added generously. ‘He saved my life, I won’t hear a word against him.’
‘Oh Mikey,’ said Shapiro with heavy irony, ‘he will be touched.’
‘I don’t know if he had help with the story or if he’s brighter than he looks.’ Shapiro was stirring his coffee lugubriously, staring into the muddy vortex as if seeking wisdom. ‘But actually it’s quite clever. He’s not saying Donovan’s wrong, just that he didn’t see everything. That’s plausible – first he was on the floor of the shop, then he was chasing the van up the
road, then he lost sight of it going into Chevening. He didn’t see the crash, he could certainly have missed seeing this putative second party legging it immediately afterwards. You wouldn’t have to disbelieve Donovan’s account to accept Mikey’s.
‘Then, this putative second party looked sufficiently like Mikey that even a reliable witness could be mistaken. If I ask Kumani whether the robber was wearing a navy-blue coat or a charcoal-grey one he’ll look at me askance and say that wasn’t the bit he was concentrating on. And Mikey’s coat and gloves were burned in the van, so we’ll never know if Donovan’s blood was on them. Any more than we’ll know if that’s why Mikey got rid of them, though we may suspect as much.’
Liz regarded him over the tray. As a Detective Superintendent Shapiro had his coffee served in cups on a tray instead of in a plastic mug with no saucer. That, and the salary, was the only difference promotion had made. ‘Are you telling me you think Mikey Dickens didn’t rob Ash Kumani at gunpoint and floor Donovan in the process?’
Shapiro’s glance was dismissive. ‘Of course not. Of course the little sod did it – there was no second party, he was alone in the van. But he’s come up with a story that’s going to take some disproving. I’d be interested to know if that was his idea or if Ms Holloway fresh from London offered suggestions.’
Liz shrugged. ‘Hardly matters, does it? Whoever the Dickenses went to would need to earn their oats. We’ll just have to earn ours as well. We need a witness, someone who can say if there was one man or two in the van after it left Kumani’s. Someone else may have seen it earlier, but I can only think of one person who certainly saw it, and closer than anyone else. Do we have a statement from Mrs Taylor?’
‘A rather cursory one. She was still pretty upset when Mary Wilson saw her, she got down the basics and left it at that. Maybe by now she’s a bit calmer. Anyway, it’s a simple enough question, either she saw how many people were in the van or she didn’t. Do you know her, Liz? – she teaches at Brian’s school.’
Liz nodded. ‘We’ve met. A pleasant enough woman; maybe a little intense. I’ll go and see her, see if she can help. If she can say there was definitely only one man in the van, we’ve got him.’
‘And I’ll tell Donovan.’ Shapiro’s nose wrinkled as if he’d bitten into a lemon.
‘It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it,’ said Liz stoutly.
Donovan took the news with a kind of savage amusement, as if life had taught him to expect no better. ‘So that’s it, is it? He robbed Kumani at gunpoint, he knocked me down, he damn near killed Mrs Taylor – but he says it wasn’t him so we let him go. I mean, what possible reason could he have to lie?’
Shapiro had been a police officer for longer than Donovan had been alive. He’d learned much about crime and criminals, and also about policemen. He remembered when a sergeant using that tone to a superintendent would have been told to clear his locker. Even today there weren’t many senior officers who’d put up with it, and those who knew Shapiro well enough to know that behind the slightly rumpled exterior dwelt a mind as sharp and clear as a cut-glass bell didn’t understand why he did.
If they’d asked he’d have explained. Most detective sergeants were either on their way up the ladder or were good DCs for so long they’d earned the promotion even if they weren’t up to the job. Donovan was. On his record he should have made DI; but for various reasons, some of them his fault, others not, he wasn’t considered DI material. The police force hadn’t changed so much in thirty years that it encouraged people who challenged its basic precepts. Which meant that Donovan would stay a detective sergeant and stay in Castlemere; and long after Liz Graham had moved on and Shapiro himself was only a memory his experience in this town would be an asset to Queen’s Street CID. He was worth keeping on board for that, even if the line hadn’t been drawn that he was prepared to toe.
On top of which there was the personal reason. Donovan had risked his life for this job, and he’d risked his job for Shapiro. A man didn’t forget that in a hurry.
But though Shapiro allowed him some latitude, for the sake of the future and the past, his patience wasn’t limitless. ‘Of course that isn’t it,’ he snapped. ‘I haven’t put him on a plane to Rio: I’ll have him back in here as soon as I have enough to charge him. Finding the gun will do – no jury’ll believe he went on doing what he was told by a hijacker who’d thrown his gun away. No, if we find the gun we have him. He was the only one with reason to ditch it. This putative second person would have hung on to it as long as he could, so if he didn’t lose it at the scene of the accident he’s still got it.’
‘He hasn’t still got it,’ insisted Donovan, because he doesn’t exist! There was only ever Mikey. I know, I never saw his face. But if you smell pig, and something pig-shaped runs you down and leaves trotter-prints up your cardigan, you don’t need to see the face to know it was a pig.
‘It was Mikey’s size and Mikey’s shape, it was wearing Mikey’s coat and doing what Mikey does in the characteristically vicious way that Mikey does it. Then it burnt rubber in Mikey’s van, and when it crashed – away to buggery! – there was Mikey behind the wheel. It was all Mikey, there was no one else. He dumped the gun because he didn’t want to be caught with it on him. The rest of it, this other man, he made it up. If there’d been a gun in his ribs that’s the first thing he’d have said when I pulled him out the van. You would, wouldn’t you? – It wasn’t my fault, guv, it was the other feller made me do it. If there’d been another man, Mikey’d have said so.’
‘Maybe he would,’ said Shapiro grimly. ‘Except—’
It wasn’t often that Donovan failed to follow where his chief was leading. But he lost the trail this time. ‘Except what?’
Shapiro glowered at him. ‘Except that he was never properly cautioned about the consequences of not doing so.’
Chapter Five
The Taylors had a cottage on the Castlemere Canal a mile or so from Chevening village. Even with the directions she’d been given Liz had trouble finding it. She passed the farm lane twice before realizing it was the turning she needed and not just the way to some barn or byre. Leaving the road she drove through the eerie flatness of The Levels with not a house, not a car, not even a tractor in sight.
Then suddenly she was there, a little stand of willows screening the cottage until the glint of water at the end of the lane had already brought her to a halt.
There was no car in front of the house, which might have meant there was no one at home or just that the Taylors hadn’t yet replaced the white saloon. Liz rang the bell and waited, and was at length rewarded by footsteps in the hall.
‘Mrs Taylor? I don’t expect you remember me – I’m Brian Graham’s wife, we’ve met at the school.’
Patricia Taylor nodded, politely enough but without warmth: either she wasn’t sure who her visitor was or she didn’t care.
Liz pressed on. ‘Actually, I’m here in my official capacity, as a Detective Inspector.’ She produced her warrant card, mostly from habit. ‘About the crash.’
‘I made a statement.’
‘Yes. I hoped we could talk a bit more about it now the dust’s had time to settle.’
Mrs Taylor showed her to a chintzy sitting room that enjoyed the winter sun and a view across the canal to the endless vista of The Levels beyond – a sort of Dutch landscape that made the ordeal of bouncing up a farm track eminently worthwhile. She took a chair and gestured Liz to the sofa. ‘I don’t know if I can add anything to what I’ve already said.’
She was a year or two younger than Liz, her nose up against the great watershed of forty. She was dark and erect, with a reserved manner that earlier generations would have considered properly school-marmish. In today’s educational climate it set her apart from those of her colleagues who taught in sweatshirts and trainers.
‘How are you feeling now?’
Pat Taylor’s dark eyes widened as if she considered the inquiry slightly impertinent. Then she seemed to realize
it was just part of the process. ‘All right, I suppose. Bruised – I’ve got the marks of the seat-belt printed right across me. Shaken, of course. The hospital said there was no damage done so I suppose I should be grateful. I could be dead. I could be a vegetable!’ She heard her voice climbing and fell abruptly silent.
Liz nodded gently. ‘I know. It makes you feel so vulnerable, doesn’t it? It makes you think you’ll never be safe outside your own front door again.’ Liz wasn’t talking about a car crash but she was talking from personal experience. ‘But it does pass. First it fades a little, so it’s somehow less intrusive, less disabling. Then you notice that you’ve gone a whole afternoon without thinking about it, then a whole day. And then it takes its place in history. You don’t forget, but you get past it and move on. Thank God it was only the car you lost, not a member of your family.’
Mrs Taylor managed a wan smile. ‘I’m sorry. You must think I’m behaving very badly.’
‘Don’t be silly. You had a brush with death, of course you’re shocked. It’ll take time to find your feet again. But you must have driven an awful lot of miles when nobody trashed your car, and it’s most unlikely anything like it will ever happen to you again.’
‘Who was he?’ She didn’t say who she meant; she didn’t have to.
‘I don’t expect you’d know him. He’s only a young lad, but he’s got quite a track record. There was a robbery at the garage on Cambridge Road, he may have been involved in that. My sergeant gave chase, and he seems to have been more interested in getting away than winning awards for his driving. You were just very unlucky.’
‘Your sergeant,’ echoed Mrs Taylor. ‘The tall man, who came over to me after the crash?’
‘Yes, that’s Donovan.’
‘He said he couldn’t get me out. He said I had to wait.’
‘It was the safest thing to do.’
‘He got that little thug out of his van!’
‘With the van on fire the risk of compounding an injury was irrelevant. If he’d waited for the experts there’d have been only a body to recover.’
