by Jo Bannister
So if the gun could be kept safe until it was wanted again, that’s what Roly would do. Send it to ground; and not with another Dickens or a known Dickens associate. It could be anywhere. He could have gone out with a trowel and a plastic bag and buried it in a corner of someone’s allotment. Unless Roly could be persuaded to say where, it would never be found.
Donovan was about to leave when he heard the motorbike. There was an extraordinary déjà vu moment in which he thought it was his bike and therefore him riding down through The Jubilee; though common sense intervened quickly it didn’t quite wipe out the absurd chill of that. Shaking his head to dislodge the sensation – he was an imaginative man, born of an imaginative race; a certain amount of creativity was valuable in a detective but not so much that he found himself wondering if he had his own permission to be riding his own motorbike – he turned to see where the sound was coming from.
The machine emerged from George Street into the upper part of Jubilee Terrace. There were enough surviving street lights up there to send a constellation of glints and gleams bouncing off the black and chrome of a Kawasaki 400 in show-room condition.
A bike like that didn’t belong in The Jubilee. Not because none of the inhabitants could afford it – rob enough garages and you can afford most things – but because if it had belonged there Donovan would have known. If that bike lived anywhere in Castlemere Donovan would have known. He went to the office window at the sound of a bike engine the way other people respond to the sound of a band in the street.
And if it didn’t live here, the chances were – this being The Jubilee – it had been stolen. In London, maybe, and brought here in the belief that no one would know. Donovan might not have noticed if someone had come out of George Street wearing the Crown Jewels, but he always noticed bikes.
The rider was dressed like most bikers, in black leathers with a full-face helmet. He wasn’t a big man: if Mikey Dickens hadn’t been hors de combat Donovan might have thought it was him. Except that he rode that bike with a finesse which was not the first quality you associated with Mikey or any of his family. Respect, thought Donovan – for the machine, for what it could do.
All the same, the mere fact of its being here raised enough reasonable suspicion for a conscientious policeman to stop it and seek an explanation. And maybe talk grommits and big ends for a while. As the bike crossed Coronation Row and slowed to turn into Brick Lane Donovan stepped out of the shadows into the middle of the road, one hand up in the prescribed fashion.
The Kawasaki was too well-bred for its brakes to squeal but it kicked a couple of little fish-tails as it came to a halt. Muffled by the tinted perspex, the tirade of abuse from inside the helmet may have lost some of its highlights but Donovan still got ‘cretin’and ‘bonehead’and (probably) ‘sucker’.
‘All right, sonny,’ he growled, ‘you want to tell me about the friend of a friend who didn’t at all mind you borrowing his wheels while he was in Benidorm?’
‘And another thing,’ snarled the rider, unintimidated, throwing off the helmet so that a river of red-gold hair flowed down one black leather shoulder: – ‘don’t call me sonny!’
Donovan didn’t believe in love at first sight. If asked he would have said he didn’t believe in love; though this was nonsense, all Irishmen are romantics, it’s why they write such wonderful songs about all the battles they’ve lost. But either way, a beautiful girl on a Kawasaki 400 was a dream come true. Donovan felt his jaw drop and closed it. He felt his eyes smart and blinked. Finally he remembered he was still standing in the middle of the road with one hand up and he let it fall. ‘Er – hi,’ he said inanely.
‘I said,’ repeated the girl, her voice steely with exasperation, ‘what do you want that’s worth risking both our lives for?’
‘I think I was going to make a big mistake,’ admitted Donovan. ‘I was going to ask if you’d any right to be riding that bike.’
Even outside the shadow there wasn’t a lot of light, but what there was gathered in the pale oval of her face. Enough to show the flash of indignation in her eyes tum first to an appreciation of the compliment and then to amusement. ‘That would have been a mistake,’ she nodded. Unmuffled by the helmet, her voice had the clear carrying quality of struck crystal. ‘Anyway, what business is it of yours?’
His reply was so low she had to ask him to repeat it. ‘I’m a policeman!’ he said then, loud enough to cause heart attacks all over The Jubilee. ‘I’m supposed to challenge anyone acting suspiciously.’
Now the anger had subsided she was rather enjoying his discomfort. ‘And I’m Rumpole of the Bailey. What do you mean, acting suspiciously? – I could give lessons on how to ride a motorcycle.’
Donovan didn’t doubt it. ‘That’s what I mean. In The Jubilee, somebody riding carefully on a clean motorbike is suspicious. If you want to go unnoticed here, lose that prissy helmet and practise your wheelies.’
The girl laughed. ‘My wheelies don’t need any practice. I take it you’re a biker?’
Donovan did the slow smile. ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’
‘What do you ride?’
‘Same as yours but the 550.’
The girl nodded. ‘I like the power of a big bike but the weight’s a problem. The 400’s a good compromise – plenty of burn but I can still hold it up in traffic jams.’
‘Do you live round here?’
Her head tipped to one side. ‘Is that an official inquiry, officer?’
‘No.’
‘Then no. Castlemere, but not here. I was visiting someone. Why?’
He shrugged in what he hoped was a nonchalant fashion. ‘I thought, if you’d got a long ride home, you might like a coffee first. I know a place on the canal, three minutes from here.’
‘Well, it isn’t that long a ride,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘On the other hand, it’s a chilly night. A café, you say?’
Donovan nodded. ‘At Mere Basin, where the narrowboats used to tie up. There are still some about. Talk to me nicely and I might show you one.’
Her name was Jade. Some people would have looked for rather more in the way of an introduction but Donovan went for months, sometimes even years, without using his first name and had always found one perfectly adequate.
‘How did they know you were going to have green eyes?’
She laughed again, like a crystal fountain. ‘How do you know I’ve got green eyes?’
And to be sure, there was nowhere near enough light to tell. But his conviction didn’t waver. ‘With hair that colour? Of course they’re green.’
‘The hair colour might have come out of a bottle.’
‘Sure it might,’ said Donovan. ‘And I might be lead tenor in a Welsh miners’choir.’
‘You’re Irish.’
‘And you have green eyes.’
Jade grinned and threw a long leg over the machine. ‘Coffee, then. Tell me where to go.’
Donovan didn’t need asking twice: he got on behind her, only hoping he wouldn’t be flagged down by one of the more reckless PCs for riding without a helmet. But even a PC desperate for arrests would think twice before venturing this far up Brick Lane. In fact they saw no one. Donovan’s biggest problem was riding pillion on a bike when he didn’t know where to put his hands.
Chapter Seven
Shapiro was unsurprised about Billy Dunne’s revelation. Something of the sort had to have happened: if the gun had still been lying by the road on Tuesday his own search would have found it.
‘Wherever Roly’s hidden it,’ said Donovan, ‘it won’t be at home and it probably won’t be in The Jubilee. Can you think of anywhere else?’
Shapiro squinted at him. ‘You don’t think, Sergeant, that in choosing a safe hiding place for a gun used in an armed robbery, Roly would have it in mind to avoid places known to the local Detective Superintendent?’
Chastened, Donovan nodded. ‘So—?’
Shapiro thought. ‘The likelihood is that Roly’s the only one who knows exactly wh
ere that gun is now. He won’t tell us, and there’s no point putting a tail on him because he has no need to go anywhere near it for the foreseeable future. What does that leave?’
‘Guile?’ suggested Donovan hopefully. When it came to sneaky, no member of Castlemere’s criminal fraternity could hold a candle to its senior detective.
‘Trick him? I suppose it’s possible. But Roly Dickens is no fool, he’ll know we’re anxious to get hold of that gun – I don’t know what we could do that would make him hand it over.’
Neither did Donovan, but there had to be something. The alternative was that Mikey was going to get away with this. ‘Can we get him worried that we might have found it – worried enough to go and check?’
‘And follow him there? You’ll need a good story. Roly’s sharper than he looks: it’s no coincidence that he has half The Jubilee under his thumb. Getting him to take your bait may be the easy part. The hard part will be stopping him yanking you into the water and drowning you.’
Donovan was frowning. ‘You’re not telling me we can’t deal with Roly Dickens?’
‘Of course not. I’m telling you not to underestimate him. He’s a clever, dangerous man and he’s fighting for something that matters to him.’
‘This is pretty important to me, too,’ gritted Donovan.
‘I know that. That’s why I’m telling you to be careful. He’ll make a fool of you if he can; and if he can’t he might get serious. I don’t want you getting hurt over this.’
Donovan touched a finger to his face. ‘Bit late for that, chief.’
Shapiro knew he was wasting his time. Threatening Donovan only made him obdurate. He thought it wouldn’t matter; he didn’t think he’d get close enough to make Roly angry. ‘All right, see what you can do. But don’t get so far out on a limb that you don’t hear the sound of sawing.’
The problem would be convincing Roly that he should be worried. Clearly he would have put the gun where he believed it would be safe: somehow Donovan had to persuade him that the police were closing in on it but there was still time for him to make it safe if he acted at once.
Donovan had an extensive stable of informants, but none of them would be much use to him in this. A man would have to be pretty close to Roly Dickens to know where he’d hidden Mikey’s gun, and anyone that close wasn’t going to talk to a policeman. Not if he was attached to both kneecaps he wasn’t.
He was still fretting about it, and no nearer an answer, when he met Jade after work. They went for a meal, then on to an exhibition at the Town Hall. Two hundred years of the Castlemere Canal in photographs, paintings and artifacts. Jade had seen it advertised and thought Donovan would be interested. But he trailed round behind her like a bored child.
‘Well, that went down like a lead balloon,’ she growled as they left. ‘If there’s something you’d rather be doing tonight, don’t let me detain you.’
With a guilty start he realized he was squandering his chance with her, and that it mattered to him not to. ‘I’m sorry. It’s work – I’ve hit a brick wall and I can’t get it out of my head. I’m rotten at keeping my work and my private life separate,’ he added honestly. ‘Only I don’t usually have enough of a private life for it to be a problem.’
Jade gave a little snort, half of impatience, half amusement. Despite his failings there was something about Donovan she couldn’t help liking. It might even have been his lack of social skill. There was no polish with him: what you saw was what you got. All right, what she was getting tonight was a rather dreary preoccupation with his work; but she knew there was more. It wasn’t just that he was attracted to her, though she knew he was. Men had liked her before, but she hadn’t let them take her for granted. She wasn’t quite sure why she was willing to put up with it this time. Presumably, because she thought he was worth it.
She knew now – she’d known last night – it wasn’t going to be an easy relationship. They were too alike: impatient, unconventional, fiercely ambitious. Both of them took risks to get what they wanted. Two more cautious people wouldn’t have ridden off into the darkness together and spent three hours in a basement café that could have been empty for all they knew or cared. For the last half hour it was, except for them and an increasingly irate waiter.
For two pins, she knew, Donovan would have asked her back to his boat when the café closed. For two pins she would have gone. Why? – because a part of her thrived on danger, didn’t care if she was being unwise. Trouble she could handle: tame and safe withered her. Donovan with his moods and his dark looks and the intensity that radiated from him like a heat made her feel more alive than anything had in some time.
But he hadn’t asked her back, and in the end she had too much pride to invite herself. He’d asked to see her again. She’d shrugged, said she’d call him.
As soon as the morning papers arrived she took them to her office, looking for an excuse to make it tonight. When she saw the canal exhibition advertised it was like fate lending a hand. But she waited until lunchtime to call. No need to tell him he’d got under her skin.
So his lack of enthusiasm for what she’d chosen was doubly disappointing. Two truisms occurred to her: one about fish in the sea, and one about flogging a dead horse. ‘Do you want to call it a night?’
‘No!’ The swiftness of his response could only be a compliment, however belated. ‘I really am sorry, it was a nice idea, it’s just—’ He raised one shoulder in an awkward lopsided shrug. ‘If you hadn’t noticed already, I am to the jolly social whirl what King Herod is to The Mothers’Union.’
She laughed at that, the red hair dancing. That was what he did for her that made it worth putting up with the rest: he surprised her, he made her laugh. ‘OK, so you want to worry about work. Anything I can help with?’
Donovan gave a rueful grin. ‘Not even Rumpole of the Bailey could help me with this. In fact, if Rumpole knew what I was up to he’d get his client discharged without a stain on his character.’
Jade liked him remembering her joke. ‘Sergeant!’ she exclaimed in mock horror. ‘You’re not trying to frame someone?’
‘’Course not.’ He sounded outraged; then his eyes slid away and his thin lips sketched a self-deprecating smile. ‘But it’s not exactly above-board either. I have to convince someone that I know things I don’t so he might as well come clean when in fact he’d be better off not doing so. I suppose that’s vaguely dishonest but you couldn’t call it a frame – he’s guilty, I’m just having trouble proving it. God Almighty, I was there – I saw what he did! But he’s come up with a pack of lies that just might be good enough to get him off. Somehow I have to get him to cooperate in his own downfall.’
After the exhibition, somehow it seemed natural to finish up back at Tara. Donovan shut out the winter night and Jade shrugged off her coat and curled into a chair. Her brow furrowed with thought. ‘That’s what’s worrying you? If you should do it?’
He shook his head. ‘How to do it.’
He didn’t set out to tell her everything, but between explaining the principle and trying not to sound crooked himself he told her most of it, omitting only the names. Jade listened in silence. Donovan couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
When he ran out of things to say he got up and went to one of the big lozenge-shaped windows. Mere Basin was lit like Santa’s Grotto but there were few lights along Broad Wharf, only a few security bulbs above the rear entrances of the commercial buildings on Brick Lane. There were also lights on the James Brindley, but beyond that was darkness. It had started to rain in the last half hour, a cold sleety rain that didn’t so much run down the glass as slither. Donovan laid his arms on the sill, dropped his chin on his bony wrists and watched it.
He was afraid that the next thing he’d hear would be the door closing as she left. He thought she was judging him. She hadn’t said so. She hadn’t said much at all. Perhaps she thought they still lived in a world where right triumphed over wrong without a helping hand. Donovan genuinely saw nothin
g improper about tricking Roly, but perhaps it looked different from the outside. Perhaps someone who’d never met the Dickenses, or anyone like the Dickenses, thought they really were innocent until proven guilty and it really was better that ten guilty men should go free than that one crooked defence should be shown for what it was by a little creative policing.
Listening for the door, he was startled to find Jade standing beside him, her elbows on the same narrow sill. She glanced sidelong at him and smiled. ‘Don’t look so tragic. It’s only a job.’
He thought about that for a moment then shook his head. ‘No. It isn’t.’
‘I wish I could help.’
‘You? How can you help?’
His tone stung her. She swung on him, the red hair flying, the green eyes – he’d been right about that – flashing like ice over emeralds. ‘Don’t be so bloody patronizing! I get around, I hear things. I may even know things that you don’t, that you’d give your eye-teeth to know. You don’t want my help, fine – but then don’t whinge on about how hard your job is!’ She stalked away from the window, snatching up her bag.
Another moment and she really would have gone. Donovan didn’t know how to stop her. He didn’t dare touch her, hadn’t the skill with words to talk her round. All he could think of in the time available was to bar her exit. He crossed the saloon in a couple of long-legged strides and put the door at his back. ‘Jade—’
‘Shift.’ She sounded very much as if she meant it.
His voice was low. ‘Don’t walk out.’
‘I’m not walking out, there’s nothing to walk out on. I’m just leaving.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted. He also didn’t get much practice at apologizing. ‘Whatever – I didn’t – I mean, I don’t—’ It not only wasn’t coming out the way he wanted, he wasn’t making any sense at all. His hands spread helplessly and then dropped to his sides. ‘Don’t go.’
