Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

Austin’s brow furrowed. ‘Three veg?’

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

‘What did he get fired for?’

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

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

‘All the time.’

‘Skiving.’

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

‘Smoking in the greenhouses.’

‘ Borrowing power tools …’

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

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

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

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

‘End of September.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Still waiting.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Innis Cole.’

‘You live here?’

‘Yes.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Three?’

‘Maybe.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Think so, yeah.’

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

‘Yeah.’

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