Falling More Slowly

by Peter Helton

  ‘But, sir …’

  Impatiently McLusky shouldered his way through the group and opened the door to the lobby.

  Inside three engineers in full body armour looked up and shouted at him almost in concert. One rushed towards him, arms outstretched. ‘Please move outside, sir.’

  McLusky held up his ID. ‘I’m McLusky.’

  ‘That’s who it was addressed to. But it makes no difference.’

  ‘It does. I don’t want the thing to blow up. No controlled explosions if you can help it.’

  ‘Please, sir, let’s talk outside.’

  Away from the door and the uniformed officers McLusky and the engineer, a man with freckles and a moustache, talked quickly.

  ‘Try not to blow it up. If at all possible we need it intact. Why hasn’t the rest of the station been evacuated?’

  ‘Because all personnel would have to practically file past the thing, this station is badly designed.’

  ‘How big is the device?’

  ‘Big enough to demolish the lobby but perhaps not enough to do structural damage. It’s heavy, according to the desk officer, and looks to be about four by three inches and three inches deep. Rectangular. We have a portable X-ray already in the lobby and are about to have a shufti, that should give us a better idea.’

  ‘It relates to a case I’m working on …’

  ‘Yes, we have followed that with interest. We expected to be called sooner or later. Fortunately we’re never far away.’

  McLusky tapped the man’s bulky armour. ‘Got another one of these?’

  ‘We have but I’ll have to ask my superior about that. Please wait here this time.’

  It seemed an age until the engineer returned. ‘Follow me.’

  Inside the truck he found that putting on the bulky body armour took him longer than expected. ‘I thought a stabbie was heavy but this weighs an absolute ton.’ The weight of the helmet with its blast-proof visor gave him a headache in less than the time it took him to walk across the car park. Tony Hayes’ ever-mobile eyebrows had risen to maximum elevation. He had asked if he could be there when they dealt with the package – after all, it was his lobby, or at least he thought of it like that. They had flatly refused to entertain the thought. How come the new DI always got what he wanted?

  Inside the lobby McLusky found the other two engineers busy around a grey contraption balanced on the counter. Two station phones were ringing unanswered in the background.

  One soldier waved him over. ‘Come and have a look, inspector.’

  On the small monitor beside the X-ray machine was a faint grey image that to him looked like nothing identifiable.

  ‘There are no metal parts in this package and it looks like no device I have ever encountered. There is a dense mass at the centre, hard to draw any conclusions. On that basis I’m willing to proceed and open the package. Please stand off.’

  The package, he could now see, was wrapped in brown paper and sealed with clear tape. ‘How did it get here, does anyone know?’

  ‘It was hand-delivered but no one saw it arrive. They sensibly evacuated the ground floor. It has your name on it, as you can see, nothing else.’ The man slid a scalpel around the sides of the package. ‘Nothing in the wrapping, no resistance.’ He gently folded up a flap of paper. ‘Red plastic container.’ He removed the top of the paper, revealing a red plastic tub with a white lid. The engineer laid his heavily gloved hands on it. ‘Here we go then, I’m opening it now.’

  On cue the phones stopped ringing and the lobby fell silent. The plastic creaked as the engineer prised the lid off the container. McLusky strained to see clearly. The engineer produced a plastic screwdriver and gingerly prodded the content with it.

  ‘Well, inspector, it appears to be full of mud.’

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours later, while trying to beat the traffic by finding his own intuitive route to the university, McLusky wondered just how long the mud jokes would keep running at the station. Not that Superintendent Denkhaus had found anything even remotely amusing in the incident which had paralysed his station for hours. And he had left him in no doubt about that either. Denkhaus had once more sharply reminded him that his brief was to avoid anything that might sidetrack him and here he went offering his services to Traffic Division. Naturally he wanted the mud-flinging little scrote caught but if McLusky had a mind to have a go then it was definitely to be in his spare time.

  Which is why he now found himself driving to the university during his lunch break, in order to spring some muddy suggestions on Dr Louise Rennie. This time he knew where he was going and parked close to the building next to a red Fiesta with its driver window knocked out. He left the keys in the ignition and went in search of Rennie.

  For a while he was walking against an outgoing tide of students in the science block but by the time he found the laboratory again the place had fallen silent. From the corridor it looked empty. He knocked on the glass door and entered.

  ‘Anybody home?’

  The door to the store room at the other end was open, its strip lighting on. A small tinkling noise came from there, then stopped. He walked over and stuck his head round the jamb and found himself looking at the balding head of the laboratory technician, who was standing motionless in front of a steel locker, one hand on its chromed door handle.

  He found he couldn’t recall the man’s name. ‘Hi, Dr Rennie about?’

  The technician turned around slowly and laboriously cleared his throat. ‘She’s gone to lunch.’

  It was the man he had seen by the Tobacco Factory, he was sure of it, no matter what Dr Rennie thought. ‘Where?’

  ‘Common room.’ There was a definite wheeze to the lab rat’s chest and the pallor of his neon-grilled skin made McLusky want to shudder. He decided to ask elsewhere for directions.

  Once he had been shown to the senior common room it took him only seconds to spot Louise Rennie. A man sitting opposite her talked animatedly while Rennie nodded at her lunch. She looked up long before he had got near her table. A few words spoken to the man opposite her made him get up and leave.

  ‘Don’t tell me, inspector, another forensic report? I may have to start charging.’ Rennie’s food looked as yet untouched.

  ‘Would you mind if I joined you for lunch, doctor? If I can get some food here, that is.’

  ‘Yes, go ahead. Just go and choose something. Don’t look so worried, you could pass for a lecturer, no problem. And you still have to pay for it.’

  McLusky didn’t know why the thought of being mistaken for a lecturer should give him such pleasure since he didn’t mind being a detective. Until it came to canteen food. He asked for the trout and while piling salad into a bowl noted the complete absence of unidentifiable brown stuff shrivelling under hot lamps.

  When he sat down at her table Rennie’s food still looked untouched. ‘You shouldn’t have waited, it must be getting cold.’

  ‘I found I’m not really hungry. Bon appétit, inspector.’ Rennie smiled, leaning back. Her grey silk top shimmered like water across her chest as she did so, tugging at McLusky’s eyes. ‘Is this a social call then?’

  He waggled one hand. ‘Expect further attempts to impose on your time and good nature.’

  ‘You think me good-natured? Interesting. Does it have anything to do with what’s in your carrier?’

  ‘It has.’ He put his fork down.

  ‘No, no, you eat. You look like they’ve been starving you.’ She pushed her tray aside and pulled the bag towards her. ‘A tub. It’s heavy. What’s in it?’

  ‘Mud.’

  ‘You know how to treat a girl. How does this fit in with the bombings, inspector?’

  ‘You can call me Liam, doctor.’

  ‘You can call me Louise, Inspector Liam.’

  ‘It’s a different … case. I was wondering if it was possible to tell where it came from.’

  ‘Liam. Mm.’ She moved her lips as if savouring the taste of the name. ‘I do alread
y have a job, did I not mention that?’

  ‘I know, that’s quite okay, you don’t have to do it, I just thought it was worth asking. I was hoping there might be a really easy test for that kind of thing.’

  ‘Did you now. Only if you’re looking for something specific or if you know what’s what. It’s a job for the forensic lab, surely.’

  He reached over and put the tub back in the bag, shoving it aside. ‘Too busy. It’s low priority stuff. Not really important.’

  ‘Important enough for you to come up here, though. Oh, I get it.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You didn’t really need to bring an excuse along, you know.’

  ‘Good. So how are you?’

  ‘Fine, I’m good, I’m having a good day.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’m teaching a bunch of first years next, keen but dim. I enjoy it. And you?’

  ‘I’m enjoying this.’

  ‘Yeah, the food’s all right here.’

  ‘No, I mean this.’ He waved his hand between Rennie and himself.

  ‘You’re easily pleased.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve been thinking about you. It was a shame our evening the other day got interrupted.’

  ‘Truncated would be a better word. Severely pruned. You arrived late and left early.’ Rennie reached an arm across and retrieved the mud-filled tub. She peeked under the lid and poked a well-manicured finger in. ‘Sticky stuff. I’ll spend five minutes on it and it’ll cost you dinner whether I find anything or not. Deal?’

  McLusky smiled at his food. ‘Deal.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Result, Moneypenny.’ Sorbie flung his imaginary hat towards the invisible hatstand in the CID room, then tried to plant a kiss on DC French’s cheek.

  French pushed him away good-naturedly. She didn’t really mind Jack’s attentions, not that he actually meant them. No one else seemed to even notice that she was a woman, certainly not while the glamorous Fairfield was about. ‘You’ve been celebrating, I can smell it. You made another arrest then?’

  ‘Traffic scooped him up for us, but he’s ours. We can link the little scrote to at least eleven burglaries through his lavish and evil-smelling DNA donations in his victims’ underwear drawers, the stupid wanker. That’s the second outstanding warrant sorted and all from the council car park. We must do this more often. McLusky might be less than useless at catching the bench bomber but he does wonders for my clear-up rate.’

  ‘I’m glad to have been of some small service to you, DS Sorbie.’ McLusky walked past him on his way to the tea kettle.

  ‘Ah, ehm, sorry, sir, didn’t see you there.’ Sorbie sat down heavily at his desk and busied himself with logging on.

  McLusky took his time making himself a mug of instant coffee, leaving Sorbie to squirm in the ensuing silence. Secretly he had to agree with the sergeant’s assessment. In terms of his own investigation the car park CCTV had been of no help at all. Yet the prodigious number of man-hours spent marrying faces to number plates from the endless footage had resulted in no fewer than three arrests of known criminals. The hapless suspects hadn’t counted on police officers looking at the footage, which only ever attracted police attention if an incident occurred. Once they had been recognized and their number plates read it had only been a matter of time until they were picked up. Two had been outstanding warrants in Fairfield and Sorbie’s open files. A third was a missed court appearance who had been scooped up because an officer spotted a 2002 number plate on a 2003 car. That man too was now in custody.

  McLusky thought he could hear the CID room breathe out collectively behind him as he left carrying his mug of coffee. He hadn’t really meant to pour cold water on Sorbie’s celebration; there was never quite enough to celebrate for police officers as it was, and the sergeant had made good use of the footage and followed up well. Only there was something about DS Sorbie that made McLusky suspect that he probably deserved the odd bucket of cold water occasionally. He would mention Sorbie’s good work in his report while not forgetting to point out that only the footage watched by police officers had yielded fortuitous results. Those worked on by civilian operators had drawn a blank since they were unfamiliar with the faces of the suspects.

  Perhaps he should have mentioned to Sorbie though that he thought smelling of quite so much booze after lunch was never a good idea in a nick where the superintendent had a habit of prowling about.

  Two hours later Sorbie viewed his dispiriting surroundings through the metallic pulse of a dehydration headache; Nelson Close was an unheroic huddle of three dozen prefabs, a third of them with their flimsy backs to a ghostly road that once serviced a now derelict industrial estate. The council ought to have bulldozed them years ago only some of these poor deluded people refused to be rehoused into nice new high-rise flats with a view. They liked their ‘bit of garden’ and didn’t want to move. The council had lost their court case against them and now they had to wait for the tenants to die off before they could develop the site along with the rest of the area.

  He burped acidly. His stomach had turned sour after all that cider he had gulped earlier. Kicking about impatiently at a mouldering cardboard box in one of the empty plots he looked about for a place to relieve himself. He just couldn’t bring himself to ask one of these weirdos for permission to use their toilet. Only a dozen of the creepy little bungalows were still being lived in, if you could call this living. The rest did service for target practice by passing kids. The ones that were inhabited were being broken into one by one, three so far. The empty ones had now been boarded up to try and keep the junkies out.

  Behind him he could hear Kat doing her ‘reassuring the public’ bit with two wrinklies, probably a lot better than he could himself, he had to admit. But then women were always going to be better at that kind of thing. What a dump this was. It had probably been all right fifty years ago but even then these flimsy things must have been freezing in winter and roasting in summer. And anyone in possession of a tin opener could break in. Pathetic.

  DI Fairfield said her goodbyes to the old couple and soon joined him with her clipboard. ‘You didn’t spend a lot of time with your lot, did you?’

  ‘Well, there isn’t really all that much to say, is there? If you live in a stupid place like this it’s no wonder you get broken into.’

  ‘You didn’t tell them that, did you?’

  ‘Not in so many words, though I did point out that if they don’t have locks on their windows then they might as well leave them open. Same thing to a burglar.’ Sorbie rubbed his unruly stomach, which was churning. ‘I’ve never been any good at this stuff, not when I was in uniform and not now. And this is definitely a uniform job.’

  ‘I know. They’ve been round too.’ Fairfield sniffed the air and didn’t look at all put out. The sun was going in and out of the clouds, beginning to burn away the greyness that had hung around her mind all winter. When she first joined the force she’d never imagined it would mean spending so much time sitting indoors hammering on keyboards, filling in forms, chasing targets, following initiatives. She much preferred being outside, talking to people away from neon lights and computer screens. She should move away from the city, get a job in a little seaside town … it would take forever to make DCI. ‘You know exactly why we’re here.’

  ‘Yes, so Denkhaus doesn’t get his gold stars tarnished.’

  ‘It’s politics, Jack. People need to see that we take this seriously, that’s why the ACC wants us to show our faces. To reassure people. We’ll have one more chat before we go. That chap standing in the door, last-but-one house.’ Fairfield cheerfully waved at a man in his sixties standing in his front door. He didn’t wave back. ‘That’s the last of the inhabited ones. It’s vulnerable that one, it’s the last-but-one, has empty houses on either side and it backs on to the old service road. He hasn’t been burgled yet, perhaps we can convince him to get some security. This is all about perception of crime anyway, not actual crime. Denkhaus doesn’t want another newspa
per crusade over this one. Or more suggestions that we’re not protecting these people because the city wants them to pack up and go. Of course the fact that these prefabs are isolated and full of old folks was publicized by the stupid papers in the first place.’

  The morose expression of the man didn’t change when Fairfield showed her ID and introduced DS Sorbie. ‘Caught them yet?’ He snorted dismissively before Fairfield could draw breath to answer. ‘Thought not. According to your own statistics it isn’t likely you ever will. And if you do, the courts will let them off with a slap on the wrist so they can go and do it again.’

  ‘Not quite, Mr …’ She looked down her list.

  ‘Cooke.’

  ‘Mr Cooke. We have been quite successful in driving down the rate of burglaries in the city. One of the ways in which householders themselves can help of course is by fitting locks and shutters to windows. Has anyone spoken to you about that yet?’

  ‘They have. I told them what I’m telling you now: fitting window locks won’t make a blind bit of difference to the criminals. They just go somewhere else. Do you think they’ll go, “Oh dear, window locks, well, I’d better go straight then and get a respectable job”? Rubbish! It won’t stop a professional housebreaker and it’ll just make the drug addict try next door. You don’t stop criminals with locks on your windows, you stop them with locks on their cells. And by keeping them locked up.’

  ‘There might be something in that, Mr Cooke. In the meantime I hope you’re not making it easy for them.’ She looked down the sad cul-de-sac. One more boarded-up house separated Mr Cooke from a derelict and overgrown site where a brickworks had been demolished. She certainly wouldn’t feel safe living here.

  ‘Making it easy? It’s the council who are making it easy for them. The burglars and the kids who throw empty beer bottles at our houses and the drug addicts who leave their needles lying about, they all come down the service road. Then they come through the fence. We’ve asked the council to put in a decent fence several times but they’d rather wait until we’ve all been robbed blind or brained by a flying bottle.’