Falling More Slowly

by Peter Helton

  ‘You think he’s a possible?’

  ‘He’s all we’ve got, so we’ll pull him in.’

  ‘We could always get a search warrant and have a look in his garden shed. It’s certainly big enough for a bomb factory.’

  ‘Is it? I didn’t see it. Why didn’t you say? Turn around, let’s have a look at it.’ McLusky threw the cigarette out of the window and sat up in his seat, impatiently working an imaginary gas pedal.

  Austin slowed, looking for a place to turn round. ‘Shouldn’t we get a search warrant first, sir?’

  ‘Sir, is it? You can call me Liam, even when you disagree with me. Go on, Jane, make the turn.’

  Austin obliged. ‘I tried the shed, it was locked and the window was blocked up.’

  ‘Blocked-up windows I like. Mr Innis Whatsisname could be on the phone to Daws this minute, telling him we’re looking, or he might already be clearing out the shed. Shit, Daws could be living in it for all we know.’

  ‘But without a warrant –’

  ‘You know, I had a shed once. They are so flimsy. One good gust of wind and they fall over.’ He licked his finger and stuck it out of the window. ‘Seems quite windy today.’

  Back at Daws’ house he made Austin leave the car at the street corner. ‘I’ll go round the back this time, you can take the front. Don’t want it to get boring for the boy.’

  Along the back of the terrace ran a narrow tarmacked alley full of oozing bin-liners, broken glass and dog shit. He found the back of the house. The flimsy wooden door to the garden was locked. He jumped up and easily pulled himself over it. There was indeed a large shed at the bottom of the desolate little garden. It looked to be at least twelve by eight foot. The double door was secured with a large padlock, the window blocked from inside with fibreboard and chicken wire. McLusky reached the back door just as Innis Cole unlocked it from the inside, dressed to go out. His face fell in resignation and he opened the door.

  McLusky stepped into the kitchen. ‘Don’t mind if I do. Not much of a kitchen gardener is Mr Three Veg. Not even two veg out here. Aren’t you going to let DS Austin in? Not very polite that.’ Austin was working the bell as well as banging his fist against the front door.

  ‘What is it you want now?’ Cole looked for a second as though he would stamp his foot in indignation but instead walked off down the hall and opened the front door to the noisy DS who swept him back into the kitchen.

  McLusky boomed at the boy. ‘We’ve come to take a look at your shed.’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘It’s not my shed, it’s Tim’s. And I don’t have a key. Anyway, you’ll need a warrant, won’t you? Search warrant?’

  ‘Search warrant? If we came with a search warrant we’d start by searching under your mattress and you wouldn’t want that. Nah, son, we don’t want to search the shed. You’re going to open it and we’ll just stand there and look over your shoulder. That’s not a search, that’s called noticing things. Let’s have it then.’

  ‘As I said, I don’t have a key.’ His eyes strayed involuntarily to a large biscuit tin on the window sill.

  McLusky picked up the greasy tin and thumped it down in front of Cole. ‘Go on, have a rummage. It’s called cooperating with the police and we like it a lot.’

  Cole sounded younger by the minute. ‘He’ll kill me.’ He popped the lid and emptied the tin on to the table. Rubber bands, springs, screws, corroded triple-A batteries, leaky biros, fuses. There were several keys, dull from lack of use, and one shiny Yale key on its own split ring. Cole picked it out without enthusiasm. ‘This is the spare one, I think.’

  ‘Okay, let’s have a look-see.’

  Cole led them to the shed with the air of a man being made to walk the plank. ‘Whatever is in there has nothing to do with me.’ While he sprung the lock and opened the double doors he appeared to be holding his breath. Then he exhaled noisily. The shed was full of tools, mainly for gardening use: apart from three lawn mowers there were forks, spades and rakes, leaf blowers, strimmers and hedge trimmers of various makes and ages.

  Cole was visibly relieved. ‘Well, what do you know? Gardening stuff. He was a gardener, probably still is.’

  ‘Probably.’ Austin leant this way and that so he could get a good look without going anywhere near the door. ‘Looks to me though as if he’s gone a bit overboard on the tools. You could kit out ten gardeners with that lot. I mean, who needs four hedge trimmers? Three lawn mowers?’

  ‘As I said, nothing to do with me. Can I lock it again?’

  McLusky sighed. ‘Yes, go on.’ The shed was full of stuff obviously stolen but a bomb factory it wasn’t – for a start there was no space left inside – and Superintendent Denkhaus’s speech from this morning was still fresh in his mind. No distractions, no damsels in distress, no kittens up a tree. This looked like a kitten up a tree.

  Austin dug up some professional courtesy as they left by the front door. ‘Well, thank you for your cooperation, Mr Cole.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Relief at their departure made Cole generous.

  McLusky turned round and towered over him. ‘Just out of interest, how much rent are you paying Daws?’

  ‘What?’ Cole’s eyes widened helplessly.

  The words rabbit and headlight came to the inspector’s mind. ‘Well? How much? Quickly now.’

  ‘Ehm … fif … fifty pounds?’

  ‘Fif-fifty pounds.’ He nodded gravely while the young man tried not to squirm under his gaze. ‘Okay, bye for now.’

  Cole stood in the door, breathing rapidly, watching them walk to the car. He had to move out, they were bound to come and search the place properly after this. Might as well start packing now. Of course he couldn’t leave until Three Veg came back or he’d be in deep shit with him. He had to keep looking after the place though he wasn’t sure who was scarier, Three Veg with his explosive temper or the weird inspector and his unblinking eyes.

  Chapter Four

  ‘You don’t really think he planted the bench bomb, do you? Anyway he couldn’t have, he’s on holiday.’ Colin Keale’s upstairs neighbour was a fleshy forty-year-old man with sparse hair and a moist voice. He reluctantly handed over the spare key Keale had left with him so he could water his house plants. ‘He would hardly have left me the key to his flat if he had a bomb factory down there.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’ McLusky took the key off him and thought that he probably meant it.

  ‘Unless you think I’m involved in the bomb plot too, inspector.’ He sounded hopeful, relishing the thought. ‘I know all about Colin’s bit of silliness with the pipe bombs but he wasn’t very well at the time. I assure you he’s completely normal now. He’d never do anything like it again.’

  ‘We just need to eliminate him from our inquiries, that’s all.’

  Colin Keale lived in a small basement flat on Jacob’s Wells Road, not five minutes’ walk from the site of the explosion. If he did plant the bomb then it would seem the height of laziness to do it within hearing distance. Or perhaps it gave the act an added frisson. But surely the ultimate satisfaction must be to watch it happen.

  Austin barred the neighbour’s way on the steps. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to stay up here.’

  ‘What, are you afraid I might interfere with the evidence, or something?’

  Austin ignored him and followed the inspector down the cast-iron steps into the basement forecourt.

  A fig tree in a half-barrel sent fleshy leaves up to the sun and other plants in pots thrived inexplicably in this deeply shadowed sinkhole. McLusky gave the half-barrel an exploratory kick. It felt and sounded solid enough. Next he flicked open the letter box and peered through. The narrow hall looked dark and crowded with jackets hanging from the wall. There was nothing on the floor as far as he could make out. He rang the bell and immediately afterwards inserted the key and opened the front door.

  The place smelled faintly of chip shop curry sauce. To the right a door led into a small sitting room; el
ectric heater in a blocked-up fireplace, sofa, stereo, TV and potted plants, lots of them. Everything was tidy. The kitchen was a narrow galley made even darker than necessary by the fact that several house plants crowded around the tiny window. The bathroom was a windowless and plantless hole but the bedroom was a jungle. There was a narrow bed and a couple of chests of drawers. Plants stood on every surface, a big palm grew in a large pot on the carpetless floor. All this vegetation stretched yearning shoots towards the ungenerous basement window. McLusky ran a latex-gloved finger across the front of a bookshelf and harvested a worm of dust. Next he ran a thumb over a polished yucca spike – not a speck of dust. There were books, mainly on the care of house plants. He turned to Austin. ‘Go get the neighbour, will you, whatsisname …?’

  ‘Tilley.’

  Mr Tilley appeared pleased to be asked at last. ‘Satisfied, inspector? No bomb factory here.’

  ‘What does Colin Keale do, fork-lift driver?’

  Austin confirmed it. ‘That’s what it says in his file.’

  He turned to Tilley. ‘Where?’

  ‘Supermarket depot. He does mainly night shifts. It suits him, he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, just gets orders over the radio and picks stuff up and dumps it on the ramp. That’s his job, that’s all he does. That and growing house plants. Look.’ He indicated a low table near the window. It held a plastic propagator full of tiny pots and trays. Above it hung a grow lamp. ‘He propagates potted plants. Not pot plants. He’s as straight as you and me, inspector.’

  Speak for yourself, thought McLusky. ‘When’s he due back?’ He knew already but wanted to hear it from Tilley.

  ‘This weekend.’

  ‘Who’d he go with?’ He continued to open drawers without really searching the place.

  ‘By himself. He’s not overly sociable but he’s no longer the nutter he was a couple of years ago. Colin takes his medication and he stays off the booze, mainly.’

  ‘Mainly?’

  ‘Everyone needs a drink from time to time, you know?’

  Too right. He squeezed into the kitchen, opened cupboards, cutlery drawer, oven. This didn’t ring any alarm bells at all, he was wasting his time. ‘And what does Colin Keale drink when he does need a drink?’

  ‘Scotch, I think. I saw a bottle once, but it’s no longer a regular thing, really.’

  ‘Any particular brand?’

  ‘I couldn’t say. Glensomething. There’s so many of them. What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘Nothing, just idle speculation. Thank you, Mr Tilley.’ He handed him the key. ‘Can we leave you to lock up?’

  Back on the pavement he shrugged. ‘Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there but it doesn’t feel right.’

  Austin didn’t like the implication. He had been taught to mistrust his feelings and go with the facts. He hoped McLusky wasn’t talking about instinct. Next thing you knew he’d be saying he’d got a hunch. Hunches didn’t go down well in twenty-first-century policing. ‘Could be under the floorboards.’

  ‘I know, but it ain’t. Maybe it’s the potted plants. Anyone who blows up stuff is obsessed with something, a grudge, an ideology, an idea, a fantasy of some kind. But not Care and Propagation of House Plants, Volume 2, surely? Send someone round the supermarket depot, see if he has a locker there where stuff could be hidden. Though I doubt it very much.’

  ‘Okay. But we’ll still pick him up when he gets back?’

  ‘Oh yes. The moment he steps off the plane, Jane.’

  Maxine Bendick dashed through the drizzle to her Mini, fumbled with her seatbelt, started the engine and checked her watch. She had twelve minutes to get across to Park Street for her fitness training. It was an idiotic rush to squeeze the lesson into her lunch break at the best of times but when, as it had today, something came up just before she was due to leave, like a client having a lengthy rant about his council tax bill, not that it had anything to do with her, then she would be late for sure. It was only a half-hour slot anyway but the only one that had been available and nothing was going to stop her. The insane traffic might, of course. She felt vaguely guilty for driving such a short distance – from the ‘council services access point’ where she worked to the car park behind the Council House – but she would never manage it in time on foot lugging her gear. Getting from her reserved parking space to the Council House car park wasn’t the real problem either, she was getting good at that. Only finding a space when she got there could sometimes be tricky, even if there weren’t bombs going off. It was a week since the bomb blast. She hoped the police had finished examining the area or it would take her even longer to get to the gym.

  Traffic didn’t seem as bad today, moving at a steady snail’s pace. She was even lucky with a parking space and found one close to the exit. This made all the difference. If her parking space was at the ‘good’ end she would take the long way to the gym, cutting through Brandon Hill. It was a longer walk but it was worth it, reminding her that there was life beyond houses and housing. Her new Mini bleeped and blinked as its central locking engaged and Maxine walked off at a brisk pace. The drizzle was turning to rain but she didn’t mind. A glint caught her eye. Something square and shiny was lying on the tarmac close to the exit of the car park. It looked like a powder compact. A young couple were walking towards it. Surely they would claim it? A little girl’s voice inside her shouted No, I saw it first! then the couple had walked past it without noticing. Maxine quickly stooped and picked it up. It was indeed a gold compact. It was quite clean and unscratched, so couldn’t have been lying there long. Not real gold, probably, the metal was a bit too pale for that, though it was satisfyingly heavy. Maxine slipped it into her jacket pocket. There was no time to look at it now. She shrugged her sports bag higher on to her shoulder and hurried towards the park.

  ‘I was always crap at chemistry.’ McLusky had spoken out loud in the privacy of his empty office though he would happily have admitted it in company. He didn’t understand half of what the report said. He turned to the end of each section and read through the conclusions. More jargon. The Forensic Science Service at Chepstow had worked fast, had worked miracles, in fact. Getting at least some of the evidence from the locus of the blast analysed within a week was lightning speed compared to normal procedure and had only been accomplished with considerable pressure from the ACC.

  Usually there was nothing too complicated about these reports but this time he had no idea what firm conclusions he should draw from the make-up of the device.

  Joel Kerswill had given a written statement that offered them nothing more than another description of the skateboarder. Elizabeth Howe, the second victim, had abruptly regained consciousness two days after the explosion. Spookily, it had been at the exact hour of the blast, as though she had heard an echo that had at last awoken her. If so, then it had certainly been a mental echo; she had two perforated eardrums. They’d finally been allowed to talk to her yesterday. The interview had been conducted entirely in writing, to spare Ms Howe’s ears. The prognosis for recovery was good.

  She remembered sitting on the bench to rest before continuing to carry her meagre shopping home. The next thing she remembered was being lifted up, like in a dream. She couldn’t actually remember hearing the explosion.

  No new clues about people or events, nothing about the bomb itself. Not one witness had noticed a container under any of the benches.

  This much he did understand from the FSS report: the metal container that had held the explosive device – a tin in which Glenfiddich whisky was sold – had also contained an amount of petrol. The device had been triggered with the help of a simple timer constructed from a Russian-made mechanical wristwatch and a run-of-the-mill three-volt battery. The rest of the report was so much gobbledegook. Very precise gobbledegook, naturally. The FSS prided itself on it, which meant their reports were littered with provisos, approximations and qualifications – probably no smaller than but not exceeding.

 
In other words, what he wanted was an interpreter. He stuck his head round the door of the CID room. ‘Jane, the university?’

  Austin looked up from a pile of painful paperwork and pointed a plastic biro over his shoulder. ‘Yes, Liam. Big thing up the hill, can’t miss it.’

  ‘I take it they have a chemistry department?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Good. I need help with bomb-making.’

  ‘Aha. So what did you make of the forensic report?’

  ‘Oh, I think I’ve cracked it.’ He pulled a face he hoped expressed cheerful disgust and walked off down the corridor.

  DS Sorbie was muttering to himself from behind his desk. ‘Cracked yourself.’ The new boy was swanning around the city running after one single crank who let off a firecracker while the rest of them worked on ten case files at the same time and drowned in paperwork and stupid initiatives. The runaway ten-year-old boy had at least been found, albeit half-dead after what looked like a hit and run on the A road leading to the motorway. There’d been more muggings by the scooter-riding muggers. An attempted abduction of a young woman near the harbour and the never-ending string of drug-fuelled burglaries. Perhaps McLusky would do them all a favour and get himself run over again, then normal service could resume. And maybe then they might promote someone around here rather than import inspectors from outside.

  McLusky turned off Park Street into the university hinterland and amused himself by trying to rip the exhaust off the Polo by bouncing it over the ambitious speed humps. After much cruising about he found a parking space at hikable distance from the chemistry teaching laboratories and started marching towards them while dialling the number Tony Hayes at the front desk had found for him. He was put through to the science department and talked to three different people until he found someone who might be able to help him.

  ‘And is there anybody I could talk to today, perhaps?’