‘I can’t pay for it, Becky.’
‘Don’t be daft, it’s on the house. And please don’t call me Becky, I hate that name. It’s Rebecca.’
He took a few deep gulps, pulling a face as the liquid touched his shaky teeth. Blood had dripped on to his jacket which was grimy at the back where he had fallen to the ground.
‘Have you called the police yet?’ The barmaid’s blonde head disappeared below the bar top where she was rummaging about.
‘They got my mobile. There’s no point, anyway. The police can’t catch them. They’ve had their description countless times now, no point telling them again.’
‘You’ll have to report it anyway, Rick, just for the cards and your mobile.’ She had found a first aid box and produced a bottle of iodine.
‘I know but I’ll do it tomorrow, I’ve had enough aggro for one evening.’
‘Go and clean yourself up in the toilet and then we’ll put some of this on you.’
‘No way, that stuff stings.’
‘Don’t be such a baby. And if you don’t cancel your cards now they’ll have spent your money by the morning. Here, you can put it on yourself, I’ve got work to do anyway.’ She walked off to serve customers at the other end of the bar. Rick stayed put, dabbed, sniffed and drank. A middle-aged couple who walked in a few minutes later seemed to know him. The story got told again, sympathy was expressed and they bought him a drink before squeezing on to a bench in the corner.
McLusky had finished his meal and brought the empty plate to the bar, next to the mugging victim. Rick was in his late twenties with dark curly hair and a peeved expression on his narrow face, which might have a lot to do with recent events. ‘How many attacked you?’ McLusky asked.
‘Four, there’s always four, isn’t there? Two scooters, two riders and two big bastards on the back who deal out the shit and do the mugging.’ He looked morosely into his pint glass.
McLusky guessed more beer would be required soon. It would numb the pain but the humiliation and anger would take time to dissolve. ‘Buy you another?’
He looked up at him. ‘If you like. Thanks. The bastards.’ He drained his glass.
McLusky signalled his order across to the barmaid. She seemed to be running the place single-handedly tonight. ‘So what did they look like, your assailants?’ There it was, assailants, perpetrators, suspects. Police speak. Bastards.
Rick didn’t notice. ‘Where have you been? Same as what they always look like.’
‘I just moved here. First time I’ve heard about it.’
‘Oh, right. Well, they all wear black. Black jeans, jackets, gloves, helmets. They’ve got balaclavas on under their helmets and they wear sunglasses, one had pink lenses the other yellow. Didn’t see the blokes who rode the scooters really, I was busy getting my face kicked in.’
‘What were their voices like?’
‘Voices? Normal, like from round here.’
‘Young, old? What age, do you think?’
‘No idea, mate.’
A pint of Guinness and one of lager arrived. The girl put the lager in front of Rick. ‘Looks like you’re doing all right out of this, anyway.’
‘You didn’t get a number plate, did you?’ McLusky asked.
‘I didn’t. But they’re always either so muddy you can’t read them or they’re nicked anyway.’
McLusky left it there and returned to his little table by the window. Asking any more questions would have given the game away. He felt he had done enough work on his first day. Starting with that maniac in the digger demolishing his house and the zippy Skoda. He regretted having sacrificed the car now but it seemed the obvious thing to do then. It would read badly in his report, he knew that much. Not at all how he had intended to start his new job but in retrospect not at all untypical. And then the damn bomb in the park.
If it was a prank then whoever planted it had to have been either unaware of the strength of the explosion that was going to occur or completely indifferent to the possibility that people might be killed. What he didn’t see was why someone would have planted it in that spot if they had actually intended to kill a lot of people. Unless …
Unless they had intended to kill a specific person and failed. Or a group of people. Had someone or a whole group of people agreed to be there at a certain time but failed to turn up and thus escaped being blown to kingdom come? Had it been triggered remotely? Was the woman now recovering in hospital the intended victim? At least in his book a bomb to kill a retired postmistress was definite overkill. All these questions had to be worked through and new ones found. Asking the right questions was what CID work was all about. How was the bomb made? Where did the components come from? How was it detonated, etc? McLusky yawned. Tomorrow Albany Road would no doubt be back in charge of the investigation and that’s when he would start asking good, intelligent questions of the team. But for now he had had enough. Possibly not enough Guinness but enough of his first day back at work.
Chapter Three
No personal items, no photographs, no Christmas cactus. McLusky was again impressed by the extreme minimalism, even sterility, of the superintendent’s office. Apart from the obvious, the computer screen, the blotter, in-and out-tray, phones and fountain pen, there was nothing much to break up the expanse of clean, clear desk. Denkhaus certainly didn’t feel the need to create a barrier between himself and whoever had the dubious pleasure of sitting in the ungenerously upholstered chair in front of his desk. The rest of the office was similarly functional. The view across the city his window afforded was unimpeded by pot plants or other decoration.
Denkhaus’s impatient, forever slightly irritated energy blasted straight at him. ‘Yes, McLusky, interesting man, Kelper. High-flyer, he’ll go all the way. You should have heard some of the things he talked about. Well, hinted at, all hush-hush stuff really. The budget they have, especially since the London bombings, it’s astronomical. We can only dream … We dined at the Cavendish in Bath last night and — ’
‘Then I hope he picked up the bill.’ To McLusky’s own amazement he had given voice to his thought. He hadn’t even heard of the Cavendish before but he was absolutely certain that eating there was beyond a DI’s salary. It just sounded like it.
Denkhaus looked puzzled, not used to being interrupted by smartass DIs. ‘What?’
‘I was just interested, since he wields such a healthy budget. Sir.’ He got the ‘sir’ in far too late to make any difference.
‘That’s utterly beside the point, DI McLusky, and it was hardly clever to bring up the budget! Ours has a sizeable hole in it since you saw fit to use a practically brand new car as a battering ram. I do wish you could have thought of something less spectacular. We’ve been plastered across the front pages of the Evening Post day after day for entirely the wrong reasons. You haven’t been here five minutes and you go and give them more ammunition. Yesterday I felt like sending you straight back to where you came from, I hope you realize that?’
‘Yes, sir.’ McLusky tried to look contrite. ‘And what about today, sir?’
‘Today you are back in charge of the bomb investigation. You can count yourself lucky. There’s been a spate of burglaries at properties close to the canal; a plague of muggings, as I’m sure you are aware; a runaway ten-year-old boy; a string of random arson attacks on cars as well as all the usual. But unlike your colleagues you have nothing on your desk. You, DI McLusky, will concentrate on finding what the papers are already calling the Bench Bomber.’ He tapped an early edition of the Post, which looked like it had been ironed. ‘I ask you. First the Mobile Muggers, you know, mobile because they steal mobiles and because they run around on scooters. Now the Bench Bomber. They’re loving every minute of it. We really don’t need this. And of course when we can’t give them name and serial number of the perp right away it’s “police are clueless”. If that woman dies, what’s her name …?’