Chameleon's Shadow

Twenty-three

WHILE DI BEALE WENT to check on the bollard, the superintendent accompanied Jackson to the BMW, which was parked on a double yellow line beyond the Crown. The passenger door was open and Acland was sitting immobile in the seat, with his hands in his lap and his head pressed back. The fact that he’d put his jacket back on was of no interest to Jones, who was unaware that he’d ever taken it off, but Jackson noticed it.

She raised her voice unnecessarily. ‘Best I could do on the parking front, Superintendent Jones,’ she said loudly. ‘All the other spaces were taken.’

Jones watched the lieutenant’s head jerk away from the seat rest and turn to look at them, but the sudden movement set him heaving into the bag he was holding. There was no question he was ill. The undamaged areas of his face were deathly white, making the grafted skin of his tapering scar seem more prominent than usual, and his hands shook visibly as he lowered the bag into his lap when the bout of nausea ended.

Jones squatted in the open doorway to take a closer look. He thought he could make out areas of bruising around the young man’s jawline – a faint blue flush under the skin – although Acland’s growth of stubble created its own shadow. There was certainly no mistaking the diagonal weal of the seat belt on the left-hand side of the neck, or the raw split along his bottom lip where his teeth had sliced the flesh. ‘You seem to have come off rather worse than the doctor, Charles. She doesn’t have a mark on her.’

Jackson spoke before Acland could. ‘He didn’t know it was going to happen,’ she said, propping her hand on the side of the car and dropping to her haunches beside the superintendent. ‘He couldn’t see the bollard from where he was sitting.’

‘Have you called an ambulance?’

‘Not yet.’

Gingerly, Acland opened his mouth. ‘I don’t want an ambulance,’ he slurred. ‘It’s migraine.’

‘You look as though you could do with a hospital trip to me. What do you say, Doctor?’

Jackson addressed Acland direct. ‘I’d be happier if you went for an X-ray,’ she told him. ‘That was quite a bang you took to the side of your head. I’d hate to think there are any more fractures in that cheek of yours.’

His mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile. ‘Hardly felt it.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not taking you with me,’ she said firmly, as if to pre-empt any such request on his part. ‘The choice is a trolley in A&E or a bed here for the night . . . assuming Derek agrees to put you up. I can give you an anti-emetic before I go, and you can make your own way to the Bell in the morning. But I’ll have to tell Derek you’ll need watching. You understand that, don’t you?’

Acland nodded. ‘Nothing will happen.’ He drew a cross on his chest. ‘I promise.’

Jackson straightened abruptly, but Jones thought he saw annoyance – incomprehension? – in her face before she stepped back. ‘People can die from inhaling vomit,’ she said to neither in particular. ‘It’s important to keep an eye on them.’

‘You’re the expert,’ Jones remarked lightly, using the armrest on the door to push himself upright. ‘Shall we take a look at the wing?’

The damage wasn’t as bad as he was expecting. The collision had been absorbed by the BMW’s front offside impact unit, although it was clear that the side of the car had scraped along the bollard for several feet before Jackson managed to steer it free.

The bodywork was dented and scratched from the front wheel arch to the rear door, but to Jones’s eye the problems were cosmetic. The flat tyre was genuine, but he was highly doubtful that an untidy chassis would have prevented Jackson from changing the wheel.

‘You hit the kerb good and hard,’ he said, pointing to a four-inch distortion in the alloy rim. ‘A tyre can’t hold air when the rubber loses contact with the metal.’

Jackson took a breath. ‘I’m aware of that,’ she said, struggling to keep the irritation out of her voice.

Jones smiled. ‘Interesting accident, Doctor. The lieutenant has some strange injuries for an offside collision. Nearside or front-on, I might accept because of the seat-belt burn –’ he touched the left side of his own neck – ‘but offside? If the impact was hard enough, he should have spilled to the right.’

She shrugged. ‘I expect he did initially. I wasn’t looking. I was more interested in trying to control the car.’

‘Trying?’

‘Controlling the car,’ she corrected herself. ‘What I was trying to do was avoid the bollard.’

‘Naturally, but why were you driving towards it in the first place?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Doctor?’

‘Temporary loss of concentration,’ she said, ‘for which I hold my hands up. I was looking at Charles when I should have been looking at the road. I’ll inform my insurance company and the council that any damage to public property is my responsibility. Do you want me to take a breathalyser to prove that I was competent to drive?’

‘Not my area,’ he said with an amused smile, ‘but if Inspector Beale’s called the traffic police, you may have to.’ He bent down to inspect the wheel arch. ‘You’re lucky the bollard wasn’t concrete or you wouldn’t have driven away from it. Which bit needs levering out?’

‘It’s not as bad as I thought.’

‘No. More of a scrape than a collision, wouldn’t you say? The only real damage is to the wheel rim . . . and to Charles’s face, of course.’ He straightened again. ‘I think the best thing we can do is take him off your hands. Will Ms Wheeler have any objection to keeping an eye on him if we return him to the Bell?’

‘She won’t be able to. She’s running the bar.’

‘The same applies to Mr Hardy.’ He paused, waiting for an answer. ‘It’s a genuine offer. The inspector and I can drop the lieutenant off on our way back to the station.’

‘He’ll need help getting upstairs.’

‘I’m sure we can provide that.’

‘He needs to lie down as soon as possible. If you’re really willing to help, then give me a hand getting him into the Crown. I don’t have time to debate alternatives.’

Jones smiled slightly. ‘Why do I get the feeling you don’t want to leave Charles alone with your partner, Dr Jackson? What are you afraid he’ll do?’

‘I’m a lot more worried about how Daisy will react,’ she said tersely. ‘If we end up in another row over the stresses Charles is putting on our relationship, I could find myself homeless.’ She bared her teeth in a sarcastic smile. ‘It’s a lesbian thing, Superintendent.’

*

Beale’s reaction to the damaged bollard echoed Jones’s view of Jackson’s car. Not as bad as he’d been expecting. It was on a raised island in the middle of the road, one of two indicating a pedestrian crossing point between them, and if its twin was anything to go by it had been illuminated before Jackson hit it. The white plastic casing had split longitudinally and the steel structure underneath leaned drunkenly to one side. But it was hardly a hazard to the irregular passing traffic. He phoned the information through as a low priority, then, much as his boss had done, read the accident from what he could see. Visible tyre tracks before the still-intact bollard suggested Jackson had been braking hard as she approached the first island; fresh scarring along the concrete kerb suggested contact with one or both of her offside wheels; while the state of the second bollard suggested the car had still been steering to the right when she impacted with it.

Intrigued, he approached a young couple who were standing at a bus stop on the other side of the road. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘Long enough.’

‘Did you see a car hit that bollard?’

They both nodded. ‘It was two blokes fighting,’ said the girl.

‘What kind of fighting?’

‘The guy who was driving smashed the other one in the face.’ The girl shivered. ‘We’d be dead if he hadn’t. The car was coming straight for us.’

Beale phoned Khan as he walked back towards the Crown. ‘Ahmed? Yes, yes . . . still with the boss. I need a couple of favours, mate. Can you get hold of Dick Fergusson and find out if he knows of any crack operations in Kitchener Road? Alongside or behind a pub called the Crown. Right . . . ASAP. The next one’s a long shot. Have you ever seen the film Gattaca? No? Then you’ll have to Google it for me.G–A–T–T–A–C–A. Put in Uma Thurman and bring up her movies.’

He came to a halt while he waited. ‘That’s it. You should have a cast list with Jude Law and Ethan Hawke at the top. Great. What’s the name of the character Uma Thurman plays? Irene Cassini? How’s the Cassini spelt?’ He listened for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he agreed slowly, ‘that’s what I’ve been wondering. The boss and I saw her an hour ago and she was wearing an identical outfit to the one Uma Thurman wears in the movie. Right . . . try the hostess sites first.’

He was about to ring off when Khan spoke again.

Beale sighed. ‘No, of course I haven’t read the Evening Standard. I’ve been working non-stop since I left the house twelve hours ago.’ He listened again. ‘Chalky? Only the description Dr Jackson gave us. Dark-haired . . . bearded . . . mid-fifties. I can’t remember the rest of it but it’s on the computer. I put out a general alert to the neighbouring forces.’

His face tightened with irritation as Khan went on. ‘And you’re seriously telling me you only know about this body because you read it in a newspaper!’

*

The superintendent was alone when Beale resumed his seat beside him. Pat, the elderly man, had left, the only member of staff on duty was serving a customer at the other end of the bar and there was no sign of Jackson, Hardy or Acland. Jones pushed Beale’s untouched pint towards him. ‘Drink up,’ he said, ‘we may have something to celebrate. The doctor parked the lieutenant on a seat over there before she and Mr Hardy took him upstairs, and Pat recognized his undamaged side. Says he saw him in here several times last year when Harry Peel was still alive.’ His number two took a tentative mouthful of beer, expecting it to be flat, and it was. ‘With his girlfriend?’ Jones shook his head. ‘Always alone, but Pat’s fairly sure he would have spoken to Harry. Harry used to hand out cards for his taxi service, apparently . . . claimed face-to-face contact was the best advertisement.’ ‘What are we going to do? Take him back to the station?’ ‘He’s in no fit state to go anywhere at the moment, and not just from migraine either. He’s sporting a cut lip and a seat-belt burn.’ Jones raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘How hard did they hit the bollard?’ ‘More of a glancing blow. They can’t have been going very fast. The doctor was braking hard enough to leave rubber on the road.’ Beale repeated what the young couple had told him. ‘At a rough guess, I’d say the lieutenant grabbed the wheel and the only way the doctor could regain control was to punch his lights out. They missed one bollard and hit the other.’

Jones nodded. ‘I came to the same conclusion. Any ideas on why he’d want to grab the wheel?’

‘He doesn’t react well to migraine?’ Beale suggested. ‘He seems to lose his temper when the pain first starts. He lost it with the Pakistani in the pub and he lost it with you. It’s only when the retching begins that he becomes incapacitated.’

Jones shook his head. ‘He lost it with me because I touched him . . . The same was true of the Pakistani. He may be less able to control his anger when he has a migraine, but I don’t think it’s the reason he kicks off. He didn’t have a migraine outside the bank when Walter poked him, but he still reacted angrily.’

‘And walked away without doing anything stupid, Brian,’ Beale pointed out. ‘Maybe the migraine isn’t the initial trigger, but it sure as hell contributes to the violence of his responses. He needs to carry a warning sign . . . steer clear when my head hurts.’

‘He’s in a bad way at the moment,’ said the superintendent thoughtfully. ‘The doctor’s pumped him full of an anti-emetic and gone off to change her tyre. I think he’s expecting her to wash her hands of him.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘It depends whether she thinks he was trying to kill her. She’s covering his arse at the moment by claiming it was her fault – probably because she knows she provoked him – but she may change her mind by the morning. She’s mighty pissed off . . . and very reluctant to leave him alone with her partner.’

Beale used a finger to stir the beer in his glass, hoping to energize some fizz. ‘I had a mate who tried to kill himself in a BMW,’ he said idly. ‘He drove into a brick wall at forty miles an hour, and walked away without a scratch. Claimed afterwards that he forgot about air bags and didn’t know that BMWs were built like tanks.’

‘You think Acland was trying to kill himself?’

‘He’s a mess . . . bit like my friend . . . Can’t handle what’s happened to him. According to Dr Campbell, he’s been trying to end it for months through slow starvation while kidding himself it’s a lifestyle choice. Maybe he opted for the more direct approach

tonight and decided to take Dr Jackson with him.’

Jones didn’t say anything.

‘You don’t buy that?’

‘Some of it,’ the superintendent said. ‘He’s certainly a mess and it wouldn’t surprise me if he ends up dead somewhere, but I wouldn’t expect it to be through suicide. One day he’ll take on someone who’s angrier and more messed up than he is.’ He paused. ‘You could describe that as a death wish, I suppose.’

‘So he was taking the doctor on? He wanted her to punch him?’

‘Not exactly. I think he wanted to test her . . . see how she’d react if control was taken away from her. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s why he put a half nelson on me. Pay-back for depriving him of his liberty for six hours.’

Nick Beale was doubtful. ‘What was he planning to do if the doctor lost control?’

Jones shrugged. ‘Pull on the handbrake . . . Hold the wheel steady . . . Prove his nerve was stronger than hers. They can’t have been going more than twenty, not from the damage I saw, and he’s been trained to drive a Scimitar at high speed across rough terrain.’

‘Then by rights we should notify traffic and tell them a criminal offence has been committed. Whatever his reasons, Acland interfered with the safe operation of a moving vehicle. He’s damn lucky the doctor did what she did before they ploughed into those kids at the bus stop.’

‘All in good time,’ said Brian Jones, pressing his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. ‘At the moment he’s under my jurisdiction and I want it to stay that way.’

*

For Derek Hardy the superintendent’s ‘jurisdiction’ was becoming uncomfortable. Having run rural pubs for twenty years before he and his wife were offered the management of the Crown, he was more used to the village bobby showing up in his shirtsleeves for a game of darts than a detective superintendent turning his bar into a new base for operations. Another two policemen had arrived, and Derek and Jackson watched the four men swap information on the CCTV monitor in the kitchen.

‘What’s going on?’ Jackson asked curiously, using a wodge of paper towel to turn the tap in the sink to avoid smearing the chrome.

‘You probably know better than I do,’ Derek said irritably. ‘Everything was fine till you showed up with sonny boy. What’s he done?’

‘Nothing to concern that lot.’

‘Why don’t you want Mel going near him?’

Jackson washed her oily hands and wrists at his sink. ‘He has a problem with women being nice to him.’ She pulled a wry face at his alarmed expression. ‘You don’t need to go into the room, Derek. Just check from the door that he’s breathing. A couple of times should do it. Once the retching stops, he’ll go to sleep.’

‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘No reason to be. He gave me his word he’ll stay in his room and not bother anyone.’ She used the paper towel again to turn off the tap, then wiped the sink with it to remove the last traces of oil. ‘I’m more worried that he’ll do something to himself, particularly if he knows that lot are still around.’ She nodded at the monitor.

‘Is he the reason they’re here?’

‘I don’t see how. They didn’t know we were coming,’ she reminded him. ‘What were you talking about when I first walked in?’

‘The old boy who was clobbered the other day. He’s one of our regulars.’

‘Walter Tutting?’ Jackson ran off another length of paper towelling. ‘They’ve already interviewed Charles about that assault and he was able to prove he was three miles away when it happened.’ She dried between her fingers as she watched Ahmed Khan pass a piece of paper to Brian Jones. ‘It has to be something you told them.’

‘Pat Streckle did most of the talking. He and Walter knew the cab driver who was killed.’

‘Harry Peel?’

Johnson nodded. ‘He used to come in here before Mel and I took over. Did you know him?’

‘No.’ She folded the towel and put it in the rubbish bin. ‘What did you tell them about Walter Tutting?’

‘Me? All I did was describe a lad I saw with him once. They were more interested in Pat’s views on whether the old boy was a closet gay or not.’ He paused. ‘Pat recognized your friend. Maybe that’s what they’re excited about.’

‘Charles?’

Derek nodded. ‘He told the superintendent he’d seen him in here before.’

Jackson frowned. ‘When?’

‘Last year . . . said he sat at the bar a few times on his own. Before we arrived,’ he added, as if Jackson’s frown was an accusation of customer-poaching. ‘He doesn’t ring any bells with me.’

She pulled her sleeves down and buttoned her cuffs. ‘Ever seen a girl who looks like Uma Thurman in here?’

Derek shook his head. ‘Who is she?’

‘Good question,’ said Jackson with a frustrated sigh. ‘Charles swore blind to me that he’d never used any of the pubs round here. If he can lie about that, he’s almost certainly been lying about his girlfriend.’

Hardy folded his arms and studied her for a moment. ‘How the hell did you come to be involved with this bloke?’

‘Because I’m a fool,’ she said crossly, ‘and I’m damned sorry to have wished him on you and Mel. He should sleep through the night, but I’ll take him off your hands first thing . . . assuming he’s still here.’

‘Why wouldn’t he be?’

She glanced at the monitor. ‘He makes a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ she said cryptically, ‘and it’s looking less and less like coincidence.’ She moved towards the door. ‘He’s not your responsibility, Derek. If they transfer him to hospital because they want to question him, then that’s something Charles will have to deal with himself. He wouldn’t be here at all if he hadn’t acted like a prize idiot.’

*

DC Khan, one of the officers who’d joined Jones and Beale in the bar, placed a couple of printouts in front of the superintendent. ‘This –’ he touched a page – ‘is Dr Jackson’s description of Chalky, the other gives the details of the man the river police pulled out of the Thames this morning. I’ve had a word with a chap called Steve Barratt and he’s blaming paperwork for why no one made the connection. He said they checked missing persons, but there was no one matching the description.’ Jones leaned forward to scan the pages. ‘So what else has dropped through the net? We have phone calls that haven’t been followed up . . . statements that haven’t been read –’ he smacked the back of his hand against Jackson’s description – ‘and now this. What are we running here? A chimpanzees’ tea party?’ ‘We distributed Chalky’s particulars across the whole network, sir.’ ‘But you didn’t think to list him as a missing person?’ ‘No,’ Khan admitted. ‘Just that he was wanted for questioning.’ Jones looked irritated. ‘What else did this Barratt tell you? Have they done a post-mortem?’ Khan shook his head. ‘Not a full one. A pathologist took some blood and temperature readings and had a look at the external features, but there were no signs of foul play. There’s a high level of alcohol in the blood. He concluded the man was a vagrant who drowned in the river some twelve hours before his body was recovered . . . and they gave the case a low priority. According to Barratt, vagrants are the hardest to identify. It usually takes months, and no one cares when they finally come up with a name.’

Jones wasn’t interested in anyone else’s problems. ‘What about fingerprints?’

‘They weren’t planning to run a check until tomorrow, but I’ve asked Barratt to advance that process and call me when he gets a result.’

‘You mean if he gets a result. There’s no guarantee this dead man was ever convicted of anything.’

‘The chances are good, sir.’

‘Even so . . . a name isn’t going to help us. It still won’t tell us if this man was Chalky. We need someone to identify the body.’

DI Beale glanced towards the window. ‘Shall I have a word with Dr Jackson before she goes?’ he asked. ‘I think she’s still around and she’s the obvious person to do it.’

‘Why not?’ Jones agreed slowly. ‘I’d like to know how she reacts. The lieutenant seems to bring misfortune on everyone he meets.’

*

Beale called out to Jackson as he emerged from the front door and saw her about to climb into her car. She flashed him an exasperated glance and toyed with pretending she hadn’t heard. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded. ‘I really need to get on.’ ‘I’m aware of that.’ He handed her the details that Khan had printed out. ‘This man was pulled from the river this morning. We believe it might be Chalky but we need someone to identify the body. Would you be willing to help us out? We can wait until you’ve finished your shift.’ She stooped to read the page by the BMW’s internal light. ‘Is there any doubt about when he died? It says here that the body temperature suggests late last night.’ ‘We’ve no reason to question it.’ He studied her expression. ‘Why do you ask?’ The struggle she was having with herself showed in her face, but she avoided a direct answer. Instead, she handed the paper back to him. ‘The conclusion at the end says the man fell in and drowned while heavily intoxicated, and there’s no evidence of foul play. Is there any doubt about that?’

Of course Beale was suspicious. She wouldn’t be asking the questions if she didn’t have doubts. ‘We won’t know till tomorrow. The pathologist hasn’t done a full post-mortem yet.’ He folded the page and tucked it into his pocket. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Doctor?’

‘That I might not be as good a judge of character as I thought I was,’ Jackson said cryptically. She stared past his shoulder towards the Crown’s fac¸ade, before giving an abrupt sigh. ‘I have no idea where Lieutenant Acland was between midday yesterday and late this afternoon, Inspector. The last time I saw him was outside a squat in Bread Street . . . which is down near the docks . . . and I think he was looking for Chalky.’