Falling More Slowly

Chapter Seven

Tiny, tiny hairs. Backlit by the weak morning light that modelled the contours of the girl’s stomach. There had to be thousands of little downy hairs and he liked them. From this vantage point — his head resting on her thigh — he could see some of them moving in his breath. The pierced belly button was, on close inspection, not an improvement on the original design. During their lovemaking he’d been scared of catching his hair on it, ripping it out by accident. It was quite safe, Rebecca had told him. Didn’t he like it? No, no, it looked fine. A tiny enamelled daisy. He touched it now with his middle finger, waggled it about a bit. It made him shiver. Rebecca remained fast asleep. Or pretended to be fast asleep, sometimes just as good.

Why couldn’t they stick to earrings? Earrings were all right, much nicer in fact. Was it a sign he was slipping into ‘young middle age’? Was that why he’d chatted up the barmaid in the first place, to reassure himself that everything was still there, everything was just as it was before Laura?

The two-bar heater from the junk shop had been on all night while they slept and the room was unnaturally warm. The girl had kicked away the duvet after their last, lazy lovemaking. McLusky propped himself up on one elbow and studied her body: the hollow of her stomach, her taut flanks, her breasts unbothered by gravity, her long neck curved away from him, her exactly shoulder-length blonde hair, the perfect ovals of her nostrils.

He had enjoyed her body but images of Laura had constantly intruded, offering themselves for comparison. Sight, touch, smell, energy and size, everything was different. No better or worse, just different and somehow vaguely irritating, not exciting and energizing as it should have been. But these tiny hairs he liked.

Somewhere under the jumble of clothes and duvet by the side of the mattress his mobile chimed faintly and patiently. He scrabbled around for it, leaning across the girl’s body as he did so, making her stir. At last he found it and answered it. ‘McLusky.’

Rebecca opened her eyes. She gave him a look from sleep-narrowed eyes to go with her brief ironic smile.

The voice at the other end sounded bright and showered and wide-awake. ‘Morning, inspector, it’s Louise Rennie … Chemistry department? Bristol Uni?’

‘Ehm, yes. Morning. Morning, doctor.’ The girl wriggled from under him into an upright position and started clinking through the Pilsener bottles by the side of the bed, lifting each in turn without luck. ‘Have you had a new thought, Dr Rennie?’ He was wide awake now.

‘Yes, you could call it that. I have two tickets for The Duchess of Malfi at the Tobacco Factory for tonight and I wondered if you’d like to come.’

‘Ah. I see. Ehm …’ The girl lit one of his cigarettes and got up. McLusky’s eyes followed her breasts out of the room. ‘Yes, that would be … great. Shakespeare?’ So that’s what he had left her his number for. He lit a cigarette himself and inhaled deeply.

‘No, the other guy. The performance starts at eight. Can you meet me in the cafe at seven?’

‘I’ll do my best. Which cafe?’

‘The one at the Factory, inspector.’

‘Makes sense.’ The flush from the toilet seemed excessively loud. The girl padded back into the room and broke into a cough. McLusky coughed unconvincingly, trying to claim it as his own.

‘You should try and give up smoking. Both of you. See you at seven, inspector.’

He put the phone down and checked the time. Rebecca was dressing. He watched her legs disappear into preruined jeans and her breasts under T-shirt and sweater. The little pang of regret he felt made him wonder if he was likely to see them again.

By the afternoon five hours of meetings, report-sifting and fruitless phone calls had nearly succeeded in driving Rebecca’s breasts from his mind. Now, in stark contrast, he was staring at his least favourite thing, CCTV footage. The CCTV operation for the city centre was being coordinated from a single suite of hi-tech offices. McLusky had spent half an hour there, in an office where recorded incidents could be analysed and copies made, before he decided that he couldn’t concentrate in the place. The subliminal electronic buzz of hundreds of monitors thickened the air around him into an electronic fog and produced a dull headache behind his eyes.

The few staff were helpful but they were also very busy. When he’d arrived and been shown around they’d been in the process of directing police by radio to a fist fight outside a launderette, a car break-in, shoplifters tracked through the centre, a speeding pair of scooters and a group of kids lobbing bottles from recycling bins at each other across a pedestrianized street. On yet another monitor McLusky saw a middle-aged woman, perhaps drunk, perhaps taken ill, lying on the pavement near a newsagent’s. Pedestrians were neatly stepping around her, pretending not to notice.

All the staff here were civilians of course, which was another source of worry. He didn’t want anyone drawing the same conclusions he had until it became inevitable. As soon as he had the copies he had asked for he took the footage back to Albany Road.

At the station he had requested and received three battered TVs and three DVD players and had managed to cram them all into a corner of his tiny office, one balanced on top of the other, and plugged them into the only available socket via an adventurous knot of extensions. Ensconced in his chair and with a notebook beside him he wrote endless, detailed and systematic notes. Having long recognized his woeful inadequacy when it came to paperwork he tended to overcompensate by sifting everything into separate sheets, columns and folders, with large simplistic headings. This would generate piles of papers all with directions at the bottom like ‘cf. DOGWALKER 1’ or ‘see also SECOND NOISE REPORTED’.

The angles on the cameras covering the entrances were shallower and allowed number plates to be read. The time counter helped him to synchronize the footage. Any person walking in or out who could have simply dropped the booby-trapped compact he tracked from camera to camera. Those that walked out he tracked backwards, those that came in he tracked forward. Some people of course merely used the car park as a shortcut but most were coming from or walking to their cars. He then noted down the appearance of the people and the make and age of car and laboriously tracked the vehicle back to when it arrived or left, noting the index number if possible. Nobody however could be observed placing the bomb by the entrance or dropping it, though the camera might not pick up such sleight of hand. The area was just outside the picture, perhaps by less than a yard, he estimated. After two hours of this he reminded himself that he was acting on the assumption that what he had seen in the original footage was indeed Maxine Bendick bending down to pick up the glittering find that later claimed her face. His headache had got steadily worse. Time for a break. He stopped the playback and called the hospital.

Sitting on the sill of the open window he was glad of its unprestigious view over the backs of houses, away from the eyes of punters, colleagues and superiors, because it allowed him to defy the smoking ban. While he was waiting for a doctor at Southmead Hospital to come back on the line there was a knock at the door. It sounded like Austin’s knock but you could never be sure. Just in case it wasn’t he hid his cigarette by balancing it on the window frame behind him. A slight breeze made it roll off and fall into the void.

‘Shit. Come in.’

It was Austin. ‘Shit come in? Charming. Or did you think it was DCI Gaunt? I forget, you haven’t met him yet.’ Seeing that his superior was on the phone the DS sat down. He produced his own cigarettes and lit one with a silver lighter. Not before time, McLusky thought — the man’s addiction had been costing him a fortune.

Austin frowned at the tower of TV sets. ‘Why didn’t you use the computer, you could have had all three on a split screen?’

‘Really? Now he tells me.’ The doctor came back on the line, armed with files and superior advice, no doubt, to refuse his request.

McLusky had expected no less. ‘Dr Thompson, I said interview. I have no intention of interrogating Miss Bendick. She’s a witness and a victim of crime. I only need to ask her a few questions.’

‘Not for a few days, I’m afraid.’

‘One question? I tell you what, doctor. You ask her one question for me and I might not have to interview her at all, how’s that? Would you do that? It might just help stop more cases like Miss Bendick coming through your door.’

A short pause during which McLusky rolled his eyes for Austin’s benefit.

‘I can’t promise you anything. It might depend on the question. She needs rest.’

‘It’s a simple question. Just ask her where she got the powder compact.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Nothing else.’

‘I’ll call you back.’

‘Oh no, I’ll hold.’

‘You’re a suspicious man, inspector.’

Too right. Waiting for people to call back, being abandoned by operators in little-explored corners of the switchboard, phantom messages left with imaginary people and all things ‘in the post’ were part of an officer’s daily round and high on McLusky’s list of spirit-draining nuisances.

He wedged the receiver between ear and shoulder, stretched his legs out along the window sill, folded his arms and turned to Austin. ‘You found nothing, I take it?’

The DS had just returned from supervising a search of Colin Keale’s locker at the distribution depot where the man drove a fork-lift at night. ‘Nothing relating to bomb making. An overall, a newspaper and a vacuum flask that had whisky in it.’

‘Whisky? Mmm. Glenfiddich, by any chance?’

‘I don’t have your nose, Liam. I could tell it was whisky but not which one. We’ll send it off for analysis of course.’

‘And wait four weeks? Bollocks to that. Give me one sniff, Jane, and I’ll tell you if it is. What time does his plane land?’

‘16.55.’

‘We’d better get a move on soon. Is the flask still here? Then go and get it.’ While he waited for Austin to return he fluted bored invective down the line where Dr Thompson and Southmead Hospital were offering him nothing but static.

Keale’s Turkish holiday was over and he was flying back into Bristol Airport this afternoon. It would be good to have at least something to scare him with when they questioned him. Of course an awful lot of people drank Glenfiddich. Few stuffed the tin it came in full of gunpowder and shoved it under a park bench.

‘There you are, impress me.’ Austin handed over the red plastic flask. It was scratched and grimy.

McLusky unscrewed the plastic cup and popped the old-fashioned cork stopper. He inhaled the fragrance deeply and was instantly troubled by a strong desire to put the half-litre flask to his lips and empty it. ‘It’s Glenfiddich all right.’

‘Sure?’

‘Can’t be a hundred per cent sure without tasting it, but we can’t go around drinking the evidence.’

‘Am I bothering to send it off?’

‘Pointless at this stage, it wouldn’t prove a thing. We’ll wave it under his nose first during the interview and ask him. Then we’ll send it off.’

‘Because you’ve been known to be wrong?’

‘Indeed.’

The receiver against his ear crackled to life. ‘Inspector?’

‘I’m here.’

‘Miss Bendick told me she found the compact at a car park that day. Is that any help?’

On the contrary. ‘It is. Thanks for doing that, Dr Thompson. I must ask you to keep that detail to yourself for the time being. It’s important it doesn’t become public knowledge at this point in the investigation.’ He returned the receiver to its cradle with exaggerated gentleness.

‘Is it what I think it is?’

McLusky slid his jacket on. ‘Yup. Let’s go.’

By the time they had arrived at Austin’s car the implications were sinking in. ‘Bastard. Now what do we do?’

McLusky strapped himself into the back seat as conscientiously as someone about to loop-the-loop in an open-cockpit plane. ‘You have my permission to panic. Meanwhile we continue to have every available bod explore every possible avenue. How are we doing with the fireworks sales?’

‘We’re nearly through them all. Nothing. No one reports any suspiciously large sales or people coming back for several purchases, though that’s very hard to keep track of if you have several staff. If our bomber has any savvy he’ll have gone round lots of shops anyway.’

‘Quite. I expect he did. What about people licensed to handle gunpowder?’

‘We’re still checking those too. There’s not many in our area. The licence conditions were tightened up several times recently, Prevention of Terrorism Act etc. Did you know you only need a lightning conductor if you are storing more than 500 kilograms of the stuff?’

McLusky frowned at the traffic. ‘Fascinating, Jane. And what a shame, otherwise all we’d do is look for a suspicious lightning conductor and make a quick arrest. Are we going to make the airport on time?’

‘Yeah, no sweat. I’m using a shortcut.’ Austin swung the car through a couple of roundabouts and dived into the suburbs where he could avoid much of the traffic that was building up again on the more obvious routes. One day soon they would experience gridlock in the centre again. Last summer it had only taken a few simultaneous incidents and the city had ground to a complete halt.

He was keen to discuss whatever little progress they had made, the angles they had already covered, while he skilfully negotiated the network of streets and lanes that would spit them out near the airport. The DI on the back seat however did little more than grunt and for the most part stared past him out at the narrow lanes as though their final doom lurked just around the next corner.

New security arrangements at the airport meant they could park nowhere near the entrances but it didn’t matter, they had arrived in time, thanks to Austin’s shortcuts. McLusky never had much faith in shortcuts and was impressed. They hadn’t got stuck in traffic once and that was a rare experience. Still, being driven was a nightmare. ‘You’ve got to show me your shortcut on the map.’

‘I’ll photocopy you a map.’ Austin checked his watch. ‘He’ll land in five minutes.’

Colin Keale was going to do no such thing. At this very moment he was looking out from his window seat at the duvet of cloud obscuring his view of the Mediterranean. His departure from Dalaman had been delayed by two hours. But that didn’t worry Keale. What worried him was whether or not he was going to get the contents of his holdall through British customs and what would happen to him if he didn’t.

‘Didn’t you think to check before we set off?’

Austin rolled his eyes. ‘I was going to but I got distracted by the whisky thing. Airport police should have let us know really, they’re the ones tracking him. Are we going back to Albany or are we waiting?’

‘God no, we’ll wait.’ Shortcut or not, under no circumstances did he want to do the journey three more times. ‘And since it was you who got distracted by the whisky thing you can distract me with a cappuccino thing.’

They installed themselves in one of the cafes in the arrivals lounge, but not before McLusky had colourfully expressed his displeasure at not having been informed of the delay to the airport police sergeant supposedly in charge of picking up Keale.

When Colin Keale at last arrived he simply couldn’t believe it. How had they known? They hadn’t even looked inside his bag, just scooped him up in customs and frog-marched him out through a side door where these two CID clowns were waiting, and he knew CID clowns when he saw them.

McLusky put his ID away. ‘You know why we are here?’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Keale looked tired and deflated. Apart from his nose, which had caught too much sun, he looked pale. He hadn’t gone to Turkey to sunbathe, that seemed obvious.

McLusky was surprised but never looked a gift horse in the mouth until he had got it home. ‘In that case, Colin Keale, I’m arresting you for causing explosions, attempted murder, causing actual bodily harm …’

‘Wa-wa-wait!’

He didn’t let himself be interrupted and finished the caution: ‘… something which you later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

The man looked incredulous. ‘No, I fucking don’t.’

‘Well, we can talk about it down the station, Mr Keale.’

Which is what they had done now for the last hour in this depressingly neutral interview room at Albany Road. Spread out on the table stood part of the contents of Colin Keale’s holdall, the reason, he had assumed, for his arrest. There were several plastic nets and paper bags full of what had at first looked to McLusky like onions and shrivelled potatoes, and a carrier bag stuffed with packets of plant seeds, some of them in little brown envelopes with Turkish handwriting on them. And a litre bottle of whisky. It wasn’t Glenfiddich. None of this looked like a major breakthrough to the inspector.

‘I suppose this contains Glenmorangie too?’ He produced the thermos flask from a carrier but thought he already knew the answer.

‘Where the hell did you get … did you break into my locker at work?’ Keale was brimming with righteous anger but struggled to keep it in check, in view of the contraband on show on the table in front of him. So he had been stupid once and built some pipe bombs. They’d been glorified fire crackers really, just something to piss people off with. Now they were talking about blowing people up. And he hadn’t even been in the country. He had made one mistake, one error of judgement, and from here to eternity they were going to arrest him every time a car misfired in the city. He hadn’t been well, had gone through a period of mental instability, you might say. He was better now but of course to the police it had to be him if some bastard started blowing up people. He hadn’t really wanted to hurt anyone, he just wanted to make them look stupid. What a fucking mistake that had been. ‘Yes, yes, it’s Glenmorangie. I suppose you told my employers and lost me my job as well now? That’s great. That’s dandy. It wasn’t easy getting any sort of job with my history. And you’ve no idea how cold it is in those bloody warehouses in winter. A couple of tots get me through the night shift.’

Austin had brought in a photocopy of a leaflet produced by the Plant Health and Seed Inspectorate. McLusky read it. He was getting bored with all this. They’d been over Keale’s movements on the day before the explosion countless times. He cited his neighbour as an alibi and McLusky had little doubt that it would check out. The man was just a plant nut. The things on the table between them were bulbs and corms, he wasn’t sure where the difference lay, and there were enough seeds in this one carrier bag alone to keep a garden centre going. He hadn’t brought in anything illegal, he swore it, just far too much, he admitted it. Everything was so cheap there. He wasn’t doing any harm, was he?

McLusky checked his watch. He was already over an hour late, the play had started a while ago and he had no idea if Dr Rennie had got the messages he had left for her.

And now, since he had whisked Keale away before his bags had been checked at customs, he had more or less helped the nutter smuggle these things into the country. He didn’t feel much sympathy for Keale. The man was a creased, slightly greasy-looking type. Perhaps it was the plane journey that had shrivelled him or maybe it was finding himself back inside an interview room at Albany. He was just another slightly strange, unhappy man who liked growing stuff in a basement. What did it matter? This was all a waste of time.

‘Right, you can go. But don’t leave town, as they say, we might want to talk to you again.’

Keale crossed his arms in front of his chest. ‘What about my bulbs and seeds though?’

‘None of these are …’ McLusky picked up some of the shrivelled-looking things. ‘None of these are dangerous? Or endangered and what have you?’

‘No, as I told you, I just went a bit overboard.’

‘Well, then pack them up and get out of here.’

Keale sprang into action. In less than a minute he had cleared the treasure into his holdall and rushed away. In his eagerness to be out of there he left his duty-free whisky behind.

Back in his office McLusky found a place for the litre bottle of Glenmorangie in the bottom of his desk, making a mental note to get a couple of glasses from the canteen.

A fine drizzle began to darken the pavement as he waited for his taxi.

On the other side of the river in the Knowle West district of the city Frank Dudden was pissing in the street between two parked cars while shouting at the bastards in the George and Dragon behind him. ‘Fascist wankers! If you won’t even let me piss in your fucking stinking toilet then I’m pissing right here!’ He half turned to look at the pub from which he had just been evicted and splashed urine against the back of a car, over his shoes and one knee as he swayed backwards. ‘Fuck.’ He buttoned himself up, wiped his hands on his trousers and steadied himself. Wankers, all of them. As he passed the pub he aimed a kick at the door through which he had been propelled by the landlord. His kick glanced off the slick woodwork and hurt the side of his foot. ‘Fascists!’ Dudden steadied himself against the wall before steering an approximate course down the pavement. First they sold you the drink then they told you you’d had too much. What was the world coming to when a man couldn’t even get pissed in peace to drown his sorrows? What was so bad about that? It was any decent and honest Englishman’s right to get rat-arsed if his girlfriend of seven — seven! — years ran off with his month’s takings. Which, okay, he should have banked earlier. Still. Running off with it. Without him. Because of one bloody scuffle. And to Spain! Toremo-fucking-linos! Just how tacky was that?

Dudden reached his car at the street corner and stopped to focus on the object standing on its roof. ‘What the fuck?’ A can of Special Brew. An unopened can of Special Brew. You’re hallucinating now, Frank, because you’re thirsty. He looked around him. There were people walking on the other side of the street, cars driving by, but nobody in the immediate vicinity. Well, if it was standing on his car he’d fucking have it anyway. He reached across and picked it up. Heavy. It really was full, unopened. ‘Well, thank you, very thoughtful of you, whoever you are, Mr Special Brew delivery person.’ He sniffed, hawked and spat viscous, slow-travelling mucus between his feet. Having fumbled the car door open he let himself fall behind the wheel and pulled the door shut. ‘Manna from fucking heaven. No offence.’ He tilted the ring-pull up with the long nail of his index finger and pulled.

The confined explosion knocked Frank Dudden against the roof while separating him from his left hand and most of his genitals. Sprays of blood from his multiple injuries blinded the ruined remains of the windows. His lungs had been crushed empty by the force of the blast. By the time Dudden managed to suck up enough breath to scream he was already too weak to do so. Instead, a pink bubble escaped from his mouth and popped while his heart pumped his blood into the upholstery.

The play wouldn’t finish for ages yet. He wasn’t really dressed to mix with a theatre crowd either, though the Tobacco Factory didn’t look all that posh. Like many cultural venues in the city a theatre had found a home in one of the many rundown commercial Victorian buildings that had once served the busy port on the river Avon. Cigarettes were now made in China, no doubt. He wondered if one day Chinese tobacco factories would turn into fashionable theatre venues.

Webster, so that’s who the play was by. He studied the poster behind the glass door. One of those ancient plays performed in modern dress, presumably to show how relevant it was to the present. Or perhaps because it saved money on the costumes? He probably would have hated it anyway. Two people stood outside, smoking, twelve feet apart, having nothing in common but their craving. He entered the lobby. The place was quiet. It had been immaculately restored and looked modern and cheerful. McLusky hated the nursery school of architecture. The man behind the reception desk barely registered him.

‘Where’s the cafe?’

‘Upstairs next to the auditorium.’

Bare brick walls, blond wood tables, medieval music. Three bar staff oversaw a practically empty room, probably waiting for the interval crush. He registered with a sigh that the only thing on draught was lager and ordered a bottle of Guinness, then corrected himself. ‘Make it two.’ He’d just remembered how small those bottles were, they got smaller too as he got older. ‘What time’s the interval?’

The barman checked his watch, pulled a face. ‘Ten minutes.’

‘Will there be a crush?’

‘Oh yes, stand well back.’

Only two of the tables were occupied, by couples talking in low voices, not noticing him. McLusky took a table as far away from the bar as possible from where he could still keep an eye on the door, and emptied the first bottle without bothering to pour it, then took more time over the second one. He was relieved to see that one of the men at the tables was also wearing jeans and he relaxed a little. Laura had been keen on the theatre, though he could only remember having gone with her twice. He had enjoyed it, but it all seemed a bit of an effort, mainly the dressing-up part. This was okay.

There was no mistaking the moment the interval started. A wave of voices and footsteps approached and poured through the door, breaking against the bar. Dr Louise Rennie was among the first. She received instant attention from the barman and signalled to McLusky that she’d get him another drink, seemingly taking his presence here for granted.

‘I didn’t get any messages.’ She added another bottle of Guinness to his collection and took a sip of her orange juice.

‘I’m sorry. I called the uni. They said they’d pass it on.’

‘I’m sure I’ll find a note in my pigeonhole tomorrow. Today’s my day off. It really doesn’t matter. It’s not a good production and I would have been embarrassed having dragged you out to see it. Were you busy catching the bench bomber?’

‘Is that really what people are calling him?’

‘It’s what they call him in the papers. Why, what do you call him?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Though I can imagine. Can you talk about it? I mean the case.’

‘Some of it.’

‘Is the new explosion, the poor woman with the powder compact, is that related? Is it the same guy who did that?’

‘I think so, though so far there’s no evidence to support that theory. It just seems unlikely that two people in the same city are planting bombs at the same time. Forensics may be able to confirm that it’s the same perpetrator but I’m pretty certain anyway.’

‘But the bombs were very different. That’s what the papers said, anyway.’

‘They were. It was a different type of explosion. The bomb was much smaller, obviously. And it didn’t have a timer, it was set off when the compact was opened.’

‘So the first one was a time bomb? That wasn’t in the papers.’

‘Keep it to yourself. I shouldn’t have told you that. We need to keep back details so we can weed out the cranks and attention seekers claiming responsibility. We’ve already had several cheerful souls on the phone.’

‘But how did the woman get hold of it? Was it her own compact that someone filled with explosives?’

McLusky hesitated. ‘That’s … one of the things I can’t tell you.’

Louise Rennie looked away over his shoulder at nothing, pondering the answer. ‘I see the implications, I think. If it wasn’t hers then … Things could get interesting.’

McLusky went through a series of helpless facial expressions that signalled, ‘Yes, you’re right, but I’m not saying anything.’

‘And the bomb was much, much smaller. Was it the same type of explosive?’

‘There’s no word yet. But what did the most damage to the victim was the tongue of flame that shot from the device. It set her face on fire.’

‘That might not have been the intention. It might just not have worked properly.’

‘That’s always possible.’ This was like still being at work, only with the addition of beer and beauty.

They both reached for their glasses and drank. ‘What are you suddenly smiling about, inspector?’

‘Well, doctor, I was thinking that this is a most peculiar topic of conversation for a date.’

Rennie sat back in her chair. ‘A date? Is that what this is?’

‘Well, no, I didn’t mean …’

‘It was meant to be a visit to the theatre, which has now turned into a drink, or in your case, three drinks.’

Why had he said that? He didn’t even like the word ‘date’. Nobody ‘dated’ in Britain. McLusky searched her face for signs of annoyance but found instead what he hoped was an ironic sternness. She wasn’t wearing her glasses but peered at him over their rims anyway.

‘Sorry, it’s not really what I meant. I was just wondering if any of the other couples at their tables are talking about bombs and mutilation.’

‘The other couples? You can obviously see us as a couple, then?’

‘Jesus, one has to choose one’s words carefully around you.’

‘I’m a pedant, inspector. Take no notice.’

McLusky knew that ‘take no notice’ without exception meant ‘please note’. A change of subject might help. ‘So, how’s the play? Rubbish, you said? Thanks for the invitation, by the way. That was quite unexpected.’ She waved it away. ‘I had a spare ticket.’

‘And you asked everyone else but no one could make it?’

‘Well, no, it wasn’t quite like that. I just thought you’re new in town, probably don’t know many people yet …’

‘That was kind of you. I’m afraid I came straight from work, I’m not dressed for the occasion.’

‘Neither am I, really. The Tobacco Factory isn’t that kind of theatre, you wear whatever you feel like.’

Rennie wore a simple grey knee-length dress, matching shoes and handbag. It reminded him of the sixties. No jewellery apart from pearl ear studs, yet she looked fit for the catwalk. Her eyes weren’t like Laura’s at all, he decided. ‘So, are you going to bring me up to speed about the play?’

‘Oh, stuff the play, you’ll never get into it now and I’m not fussed about it. I thought we could go and eat something.’

‘There’s a bistro here, I saw.’

‘It’s a bit too studenty here for me. I didn’t book anywhere but I know one or two places where we might get a table.’

He tried not to let his relief show. ‘Okay, if you’re sure about the play. I’m quite hungry, now you mention it.’

‘So am I. We’ll finish our drinks and go.’

‘Good. So the interrogation starts here. Have you always lived here?’

‘Me? God no …’

The conversation flowed easily, mainly because Rennie talked freely and happily about herself. She gave him her potted autobiography from her peripatetic childhood when the family followed her father from failed venture to failed venture, her travels, her eventual studies at Liverpool and her subsequent teaching posts. They both had a stint in Southampton in common, she teaching chemistry, he on the force.

As they left the Factory they found the rain had stopped. McLusky offered Rennie a cigarette.

‘No thanks, I’m a chemist, I know what’s in it. But you go ahead.’

He lit one for himself with a shiny silver lighter he found in a pocket of his leather jacket and didn’t remember owning. It was satisfyingly heavy. They were walking towards Rennie’s blue Toyota when his mobile rang. In a city full of strangers this could only mean bad news.

It was DS Austin. ‘At last. Your airwave isn’t turned on or something and your mobile was saying you were unavailable.’

McLusky’s mental image of his airwave radio lying at home next to the cooker made him swallow hard. ‘No signal, I guess.’

‘Your predictions are coming true. Another bomb, by the looks of it. The victim is male. Blew up inside his car.’

‘Is the victim alive?’ McLusky made an apologetic gesture to Rennie who shrugged her shoulders.

‘He was still alive when the paramedics got there but he died at the scene. It’s in Knowle West.’ Austin gave the address.

‘Hang on a second.’ He fumbled about in his pockets.

Rennie had anticipated it and handed him a folded envelope from her handbag. She watched him note down the address with a heavy, brushed-steel pen. The man had a certain style, she had noticed it before, no plastic biros or disposable lighters for him. He looked good in a leather jacket, too. The inspector probably drove a good car and owned solid, quality furniture, he seemed that kind of a man.

McLusky folded his mobile. ‘Something’s come up. I’m afraid I have to go and find a cab somewhere. I came without my car.’

‘I’ll drive you there, much quicker.’ She released the central locking then went to the back of the car and squatted down low, inspecting the tail pipe.

‘What on earth are you doing? You’re not looking for bombs, are you?’

Rennie straightened up. ‘No. Just making sure it’s clear. It’s the latest craze, it seems, blocking the exhaust pipes of cars. It was my turn a couple of days ago. Car wouldn’t start and I ended up having it towed to a garage. It took them half a day to find a rotten apple in the exhaust pipe.’

As Rennie drove off McLusky spotted a man standing alone beside the entrance of the building, watching. ‘Isn’t that …?’ Rennie drove off fast and he lost sight of the figure.

‘Isn’t that what?’

‘The … the bloke. The chap who was at the laboratory when I came up to ask your advice. I thought I just saw him by the theatre.’

‘What, Harmer? Most unlikely. I don’t think Steven even knows what goes on inside a theatre.’

‘What is he, your assistant?’

‘Yes, well, not just mine. He’s a lab technician. Am I driving you to the scene of a murder?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Another bomb? You might as well tell me, it’ll be in the paper tomorrow, save me the expense.’

‘I was going to. Yes, another explosion. That’s all I know, really. A man died.’

‘That then rather looks like a bombing campaign, doesn’t it?’

‘If it turns out to be our man again, yes.’

‘But what’s he campaigning for?’

‘That’s a good question.’

‘You haven’t received any demands, then, something else you can’t tell me?’

‘No, nothing at all.’

Rennie was driving them south, confident of where she was going, hardly referring to her sat nav. To him all this looked new, alien, yet somehow universal. A cityscape of suburbs, becoming poorer and more depressing the further they went. Even in sunshine, without sodium-lit rain, this place would look drab and dispiriting. Here and there a building site hinted at recovery, yet mainly what they drove past were drab streets full of cars that looked dumped rather than parked; a boarded-up house, a playground full of rubbish, a van without wheels.

Knowle West. McLusky recognized it instantly, though he had never been here. It was Costcutter Country, and markedly different from the other Bristol west of the river. Here problem neighbourhoods, high unemployment, failing estates and failing schools had created a ripe market for hard drugs and the crime they spawned. Gangs of children, often led by young adults, defended their imagined turf and were responsible for an impressive percentage of the crime, knifings and shootings in the city.

Rents here were lower, yet even hard-up students shunned the area, not being keen on too much reality all at once. Besides, it was too far from the university, from the clubs and the gigs. Even pubs were failing here as more and more people stayed in to drink supermarket booze and watch TV in the imaginary safety of their homes.

Judging by the number of drinkers standing outside its doors the George and Dragon was bucking the trend. The area around Frank Dudden’s car had been completely sealed off and the road junction was closed. Despite the persistent drizzle many of the neighbourhood’s residents had deserted the fantasy world of television and computer games for the arc-lit reality of death on their own streets and formed a noisy cordon beyond the police tape. Many had brought drinks, bicycles, babies and camcorders. Pictures and videos were being taken on mobile phones.

On the other side of the tape police cars, Forensics vehicles, ambulance, undertaker’s van, technicians’ cars and Denkhaus’s Land Rover were already there. Everyone had crammed their vehicles across the junction and on to a triangle of grass which they soon realized was the neighbourhood’s dog toilet, the pub’s vomit bucket and a used-needle repository.

‘Looks like you’re the last to arrive, inspector.’ There hadn’t even been time to move to first names.

‘Looks like it, doctor.’

‘So this is what policemen’s wives can expect, is it?’ She checked her watch. ‘Forty-seven minutes, not much of a night out.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. It’s not always like this, honestly. Thanks for the lift. Perhaps we could …’

‘Yes, inspector. Next time I have fifty minutes to fill I might call on you again.’

‘I look forward to it.’

But don’t hold your breath. ‘Good luck, inspector.’

Watching her drive off McLusky was assailed by a sudden feeling of loss that cut him raw across his chest. He ducked under the police tape and stood in the shadows between the police vans and lit another cigarette. This is what policemen’s wives can expect. He took a deep drag on his cigarette then walked coughing towards the arc lights at the street corner. It was all policemen’s wives’ husbands could expect.

DS Austin had spotted him and lifted a finger in greeting but McLusky steered a course towards Superintendent Denkhaus who was talking with a sharp-suited man standing close to a metal briefcase and holding aloft a black umbrella. The two were shaking hands as he got there. ‘Ah, glad you could join us at last. You might try keeping your airwave turned on if you want to head this investigation.’ He turned to the umbrella’d man. ‘This is DI McLusky, new to our troubled parish. Dr Coulthart, Home Office Pathologist.’

Coulthart was in his late fifties, wore rimless spectacles and had a suspiciously full head of dark hair. He seemed to look through McLusky. No offer to shake hands was forthcoming. Instead the pathologist gave a curt nod. ‘Inspector.’ He picked up his briefcase and turned away. ‘Good luck, Rob. I think you’ll need it.’

Denkhaus grunted at his retreating shape. Coulthart had taken his umbrella with him, leaving the superintendent standing in the incessant drizzle. He had come without his hat and was bristling with discomfort and irritation. If DCI Gaunt hadn’t been in Spain trying to assist in the arrest of that bastard DI Pearce, he wouldn’t now be standing in the sodding rain. Again. He gripped McLusky’s shoulder hard. ‘It was only a matter of time before someone got killed. This shit always escalates, by accident or design. This one may have got killed by accident but we can’t count on it.’ He released him and jerked his head towards the wreck of the car at the street corner. A large enough tent had at last been found and crime scene technicians were erecting it around the vehicle. ‘You go get a good eyeful, I’ve seen enough. It’s all yours, detective inspector.’

McLusky stood in the rain and gave the scene time to sink in. Glass and bits of fittings from the car were lying in a wide orbit. Technicians and Forensics were busy all around the area, closely watched by the press and neighbourhood. TV had arrived and bribed their way into the upstairs bedrooms of nearby houses to get a better view. Austin was talking to one of the white-suited technicians, himself still wearing overshoes and latex gloves. Uniform were everywhere.

The four doors of the victim’s car were wide open now. Having donned protective gear himself McLusky approached it from the driver’s side. Everything he saw was dark red, thoroughly sprayed with blood from the explosive dismemberment of the victim. The car’s interior felt like the inside of a giant mouth with broken teeth and a half-chewed man on its tongue. Paramedics had got some dressings on to the victim in a vain effort to stop the bleeding and had managed to get a drip into his arm before he died. The dressings were so soaked in blood it was difficult to tell them apart from the charred clothes and the stained upholstery. The smells were of blood, faeces, urine and burnt flesh mingled with the aroma of spent gunpowder. The rain drummed harder on the polypropylene sky above. He looked closely at the dead man’s grey face, smeared with his blood. The eyes were closed, the mouth wide open, showing much dental work. He knew little could be gained by this. There wasn’t much he could glean from this carnage that the finely detailed reports he would soon receive couldn’t tell him. Yet something compelled him to absorb fully the aftermath of what had occurred here. Somehow he felt more of an obligation to engage with this filthy corpse of an out-of-shape middle-aged man than he had felt towards the survivors of the first two blasts. He owed this man more than the others.

Austin had appeared behind him. He had taken one look at the carnage and since then studiously avoided the corpse. He felt guilty now, seeing what time the inspector took. But as far as he could tell, what had happened here was quite obvious.

Paramedics had crawled all over the front and back of the car, their uniforms more red than green when they finally gave up, no doubt giving Forensics a headache. They had found the shredded remains of a can of lager that had contained the device. The smell was gross. What was Liam studying so closely? ‘Booby-trapped beer can. Found anything else?’

McLusky broke off his vigil. Failure is what he had seen. The picture of the dead man had imprinted itself on his retina. Perhaps they should allow the press in, allow the TV cameras close and make them transmit this on the news in fine detail. Could the bomber really have wanted this? Would the bomber look at this and think he had done well? Would he be shocked? Or was he too weird, too far gone to care? Perhaps it was a stupid question. People had been blowing each other up quite happily ever since explosives were invented. ‘Has Denkhaus named a crime scene coordinator?’

‘Yeah, me.’

‘Right. No, I didn’t see anything special. Just brewing up a good head of resentment. So, tell me about it.’

‘Victim is a Frank Dudden, a small trader at St Nick’s Market, sells T-shirts with your own designs printed on them, that kind of thing. Got thrown out of the pub because he could hardly stand up straight. We have an eyewitness for what happened next. The old boy who lives in … number fourteen, across there.’ He indicated the little grey house across the street where every window was lit up. ‘A Mr Belling. He keeps a diary of all the nuisance in his street so he can complain to the council about it. He heard shouting and came to the window. Saw the whole thing. ‘

‘Right, let’s talk to him.’

‘He’s already given us a statement. He saw the can of — ’

‘I want to hear it myself.’ He marched off and Austin followed in his wake.

They found the front door ajar. McLusky announced himself. ‘Hello, police. Can we come in?’

A man appeared at the end of the corridor. ‘Oh yes, in here, if you will.’

They stepped into the brightly lit hall and squeezed past an electric bicycle to get to the back. The witness was at home to visitors in his kitchen. Mr Belling was a small wiry man in his late sixties. He wore a thin steel-grey sweater over a pink shirt and thin grey tie. His wrists were encircled by two wristwatches, one on each side.

PC Purkis was enjoying a mug of tea at the kitchen table and Mr Belling was glad of the policewoman’s company. The thing had been quite a surprise. He also hadn’t enjoyed this much attention since he broke his collarbone five years ago. And here were more people coming.

McLusky showed his ID and introduced Austin. They gratefully accepted the offer of refreshments.

Belling fussed over the tea for the newcomers and when everyone was settled around the table McLusky invited him to repeat what he had seen. Belling made himself comfortable on his chair. His was the one with the cushion. McLusky suspected that Mr Belling spent many hours sitting on that cushion, writing letters to the council in blue biro.

Belling took a sip of tea first. ‘I had of course spotted the tin of lager on top of the car earlier but I had assumed it to be empty. These days people chuck their rubbish wherever they like. For instance, you are only supposed to put your bin bags out on a Tuesday but sure enough every week the people in number twenty …’

McLusky drank his tea and let the man get there in his own time. It was dry and warm in here.

‘It was the shouting that made me look out this time. I was upstairs so I could clearly see him standing outside the pub, shouting. Well, I say standing but he was swaying. You could tell he was drunk, he had that leery kind of voice they get. Then he urinated right there outside the pub, between the cars, that’s usually a good indication of drunkenness, I find. Then off he went, nearly fell over twice before he made it to the car. I couldn’t read the number plate, even with my binoculars, because of the angle. But I was going to call the police right away if he drove off, because he was obviously dangerously over the limit. He picked up the tin from the roof and I thought he was going to throw it away, which would have been typical of his kind, but he took it with him when he got in. I was waiting for him to start the engine but instead the car just exploded. Just like that. Bang. Except it didn’t sound at all like it does on the radio, it sounded much nastier. All the windows blew out, stuff all over the place. It rattled my window and set off every damn car alarm in the neighbourhood. I called for an ambulance straight away, of course.’

McLusky thought he knew the answer but asked the question anyway. ‘What did you do after that?’

‘Well, I went back to the window, of course, to see what would happen next.’

‘You didn’t go outside to see if you could offer any assistance?’

‘Go outside? A bomb had just gone off! I was hardly going to go where I could be blown up. Everyone in the street had to have heard it, some of them would go, no need for me to go outside.’

‘Quite. Let’s go back a little. You said you had noticed the can of beer on the car roof earlier. How much earlier?’

‘Oh, now let me have a look in my journal. I keep a journal, you know, of all the happenings around here. You’d be surprised what goes on. It’s upstairs, I’ll fetch it down.’ Belling disappeared.

The three police officers exchanged glances. Austin nodded ironically. ‘Very organized.’

PC Purkis agreed in a low voice. ‘Everything in this house is very proper and in its rightful place.’

McLusky looked around the kitchen. Everything was. Immaculately straight, spotlessly clean, nightmarishly tidy and neon-lit. He already knew the old man would tell him to within two decimal points what happened when. CCTV had nothing on Mr Belling.

He returned with a brightly coloured child’s exercise book. ‘Here, you see, I did note it down. I came to the window because number seventeen were having a fresh row, shouting at the top of their lungs as usual, but the tin wasn’t there then. Then I came back to the window because the motorized skateboard was coming through again with that awful two-stroke noise.’

McLusky perked up. ‘Motorized skateboard?’

‘Yes, trailing blue smoke too, as if there wasn’t enough pollution in this city, now they have to fit engines to their skateboards.’

‘Do you think you could describe the skateboarder for us, Mr Belling?’

Mr Belling could. ‘One of those chaps who dress like a child even though they are clearly over thirty. Spiky hair, you’d think they’d wear a helmet, wouldn’t you, but I suspect that would spoil the image. He does have gloves and knee protectors. A red scarf and sunglasses, even when there is no sun, of course. Yes. Now … 19.04 p.m., that’s when I noticed the tin. And the explosion occurred at 20.15 exactly.’

It was exactly midnight when McLusky left Albany Road by taxi. The rain had stopped but the snakes of traffic hadn’t. Hordes of young people, wearing surprisingly little considering the weather, were pressing through the narrow streets and alleys of the Old Town, shouting, some staggering, some drinking from cans and bottles. He spotted two teenage boys pissing side by side against a shop window, talking happily while the urine sloshed around their trainers. Flying insults, laughter, angry argument, excited howls. Twice the cab stopped for drunks swaying across the street, the driver muttering under his breath but keeping his opinions to himself, for which McLusky was grateful.

Reams of statements had been taken during house-to-house inquiries and from the landlord and patrons of the George and Dragon. McLusky had spoken to the landlord himself. The man was visibly shaken by the death of Frank Dudden, who had been a regular. He had thrown him out that night ‘for his own good’ as he had believed. Now he felt that somehow he had sent him to his death and felt responsible. He had neither heard nor seen a motorized skateboarder, ‘not today, not ever’. Not that kind of pub, he had assured him.

Belling’s description matched exactly those of the residents of Berkeley Square and Charlotte Street who had been annoyed by a skateboarder prior to the first bomb in Brandon Hill. Could it be a coincidence? McLusky didn’t like coincidences.

Only two other residents in the immediate area remembered the skateboarder but neither had seen or heard him recently. The proliferation of underpowered scooters howling up and down the streets probably meant that the sound was too unexceptional to be noticed around there.

A description had now been circulated force-wide and he was sure they would pick him up eventually. Was he the bomber? He’d certainly like a chance to ask him.

If the skateboarder was connected to the bombs then he wanted to be caught — why else make yourself conspicuous? — and McLusky would oblige. And when he caught up with the bastard he’d better be wearing his knee-pads.