Broken Lines

by Jo Bannister

  It could. But Donovan couldn’t afford for him to think so. ‘Don’t you see, it’s the only way it could have been done. That’s what was puzzling us, why Shapiro couldn’t take my word that it wasn’t me. Whoever attacked Mikey had to get there and had to leave. He could have been waiting a long time, but he had to leave after I was already on my way to Cornmarket. If he’d come up the towpath I’d have seen him; if he’d left by Brick Lane he’d have been seen there too.

  ‘But who’d see him come by boat? Who’d stop him as he left and find the weapon still on him? He could afford to take it away, and bring it back later, because there was no chance of him being stopped and searched. He slung it on to the path when he saw me coming, waited till the dog brought it to me, then he started his engine and left.’ The breath left him in a shaky sigh. ‘Jesus, Roly, that’s how he did it. That’s how it was done.’

  ‘Who? Who did it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ But in the moment of saying it he did. He knew where he’d seen that boat before. He remembered Pat Taylor’s eyes when she looked at him and before she looked away. He didn’t know why, but he knew how and now he knew who.

  And if he told Roly Dickens, the big man would leave him here, bound and gagged, and go to the house on the canal at Chevening. Would his fury be in any way lessened by the fact that the attack on his son was carried out, or at least instigated, by a woman?

  Donovan was Irish and therefore sentimental. He didn’t believe that a woman’s body could take the kind of punishment his had had to. He thought that if Roly got his hands on Pat Taylor he’d kill her. He thought that if he told Roly what he believed he’d be responsible for a woman’s death. If he was right, Donovan had every reason to despise Pat Taylor for what she’d done to him. But he still couldn’t bring himself to send Roly Dickens to her door.

  ‘Roly – please – I can’t tell you that.’

  Roly’s voice was as cold, hard and unyielding as the creak of a glacier. ‘Wanna bet?’

  This was harder than before. Before he had only his wits to defend him from Roly’s anger: now he had something to buy him off with. He had no illusions about how serious this was: it was literally a matter of life and death. He thought probably, at least on this occasion, he deserved to live more than Mrs Taylor did: whatever her motive – and all he knew was that she’d lost her car – she’d reduced one man to a vegetable and set out to destroy another. It was she, not Donovan, who had sewn the wind: he knew of no law, common, statute or moral, that compelled him to reap her whirlwind.

  And yet. It was his job to protect the weak against the strong, and it remained his job even when doing it meant getting hurt. He’d risked his life for his job before – every policeman had at some time or another. In essence, this was another situation like that. He could keep a dangerous man here, or he could let him go to hurt a defenceless woman instead. When you got right down to it, that was the issue: not what that woman was and had done, or even what Roly was, but what Donovan was.

  Right now Donovan was scared for his life, and too damn stubborn to buy it with the only acceptable currency. With a tremor in his voice that someone much further away than Roly couldn’t have missed, he said, ‘I can’t, Roly. Don’t you understand? – I can’t. I don’t have the privilege of a choice.’

  Someone tapped at the interview room door. Liz was expecting Sergeant Tripp, but he was only the first in a queue: Shapiro was coming down the corridor from Interview Room 1 with WPC Flynn bobbing in his wake, trying to attract his attention.

  Tripp could be dealt with in three words. ‘Well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great.’ She sent him back to his witch’s kitchen and Shapiro took his place.

  ‘Is she talking?’

  ‘They did it, all right. But no, she won’t say as much. She likes the idea of Roly kicking Donovan’s head in.’

  Shapiro stared at her, appalled. ‘Is she crazy?’

  ‘If you mean, is she in control of her actions, then yes. She blames him as much as Mikey for her miscarriage. The husband dealt with Mikey, she’s dealing with Donovan.’

  ‘Is that what she said? That Taylor beat Mikey?’

  Liz shrugged. ‘She hasn’t said much of anything. She didn’t try to deny it. That was her print inside the tape, incidentally – I just got confirmation from SOCO.’

  Shapiro had both hands shoved deep in his pockets. It gave him the round-shouldered profile of a dyspeptic bat. ‘Liz, I’m not sure Taylor was part of it.’

  Liz stared at him. ‘Then who do you think helped her?’

  ‘Maybe nobody.’

  Since suspicion first settled on the Taylors Liz had assumed that Pat had set it up and Clifford carried it out. But if Clifford wasn’t involved …

  Pat Taylor beat the living daylights out of Mikey Dickens with a baseball bat? The head of the English department at Castle High stood over a nineteen-year-old boy and pounded away at his head until her oilskins were spattered with his blood and fragments of his skull and brain?

  Actually, there was nothing a woman couldn’t have done, if she was angry enough. Liz’s mind flashed back to little Bella Willis, tackling with her bare hands the man she thought was threatening her baby. That maternal drive went down deeper than reason, deeper than fear or even self-preservation, tapped into a well of primal savagery nothing else reached. If Kevin Tufnall had actually stolen her child, had in fact killed him, nothing on God’s earth would have prevented Bella from taking him apart.

  That surfeit of anger, the disabling of normal inhibitions, was the key. Given that, there was nothing so physically demanding about the demolition of Mikey Dickens that a middle-aged woman couldn’t have accomplished it; except for one thing. ‘Frank, the attack on Mikey was three days after Pat Taylor’s miscarriage. I don’t think she’d have been strong enough to do it. To help Taylor, certainly. But to play baseball with a man’s head?’

  Shapiro caught his breath. He’d missed the significance of the timing. ‘God damn!’

  ‘Look,’ said Liz, ‘maybe just how she did it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that, with or without help, she managed somehow. Because if she did it, Donovan didn’t. Isn’t that enough? For Roly, I mean.’

  That was the crucial point. Shapiro nodded. ‘If we can find him.’

  WPC Flynn finally succeeded in catching his eye. ‘Call from PC Stark, sir. He’s found Roly Dickens’s van, on a track in the woods near Hunter’s Spinney. He can’t see anyone, but he says they must be inside because he can see it rocking from fifty yards away.’

  Liz knew what that meant. ‘Oh Christ!’

  Shapiro said, hard and fast, ‘Tell Stark not to approach until we get there. He can’t take Roly on his own, he can only get hurt too. We’ll be there in six minutes – tell him to wait till then.’

  ‘Sergeant Bolsover already has, sir,’ said Flynn. ‘But I’m not sure he will.’

  Jim Stark was a born policeman. He was a strong man but he didn’t throw his weight around; he was brave but not foolish; he did a good rugby tackle if a suspect tried to leg it but was equally happy seeing old ladies across busy roads.

  If he had a weakness, it was that he was too kind. He was a sucker for tramps wanting a hot meal and small children claiming to be lost. He had no illusions about his ability to arrest, single-handed, a man four stones heavier than him, with huge well-practised fists and boots, fuelled by a deadly rage taking him to the brink of madness. He knew that in any confrontation with Roly Dickens he’d come off worst. It made no difference. He couldn’t hide in the trees while Roly’s van bounced on its suspension and grunts and choked cries attested to the violence of what was happening within. He turned off his radio and came up the track at a run.

  They were in the back: there wasn’t room for this in the front. He went to the back doors and snatched them open, and kept moving forward in the hope of forcing Roly off the target of his fury before his own impetus ground to a halt.

  He found himself sprawle
d on top of two naked bodies that were so involved in what they were doing they didn’t even stop.

  By the time the cars arrived the naked bodies had calmed down and found some clothes, PC Stark had recovered his composure and his message had been relayed to Shapiro. So the superintendent already knew it wasn’t Roly and Donovan in the van but two seventeen-year-olds who’d despaired of finding an empty room in either of their houses.

  But it was still Roly’s van, and it was vital to establish where they’d acquired it and when.

  ‘A couple of hours ago,’ said the girl. ‘It was sitting in the car-park with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. We reckoned anybody that stupid would probably think he’d forgotten where he parked it. We were going to put it back later, then nobody’d ever believe it went missing.’

  ‘What car-park?’ demanded Shapiro tersely.

  ‘The one at the hospital.’

  ‘They never left the hospital.’ Shapiro sounded stunned. His mind was desperately sifting information, trying to work out if the clues had been there and he’d simply missed them. He glanced at his watch: two o’clock. ‘They’ve been there all along. We searched but the place is a rabbit warren. Roly must have found somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed, and they’ve been there for five hours. They’re still there.’

  Liz’s eyes were enormous. ‘If we have to search every storeroom, every side room, every maintenance area and staffroom and repository on the site, it’ll take another five hours.’

  ‘We’ve no alternative. Basically, we have to open every door in the building because they could be behind any one of them.’ Shapiro became aware he didn’t have Liz’s full attention. ‘What?’

  She blinked. ‘I’m just thinking. We know how Roly feels about Mikey – look what he’s done to prove it. Give or take the odd hour, he’s sat by his bed for five days. Now he’s got Donovan with him he needs some privacy so he’s gone somewhere else. But if you were hiding in a quiet part of the hospital, and a child of yours was maybe dying in another part, wouldn’t you slip away and see him from time to time? And Roly doesn’t know we’re looking for him. He’s no reason to suppose we’re even looking for Donovan yet.’

  ‘How can you slip away from six foot of bad-tempered detective?’ objected Shapiro. ‘No, don’t answer that…’

  Liz shook her head. ‘If Donovan was dead there’d be nothing keeping Roly away from ICU, and he hasn’t been seen since before nine o’clock. I don’t think he’ll run, whatever he’s done. While Mikey’s in ICU Roly will be nearby; and he’s not going to sit in a storeroom all day and never know how the boy’s doing. If we watch Mikey, sooner or later we’ll spot Roly.’

  ‘If he doesn’t spot us first.’

  ‘Mary Wilson will look good in a nurse’s uniform,’ said Liz. ‘He won’t be worried about the odd nurse seeing him.’

  ‘What do you suggest – we all hide in the sluiceroom and jump him when she gives the word?’

  ‘We could,’ agreed Liz politely. ‘But it might be better to follow him. We’ll find Donovan quicker than way, which might matter if he’s hurt.’

  ‘Do it,’ said Shapiro. ‘I’ll organize some fire power.’

  An arched eyebrow signalled Liz’s surprise. ‘Do we know Roly’s armed?’

  ‘We don’t know he isn’t.’

  It didn’t seem enough. ‘That’s grounds for issuing firearms?’

  ‘Not if it was Mikey holed up in there, or almost anyone else,’ said Shapiro. ‘But I’ve known Roly Dickens a lot of years, and I worked with officers who’d known him longer still. He was a bare-knuckle fighter in his youth. I bet you thought that went out with compulsory education and the Welfare State, didn’t you? – but not round here it didn’t. Round here it went out when there was no one left who was prepared to take on Roly Dickens.

  ‘It’s a long time ago but it shows what he’s capable of. He’s not much younger than me, and he’s even fatter, and still I have no doubt that in his present mood he could kill a man with his bare fists. On my reading that makes him armed and dangerous. I hope we won’t have to use guns, but it would be foolhardy not to have them in support.’

  She didn’t know whether to say anything more or not. Shapiro realized what she was thinking and grimaced. ‘I know: I promised Thelma I wouldn’t hurt him. But we were talking about when he’s in custody. I said he’d be safe at Queen’s Street, and I meant it. I didn’t say I’d stand by and watch him cut Donovan’s heart out. If that’s my only choice I will cheerfully blow his God-damned head off.’

  Chapter Six

  WPC Wilson made a fetching nurse. She wasn’t a big girl, people who didn’t know her wondered if she was tough enough to be a police officer, and the blue gingham uniform suited her. She installed herself at a desk in the next bay to Mikey’s, with a clear view down the corridor. If Roly got close enough to see his son, Mary Wilson would see him.

  Liz waited in the nearby staff-room with Dick Morgan, and Shapiro with another three officers, two of them armed, in an empty office on the ground floor. They knew they could be there a while, and strictly speaking there was no need for both the town’s senior detectives to be at the scene. But neither was prepared to sit it out at Queen’s Street, so they sat with their radios and waited. And waited.

  When rough hands grabbed Donovan’s head, fear burgeoned through him. But Roly was only snatching off his blindfold.

  It took time for his eyes to adjust but when they did he recognized two things in quick succession: the broad face of Roly Dickens, flushed with anger and thrust forward on the bull neck until it was only inches from his own, and the scalpel that he’d used to get Donovan down here. Its lancet tip was at his left eye. When Donovan blinked his lashes brushed it.

  ‘Donovan,’ spat the big man, ‘I will use this. To get the man who maimed my child I will carve you; I will blind you if I must. Whoever he is, he’s not worth that. You’ve held out as long as anyone could: now tell me. No one’ll blame you. I’ll give myself up as soon as I’m done – I’ll send them here and they’ll see you were all out of choices. Don’t lose your eyes for a man who’d beat a boy with a baseball bat.’

  ‘Jesus, Roly.’ Donovan began to shake. ‘Think about this, will you? This – man – is going to pay for what he did to Mikey. You don’t have to do anything more. He’s going to jail: he’s going to be old before he gets out, if he ever does. Isn’t that enough for you?’

  Roly shook his head. ‘You’ve seen Mikey, you’ve seen what he did to him. He’s never getting out of that bed. It’s only a matter of time before the doctors start sounding me out about pulling the plug on him. This is my child we’re talking about, my youngest son, and I’m going to have to say it’s all right to kill him.’ The pain and the fury in him were incandescent. Watching him was like seeing a star go nova.

  He was panting as if with exertion. ‘But if you think I’m going to watch him die, and afterwards I’ll be content for a court to say what happens to his killer, you know nothing about me. I’m an Old Testament man, me – an eye for an eye, a life for a life. He destroyed my son: I am the only one qualified to judge him. After that, a court can decide what happens to me.’

  ‘Roly, I understand how you feel.’ Donovan had given up any attempt to disguise the tremor in his voice. ‘But I can’t give you what you want.’

  ‘You can. You will.’

  ‘No. You may take it. Someone with a cast-iron stomach and enough time can probably get anything out of anyone. Sure you can hurt me. You can blind me; and probably by then I’ll be ready to do anything, to say anything, to make it stop.’ The words were coming faster and faster, out of control, almost too fast to follow. He clenched his jaw, struggling for command. ‘But you’ll have to do it. Do you understand? – you have to do it. The threat isn’t enough. You’ll get what you want eventually, but I’ll take a fair bit of punishment first. Is that what you want? Is that what you want to go to prison for – torturing information out of someone who couldn’t
fight back? I know you can do it, Roly. But you’ll regret it.’

  ‘I can do my time,’ Roly said thickly.

  ‘Jesus, I know that!’ exclaimed Donovan. ‘That’s not what I mean. There are people in this town look up to you. Admire what you’ve achieved. Today, right now, the worst anyone can say is that you’re a professional criminal, and I don’t suppose you’d mind having that on your tombstone. This is different. People may understand, in a way, but a lot of rooms’ll go quiet when your name comes up in the conversation. Even apart from that, you’ll be sorry. You won’t believe you sank this low. I’m not your enemy, Roly, you know that. I know you want the name, but you can’t justify what you’re going to have to do to get it.’

  ‘My son is all the justification I need!’

  Donovan shook his head. Droplets of sweat flew off the rat-tails of his hair. ‘No. We’ve had our differences, Roly, but I never thought you were capable of this. In your right mind I don’t believe you would be. And when it’s over, when your head’s clear and you know the whole story, you’ll wish you hadn’t. You’ll wish to God you’d stopped when you had the chance. Now, Roly. You can stop this now.’ His mouth was dry. He swallowed. It was like swallowing ashes.

  For as long as Roly Dickens said nothing, staring at him from a range of inches with anger and puzzlement and respect and, yes, regret in his eyes, Donovan thought there was a chance that he’d done it – that he’d saved both himself and Pat Taylor from the big man’s wrath.

  Then Mikey’s father said bleakly, ‘You’re a good man, Mr Donovan. It’s a pity it’s always good men who get hurt.’

  Liz’s nerve broke before Shapiro’s did, but it was a close thing. If she’d delayed calling him another five minutes he’d have called her.

  ‘This is crazy!’ she said. ‘He isn’t going to come. He’s holed up somewhere, God knows what he’s doing to Donovan, and we’re not even looking for them!’