Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

‘On second thoughts, this could be a wind-up … did you see them drive it or did it get here on the back of a flatbed truck?’

Fish and chips from Pellegrino’s. They ate sitting in the car. The heater didn’t work but right now McLusky was quite happy just to sit out of the rain in the vinegary fug rising from their paper parcels. A traffic warden knocked on the steamed-up window. McLusky cranked it down. It took some effort.

She shook her head at them. ‘Sorry to disrupt your meal but you can’t stop here, gentlemen.’

McLusky fished with greasy fingers for his ID and held it aloft for the woman to inspect. ‘We’re under cover, please move along.’

The warden shrugged, then took a last glance at the graffiti’d bonnet before moving on. ‘Of course you are.’

McLusky stuck his head out and called after her. ‘You blew our cover!’

While following Austin’s directions to the Royal Infirmary he wondered how soon he would be able to drive there in his sleep. Every CID officer in every city could sleepwalk to A amp;E and the mortuary, it was part of the job. He cruised around for a parking space. How could the National Health Service have a funding crisis? The parking fees alone should take care of it. He squeezed the little Polo on to the end of a row reserved for staff and abandoned it, two wheels buried in spiky shrubbery. ‘Sorry about that. Get out my side.’

‘Are you sure we should be doing this?’ Austin levered himself across the gear stick and out the driver’s side.

‘Yeah, right, if it gets towed away I’ll cry.’

‘Not that, I mean if whatsisname, Kelper, is in charge shouldn’t we await orders from on high?’

‘Bollocks to that. You don’t think they’ll actually do any investigating, do you? They’ll throw their weight around for a few hours and get waited on hand and foot. When they’re satisfied that Al Qaeda hasn’t taken to blowing up park benches in an effort to undermine British morale they’ll disappear again. No, we’ll carry on as normal. Let’s ask at reception here.’

He hated hospitals. Never mind the smell, never mind the lousy food or MRSA superbugs; never mind his unhappy memories of the weeks spent mending after two suspects had reversed over him. It was more than that: McLusky hated hospitals because he felt depression oozing from the very fabric of the buildings. He knew that the cloying, stifling mood would hang around in his clothes and hair like a miasma of hopelessness for hours afterwards. He simply couldn’t believe that good things ever happened here. Post mortems he avoided for the same reason. He’d yet to learn anything at a post mortem he couldn’t read in a report at his desk or ask over the phone without having to try and shake off the reek of death afterwards. Someone had to attend of course but who said it had to be him? Once a dead body had been removed from the crime scene he was happy to leave it to the scientists and grave diggers.

The boy’s bed was by the window in a room with two other male patients who were either asleep, unconscious or dead, it was hard to tell. Joel Kerswill’s mother was there, on a hard chair at the bedside. It was clear she had cried recently and since cheered up again at the excellent prognosis. The curtain separating the Kerswills from the bed next to them was drawn but the front curtain was open.

The boy was perhaps fifteen or sixteen. He was sitting propped up against the big hospital cushions with a fierce expression of disapproval on his pale face. His right eye was covered with a white dressing. There were scratches and pock marks on his cheek and forehead where flying splinters had hit, all scabbing over now.

IDs at the ready. ‘I’m Inspector McLusky, this is DS Austin.’

Mrs Kerswill was in her mid-thirties. She wore a grey and blue track suit and trainers. Her dark hair had been subjected to a utilitarian cut that she imagined allowed her to forget about it. She clutched car keys and mobile in one hand and a packet of cigarettes and lighter in the other. ‘He could have been killed! It’s a miracle he hasn’t been killed! He could have lost an eye, or both. My son could be blind now, d’you realize that? Just from walking along minding his own business. First London, then Glasgow, now here. I mean, London, fair enough, but you’d never expect them to do it here, would you? Not in a park either. Do you have a lead yet? Do you know who did this to him?’

‘The inquiry is well under way.’ Platitudes. He turned to the son. What was his name again? ‘How are you feeling, son?’

‘I’m not your son. It hurts and I want to go home, okay?’

‘Joel! No need to be rude to the man.’ She turned an apologetic face to McLusky. ‘They want to keep him in until tomorrow. As a precaution, they said.’

‘Joel, do you feel up to answering a few questions?’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘Well, for instance, did you notice anyone near the place just before the explosion?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Did you notice anyone near the shelter just before the bomb went off?’

‘I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t pay any attention, though. Didn’t expect there to be a bomb, did I?’

‘And you were walking past? In which direction?’ Joel’s injuries seemed to be on the right side so he presumed the boy had been walking along the path towards town.

Joel Kerswill confirmed it. ‘I was walking towards Park Street.’

‘Why were you there?’

‘To look at it. I’d just got back from the Parks Department. I went for an interview.’

‘For …’

‘Apprenticeship. Gardening. Working in the nurseries and that. At Blaise Castle.’

‘Did you get in?’ Austin asked.

‘Don’t know yet. I think I deserve to though.’ Joel’s antagonism seemed to melt a little.

‘Because of what happened?’ McLusky asked.

‘Yeah, don’t you think? I nearly died there. Well, I could have, if I’d sat down for a bit close to where the bomb was. I’d be well dead if I’d sat down. I don’t think they should give it to someone else, it wouldn’t be fair.’

‘I should think so, too. But to come back to the moments before the explosion. You said you didn’t see anyone. Was anyone running? Riding a bicycle?’

‘Not that I noticed. There was some guy on a motorized skateboard who overtook me? Maybe a minute before? But I didn’t see him near that pavilion thing that blew up. Unless he chucked a hand grenade or something.’

‘Okay. We’ll leave it there then but we might need to talk to you again if anything new turns up. Someone will come and take a written statement for you to sign but perhaps later at home, when you’re feeling better.’

‘I feel all right, I could go home now.’

‘He wants to play on his computer.’ Mrs Kerswill smiled and was rewarded with an embarrassed scowl by her son. ‘His father walked out on us, perhaps the useless sod will get in touch if he reads about this in the paper. A photographer took Joel’s picture for the Post .’ Her son’s scowl deepened. Why did she have to tell everyone? ‘He owes us a fortune in maintenance. And Child Support, in case you were about to ask, are bloody useless. If you ever come across him you can give him a message from me. Right where it hurts.’

McLusky promised to keep them informed and left. Just before they gained the corridor Austin nudged his arm and nodded in the direction of the nearest bed. The middle-aged patient in it, propped up in a sitting position, was staring straight ahead, oblivious, under a sign warning Nil by mouth . His skin was a cardboard shade of grey.

Once in the corridor McLusky pointed back at the room. ‘Wasn’t that …?’

‘Mr Spranger.’

‘I didn’t recognize him without his bulldozer.’