John Harvey: A Darker Shade of Blue

Riding on the back of a popular hysteria about the rising rate of crime they had helped to create, the tabloid press rejoiced in seeing their circulations soar, inviting their readers to text or email in support of the campaign Free Silver Now!

‘If this government,’ proclaimed a Tory peer in the Lords, ‘and this Home Secretary, have not totally lost touch with the people they are supposed to represent, they should act immediately and ensure that the sentence in this case be made to better reflect the nation’s mood.’

Malkin settled into the back of the public gallery in time for the verdict: after due deliberation, and having reconsidered both his previously untarnished reputation and his unstinting work for charity, the judge reduced Alan Silver’s sentence to eighteen months. Taking into account the time he had spent on remand awaiting trial, this meant Silver had little more than two months to serve.

Channel Five were rumoured to have offered him a six-figure contract to host a weekly chat show; a long-forgotten recording of ‘Mama Liked the Roses’, a sentimental country ballad initially made popular by Elvis Presley, had been reissued and was currently number seven in the charts.

As he was led out to the waiting Securicor van, Alan Silver, grey hair trimmed short and wearing his sixty-three years well, was, none too surprisingly, smiling.

Malkin found Michaels’ father staring into the water of the canal, smoking a cigarette.

‘You still think justice should be allowed to take its course?’ Malkin said.

‘Do I fuck!’

Earlier that morning, Will Grayson and his four-year-old son, Jake, had been building a snowman at the back of the house: black stones for the eyes, a carrot for a nose, one of Will’s old caps, the one he’d worn when he was on the police bowling team, snug on the snowman’s head.

Inside, Will could see his wife, Lorraine, through the kitchen window, moving back and forth behind the glass. Pancakes, he wouldn’t have minded betting. Lorraine liked to make pancakes for breakfast those mornings he didn’t have to go in to work; Lorraine well into her eighth month and on maternity leave, the size of her such that their second kid must be almost ready to pop. Baby might come early, the midwife had said.

As Will crouched down and added a few finishing touches to their snowman, Jake sneaked round behind him and caught him with a snowball from close range. Will barely heard the phone through the boy’s shrieks of laughter; didn’t react until he saw Lorraine waving through the window, her knuckles banging on the pane.

Will touched her belly gently with the palm of his hand as he passed. Good luck.

‘Hello?’ he said, picking up the phone. ‘This is Grayson.’

The change in his face told Lorraine all she needed to know and quickly she set to making a flask of coffee; a morning like this, more snow forecast, he would need something to keep out the cold.

Will laced up his boots, pulled on a fleece, took a weatherproof coat from the cupboard beneath the stairs; the first pancake was ready and he ate it with a smudge of maple syrup, licking his fingers before lifting his son into the air and swinging him round, kissing him, then setting him down.

Lorraine leaned forward and hugged him at the door. ‘Be careful when you’re driving home. In case it freezes over.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He kissed her eyes and mouth. ‘And call me if anything, you know, happens.’

She laughed. ‘Go get the bad guys, okay?’

When the car failed to start first time, Will cursed, fearing the worst, but then the engine caught and turned and he was on his way, snaking tyre tracks through a film of fallen snow.

Some thirty minutes and two wrong turnings later, he pulled over into a farm gateway and unfolded the map. Out there in the middle of the fens, a day like this, everything looked the damned same.

It was another ten minutes before he finally arrived, wheels cracking the ice, and slid to a halt behind Helen Walker’s blue VW, last in line behind the three police vehicles parked alongside the fen. There was an ambulance further back, closer to the road.

Helen Walker: how had she got there before him?

‘Afternoon, Will,’ she called sarcastically, leaning over the scaffolding on the upper level of the unfinished house. ‘Good of you to join us.’

Will shot her a finger and began making his way up the ladder.

He and Helen had worked together the best part of three years now, Will, as detective inspector, enjoying the higher rank, but, most of the time, that wasn’t how it worked. It was more as if they were partners, sometimes one would lead, sometimes the other.

‘How’s Lorraine?’ Helen’s first question when he stepped off on to the boards.

‘She’s fine.’

‘The baby?’

‘Kicking for England.’

She laughed at the grin on his face.

‘What have we got?’ Will asked.

Helen stepped aside.

The dead man lay on his back, one arm flung out, the other close to his side, legs splayed. Eyes opened wide. A dark hole at the centre of his forehead. The blood that had pooled out from the exit wound seemed to have frozen fast.

‘Someone found him like this?’

‘Kids. Playing around.’

Will crouched low then stood up straight. ‘We know who he is?’

‘Arthur Fraser.’

‘How do we know that?’

‘Wallet. Inside pocket.’

‘Not robbery then?’

‘Not robbery.’

‘Any idea what he was doing here?’

‘Checking on his new house, apparently. The architect’s name’s on the board below. I gave him a call. He was with a client the other side of Cambridge.’ Helen took a quick look at her watch. ‘Should be here, another thirty minutes or so.’

Will turned back towards the body. ‘He come from round here? Fraser?’

‘Not really. Address the other side of Coventry.’

‘What’s he doing having a house built here?’

‘I asked the architect that. Making a new start, apparently.’

‘Not any more.’

Malkin and Earl Michaels sat at one of a cluster of wooden tables out front of a canal-side pub. None of the other tables was occupied. The snow had held off but there was a wind, driving in from the north-west, though neither man seemed bothered by the cold. Both were drinking blended Scotch, doubles; Malkin nursing his second, Michaels on his third or fourth.

‘How much,’ Michaels asked, ‘always assuming I wanted to go ahead, how much is this going to cost?’

When Malkin told him, he had to ask a second time.

‘That friggin’ much?’

‘That much.’

‘Then you can forget it.’

‘Okay.’ Downing the rest of his drink in one, Malkin got to his feet.

‘No. Hey, hey. Wait a minute. Wait up.’

‘Look,’ Malkin said, ‘no way I want to push you where you don’t want to go.’

‘Come on, it’s not that. You know it’s not that. Nobody wants that

… Nobody wants it more than me. That bastard. I’d like to get hold of that fucking shotgun of his and let him have it myself.’

‘And end up inside doing fifteen to life.’

‘I know, I know.’ Michaels shook his head. He was a heavy man and the weight sat ill upon him, his body lumpen, his face jowly and red.

Malkin sat back down.

‘That sort of money,’ Michaels said. ‘I’d be lucky to earn that in a year. A good year at that.’

Malkin shrugged. ‘You want a job well done…’

‘Listen.’ Leaning in, Michaels took hold of Malkin’s sleeve. ‘I could go down some pub in the Meadows, ask around. Time it takes to have a good shit, there’d be someone willing to do it for a couple of hundred quid.’

‘Yes,’ Malkin said. ‘And ten days after that the police would have him banged up inside and he’d give you up first chance he got. Listen to him, you’d been the one talked him into it, forced him more or less, did everything except pull the trigger.’