Falling More Slowly

Chapter Eight

McLusky had overruled Austin’s decision to set up an incident room near the scene of the murder. Austin had tried to argue but McLusky was adamant. ‘This won’t be the last. The devices are going off at such close intervals we’ll still be stuck out here in Knowle West when the next one blows.’

Secretly Austin had been relieved. There would have been very few facilities out there and setting up at Albany Road was always far easier and quicker. And closer to the canteen.

McLusky had been impressed by the speed with which things had materialized — tables, chairs, phones, terminals, printers, monitors, civilian IT staff, fax and kettle. It couldn’t really be called ‘well rehearsed’. The murder rate in the city was so high rehearsal was unnecessary. It was now simply routine.

This morning, as McLusky looked at the civilians and officers talking on phones or clacking away on grey, battered keyboards, he felt panic beginning to bubble on the floor of his stomach. But why? What was different this time? Precisely nothing apart from the fact that the victim had died. It would be no easier or harder getting a lead. Strikingly different was the effect the bomb had had on the media. The press was making much of beer, booze and bomb alliteration. The unusual packaging of the bombs had attracted the national press too. Everyday items like powder compacts and cans of lager were not supposed to explode. There was much speculation about the choice of item. The beer can was surely aimed at drunks and the powder compact at the vain. Yet the more intelligent writers did spot what McLusky had said from the start, that anyone might have picked the items up and become a victim. That didn’t mean of course that there was no connection in the mind of the maniac behind the bombings.

He noticed several of the computer operators sit up straighter which meant Superintendent Denkhaus had once more appeared in the open door behind him. A desk facing away from the door had been a bad choice. The super appeared at his elbow and without comment added another national paper to the pile already there. He managed to see Deadly Drink in the headline before Denkhaus leant a fleshy hand on it and bent close to him. ‘I’m giving a press conference at half eleven. Have you got any pearls for me that I can throw before the lions or are you sending me out there naked?’

A moment of metaphorical bafflement made McLusky hesitant. ‘Ehm, no. I mean, nothing new since we last spoke, super. We have the skateboarder near two of the incidents but I’d rather you didn’t use him to protect your modesty. So to speak. Just … following your metaphor, sir. I don’t want him to know we are looking for him. He can easily unspike his hair and float the skateboard down the river.’

Denkhaus shrugged heavily. ‘On the other hand someone must know who he is. If your friend or neighbour rode a skateboard with an engine on it you would know about it. We could be looking at an early arrest …’

‘I doubt it, sir. The man’s a loner. He makes bombs, so he’s unlikely to sit on the pub quiz team. He’s too busy hating someone, something. His neighbours might have no idea he’s got a motorized skateboard. I imagine he takes it in the back of his car. He drives to a car park, puts on the gear and gets on the skateboard. Then off he goes. The same in reverse. If he has a garage his neighbours might never know.’

‘Someone will have seen him take the thing out and start it up.’

‘Sure. It’s what I’m hoping but I don’t want to spook him. As long as he’s using the skateboard he’s conspicuous. I’ll find him.’

Denkhaus didn’t like the way McLusky said, ‘I’ll find him.’ Police work was team work. He knew the McLusky type. They thought they’d invented detective work, thought that it was all down to them and that they could bend the rules. Cocky guys full of ‘I’ when the going was good. When it all came to nothing it was back to the collective ‘we’. I succeed, we fail. ‘Do you really think he could be our man?’

‘He’s all we’ve got at the moment.’

‘You were quite sure about letting Colin Keale go. You don’t want to pull him in again, apply a bit more pressure?’

‘Not until we’ve exhausted everything else. Not until I’m getting desperate.’

‘Don’t worry, McLusky, I’ll tell you when you’re getting desperate.’ Denkhaus straightened up and squinted at the window. Rain clouds hung low over the city. ‘I hate going out there fielding questions without having anything positive to feed them. There’s no progress on the muggings and no progress on the bomber. All the press are ever looking for is incompetence or negligence. They’re forever trying to blame us for what’s happening out there. In fact what gives the media the biggest hard-on is resignations, hounding someone until they are forced to resign. Makes them feel their crummy little lives are worth living. I’m already getting my ears chewed from upstairs about this. They’re afraid the bomber might cause a panic. If people start panicking then we really aren’t doing our job properly. What’s happened to the spirit of the blitz? All it takes is one little …’

The phone on the desk rang. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ He answered it. It was Lynn Tiery, the superintendent’s secretary. She had the Assistant Chief Constable’s office on the line for Superintendent Denkhaus. ‘It’s the ACC for you.’

Denkhaus suppressed a groan. ‘I’ll take it in my office. Keep me informed. About every detail. Whether there’s progress or not.’

When Denkhaus was out of earshot the civilian computer operator at the next desk looked up from the lists on his screen. ‘No pressure then.’

‘Not yet. Is it me or is it bloody freezing in here?’

A cheerful chorus answered his question. ‘It’s bloody freezing in here.’

‘Can we do anything about that?’

‘Nope. The heating shuts down automatically on this day every year irrespective of the actual temperature. Centrally managed. It would probably take an Act of Parliament to get it changed.’

‘Marvellous.’ If he had to be cold he’d rather be cold out there where he could do something useful. Footage from the car park where the compact was left was still being sifted. A check on all identified vehicles was being done. It would take time to cross-check if any of the registered owners had previous and those would end up on the top of the list to be interviewed about their movements. Endless man-hours. Of course it had to be done but McLusky was almost certain it was a waste of time. Unfortunately he had nothing rational to base this conviction on so could do little about it. What he could do was get out of here.

Damp humanity crowded the lobby. An entire minibus-load of day-trippers were reporting all their possessions stolen, including their bus. A couple of pale, thin-haired teenage boys were being processed, the evidence of their thieving in a clear plastic bag on the desk: CDs and DVDs. They wore nothing more than jeans, T-shirts and trainers and looked like they’d swum there. The rain appeared to do little to dampen the public’s enthusiasm for mayhem. Theft, shoplifting, burglary and naturally all crime connected to drugs continued unabated. Domestic violence rose slightly. Only the figures for indecent exposure were significantly depressed by cold, wet weather.

McLusky turned on the windscreen wipers of the Polo. They were useless. It was even colder in the car. The lack of heating meant he had to drive with the window half open to stop the windscreen fogging up completely. He kept wiping a patch so he could peer through. The route to Forthbank Industrial Park in the east forced him to battle through some of the worst traffic snarls in the city. Wedged between two articulated lorries in his underpowered car and barely able to see through the spray kicked up by other vehicles he darkly pondered his transport problems. When the sign to the industrial park appeared out of the gloom he gratefully pulled off the busy A road and through the open gates. Among a monkey puzzle of signposts McLusky found what he was looking for.

The place looked like an enormous upturned mushroom punnet, appearing to have practically no windows, and advertised itself with three-foot comic-strip lettering above the entrance: Blackrock Sports Park. He was about to lock his car when he changed his mind, checked that the glove box was empty and left the Polo unlocked.

In the lobby he showed his ID to the man behind the counter. The receptionist looked about fourteen. ‘Are you looking for someone?’

‘Could be. This is a skateboard arena, right?’

‘Skateboarding and rock climbing.’

‘Do you ever get people with motorized skateboards here?’

The kid laughed. ‘No fear. Total no-no. Anyway, they’re crap.’

Perhaps he had better talk to a grown-up. ‘I see. Who runs this place?’

‘Spike.’

‘Spike who?’

‘I don’t know, just Spike.’ His tone suggested this was an unreasonable question.

‘Is he in? Can I talk to him?’

‘Sure, he’s on the course. Through those doors and then the next. You can’t miss him, no one else wears yellow after all.’

‘Why’s that?’ McLusky suspected some arcane rule of skateboarding.

‘Do you wear yellow much, inspector?’

He thought the kid might have a point. By the next set of double doors a sign instructed him to take off his street shoes before entering the echoing hall and he complied, carrying his shoes and feeling slightly ridiculous. The arena was an artificial landscape of ramps and pipes and rails, flights of steps and curves. It was a big place. He wouldn’t have called it busy but it still surprised him how many people had time and money to skate around here on a weekday.

A spiky-haired man in what looked like a yellow romper suit made from shiny synthetics was chatting to a diminutive girl. When he spotted the unlikely-looking intruder he came rolling over, flipping up his board as he stopped in an automatic gesture. ‘Help you?’

‘McLusky, CID. I’ve already been told by your receptionist, no motorized skateboards here.’

‘Certainly not. Why d’you ask? Someone making a nuisance of themselves?’

The place echoed to the sound of rubber wheels and grinding boards and the rain drumming on the giant roof. ‘I’m looking for someone who rides one, he could be a witness. Spiked hair, skinny, same age as you perhaps, mid-to-late thirties. Wears denims, scarf, shades. He rides a skateboard with a little two-stroke engine and wire control.’

‘Yup. It’s for idiots. A gimmick. You won’t find anyone using them here, that’s for sure.’

‘What, because of the noise or the pollution?’

‘Nah, that’s not the point. It’s like bicycles and motorbikes, right? It just don’t mix. And you can’t really do a thing with ’em.’

‘So what do people do in here?’

‘Well, as you can see, we’ve got the lot. You don’t skate, I take it?’

‘You’re very astute.’

‘You’d be surprised. We get all sorts here. Well, there’s basically two types of skating, there’s street skating and ramp skating. In street skating you could for instance jump up on a bus-stop seat or suchlike and do grinds and board slides, tail grinds and stuff. In half-pipe skating you go up and down the ramp and do tricks on the ledge. Over here we’ve got a couple of half-pipes, a jump ramp …’

The man got into the swing of it and McLusky let him carry on without really taking in much. Spike seemed to talk in a different language and each sentence contained at least three words that appeared to be English but which McLusky had never heard before.

At the opposite end of the hall a skater coasted quietly towards the exit. He didn’t like the look of that man who had just come in. He had seen the suit show some kind of ID and somehow he didn’t look like a health-and-safety guy. It might have nothing to do with him but he’d make himself scarce anyway. As he slipped through the doors while the copper’s back was turned he thought that perhaps it was just as well they made you wear helmets in here. Spiky hair was too conspicuous. He’d change it, slick it back from now on. Not bothering to shower and change, he just cleared the things from the locker and went straight to his van. He stowed his gear in the back, next to his brand new motorized board, still in its box. Electric, rechargeable, much quieter and even faster than the two-stroke one. And environmentally much more sound, mustn’t forget that, of course. Apparently it had a range big enough to get you right across the city. He saw himself skating silently, magically, across town. Stealthboard. But first it needed to be charged. Then he could use it tomorrow night.

The Polo was still there. Ah well, give it time. Somehow the musty interior managed to feel colder than the outside. What McLusky had learned from Spike seemed to fit with what he himself thought of the bomber. A motorized skateboard was regarded as uncool and according to Spike you ‘couldn’t do a thing with it’. No tricks. Whoever the skater was he wouldn’t be hanging out with kids at the half-pipes in the park. Motorized skateboards were for nerds and dweebs. For loners. Spike had in fact suggested that anyone using one might be more interested in fiddling with small engines than skating. Someone with engineering skills.

While he fought his way back towards the centre through lunchtime traffic the rain began to fall more slowly and then abruptly stopped as the sun broke through the clouds. After weeks of relentless rain and monochrome dreariness the brightness of the light seemed Mediterranean in its intensity. Colour returned to the city and patches of blue sky were reflected in the long kerbside puddles. All this light made McLusky hungry.

The Albany Road canteen served a type of food specially designed to minimize the chances of police officers enjoying their pensions for too long. The chip-fat and wrinkly-sausage smells that pervaded the neon-lit basement cavern reminded him of school dinners, as did the hubbub of voices albeit an octave or two lower now. Standing in the queue behind a young constable with unusual BO he surreptitiously surveyed the room, conscious that as the new kid on the block some diners would be checking him over. He spotted DI Fairfield sitting by herself and decided to join her. Things had been so hectic there had never been time to get really acquainted.

When it was his turn there was little left to choose from in the beige-and-brown section under the heat lamps. Something called ‘cauliflower bake’ looked the least lethal. As he carried his food on a tray in the direction of Kat Fairfield the DI looked up. Spotting him she drained her glass of water and, leaving her tray on the table, made for the exit on a tortuous route specially chosen to avoid him.

Someone waving attracted his attention. It was Austin, also sitting by himself in front of a mug of stewed canteen coffee. The DS shrugged his shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t take it to heart. I’m certain DI Fairfield is a great admirer of yours, she’s just shy and retiring.’

‘I’m sure.’ He drove his fork through the dried crust of industrial cheddar into the anaemic concoction beneath and faltered. ‘Is today a special occasion or is the food always crap?’

Austin waggled his head. ‘It’s a bit late, the best stuff disappears quickly. The food’s not so bad as long as you strictly avoid anything with “bake” in its name.’

‘Ah.’ McLusky put his fork down and pushed his plate aside. ‘Thanks for the warning. I take it nothing’s come up to get us any further in the Frank Dudden murder?’

‘Not really. Did you go out to the skating park?’

‘Yup, nothing. I was given the impression that no one would admit to owning a motorized board anyway, if they ever came there at all, and the description didn’t seem to ring a bell.’

‘Well, after what the old guy said about the skateboarder I had a look at the map. Around the harbour basin, the Floating Harbour and out Ashton way are tarmac paths he could use. There’s also the cycle paths. One cycle track runs from here all the way to Bath along the river. He could be running around on that.’

‘Do a lot of people use that path?’

‘No one with any sense. We had loads of problems along that path. People got kicked off their bikes left right and centre. They’d rob them, take their bikes and then ride off on them.’

‘Why don’t they close the paths then?’

‘I wish they would. Unfortunately you can get a lottery grant for making cycle paths but not for getting rid of them. It’s anarchy down there. It’s where St Paul’s kids take their stolen mopeds to ride and the glue-sniffers hang out there. Closer to the access points you get the prozzies using it if it isn’t raining. We had people grow cannabis on the verges. Last year one guy tested his home-made jet-engine down there. Strapped it to an old children’s go-cart. Hadn’t thought of fitting brakes. He fell off and the jet went on and set fire to everything it passed. It’s pretty much nutter country so our skateboarder should fit right in. We have stepped up patrols.’

‘I’ll check the place out.’

‘Don’t go alone after dark is my firm advice. Oh yes, I was told to remind you about Frank Dudden’s autopsy.’

‘What time is that?’

Austin checked his watch. ‘In about fifteen minutes, actually.’

‘Then what are you sitting around here for? Get going, DS Austin.’

Austin’s face fell. ‘Me? I thought you … Oh, right. Okay.’ He took a gulp of his coffee and rushed off, clearly indignant.

McLusky reached for Austin’s abandoned mug. If police work were a popularity contest he’d never get anything done. He sipped the coffee. It tasted appalling and he knew it would give him heartburn. As a kind of penance he drained the mug anyway.

Five hours later the heartburn was still with him as he wrestled with paperwork at his desk. Whatever had happened to ‘freeing front-line officers from unnecessary red tape’?

Not even a nano-second passed from the perfunctory knock to his office door opening. Denkhaus, back from the press conference, filled the frame.

‘Where the hell is that report on the written-off Skoda? The ACC is asking. And as if I didn’t have enough to contend with, Phil Warren needled me about that very escapade at the press conference.’

‘Who?’

‘Reporter on the Post. Never mind that, where’s the damn report? I thought I’d asked for that days ago!’

‘And I went straight to work on it but I kept getting distracted by the noise of explosions.’

‘Don’t get distracted, McLusky. If I ask for something I expect DIs to deliver.’

McLusky nodded his head at the computer screen in front of him. ‘I’m actually working on it right now. Nearly done.’

For a moment it seemed as though the superintendent was going to walk around the desk to take a look at it. Had he done so he’d have found that McLusky was frowning at a fish-tank screensaver with the bubbling sound turned off.

But Denkhaus just grunted. So far he was singularly unimpressed by the new DI. He sniffed the air. ‘Has someone been smoking in here? You realize the entire station is a no-smoking zone?’

McLusky made a show of sniffing and nodded. ‘This office always smells of smoke. My predecessor must have smoked heavily.’

‘That he did.’

‘The smell got into the furnishings.’

Denkhaus seemed satisfied with the explanation. He gave a curt nod with his chin towards the computer. ‘Get on with it. I’ll be in my office. Waiting.’ He closed the door heavily behind him.

McLusky breathed a sigh of relief when he heard Denkhaus in the corridor bark at his next victim.

Around four o’clock Austin returned from witnessing the autopsy. As it turned out it had been his first and he hadn’t enjoyed it much. He had been berated by Dr Coulthard for being late. The pathologist had been expecting a DI and showed his displeasure by treating Austin as though he suspected the DS had suffered brain damage on the way to the morgue. Even though the viewing area was separated from the theatre by a glass wall and he had been spared the smell of the mutilated corpse, Austin had felt his stomach churn. The pathologist dug up no surprises. He pronounced that in life Dudden had been a slightly overweight middle-aged man with a troubled liver and straining kidneys who, had he not picked up a booby-trapped beer can, might have had another ten years’ drinking in him before his own internal time bomb put an end to it. Austin reported to McLusky in short sentences then quickly disappeared to the incident room.

To McLusky it only confirmed his belief that going to autopsies was a waste of time and put one in a bad mood for the rest of the day. ‘I wonder who else I can piss off on this shift.’ He pushed the other bumf aside and pulled his keyboard towards him. How I destroyed a good-as-new Skoda fifteen minutes after it was issued to me and how it was unavoidable by Detective Inspector Liam McLusky…

When after one hour and three drafts he eventually brought the sober report to Denkhaus’s office Lynn Tiery, his steel-eyed secretary, knew all about it.

‘Ah yes, the super’s been waiting for this.’ She put it on a pile of papers on her desk and went back to clacking on her keyboard.

‘You’d better take it in to him then.’

She smiled up at him without slowing her typing. ‘No rush, the super went home an hour ago.’

While McLusky had been buried under his fast-accumulating paperwork the return of the sun had worked a transformation on the city. The late sunshine softened the architecture. People looked brighter, happier, moving more slowly. As he walked along Albany Road he caught a glimpse of the old harbour between two buildings. A tall ship was moored down there and the old harbour ferry chugged across the brightly mirrored water. The footbridge looked like a spindly limb in black silhouette against the sun. In this light the sprawl of the city felt mysterious to him, so large, full of the unknown, full of new people, the promise of a new life. For a brief moment he was visited by a feeling he had last experienced as he first arrived by train in Southampton. Then he had looked across the busy harbour and thought the place must contain everything a man could possibly want from life. Now he snatched at the feeling, wanting to own it again, but it escaped him like the tail end of a dream. He blinked it away and walked on. It was of course all an illusion, there was nothing mysterious about cities. With all those people climbing over each other like so many ants the only mystery was why the pavements were not stained with blood more often.

A few turns left and right brought him to Candlewick Lane. He stopped opposite the Green Man. It was a CID pub and he should go and make himself known, drink, socialize, talk shop. Not tonight. There was plenty of time for that, preferably with Austin in tow and when he was in an indestructibly good mood. Tonight all he wanted was a quiet pint. Or perhaps more than one. He turned down several steep flights of uneven medieval steps between narrow timber-frame houses, getting into a rhythm and letting his feet make all the choices. It brought him close to the harbour on Ropemakers, a surprisingly quiet one-way street with cars parked on either side. Just as he scanned its low brick buildings the sun dipped behind clouds and the lights of a pub sprang to life. The illuminated pub sign proclaimed this to be the Quiet Lady, above the picture of a woman in a yellow dress carrying her own head under her arm. Inside, it was an unreconstructed drinking hole, just the way McLusky liked it.

‘Have you got a garden or somewhere I can smoke?’

The landlord set a carefully poured pint of Murphy’s before him. ‘Upstairs. The room marked Private. You can kill yourself there.’

‘Ta.’

Everything about the room was small. A couple of logs smouldered in a tiny grate, rickety tables for two stood in front of three slits of windows and a skinny bench opposite the fire completed the furnishings. The room was empty. Just what the inspector had ordered. Sitting by the window closest to the fire he drank and smoked. Below him lay the warren of the Old Town and beyond that the harbour basin. The sun soon set over the wasteland on the opposite shore, briefly throwing disused loading cranes and a few surviving structures into silhouette against the sky.

Somewhere out there the next episode was being planned. Somewhere out there a man, surely a man, was dribbling gunpowder into a harmless object, turning it lethal. Out there his next victim walked unawares. Unless …

Footsteps outside, then the door opened. The invasion force consisted of just one woman in her forties. She was carrying a drink in a tall glass and lit a long cigarette already dangling from her lips. Her hair looked an unlikely shade of brown and was held in a tight twist at the back of her head. She acknowledged him with a nod and sat facing the window at the next but one table, sucking greedily at her cigarette. ‘Can’t smoke at work, can’t smoke on the bus, can’t smoke in the bloody bar. This country is beginning to piss me off.’ She spoke not to him but at the window in a hoarse, aggrieved voice.

McLusky nodded and lit another cigarette himself.

After a minute’s silence she turned to him. ‘What about the bloody bombs then? Did you hear the copper on the telly? We’re all supposed to go about our business and stay calm but vigilant. They’ll ask us to dig for victory next.’ She snorted smoke through her nostrils.

That sounded like Superintendent Denkhaus had been rolling out the spirit-of-the-blitz platitudes. But what else could he have said to them? He nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, I wouldn’t go around picking up things off the street. Gold compact, can of beer or whatever. God knows what’ll blow up next.’

‘It’s human nature though, isn’t it, you find something interesting, you wouldn’t just leave it. You don’t look at a can of beer and think, That could blow my hand off, do you?’

‘Perhaps people should from now on.’ Of course a lot depended on where you found the thing. Unless …

She took a long gulp from her glass. ‘Now tell me this, though. What’s the motive? Who’s behind it? What kind of person does such a thing?’

He shrugged. ‘A coward. Also someone quite mad. It doesn’t look political so I guess it’s personal. Psychotic bastard would be my guess.’

‘D’you think they’ll get him? Any time soon?’

‘I doubt it.’ He realized that he very much meant it. ‘He’ll be difficult to find. He might be living quite a normal life otherwise. People compartmentalize their minds. When he’s not making bombs he’s probably Mr Boring of Sleepy Street and kind to birds.’

McLusky didn’t really feel like talking. When the table between them was taken he took the opportunity to leave the room. He drank another pint downstairs where the place had filled up, mainly with men drinking in groups or by themselves. He wondered whether the name of the pub kept most women away.

By the time he made it back to the Albany Road car park he reckoned he had worked off a sufficient amount of alcohol to drive home. Via another drink at the Barge Inn.

* * *

Chris Reed pushed his bicycle along the sparsely lit street in Redland. It was an excellent district for his purpose. It was middle class but not too posh. In some middle-class areas all the 4?4s were in the garages and only the second cars left on the streets. But the tarted-up terraces in this street had no garages and the agricultural machinery was parked where he could get at it.

Earlier he had visited the covered market at closing time and had stocked up on all the fruit they were going to throw away at the end of the day. What a waste. Just because they were bruised or a bit past it they were going to chuck it, as if there weren’t enough poor people in this town who would appreciate it. He had come away with a good haul, apples and oranges mainly but also an overripe pineapple. He kept that and a couple of apples for eating, the rest he was using for his new double-whammy. Every 4?4 got the exhaust blocked with fruit and the windscreen splattered with mud. The leaflet — If the off-roader won’t go to the country then the country will come to the off-roader — went under the windscreen. First they would have to read his leaflet, clean the mud off, then they’d find that their engine wouldn’t start. They’d get the message. And the windscreens weren’t easy to clean either. This wasn’t just any old mud. He got it from a special place near the Floating Harbour. It was dark, sticky and slimy from decades of spilled oil from a refuelling point for boats and barges. The reservoir on his bicycle was nearly empty but there really wasn’t any point in using the mud sparingly. The mud had to represent a real inconvenience for the drivers, not a symbolic one. He’d get some more of the stuff some night soon. He didn’t need any help. Sod Vicky. You couldn’t rely on others. He’d work by himself from now on.

A black Mercedes four-wheel-drive gleamed. It was parked in the pool of light from a streetlamp, which wasn’t good but the car was so shiny it was practically screaming out for the treatment. Putting the bike on its side-stand he took a half-rotten orange from the left pannier and rammed it expertly up the car’s exhaust. The second pannier held two containers made from sawn-off petrol cans. The mud really was nearly finished yet he managed to scrape together one more ladleful. The splat across the windscreen was also expertly executed, without getting a single drop on his clothes. As he reached for the leaflet in his jacket the door of the nearest house opened. From it a man came charging towards him, swinging a walking stick like a weapon. ‘What the fuck are you doing to my car?’

Chris jumped on his bike and pedalled off furiously while the man gave chase. Christ, he looked quite fit, if he caught up he’d be in trouble. The road climbed uphill here and it was difficult to get any speed up on this boneshaker, another skip-find. At last he was pulling away from his panting pursuer. ‘Just delivering an important message!’ He shouted it across his shoulder when he was sure he was getting away. The man issued a stream of insults that echoed along the street, then he hurled the walking stick after him. It fell short.

When he reached the safety of the next street corner and realized he had lost his pursuer Chris laughed. It was the laughter of relief. He’d have to be more careful from now on, or his one-man campaign could easily come to a premature end.

McLusky left the Polo unlocked at the first parking space he found and walked briskly down to the Barge Inn. Another couple of drinks would see the day out in agreeable enough fashion. It was Rebecca’s night off. The pub was busy but he found a stool at the corner of the bar and was soon sipping a pint of Guinness served by the bald landlord. He found it difficult not to think about his work. It was his case and he was responsible. There would be another bomb, therefore he was already responsible for the next victim because it was up to him to stop the bombs. But you couldn’t work twenty-four hours a day, even though it felt like you were. Especially at the very beginning of a murder investigation there was pressure to work non-stop for the first forty-eight hours which is when a result was most likely. Of course most murders were committed by the victim’s nearest and dearest or by rival criminals, so you had a pretty good idea of who to look for to begin with. Not here, not this time.

He suddenly felt ravenous and ordered a double portion of chips from the landlord. It arrived together with another pint and a hefty bottle of ketchup. He was warming to this pub. As he glugged ketchup over his chips a group of men detached themselves from the bar and headed for the exit. Through the gap they had left he spotted Rebecca. He could tell it was her day off since she was wearing her paint-spattered multi-coloured art student gear. She sat very close to a boy of about nineteen or twenty, their legs entwined, hands on each other’s thighs while they talked. When the girl looked up her eyes met McLusky’s. She acknowledged him with a brief smile and a nod. Then she bent to the boy’s ear and spoke a few words. The boy laughed.

‘That’s a lot of ketchup, my friend.’ The landlord blocked his view. ‘Might have to start charging extra.’

McLusky looked down. His chips had drowned in a red sea of sauce. He suddenly felt tired and no longer hungry. While the landlord collected glasses behind him he picked up his pint, hid it under his jacket and stole out of the front door. He would drink it at his place and bring the glass back some time. As he crossed Northmoor Street furtling for his keys a sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him look right. Nothing. Yet his mind filled in the blanks and furnished him with an after-image of a figure standing by the corner, now vanished. He wanted to run to the corner but was hampered by the pint he was carrying. By the time he had speed-walked there and looked down the road there was nothing suspicious to see, a few cars, a few people walking. Nobody he recognized.