‘I don’t have your nose, Liam. I could tell it was whisky but not which one. We’ll send it off for analysis of course.’
‘And wait four weeks? Bollocks to that. Give me one sniff, Jane, and I’ll tell you if it is. What time does his plane land?’
‘16.55.’
‘We’d better get a move on soon. Is the flask still here? Then go and get it.’ While he waited for Austin to return he fluted bored invective down the line where Dr Thompson and Southmead Hospital were offering him nothing but static.
Keale’s Turkish holiday was over and he was flying back into Bristol Airport this afternoon. It would be good to have at least something to scare him with when they questioned him. Of course an awful lot of people drank Glenfiddich. Few stuffed the tin it came in full of gunpowder and shoved it under a park bench.
‘There you are, impress me.’ Austin handed over the red plastic flask. It was scratched and grimy.
McLusky unscrewed the plastic cup and popped the old-fashioned cork stopper. He inhaled the fragrance deeply and was instantly troubled by a strong desire to put the half-litre flask to his lips and empty it. ‘It’s Glenfiddich all right.’
‘Sure?’
‘Can’t be a hundred per cent sure without tasting it, but we can’t go around drinking the evidence.’
‘Am I bothering to send it off?’
‘Pointless at this stage, it wouldn’t prove a thing. We’ll wave it under his nose first during the interview and ask him. Then we’ll send it off.’
‘Because you’ve been known to be wrong?’
‘Indeed.’
The receiver against his ear crackled to life. ‘Inspector?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Miss Bendick told me she found the compact at a car park that day. Is that any help?’
On the contrary. ‘It is. Thanks for doing that, Dr Thompson. I must ask you to keep that detail to yourself for the time being. It’s important it doesn’t become public knowledge at this point in the investigation.’ He returned the receiver to its cradle with exaggerated gentleness.
‘Is it what I think it is?’
McLusky slid his jacket on. ‘Yup. Let’s go.’
By the time they had arrived at Austin’s car the implications were sinking in. ‘Bastard. Now what do we do?’
McLusky strapped himself into the back seat as conscientiously as someone about to loop-the-loop in an open-cockpit plane. ‘You have my permission to panic. Meanwhile we continue to have every available bod explore every possible avenue. How are we doing with the fireworks sales?’
‘We’re nearly through them all. Nothing. No one reports any suspiciously large sales or people coming back for several purchases, though that’s very hard to keep track of if you have several staff. If our bomber has any savvy he’ll have gone round lots of shops anyway.’
‘Quite. I expect he did. What about people licensed to handle gunpowder?’
‘We’re still checking those too. There’s not many in our area. The licence conditions were tightened up several times recently, Prevention of Terrorism Act etc. Did you know you only need a lightning conductor if you are storing more than 500 kilograms of the stuff?’
McLusky frowned at the traffic. ‘Fascinating, Jane. And what a shame, otherwise all we’d do is look for a suspicious lightning conductor and make a quick arrest. Are we going to make the airport on time?’
‘Yeah, no sweat. I’m using a shortcut.’ Austin swung the car through a couple of roundabouts and dived into the suburbs where he could avoid much of the traffic that was building up again on the more obvious routes. One day soon they would experience gridlock in the centre again. Last summer it had only taken a few simultaneous incidents and the city had ground to a complete halt.
He was keen to discuss whatever little progress they had made, the angles they had already covered, while he skilfully negotiated the network of streets and lanes that would spit them out near the airport. The DI on the back seat however did little more than grunt and for the most part stared past him out at the narrow lanes as though their final doom lurked just around the next corner.
New security arrangements at the airport meant they could park nowhere near the entrances but it didn’t matter, they had arrived in time, thanks to Austin’s shortcuts. McLusky never had much faith in shortcuts and was impressed. They hadn’t got stuck in traffic once and that was a rare experience. Still, being driven was a nightmare. ‘You’ve got to show me your shortcut on the map.’
‘I’ll photocopy you a map.’ Austin checked his watch. ‘He’ll land in five minutes.’
Colin Keale was going to do no such thing. At this very moment he was looking out from his window seat at the duvet of cloud obscuring his view of the Mediterranean. His departure from Dalaman had been delayed by two hours. But that didn’t worry Keale. What worried him was whether or not he was going to get the contents of his holdall through British customs and what would happen to him if he didn’t.
‘Didn’t you think to check before we set off?’
Austin rolled his eyes. ‘I was going to but I got distracted by the whisky thing. Airport police should have let us know really, they’re the ones tracking him. Are we going back to Albany or are we waiting?’
‘God no, we’ll wait.’ Shortcut or not, under no circumstances did he want to do the journey three more times. ‘And since it was you who got distracted by the whisky thing you can distract me with a cappuccino thing.’
They installed themselves in one of the cafes in the arrivals lounge, but not before McLusky had colourfully expressed his displeasure at not having been informed of the delay to the airport police sergeant supposedly in charge of picking up Keale.
When Colin Keale at last arrived he simply couldn’t believe it. How had they known? They hadn’t even looked inside his bag, just scooped him up in customs and frog-marched him out through a side door where these two CID clowns were waiting, and he knew CID clowns when he saw them.
McLusky put his ID away. ‘You know why we are here?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Keale looked tired and deflated. Apart from his nose, which had caught too much sun, he looked pale. He hadn’t gone to Turkey to sunbathe, that seemed obvious.
McLusky was surprised but never looked a gift horse in the mouth until he had got it home. ‘In that case, Colin Keale, I’m arresting you for causing explosions, attempted murder, causing actual bodily harm …’
‘Wa-wa-wait!’
He didn’t let himself be interrupted and finished the caution: ‘… something which you later rely upon in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
The man looked incredulous. ‘No, I fucking don’t.’
‘Well, we can talk about it down the station, Mr Keale.’
Which is what they had done now for the last hour in this depressingly neutral interview room at Albany Road. Spread out on the table stood part of the contents of Colin Keale’s holdall, the reason, he had assumed, for his arrest. There were several plastic nets and paper bags full of what had at first looked to McLusky like onions and shrivelled potatoes, and a carrier bag stuffed with packets of plant seeds, some of them in little brown envelopes with Turkish handwriting on them. And a litre bottle of whisky. It wasn’t Glenfiddich. None of this looked like a major breakthrough to the inspector.
‘I suppose this contains Glenmorangie too?’ He produced the thermos flask from a carrier but thought he already knew the answer.
‘Where the hell did you get … did you break into my locker at work?’ Keale was brimming with righteous anger but struggled to keep it in check, in view of the contraband on show on the table in front of him. So he had been stupid once and built some pipe bombs. They’d been glorified fire crackers really, just something to piss people off with. Now they were talking about blowing people up. And he hadn’t even been in the country. He had made one mistake, one error of judgement, and from here to eternity they were going to arrest him every time a car misfired in the city. He hadn’t been well, had gone through a period of mental instability, you might say. He was better now but of course to the police it had to be him if some bastard started blowing up people. He hadn’t really wanted to hurt anyone, he just wanted to make them look stupid. What a fucking mistake that had been. ‘Yes, yes, it’s Glenmorangie. I suppose you told my employers and lost me my job as well now? That’s great. That’s dandy. It wasn’t easy getting any sort of job with my history. And you’ve no idea how cold it is in those bloody warehouses in winter. A couple of tots get me through the night shift.’