McLusky broke off his vigil. Failure is what he had seen. The picture of the dead man had imprinted itself on his retina. Perhaps they should allow the press in, allow the TV cameras close and make them transmit this on the news in fine detail. Could the bomber really have wanted this? Would the bomber look at this and think he had done well? Would he be shocked? Or was he too weird, too far gone to care? Perhaps it was a stupid question. People had been blowing each other up quite happily ever since explosives were invented. ‘Has Denkhaus named a crime scene coordinator?’
‘Yeah, me.’
‘Right. No, I didn’t see anything special. Just brewing up a good head of resentment. So, tell me about it.’
‘Victim is a Frank Dudden, a small trader at St Nick’s Market, sells T-shirts with your own designs printed on them, that kind of thing. Got thrown out of the pub because he could hardly stand up straight. We have an eyewitness for what happened next. The old boy who lives in … number fourteen, across there.’ He indicated the little grey house across the street where every window was lit up. ‘A Mr Belling. He keeps a diary of all the nuisance in his street so he can complain to the council about it. He heard shouting and came to the window. Saw the whole thing. ‘
‘Right, let’s talk to him.’
‘He’s already given us a statement. He saw the can of — ’
‘I want to hear it myself.’ He marched off and Austin followed in his wake.
They found the front door ajar. McLusky announced himself. ‘Hello, police. Can we come in?’
A man appeared at the end of the corridor. ‘Oh yes, in here, if you will.’
They stepped into the brightly lit hall and squeezed past an electric bicycle to get to the back. The witness was at home to visitors in his kitchen. Mr Belling was a small wiry man in his late sixties. He wore a thin steel-grey sweater over a pink shirt and thin grey tie. His wrists were encircled by two wristwatches, one on each side.
PC Purkis was enjoying a mug of tea at the kitchen table and Mr Belling was glad of the policewoman’s company. The thing had been quite a surprise. He also hadn’t enjoyed this much attention since he broke his collarbone five years ago. And here were more people coming.
McLusky showed his ID and introduced Austin. They gratefully accepted the offer of refreshments.
Belling fussed over the tea for the newcomers and when everyone was settled around the table McLusky invited him to repeat what he had seen. Belling made himself comfortable on his chair. His was the one with the cushion. McLusky suspected that Mr Belling spent many hours sitting on that cushion, writing letters to the council in blue biro.
Belling took a sip of tea first. ‘I had of course spotted the tin of lager on top of the car earlier but I had assumed it to be empty. These days people chuck their rubbish wherever they like. For instance, you are only supposed to put your bin bags out on a Tuesday but sure enough every week the people in number twenty …’
McLusky drank his tea and let the man get there in his own time. It was dry and warm in here.
‘It was the shouting that made me look out this time. I was upstairs so I could clearly see him standing outside the pub, shouting. Well, I say standing but he was swaying. You could tell he was drunk, he had that leery kind of voice they get. Then he urinated right there outside the pub, between the cars, that’s usually a good indication of drunkenness, I find. Then off he went, nearly fell over twice before he made it to the car. I couldn’t read the number plate, even with my binoculars, because of the angle. But I was going to call the police right away if he drove off, because he was obviously dangerously over the limit. He picked up the tin from the roof and I thought he was going to throw it away, which would have been typical of his kind, but he took it with him when he got in. I was waiting for him to start the engine but instead the car just exploded. Just like that. Bang. Except it didn’t sound at all like it does on the radio, it sounded much nastier. All the windows blew out, stuff all over the place. It rattled my window and set off every damn car alarm in the neighbourhood. I called for an ambulance straight away, of course.’
McLusky thought he knew the answer but asked the question anyway. ‘What did you do after that?’
‘Well, I went back to the window, of course, to see what would happen next.’
‘You didn’t go outside to see if you could offer any assistance?’
‘Go outside? A bomb had just gone off! I was hardly going to go where I could be blown up. Everyone in the street had to have heard it, some of them would go, no need for me to go outside.’
‘Quite. Let’s go back a little. You said you had noticed the can of beer on the car roof earlier. How much earlier?’
‘Oh, now let me have a look in my journal. I keep a journal, you know, of all the happenings around here. You’d be surprised what goes on. It’s upstairs, I’ll fetch it down.’ Belling disappeared.
The three police officers exchanged glances. Austin nodded ironically. ‘Very organized.’
PC Purkis agreed in a low voice. ‘Everything in this house is very proper and in its rightful place.’
McLusky looked around the kitchen. Everything was. Immaculately straight, spotlessly clean, nightmarishly tidy and neon-lit. He already knew the old man would tell him to within two decimal points what happened when. CCTV had nothing on Mr Belling.
He returned with a brightly coloured child’s exercise book. ‘Here, you see, I did note it down. I came to the window because number seventeen were having a fresh row, shouting at the top of their lungs as usual, but the tin wasn’t there then. Then I came back to the window because the motorized skateboard was coming through again with that awful two-stroke noise.’
McLusky perked up. ‘Motorized skateboard?’
‘Yes, trailing blue smoke too, as if there wasn’t enough pollution in this city, now they have to fit engines to their skateboards.’
‘Do you think you could describe the skateboarder for us, Mr Belling?’
Mr Belling could. ‘One of those chaps who dress like a child even though they are clearly over thirty. Spiky hair, you’d think they’d wear a helmet, wouldn’t you, but I suspect that would spoil the image. He does have gloves and knee protectors. A red scarf and sunglasses, even when there is no sun, of course. Yes. Now … 19.04 p.m., that’s when I noticed the tin. And the explosion occurred at 20.15 exactly.’
It was exactly midnight when McLusky left Albany Road by taxi. The rain had stopped but the snakes of traffic hadn’t. Hordes of young people, wearing surprisingly little considering the weather, were pressing through the narrow streets and alleys of the Old Town, shouting, some staggering, some drinking from cans and bottles. He spotted two teenage boys pissing side by side against a shop window, talking happily while the urine sloshed around their trainers. Flying insults, laughter, angry argument, excited howls. Twice the cab stopped for drunks swaying across the street, the driver muttering under his breath but keeping his opinions to himself, for which McLusky was grateful.
Reams of statements had been taken during house-to-house inquiries and from the landlord and patrons of the George and Dragon. McLusky had spoken to the landlord himself. The man was visibly shaken by the death of Frank Dudden, who had been a regular. He had thrown him out that night ‘for his own good’ as he had believed. Now he felt that somehow he had sent him to his death and felt responsible. He had neither heard nor seen a motorized skateboarder, ‘not today, not ever’. Not that kind of pub, he had assured him.
Belling’s description matched exactly those of the residents of Berkeley Square and Charlotte Street who had been annoyed by a skateboarder prior to the first bomb in Brandon Hill. Could it be a coincidence? McLusky didn’t like coincidences.
Only two other residents in the immediate area remembered the skateboarder but neither had seen or heard him recently. The proliferation of underpowered scooters howling up and down the streets probably meant that the sound was too unexceptional to be noticed around there.