Falling More Slowly

by Peter Helton

  ‘I meant to send them up as soon as I had a minute.’ Hayes spoke without turning around, having excellent hearing as well as eyes at the back of his head.

  The bag was suspiciously light. ‘There’s not a lot here.’

  ‘That’s all that came, sir.’

  Back upstairs McLusky found a DVR and monitor in the CID room. It was quiet, most officers being out for a change, chasing something. Austin was there chewing a cheap biro into oblivion in front of his computer. McLusky loaded the footage. There was none from the gym. He complained about it to Austin.

  ‘There wouldn’t be, the system’s not switched on during the day.’

  All that had come was CCTV from the Council House car park. Footage of the whole day was there but for the moment he was only interested in that covering the time and area of Maxine Bendick’s approximate arrival. The image was in black and white and a time counter ran at the bottom right, accurate to one tenth of a second. Once he knew what he was looking at he could safely fast-forward until the car whizzed into view, then he rewound and pressed play. The Mini came into the picture on the bottom left, speeded up and slotted neatly into the space in one movement. At this moment there were no people and no other moving cars visible. All the spaces at this end were taken now. After only the shortest interval Maxine Bendick got out of the car. He paused the tape. So that’s what she looked like. He mentally corrected himself: this is what she had looked like, before half her face was burnt off. He released the flow of the image. The woman sprang to life again, retrieved her bag from the passenger seat then pointed her key, which was answered by a silent flash of the car lights. She walked off briskly through the rain. An undamaged, unburnt Maxine, untouched by the madness, walked into the wilderness without noticing it. The car park was on a slight slope. The picture angle was a little awkward but adequate, looking across from the top of one of the high lamp-posts. Maxine was making her way towards the edge of the picture which only showed a narrow strip of pavement. A couple, man and woman, appeared from that direction. He would later follow their movements and, if they walked to a car, try and identify it and trace them. Maxine speeded up now and then disappeared out of the frame. End of story. Nothing had happened.

  Or perhaps … He rewound a little, replayed the sequence. Maxine disappeared off the screen but a sliver of her bag, which stuck out behind her, didn’t. It bobbed down, then up again before finally going out of shot. McLusky’s opinion was succinctly summed up. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Found something?’

  ‘I think so. Come here, Jane, look at this.’

  Austin arrived at his shoulder. He replayed the whole sequence for him. ‘Gets out, grabs bag, walks towards the exit, right? Here comes a couple towards the entrance …’

  ‘She puts on a bit of a spurt.’

  ‘Yes. Keep your eye on the bag.’

  ‘Oh, she stops and bends down, that’s what that looks like.’

  ‘I think when she’s fit to be interviewed she’ll tell us she found the damned thing right there.’ McLusky tapped the edge of the screen with a fingernail. ‘Only she didn’t open it until later because she was in a hurry.’

  Austin nodded. ‘Possible.’

  ‘Possible. Though I hope not. I sincerely hope not. How long do you think the thing could have been lying there? Minutes? Hours? Days?’

  ‘That’s hard to say. It’s a busy car park and a lot of people go in and out, not to mention those walking along there. Not long. It was bright gold.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking.’ He scribbled a note for Deedee Dearlove to try and trace the couple in the video. Naturally he expected others to read his notes.

  Austin scratched the tip of his nose. ‘Why were you hoping she hadn’t found it there?’

  A couple of civilian operators walked in. McLusky jerked his head towards the exit. ‘My place.’ Austin followed him into his office. McLusky wedged open a window and pulled open a drawer. He produced a small ashtray with a lid and his cigarettes. Austin accepted one. Still this ridiculously light brand. What was the point? You had to smoke twice as many. He accepted a light from the inspector’s tiny plastic lighter, filled his lungs with smoke and repeated his question. ‘Why are you hoping she didn’t find the thing there?’

  ‘Because.’ He swivelled his chair and shot upright. ‘Because I very much want someone to have it in for Maxine Bendick. I want to please find that someone has been trying to blow her up.’ He stood by the large-scale map of the city centre which nearly covered one entire wall of the tiny room and tapped his fingers on the green shape that represented Brandon Hill. ‘Here’s the shelter, was the shelter, I should say. Here’s the car park, here’s the way she habitually takes through the park. Maxine Bendick goes to her gym three lunchtimes a week. She went on the Monday of the bench bomb. The pavilion went up an hour before she was due to walk within ten feet of the thing.’

  ‘So you do think Maxine Bendick was the intended victim?’

  ‘I was hoping. Until I saw the footage we just looked at.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘Good. I don’t think anyone else does yet. If someone really was after Maxine Bendick then we shouldn’t have much trouble finding him. They must connect somewhere. If you have made an enemy who goes to this kind of trouble to get at you then he’ll stick out a mile. Ex-boyfriends, husbands if any, cranky relatives, anyone who asked her out and was turned down since the beginning of time needs to be checked out. Anyone she could have made an enemy of at work or members of the public, all still have to be followed up, of course.’

  ‘It’s what we’re doing. But if she found the powder compact by the steps …’ Austin puffed up his cheeks as he shared the inspector’s vision.

  ‘Jane, if she found the thing then we’re in deep, deep trouble. The words shit and creek spring to mind. If she found it then it wasn’t aimed at her at all. It was aimed at To Whom It May Concern. Anyone could have picked it up, the couple who walked past, for instance.’

  ‘But a powder compact, surely it was aimed at a woman.’

  ‘It was golden, shiny. Any normal child would pick up something like that, anyone, probably. All that glitters. It means that whoever planted it has no connection to the victims at all. The motive lies elsewhere. God help us, Jane, we might as well run up the white flag now and call in a psychiatrist. Because we haven’t got the first idea of where to look.’

  ‘One place I did look was the DVLA.’

  ‘Oh yeah, Three Veg. Got anywhere?’

  ‘There’s no record. Timothy Daws, van or no van, never had a driver’s licence or anything registered to him, now or ever.’

  ‘That makes a change. I had him down for dizzy driver, uninsured and untaxed. Still, two out of three isn’t bad. Any joy at the DSS?’

  ‘He’s on Incapacity for a bad back, so he doesn’t have to come in and sign on.’

  ‘Right, we’ll pull him in when we can but he’s way down the list now. Another bomb in the park and I’d have been out there like a shot in a helicopter looking for white vans, but this powder compact doesn’t fit. It’s near the park but not in it. It’s in the wrong place and the wrong kind of object if you want to revenge yourself on the parks department for being dismissed. If you wanted to get back at them you would, I don’t know, booby-trap a flower pot or something.’

  ‘Forensics might come up with something.’

  ‘Oh yeah? If the pickings are as rich as last time we’ll be no further. There was no DNA found at all on the debris of the last one, which is hardly surprising after the explosion, the fire and the hosing down it got. And even if there had been it would do us no good unless his DNA was already on file. This is a new customer. This will turn out to be everyone’s favourite nightmare. Like the guy in the States who shot people at petrol stations from the comfort of his car, I forget his name. This is a bastard who doesn’t mind who he hurts. And this won’t be the last explosion we’ll hear in the city either. This, as they say, is just the b
eginning. He gets a kick out of this and he’ll need a new fix soon. And what are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say we have a nutter out there who just likes to blow up people and he isn’t fussed who it is he hurts.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Then why give Maxine Bendick police protection?’

  ‘Because, Jane, I’ve been known to be wrong.’

  Chapter Six

  Dave Hands slammed the front door to his tiny, first-floor council flat with some force and clattered down the stairs. He hadn’t planned on going out but the bastard leccy had just run out and he could hardly be expected to sit in the dark without the telly all night. So it was off to the convenience store to charge the meter key. He was forever on ‘emergency’ which constantly ran out, usually just before the kettle boiled. Unlike this bloody rain. There seemed to be an endless supply of that.

  He crossed the glistening road and walked the few yards past the darkened shops to the battered door of the convenience store. The shop was empty of customers. The hard, suspicious eyes of the shopkeeper followed his every move. He hated this place. Everything in here was crap, crap food, shit fags, tins of crap. Everything in here was a rip-off. Rip-off electricity, rip-off booze. The price of bog-roll was fantastic. You had to be rich to buy this shit. Rich and stupid.

  He was supposed to stay at home and save his money, pay off his ridiculous overdraft. Sod it, he had been good all week, now that he was out anyway he would go for a beer and make it worth his while. No point getting rained on just for the bloody leccy, that would just depress the shit out of him.

  Even the cash machine in this place was a rip-off. It charged you for each withdrawal. Better to take out next week’s money all in one go, it was cheaper in the long term. Extra tenner for the pub. Fuck it, make it twenty, it needn’t mean he would spend it all. He folded the notes into his card wallet, all apart from the twenty for the pub which he shoved into his jeans pocket. He felt better already.

  Once outside he breathed in deeply. You needed to take a break from being good sometimes or life became unbearably dull. He crossed the empty road. The rain came down heavily now. A couple of pints up the road then.

  That’s when he saw it. Just there on the pavement, at the edge of a slimy concrete bus shelter, lay a fat wallet. A man’s leather wallet, in the rain. Now that would be fantastic if there was actually money in it. There was certainly something in it, it was positively bulging. His steps quickened. Money, he hadn’t found any money in the street since he was a kid. It looked new. And expensive. He bent down and picked it up.

  ‘Oi! Fuckwit!’ A large black shadow jumped from behind the shelter, another appeared from behind a parked van. ‘Leave it! Your phone, your money! Now!’

  They wore helmets, visors halfway down. Shouting. One pushed him towards the other. Two scooters appeared from the nearest corner.

  It was them. No way were they going to get his money. ‘Fuck off!’ He kicked back at the one who grabbed him from behind. The big guy in front punched him straight in the face with a gloved fist before he could even get his own up. He heard the crunch as his nose broke. Blood spurted. Two, three hard jabs to his right kidney from the bastard behind nearly made his knees give way. He heard himself scream in pain and lashed out at the guy in front who grabbed him by the throat with a vicious grip. He couldn’t breathe. The helmet smashed into his face. Once, twice, three times. After the third impact he fell backwards, spurting an arc of blood. When he hit the edge of the bus shelter the back of his head exploded in pain as the impact cracked his skull. And everything went dark.

  * * *

  DI Kat Fairfield hated being driven nearly as much as McLusky did but she would reluctantly concede that Jack Sorbie’s skills behind the wheel matched her own. She actually felt quite safe when the DS drove, even at speed. At the moment she had him just cruise about the edges of the city. A leaden sky made it darker than it should have been at this time of the evening. Headlights reflected in wet streets, kerbside puddles sent up neon-coloured spray. What, she might ask, was sweet about April showers? This was the dampest, coldest spring she could remember, hardly better than the winter that had preceded it. This was what a volcanic winter would be like, endless dreary rain from an obsidian sky. She could really do without it, thanks very much. Denkhaus’s new protégé McLusky she could also do without. She had no intention of staying a lowly DI forever, so the last thing she needed was the superintendent’s new Golden Wonder. It was a shame DCI Gaunt was away. She felt that she’d been getting somewhere with him. She didn’t care that no one seemed to like Gaunt. You didn’t have to like people to work well with them, sometimes it was easier when you didn’t, it made the relationship simpler. But Denkhaus was a difficult man, with mood swings of menopausal monumentality. Somehow she found it difficult to get on the right side of him.

  There was only one thing at work that had improved recently. The single thing that had eased off was the frequency with which male colleagues, civilians and officers alike, were trying to drag her under their duvets. She had turned every one of them down, politely and firmly. Well, firmly, anyway. Then recently Claire French had warned her that a rumour had sprung up that she was gay. Offers of drinks, meals and the cinema had drastically fallen off since then. Not that she’d ever consider starting a relationship with someone from the force anyway. She’d never been attracted to another officer. First she had wondered why, since she liked her job well enough and couldn’t now imagine doing anything else. But lately she had come to think that two police officers, even if they didn’t have to work closely together, could only succeed in getting in each other’s way – or worse, dragging each other down. And surely the job was tough enough as it was. Anyway, didn’t sleeping with someone from work display a certain lack of imagination? It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the opportunity to meet other people. She encountered new people every day. Problem was they were either victims or perpetrators, and she didn’t fancy either much. There was the life-drawing class, when she managed to attend, but the current intake didn’t do much to inspire her.

  It wasn’t true, was it, DC French had asked eventually. Of course it wasn’t. Though she had felt a bit of a fraud for asserting it so bluntly. She was by no means sure. Fairfield thought she was probably bisexual, or would be, given half a chance, only so far it simply hadn’t presented itself. Well, not since school anyway and she doubted if that really counted. Ultimately it had remained an unconsummated affair anyway. And even if. She’d hardly tell DC French about it, the nosy cow.

  ‘Another circuit, Kat?’

  It was Katarina but she didn’t mind the ‘Kat’, not from Sorbie, anyway. It had been Katarina Vasiliou until what her mother called, had always called, ‘Rina’s disastrous marriage’. Of course any marriage not involving a nice Greek boy would have been disastrous in her mother’s eyes. It had lasted all of one year. Well, technically she was still married and the name was useful, at least. Fairfield was an easier name to get on with in the force than Vasiliou, she was certain of it. No, she didn’t mind Sorbie calling her Kat when no one else was around. Jack was all right. Loyal, anyway. ‘Yes, just keep cruising.’ She went back to concentrating on the photocopy of the map she’d stuck to the dashboard. On it she had marked all the muggings attributed to the same gang with yellow marker pen. She was willing the resultant mess to turn into a revealing pattern that would instantly tell where they would strike next, preferably with a loud ta-dah sound, but however long she stared it still looked random. Just like herself and Sorbie, the scooter muggers cruised around town, looking for a likely victim. They struck three, four or five times in quick succession, then disappeared from the radar. All she had gleaned so far was that the gang operated strictly outside the zone covered by CCTV. As expected, the cameras installed around the centre had never brought down the overall incidents of street crime, they had simply succeeded in moving certain types into adjacent areas.

  Into the y
ellow dots, in her clear, upright handwriting, she had logged the time of each incident. Now, with a notepad on one raised knee, she sorted the times into a list. Forty-two incidents so far. Not to have caught them by now, after all the effort expended, was becoming embarrassing. They didn’t need the Evening Post to point it out. Denkhaus was screaming blue murder that their clear-up rates were beginning to look ridiculous. As she listed the times in barely legible handwriting due to Sorbie’s driving, a pattern did begin to emerge. So far all they had realized was that the gang struck from dusk onward. They obviously liked the relative darkness but for some reason had never attacked after eleven in the evening. Now she noticed something else. So far they had never struck at weekends.

  Sorbie was stunned by the news. More, it seemed to upset his sense of how decent criminals ought to operate. ‘I can’t get over it, you’re telling me they work Monday to Friday and about seven to eleven? They treat it like a job?’

  ‘I know. They’ve certainly got better hours than we have. I wonder what their pension plans are like.’

  ‘And their job’s getting easier. Since Denkhaus told the paper it was safer for victims not to resist, people have just handed over their stuff. The last victim was completely unharmed.’ Sorbie snorted contemptuously as though that was a failing on the part of the victim. ‘The bastards just had to ask nicely and were given the stuff.’

  ‘Denkhaus was absolutely right to make that statement. It’s much safer to just give them what they ask for. They have clearly demonstrated that they are willing to use a lot of force. But it’s the kind of advice that sticks in your throat. You see what I see, Jack?’