Falling More Slowly

Chapter Three

No personal items, no photographs, no Christmas cactus. McLusky was again impressed by the extreme minimalism, even sterility, of the superintendent’s office. Apart from the obvious, the computer screen, the blotter, in-and out-tray, phones and fountain pen, there was nothing much to break up the expanse of clean, clear desk. Denkhaus certainly didn’t feel the need to create a barrier between himself and whoever had the dubious pleasure of sitting in the ungenerously upholstered chair in front of his desk. The rest of the office was similarly functional. The view across the city his window afforded was unimpeded by pot plants or other decoration.

Denkhaus’s impatient, forever slightly irritated energy blasted straight at him. ‘Yes, McLusky, interesting man, Kelper. High-flyer, he’ll go all the way. You should have heard some of the things he talked about. Well, hinted at, all hush-hush stuff really. The budget they have, especially since the London bombings, it’s astronomical. We can only dream … We dined at the Cavendish in Bath last night and — ’

‘Then I hope he picked up the bill.’ To McLusky’s own amazement he had given voice to his thought. He hadn’t even heard of the Cavendish before but he was absolutely certain that eating there was beyond a DI’s salary. It just sounded like it.

Denkhaus looked puzzled, not used to being interrupted by smartass DIs. ‘What?’

‘I was just interested, since he wields such a healthy budget. Sir.’ He got the ‘sir’ in far too late to make any difference.

‘That’s utterly beside the point, DI McLusky, and it was hardly clever to bring up the budget! Ours has a sizeable hole in it since you saw fit to use a practically brand new car as a battering ram. I do wish you could have thought of something less spectacular. We’ve been plastered across the front pages of the Evening Post day after day for entirely the wrong reasons. You haven’t been here five minutes and you go and give them more ammunition. Yesterday I felt like sending you straight back to where you came from, I hope you realize that?’

‘Yes, sir.’ McLusky tried to look contrite. ‘And what about today, sir?’

‘Today you are back in charge of the bomb investigation. You can count yourself lucky. There’s been a spate of burglaries at properties close to the canal; a plague of muggings, as I’m sure you are aware; a runaway ten-year-old boy; a string of random arson attacks on cars as well as all the usual. But unlike your colleagues you have nothing on your desk. You, DI McLusky, will concentrate on finding what the papers are already calling the Bench Bomber.’ He tapped an early edition of the Post, which looked like it had been ironed. ‘I ask you. First the Mobile Muggers, you know, mobile because they steal mobiles and because they run around on scooters. Now the Bench Bomber. They’re loving every minute of it. We really don’t need this. And of course when we can’t give them name and serial number of the perp right away it’s “police are clueless”. If that woman dies, what’s her name …?’

‘Elizabeth Howe,’ McLusky supplied.

‘If Elizabeth Howe dies and this turns into a murder investigation then the pressure will really be on. Go after whoever did this with that uppermost in your mind.’ Denkhaus punctuated his speech by jabbing an index finger towards him. ‘No domestics, no bulldozers. You find damsels in distress, kittens up a tree or toddlers down a drain, you walk straight past. You concentrate on this.’

‘Yes, sir. What was Kelper’s opinion?’

‘Oh, he thought it had nothing to do with extremism. Home-grown stuff, a prank or a crank. And I think we all agree on that. After London they’re simply too stretched to investigate stuff like this. They insist we can take care of it ourselves. Let’s prove them right, shall we? He also thinks it’s a one-off and the target, the shelter, marks the perp out as a crank. A dangerous crank but not a terrorist.’

‘Let’s hope he’s right. Will that be all, sir?’

‘Yes, but let me have your report on the unfortunate destruction of the Skoda by tomorrow. And for Pete’s sake make it sound good. In fact make its demise sound absolutely inevitable even to the Assistant Chief Constable’s ears!’ Of course the new DI wasn’t the only source of the superintendent’s black mood this morning. For the second time in a month the windows of his immaculate 4?4 had been plastered with mud, this time in a restaurant car park in the Old Town. The crudely made leaflet that came with it claimed that If the 4?4s won’t go to the country the country will come to the 4?4s. Scores of Land Cruisers, Jeeps and Freelanders had recently got the same treatment. Someone, probably one of the Saturday traffic protesters, was waging a low-level campaign against the city’s gas guzzlers but since no actual damage was being done no action had been taken. There was even a certain level of public support for the mud throwers, which in turn was branded ‘the politics of envy’ by the 4?4-driving camp. Denkhaus knew better than most how stretched their resources were, which infuriated him even more. These days you had to fling much harder stuff than mud to attract the attention of the force.

‘What have you got for me, Jane?’ Without stopping, McLusky called into the CID room by way of sharing around some of the pressure he suddenly felt.

Austin hit the ground running. ‘Colin Keale, the pipe-bomb bloke: he boarded a plane to Dalaman airport in south-west Turkey at 22.50 two days ago, the night before the bomb. From here.’

‘That leaves him well in the frame. He could easily have planted the thing, with a timer, and then conveniently gone on holiday. As an alibi it won’t wash, I want him.’

‘We’re working on it. It was a flight-only deal, so he could be anywhere, but the neighbours think Marmaris.’

‘Okay, we’ll start by applying for a warrant to search his hole.’

‘Right. Witness statements from the park and the house-to-house are all on your desk.’ He no longer addressed McLusky as ‘sir’ but didn’t use his first name, not so soon, even though it had been offered, not within earshot of the others anyway. It was only his second day after all and Jack Sorbie had already ribbed him about ‘his new chum’. Your new chum’s getting a right bollocking from the super, mate.

‘And? Close the door, tell me about it.’ McLusky sank into the chair behind his desk for the first time. It hissed as air escaped from the faux leather upholstery and creaked metallically as he settled into it. He lit a cigarette and looked around for something to use as an ashtray.

‘Ehm, you know this building is no-smoking?’

‘Good for the building.’ He reached behind him and opened the window.

‘Seriously. Even the custody suite went no-smoking yesterday. There’s blokes over there screaming that it violates their human rights. They called for their solicitors. They’re going to sue us.’

‘No win no fag. I wish them luck. Let’s get on with it, Jane.’ He was suddenly not in the mood for banter.

Jane didn’t blink. ‘Well, one woman witnessed a man plant the bomb and she recognized him. He’s been arrested and admitted everything.’

‘Very funny.’

‘We got a pile of statements. Looks like we have a lot of leisured and/or retired people and quite a few homeworkers living in the streets bordering the park closest to the locus. Most people who were at home around the time of the bombing did look out of the window earlier because of a bloke on a motorized skateboard. Making a nuisance of himself going up and down the paths. Apparently it made a horrible noise, they use little two-stroke engines — ’

‘Yeah, I know the things. Bloody menace.’

‘Well, quite a few people got annoyed and had a look at what it was and all saw the same bloke.’

‘The motorized skateboarder … the boy, Joel, he mentioned him. Do we have a description?’

‘Strictly speaking it’s the board that’s motorized of course.’

‘Jane …’ McLusky managed to ladle quite a bit of menace into the word.

Austin rattled it off from memory. ‘Tall, skinny, spiked hair, sunglasses, denims, red scarf and skateboarding gear, knee pads, that sort of thing. Mid-to-late thirties.’

‘Late thirties? You’d have thought he’d have better things to do than skating in the park. Right. I want him. He’s been up and down the street, he’ll have seen something others didn’t. Shouldn’t be difficult to find. If anyone sees a bloke on a motorized skateboard tell them to kick him off it and bring him in. Illegal except on private land anyway if my memory serves me right.’ McLusky stubbed his cigarette out on the aluminium window frame. ‘Okay, I’ll dive into these.’ He pulled the pile of reports towards him. ‘Oh, before you go, what does one do for coffee around here?’

Austin stood in the door, suppressing a sigh. ‘Milk, sugar?’

‘No, no, I’m old enough to get my own. Just point me towards it.’

The DS cheered up immediately. ‘Ah, well, in that case it all depends. There’s the machine at the end of the corridor if you like your water brown. There’s the canteen if you want molasses and there’s a kettle in the CID room, bring your own mug and put 10p in the jar.’

‘Instant?’

‘Instant. DI Fairfield has a cappuccino maker in her office.’

‘Has she?’

‘Only for the inner circle.’

‘And they are?’

‘DS Sorbie, DCI Gaunt, the super … basically everyone above her own rank and anyone below her own rank who’s about to get bullied into doing her a favour.’

‘You ever tasted it?’

‘Not me. It’s not fair trade coffee, if you get my drift. I’ve managed to avoid it so far.’

‘All right. Thanks for explaining the politics of coffee to me, Jane.’ He waited until Austin had closed the door before sliding open the desk drawer and taking out a half-eaten Danish pastry from Rossi’s. Coffee might have to wait though. He started reading the reports, scattering bits of flaked almond over the pages. Everybody had seen something, everyone remembered someone else, only no one remembered anything significant. Those residents whose houses faced the park had given the most detailed descriptions. It was unsurprising. Those actually in the park were all there for different reasons. ‘Taking the air’ were the pensioners, using it as a shortcut were the busy people, ‘hanging out’ were the kids playing truant. Pram pushers, dog walkers and tourists made up the rest; all had their own agendas. But those who lived west of the park had gone to their windows in order to look. Everyone saw the skateboarder. One witness even described Elizabeth Howe, sitting on one of the benches in the shelter, resting with her shopping. This was corroborated by a dog walker in the park. According to him Howe gathered her shopping bags and had just set foot on the path when the bomb went off. Her body was blown forward by the explosion and she twisted while falling, landing back first on the path. Through some sort of miracle nobody was close enough to the bomb to get killed. Two witnesses saw a couple hugging and kissing earlier on one of the benches. One remembered a young man sitting on the other side, drinking beer from a can. Another saw a three-or four-year-old girl stand on one of the benches before being fetched away by a woman. Lucky family. Nobody saw the container, nobody saw anyone acting suspiciously.

McLusky finished the Danish, licked his fingers and wiped them on his jeans but they remained faintly sticky. He closely read all the reports and notes and got a mental picture of people moving through the park; the skateboarder, woman and child, beer-drinking type, snogging couple, a sprinkling of tourists; Elizabeth Howe and Joel Kerswill walking past each other in different directions. Then the bang. He imagined it from above, watching a silent explosion as from a hovering balloon, saw himself, Austin and Constable Hanham run towards the scene. Too late, it was all too late. McLusky saw it in his mind as though he was there, hovering. He had been there and he had been useless. It unfolded in front of his eyes like a movie scene, shot from high above the trees, and he wished he could simply play the film backwards until a figure would walk up, reach for the bomb, put it back into the bag … Because there would be a bag, of course, it would also be quite heavy. Perhaps it had been left inside the bag and that had been destroyed by the blast …

Impatiently he shuffled the papers into a messy pile and pushed his chair back on its castors. How was he supposed to draw a bead on this idiot from these bits of paper? They were out there, somewhere, either kids reading about their own prank in the Evening Post or a malicious crank gloating over the column inches he had been given. Far less likely was an inept assassin analysing what went wrong, planning his next move. Since when did they go around assassinating kids and ex-postmistresses? Post … postal workers … mail. No, it didn’t fire his synapses. All he had was Colin Keale, a known bomb-maker, in Turkey, a retired woman and a kid wanting to be a gardener.

McLusky grabbed his jacket and made for the bathroom down the corridor where he washed the stickiness off his hands, then he clattered down the stairs and out into the thin April light. He never found it easy to grasp a case while locked up inside an office, especially one as dispiriting as the one they had found for him at Albany Road. If you wanted to do policing you had to be out in the street and he didn’t even know most of the streets in this city. As a police officer you had to do more than just know them, you had to own the streets and feel in your bones that you did. My city, my streets, my patch.

It looked like a good-enough patch, though there was a chill wind blowing through the narrow lanes of the Old Town. The endless procession of traffic snarled like giant knotted ropes up and down the streets as he walked in the vague direction of the river. Cars, vans, lorries, pedestrians, taxies, minibuses, cyclists, motorized rickshaws and of course scooters squeezed through the unquiet heart of the city. Scooters were everywhere now. They seemed to be the new weapon of choice for many commuters and they were being bought, ridden, crashed and stolen everywhere.

Eventually he found himself walking near a ruined church in a convoluted bit of park. He walked purposefully on into a busy area of tall Georgian buildings. He squeezed through a crowded food market in Corn Street, keeping a sharp lookout. He had planned to enter the first cafe he found but had already dismissed the first two as unlikely candidates for the best cappuccino in town which was what he was looking for. In McLusky’s opinion there really was no point in drinking imitation coffee. Find the best and stick to it. It should only take me a year, he thought, there were cafes and restaurants and takeaway coffee places every few yards. He abhorred drinks in Styrofoam cups and hence avoided the takeaways. The chances that a barista first brewed the finest coffee in town then poured it into plastic cups were anyway frankly remote. Eventually he simply picked a small cafe called Cat’s Cradle where a table had just become free. He ordered a large cappuccino from the frizzy-haired girl behind the counter and sat on a cold chrome chair at a cold steel table by the window. He watched the people passing in the narrow lane. At this time of day there were mostly women in the streets, he noticed, and the place was busy. The city attracted a fair number of tourists even this early in the season. Museums, art collections, the science park and historic ships, both real and replica, in the old harbour seemed to be the main attraction.

As the girl set the enormous cup of froth in front of him a loud bang outside made her jump and sharply draw in breath. McLusky tried to reassure her. ‘Just someone dropping stuff into an empty skip.’ He had caught a glimpse of the battered yellow mini-skip at the end of the lane earlier.

The girl relaxed her shoulders. ‘Well, after what happened yesterday you can’t help thinking. Another one could go off any time, couldn’t it?’

‘Is that what you think? That there’ll be another one?’

‘I don’t know, do I? But it’s scary, isn’t it, if someone blows up stupid things like a pavilion. On the tube you’d expect a bomb, but if they blow up stuff like that then anything could explode next. I never thought it would come here.’

‘I don’t think it has. I don’t think it was a terror bomb.’

‘Well, if it makes people terrified then I think it is.’

The girl had a point. As she left to serve other customers he tasted his coffee. His scale of coffee-rating only had three levels — ‘awful’, ‘drinkable’ and ‘the best’. This one was just about drinkable.

It did however have the desired effect of sharpening his senses. As he continued on his erratic march across town he took everything in precisely, filing away into his memory intersections, back streets, alleys and steps, possible shortcuts. He looked keenly, not like a tourist, but like someone taking possession of a new car, a new house, a new lover. Everything interested him from street furniture to the location of the banks and the number of CCTV cameras. His street instincts were good today and eventually he found himself at the western end of Brandon Hill without having consulted the A-Z in his jacket pocket once. The park was still closed to the public and all entrances were guarded by extremely bored uniformed police. McLusky showed his ID and ducked under the tape. He avoided the locus of the explosion and took a circuitous route to the top of the hill dominated by a hundred-foot tower built from pink sandstone. He climbed the narrow winding stone steps that led him breathlessly to the top. From here he had views across the city in all directions but what interested him lay directly below. It wasn’t exactly Central Park but for a fingertip search it was big enough. There was a large children’s play area, plenty of trees, a pond. The entire area had been combed. There was no separate parks police so Avon and Somerset had provided enough manpower to make sure there were no more devices hidden in the grounds. Suspicious items had of course been found. Two had been blown up in controlled explosions by Royal Engineers; both had been duds. One turned out to be an old dried-up can of yacht varnish. The other had been a rucksack of an Italian tourist, already reported lost. Inside, among other possessions, were his camera and his passport, both now vaporized.

He clattered back down the ancient steps and approached the locus of the explosion. An inner circle had been taped off here, covering the area of scattered debris. A lone CSI technician wearing a coverall was still or again going over the scene, this time with a metal detector. He looked up, annoyed at seeing him approach. ‘Can you stay beyond that case, please?’ He pointed to an aluminium case standing on the path.

McLusky stopped dutifully by the case and brandished his ID. ‘DI McLusky.’

‘Makes no difference, I’m afraid.’

‘Point taken. Anything in particular you’re looking for today?’

‘You should get a preliminary report sometime this afternoon.’ He hesitated. ‘But yeah.’ The man came over to him, carrying an evidence bag. He held it up for him to examine. It contained a very small piece of metal that could have belonged to some kind of mechanism. ‘The device contained a timer, inspector. They used a wristwatch. A mechanical one works best for this kind of thing. Tick tock, a real ticking time bomb. I’ve come back to see if I can recover more of the pieces. I’m not saying we’ll get it back to work but the more of the pieces we have the greater the chance that Forensics can come up with a make. If it was a new watch then it will probably turn out to have been Russian.’

‘Russian? Why’s that?’

‘Real wind-up watches are relatively expensive but the Russians still make cheap ones you can buy here and there. You would probably not go and buy a precision Swiss watch just to blow it up. So unless you had an old one hanging about you’d probably buy a crap Russian one from a catalogue showroom. It’ll last just long enough to do the job.’

‘I see.’ He looked at his own wristwatch which was a cheap battery job from a catalogue showroom. ‘So if it had a timer that means it wasn’t radio controlled or anything? Not set off remotely by someone watching for his victim to get near it?’

‘That’s correct. It was a very simple device, anyone could have built it. It’ll say so in the report, I’m sure.’

‘So if you’re using a wind-up watch how long in advance can you set the bomb to go off?’

‘Twelve hours. Enough time to get to the other side of the world, inspector.’

Or Turkey. ‘Thanks. Good hunting.’ Or whatever one wished people who hoovered grass for a living. Anyone could have built it? McLusky was sure he wouldn’t know where to start. His understanding of things explosive began and ended with the kind where you put a match to a fuse and retired to a safe distance. He ducked out of the perimeter on the other side. He called Austin on his mobile. ‘I’m in Great George Street. Bring the car. No, your car.’ He smoked two cigarettes before Austin crept up on him in a minute Nissan. Not really a convincing car for a big hairy DS, thought McLusky, even in blue.

The car park at Blaise Castle Estate out in Henbury had plenty of space this cold April lunchtime. The man at the estate office glanced at their IDs and gave them directions without asking what they had come about. They had to walk back along the road they had come and long before they got to the nursery McLusky wished they had taken the car. The signs on the gate declared No Parking and No Public Access. McLusky and Austin weren’t public. They pushed through and walked up between long propagating houses and through an open door into a large shed with a concrete floor. There were wooden bays containing various composts and more empty flowerpots than seemed possible. By a still-steaming kettle stood two young men in green dungarees and green T-shirts, chomping sandwiches.

One of them swallowed down a large mouthful, looked like he regretted it for a second, then challenged them. ‘Help you gentlemen?’

They showed IDs. McLusky looked around. ‘Boss about?’

‘On her lunch break. It’s about the bomb, is it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘We’re putting in for danger money.’

‘Good thinking. You wouldn’t of course have any idea who would want to blow up a shelter in Brandon Hill?’

‘Not the foggiest, and we’ve been thinking hard.’ He reached up a hand as if to scratch his head but changed his mind. His thin hair was ineptly spiked into a ridge that ran down the centre of his head like a flailed hedge.

The other man spoke with a strong Bristol accent, modified by sandwich. ‘We hope it’s no one with a grudge against the park, since we’re out there all the time, like. We was planting bulbs around there only the other day, all round that shelter.’

‘Well, last October actually.’ The thin-haired gardener gave his colleague a pitying look.

‘A grudge against the park? Or the parks department? Has anyone left under a cloud recently?’

They looked at each other for a split second, seeming to come to an instant agreement on the matter. ‘Yeah, Three Veg did.’

‘Yup, got fired.’

Austin’s brow furrowed. ‘Three veg?’

‘Nickname. His real name’s Tim. He’s a veggie, so at school when others were having meat and two veg he used to ask for three veg. It stuck.’

‘What did he get fired for?’

The first man had at last dispatched his sandwich. ‘What didn’t he? Just about everything.’

The two gardeners slipped into their well-rehearsed double act. ‘Being late.’

‘All the time.’

‘Skiving.’

‘He’d be out there, like, supposed to plant up a bed and he’d be standing by the fence watching the girls instead, leaving all his stuff lying about.’

‘Smoking in the greenhouses.’

‘Borrowing power tools …’

‘Driving the minivan through the park like a maniac.’

‘Oh yeah, that was on his second day here, nearly got fired for that then, didn’t he?’

McLusky had heard enough reminiscences. ‘So he got the sack. When exactly was that?’

‘Last summer. September? Yeah, it was September.’

‘End of September.’

‘You seriously think he’s behind it? Building a bomb? Three Veg couldn’t do it, he hasn’t got the brains.’

Rapid shakes of the head from the first man. ‘Too thick.’

‘Apparently it doesn’t take much brains. And we have to explore every avenue. Does he have a surname?’

Hedgerow Hair nodded his chin at a door in the back. ‘They’ll have that in the office, won’t they?’

They did. Timothy Daws, twenty-eight years of age. An address in Bedminster. The admin worker wasn’t taking a lunch break. She was eating salad from a plastic container at her desk. ‘Yes, we had to let him go in the end. He was charming but a compulsive liar and never did any work. When he did turn up for work at all.’

‘Did he have any redeeming features? Was he mechanically gifted, perhaps?’

‘We thought so at first. He seemed to be so good at repairing things. Machines appeared to be breaking down as soon as he was supposed to take them out on a job. He would then say, Oh, leave it to me, I’ll fix it, and he would, eventually. Only it later turned out there was either never anything wrong with them in the first place or he’d been the one to sabotage them. He’d just sit around smoking, doing nothing. It was another way of delaying the start of any job you gave him.’

McLusky thanked her and walked out the other end between the propagating houses full of row upon row of plants growing in plastic pots. Two more gardeners working at this end looked up from what they were doing and gave him a friendly nod as he passed. One even smiled. People enjoying their work, whatever next? On the way back to the car park he called Albany Road. ‘Have we got the search warrant for Colin Keale yet?’

‘Still waiting.’

‘All right, can you run a name for me? Timothy Daws, as in jackdaw. He got fired by the parks department for being a waste of space.’

‘Won’t be a tick.’ The officer didn’t take long to come back over the phone. ‘Timothy Daws, yup, petty theft and one caution for cannabis possession, nothing recent. Hardly a career criminal, sir.’

‘I don’t care, it’s all we’ve got. I have an address out in Bedminster, wherever that is.’

The DC compared it with the one on the computer. ‘Yes, same address he gave then.’

‘Right. Chase the search warrant.’ He slipped his mobile back in his jacket. ‘We’ll pay Mr Three Veg a little visit.’

Austin drove south and west. ‘Does he look like a candidate for our Bench Bomber to you?’

‘Not really but who does? If he’s a long-term pothead then he could have gone paranoid. Apparently he’s a lazy bastard so I wouldn’t have thought he’d go to the trouble of learning to make bombs. Also, if you wanted to take it out on the parks department surely you’d bomb the parks department.’ McLusky sighed. ‘Unfortunately there’s no “surely” with these nutters. So we’ll go visit.’

The address turned out to be at the end of a dispiriting terrace of small grey post-war houses. Tiny front lawns had mostly been tarmacked to provide parking, since the street itself was too narrow to accommodate the collection of low-budget cars. Only a few front lawns struggled on, some full of the brightly coloured impedimenta of child-rearing, some full of broken white goods. Daws’ address fell into the struggling-lawn category. Water from a split downpipe was leaking into the stonework. At the windows the remains of squashed flies dotted grey net curtains. Austin went round the back to stop Daws from disappearing through the garden.

There was a door bell but McLusky ignored it. He squatted down and peered through the letter box. A narrow hall, steep stairs on the right, a tangle of mountain bikes on the left and at the back of the hall what looked like a kitchen. There was movement there. He straightened up, rattled the letter-box lid and pounded on the door.

After a minute the door opened a crack and the pale spotty face of a young man appeared in the gap. ‘Yeah?’

McLusky pushed the door wide open and the kid staggered back. ‘Hey!’

‘Always put the chain on before opening the door to strangers, son.’

The young man looked alarmed. ‘There isn’t a chain.’

‘Then fit one. You Timothy Daws?’ He already knew he couldn’t be. This specimen was too young and had all the charm of a damp dish cloth.

‘No. And it’s not my house. Tim isn’t here. What do you want?’

McLusky waved his ID. ‘Police. Mind if I come in?’ He hefted past the skinny youth. ‘Thanks. Who are you?’

‘Innis Cole.’

‘You live here?’

‘Yes.’

‘You a friend of Timothy’s?’ Innis Cole, McLusky decided, was barely twenty and nervous. Probably nothing more serious than an eighth of blow in his bedroom, though.

‘Not really. He’s a housemate. Well, landlord, really.’

‘Let’s go into the kitchen, Innis. So he does live here?’ He allowed the spotty kid to lead the way. Cole stalled however when he noticed Austin trying the half-glazed back door. Austin flattened his ID against the glass. McLusky gave Cole a playful push from behind. ‘That’s all right, he’s with me. Go let him in.’

Austin sniffed as he entered. The place smelled of sour washing and stagnant water. The kitchen was a mess.

Now that he had two officers to put up with the youth appeared even more nervous, looking from one to the other.

McLusky pressed on. ‘Where’s Three Veg then?’

The use of Daws’ nickname seemed to worry Cole. ‘Don’t know. He doesn’t tell me where he goes.’

Austin positioned himself behind him. ‘When did you last see him?’

The youth turned around. ‘I, er, don’t know. Couple of days ago?’

‘Three?’

‘Maybe.’

McLusky flicked through a small pile of letters addressed to Daws. None of them were personal. ‘Does he often disappear for several days?’

Cole turned around again. ‘From time to time, yeah.’

‘But he doesn’t tell you where he goes.’ He picked up a chopstick and used it to poke around between the collection of empty takeaway cartons and beer cans on the table.

‘What does Mr Daws do for money?’ Austin wanted to know.

Innis rolled his eyes and sat down at the encrusted kitchen table. He wasn’t going to whirl around any longer. ‘I don’t know. I think he’s signing on at the moment.’

Austin ran a finger through the grime on the half-glazed door, then inspected it and looked for somewhere to wipe it. ‘This is a council place, right?’

‘Think so, yeah.’

‘But you pay rent to Daws.’ Austin wiped his finger on the margin of a local free newspaper.

‘Yeah.’

McLusky waved a couple of benefit cheques he had found among the letters. ‘While Daws claims rent for the entire place from housing. And hasn’t bothered cashing these. Curious, wouldn’t you say? Can’t be short of cash then. When did you last see him, Mr Cole?’

‘Is that what this is about? Benefits?’

‘Could be. Doesn’t have to be. I’m not really interested but I could always take an interest if I got a bit bored.’ McLusky gave him a warm smile, which seemed to unnerve Innis Cole considerably. ‘So?’

‘A few days.’

McLusky scissored the cheques between his fingers.

Innis tried to count them. ‘Two weeks?’

‘And where’s he gone?’

‘He didn’t tell me. He’s got a job on, is all he said.’

‘A job on. What kind of a job?’

‘I don’t know. Something to do with gardens. He works with someone else sometimes. Or for someone else, I’m not sure which.’

‘Does he have a car?’

‘A van. And it’s no use asking me what kind, it’s white and quite clapped out. He was given it, I think.’

‘Right. And what do you do, Mr Cole?’

‘I work at the video shop.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the high street.

‘But not today?’

‘I’m on a late, we’re open till ten thirty.’

McLusky turned on his avuncular voice. ‘Okay. Now we would like to talk to Mr Daws about this and that. You might want to give us a call when you see him. But don’t worry, we’ll pop in from time to time. Whenever we’re in the area.’ He nodded reassuringly at Cole. As the two detectives left the narrow house Innis Cole did not look reassured.

McLusky sank into the passenger seat. ‘Do you realize this is a girl’s car, Jane? The baby blue colour won’t fool a soul.’

‘I know. Eve made me get it. She loves the things.’

‘Married? Girlfriend?’

‘Ehm, girlfriend, well, fiancee, sort of …’

‘Sort of? That doesn’t sound like you went on your knees and offered up diamonds. It was her idea then.’

‘Yes, but not a bad idea for all that. We’ve been living together for a year now. It really makes sense.’

‘Aha?’

‘Well, it does when she explains it.’

‘Do you love her, Jane?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I do. How about you?’

‘Me? I never met the girl. Am I attached? No, not at the moment. I thought I was. Until … the accident and me in hospital. It was the last straw for Laura.’ He realized that this was the first time he had said her name out loud since the break-up and the shape of it threatened to fill the entire car. He lit a cigarette and found the ashtray crammed with sweet wrappers. ‘Any thoughts about Mr Cole?’

‘The guy was far too nervous.’ Austin navigated the car back on to the main street and pointed it in the direction of Albany Road. ‘He was trying to cover up for Daws not being there, so Daws probably told him, “If anyone asks I’ve only been gone a few days.”’

‘Get on to the DSS, see when he last signed on and whether he missed an appointment. And also find out when he signs on next, we can easily collect him then.’

‘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.