Falling More Slowly

by Peter Helton

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

DI Liam McLusky, freshly transferred from Southampton and just recovered from having been injured in the line of duty, has not time to settle in before he is pushed in at the deep end in a new and unfamiliar city. Everyday objects, transformed into explosive devises by a man trying to revenge himself on the world for reasons unknown, are being left across Bristol, maiming or killing those who pick them up. Apart from the challenge of finding the perpetrator McLusky has to cope with new colleagues - especially his new right hand man DS James 'Jane' Austin - new superiors, new relationships... and the prospect of having his ex-partner move into the city to study there - and keep tabs on him... Praise for Peter Helton's previous novels: 'Skilful plotting, wry humour and deftly drawn characters mark this debut' Library Journal 'Helton provides breezy prose and a lively cast' Kirkus Reviews 'Lively prose and a vivid picture of the city of Bath' Publishers Weekly 'Helton has created a wonderfully caustic main character who careens through this action-packed debut' Booklist

Release date: November 1, 2010

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 224

Sample

Chapter One

The ghost of a scream echoed around him. McLusky sputtered into consciousness as he shot upright. He’d screamed himself awake. He hadn’t done that for a while, thought he’d stopped doing it. Damn. Blinking rapidly into the twilight while his hammering heartbeat slowed, he took a while to realize where he was. He groped around on the floor until he found his alarm clock, then brought the thing close to his eyes to read the time on the tiny display.

7.29. Nightmare beat alarm by one minute. His meeting with the super at Albany Road station was at nine, quite a civilized time to start a new job. Which he might do if he ever made it off this mattress.

Liam McLusky hadn’t slept well. He’d drunk at the Barge Inn, the pub across the road, until closing time then spent half the night lying on his mattress, sipping Murphy’s and listening to the strange creaks and groans of his new abode.

Propping himself up on one elbow he fished a cigarette from a pack of Extra Lights on the floor, lit it and inhaled deeply. He had stopped smoking after the attack because he’d been in a hospital bed for a whole month before learning to hobble around again. It had seemed too good a chance to miss when he was already one month ahead in the cravings department. He’d lasted six months without a single puff.

Yesterday he had started again. New city, new job, new pack of ciggies, extra mild. New first-floor flat, rented. He took a quick inventory of the bedroom: one mattress, floorboards. Zen-like simplicity though perhaps lacking the style. There was a built-in wardrobe with louvred doors the entire length of one side which, after he had flung his clothes into it, remained half empty; a minute fireplace where a gas fire had recently been removed – he could see the old gas pipe protruding from the floor; four empty cans of Murphy’s, one of which he was using as an ashtray. A bin-liner full of clothes in need of a wash completed the furnishings. He twirled the cigarette butt into the can where it died with a hiss.

He pushed himself upright. All his adult life he had slept in the nude yet since his release from hospital he had taken to wearing a T-shirt at night. He didn’t like looking at the long, curved post-operative scar. It still felt as though that part of his torso where surgeons had delved to repair the internal damage needed symbolic protection.

But really he was fine. He’d been declared fit. He was ready for duty, more than ready. The enforced idleness had been the most difficult part. A fresh start in a new town was what he needed but most of all he needed a start. In the bathroom he turned on the hot tap, opened the gas valve, struck a match and fed it into the mouth of the old-fashioned gas boiler just as the landlady had shown him. Gas hissed and caught with a loud bark that made him flinch. The shower consisted of two plastic hoses attached to the hot and cold taps of the bath and connected to a droopy shower head fixed to the wall. He could only just fit himself under it. It took a while to get the mix right but it hardly mattered, nothing really mattered at this stage. McLusky kept telling himself that. He sniffed the towel and decided it would need washing. Launderette just a couple of doors down, how good was that? He pulled on his socks, then polished his shoes with his right foot. It would do. Chinos, shirt and tie, black leather jacket. He’d considered the suit, first day and all that, and rejected it. Start as you mean to go on. Then he’d remembered he’d been wearing it when they ran him over. At the hospital they had cut the trousers off his blood-soaked legs.

No fridge in the kitchen yet but a gas cooker with three rings, grill and oven, the Newhome 45, its feet standing in small glass saucers to save the ancient lino. This was like stepping back into World War II. Looked a bit like a bomb had landed in here too. Boxes with his stuff stood everywhere. Every surface, and there weren’t that many, was cluttered with items that had nowhere to go. No furniture here either apart from a red 1950s kitchen cupboard with glass drawers. He’d seen a junk shop round the corner, it would take no time at all to kit this place out. Some old dear had lived in the flat for forty years and died in here too. He didn’t mind. These houses were old, of course people had died there. He liked old houses. He wanted to die in an old house too. What were the chances? He liked places with a history, that’s why he had rejected the modern flat in Cotham they had offered him ‘until he sorted himself out’; too new, too soulless. And since he would never spend enough time there to give it soul himself, he would have to borrow other people’s.

Apart from the kitchen there was only the big, oddly shaped sitting room and a spare room just large enough to accommodate a midget. All that could wait.

In the meantime there was the Italian grocer’s next door. He’d soon found out why the flat was cheap: noise from the pub until late and the women at the grocer’s setting up the vegetable stalls on the pavement at just after six in the morning, talking loudly in Italian. It always sounded like they were having an argument but they probably weren’t. Just loud and happy to be alive. The place also sold pastries and coffee to take away, of which he intended to take full advantage. The grey-haired woman behind the counter showed a strong family resemblance to his Italian landlady but he hadn’t yet worked out who was who, so many people seemed to work there. The woman furnished him with both coffee and a Danish and called him Mr Clusky. McLusky set off towards the centre of town. His new town.

   

Carl Spranger had spent the night asleep behind the wheel of his BMW and woke with a start and a groan. Shit. He had a raging headache and felt sick to his stomach. It was cold in the car, the windows had misted up with his condensed breath. Fucking bitch. Greedy stupid fucking bitch. He searched for cigarettes amongst the crumpled packets and crisp wrappers but knew there weren’t any left. He thumped the dashboard. Shit. Everything was shit now. The devious cow. She’d sent a private bloody detective after him to spy on him and Allie. Paid for with his own bloody money of course.

There was an inch of vodka left in the bottle on the passenger seat. Hair of the dog, always worked. He let the liquid burn down his throat. It was answered by a sharp stab in his stomach. He held his breath until the pain eased. Happened more and more often recently. Ulcer probably. Cancer maybe. And why not? What the fuck did it matter now? Twelve years and now she wanted a divorce. Screamed her demands at him. I want a divorce and I want this fucking house. The house. No one gets the house. One affair and she wanted out. She had it all planned already, his replacement waiting in the wings. A chiropodist, very refined, not coarse, like you. Refined, my foot, ha! He wound down the window, spat, wiped the windscreen. Right front wing had a wrinkle in it. He remembered dimly, he’d hit something in the dark. Large dog, small deer, whatever, he didn’t get a look at it. Where was this godforsaken place? Lay-by on the A road leading to the motorway. He’d just driven around, had got too drunk though, cars kept blaring their horns at him, letting him know, probably weaved a bit. Stopped here, slept it off. The house. He started the car and pulled out into the road doing a U-turn. Two cars braked hard, parping their horns. He stuck his head out of the window. ‘Fuck you too! I’m busy. Fuck you.’ The house. The house was practically all that was left. She didn’t know that, of course. Plant hire business was bad, had been for a long time. He’d had to sell off machinery lately simply to stay afloat. Just him running the place from a Portakabin, with Allie, who had started as a receptionist, manning the phone. Good at telling lies for him, now he was getting more calls from creditors than customers. Lying for him, helping him, consoling him. Allie had more sympathy in her little finger than … Working late together trying to make sense of the books, trying to salvage something. A friendly word, a hug, a kiss. He’d screwed her in the office. Twice. Twice! And now she wanted the house? She wanted the house for that? No chance. Not-a-fucking-chance. No one was going to get the fucking house.

   

‘You can’t miss it,’ the woman said while eyeing up his almond Danish as though she really fancied a bite. McLusky offered but she just laughed and walked away. Somehow he had managed to get lost, which wasn’t good, not for a police officer and not on his first day. Should have called a cab. He checked his watch. Plenty of time.

Of course he’d been to Albany Road station before but not from this direction. He’d looked it up on the A–Z. Easily walkable from his Northmoor Street flat and it would help him get to know the place. Should have brought the map of course. He was in the right district though. The warren of Bristol’s town centre had grown over centuries like a rich fungus, the mycelium of its streets stretching senselessly out across the hills behind the harbour area. Dark streets, bright streets, tightly wound streets, steep streets, allowing only brief, surprising glimpses of the harbour basin and the river. The city was built on nothing but hills it seemed. The Romans had vineyards here on the steep, south-facing slopes where the Old Town had grown up. Or perhaps it was a different hill; he’d read something about it in a guidebook. Some of the houses were tall and narrow timber-frame buildings, a lot of Victorian houses too, but the scars left by WWII bombing had been filled with drab utilitarian concrete buildings, some towering high above their more elegant neighbours.

The most noticeable thing however was always the traffic. These streets had not been built for it and the centre was too busy, too crowded to pedestrianize. Successive traffic schemes had failed. The ever-changing one-way system had become so unworkable half of it had simply been abandoned and the streets handed back to the chaos merchants. The result was a mess of Mediterranean intensity: noisy, polluted, crowded, dangerous and during peak times bordering on anarchy. Delivery vans driving over pavements, taxis going everywhere, car drivers desperate for a place to stop, the usual bikers and suicidal cyclists, the even more suicidal skateboarders, enough scooters for an Italian teen movie and pedestrians dodging the lot. Many cyclists wore dust masks, some wore actual gas masks, probably as a mark of protest against the dense pollution. He had been reading the local paper to get a taste of the place. A campaign was under way to stop motorized traffic coming into the city altogether with protests every Saturday morning, bringing more chaos to the streets. And how were emergency vehicles supposed to get through this, he wondered? How on earth did you move an ambulance through these streets?

McLusky hadn’t bought a new car yet, his last having been wrecked in the chase in which he’d been injured. He’d been promised the loan of a plain police unit until he ‘sorted himself out’ – so much sorting – but taking in this traffic chaos he thought that perhaps roller blades might well have the edge.

He asked directions again, this time of a grey, elderly man rummaging for something in his canvas satchel while pushing an electric bicycle along the gutter. The man looked up with a closed-off face and seemed to consider ignoring him, then pointed. ‘Albany Road station? Down those steps, then turn right. You can’t miss it, it’s the ugliest building in town. Wants dynamiting.’

‘Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.’ He crossed the street carefully, remembering too well the sound of his own breaking bones as they’d made contact with the car bonnet. He had no desire to repeat the experience. He didn’t really believe he could survive a second time. Or even wanted to. Perhaps this would go away or perhaps the feeling might never leave him. Or it might even help him live, the flat feeling that he no longer minded dying. He didn’t want to die. But equally he wasn’t sure he wanted to survive at all costs. Living and surviving were different things after all.

A shadowy network of alleys and worn, irregular steps connected some of the Old Town streets. Small shops and artisans’ workshops clung on here but the business rates and rents had driven many of them out, making way for the national chains that could afford to pay them.

He recognized the place instantly. The man had been right, Albany Road police station was quite the most unlovely building he had come across so far, something he hadn’t really taken in when he had come for his interview six weeks earlier.

Comparing the station with the surrounding architecture, a small eighteenth-century church and several well-kept Victorian houses, wasn’t really fair. It would be like comparing a plastic stacking chair with Chippendale furniture. This was definitely the stacking kind of architecture. He checked his reflection in the window of an electrical retailer’s, too late to worry really. Hair a bit wild though. He smoothed it down.

Reaching for the handle of the tinted glass door of the station he hesitated just a fraction – new job, new era, new life, new crew, new town, new day – then walked inside.

The desk officer buzzed him through the next door. ‘Morning, sir, they’ll be expecting you.’ Just the slightest hint of doubt in his baritone. ‘Will you find your own way …?’

He nodded and the desk officer gratefully returned to what he’d been doing, far too busy to nursemaid freshly minted detective inspectors.

McLusky remembered his way to CID from his interview though he hadn’t met many of his new colleagues at the time since most had been off sick with some sort of virus.

Inside, too, the station was undeniably sixties or seventies. Recently refurbished, the super had said. He’d just have to take his word for it. The place was busy, the stairs echoing like a tunnel with footsteps and voices. Eight forty: he was early, his meeting with Superintendent Denkhaus was not until nine. Straight into the CID room and he instantly felt at home. CID rooms were CID rooms: desks, waste baskets, computer screens, phones – several with detectives attached to them – maps of the force area and city centre on the walls, whiteboard, noticeboard, fax machine, photocopier and kettle. The windows were firmly closed against the noise of the traffic below. The place smelled of printer ink, cheap aftershave and deodorant overwhelmed by sweat.

One man looked up, frowned, then tried for a smile and got up. ‘Inspector McLusky, sir? I’m DS Austin.’ He stretched out a broad and darkly hairy hand. McLusky shook it. The whole man was darkly hairy and broad, probably worked out. Intelligent, open eyes, blinking fast. The soft Scottish accent sounded like Edinburgh to him, but he was no expert. ‘Welcome to Albany. Ehm, your office, sir, is just along here.’

His office. He’d never had his own office. He’d not been a DI long enough for them to even find one for him in Southampton before the bastards rammed him off the road. Then came back and ran him over as he staggered from his car.

Austin led the way back into the corridor and to a door right at the end. ‘You’re taking over from DI Pearce, it’s his old office.’

McLusky had read about Pearce, a bent copper, currently on the run with a goodly amount of drug money, probably in Spain. Enjoy it while you can. Spain was no longer a safe hiding place.

He walked straight in. It was about the size of the box room in his new flat – space for second midget here – and smelled aggressively of cleaning products. It contained a dented filing cabinet, two chairs, an empty bookshelf, a metal dustbin and a small battered desk. The window faced out the back overlooking graffiti-covered walls, chaotic pigeon-shit rooftops and the shadowy backs of houses. In the middle distance, between tall buildings, he glimpsed a sliver of the harbour. Apart from in- and out-trays, monitor, keyboard and phone he’d been furnished with a set of car keys sitting on a form for him to sign and an envelope lying across the keyboard which he knew would contain the gaff he needed to log on to the computer.

‘Thanks.’ McLusky shivered. He thought he could feel the dampness in the fifty-year-old cement bricks on the other side of the plasterboard, could hear the rustle of their slow crumbling. He pointed to the envelope. ‘This is precisely the amount of paperwork I can cope with. Can you see it stays like that, please?’

‘We’ll do our very best, sir.’ Austin’s lopsided grin acknowledged the avalanche of paperwork heading for the inspector’s in-tray.

The phone on his pristine desk rang. He took a deep breath then picked it up. Anyone could make a mistake. ‘DI McLusky.’

It was Area Control. ‘Sir, I know this sounds like a job for Uniform, but …’ The young male voice hesitated.

‘Go on then.’

‘The original call was made by a Mrs Spranger, sounded like a domestic at an address in Redland. We’ve sent two units so far and both have gone off the air. We always have reception problems in Redland. We’ve since had a mobile phone call from one of the officers and he seemed a bit incoherent. There was a lot of background noise …’

‘Okay, we’ll deal. What’s the address?’ He snatched up the keys, turned the form around and snapped his fingers for a pen. Austin unhooked a biro from his shirt pocket and obliged. McLusky scribbled down the unfamiliar address and hung up then pocketed the pen in his leather jacket. Austin opened his mouth then thought better of it.

‘Right.’ McLusky held up the paper for Austin to read. ‘Where is this place? We’ll take my car, just lead me to it.’

The car turned out to be a grey Skoda. ‘You sure you want to drive, sir?’ Austin doubted the wisdom of it but got in at the passenger side anyway.

‘Positive. Just give me clear directions and in good time. The sooner I find my way round town the better.’ McLusky avoided being driven if at all possible. He hated being a passenger, always had done. ‘Never driven one of these before, though.’ He pulled out of the station car park. It felt good to be holding a steering wheel again. Skodas used to be joke cars, now the police couldn’t get enough of them.

‘Go left here. The new Skoda. 180 bhp, they’re okay, actually.’

‘We’ll find out if you’re right in a minute. How long’ve you been at Albany Road?’

‘Two years. Bath before that, then a spell at Trinity Road.’

‘Your accent?’

‘I grew up in Edinburgh but we left when I was sixteen. We moved around a lot. Straight across here, sir, and keep going downhill till the next set of lights, then left and left again.’

Traffic really was appalling but using the siren sometimes made matters worse, people froze or blundered into each other. ‘Keep telling me where I am so I’ll learn the streets. I did spend a couple of hours with the A–Z a while back but it’s not the same.’ After the lights McLusky found a stretch of miraculously drivable road, put his foot down and got blitzed by two speed cameras in short succession before having to slow right down again.

‘This is Broadmead, still faster through here this time of day.’

‘Trinity Road is district headquarters, right?’

‘Right. I hated it. Keep going, but try and get into the left laaaaane.’ Austin gripped the dashboard as McLusky braked abruptly so as to narrowly miss colliding with a biker who hadn’t expected a Skoda doing fifty across the junction.

McLusky barged on through the traffic. ‘It does move, this thing. What’s the super like? I mean I have met him, of course, once, but that was formal. To work under?’

‘Ehm, Denkhaus?’ Austin sounded distracted as his DI drove across three lanes, getting snarled in traffic, weaving, bullying his way through. ‘Up Stokes Croft until I tell you. Ehm, he’s a no-nonsense copper, can suddenly become a stickler for procedure when the mood takes him. I have book-shaped indentations on my head to prove it. Someone suggested it always happens when he tries to lose weight. Sugar cravings.’ He pointed across the street. ‘Not a bad takeaway that, by the way.’

McLusky came up behind a bus going at walking pace. He worked the horn, mounted the pavement and managed to overtake in the space between two lamp-posts. Just.

Austin kept his eyes firmly shut until he felt the car regain the road.

‘I remember this bit, came down here on my way to the station. But keep up the directions. Albany Road a happy nick?’

‘Depends who you’re working with, but yeah, it’s all right, I suppose.’

McLusky parped his horn at a pedestrian who looked like he might just be thinking of stepping into the road.

Austin hung on tight and gave directions in good time since the inspector was already cornering with squealing tyres. He didn’t know a lot about the man and half of that was rumour. He was about five years older than himself, he guessed, thirty-three or -four. He’d transferred up to Bristol from Southampton after nearly getting himself killed in the line of duty there. University man and difficult with it, someone had said. And something about being a bad team player. Unpredictable. Not exactly what they needed at Albany. He sneaked a glance at the new DI. He seemed utterly relaxed despite driving at speed in a new town and an unfamiliar road system. Some system. ‘Next left.’

McLusky didn’t slow. ‘I live down that street over there, next to the Italian grocer’s.’ He cornered and accelerated up the hill.

‘Above Rossi’s? What’s it like? Left and directly right again.’

‘The grocer’s?’

‘Your place.’

‘Well … Quite cheap. Totally unmodernized, wonky floorboards, no central heating or anything.’ No heating at all, now he came to think of it.

Austin shrugged. He could only dream of central heating. He and his fiancée had just scraped together enough for a tiny dilapidated end-of-terrace. Heating would have to wait. ‘I quite like Montpelier, couple of good pubs round there. Go left, no idea what that’s called, and right up the hill.

‘Keep going, nearly there. Careful, there’s often dopey schoolkids wandering across this street.’

McLusky worked the horn again. Austin had never driven through the city at this speed, not even with Blues and Twos. He hated to think what kind of speeds the DI reserved the siren for. McLusky drove up on the wrong side of the road, overtaking everything, barging through, getting a chorus of angry horn play in return.

‘Turn right, that should be it.’

‘Very leafy round here.’ They certainly had the right place. There was no need to look for the paper on which he had scribbled the name of the house. Just beyond the crest of the humpback street was the scene of the disturbance, unlike any domestic McLusky had yet attended in his eight years on the force. Spectators had gathered on the opposite side of the road. He pulled up and jumped out. They were intercepted by a distraught-looking constable. McLusky showed him his ID.

‘I’m glad you’re here, sir.’

‘I bet you are. What the hell’s going on?’

The drive of the squat detached house looked like a scrapheap. At various angles stood two squad cars, a BMW and what appeared to have been a green civilian Volvo. All four cars were utterly destroyed, their roofs caved in, windows missing, in fact there wasn’t a single surface left undamaged on any of them. Behind all the battered metal, on the once well-kept lawn, stood an enormous wheeled digger, its engine growling, its hydraulic arm pivoting left and right, threatening two uniformed constables with oblivion. At the house the curtains were drawn at all the windows.

‘It’s a domestic, sir. The individual in the cab of the digger is a Mr Spranger and he is the owner of the house. He intends to destroy it.’

‘Did he steal the digger?’

‘No, he owns that too.’

‘He owns the house and he owns the digger? Well, that’s all right then. Why don’t we let him?’ McLusky shrugged. He hated domestics. Everyone hated domestics. There was nothing more tedious on the planet than people who needed the police to sort out their relationships.

‘My sentiment entirely, but we can’t. It appears Mrs Spranger is still inside. Though that doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s going to demolish it around her ears. Told us to clear off his property, sir, and when we didn’t he attacked our vehicles. The other cars were already totalled when we got here.’

‘Any sign of the woman?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Has anyone tried to enter the premises to see if there really is a woman in the house?’ Because if there wasn’t he’d pull those constables out of danger and let the lunatic get on with it.

‘Constable Hanham tried and got chased right round the house by the digger. That’s how the shed and the greenhouse at the back got it.’

McLusky watched as the burly red-faced man operating the digger took another swipe at an officer. He didn’t like the odds. Spranger seemed to be shouting continuously though no one could hear what he was saying over the noise. He looked like a man about to explode. Perhaps he was going to give himself a heart attack and save them all some bother. ‘Any ideas, DS Austin?’

Austin scratched the tip of his nose. ‘Perhaps if we rushed the cab from both sides one of us could get to him and pull him off or snatch the keys out of the ignition.’

‘Fair enough – you up for it then?’

The constable vigorously shook his head. ‘With respect, sir, we tried that. He’s locked himself in and I caught a nasty whack on my side when he suddenly swung the thing round.’

‘Are you okay though? What’s your name? Will you need medical attention?’

‘I’ll be all right. It’s Constable Pym, sir.’

‘Okay, Pym. Request an ambulance anyway. This looks like it has the potential to get painful for someone. And then make sure you keep those civilians out. And move those cars along.’ The number of onlookers on the pavement was growing all the time and several cars had stopped in the lane. There were worried faces at an upstairs window in the house to the left, peering across at the noisy yellow digger swinging its bucket arm wildly from side to side. Pym, in his mud-stained uniform, walked off with a slight limp. The digger churned up the damp lawn with its five-foot wheels, lurching forward another yard towards the front of the house, the constables jumping back but not prepared to give way. They’d soon be with their backs to the wall.

McLusky didn’t like the look of it. ‘Okay, we can’t play cat and mouse with him all day. I think the fact that he hasn’t actually touched the house yet is a good sign, but all the same. Go round to the right and attract the constables’ attention and wave them off. As soon as they’re clear I’ll try and put the Skoda between him and the house.’

Austin scratched his nose harder. ‘Do you think that’s wise, sir?’

‘No, I don’t, but I can’t think of anything else short of getting Armed Response out . . .