Broken Lines (24 page)

‘Visiting,' said Donovan after a moment. ‘It's what you do when people are sick.' As always, fear made him querulous.

‘Mikey's been sick for five days. You haven't been near him before.'

‘I've been busy.' Did Roly also forget to mention that offensive answers, however accurate, would get him thumped? Donovan waited; but apparently not.

‘So what changed?'

‘What changed is—' He realized just in time what this was going to sound like and stopped, wondering what to do. While he was still wondering Roly's fist arrived, a knot of bone like a cow's knuckle spilling him across the floor.

The big man's voice was still ominously, unnaturally calm, prompting him. ‘What changed is—?'

With his hands and feet bound Donovan couldn't sit up unaided. Whatever it cost, he was damned if he was answering questions in this position. ‘Pick me up.'

‘What?' It may have been the accent, which always thickened under stress, or it may have been the blood in his mouth, but Roly genuinely didn't understand.

‘I said pick me up, God damn it!' Donovan raged in breathless, impotent fury. ‘I'll tell you what I know, but not with my face on the floor.'

After a long second the big hands seized Donovan by the shoulders and propped him upright again. Roly picked up where he left off. ‘And the question was, what changed?'

‘I've been suspended.'

He heard Roly catch his breath. ‘You mean, even Mr Shapiro thinks you did it?'

‘I don't know what he thinks.' An edge of desperation snagged in Donovan's voice. ‘But somebody's set me up well enough that he couldn't keep me on the job any longer.'

‘You've been framed?'

As a defence, it usually provoked the same hooting derision from Donovan. His broken lips sketched a bleak grin. ‘Pathetic, isn't it? You'd think a guy could come up with a better excuse than that.'

‘What have they got on you?'

The man was asking him to hang himself. He could refuse to answer. He'd get thumped, but he still thought he could deal with that. More serious, more of a threat to his long-term health, was that Roly would take his silence as proof of guilt. Why not? – in similar circumstances Donovan had. The facts were damaging; letting Roly see he was afraid of them could be fatal.

He took a deep breath. ‘Plenty.
I'd
think I'd done it if I didn't know better.'

He didn't begin at the beginning: Roly knew what Mikey had done to him, he was more interested in what had been done to Mikey. He began with that sleepless night on
Tara
when he decided to take the dog for a walk.

Liz glanced at her watch as she turned into the school campus. The start of the lunch hour was a good time to catch a teacher: she wouldn't have to arrange cover for her class before she could talk.

She parked her car and headed for the staffroom. Mrs Taylor was going the same way: they met in the corridor. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?' said Liz.

‘Now?' The other woman frowned. ‘I was just going for lunch.'

‘Skip the soup,' said Liz shortly. There was an empty classroom immediately beside them: she opened the door and waited till Pat Taylor joined her inside.

‘There's a flap on,' said Liz, ‘so I'd like to make this quick. I'd also like to clear it up once and for all. How many people were in the van that hit you?'

Annoyance flickered in Mrs Taylor's gaze. ‘This is what I'm missing the minestrone for? Two. I told you: two.'

‘So you did. The trouble is, that's starting to conflict with the evidence. The only other person who said there were two is a proven liar.'

Her eyes flared. ‘And who says there was one? Your sergeant. The one who, if he hadn't been a policeman, would have been charged with attempted murder by now.'

That startled Liz so much that for a moment she didn't know what to say. She was surprised that Donovan's situation was a matter of public gossip, at least outside The Jubilee, more than surprised that Mrs Taylor would throw it in her face like that. So she'd had an upsetting experience; but even coming on top of a bad time for her, that didn't justify her hatred for Donovan. And plainly it was hatred, not unhappy memories, that made her shun him before and speak this way now. Why? – because he left her hanging in her seat-belt for a few minutes while he rescued a man from a fire?

‘Is that what you want?' she asked quietly. ‘To ruin Donovan? Why?'

Expressions kaleidoscoped across Pat Taylor's face. Liz glimpsed hate, sure enough; and loss and pain. There was a mass of anger, and behind that there was grief. She wouldn't meet Liz's gaze. At last, and it was an effort to get it out, she said, ‘He should have helped me.'

‘He
would
have helped you, if he could. Mrs Taylor, we've been through this – he had two people in trouble, one was frightened, the other was in immediate mortal peril. He'd rather have helped you than the boy – it would have been safer and more rewarding – but he didn't have any choice. He did what was required of him. It's most unfair that, with all the trouble he has right now, you're still trying to make him pay for that.'

‘Unfair? You call that unfair?'

Which was the wrong answer from someone who was telling the truth. But Liz wasn't content to prove her a liar: there had to be a reason. She said quietly, ‘Will you at least admit that you may have been mistaken about the passenger?'

It was like drawing teeth. Mrs Taylor clutched her grievance to her and held her tongue. Liz said nothing more: nothing that would help her out, nothing that would help her change the subject. She just waited, her eyes on Pat Taylor's face.

Finally, as if the very silence was a goad whose urging could not be resisted forever, Mrs Taylor stumbled out, ‘I – suppose.'

Liz vented her breath in a sigh. She may have seemed certain, obdurate and enduring, but inside she'd been ready to give up. ‘I see. All right. Well, it can go on file as Anyone-can-make-a-mistake. But I'd like to understand. I don't know why you ‘d treat a decent man that way.'

And then she did. Perhaps the answer passed intuitively from one woman's mind into the other; or perhaps deep in the synapses of her brain Liz was working on the puzzle unknown even to herself. However it was, connections were made that completed the chain of motive and action, of cause and effect. Some of it she knew already; the rest she guessed.

Shaken, she sat down abruptly on a desk. ‘Oh Pat. Pat, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you tell somebody?'

Pat Taylor's voice was a whisper. ‘How did you guess?'

Liz shook her head with shock and compassion. ‘There had to be something – something like that, something big. You're not an irrational woman, there had to be some reason for you to hate him that much. And then, when I called at your house, you had a hospital appointment but you didn't want a lift into town. You weren't going to Castle General, were you? You were going to the Feyd Clinic. Had it already happened?'

Mrs Taylor gave a fractional shake of the head. ‘I thought I'd got away with it. I told the hospital I was two months pregnant, and they checked me over and said everything seemed all right. They said to come back if I had any symptoms, and to see my own doctor in the next few days. That's where I was going when you called. The clinic knew my history, they'd finally succeeded in getting me pregnant – if anyone could save the baby they could.'

She sat down on the next desk. ‘I was there when the bleeding started. They said not to worry, there wasn't much, it would probably stop in a little while. They put me to bed and gave me an injection.

‘But it didn't stop. Then late in the afternoon…' Her voice tailed away. Liz stole a glance at her face and was stunned by the pain there. She didn't dare speak, could only wait until Mrs Taylor was able to continue.

‘After everything that had happened, it wasn't such a surprise. I was where I needed to be, people who knew what this meant were looking after me. But oh! the wrench of it. It wasn't a pregnancy, it was a baby. It was
my
baby, the only baby I ever conceived, the only chance of a baby I'd ever have, and my body was pushing it out as if it didn't want it. I'd spent ten years fighting for that baby, and now my womb was throwing it away. I wanted to stab myself. I thought, maybe if I stabbed myself it would give my body something else to worry about and it would leave my baby alone. If I'd had something to do it with I would have.

‘And then it was too late. It was all over. I felt – empty. As if my insides had been ripped out. They tidied me up, gave me a sedative. They said, All right, we'd been unlucky, but it was a good sign that I'd been able to conceive, maybe next time …' She barked a silent, mirthless laugh. ‘Next time? This one took ten years. Now I'm thirty-eight, I don't have a husband any more, and even if they'd give me AID I couldn't afford it on my own. This was my one chance, my last chance. And it was gone because some little thug ran me off the road, and some stupid ignorant policeman thought his trashy life was worth more than my baby's!'

Liz had nothing to say to her. She'd known there had to be an explanation, something she was missing, something to explain that excess of anger, and this was it. God knew it was enough.

At last she stood up and touched Pat Taylor's hand. ‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘I do understand. It wasn't Donovan's fault, but I understand why you felt it was. I'll leave now. Call me if there's anything I can do; otherwise I won't bother you again.'

‘And' – Mrs Taylor forced a thin smile – ‘bearing false witness against a police officer?'

Liz shrugged. ‘He's got more than that to worry about right now. Forget it, it's history. You were under a terrible strain and you made a mistake. It's cleared up now.'

Heading back into town she found a phrase rattling round in her head. ‘His line was broken…' Shakespeare, the Bible? – most expressions you'd heard and couldn't place were one or the other. Until now it hadn't meant anything to her: she'd understood the meaning, given no thought to the import. Now the enormity of it bore in on her. The line of Clifford and Patricia Taylor was broken. A thousand generations had gone into making each of them; but their line ended here, their last chance stolen along with Ash Kumani's weekend takings.

The thief's line had ended too. The line of Roly Dickens would go on, he had more than enough children and grandchildren to ensure it, but the unique combination of DNA that was Mikey Dickens would not now contribute to the next generation. His line was broken.

As, for that matter, were the lines of Brian and Elizabeth Graham. To be sure, they'd had more choice in the matter than either Pat Taylor or Mikey Dickens, but the magnitude of the choice momentarily troubled her. There were no Graham children, and no Ward children either: Brian had had a sister who died of leukaemia in adolescence, Liz was an only child. Four lines – those of her parents and those of his – had combined in the hope of succession and had been disappointed.

Common sense kicked in. There was nothing so extraordinary about any one of them that their genes should have passed down undiluted. And there were plenty of children in the world, and the way sex worked there could be no shortage of those sporting ancestral Ward and Graham genes. They had heirs, and as much stake in the future as anyone else. They'd chosen – she'd chosen – to eat the cake, she couldn't now complain that the cupboard was bare.

But she could still find it in her to envy Frank Shapiro his three. In them his immortality was secure; through them he was made someone of historical account, and would have been if he'd achieved nothing more. He would live in them, and in their children, long after the small accomplishments of DI Graham were forgotten.

She was getting maudlin. There was another saying: Take what you want, says God, and pay for it. Nothing was for nothing; at least, nothing worth having. She still considered what she'd chosen was worth what she'd given up.

Shapiro was back in his office. She knew by his face that there was no news. She told him where she'd been. ‘There was no passenger in the van. Pat Taylor made that up, to avenge herself on Donovan.' She told him why. ‘Oh, and Jade Holloway's volunteered to give her fingerprints. Which means, of course, it wasn't her that handled the baseball bat. Frank, I think we're right back where we started. What do we do next?'

‘I don't know what to do.' Liz wasn't sure but it might have been the first time she'd heard him admit defeat. ‘We've searched the hospital, we've got people looking for Roly's van, I even got his mum to say she'd call if
she
hears anything. I don't know what else we can do.' He looked old; old and tired.

And for the first time Liz felt that maybe she could do something he couldn't. She sat down, taking determination deep into her lungs. ‘If we can get at who did what Roly Dickens is blaming Donovan fot, maybe we won't have to find them – maybe Roly'll give it up. He'll have no reason to hurt Donovan once he knows.'

Shapiro's eyes were dull. ‘If we can get at it. If it isn't already too late.'

‘Don't think like that,' Liz said fiercely. ‘As far as we know there's still everything to play for. Start thinking it's a lost cause and we'll get careless, we'll miss things. I can't guarantee we'll find him if we keep looking, but I'm damn sure we won't if we don't. Don't you dare give up on Donovan! He wouldn't give up on you.'

One of the few drawbacks to being a Detective Superintendent was that people didn't often speak to you like that. Only someone who'd known Frank Shapiro as well and as long as Liz would have done so now; but it was what he needed. He shook himself like a Labrador emerging from a pond. ‘You're right. I'm sorry, I just – lost it for a moment. All right. Nobody's giving up on anybody. Maybe we need to split our resources. You concentrate on who attacked Mikey. Take who you need and what you need to do it. I'll stay with the search; I can use uniforms for that. We need a break – desperately, and soon, but we only need one. Don't tell me we haven't earned that much.'