Bright Spark (7 page)
“Good
man.” Harkness caught a whiff of some peppery musk, a blend of brothel and
municipal lavatory. It wasn’t Biddle, whose trademark tang of pipe tobacco and
stale sweat was present and correct. Perhaps Newbould’s spray-on deodorant was
being tested.
“Now
then, top of the old agenda, crime scene integrity and health and safety. A
little bird tells me that certain protocols vis a vis risk assessing a crime
scene and not circumventing the rules for preserving the evidential integrity
of said scene may not have been observed to the fullest letter of the manual.”
“Well,
sir, it’s like this…”
“Relax,
Rob, it’s not last cigarette time. And there’s more.”
“It’s
like this, Rob,” began Brennan, cutting across Newbould, his South Yorkshire
accent thickened by forty years of full tar, full fat and full pint glasses.
“You
turn up half cut at a murder scene in your best pal’s personal car looking like
you’ve coated yourself in glue and rolled around in a charity shop. Then you
play at being a fireman, traipse around a delicate crime scene like you’re
Clouseau and fart around with the dog squad while the golden hour ticks away.”
Harkness’s
radio flashed and chimed, a personal message overriding the mute setting. He
flushed, fumbled it from his belt clip, saw a collar number he didn’t recognise
and blocked the call.
“Finished?”
asked Brennan, index finger frozen in mid jab. “Good. Bloody technology. Now
this is a bollocking, not a debate. I like you and you’re a bright boy, but you
need to stop pissing about and realise you’re wearing bigger shoes now. In a
second, I’ll ask you to say ‘yes, sir’, and when you say that, you’ll be
agreeing that we’ll never have a conversation like this again.”
Brennan
leaned across the desk and cocked an ear.
“Yes,
sir,” said Harkness, exhaling slowly. He had a sudden urge to change his
clothes and scour his skin, to erase the taint of the night that now clung to him,
reeking.
“Right
then,” said Brennan, leaning back and crossing his arms over his well rounded
gut. “We’ve got some admin and media waffle to take care of while you two piss
off and figure out how to find this bastard. Come back with a game plan when you’ve
got one that might work.”
“Which
two, sir?” said Harkness, dread transfixing his features like the shadow of a
falling rock.
Biddle
grinned and stuck out a hand, stray nasal hair twitching, lustrous and stiff as
wire wool, as he exhaled with a snort that might have been laughter.
“Rob,
looks like I’m tutoring you again,” said Biddle. “I bet you thought you’d seen
the back of me, an’ all.”
Harkness
nodded to the two bosses, both of whom ignored him, their attention fixed on
the policy log, already up to five pages in Newbould’s flowery longhand. He led
Biddle into the main office where the phone on his desk had just stopped
ringing.
“Looks
like someone was trying to get hold of you there, Rob. You always were a bit
difficult to reach.”
Harkness
gestured to a chair near his own. Biddle grinned, strolled past it, rotated the
executive chair and lowered himself into it.
“I
think you’ll find that’s my chair now, Ron,” said Harkness, voice as neutral as
he could make it. “Some stains on there of sentimental value to me.”
“Sorry,
Rob.” Biddle stood, hands raised in mock surrender. “Forgot how much you liked
your own space. We can’t all be team players.”
Harkness
dropped into his chair, tweaked a lever to change the incline by a millimetre
or two and it was his again. He was conscious of the weariness seeping into his
head like an anaesthetic, drawing in his horizons, blurring connections, making
insight more and more difficult. His heart was thumping against his ribs and
adrenaline wanted to make all the decisions; perhaps he should let it.
“Give
me a clue then, Ron. Why have we been saddled with each other?”
“Steady
on, Rob. Anyone might think you weren’t pleased to see your old mentor.”
Harkness
drew in a deep breath and wished it was being filtered through a cigarette.
“You
and your moods, Rob. Well, the boss heard there was some danger of you screwing
this one up with your erratic working practices and asked me to come and lend
you a guiding hand. I never mind a bit of OT and you know I’m fond of you, so
I’m here to help.”
“And?”
“And
nothing. Just think of me as the stabilisers on your new bike.”
“Not
the wind beneath my wings?”
“I
forgot how good you were at naming that tune.”
“Well,
Ron,” said Harkness, propping his feet on the table after double-checking that
the cleaner had left. “I haven’t forgotten much. While the office is empty and
we’re both behaving like grown-ups, I should point out that I’m not happy to
see you. You made my life miserable when I was too new and dumb to kick off
about it. I’m still not sure why and I doubt you know yourself. Maybe it’s
because I’m younger and prettier than you.
“Now,
I know you and Brennan drink, play golf and do Lord knows what else together,
which means I’m stuck with you. But if you go out of your way to botch this up
for me, I’ll walk off it and I’ll tell the boss why.”
“You’ve
changed, Rob.” Biddle hooked a finger under his collar and pulled it away from
his bobbing Adam’s apple. “Looks like you’ve grown a pair. I always thought you
were harmless enough. Just a shame you never really joined the gang. Always
hard to know whose side you’re on.”
“Right
now, my own. Do you need more foreplay or should we crack on with a bit of
work?”
Biddle
had accepted the offer of a milky coffee, three sugars, but had insisted on
counting out the exact price of 31 pence. Harkness had left his jacket and tie
draped over his chair and slipped his mobile phone and a notebook into a
pocket. He announced an urgent and potentially prolonged visit to the gents and
left Biddle squinting at his spider’s web of notes.
Harkness
descended to the basement, passing the armoury where a sharp crackle, a tang of
ozone and a grunt of satisfaction suggested early turn traffic were testing
their stun guns. He crossed the bare concrete floor, passing sleek, high
performance traffic cars, battered, low performance patrol cars and barely
legal, unmarked bangers reserved for low profile work and fast food runs. The
keys had been left in the ignition of a badly mauled Mondeo on a ‘T’ plate. The
windscreen was cracked, a wing mirror was missing and the tyres were almost
slick. Harkness took the keys and pocketed them.
In
a badly lit corner behind cars parked three deep, he found
the overspill from the property officer’s store.
Bicycles, jerry cans, lead cladding and copper cable were piled against each
other in an area demarcated by a lavish leather suite seized as proceeds of
crime from some well to do ne’er do well. Harkness flopped into his habitual
thinking space, a lavish, four berth sofa which could accommodate him from head
to toe without overhang. There must have been another seizure since he was last
down here. The familiar aroma of diesel and leather was underlined by something
sweet and pungent enough to make his eyes water and his fingers itch for a
cigarette; a decent crop of cannabis, not sticks and seeds from the school
gate.
He
stretched his arms above his head, levered his back straight and felt the
stiffness in his upper spine dissipate with a crack like a distant gunshot. He
held the ecstasy of uncoiling pain on his lips as his eyelids fluttered shut.
Peace and quiet, space to think, cool and comfortable, mind clear, ready to
reassess, reorder, get a grip on things; the mantra might work better if his
inner voice didn’t sound so much like a stage hypnotist at a working men’s
club.
Had
the arsonist really intended murder? How had they ensured the victims were
under lock and key and behind the most secure double-glazing in the East Midlands before setting the blaze? If it was Murphy, could he really have murdered his
own family in so calm and orderly a manner? Normally, there’d be intimate and
bloody hatred involved in the killing of a loved one.
The
fact that Murphy was missing didn’t automatically make him the suspect; he
could be an undiscovered victim. If not Murphy, then who would hate him enough
to stray into a nice area and attack his home and family? That kind of hatred
didn’t spring from one drunken spat, it needed deep roots. A quick, drunken
rumble in the saloon bar was too shallow a pretext, unless it flowed from
something older. There must be a name in all that paper on his desk, a
signpost, a reason. Perhaps Biddle would find it, if he could take a break from
drafting a list of learning points.
His eyes closed again and with
a protesting gasp he toppled into sleep.
He should have set his alarm as
there was no time to sleep, no time to eat, no time to think and no time to get
it wrong. A clock on the wall was encircled by gunpowder which flared and
sputtered in time with the second hand. Something bright and noisy would happen
when it got to twelve again, and even though the spark and the second hand were
moving far too slowly, as if he had an ocean of time in which to rest, he knew
he’d wake very soon in a spitting panic, brain even more addled than it was
now.
The clock had to be attached to
something, so flock wallpaper in nicotine yellow appeared and he was back in
the medium’s front parlour, lately the favourite venue for his night terrors.
Ceramic ladies and gallants, frozen in blushing dalliances, jostled for space
on the mantelpiece with faded photographs of children, frowning, grinning and
grimacing in sagging school jumpers and not understanding the need to strike a
pose and pretend to be something or someone else. Every ten seconds, a parakeet
let fly a piercing whistle and listened like a sonar operator for an answering
echo from silent depths.
A gas fire hissed, brown frame
bronzed in places and white elements blackened as if it were rarely turned off.
The sofa was too comfortable, the room too warm, it was so difficult to speak
or think or move. The diminished, bearded man in sellotaped glasses had in
other dreams politely and slowly explained that Mrs Crowe was detained with
another client. He smiled and hummed, not feeling the need to explain again,
and had settled like dust into his armchair to read a paperback bible. He’d yet
to turn the page from where it had fallen open in his lap.
The girl rocked slowly in the
other armchair, eyes rolling, lips twitching and a thin tracery of drool
sketching a lop-sided smile. Her fingers, pink and swollen with nails bitten to
the quick, pawed with their own energy at her food-stained nightdress.
A mobile phone chose that moment to fill the room
with a saccharine R&B medley that demanded to be silenced. Shuffling in the
soft folds of the armchair while the tune swelled in volume and the singer’s
desires grew more ardent, he plucked the wretched thing from a pocket to find
it wriggling like an overturned cockroach. He flipped open its carapace and
jabbed at a red button, silencing the pimp-crooner mid-groan. He’d missed calls
from Slowey, from Hayley and most recently from himself.
The bearded man eyed him over
his lenses, licked a finger and turned a page. The girl sobbed and bellowed
unformed words. The bird cocked its head and eyed him. The murmur from beyond
the frosted doors that led to Mrs Crowe’s conservatory had evaporated.
“Sorry. Probably work.” The
clock resumed its ticking.
“What is it you do then?” The
bearded man seemed to find his own voice surprising and his eyes returned to
the pages before him as if for guidance.
“I think I’m a policeman.”
“What an odd thing to say. Are
you or aren’t you?”
“I suppose that’s why I’m
here.”
“I suppose so.”
“Next,” said the parakeet,
unleashing another whistle that made him grit his teeth and squeeze shut his
eyes. He held them shut, told himself to wake up, swearing that he’d see the
real world when he opened them. Then the air changed; it was warmer, and the
smell was all wrong, not leather and cannabis but stale sweat mingling with
just used cat litter.
He prised open his eyes and was
folded into a deckchair that was much too small for him, staring over his knees
at Mrs Crowe while the fabric under his buttocks was slowly tearing stitch by
popping stitch. The raised hook of a cat’s tail brushed his knees.
“Back again, Robert? The future
isn’t a fruit machine, you know. You can’t make all those bad things go away
just by pulling the lever again. Or are you one of those sceptics, come to
catch me out?”
Mrs Crowe filled her half of
the conservatory. Her pale blue eyes, receding behind thick spectacle lenses,
were her sharpest feature. From the perm that domed her chubby face to the
fleshy forearms that cradled pendulous breasts and ankles whose thickening
flesh spilled from her slippers, she inhabited the space as fully as she could.
She rarely moved, nor did she need to. The physical realm was of little
interest to her. Only the glimmer behind her lenses, the faint movement of her
blouse and the sheen of sweat on her lip confirmed she was alive and awake.