Broken Lines (12 page)

Shapiro listened with more composure than Donovan spoke. In thirty years on the job he'd seen it all before. He'd seen good coppers leave the rails for love, for money, for the hell of it. He'd known them go to bed with defendants'wives, daughters, mistresses, and on one memorable occasion the defendant himself. A defence solicitor might have been a new departure but it was only a variation on the theme.

‘And you didn't know who she was until just now?'

‘No. She was riding a motorbike when I met her.' He seemed to think that explained everything.

‘And she didn't quiz you about the case?'

Without looking up Donovan shook his head. ‘She didn't have to. I couldn't have said any more if she'd laced my cocoa with truth serum. I didn't think I was compromising the investigation, but together with what she already knew of course I was. I knew
somebody'd
got a big mouth: it never occurred to me it was me.' He filled his lungs and raised his eyes. ‘There's no need to start disciplinary proceedings, unless you want to. You can have my resignation.'

Shapiro raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that what you want?'

Donovan's eyes flared. ‘You're joking! I just – don't see any alternative.'

Shapiro sighed. ‘Don't be so theatrical, Sergeant. Yes, you've made an idiot of yourself. Yes, you've wasted everybody's time. And yes, you'll take a bit of stick over it in the canteen – for a week, or however long it takes for the next poor soul to cock up. It isn't a resigning matter. It isn't even a disciplinary matter. You've set the record straight, we know what went wrong, we know it won't happen again – that's it. Go, and sin no more.'

‘But—' Donovan couldn't believe it was over. ‘Mikey Dickens is going to get away with armed robbery because of me!'

‘Maybe he is, maybe he isn't,' said Shapiro calmly. ‘It's too soon to say. You can take the blame if it makes you feel any better, but since we don't hand out medals every time we get a conviction I don't see why you should do public penance for this. You made a mistake; all right, you made a stupid mistake. I can cope with honest mistakes, even stupid ones, as long as I know about them. If you'd taken money from her, or if talking was the price of getting her into bed, you'd have been an ex-policeman by now. But with all your failings, Sergeant, I've never had cause to doubt your honesty and that's worth a lot. You're forgiven, Donovan.

‘But if you want to pay them back, go find someone who saw Mikey driving up Cambridge Road alone on Sunday evening. It's quite true: success is the best revenge.'

Donovan had walked in here thinking he'd trashed his career, and he was going to leave with hardly a stain on his character. He looked as if a puff of wind would knock him off his feet. He mumbled thickly, ‘I won't let you down again. And I will get Mikey Dickens. Maybe not for this, but somewhere and sometime, and the smartest London lawyer money can buy won't do him any good.'

Shapiro nodded tolerantly and let him go; only murmuring after him, ‘It's not the smart ones you have to watch for, it's the pretty ones.'

Liz shook her head knowingly. ‘It's the ones on motorcycles.'

When they were alone Shapiro laced his fingers over his chest and regarded her speculatively. ‘Was I right? Or should I have given him a hard time?'

She shook her head again. She had her hair down today and it danced on her shoulder in a mass of fair curls. ‘I don't think anything you could say would hammer the lesson home any harder. That's one mistake he's never going to make again. My guess is the next woman he wants to sleep with will have to fill in a questionnaire.' Her face split in a grin. ‘It's a pity, really. I find it

enormously cheering that even Donovan can make a fool of himself

over a girl.'

Beyond Broad Wharf the towpath ran east for half a mile before turning up the northern spur of the canal, now derelict. Before the railway came the area between the waterways was a centre of the forage trade: hay and grain grown on the water-meadows of the River Arrow went by barge to feed carriage horses and dray horses all across the south-east. It was still called Cornmarket, though it had been wasteland for a generation.

Sergeant Bolsover, who was born in Castlemere, remembered when this was the town's industrial estate, home to numerous factories and extensive railway yards. Shapiro remembered the yards closing in favour of a passenger halt across town, and the factories either closing or moving out to the new ring road. By the time Donovan came it was just a thousand acres of rubble, emptier and more desolate the further east you went. Youngsters held mountain bike trials there; people walked their dogs there, as long as they could be home by nightfall; people abandoned their clapped-out cars and defunct settees there.

People who'd spotted the name on a map were devastated by the reality and couldn't imagine why it hadn't been redeveloped. But Castlemere had shrunk, in size and in population, since Commarket was the beating heart of its commercial success a hundred years ago. It wasn't redeveloped because it wasn't needed.

A small community of tramps and dossers lived there, in homes made by stretching plastic or tarpaulin between the remaining bits of masonry. Their social focus was a great bonfire that burned for most of the year in a ring of discarded furniture. Keeping it fed was the main reason Cornmarket hadn't disappeared under a sea of detritus long ago, because the town's refuse collectors would only come here under protest and armed guard.

Fenland winters are bitterly cold: anyone with anywhere else to go had gone months back. Those who still had some family may have spent the long summer evenings abusing them from the comfort of an overstuffed settee in front of the bonfire; but by the middle of October the memory of their sins was fading and as the frosts deepened vacancies appeared on the settees. Others, who had no families or whose families wouldn't have them back, headed for the milder climate of the big city and took a cardboard box behind King's Cross station till spring. Only those with no alternative remained at Cornmarket throughout the iron-hard winter, huddled together like puppies in a crate to share the meagre warmth of their wasted and rancid bodies.

Such a one was Desmond Jannery, age thirty-two going on fifty, one time actor, one time chicken shed mucker-out, long time nothing at all; hobbies – cider, cheap wine and methylated spirits. Desmond had family, he even had family not far from here, but they'd long given up on him – and no one who wasn't there while they were still trying has any right to criticize. He tried wintering in London once but found the pace hectic and decided, like George V, that he didn't much care for abroad. He had no ambitions left, not even rock-bottom ones like getting through the next night. Each dawn he woke with a sense of disappointment.

Once or twice he'd summoned the strength of purpose to make an end, saved up enough cider to drink himself into a stupor and lain down unprotected on the bare ground to let the cold leach away his life unnoticed while he slept. But each time another derelict had seen, and solicitously tucked a blanket around him, and he had woken to another chill dawn and a day without promise. He'd given up on suicide now. It seemed to be something else he was no good at.

It was the dog that woke him. Desmond liked dogs, even this one with its mantrap jaws and unforgiving eyes. Its name appeared to be Brian You Bastard. It came by here most nights, and often paused in the pool of warmth around the fire, the red glow revealing the hard framework of muscle and sinew so that for a moment it appeared not a real dog but some epic statue, an heroic dog of bronze. Then it lifted its leg against the settee and broke the spell.

Tonight, though, the dog had other things on its mind. It stood silhouetted by the fire and stared at him, so intently that Desmond was willing to believe the stare alone had woken him. He looked round but saw no one else astir. The fire was burning low: he threw some wood on to it. His feet were numb with cold and he got up to stomp the life back into them. He didn't know what time it was but clearly it was late, probably after midnight. The dog bounded past him into the encircling dark. On an impulse, taking a brand from the fire he followed.

Even with his alfresco torch he almost didn't see the figure on the ground. It was clad in black and lying motionless, face down on the frozen ground, just a darker shadow in the shadow of a broken wall.

Desmond's first thought was that it was a fellow sojourner – somehow they never quite thought of one another as friends – who'd had too successful a day's begging for his own good; or maybe, as Desmond had himself before now, saved up enough strong cider to see him on his way. When it happened to him Desmond had thought it no kindness to drag him back. Now he found he could not just turn and walk away. He bent down, holding the brand close, and shook the figure by a thin shoulder. ‘Hello there?'

There was no reply; and then he saw why not, and that there was unlikely to be however hard he shook. The torch he held cast only a dim red light but it was enough to pick up the gleam of blood in the tangled hair.

No one committed suicide by hitting himself over the head. A broken skull meant violence and that, even in the fringe society to which Desmond Jannery belonged, meant calling the police. It would be a difficult time for all of them but there was no alternative. The man might not be dead. Desmond couldn't go back to the fire and let someone else discover him in the morning if there was even a slim chance that he was still alive.

He took a deep breath, meaning to rouse the camp. But as he turned he almost collided with a man standing behind him: a tall string-thin figure as dark as the one on the ground. Desmond raised his brand, more for protection than illumination, but there was enough light at such close quarters for him to see and, after a moment, recognize the man's face.

Startled as he was he leaned forward, peering. ‘Is that you, Mr Donovan?'

At one in the morning The Jubilee was as dark and eerily quiet as a disused stage-set. No lights showed in the front parlours; even the upstairs windows were black. They kept regular hours in the six streets: those whose trade required the cover of darkness were away pursuing it while the day-shift were tucked up in their beds. Even the local cats were staying home tonight.

Liz parked in front of the house in George Street and looked up at its narrow frontage, three windows and a door, wondering how three generations of Dickenses managed to live in such close proximity. Perhaps it was bigger than it appeared; also, the three generations were now represented by just three people. Thelma was a widow, Roly's wife left him years ago and only his youngest child remained at home. Fifteen years ago he must have been putting them to bed with a shoe-horn.

It was tempting to linger in the frosty peace of the street, but there was a difficult job to do and it was better to get on with it. There were no bells in the Victorian front doors – when she rapped the iron knocker it was like cannon-fire ricocheting between the brick frontages.

She expected Roly to come down, but when the hall light came on and the door opened it was his mother standing there in her dressing-gown, her thin grey hair plaited into a cord, a peevish expression on her sleep-wrinkled face. She may have recognized Liz's car from her bedroom window. She'd certainly seen it often enough.

But her expression changed as she took in Liz's. She may not have known why the Inspector was here but she knew it wasn't to arrest anyone. ‘What's happened?'

‘I'm sorry to get you up, Thelma. It's Mikey. Is Roly at home?'

‘He's asleep. Shall I get him? What's Mikey done?'

‘I think you should wake him,' said Liz. ‘There's been – an accident. Mikey's in the hospital.'

When Thelma woke him with the news Roly Dickens threw on whatever clothes were nearest and hurried down. The effect was of a badly wrapped parcel. He was a big man, in every direction, and the combination of a sweatshirt that barely made it down to his middle with a pair of those special builder's trousers that barely made it over his hips was not entirely becoming.

‘Accident? What kind of accident? Is he hurt?'

At the same time there was something rather touching about Roly Dickens as a sartorial disaster area, simply because it wasn't his normal way of dressing. The man had a certain style. Whatever he wore for work, he turned up for court appearances in a three-piece suit. He polished his shoes and matched his tie to his breast-pocket handkerchief. The fact that he came before Liz in such disarray now said clearer than words that even if Mikey struck the rest of the world as one scant evolutionary step above the wood-louse his father cared about him. The heavy face, unshaven jowls blue and bristly, twisted with anxiety and there was fear in the bloodhound eyes.

In the second before she answered Liz felt it like a physical pang that this was something whose direct equivalent she would never experience. If she'd married a man who turned out like Mikey Dickens she'd have divorced him; if she bought a horse that shifty and unreliable she'd have it shot. But your children were part of you, and remained so however unsatisfactory you found each other; and most parents, like Roly, found they had no option but to love them pretty much as they were. She wondered if Mikey had known how lucky he was that there was one person in the world who loved him enough for news of his misfortune to cause such distress. She hoped so; because it sounded as if what Mikey didn't know yesterday wouldn't trouble him in the future.

‘He has a head injury,' she said. ‘It's serious, but he's in hospital and they have enormous expertise at dealing with these things. I'll drive you there. By the time we arrive the doctors'll maybe have a clearer picture.'

Thelma was going to get dressed and come too but Roly wanted her at home. ‘Get on the phone, tell the family what's happened. Tell them I'll be in touch when I know more.'