Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

Austin dug up some professional courtesy as they left by the front door. ‘Well, thank you for your cooperation, Mr Cole.’

‘That’s all right.’ Relief at their departure made Cole generous.

McLusky turned round and towered over him. ‘Just out of interest, how much rent are you paying Daws?’

‘What?’ Cole’s eyes widened helplessly.

The words rabbit and headlight came to the inspector’s mind. ‘Well? How much? Quickly now.’

‘Ehm … fif … fifty pounds?’

‘Fif-fifty pounds.’ He nodded gravely while the young man tried not to squirm under his gaze. ‘Okay, bye for now.’

Cole stood in the door, breathing rapidly, watching them walk to the car. He had to move out, they were bound to come and search the place properly after this. Might as well start packing now. Of course he couldn’t leave until Three Veg came back or he’d be in deep shit with him. He had to keep looking after the place though he wasn’t sure who was scarier, Three Veg with his explosive temper or the weird inspector and his unblinking eyes.

‘You don’t really think he planted the bench bomb, do you? Anyway he couldn’t have, he’s on holiday.’ Colin Keale’s upstairs neighbour was a fleshy forty-year-old man with sparse hair and a moist voice. He reluctantly handed over the spare key Keale had left with him so he could water his house plants. ‘He would hardly have left me the key to his flat if he had a bomb factory down there.’

‘I’m sure you’re right.’ McLusky took the key off him and thought that he probably meant it.

‘Unless you think I’m involved in the bomb plot too, inspector.’ He sounded hopeful, relishing the thought. ‘I know all about Colin’s bit of silliness with the pipe bombs but he wasn’t very well at the time. I assure you he’s completely normal now. He’d never do anything like it again.’

‘We just need to eliminate him from our inquiries, that’s all.’

Colin Keale lived in a small basement flat on Jacob’s Wells Road, not five minutes’ walk from the site of the explosion. If he did plant the bomb then it would seem the height of laziness to do it within hearing distance. Or perhaps it gave the act an added frisson. But surely the ultimate satisfaction must be to watch it happen.

Austin barred the neighbour’s way on the steps. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to stay up here.’

‘What, are you afraid I might interfere with the evidence, or something?’

Austin ignored him and followed the inspector down the cast-iron steps into the basement forecourt.

A fig tree in a half-barrel sent fleshy leaves up to the sun and other plants in pots thrived inexplicably in this deeply shadowed sinkhole. McLusky gave the half-barrel an exploratory kick. It felt and sounded solid enough. Next he flicked open the letter box and peered through. The narrow hall looked dark and crowded with jackets hanging from the wall. There was nothing on the floor as far as he could make out. He rang the bell and immediately afterwards inserted the key and opened the front door.

The place smelled faintly of chip shop curry sauce. To the right a door led into a small sitting room; electric heater in a blocked-up fireplace, sofa, stereo, TV and potted plants, lots of them. Everything was tidy. The kitchen was a narrow galley made even darker than necessary by the fact that several house plants crowded around the tiny window. The bathroom was a windowless and plantless hole but the bedroom was a jungle. There was a narrow bed and a couple of chests of drawers. Plants stood on every surface, a big palm grew in a large pot on the carpetless floor. All this vegetation stretched yearning shoots towards the ungenerous basement window. McLusky ran a latex-gloved finger across the front of a bookshelf and harvested a worm of dust. Next he ran a thumb over a polished yucca spike — not a speck of dust. There were books, mainly on the care of house plants. He turned to Austin. ‘Go get the neighbour, will you, whatsisname …?’

‘Tilley.’

Mr Tilley appeared pleased to be asked at last. ‘Satisfied, inspector? No bomb factory here.’

‘What does Colin Keale do, fork-lift driver?’

Austin confirmed it. ‘That’s what it says in his file.’

He turned to Tilley. ‘Where?’

‘Supermarket depot. He does mainly night shifts. It suits him, he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, just gets orders over the radio and picks stuff up and dumps it on the ramp. That’s his job, that’s all he does. That and growing house plants. Look.’ He indicated a low table near the window. It held a plastic propagator full of tiny pots and trays. Above it hung a grow lamp. ‘He propagates potted plants. Not pot plants. He’s as straight as you and me, inspector.’

Speak for yourself, thought McLusky. ‘When’s he due back?’ He knew already but wanted to hear it from Tilley.

‘This weekend.’

‘Who’d he go with?’ He continued to open drawers without really searching the place.

‘By himself. He’s not overly sociable but he’s no longer the nutter he was a couple of years ago. Colin takes his medication and he stays off the booze, mainly.’

‘Mainly?’

‘Everyone needs a drink from time to time, you know?’

Too right. He squeezed into the kitchen, opened cupboards, cutlery drawer, oven. This didn’t ring any alarm bells at all, he was wasting his time. ‘And what does Colin Keale drink when he does need a drink?’

‘Scotch, I think. I saw a bottle once, but it’s no longer a regular thing, really.’

‘Any particular brand?’

‘I couldn’t say. Glensomething. There’s so many of them. What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Nothing, just idle speculation. Thank you, Mr Tilley.’ He handed him the key. ‘Can we leave you to lock up?’

Back on the pavement he shrugged. ‘Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there but it doesn’t feel right.’

Austin didn’t like the implication. He had been taught to mistrust his feelings and go with the facts. He hoped McLusky wasn’t talking about instinct. Next thing you knew he’d be saying he’d got a hunch. Hunches didn’t go down well in twenty-first-century policing. ‘Could be under the floorboards.’

‘I know, but it ain’t. Maybe it’s the potted plants. Anyone who blows up stuff is obsessed with something, a grudge, an ideology, an idea, a fantasy of some kind. But not Care and Propagation of House Plants, Volume 2, surely? Send someone round the supermarket depot, see if he has a locker there where stuff could be hidden. Though I doubt it very much.’

‘Okay. But we’ll still pick him up when he gets back?’

‘Oh yes. The moment he steps off the plane, Jane.’

Maxine Bendick dashed through the drizzle to her Mini, fumbled with her seatbelt, started the engine and checked her watch. She had twelve minutes to get across to Park Street for her fitness training. It was an idiotic rush to squeeze the lesson into her lunch break at the best of times but when, as it had today, something came up just before she was due to leave, like a client having a lengthy rant about his council tax bill, not that it had anything to do with her, then she would be late for sure. It was only a half-hour slot anyway but the only one that had been available and nothing was going to stop her. The insane traffic might, of course. She felt vaguely guilty for driving such a short distance — from the ‘council services access point’ where she worked to the car park behind the Council House — but she would never manage it in time on foot lugging her gear. Getting from her reserved parking space to the Council House car park wasn’t the real problem either, she was getting good at that. Only finding a space when she got there could sometimes be tricky, even if there weren’t bombs going off. It was a week since the bomb blast. She hoped the police had finished examining the area or it would take her even longer to get to the gym.