Bright Spark (28 page)

       “Get
the basket?”

       Harkness
nodded. As a fee-paying member of the Fed who’d been injured on duty, he’d
received the standard assortment of fruit, boiled sweets and assorted pickles
on a wicker tray with a pro forma message thanking him for his commitment to
duty and wishing him a speedy recovery. He’d spent a sulky hour in the sun
wishing they’d sent whisky, then plucking out the grapes with his teeth and
spitting them onto the lawn for the sparrows and blackbirds to fight over.

       “Well,
thought I should swing by. Welfare visit. Make sure you’re being looked after.
You know the drill.”

       “Not
necessary, but thanks,” said Harkness, raising a hand in appreciation and
wincing.

       “How
is it?”

       “Getting
there. Was unbearable. Now it’s almost unbearable.”

       “I’ve
got to ask, Rob, ‘cause I’m nosy and I’m a rude, obnoxious old bastard. How are
you getting on in the crapper?”

       “You
don’t mince around do you, boss? I’ll tell you how. You spend a day or two
getting a nurse to hold your pecker while you think about Margaret Thatcher and
try not to enjoy it, then realise there’s no chance of that ‘cause it’s all
shrivelled with embarrassment, so you think about anything at all until your
bladder uncorks itself and you piss your pathetic drizzle into the cardboard
pot while the nurse umms and ahhs like you’re top of the class at
potty-training.

       “If
you really want more detail, and I just know you do, well I managed to
disengage my bowels ‘til I got home – nurses didn’t like that at all ‘cause
they want you to perform before you’re discharged. Perverts. Since then, well,
Hayley’s had to do some really horrible things that neither of us ever wants to
repeat because our bread’s not buttered that way. I still can’t look her in the
eye. It’s fair to say the mystique has gone.

       “I can
manage it myself now, just about. Got a supply of those big cellophane gloves
you get at petrol stations. Fit over the bandages nicely. Hurts like a bastard
but that’s a small price to pay.”

       “I
thought your missus was off work?”

       “She
was until today. I persuaded her I can open a door and eat a sandwich
unassisted. She’s a good girl.”

       “Better
than you deserve.”

       “Amen.”

       “Suppose
you’d like to know what’s occurred, Rob?”

       “I’d
like to come back next week and find out for myself. I might need a scribe but
that’s nothing new.”

       “Doctor’s
signed you off for a month, subject to review. And before you butt in like you
always do, I want you to take it.”

       “What’s
next?”

       “Testy
bastard, aren’t we today? Right, item number one: Firth was switched off on
Wednesday morning so he’s gone, dead, expired, well and truly out of the frame.
Very sad and all that but problem solved.”

       “I
watch the news, boss. Dead despite the ‘heroic efforts of an officer who has
yet to be named.’ When oh when will I get my moment?”

       “Alright,
smartarse. Want a Blue Peter badge, do we?  Item two: The enquiry has
developed. If that’s the word. ‘Clusterfuck’ would be my word but I’m just an
old-fashioned sweary-Mary. The Detective Chief Superintendent and myself are of
a mind to scale down the original murder enquiry. The prime suspect is dead. He
was far and away the best fit for this and I can’t see us finding a better
candidate. We’ll keep a skeleton crew running it to make sure we can write up
the enquiry well enough to satisfy the Coroner.

       “While
I’m on the subject, Firth’s death will be examined by the team too. If we do it
right first time, the dead stay buried.  Anyway, fact is, you’re a witness.
Maybe even a suspect, technically speaking. Enquiry team will be knocking on
your door soon and boring you to tears with some very lengthy statement-taking.
Now, because you’re a witness, I want you on ice ‘til I say different. That
means home leave, out of the office, not contaminating my already too fucking
complicated enquiry.”

       “Why
do I feel like a suspect?”

       “’Cause
you’re not as thick as you look and thought was given in some quarters to
hanging it around your neck. But let’s get it said now and avoid fucking each
other over later on. You probably stoked him up in the car. Trying to get a
cough and do your job. Then you did some amateur surveillance. Would he have
done it anyway? If you’d dropped him off without a word and taken yourself off
for a long lunch like a normal cop? Who knows?

“Could
somebody with two degrees and a big fucking chip on their shoulder argue that
he did himself in because of something you said to him? Or that he did it to
prove something to you, knowing you’d be watching? They could, but they
couldn’t prove it unless the car was wired. I don’t know and I don’t want to
know what you discussed on what was incidentally a suspiciously long fucking
car ride to his gaff.

“Truth
be told, I wanted you to lean on him and keep eyes on. And luckily for you and
me, a handful of smartarse lawyers and cops with crowns on their shoulders
signed off on bailing him out, so if they attack us, they’ll end up bending
over with their trousers round their ankles when we roger them with the
Nuremberg defence.”

“I
did nothing wrong,” muttered Harkness, shaking Brennan’s imagery out of his
head. “We did nothing wrong. This man………this youth…..Firth was broken before we
even got hold of him.”

“I
agree. That’s why we’re going to tidy up. We’re not burying anything, Rob.
We’re just showing the truth in the best possible light.”

“I’ll
need to think about this.”

“Good.
Take your time. Lie in the garden. Watch Countdown. Boot up the interweb and
abuse yourself silly, assuming you can make a fist. Do all the thinking you
want.”

“This
was supposed to be my case. I need to review it. There’s got to be a better
resolution than this.”

“There
will be.”

“The
case hasn’t been solved.”

“It
has, Rob. You just don’t know it yet.”

       Harkness
had Hayley dig out his undergraduate notes and began to re-acquaint himself
with the universe beyond this squabbling city. In accepting an enforced leave
of absence, he’d been compelled to admit that he had entirely forgotten how to
use day after day of free time. Two or three days off between exhausting shifts
was another thing altogether; one day could be devoted to catching up on sleep,
another to recovering from a hangover and maybe a third to laundry, admin,
acknowledging Hayley’s existence and the almost inevitable late call-out.

       Yet a
seemingly unbroken chain of unstructured days and empty time felt daunting when
it should have felt liberating. The pain running its course through his hands
made writing with a pen or a keyboard impossible and stymied his determination
to review the case in as much detail as memory and Slowey’s secret bulletins
would allow.

Maybe
he should just settle for electronic distractions. Yet the ageing games console
kept idle company with the DVD player in a dusty corner of the lounge;
rampaging through a virtual world dispensing semi-automatic, hollow-point
justice to the unrighteous held a vague appeal, but his hands couldn’t have
held the controller. Hayley had acquired a stack of DVDs, trying to anticipate
with very little guidance what might divert him, but he couldn’t bring himself
to laugh at the stylised degradations of frat-house comedy, nor could he
stomach the formulaic, violent and oddly sanitised retribution that seemed to
clinch just about every movie thriller.

       So he
spent his days cross-legged on an outsize bean-bag on the living room floor,
old notes, maps and diagrams laid out before him, laptop sighing away the heat
of its thoughts, curtains tight shut for at least half the day to blank out the
sunlight. Even indoors, the furious energy of the nearest star seemed to add an
extra jolt to the voltage running through his hands.

       In
empty moments, his hands fascinated him. The torrent of needles tearing through
his flesh now at least felt cleansing, as if the wrecking crew had been
replaced by builders. He no longer wore bandages during the day, allowing the
wounds to cool and breathe. The flesh of his hands resembled a Martian plain,
rust-red and criss-crossed by deep rivulets. He spent a meticulous and
excruciating hour every day excising the pale lids of blisters with sharp
scissors, liberating the clean flesh beneath and making sure every raw surface
was coated with anti-biotic cream.

       Reprising
his BSc in Astrophysics occupied his mind for most of his waking hours. At
first, he’d found the intellectual contortions of fifteen years earlier beyond
him, as if he were reading the work of some arcane specialist he could never
hope or indeed need to emulate. Within days, he’d opened up, dusted off and
aired chambers in his mind he’d long ago closed and forgotten about; and
occupying those obscure rooms, hiding in peaceful obscurity, was the best and
only way he’d found to shut out the noise of the distant past and the near
present. 

       His
parents, some of his friends, Hayley and the few people at work who knew his
degree subject had been baffled by his career choice. After all, why would
somebody with the wherewithal to understand celestial mechanics want to waste
their brain as a copper? While he nodded along with them, he knew that
astrophysics had been a hobby and not a vocation. He was fascinated and
absorbed by the heavens, finding something in their study akin to spiritual
solace; but he was driven by policing, or at least those parts of it that
allowed him to set things right and re-order the world in his small, ham-fisted
way.

       So he
revelled in his dusty notes and lofty thoughts but didn’t forget that this was
the church he only turned to when his chosen life became too bruising; he was a
foul-weather parishioner, sinking to his knees only for weddings, funerals and
star charts.

       Perhaps
the discipline of astronomy offered as much solace as any other humbling
devotion. Once its mathematical complexities and conundrums had wrenched your
mind away from whatever earthly banalities and horrors had consumed it, you
were free to gape in wonder at the incalculable immensity of time and space,
the almost infinite possibilities that the universe harboured, out there,
somewhere, sometime. Then you could let time gently coax you from your moorings
and drift, watching the earth-bound tumult of fear and anxiety and commitment
and toil recede into irrelevance.

       “So,”
Hayley had said, joining him on the floor on a lazy Sunday afternoon almost a
week after the spate of deaths. “How do you know any of this is true? How can
anyone know?”

       “We
don’t. Philosophically speaking, I can’t even be sure you exist. Sometimes I
think I imagine you because I need a sexy, stroppy girl to slap me around and
keep me in my place.”

       The
light faded from her eyes and she wrapped her arms around her knees. She looked
older somehow, her temples speckled with a dull silver he’d never noticed
before, a delicate tracery of lines fanning out from the corners of red-rimmed
eyes.

       “Look.
I’m sorry,” he said.

       “Why?”

       “I
haven’t earned back flirting rights yet.”

       “No, Rob.
That’s not it. It’s just. You can’t. I mean you shouldn’t. Fuck it.” She picked
up her wine, gently rolling the sanguine liquid around the glass and admiring
the traceries of evaporating alcohol. Then she drained it quickly and placed
the glass firmly back on its coaster, the light back in her eyes. “Take me
seriously. That’s all.”

       “I do,
love. Of course I do.”

       “You
do. As your flatmate. A flatmate you’re fond of but still just your flatmate.
With the odd shag thrown in. When we’re both in the house and a bit squiffy and
in the mood at the same time. You know, when the stars are aligned: you’re the
expert so you’d know.”

       “I’ve
not been there for you. I know. I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for
me this week. You could have just, I don’t know, left me there. I deserved it.”

       “Rob,
don’t thank me, you big drama queen. Just appreciate me.”

       “I
do…”

       “No.
Listen. You’re married to your work and to Christ knows what else. I know you
don’t tell me anything like all of it. We’re good together. We were good
together. But you’re pulling away and I can’t stand much more of it.”

       “I
know. It’s the job. It can be better.”

       “Don’t
give me resignation and wishy-washy hope. It’s the job? You chose the job. I
can’t take that to the bank. I love you. I want to take care of you. That’s in
the contract; it’s not an extra you have to thank me for.”

       “Tell
me what you want.”

He’d
craned his neck towards the coffee table and sipped up a good, strong dose of
Laphroaig through a straw.