Falling More Slowly

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 protege 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 yellow 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?’

‘Yup.’ Two identical blue scooters had joined the stream of traffic from a side street and were now weaving across the lanes ahead of them, going south along the Bath Road. The scooters the gang used had been reported as being all kinds of colours. But Fairfield had noticed that they seemed to get progressively darker and had come to the conclusion that the gang used spray paint to change the appearance of their transport. It was easier to do dark over light with a spray can.

‘No passengers though. Shall I hassle after them?’

‘Just try and keep them in sight, might as well have something hilarious to look at.’

Sorbie obliged and noted the index numbers as he got close enough. Both scooters were sporting L-plates and were being ridden accordingly.

Sorbie snorted with contempt. ‘All over the place. Makes you wonder how they survive long enough to take the test. Someone ought to drag them off the things and read them the bloody highway code. In Braille.’

The traffic was still heavy, the wet roads glistened. As the rain thinned to a fine drizzle the windscreen wipers slowed to an occasional squeak. He kept the scooters in view, as instructed, but knew they weren’t the ones, not just because of the L-plates which could come off quickly. No, when he saw the muggers he would know them. And these guys ahead of him were criminally stupid rather than criminal. They appeared to be keeping up a shouted conversation between themselves as they drove through and around traffic and scooted side by side in the middle lane.

‘Still going south.’ Sorbie kept up a murmured commentary to himself.

Fairfield looked up. ‘Let’s carry on up here, then turn round at the old brewery, then back towards the centre. This place is due a mugging or two, I feel.’

Female intuition, Sorbie thought, but kept it to himself. ‘That route takes us past Mitchell’s place of course.’ He looked at his superior.

Fairfield stiffened. ‘So?’

Ady Mitchell was a fence. Fairfield knew he was a fence, but proving it was something else. Normally she’d hardly be interested but since he set up in the city theft and robbery, mostly of mobile phones and PDAs, had shot up. Certain types of burglary too. He had plenty of previous. Fairfield refused to believe this was a coincidence and she didn’t believe he’d gone straight. It had become a pet project of hers but so far proving a connection had eluded her. Mitchell had finally made a complaint against her when out of frustration she had taken to sitting in her car near his lock-up, one in a row of brick-built Victorian warehouses at the edge of Brislington, without official sanction. She knew at the time it was obsessive behaviour and that she ought to get a life but it had gnawed at her pride and still did. It had earned her an official reprimand for unauthorized surveillance.

They had visited the lock-up twice before that and not seen anything suspicious. It was an Aladdin’s cave of junk of every description, from china to electrical goods. Second-hand goods, buying and selling, eBay trader, fence — it was all the same to her. And it would be low on her list of priorities if only it hadn’t meant children being targeted for their mobiles and business types for their BlackBerries. If she could link him to any street robberies that would be sweet indeed, only now she couldn’t even go near him without landing herself in serious trouble. ‘That’s okay, we’re following these two, nothing to do with Mitchell.’

Sorbie kept his eyes on the road. ‘If we got stuck in traffic near his lock-up would that be interpreted as unauthorized surveillance too? If we happened to look and see something?’

‘Like stolen goods being unloaded by known criminals? Only if they can prove you deliberately brought along your own traffic jam. Hey, you’re giving me ideas now …’

The scooter riders turned off to the right. ‘There they go. Mitchell’s place coming up in a sec.’

‘I know, Jack, I’ve been here before, you know?’

‘Just saying.’

‘Well, don’t. Just drive.’ Fairfield engineered a yawn as they drove past the lock-up. All of the warehouses looked dark and deserted at this time of the evening and the clapboard cafe that served them had long closed for the night.

Drizzle gave way to heavy rain again. Sorbie turned right at the traffic lights by the brewery and drove back east. They saw several scooters on their way in. ‘If you’re looking for scooters there’s always scooters. It’s like being told to look for a kid wearing trainers.’ A few minutes later he turned back towards the centre. They passed the large drive-through burger place. At this time of the evening it usually played host to hordes of teenagers, many on scooters. Tonight it looked deserted.

It was while he swept through a few side streets to relieve the monotony that the radio came to life. They no longer crackled (though from time to time they stopped working for no reason) but the controller still sounded reassuringly like she had a bad case of hay fever. Street robbery reported in Kensington Hill. Four suspects on two blue scooters leaving the scene along Hollywood Road going south.

Sorbie slowed down. ‘Hey, that’s us, Hollywood’s just behind us. They’ll come this way any second.’

‘I’m not so sure. Quick, do a U-ee! They might feel like a burger after a good mugging. We can always turn again.’ She steadied herself against the dashboard and gave their position to the controller. ‘Was the victim hurt?’

‘Yes, victim is male, in his thirties, collapsed with head wound, ambulance en route, ETA four minutes. The victim is receiving first aid from a taxi driver who is a trained first-aider. A passing couple who made the call saw the scooters leave in your direction.’

‘Get shifting, Jack. Looks like this one put up a fight for you.’

‘Bastards.’ He performed a ragged U-turn using the entire width of the road, the pavement and a bit of roadside shrubbery. It took him no more than thirty seconds to get to the bottom of the hill. There was no sign of any scooters. Sorbie bullied his way up the hill, scanning the road, his mirrors.

‘Damn, they could be miles away, those damn things can squeeze through any traffic too. Keep going.’

‘If we do meet them, do we try and stop them?’

‘We’ll follow.’

Seconds later they approached a narrow side street. It spat out two blue scooters. Sorbie knew this was the genuine article, he had always known he would know. Two scooters, four muggers; black clothes, black trainers, black full-face helmets. Only they were going the wrong way.

‘Rats. I was half-right, anyway. Turn round. Let’s get ’em. Make a noise.’

‘It’ll only make them split up.’

‘I know, Jack, but it’s in the rule book.’ She gave their call sign to the controller. ‘In pursuit of four suspects, possibly male, on two blue scooters travelling west on Bristol Hill, index number …’ She gave the number of the closest scooter. Sorbie brought their plain unit closer to the rear of the nearest scooter before turning on Blues and Twos. Blue light strobed under the grille of the bonnet and the siren howled.

Riders and passengers turned around and the scooters swayed, then picked up a bit of speed. It was a moment they had discussed many times. A single police unit would never persuade them to stop. It would take at least two units to have any chance of cutting off even one, after which they would probably abandon the scooters and run. If by then they had a helicopter up they should be able to apprehend them. Only it hadn’t worked the last time a patrol had caught a glimpse of them. They’d lost them on the ground and the helicopter had circled the area and found nothing.

Sorbie knew this pursuit could only go two ways and he was certain he already knew how it would end. If it went on long enough they might crash or they would disappear down an alley where he couldn’t follow. He had also discussed the possibility of ‘nudging’ them off, as he had delicately put it to Fairfield, but the inspector wouldn’t hear of it. Sorbie had met Australian police on a visit to Sydney and had admired their attitude. Over there suspects were ‘crims’ and crims got what they deserved. There was no time to pursue this favourite gripe of his, however. The front scooter was signalling left to alert his partner behind him and both scooters turned side by side, slicing across the inside lane and turning down a side street. A startled car driver slammed on his brakes, blocking Sorbie’s path.

‘Whose side are you on, blockhead?’ Sorbie cranked the wheel and took a lot of pavement in cornering around the vehicle. It only cost him a few seconds but it had put the entire length of a street between him and the scooters. They were cornering again. Sorbie shot after them.

Fairfield pointed ahead. ‘They’re going down there, that’s a dead end.’

‘It is for us but not for them. There’s a pedestrian entrance into the supermarket car park, they’ll go through there. We’ll have to go round. We’ve lost them.’ Sorbie drove on without slowing but turned the siren off until he needed it to cut across the next two junctions, then turned it off again. It might relax the riders if they thought they had lost them. He doubted it would. They were too well organized not to have an escape route planned in advance. Having circled the supermarket he slowed in the middle of the junction long enough to avoid colliding with a greengrocer’s van, then sped north.

Fairfield, who had kept up a commentary on the pursuit to the controller, asked if any units were in the area and was told there were none on that side of town. Several had been drawn off to help with a multiple RTA on the motorway, which kept the helicopter busy as well.

‘Are we packing it in?’ Sorbie asked, still overtaking vehicles at speed. They had come full circle, once more on the Bath Road.

Fairfield’s voice was gritty with frustration. ‘Carry on past Mitchell’s place. You never know, we might get lucky.’ Minutes later the lock-ups flew past her window, dark and deserted. ‘All right, cut the lights and drive me towards my coffee machine, Jack. I’m seriously pissed off now.’

Chris Reed loved computers. He loved everything about them. And especially the net. It was the most liberating weapon unwittingly given into the hands of the ordinary man, and now it was unstoppable. It brought together like-minded people into supportive communities that could be fostered and nurtured into global movements. The establishment could never monitor them all, there were too many of them, too many sites, too many users. Computers helped keep in touch, organize action. Computers gave you ideas. And they cost next to nothing. This one had come from a skip, like most of the things in his room in fact, and it was okay. It was ancient and had less memory than a middle-aged pothead but it did most things, albeit very slowly.

The printer on the other hand was a pain in the arse. Reed cleared another paper jam. The print on his home-made leaflets was too pale and a bit stripy, not at all the stark-looking warning he had been aiming for. But they’d get the message.

He could only do a few cars at a time. Of the five students in this house all but Vicky were totally apathetic. A couple of them had come on the Saturday Traffic Protest once and that was it. Direct action wasn’t their style. Any action really. They didn’t even bother to vote. As far as he could see they were all at uni so they could one day become part of the establishment and add their own 4?4s to the madness and consume until the planet was dead.

He left the printer chewing on the leaflets and went and knocked on Vicky’s door. Loud, synthetic dance music thumped on the other side. He knocked harder.

The music blasted him as Vicky at last opened the door. ‘Oh, hi.’ She went back to piling her hair into a mess on top of her head in front of a narrow length of mirror glass, giving a grunt of frustration when the arrangement snaked apart. She started all over again. As she lifted her arms her short dress rode up high enough to gave him a glimpse of black knickers.

‘You’re wearing a dress?’

‘Yeah. Look all right?’

She’d forgotten. Obvious. ‘Not very practical.’

‘That always depends.’ She could see Chris in the mirror. He was so scruffy. Someone should take the man in hand. For a mature student he was all right really. He had some valid ideas, stuff to say. But it got boring very quickly. Chris the one-trick pony. ‘I’m going out tonight. We’re meeting at the Watershed.’

He crossed the room to the mini system and turned down the moronic music. ‘We were going to do some cars tonight. You said you’d come.’

‘No, don’t do that, it gets me in the mood.’ She turned it up again and returned to her mirror. ‘I must have forgotten. Next time. I’ll come with you next time. Who else is going anyway?’ She asked purely for something to say, she really wasn’t in the mood for Chris tonight and she knew there’d be no one else. In theory Chris’s raids were quite a laugh, in practice they were cold and yucky.

‘It’s just us.’ He knew she wouldn’t change her mind now, she had her make-up done and everything, but he wouldn’t let her off so easily.

‘Sorry, we could do it tomorrow night, what’s wrong with tomorrow?’

‘I’ll do it by myself then. Won’t be able to do many cars but at least it’s a start. Then we can do some more tomorrow.’

‘Oh no, just remembered, I can’t tomorrow, I’m going up to see my parents for a couple of days, aren’t I? Dad’s birthday, they sent me a train ticket.’

He left her room without a word and slammed the door behind him, regretting it instantly. He couldn’t afford to alienate the girl. But how were they ever going to make a difference if dancing and birthdays took precedence over saving the planet? He found lots of support for what he had to say on the net, in the forums and chat rooms, but actually getting stuff off the ground yourself was a lot harder. He hadn’t managed to find many recruits and of the few he did find, only Vicky was left to help him. When she felt like it. Ah well, he’d do it tonight and he’d do it by himself.