Broken Lines

by Jo Bannister

  ‘Accident? What kind of accident? Is he hurt?’

  At the same time there was something rather touching about Roly Dickens as a sartorial disaster area, simply because it wasn’t his normal way of dressing. The man had a certain style. Whatever he wore for work, he turned up for court appearances in a three-piece suit. He polished his shoes and matched his tie to his breast-pocket handkerchief. The fact that he came before Liz in such disarray now said clearer than words that even if Mikey struck the rest of the world as one scant evolutionary step above the wood-louse his father cared about him. The heavy face, unshaven jowls blue and bristly, twisted with anxiety and there was fear in the bloodhound eyes.

  In the second before she answered Liz felt it like a physical pang that this was something whose direct equivalent she would never experience. If she’d married a man who turned out like Mikey Dickens she’d have divorced him; if she bought a horse that shifty and unreliable she’d have it shot. But your children were part of you, and remained so however unsatisfactory you found each other; and most parents, like Roly, found they had no option but to love them pretty much as they were. She wondered if Mikey had known how lucky he was that there was one person in the world who loved him enough for news of his misfortune to cause such distress. She hoped so; because it sounded as if what Mikey didn’t know yesterday wouldn’t trouble him in the future.

  ‘He has a head injury,’ she said. ‘It’s serious, but he’s in hospital and they have enormous expertise at dealing with these things. I’ll drive you there. By the time we arrive the doctors’ll maybe have a clearer picture.’

  Thelma was going to get dressed and come too but Roly wanted her at home. ‘Get on the phone, tell the family what’s happened. Tell them I’ll be in touch when I know more.’

  As he squeezed his bulk into the car he said, ‘What kind of an accident?’

  Liz could have lied, she could have fudged; both seemed crueller than giving him all the bad news at once. ‘Actually, Mr Dickens, we think Mikey was attacked. He was found half an hour ago by one of the Cornmarket dossers. He’d been beaten up.’

  Dickens stared at her in disbelief. ‘Some dosser broke Mikey’s head?’

  Liz was quick to scotch that. ‘No, we don’t think so. The dosser found him, that’s all. He’d been lying there for some time already: if he hadn’t been found he’d have been all night and he wouldn’t have survived.’ It was important that Roly understood that before he organized a lynch-mob.

  Mikey was in theatre. While Roly sat hunched in a corner, repeatedly checking his watch as the slow minutes passed, Liz talked to the casualty registrar.

  ‘He was beaten up?’

  ‘He was beaten up,’ agreed Dr Morrison. ‘But it wasn’t a fight that got out of hand, or even a systematic beating that went too far. Someone tried to kill him. Eighty per cent of the effort expended went into smashing his head. There are other injuries but they’re almost incidental. They were probably done after he was unconscious.’

  Liz stared at him. ‘They fractured his skull and then gave him a drubbing? Why would anyone do that? – and anyway, what makes you think so?’

  Dr Morrison looked tired. ‘Why is more your business than mine, Inspector. Maybe to disguise the real purpose of the attack – make it look like a fight instead of an execution? What makes me think so is the angle the blows landed at. Apart from the one that stove in the back of his skull – which was probably the first because he was vertical then and horizontal thereafter – that boy didn’t move from the beginning of the attack until it ended. Even broken bones don’t stop you thrashing about on the ground: you’d expect the injuries to reflect different degrees of force arriving from different directions but they don’t. He just lay there and took it. I don’t think he knew it was going on.’

  Liz was trying to visualize what happened. ‘So he was on his feet when somebody hit him from behind, laying him out cold. But they didn’t walk away then – they continued hitting him, about the head with enthusiasm and in a rather more desultory way about the body. How long for – seconds, minutes?’

  ‘That depends on how many they were. One man would have taken minutes to do that much damage, and that’s not allowing for a break to get his breath back. More of them could do it quicker.’

  Liz pondered. ‘You said that, apart from that first blow, they all arrived with similar force from the same direction. Does that sound like several men at work?’

  Morrison thought, then shook his head. ‘No, it doesn’t. In fact, most of those injuries were inflicted by someone standing in the same place. So the likelihood is there was just one assailant.’

  ‘What did he use?’

  ‘Probably a baseball bat or a pick-axe handle – something long, wooden and without corners. The first blow was full strength, just as hard as he could make it The boy dropped like a stone, and while he was lying face down on the ground the assailant stood over him and hit him again and again. Maybe a couple of dozen times in all. Mostly he worked on the head. He didn’t plan on Michael Dickens waking up.’

  The only place Mikey got his full name was on charge sheets: it quite surprised Liz to hear somebody call him that. ‘And will he?’

  Morrison didn’t answer at once. His gaze strayed to Roly, still huddled oblivious in his comer. ‘Inspector Graham, you’ve seen enough assaults and road accidents to know that, this early in the game, our best guess is exactly that – a guess. People with head injuries surprise us more often than not. They surprise us by dying when they should recover and by living when they should die. They surprise us by being totally incapacitated by a relatively minor injury, and by overcoming the loss of a substantial part of their brain. I bet on horses but I wouldn’t bet on the prognosis for a brain injury.’

  He sucked in a slow breath. ‘That said, we’d get more on the EEG from an earthworm. The machines are all that’s keeping him alive. That’s all right, a lot of head trauma cases owe their eventual recovery to the fact that a ventilator kept them going for the critical first three days. But this boy? He might not die; but if he was my son I’d be hoping he would.’

  As soon as Scenes of Crime took over at Cornmarket Shapiro took Donovan back to Queen’s Street. They needed to talk, possibly at length, certainly without interruption. His first instinct was to adjourn to Tara which was closer. On reflection, though, this was a conversation that would be better conducted in the office. He wasn’t sure what was going to come of it, but if Donovan’s explanation was not satisfactory – and perhaps more importantly if it was – he didn’t want the record to look as if it had emerged from a cosy chat rather than a formal interview. Everything that had happened so far and everything that happened from now on would be subject to scrutiny. It was important that nothing he did made it look as if different rules applied when a police officer was involved.

  Donovan was slow to realize that this was more than a debriefing. He hadn’t been much use at the scene but that was understandable. Stumbling without warning on a murderous assault isn’t the same as investigating one, and Shapiro was not surprised that his sergeant, who’d seen almost everything the job had to offer, was somewhat shocked.

  Fifteen hours earlier Mikey Dickens had been a thorn in his flesh, the source of professional indignity and personal humiliation. If the devil had appeared in a puff of smoke and offered to do Donovan one untraceable favour, the striking down of Mikey Dickens with the smug grin still on his face would have been tops. Finding him in his blood in the rubble of Cornmarket, a bit of human detritus as broken up as the rest of the rubbish, must have been like having an unworthy birthday wish granted. No wonder he looked shocked; guilty, even.

  As long, Shapiro thought grimly, as that was the only reason. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘tell me again. Everything.’

  Donovan nodded compliance. ‘It was a bit after midnight. I couldn’t sleep. I was still – yeah, OK, I was still too angry. I thought I’d walk it off. I got the dog and set off down the towpath.

 
‘I didn’t see a soul till we reached Cornmarket. Then I could see the bonfire, and the dog silhouetted against it. I headed that way, but by the time I reached the fire he’d gone. Then I saw movement by those tumbledown walls where the Inland Navigation offices used to be. I didn’t want to call him and wake every dosser in Castlemere so I went to get him. But when I got there this guy Desmond was standing staring at something on the ground, and it was Mikey.

  ‘My first thought was Desmond had floored him. But that made no sense: any dosser would run a mile from any Dickens, and if he didn’t he wouldn’t have got the better of him. Mikey might be a little runt but he’s a runt with street-fighting in his blood.

  ‘I wasn’t carrying’ – he meant a mobile phone, not a gun – ‘so I hared up on to Brick Lane and woke the first house I came to. You know the rest: by the time I got back to Cornmarket the area car was arriving and the ambulance was right behind it.’ He drew breath. ‘What about Mikey?’

  Shapiro grimaced. ‘He made it to hospital alive, they took him straight to theatre. He’s in a bad way, but just how bad they won’t know for a day or two.’ He changed tack a little. ‘From the blood on the ground SOCO reckoned he’d been there twenty minutes – possibly a little less, allowing for the cold. Would you have been out that long?’

  Donovan thought. ‘Probably about that. It’s half a mile from Tara to the start of Cornmarket, a bit further to the fire. I walk it in about ten minutes in daylight. It’s slower in the dark, plus I was in no hurry – I wasn’t going anywhere, I just needed the fresh air.’

  ‘So if whoever did this came back along the towpath, you should have seen him.’

  ‘If SOCO’s right about the time, yes. Even hurrying he couldn’t have passed Tara before I left.’

  ‘And you saw no one.’

  ‘Not till I saw Desmond. So the guy left by Brick Lane; so either he had a car or he hadn’t far to go. Someone who’d just left a Dickens for dead wouldn’t choose to walk past The Jubilee, not if he had a choice.’

  Shapiro frowned. ‘You think someone from The Jubilee did this?’

  Donovan shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Walshes and Dickenses trade the odd black eye, but most of the time a sort of armed truce suits both lots. This is an invitation to Armaggeddon. If it was a Walsh we’re going to have war in The Jubilee.’

  Shapiro scowled. ‘Then we’d better find out who did it before things deteriorate that far.’ He straightened behind his desk. ‘You’ll understand, Sergeant, that I have to ask you this. Are you responsible for the attack on Mikey Dickens?’

  Donovan let out a snort that was half a laugh. ‘You’re kidding!’ Only then, when Shapiro’s face didn’t dissolve in its wry crumpled grin, did he realize the superintendent was serious. ‘You’re not kidding. Dear God, you mean it! You think I maybe smashed Mikey’s head with a baseball bat.’

  ‘Is that what it was?’ asked Shapiro softly. ‘A baseball bat?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ grated Donovan, ‘I wasn’t there. I found him – no, Desmond Jannery found him, I arrived right after that. He’d been on the ground twenty minutes before I got there.’

  ‘We both know,’ Shapiro murmured, ‘that the first man to see the victim dead was quite often the last one to see him alive. That’s why I have to ask, and you have to answer as clearly as you can, as often as it takes, in as much detail as necessary to show that it was just an unfortunate coincidence that you were there when Mikey was found.’

  ‘It was a coincidence all right.’ Donovan’s voice rose dangerously. ‘I don’t know how unfortunate it was. If I hadn’t been there Desmond would still have been gawping at him, wondering what the hell to do, half an hour later, and another half hour would have seen Mikey on the substitutes’bench at the Pearly Gates. Now, there’s people enough in this town would agree that was the height of misfortune. But I thought we took the view, at least officially, that all human life is worth preserving.’

  ‘Don’t take that tone with me, Sergeant,’ snapped Shapiro. ‘We’re talking in my office because for now I’m prepared to treat you as a witness rather than a suspect. Any time I can’t get a straight answer from you that can change, and we’ll finish this in an interview room with the tape running. Is that clear?’

  Donovan was on his feet, leaning forward over his fists on the desk. ‘What’s clear, sir, is that I’ve worked for you for eight years and you still don’t know if you can trust me!’

  Getting older and fatter had not yet deprived Shapiro of a surprising turn of speed when it was called for. He shot out of his chair and faced the younger man nose to nose. ‘That depends what you mean by trust. I would trust you with my life, Donovan. I would not necessarily trust you to keep your temper in the face of provocation from some pushy little low-life.’

  ‘And what? Wait till he turned his back before stoving his head in? Then beat him up some more while he was unconscious on the ground? Jesus Christ, is that what you think of me?’

  It was late, they were both tired and stressed, in another moment Shapiro might have said something he would have regretted. He sank back into his chair. ‘Of course not. But for a second, forget it’s you and look at the facts. The boy made a fool of you. He knocked you down, you had to risk your life to rescue him, then he wormed off the hook thanks to someone you confided in. Only yesterday morning the three of you were involved in an altercation on the steps of this police station. You said things then that could be interpreted as threats.’

  ‘But—’

  Shapiro waved him to silence. ‘I know: they weren’t meant that way. But you must see that now we have to go over what’s been said and done with a magnifying glass. It’s not enough that I don’t believe you capable of a sustained attack on a helpless man. To an objective outsider it might seem a reasonable hypothesis. I have to be able to show I considered it and had good reason to dismiss it. Do you understand?’

  At a cerebral level Donovan did. Caesar’s wife wasn’t the only one who had to be above suspicion: police officers who found that intrusive had to look round for work where the presumption of innocence applied. There must be half a dozen people in Castlemere with as good a reason for flattening Mikey Dickens, but all of them were entitled to be assumed innocent unless evidence of their guilt could be found. It might be unfair that the same indulgence didn’t extend to the investigating officers, but at a rational level he accepted the necessity.

  The problem was, too much of Donovan’s thinking came not from his head but from his heart. He knew, and so did those around him, that too often emotion coloured his judgement. There were times when it hindered his efficiency as a detective.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said at last, thinly. ‘Of course I do.’ One long hand sketched an apology in the air. ‘It’s just … You flog your guts out for a job, you even risk your life, God damn it; and sure, everybody’s glad of a result, you’re the boys next time the Assistant Chief Constable’s passing through; still, that’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it? And then something like this comes up, and everything you’ve done somehow gets forgotten. We’ve always had our doubts about Donovan – he’s got a temper, he’s got a bad mouth, it was only a matter of time before they got him in deep shit. Evidence? – well no, maybe not; but there’s no smoke without fire. And after eight years that …’

  ‘Hurts?’ Shapiro offered softly. ‘I know, Donovan – I remember.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Donovan forced a rough little laugh. ‘That really was stupid. I mean, I could believe I might dump on a suspect, but how could anyone think you had? That’s like accusing Mother Teresa of white slaving.’

  Shapiro squinted down his nose. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I? Listen. I’m not doing this because I don’t believe you, I’m doing it because it’s required of me. You’ll put up with it for the same reason. And after that we’ll go out and find who really did flatten Mikey. Yes?’

  Donovan nodded. ‘Yes. Sir.’

  Chapter Two

  No one in Brick Lane heard a car
entering or leaving Commarket. No one in Cambridge Road saw Mikey’s van racing away from Kumani’s forecourt. Donovan spent Saturday afternoon going door to door and getting nowhere, and Sunday evening he went back to stop traffic near the garage in the hope of finding someone who only passed that way once a week. He found a couple of people who visited relatives for Sunday tea but neither of them had seen Mikey’s van.

  On Monday morning Liz visited Mrs Taylor again. She took Donovan with her. ‘She’s the one person we know saw that van at a time when, according to Mikey, there were two people in it. She’ll be calmer now, maybe her memory’s clearer. If she can say for sure that the driver was on his own, that’s one less thing to worry about.’

  Donovan was still feeling under siege or he wouldn’t have taken offence at that. ‘Yeah,’ he growled, ‘once we’re sure whether I’m lying about the hijacker we can concentrate on whether I beat the suspect’s head in.’

  Liz thought of herself as a patient woman. It wasn’t altogether true, but she thought it. But when Donovan was in this mood a little of him went a long way. ‘Donovan, stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself! There’s a nineteen-year-old boy in the hospital who looks like a steamroller’s been over him; and the likelihood is he’s never going to tell us who was responsible. We have to find out. The fact that you and the victim weren’t on speaking terms is immaterial; so is the inarguable fact that Mikey Dickens is a thief, a liar and a general waste of space. Nobody had the right to do that to him, and unless we want him to do it again next time someone annoys him we’d better get him found.’

  Liz was driving, and when she turned into Chevening Moss Road Donovan felt a quiver of disquiet. He must have been this way a thousand times, without any problems until eight days ago; now he expected trouble round every twist of the lane. Mainly to avoid thinking about it he said, ‘This baseball bat or whatever. Do you reckon he took it home with him?’