“Go
on,” said Harkness, resisting the urge to prompt, to interpret too soon, to
skew the narrative his way.
“Slip
on infra-reds. Grab silenced SMG, all quiet like. Greased it special. Full
clip, one in the spout. Ready. Hatin’ noisy stupid pissin’ pukin’ drunks.
Threat to realm. If he takes me out, what happens to bridge an’ major trunk
road? Lines o’ commun’cation an’ that, eh?
“Want
him to go away. Don’t happen. He’s dancin’ on the parapet, wavin’ his stupid
arms, shoutin’ and bawlin’ an’ weepin’ like a girl. ‘Come an’ fuckin’ face me,
runt. You freaks. All o’ you wankers. Am right ‘ere.’ Tha’s what he shouts. Anyhow,
need to tell police ‘bout this. This mess under my bridge. ‘Fore foxes get all
o’ him.”
“About
what, Mickey?”
“Had
to kill ‘im. Keepin’ me awake. Disturbin’ peace. Danger to motorists an’
pedestrians on major trunk route. Seen idiots on bridge before. Prancin’ on
parapet. Wastin’ time. Police talkin’ ‘em down. Not this one. Dangerous nutter.
Had ‘im in sights, took the shot. Semi-auto. One burst o’ three into the chest.
Would o’ won me a goldfish. Down he comes like his strings was cut. Screamin’
like a woman then crashes through my tarp like a fat side o’ beef then all
quiet.
“Had
to decamp. Sharpish. Move to bus shelter. Pendin’ repairs to tarp. But couldn’t
go back today. Had to think. Now here I am. Confessin’. Ready to do my time.
Her Maj’sty’s pleasure again. Winter’s comin’, an’ all.”
Harkness
took a deep breath despite the stench. The stench couldn’t be ignored. It told
a story of filth, decay and a slowly poisoned mind. Mickey wanted to be
believed. Perhaps he even believed it all himself. He glanced sideways. Slowey
had drawn parallel lines between two separate but apparently identical accounts
in his notebook. Mickey could at least tell the same story twice.
“You’re
a brave man, Mickey. A lot of men in your shoes would just hide from the truth,
but not you.”
“All
‘bout honour wi’ me, see. Ain’t got a pot to piss in but got me honour.”
“That
you do. Tell me, Mickey, what time did all this happen?”
“Ain’t
had a watch for years, youth. After dark, coupl’ hours ‘fore you saw me in the
bus shelter. Mebbe.”
“And
where have you spent the last 24 hours or so?”
“Anywhere
but there. West Common. High Street Bridge. About. Here for an hour ‘til your
pal let me in.”
“What
kind of weapon did you use?”
“Heckler
& Koch MP5, SD series. You know. Silenced. Compact. Accurate. ”
“And
where would you get one of those, Mickey? Souvenir?”
“No,
no. Not British Army issue, them.” He raised a finger to his lips. “Got it on eBay.”
“And
where’s this gun now? Same place as your computer?”
“Gun’s
in the Brayford. Don’t need a ‘puter. I know people. People who know people.”
“Are
those glasses much use for shooting, Mickey? What prescription are you on at
the optician’s?”
“Dunno.”
Mickey stared hard with wide open eyes through his scuffed and bleary lenses.
“Use iron sight. Old school. Shoot fine.”
“Need
another coffee, Mickey?” asked Harkness, nodding vigorously and standing.
“S’pose.”
“Let’s
all have a coffee.” Harkness looked at Slowey at dipped his head towards the
door. “I’ll borrow Ken here to help me carry ‘em.”
Harkness
closed the interview room door tightly behind them and motioned Slowey into the
deserted town enquiry office.
“Thoughts?”
said Harkness, rubbing at the fingerprint smears on the glass exterior door
with his shirt sleeve.
“You
mean beyond sleeping in a bed tonight? I should be intrigued, excited, all that
stuff. But I’m mostly dreading it.”
“Dreading
what?”
“What
we find under that bridge. Complications.”
“Believes
it, doesn’t he? Some of it, anyway.”
“Well
a fantasist isn’t exactly a liar. Must have got his inspiration somewhere.”
“We
need to bottom this out, even if it’s total bollocks. Here’s the plan then. You
nick him for murder and get him booked in.”
“They’ll
just laugh at me and tell me to piss off.”
“I’m
sure you can talk them round. If you’re quick, you’ll catch Dawson and he’s
game for a laugh. Besides, you can insinuate with a clear conscience that
Mickey’s confessed to murdering Dale Murphy. Who, don’t forget, is our
outstanding victim stroke suspect. And you’ll be helping Mickey.”
“How’s
that?”
“If
ever a man needed three square a day, shower facilities and a change of
clothes, that’s Mickey. That’s probably why he’s here. Murder beats shoplifting
as a way of getting a bit of subsidised accommodation.”
“What
will you be doing while I’m perjuring myself?”
“I’m
going to acquire a search bag, a dragon light and a biddable probationer or
two. Then you and I can go and ruin these suits on the bypass.”
The
night swallowed up the van’s diesel clatter. Harkness gave up tinkering with
the van’s ventilation system and cranked open a window to find that the air
outside tasted burnt as if laden with gunpowder. The pubs had either closed or
were half empty with no door staff in sight. The odd forlorn drunk swayed
homewards, lacking anyone to drink or dance or screw or fight with now that the
holiday was over and the working world was swimming back into focus.
On
Burton Road, nice people lay awake beneath whispering plane trees and well
maintained mock Tudor facias, minds roving into the night where rattling
diesels scattered their reckless noise, foxes prowled and - perhaps but who
knows where - arsonists lurked. The tower blocks of the estate behind were hazy
in the murk, lozenges of light drifting upwards.
Harkness
jolted the van onto the pavement where the housing petered out and Burton Road spanned the four lane city bypass before disappearing into the woods and fields
beyond. One hundred feet below, the bypass descended through a gouged-out valley
towards the flood plain of the Witham.
“Welcome
to the glamorous world of CID.” Harkness killed the engine and turned to peer
through the mesh separating him and Slowey from their two passengers.
It
was like a ‘before and after’ picture from an all too honest recruitment
campaign. Slouching on the bench at the back of the crew compartment was
Newell, a name Harkness recognised from dozens of sloppy handover files over
the years. His gut and shirt tails bulged from beneath the stab vest that might
have fitted once. Perched eagerly on the jump seat nearest the sliding door,
Aspull was the very model of short back-and-sides keenness, polished, ironed
and groomed. The night-turn sergeant had been happy to lose the knowing old
lag and the unknowing probationer for an hour or two.
“Happy
to help, Sarge,” said Aspull, seemingly without irony. “Could be interesting.”
Newell
shrugged.
“You’re
the fittest and most expendable,” said Harkness, motioning to Aspull, “so you
can shimmy down the embankment with us. If Mr Newell would kindly guard the
scene from above…”
“Roger
wilco,” muttered Newell, appearing comfortable with the prospect of sitting in
a van for an hour or two.
The
four men decamped. Harkness ripped off his tie, stuffed it in a pocket and
rolled up his sleeves, Slowey following suit.
“You
got a torch, son?” said Harkness, hefting the bulbous dragon light from the
van’s cage. Aspull tapped the outsized maglite suspended from his belt. Slowey
hefted the search bag over his shoulder.
Slowey
led them to the point where the ground on either side of the bridge descended
sharply away towards the bypass. On either side of the bridge, the road was
bordered by a wide pavement and a thick steel armco which doubled as railing
and crash barrier and ran the length of the bridge to sink into the concrete at
either end. On the southern side nearest the van, a rough dirt trail led into
the undergrowth and down into rustling shadow.
Harkness
led the way down the dirt trail. Within a few seconds, the ivy and nettles
thronging the path had reached waist height and he was grateful he had the
powerful torch to pick out tree roots underfoot and jagged twigs at his eye
level. Swinging the light to his left showed him where the thick bulwark of the
bridge’s eastern side moored it fast in the clay.
The
path twisted steeply and abruptly downwards, forcing the three men to descend
crabwise with one arm gripping rocks, boughs or handfuls of ivy. Something shone
too brightly below and ahead of Harkness, synthetic and reflective. Craning
forwards, his footing failed, his light went out and he gouged a new trail in
the clay, ripping out strands of ivy as he slithered into a ditch alive with
stinging heat and the rank odour of wet clay and something worse; acrid and
foul.
“Mickey’s
fucking latrine. I am never buying another decent suit. It’s not even as if I’m
off the fucking peg twenty quid at Asda material. I don’t get paid enough for
this.”
Another
light was turned on him, allowing him to find his torch nearby and flick it
back on.
“Think
you got away with it, Sarge,” said Aspull, illuminating a midden of excrement
and rotting food loosely covered by moss and clay at the base of the slope.
“This
chap didn’t though.” Slowey was staring along the line of the dragon light’s
beam to where a figure sprawled on the ground twenty feet away, almost directly
under the southern edge of the bridge, white and inert and draped in the
tatters of a tarpaulin that had been ripped from uprights driven into the
slope. Flitting lights and the rushing grind of lorries told Harkness the
bypass was a brief drop ahead of them.
“Ever
seen a dead body, son? said Harkness, standing and assessing the damage to his
clothes.
“Not
as such,” said Aspull thoughtfully.
“Not
as such?”
“Well,
not up close. Nothing human anyway.”
“My
mind is boggling. Right. Stand here, like so, and put some light on him for me,
just about there.”
Harkness
took the maglite from Aspull, handed him the dragon and positioned the tall
probationer’s hands so that the torch was suspended above his head,
floodlighting the scene and reflecting light from the nearest blank concrete
leg of the bridge.
“Perfect.
Don’t move. I said you’d come in handy.”
Harkness
and Slowey moved forward, avoiding the dirt track and its myriad footprints and
instead tramping down the nettles and parched grass alongside it. Something
with a rasping exhaust sped past, unzipping the air. Above them some creature shrieked
and glided away on wings of unfurled silk.
Harkness
knew without fear or regret that he was in the presence of a wrenching,
unnatural death. While the air soured his mouth with the beginnings of
corruption, he knew he’d find Murphy mutely and stupidly dead at his feet for
no other or better reason than natural symmetry. The slender cone of the maglite’s
beam picked out broken fingernails on blanched fingers not quite touching the
ground and the blinking mobile phone they were reaching for. Had Murphy died
in a ditch, five inches and two seconds from civilisation?
They
had wandered into what must have been Mickey’s improvised home, a level patch
of earth outlined with rocks, partially covered by the thick shadow of the
bridge above them, with posts driven into the ground at each corner to support
a tarpaulin. Dozens of plastic bags held twigs, branches, off-cuts of metal and
wood and scavenged tins of food. A depression in the ground about the length of
Mickey himself had been lined with softer, springier fir branches. A pair of
binoculars held together by gaffer tape and a handful of paperback books lay
strewn nearby, suggesting Mickey had abandoned his treasure in haste.
Spread-eagled
across the wide, flat boulder that could well have been Mickey’s hearth and
dining table, Dale Murphy must have dropped in without warning. He laid face
up, limbs splayed, head and upper chest kinked backwards over the lip of the
stone, staring hard at them with wide open eyes. One shoe was missing, the
white sock half off. A darker tidemark stained the crotch of his unzipped pale
blue jeans. Ribs crested backwards from the ample, bare belly, three lions
still rampant on the clinging white t shirt.
Slowey
had produced the full face photo of Murphy released by the Prison Service. His
hair had been glossy with gel, his eyes shining, high cheekbones perma-tanned,
wide mouth biting down on a toothy grin.
“Changed
a bit, hasn’t he?”
“Well
he’s lost a bit of colour, certainly. Nice to meet you, Dale.”