by Jo Bannister
‘I wish—’ She heard herself saying it and stopped. ‘No. Sorry. Was he all right?’
‘They’re both all right, give or take a few cuts and bruises. Now we’re trying to establish exactly what happened – just who was responsible for just what.’
Mrs Taylor’s eyes flared. ‘I hope nobody’s saying any of this was my fault! I was already half-way round the roundabout. I heard him coming, I knew he was going too fast, but I thought he’d stop at the broken line. He couldn’t have missed seeing me. There was nothing I could do – if I’d braked he’d still have hit me.’
‘Mrs Taylor, nobody’s suggesting you could have done anything more,’ Liz said quickly. ‘Like you say, he should have stopped at the line. Once he came over it, at that speed, the accident was inevitable. It’s just a miracle nobody died.’
‘Then I don’t understand. What else do you need to ask me?’
Liz went carefully. She didn’t want to be accused of putting answers in a witness’s mouth, particularly when she was the only witness they had. ‘When you saw the van coming at you, did you get a proper look at it?’
‘Where else would I be looking?’ Mrs Taylor frowned. ‘If he’s saying it was someone else who hit me, he can think again. It happened quickly, but not so fast that I couldn’t see what it was running me down. It was a small red van and it hit me amidships. There was no one else in sight.’
‘That’s right, Donovan was still coming through the S-bend – the crash had happened by the time he got there. Certainly it was the van that hit you, that isn’t disputed.’
‘Then what is?’
Liz didn’t answer directly. ‘It was a two-seater van. Did you see if there was a passenger?’
Her lips made little puzzled shapes as Mrs Taylor considered. ‘There was someone else in the van? Someone who didn’t get out?’
Again Liz reassured her. ‘The van was empty when it blew up. Our Scenes Of Crime Officer would have known if anyone had been left behind – it doesn’t matter how fierce the fire, you can always recognize a body. No, the suggestion’s been made that someone may have been inside earlier, and we’re trying to establish when he left, before the accident or afterwards.’
‘Don’t call it that,’ said Mrs Taylor.
‘What?’
‘An accident. It wasn’t an accident. An accident is something that cannot be predicted or prevented. What happened was the inevitable consequence of deliberate actions. An accident is an accident regardless of the outcome, but if he’d killed me that boy would have been guilty of manslaughter.’
All right, she taught English, the precise usage of words probably held greater significance for her than for the population at large. It was still odd to insist on something so trivial.
But then, less than forty-eight hours ago this woman was hanging in the straps of her seat-belt as her car rolled down the road like a nine-pin in a bowling alley. She was traumatized, her reactions would be unpredictable for a while. She’d faced death close enough to smell it and nothing would be quite the same again. There were things she would have to relearn, and one was that basically the world was a pretty safe place, there was no need to be afraid all the time; and another was which things mattered and which didn’t.
In just a second or two her existence had been turned, quite literally, upside down and all the old certainties had been shaken. There would be times when shaving death in a car crash seemed almost banal; and in the next breath she would burst into tears because there were no chocolate digestives left in the biscuit-tin. In time she would pick up the rhythm of her life once more, but a bad accident is a little like a minor stroke, it creates little gaps in the record, little question marks where none were before.
‘So – did you see who was in the van?’ prompted Liz gently.
‘I saw the driver. I’m not sure I could identify him. His mouth was open and his eyes were staring, but I suppose I looked pretty much the same to him. He had a dark coat on, and a dark woolly hat – his face looked very white between them.’ She forced a chuckle. ‘I imagine mine did too.’
‘What about the passenger? Was there one?’
Mrs Taylor had to think longer about that. ‘I’m not sure. I can’t picture a second face, not the way I can the driver’s, but I couldn’t swear there wasn’t one. Oh God,’ she sighed then, ‘it’s such a jumble. You’d think it would be the clearest thing in the world, wouldn’t you, we were only a few feet apart and I knew he was going to hit me. But I couldn’t pick the driver out of a line-up, and I can’t even say if he was alone in the van. I’m sorry, Mrs Graham, I’m not being much help, am I?’
Liz smiled. ‘I need to know what you remember, not what might have been but then again might not. There are no right answers, only accurate ones. If you say you don’t remember, or you’re not sure, then I can look for the answers elsewhere. People trying so hard to be helpful that they end up misleading us are the real problem.’
‘Didn’t your sergeant see who was in the van?’ ‘Not in the period we’re talking about. Never mind, we may find someone else who did – someone crossing the road or driving in the opposite direction. We’ll make enquiries.’ As she went to leave she added, ‘It’s just possible that in another day or two you’ll have a clearer image of events than you have now. If that happens, if at some point you’re pretty sure either that there was someone else in the van or there wasn’t, would you give me a call?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Pat Taylor glanced at her watch. ‘I’m sorry but I must go now – I’ve got a hospital appointment.’
‘I’m going back to town, can I give you a lift?’ ‘Thank you, but no. The taxi’s on its way.’
The search party combed every inch of roadside between Kumani’s garage and the Chevening roundabout, and found nothing. At first they concentrated on the verge which would have been on Mikey’s right as he drove. Unsuccessful there, they extended the search to include the left hand verge and as far to the right as a good shot-putter could have lobbed a handgun. Still they found nothing.
Shapiro called them off at midday. Superintendent Giles wanted his uniforms back for other duties, DC Scobie was needed in court and, estimable as he was in many ways, DC Morgan could not conduct a finger-tip search of three miles of hedgerow on his own.
Donovan ambushed him as he came in. ‘Nothing?’
‘Sorry, Serg. Did our best.’ It sounded like real dismay, but actually Dick Morgan always talked as if someone had spilt ketchup on his cornflakes. It was his Fenland genes, lugubrious and pessimistic: soon it will be autumn and how shall we live through the winter?
‘I know. What do you reckon – any point me pushing for another go?’
Morgan thought for a moment then shook his head. ‘Somebody beat us to it.’
That was what Donovan thought too. ‘No prizes for guessing who. We might have trouble mustering enough people to search for a missing gun but I bet half The Jubilee’s been walking up and down that road.’ Glencurran, where Donovan came from, was four hundred miles north-west of the Fens but the local character shared the same peaty bleakness. Donovan might have been a square peg in a round hole in Castlemere, but he’d have found no hole at all anywhere else.
He gave a perfunctory tap on Shapiro’s door as he went in. ‘Bugger-all, then?’
Shapiro eyed him with disfavour. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Sorry, sir. Um – the search of Cambridge Road and Chevening Moss Road appears to have met with no great success, sir. Specifically, the weapon being sought has not proved amenable to discovery. Sir.’
Shapiro sighed. ‘Sergeant, one of the few things more alarming than you in a bad mood is you attempting to be funny. Is that the sort of thing that passes for humour in Glencurran?’
‘Wouldn’t know, sir,’ Donovan said woodenly. ‘The last man who made a joke there got his head blown off.’
Frank Shapiro, who hailed from the close-knit Jewish community of north London, always thought his people had an odd sense of
humour. But if Donovan was at all typical they couldn’t hold a candle to an Ulster Catholic.
‘I was thinking I might go for a nosy round The Jubilee. If Mikey’s dad did organize a Hunt-the-Luger party somebody might let it slip in casual conversation.’
‘You mean, with your finger up his nostril?’ Shapiro was joking now. Despite appearances – and Donovan could put the fear of God into someone who’d only come to Queen’s Street to hand in lost property – he had no history of violence, towards suspects or anyone else.
It wasn’t altogether that looks were misleading, more that he knew he could afford no such self-indulgence. Sergeant Bolsover might cuff a lippy youth and everyone would nod and say, That’s how it used to be done in the old days, and a lot less trouble we had then too! But Donovan wasn’t a fat grandfather with a dozen ancestors in the parish churchyard, and it made a difference. Also, he knew that if he ever started down that route, one day he’d beat the living daylights out of someone. Donovan’s temper was like another man’s drinking: it was no problem as long as he didn’t think he could stop at just one thump.
He looked hurt, but that too was part of the game. ‘I mean, in casual conversation. Nice day, how’s the pigeons, and by the way who’s got Mikey Dickens’stick-up kit?’
‘Is anyone in The Jubilee likely to tell you?’
Donovan gave a slow smile. ‘There’s a couple of people owe me a favour, yeah.’
‘And I’d be wiser not asking how?’ Shapiro shook his head wearily. ‘All right, Sergeant, if you think it’s worth a shot go ahead. Try not to start a riot. The reality of life in The Jubilee is that, however close the nearest policeman, there’s always a Dickens closer. No one who wants to go on living there can afford to take your side against Mikey.’
‘There’s also the matter of tribal rivalries,’ said Donovan. ‘The Dickenses may be top dogs now but there’s others snapping at their heels. There’s people in The Jubilee would be happy to see one less Dickens around the place. All I have to do is find one, and a nice dark corner to talk to him in.’
Chapter Six
The Jubilee did not entirely deserve its reputation as a hot-bed of crime. Certainly the Dickenses lived there, three generations of them in half a dozen houses scattered among the six streets, and so did their rivals the Walshes. But a lot of decent people without connections to either family lived there too. They minded their own business, stayed off the street if trouble was brewing, and as long as they exercised a little discretion in who they talked to about what nobody bothered them. There were advantages. One was that The Jubilee was virtually a crime-free area, since those responsible for most of the crime elsewhere in Castlemere preferred not to bring work home.
There were six streets but only one way in. Jubilee Terrace was the last turning off Brick Lane before it ran into the dereliction of Cornmarket. Wags in The Ginger Pig reckoned that if you waited till the racing was on the telly and then walled up the junction you’d solve most of Castlemere’s problems at a stroke. There was just enough truth in that to make it funny.
The second last turning off Brick Lane, on the other side, was the walkway through to Broad Wharf and Donovan’s narrowboat Tara. Apart from Martin and Lucy Cole on the James Brindley, the denizens of The Jubilee were his nearest neighbours.
He thought about putting Brian Boru on the chain that served as his lead and taking the dog with him. In Brian’s company he could walk with impunity into The Jubilee, downtown Beirut or the jaws of hell itself. On the other hand, it was hard to engage people in casual conversation when they kept counting their fingers. He took Brian for a run round Cornmarket, half a mile down the towpath, then left him in Tara’s chain locker while he headed for The Jubilee alone.
What he was looking for was a fringe member of the Walsh clan. No one connected with the Dickenses would give him the time of day; neither would anyone without affiliations, for fear of attracting attention. Those associated with the Walsh family would be happy enough to see Mikey get his just deserts and would probably be happy enough to help, but might want to get approval from head office before saying anything. Gang wars had started with less provocation.
So Donovan wasn’t looking for an official Walsh spokesman so much as a hanger-on who might talk faster than he thought, who might hear all the gossip mainly because nobody noticed him, and pass it on in the touchingly simple belief that anything that was bad for Dickenses had to be good for Walshes.
Such a man was Billy Dunne, and when Donovan saw the bent little figure shuffling down Coronation Row his heart rose. He faded back into the shadows at the corner of Jubilee Terrace, where a broken light had been awaiting replacement for three years to his knowledge, and waited for the characteristic tap-drag of Billy’s progress to reach him.
Billy Dunne may have had his collar felt more times than any man living, even Kevin Tufnall, but never before as he walked round a dark street corner a hundred yards from home. He let out a squawk they could have heard in The Fen Tiger, which was undoubtedly where he was heading now.
It wasn’t the most auspicious beginning to a discreet chat. ‘Jesus, Billy,’ exclaimed Donovan disgustedly, ‘have you got a guilty conscience or what?’
‘Mr Donovan?’ Equal quantities of relief and alarm warred in Billy’s creaky voice as he peered into the darkness. He thought at first that he’d been jumped by something nasty, then that it was a policeman, then and finally that being jumped by that particular policeman was pretty nasty. He tried frantically to remember if he’d been up to anything Donovan could have found out about.
Donovan had thought he’d keep Billy company as far as The Fen Tiger, where Castlemere’s four canals met in a near-subterranean basin near the centre of town. But if Billy Dunne had to talk to a policeman, and he didn’t seem to have much option, he preferred to do it in the shadows. He stood his ground nervously. ‘Was you looking for me, Mr Donovan?’
‘I was,’ said Donovan. ‘Matter of fact, Billy, I thought you could help me with something.’
The words confirmed Billy’s worst fears. When the police asked for your help, without arresting you first, it was the kiss of death to a man in Billy’s position. If you couldn’t or wouldn’t help they never forgot it; if you could and did, everybody you knew crossed you off their Christmas list. Billy replied with a tragic little sigh.
Donovan chuckled. ‘Don’t sound so worried, I’m not going to get you in trouble. I just wondered what you’d heard about this gun of Mikey Dickens’s.’
Those were the magic words that freed Billy’s tongue. The muscles of his jaw, that would have clamped tight at the word Walsh, immediately relaxed. He thought he was off the hook. He thought he could get Donovan off his back without calling the fires of hell down on him.
All the same, life had taught Billy Dunne to be cautious. ‘Gun, Mr Donovan?’
Donovan’s lupine smile was rather wasted in the dark, though Billy shivered anyway, from habit. ‘Gun, Billy. The gun he held up Ash Kumani with. The gun he threw away shortly before I caught up with him. The gun his entire bloody family turned out to look for. That gun.’
Billy tried to sound as if he had just this second understood what Donovan was driving at. ‘Oh – that’s what they were doing, is it? I knew there was something going on, I didn’t know just what.’
Donovan fought the unreasonable, and unhygienic, urge to kiss him. ‘Yeah, that’s what it was. They wanted to find Mikey’s gun before we did. They did, too. They must have been at it for hours.’
‘They were, Mr Donovan. I heard them all setting off about five o’clock yesterday morning – there must have been a dozen cars, maybe more. Then around eight they were back, all laughing and inviting one another in for a drink. Old Roly’ – Roland Dickens, Thelma’s eldest and Mikey’s father – ‘was acting the dog.’
‘The dog?’ This was one piece of Jubilee argot Donovan hadn’t heard before. ‘What dog?’
Billy smiled slowly. ‘You know, Mr Donovan. The dog that got
the cat that got the cream.’
Donovan let him continue on his way. There probably wasn’t much he could add, and if Donovan thought of something more to ask he knew where to find him.
So Roly organized the great gun hunt, after he got back from seeing Mikey in the hospital. That figured. If any of the clan had been in a hole it would have been Roly digging them out. The man was an icon to those who mourned the passing of Victorian values, a paterfamilias who had bred copiously and raised his children to follow in his footsteps. Even now they were grown and some were raising children of their own he continued to keep a close eye on all their doings, the rock to which they clung if danger threatened. Admittedly, what they mostly needed his help with was avoiding being locked up on charges ranging from shoplifting to armed robbery. But nothing was too much trouble for this acme of family men: father, grandfather and Godfather.
But knowing who had the gun and finding it were two different things. On what he knew now Donovan could get a search warrant, and strip Roly’s house in George Street down to the bricks. And he would find nothing. He might, just, get the warrant extended to cover other properties owned by the Dickens family, and he would find nothing there too.
The gun might already have gone – into the canal or a landfill site somewhere, or off the stern of a cross-channel ferry on an away day to Calais. If you wanted rid of something as small as a gun, that was easy enough, and if Mikey Dickens had killed someone with the weapon that would surely have been its fate. But he hadn’t. The resources of a murder hunt wouldn’t be devoted to finding it, and a gun has an intrinsic value in criminal circles: not even the cost of a new one so much as the risks involved in acquiring it. Dealers in unlicensed weapons hazard their freedom and their lives every day, and it makes them paranoid. If they have any doubts about your bona fides they don’t just run, they shoot you and then run. Donovan had arrested people buying unlicensed arms who’d been positively relieved to find he was a policeman and not another trigger-happy dealer.
