‘That’s a lot of ketchup, my friend.’ The landlord blocked his view. ‘Might have to start charging extra.’
McLusky looked down. His chips had drowned in a red sea of sauce. He suddenly felt tired and no longer hungry. While the landlord collected glasses behind him he picked up his pint, hid it under his jacket and stole out of the front door. He would drink it at his place and bring the glass back some time. As he crossed Northmoor Street furtling for his keys a sudden movement in his peripheral vision made him look right. Nothing. Yet his mind filled in the blanks and furnished him with an after-image of a figure standing by the corner, now vanished. He wanted to run to the corner but was hampered by the pint he was carrying. By the time he had speed-walked there and looked down the road there was nothing suspicious to see, a few cars, a few people walking. Nobody he recognized.
Chapter Nine
‘With respect, sir, since I can’t go anywhere near Ady Mitchell I might not be the best officer to work on the muggings.’ DI Fairfield sat very upright in front of Denkhaus’s desk. From somewhere she found the strength to control her expression and keep her voice calm. Any betrayal of emotion, any sign of anger, and the superintendent would put it down as hormonal. In this environment a woman had to be careful not to react in any way that could be construed as ‘typically female’. If you could make people forget you were a woman, if you made them believe you were one of the lads, then you would be taken seriously and get ahead.
‘Nonsense, Fairfield, you have it back-to-front. We found no evidence that Mitchell is dealing in stolen goods. These days you can make a fortune selling crap to morons on eBay without having to break the law. You had a shot at him and nothing turned up. Now concentrate on the guys who are doing the actual mugging. Because in the absence of any evidence — ’
‘Mitchell does have — ’
‘Please don’t interrupt me, DI Fairfield. If you know what’s good for your career then you’ll leave Mitchell out of it and catch the scooter gang, preferably red-handed. Because that’s the kind of headline the force needs right now. That’s what you’ll concentrate on, Fairfield.’
‘We’ve simply been unlucky, sir.’
‘Since when does intelligence-based policing rely on luck? Our statistics prove that whenever resources are targeted in the correct …’
Fairfield just nodded and nodded. She would never convince the super. He had already told her she had to make do with the resources she had, which was basically DS Sorbie, since everyone was working on the beer-can murder or buried deep under their own caseload. The quicker she agreed to everything the sooner she’d be out of his office. To make matters worse she had heard this morning that DCI Gaunt wasn’t coming back for at least another fortnight. The chief inspector would surely have backed her up and shielded her from this continuous pressure from the super.
‘… and we simply have to learn to live with it.’
It sounded as though Denkhaus had talked himself to the end of a treatise. Quick, before he jumped on the next passing hobby horse. ‘Yes, sir, of course. Will that be all, sir?’
Denkhaus supposed it was. Fairfield had to learn to be flexible and get results with the resources available. She was too ambitious and so took things personally. ‘Yes, that’s all.’
Fairfield left the super’s office with as much grace as she could muster and closed the door with exaggerated care. Ten minutes later she was in her office, sipping the blackest espresso from the tiniest cup. As the bitter fragrant liquid revived her spirits she managed to raise the ghost of a smile. One day she would sit where Denkhaus was now and all this would be nothing but a footnote in the ancient history of drudge.
McLusky hammered away at his keyboard while issuing sporadic bulletins of bitching that others had already learned didn’t want answering. ‘Of course one good reason for having an incident room in the first place is that without it the amount of useless misleading dead-end crap information murder generates would bury a detective and his desk so deep in dross you’d have to get a dog team in to dig him out …’
At a desk opposite him Austin had another crank caller on the phone, the third one so far to claim responsibility for the beer-can device. ‘And you packed it with TNT you bought over the interweb?’ There was stifled laughter among the computer operators.
McLusky wasn’t in the mood. Austin had been talking to the moron for ages. ‘Get rid of the wanker.’
Austin covered his mouthpiece. ‘No, this one’s a special wanker, he’s calling from a landline. It’s an address in town so I’ve sent a note down to Uniform, they’re on their way there to read him the riot act.’ He uncovered the mouthpiece. ‘Is that your door bell I can hear, sir? I think you’d better answer it. There’ll be a couple of officers there to explain the meaning of wasting police time, okay? And the same to you, sir.’ He returned the receiver to its cradle with a flourish. ‘This call has been recorded for training purposes. Right, what’s next?’ He pulled a file off the pile beside him and started flicking through witness statements, or witless statements as he liked to think of them. And if he ever found the microsoftie behind the phrase ‘paperless office’ he’d add ‘justifiable homicide’ to the man’s vocabulary.
McLusky had had enough and logged off. There was a whole world of madness waiting for him outside, with spring sunshine to go with it. He would walk. It was Saturday and nearly lunchtime. The Saturday Traffic Protest should still be going and he wanted to see for himself what it looked like.
Every Saturday, to maximize attendance and optimize disruption, protesters met on the Cathedral Green before spreading out into the traffic arteries near the council offices and around the harbour. Every Saturday the place came to a virtual standstill. From where he was walking now he could see that traffic across the Old Town was hardly moving at all. Most drivers sat talking on the phone or fiddling with their sat navs and radios: there was little else they could do. In this otherwise picturesque one-way street, he came across a new development. Traffic here hadn’t moved for a while. The narrow street was solid with stationary vehicles. One driver of an ancient Fiat had got out of his car in front of a cafe with small tables on the pavement. He was now sipping coffee in comfort and nibbling on a biscuit. Since then traffic in front of his car had moved by a couple of car-lengths before grinding to a complete halt again. It was enough to get the drivers who were waiting behind his car agitated. A uniformed police officer was engaged in an argument with the man at the cafe table. As McLusky passed the scene the officer stopped him. It was lanky Constable Pym. ‘Ah, Inspector McLusky, I’m glad it’s you, sir.’
To McLusky this was such an unusual sentiment that his face expressed severe doubt. ‘What is it, Pym?’
‘We got a call from one of the drivers behind here, the second one along, I think. You see, sir, this gentleman here is the driver of that Fiat, which he simply abandoned in the street.’
The driver, a hungover-looking man in his thirties, shook his head. ‘I have not abandoned it. The keys are in the ignition and it’s unlocked and I’m having a coffee. Look, it’s gridlock, or as near as. I forgot it was Saturday or I wouldn’t have come into town at all, it’s always like this.’