Broken Lines (5 page)

It didn't depend on what you knew but on what you could prove. The Crown Prosecution Service hated losing cases, if they weren't confident of a conviction they wouldn't proceed. Placid middle-aged policemen with grandchildren and a liking for country walks could be reduced to impotent fury by the sight of some cocky young thug back on the street because a break in the evidence allowed another interpretation of the facts, if viewed from the right angle and with a following wind. It was desperately frustrating. You told yourself you'd get them next time, but it didn't make it any easier to see them swagger away. It was one of those occasions when the fact that police arms had to be authorized and issued, not just pulled from a holster, saved a lot of not very worthy lives and some rather more valuable careers.

‘I've got a dozen people out looking,' said Shapiro. ‘They know it's important, they'll find it if they can. At least we know where it has to be – if he threw it from the car it went out the driver's window and ended up south of the road. It's just over three miles from Kumani's to Chevening, so the search area is a twenty foot strip three miles long. I've known smaller needles found in bigger haystacks. As long as nobody's pocketed it already, they'll find it.'

Donovan was frowning. ‘They're only looking now?'

Shapiro regarded him levelly. ‘Yesterday I was still waiting for SOCO to tell me if it was in the car.'

Donovan knew he was being unreasonable. ‘Yeah – sorry. I just—'

‘I know.'

‘I don't want him wriggling off the hook.'

‘Yes, I know.'

When Donovan left Shapiro said, ‘You know what that was about, don't you? He doesn't want people thinking Mikey Dickens got the better of him with anything smaller than a howitzer.'

Liz chuckled. ‘Have you interviewed Mikey? What does he have to say for himself?'

‘Not a lot,' Shapiro said ruefully. ‘I saw him in the hospital: by the time he was fit to see me he'd already talked to his brief and she'd advised him to say nothing at that time. I wasn't too bothered, he wasn't going anywhere with cracked ribs and a hole in his leg. He was discharged this morning, he and his solicitor are coming in later today. Maybe we'll have the gun by then: that should help loosen his tongue.'

‘And if he's still making no comment?'

‘He can stew for a while, but sooner or later I'm having him for this. He's not getting away with it just by keeping his mouth shut, not when Donovan had him in sight pretty well all the way from Kumani's to where he crashed. He can't claim he was elsewhere when they picked bits of the van out of him on the operating table!'

‘No,' agreed Liz, ‘he'll have to come up with something a bit more imaginative than that.'

‘He held me up at gunpoint, Mr Shapiro,' said Mikey Dickens, straight-faced. ‘He rushed out of the garage, jumped in the van and pointed a gun in my face. He said Drive so I drove. What else could I do? What would you have done, Mr Shapiro?'

Shapiro shut his eyes. He took two or three measured breaths. His broad face, which long ago learned to mask rather than portray emotions, became positively wooden. But when he opened his eyes again they pinned Mikey Dickens to his seat. ‘So Mr Kumani was robbed, and Detective Sergeant Donovan knocked down, by some
other
short, wiry individual with a liking for other people's money and a propensity for violence?'

Mikey met his gaze with wide-open, innocent, baby-blue eyes. ‘Gee, Mr Shapiro, I don't know. What's a propensity?'

Sitting beside him in the interview room, the Dickens family solicitor dug Mikey in the ribs. The last thing she needed was him getting smart with Detective Superintendent Shapiro. Ms Holloway was new to Carfax and Browne, Attorneys at Law, but almost the first thing she was told was not to underestimate the town's senior detective. ‘He only looks like a well-worn teddy bear,' said Mr Carfax darkly. ‘He thinks like Machiavelli.'

Ms Holloway didn't altogether believe it, but she took the precaution of elbowing Mikey under the level of the table at which they were all sitting. She must have forgotten his damaged ribs – he winced and whined and looked reprovingly at her, which even a teddy bear could hardly have failed to notice.

She cleared her throat. A woman in her late twenties, she hadn't been in Castlemere long enough to switch her London lawyer's power suit for the more casual version appropriate in the sticks. ‘Superintendent, you have my client's statement. I understand this is a full account of the events of Sunday evening, but if you need him to elaborate Mr Dickens will be happy to oblige. He's anxious to clear up any misunderstanding. He appreciates how things must have appeared to Sergeant Donovan, he has no complaints about his treatment, but he's keen to put on record those events which occurred outside the Sergeant's field of view aNd misled him as to the author of the attack on him.'

‘By the way, Mr Shapiro,' interjected Mikey, ‘how is Mr Donovan?'

It was, so far as Shapiro could tell, a genuine enquiry and he answered in the same vein. ‘He's fine, thanks, Mikey. He's back at work, you'll probably see him later.'

‘I was never so glad to see him as Sunday night.'

‘In the garage?' Shapiro prompted innocently.

But Mikey didn't need his London brief to field that one. He smiled impishly. ‘In the
van
, Mr Shapiro. After I crashed the van.'

Shapiro hadn't really expected to trip him that easily. Mikey Dickens might only have been nineteen but he'd done this before. ‘All right, Mikey, tell it from the start.'

It was the cold weather, said Mikey; possibly also the springs on the van, which needed work, but mainly the cold weather that got to his bladder something rotten. He was only five minutes from home but he didn't think he'd make it: he stopped on the garage forecourt, left the van running and dashed round the back. When he returned—

‘Much relieved?' suggested Shapiro, and Mikey grinned.

When he returned, much relieved, he noticed a motorbike at one of the pumps; and when he got in the van he found his keys were gone. He was still wondering where they'd got to when someone in a long dark coat and a ski mask ran out of the shop, snatched open the door of his van and leapt in beside him.

‘You don't keep the passenger door locked?'

Mikey was scathing. ‘Who'd steal a heap like that?'

‘Somebody making a getaway from an armed robbery?'

Mikey nodded thoughtfully. ‘Right enough, Mr Shapiro.'

‘This long dark coat,' said Shapiro. ‘Anything like the long dark coat you were wearing?'

‘No,' Mikey said firmly. ‘Mine was navy blue. His was a sort of charcoal grey.'

When he turned to remonstrate the first thing he saw was the gun; so Mikey thought he'd save the lecture on private property. The second thing he saw was his own keys being dangled under his nose. ‘I went where he told me. He said to get off the main road so I headed for Chevening. He had me scared shitless, Mr Shapiro, honest. I'm not used to guns.'

‘Not that end, anyway,' murmured Shapiro.

He saw the single headlight behind him, had no idea if it was pursuit or just a fellow traveller. But the man beside him told him to go faster. He saw the white car enter the roundabout, but his passenger jerked the gun at him and told him to beat it. ‘I think he thought we'd make it but Mr Donovan would have to stop.'

‘You knew it was Donovan, then. When did he mention that? – this passenger of yours who was wearing a coat very like yours but in charcoal grey.'

Mikey shook his head patiently. ‘I didn't know
then
it was Mr Donovan.
Now
I know that's who it was.'

Everything after that happened very quickly but seemed to happen in slow motion. He couldn't beat the white saloon across the roundabout, but he felt to be waiting forever for the crash. As the van rebounded into Fletton Road he saw the digger but there seemed to be plenty of time for the van to stop. Even the collapse of the front half of his cab seemed to happen slowly enough for him to get his legs clear. But when the van stopped the front doors were compacted to a couple of letter-boxes.

‘Thin chap, was he?' asked Shapiro. ‘This passenger of yours with the gun and the charcoal coat?'

Mikey frowned, puzzled. ‘Didn't really notice, Mr Shapiro.'

‘Only he seems to have got out through some aperture that wasn't big enough for you to follow; and without wishing to be personal, Mikey, you're not exactly Arnold Swartzer-whatsit yourself.'

Mikey's brow cleared. ‘Oh, that. He got out before we hit the digger. I'm not sure if he jumped or fell, but the door opened and he was gone. I never saw him again.'

‘Oddly enough,' said Shapiro, deadpan, ‘neither did anyone else.'

Mikey shrugged. ‘There was a lot going on, Mr Shapiro, and it was dark. And Mr Donovan was too busy trying to haul me out of there to be looking round. I don't blame him for that,' he added generously. ‘He saved my life, I won't hear a word against him.'

‘Oh Mikey,' said Shapiro with heavy irony, ‘he
will
be touched.'

‘I don't know if he had help with the story or if he's brighter than he looks.' Shapiro was stirring his coffee lugubriously, staring into the muddy vortex as if seeking wisdom. ‘But actually it's quite clever. He's not saying Donovan's wrong, just that he didn't see everything. That's plausible – first he was on the floor of the shop, then he was chasing the van up the road, then he lost sight of it going into Chevening. He didn't see the crash, he could certainly have missed seeing this putative second party legging it immediately afterwards. You wouldn't have to disbelieve Donovan's account to accept Mikey's.

‘Then, this putative second party looked sufficiently like Mikey that even a reliable witness could be mistaken. If I ask Kumani whether the robber was wearing a navy-blue coat or a charcoal-grey one he'll look at me askance and say that wasn't the bit he was concentrating on. And Mikey's coat and gloves were burned in the van, so we'll never know if Donovan's blood was on them. Any more than we'll know if that's why Mikey got rid of them, though we may suspect as much.'

Liz regarded him over the tray. As a Detective Superintendent Shapiro had his coffee served in cups on a tray instead of in a plastic mug with no saucer. That, and the salary, was the only difference promotion had made. ‘Are you telling me you think Mikey Dickens
didn't
rob Ash Kumani at gunpoint and floor Donovan in the process?'

Shapiro's glance was dismissive. ‘Of course not. Of course the little sod did it – there was no second party, he was alone in the van. But he's come up with a story that's going to take some disproving. I'd be interested to know if that was his idea or if Ms Holloway fresh from London offered suggestions.'

Liz shrugged. ‘Hardly matters, does it? Whoever the Dickenses went to would need to earn their oats. We'll just have to earn ours as well. We need a witness, someone who can say if there was one man or two in the van after it left Kumani's. Someone else may have seen it earlier, but I can only think of one person who certainly saw it, and closer than anyone else. Do we have a statement from Mrs Taylor?'

‘A rather cursory one. She was still pretty upset when Mary Wilson saw her, she got down the basics and left it at that. Maybe by now she's a bit calmer. Anyway, it's a simple enough question, either she saw how many people were in the van or she didn't. Do you know her, Liz? – she teaches at Brian's school.'

Liz nodded. ‘We've met. A pleasant enough woman; maybe a little intense. I'll go and see her, see if she can help. If she can say there was definitely only one man in the van, we've got him.'

‘And I'll tell Donovan.' Shapiro's nose wrinkled as if he'd bitten into a lemon.

‘It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it,' said Liz stoutly.

Donovan took the news with a kind of savage amusement, as if life had taught him to expect no better. ‘So that's it, is it? He robbed Kumani at gunpoint, he knocked me down, he damn near killed Mrs Taylor – but he says it wasn't him so we let him go. I mean, what possible reason could he have to lie?'

Shapiro had been a police officer for longer than Donovan had been alive. He'd learned much about crime and criminals, and also about policemen. He remembered when a sergeant using that tone to a superintendent would have been told to clear his locker. Even today there weren't many senior officers who'd put up with it, and those who knew Shapiro well enough to know that behind the slightly rumpled exterior dwelt a mind as sharp and clear as a cut-glass bell didn't understand why he did.

If they'd asked he'd have explained. Most detective sergeants were either on their way up the ladder or were good DCs for so long they'd earned the promotion even if they weren't up to the job. Donovan was. On his record he should have made DI; but for various reasons, some of them his fault, others not, he wasn't considered DI material. The police force hadn't changed so much in thirty years that it encouraged people who challenged its basic precepts. Which meant that Donovan would stay a detective sergeant and stay in Castlemere; and long after Liz Graham had moved on and Shapiro himself was only a memory his experience in this town would be an asset to Queen's Street CID. He was worth keeping on board for that, even if the line hadn't been drawn that he was prepared to toe.

On top of which there was the personal reason. Donovan had risked his life for this job, and he'd risked his job for Shapiro. A man didn't forget that in a hurry.

But though Shapiro allowed him some latitude, for the sake of the future and the past, his patience wasn't limitless. ‘Of course that isn't it,' he snapped. ‘I haven't put him on a plane to Rio: I'll have him back in here as soon as I have enough to charge him. Finding the gun will do – no jury'll believe he went on doing what he was told by a hijacker who'd thrown his gun away. No, if we find the gun we have him. He was the only one with reason to ditch it. This putative second person would have hung on to it as long as he could, so if he didn't lose it at the scene of the accident he's still got it.'