Or perhaps … He rewound a little, replayed the sequence. Maxine disappeared off the screen but a sliver of her bag, which stuck out behind her, didn’t. It bobbed down, then up again before finally going out of shot. McLusky’s opinion was succinctly summed up. ‘Shit.’
‘Found something?’
‘I think so. Come here, Jane, look at this.’
Austin arrived at his shoulder. He replayed the whole sequence for him. ‘Gets out, grabs bag, walks towards the exit, right? Here comes a couple towards the entrance …’
‘She puts on a bit of a spurt.’
‘Yes. Keep your eye on the bag.’
‘Oh, she stops and bends down, that’s what that looks like.’
‘I think when she’s fit to be interviewed she’ll tell us she found the damned thing right there.’ McLusky tapped the edge of the screen with a fingernail. ‘Only she didn’t open it until later because she was in a hurry.’
Austin nodded. ‘Possible.’
‘Possible. Though I hope not. I sincerely hope not. How long do you think the thing could have been lying there? Minutes? Hours? Days?’
‘That’s hard to say. It’s a busy car park and a lot of people go in and out, not to mention those walking along there. Not long. It was bright gold.’
‘That’s what I’m thinking.’ He scribbled a note for Deedee Dearlove to try and trace the couple in the video. Naturally he expected others to read his notes.
Austin scratched the tip of his nose. ‘Why were you hoping she hadn’t found it there?’
A couple of civilian operators walked in. McLusky jerked his head towards the exit. ‘My place.’ Austin followed him into his office. McLusky wedged open a window and pulled open a drawer. He produced a small ashtray with a lid and his cigarettes. Austin accepted one. Still this ridiculously light brand. What was the point? You had to smoke twice as many. He accepted a light from the inspector’s tiny plastic lighter, filled his lungs with smoke and repeated his question. ‘Why are you hoping she didn’t find the thing there?’
‘Because.’ He swivelled his chair and shot upright. ‘Because I very much want someone to have it in for Maxine Bendick. I want to please find that someone has been trying to blow her up.’ He stood by the large-scale map of the city centre which nearly covered one entire wall of the tiny room and tapped his fingers on the green shape that represented Brandon Hill. ‘Here’s the shelter, was the shelter, I should say. Here’s the car park, here’s the way she habitually takes through the park. Maxine Bendick goes to her gym three lunchtimes a week. She went on the Monday of the bench bomb. The pavilion went up an hour before she was due to walk within ten feet of the thing.’
‘So you do think Maxine Bendick was the intended victim?’
‘I was hoping. Until I saw the footage we just looked at.’
‘I see what you mean.’
‘Good. I don’t think anyone else does yet. If someone really was after Maxine Bendick then we shouldn’t have much trouble finding him. They must connect somewhere. If you have made an enemy who goes to this kind of trouble to get at you then he’ll stick out a mile. Ex-boyfriends, husbands if any, cranky relatives, anyone who asked her out and was turned down since the beginning of time needs to be checked out. Anyone she could have made an enemy of at work or members of the public, all still have to be followed up, of course.’
‘It’s what we’re doing. But if she found the powder compact by the steps …’ Austin puffed up his cheeks as he shared the inspector’s vision.
‘Jane, if she found the thing then we’re in deep, deep trouble. The words shit and creek spring to mind. If she found it then it wasn’t aimed at her at all. It was aimed at To Whom It May Concern. Anyone could have picked it up, the couple who walked past, for instance.’
‘But a powder compact, surely it was aimed at a woman.’
‘It was golden, shiny. Any normal child would pick up something like that, anyone, probably. All that glitters. It means that whoever planted it has no connection to the victims at all. The motive lies elsewhere. God help us, Jane, we might as well run up the white flag now and call in a psychiatrist. Because we haven’t got the first idea of where to look.’
‘One place I did look was the DVLA.’
‘Oh yeah, Three Veg. Got anywhere?’
‘There’s no record. Timothy Daws, van or no van, never had a driver’s licence or anything registered to him, now or ever.’
‘That makes a change. I had him down for dizzy driver, uninsured and untaxed. Still, two out of three isn’t bad. Any joy at the DSS?’
‘He’s on Incapacity for a bad back, so he doesn’t have to come in and sign on.’
‘Right, we’ll pull him in when we can but he’s way down the list now. Another bomb in the park and I’d have been out there like a shot in a helicopter looking for white vans, but this powder compact doesn’t fit. It’s near the park but not in it. It’s in the wrong place and the wrong kind of object if you want to revenge yourself on the parks department for being dismissed. If you wanted to get back at them you would, I don’t know, booby-trap a flower pot or something.’
‘Forensics might come up with something.’
‘Oh yeah? If the pickings are as rich as last time we’ll be no further. There was no DNA found at all on the debris of the last one, which is hardly surprising after the explosion, the fire and the hosing down it got. And even if there had been it would do us no good unless his DNA was already on file. This is a new customer. This will turn out to be everyone’s favourite nightmare. Like the guy in the States who shot people at petrol stations from the comfort of his car, I forget his name. This is a bastard who doesn’t mind who he hurts. And this won’t be the last explosion we’ll hear in the city either. This, as they say, is just the beginning. He gets a kick out of this and he’ll need a new fix soon. And what are we going to do about it?’
‘Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say we have a nutter out there who just likes to blow up people and he isn’t fussed who it is he hurts.’
‘Yes?’
‘Then why give Maxine Bendick police protection?’
‘Because, Jane, I’ve been known to be wrong.’
Chapter Six
Dave Hands slammed the front door to his tiny, first-floor council flat with some force and clattered down the stairs. He hadn’t planned on going out but the bastard leccy had just run out and he could hardly be expected to sit in the dark without the telly all night. So it was off to the convenience store to charge the meter key. He was forever on ‘emergency’ which constantly ran out, usually just before the kettle boiled. Unlike this bloody rain. There seemed to be an endless supply of that.
He crossed the glistening road and walked the few yards past the darkened shops to the battered door of the convenience store. The shop was empty of customers. The hard, suspicious eyes of the shopkeeper followed his every move. He hated this place. Everything in here was crap, crap food, shit fags, tins of crap. Everything in here was a rip-off. Rip-off electricity, rip-off booze. The price of bog-roll was fantastic. You had to be rich to buy this shit. Rich and stupid.
He was supposed to stay at home and save his money, pay off his ridiculous overdraft. Sod it, he had been good all week, now that he was out anyway he would go for a beer and make it worth his while. No point getting rained on just for the bloody leccy, that would just depress the shit out of him.
Even the cash machine in this place was a rip-off. It charged you for each withdrawal. Better to take out next week’s money all in one go, it was cheaper in the long term. Extra tenner for the pub. Fuck it, make it twenty, it needn’t mean he would spend it all. He folded the notes into his card wallet, all apart from the twenty for the pub which he shoved into his jeans pocket. He felt better already.