Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

‘So you do think Maxine Bendick was the intended victim?’

‘I was hoping. Until I saw the footage we just looked at.’

‘I see what you mean.’

‘Good. I don’t think anyone else does yet. If someone really was after Maxine Bendick then we shouldn’t have much trouble finding him. They must connect somewhere. If you have made an enemy who goes to this kind of trouble to get at you then he’ll stick out a mile. Ex-boyfriends, husbands if any, cranky relatives, anyone who asked her out and was turned down since the beginning of time needs to be checked out. Anyone she could have made an enemy of at work or members of the public, all still have to be followed up, of course.’

‘It’s what we’re doing. But if she found the powder compact by the steps …’ Austin puffed up his cheeks as he shared the inspector’s vision.

‘Jane, if she found the thing then we’re in deep, deep trouble. The words shit and creek spring to mind. If she found it then it wasn’t aimed at her at all. It was aimed at To Whom It May Concern. Anyone could have picked it up, the couple who walked past, for instance.’

‘But a powder compact, surely it was aimed at a woman.’

‘It was golden, shiny. Any normal child would pick up something like that, anyone, probably. All that glitters. It means that whoever planted it has no connection to the victims at all. The motive lies elsewhere. God help us, Jane, we might as well run up the white flag now and call in a psychiatrist. Because we haven’t got the first idea of where to look.’

‘One place I did look was the DVLA.’

‘Oh yeah, Three Veg. Got anywhere?’

‘There’s no record. Timothy Daws, van or no van, never had a driver’s licence or anything registered to him, now or ever.’

‘That makes a change. I had him down for dizzy driver, uninsured and untaxed. Still, two out of three isn’t bad. Any joy at the DSS?’

‘He’s on Incapacity for a bad back, so he doesn’t have to come in and sign on.’

‘Right, we’ll pull him in when we can but he’s way down the list now. Another bomb in the park and I’d have been out there like a shot in a helicopter looking for white vans, but this powder compact doesn’t fit. It’s near the park but not in it. It’s in the wrong place and the wrong kind of object if you want to revenge yourself on the parks department for being dismissed. If you wanted to get back at them you would, I don’t know, booby-trap a flower pot or something.’

‘Forensics might come up with something.’

‘Oh yeah? If the pickings are as rich as last time we’ll be no further. There was no DNA found at all on the debris of the last one, which is hardly surprising after the explosion, the fire and the hosing down it got. And even if there had been it would do us no good unless his DNA was already on file. This is a new customer. This will turn out to be everyone’s favourite nightmare. Like the guy in the States who shot people at petrol stations from the comfort of his car, I forget his name. This is a bastard who doesn’t mind who he hurts. And this won’t be the last explosion we’ll hear in the city either. This, as they say, is just the beginning. He gets a kick out of this and he’ll need a new fix soon. And what are we going to do about it?’

‘Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say we have a nutter out there who just likes to blow up people and he isn’t fussed who it is he hurts.’

‘Yes?’

‘Then why give Maxine Bendick police protection?’

‘Because, Jane, I’ve been known to be wrong.’

Dave Hands slammed the front door to his tiny, first-floor council flat with some force and clattered down the stairs. He hadn’t planned on going out but the bastard leccy had just run out and he could hardly be expected to sit in the dark without the telly all night. So it was off to the convenience store to charge the meter key. He was forever on ‘emergency’ which constantly ran out, usually just before the kettle boiled. Unlike this bloody rain. There seemed to be an endless supply of that.

He crossed the glistening road and walked the few yards past the darkened shops to the battered door of the convenience store. The shop was empty of customers. The hard, suspicious eyes of the shopkeeper followed his every move. He hated this place. Everything in here was crap, crap food, shit fags, tins of crap. Everything in here was a rip-off. Rip-off electricity, rip-off booze. The price of bog-roll was fantastic. You had to be rich to buy this shit. Rich and stupid.

He was supposed to stay at home and save his money, pay off his ridiculous overdraft. Sod it, he had been good all week, now that he was out anyway he would go for a beer and make it worth his while. No point getting rained on just for the bloody leccy, that would just depress the shit out of him.

Even the cash machine in this place was a rip-off. It charged you for each withdrawal. Better to take out next week’s money all in one go, it was cheaper in the long term. Extra tenner for the pub. Fuck it, make it twenty, it needn’t mean he would spend it all. He folded the notes into his card wallet, all apart from the twenty for the pub which he shoved into his jeans pocket. He felt better already.

Once outside he breathed in deeply. You needed to take a break from being good sometimes or life became unbearably dull. He crossed the empty road. The rain came down heavily now. A couple of pints up the road then.

That’s when he saw it. Just there on the pavement, at the edge of a slimy concrete bus shelter, lay a fat wallet. A man’s leather wallet, in the rain. Now that would be fantastic if there was actually money in it. There was certainly something in it, it was positively bulging. His steps quickened. Money, he hadn’t found any money in the street since he was a kid. It looked new. And expensive. He bent down and picked it up.

‘Oi! Fuckwit!’ A large black shadow jumped from behind the shelter, another appeared from behind a parked van. ‘Leave it! Your phone, your money! Now !’

They wore helmets, visors halfway down. Shouting. One pushed him towards the other. Two scooters appeared from the nearest corner.

It was them . No way were they going to get his money. ‘Fuck off!’ He kicked back at the one who grabbed him from behind. The big guy in front punched him straight in the face with a gloved fist before he could even get his own up. He heard the crunch as his nose broke. Blood spurted. Two, three hard jabs to his right kidney from the bastard behind nearly made his knees give way. He heard himself scream in pain and lashed out at the guy in front who grabbed him by the throat with a vicious grip. He couldn’t breathe. The helmet smashed into his face. Once, twice, three times. After the third impact he fell backwards, spurting an arc of blood. When he hit the edge of the bus shelter the back of his head exploded in pain as the impact cracked his skull. And everything went dark.

* * *

DI Kat Fairfield hated being driven nearly as much as McLusky did but she would reluctantly concede that Jack Sorbie’s skills behind the wheel matched her own. She actually felt quite safe when the DS drove, even at speed. At the moment she had him just cruise about the edges of the city. A leaden sky made it darker than it should have been at this time of the evening. Headlights reflected in wet streets, kerbside puddles sent up neon-coloured spray. What, she might ask, was sweet about April showers? This was the dampest, coldest spring she could remember, hardly better than the winter that had preceded it. This was what a volcanic winter would be like, endless dreary rain from an obsidian sky. She could really do without it, thanks very much. Denkhaus’s new protege McLusky she could also do without. She had no intention of staying a lowly DI forever, so the last thing she needed was the superintendent’s new Golden Wonder. It was a shame DCI Gaunt was away. She felt that she’d been getting somewhere with him. She didn’t care that no one seemed to like Gaunt. You didn’t have to like people to work well with them, sometimes it was easier when you didn’t, it made the relationship simpler. But Denkhaus was a difficult man, with mood swings of menopausal monumentality. Somehow she found it difficult to get on the right side of him.