Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

‘Quite. I expect he did. What about people licensed to handle gunpowder?’

‘We’re still checking those too. There’s not many in our area. The licence conditions were tightened up several times recently, Prevention of Terrorism Act etc. Did you know you only need a lightning conductor if you are storing more than 500 kilograms of the stuff?’

McLusky frowned at the traffic. ‘Fascinating, Jane. And what a shame, otherwise all we’d do is look for a suspicious lightning conductor and make a quick arrest. Are we going to make the airport on time?’

‘Yeah, no sweat. I’m using a shortcut.’ Austin swung the car through a couple of roundabouts and dived into the suburbs where he could avoid much of the traffic that was building up again on the more obvious routes. One day soon they would experience gridlock in the centre again. Last summer it had only taken a few simultaneous incidents and the city had ground to a complete halt.

He was keen to discuss whatever little progress they had made, the angles they had already covered, while he skilfully negotiated the network of streets and lanes that would spit them out near the airport. The DI on the back seat however did little more than grunt and for the most part stared past him out at the narrow lanes as though their final doom lurked just around the next corner.

New security arrangements at the airport meant they could park nowhere near the entrances but it didn’t matter, they had arrived in time, thanks to Austin’s shortcuts. McLusky never had much faith in shortcuts and was impressed. They hadn’t got stuck in traffic once and that was a rare experience. Still, being driven was a nightmare. ‘You’ve got to show me your shortcut on the map.’

‘I’ll photocopy you a map.’ Austin checked his watch. ‘He’ll land in five minutes.’

Colin Keale was going to do no such thing. At this very moment he was looking out from his window seat at the duvet of cloud obscuring his view of the Mediterranean. His departure from Dalaman had been delayed by two hours. But that didn’t worry Keale. What worried him was whether or not he was going to get the contents of his holdall through British customs and what would happen to him if he didn’t.

‘Didn’t you think to check before we set off?’

Austin rolled his eyes. ‘I was going to but I got distracted by the whisky thing. Airport police should have let us know really, they’re the ones tracking him. Are we going back to Albany or are we waiting?’

‘God no, we’ll wait.’ Shortcut or not, under no circumstances did he want to do the journey three more times. ‘And since it was you who got distracted by the whisky thing you can distract me with a cappuccino thing.’

They installed themselves in one of the cafes in the arrivals lounge, but not before McLusky had colourfully expressed his displeasure at not having been informed of the delay to the airport police sergeant supposedly in charge of picking up Keale.

When Colin Keale at last arrived he simply couldn’t believe it. How had they known? They hadn’t even looked inside his bag, just scooped him up in customs and frog-marched him out through a side door where these two CID clowns were waiting, and he knew CID clowns when he saw them.

McLusky put his ID away. ‘You know why we are here?’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Keale looked tired and deflated. Apart from his nose, which had caught too much sun, he looked pale. He hadn’t gone to Turkey to sunbathe, that seemed obvious.

McLusky was surprised but never looked a gift horse in the mouth until he had got it home. ‘In that case, Colin Keale, I’m arresting you for causing explosions, attempted murder, causing actual bodily harm …’

‘Wa-wa-wait!’

He didn’t let himself be interrupted and finished the caution: ‘… something which you later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’

The man looked incredulous. ‘No, I fucking don’t.’

‘Well, we can talk about it down the station, Mr Keale.’

Which is what they had done now for the last hour in this depressingly neutral interview room at Albany Road. Spread out on the table stood part of the contents of Colin Keale’s holdall, the reason, he had assumed, for his arrest. There were several plastic nets and paper bags full of what had at first looked to McLusky like onions and shrivelled potatoes, and a carrier bag stuffed with packets of plant seeds, some of them in little brown envelopes with Turkish handwriting on them. And a litre bottle of whisky. It wasn’t Glenfiddich. None of this looked like a major breakthrough to the inspector.

‘I suppose this contains Glenmorangie too?’ He produced the thermos flask from a carrier but thought he already knew the answer.

‘Where the hell did you get … did you break into my locker at work?’ Keale was brimming with righteous anger but struggled to keep it in check, in view of the contraband on show on the table in front of him. So he had been stupid once and built some pipe bombs. They’d been glorified fire crackers really, just something to piss people off with. Now they were talking about blowing people up. And he hadn’t even been in the country. He had made one mistake, one error of judgement, and from here to eternity they were going to arrest him every time a car misfired in the city. He hadn’t been well, had gone through a period of mental instability, you might say. He was better now but of course to the police it had to be him if some bastard started blowing up people. He hadn’t really wanted to hurt anyone, he just wanted to make them look stupid. What a fucking mistake that had been. ‘Yes, yes, it’s Glenmorangie. I suppose you told my employers and lost me my job as well now? That’s great. That’s dandy. It wasn’t easy getting any sort of job with my history. And you’ve no idea how cold it is in those bloody warehouses in winter. A couple of tots get me through the night shift.’

Austin had brought in a photocopy of a leaflet produced by the Plant Health and Seed Inspectorate. McLusky read it. He was getting bored with all this. They’d been over Keale’s movements on the day before the explosion countless times. He cited his neighbour as an alibi and McLusky had little doubt that it would check out. The man was just a plant nut. The things on the table between them were bulbs and corms, he wasn’t sure where the difference lay, and there were enough seeds in this one carrier bag alone to keep a garden centre going. He hadn’t brought in anything illegal, he swore it, just far too much, he admitted it. Everything was so cheap there. He wasn’t doing any harm, was he?

McLusky checked his watch. He was already over an hour late, the play had started a while ago and he had no idea if Dr Rennie had got the messages he had left for her.

And now, since he had whisked Keale away before his bags had been checked at customs, he had more or less helped the nutter smuggle these things into the country. He didn’t feel much sympathy for Keale. The man was a creased, slightly greasy-looking type. Perhaps it was the plane journey that had shrivelled him or maybe it was finding himself back inside an interview room at Albany. He was just another slightly strange, unhappy man who liked growing stuff in a basement. What did it matter? This was all a waste of time.

‘Right, you can go. But don’t leave town, as they say, we might want to talk to you again.’

Keale crossed his arms in front of his chest. ‘What about my bulbs and seeds though?’

‘None of these are …’ McLusky picked up some of the shrivelled-looking things. ‘None of these are dangerous? Or endangered and what have you?’

‘No, as I told you, I just went a bit overboard.’

‘Well, then pack them up and get out of here.’