‘I mean it as a last resort. But you’re right, Jane. Best not burden Denkhaus with the knowledge of this.’ He took the evidence bag from Austin and made it disappear in his leather jacket.
‘You mean not tell him you got a communication from the guy? Are you serious?’
‘Why bother the man with operational detail? He’s far too busy with public relations and performance targets.’
‘This could mean real trouble, especially if — ’
‘Okay, look, it’s my problem. I never showed you the letter, you need not be involved. And if it has to be mentioned later, well, it’s not dated and I might lose the envelope, I can be so sloppy, and I’ll pretend it only just got there.’
Austin thoughtfully scratched the tip of his nose. This kind of thing could easily go wrong, especially if the case came to court. ‘Just so long as you know what you’re doing …?’
‘That’s very unlikely. But it makes me feel less naked having this up my sleeve.’ Perhaps this metaphor-mixing was catching. ‘So far he has all the weapons and we’re just mopping up behind him, waiting for him to make a mistake. It’s a costly strategy.’
‘Depends on how quickly he can make the bombs.’
‘Yes. Unless …’
‘What?’
McLusky prised a cigarette out of the packet Austin was holding and walked off, talking to the echoing foyer. ‘Unless he’s made them all in advance. For all we know there could be fifty of them already out there.’ He turned at the end of the corridor. ‘And then what? We’re up the creek then. Catching him wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference then.’
McLusky stocked up on Extra Light cigarettes at a nearby newsagent’s. Lunchtime had crept up on the city and everywhere people were rushing to join queues in cafes, post offices, supermarkets and sandwich bars. His own internal clock appeared stuck at breakfast time. He bought a sticky Danish pastry at a nearby bakery and ate it while he walked.
When he returned to his car he found it unmolested by car thieves and traffic wardens. It was another warm spring day. The fungal damp-canvas smell of the Polo’s interior had intensified with the rising temperatures. McLusky suspected a dead mouse or rat under the broken upholstery but had so far failed to locate it.
Back at Albany Road he found the station car park was crowded with a large army truck awkwardly parked. Not having been allocated a permanent parking space yet meant he only just managed to squeeze into a corner at the back. Here he made sure to lock the car, in case someone was watching. He looked up. There was. There were faces at every window. He saw DC Dearlove wave at him which had to be a bad omen.
Outside the main entrance stood a group of Uniforms plus Tony Hayes, the desk officer. ‘You can’t go in, sir. Suspect package. The ground floor has been evacuated and no one from upstairs is allowed to come down.’ He pointed at the army truck. The cab door was marked 33 Engineer Regiment. ‘Explosive ordnance disposal. The package was addressed to you, sir.’
‘What? Get out of my way.’
‘But, sir …’
Impatiently McLusky shouldered his way through the group and opened the door to the lobby.
Inside three engineers in full body armour looked up and shouted at him almost in concert. One rushed towards him, arms outstretched. ‘Please move outside, sir.’
McLusky held up his ID. ‘I’m McLusky.’
‘That’s who it was addressed to. But it makes no difference.’
‘It does. I don’t want the thing to blow up. No controlled explosions if you can help it.’
‘Please, sir, let’s talk outside.’
Away from the door and the uniformed officers McLusky and the engineer, a man with freckles and a moustache, talked quickly.
‘Try not to blow it up. If at all possible we need it intact. Why hasn’t the rest of the station been evacuated?’
‘Because all personnel would have to practically file past the thing, this station is badly designed.’
‘How big is the device?’
‘Big enough to demolish the lobby but perhaps not enough to do structural damage. It’s heavy, according to the desk officer, and looks to be about four by three inches and three inches deep. Rectangular. We have a portable X-ray already in the lobby and are about to have a shufti, that should give us a better idea.’
‘It relates to a case I’m working on …’
‘Yes, we have followed that with interest. We expected to be called sooner or later. Fortunately we’re never far away.’
McLusky tapped the man’s bulky armour. ‘Got another one of these?’
‘We have but I’ll have to ask my superior about that. Please wait here this time.’
It seemed an age until the engineer returned. ‘Follow me.’
Inside the truck he found that putting on the bulky body armour took him longer than expected. ‘I thought a stabbie was heavy but this weighs an absolute ton.’ The weight of the helmet with its blast-proof visor gave him a headache in less than the time it took him to walk across the car park. Tony Hayes’ ever-mobile eyebrows had risen to maximum elevation. He had asked if he could be there when they dealt with the package — after all, it was his lobby, or at least he thought of it like that. They had flatly refused to entertain the thought. How come the new DI always got what he wanted?
Inside the lobby McLusky found the other two engineers busy around a grey contraption balanced on the counter. Two station phones were ringing unanswered in the background.
One soldier waved him over. ‘Come and have a look, inspector.’
On the small monitor beside the X-ray machine was a faint grey image that to him looked like nothing identifiable.
‘There are no metal parts in this package and it looks like no device I have ever encountered. There is a dense mass at the centre, hard to draw any conclusions. On that basis I’m willing to proceed and open the package. Please stand off.’
The package, he could now see, was wrapped in brown paper and sealed with clear tape. ‘How did it get here, does anyone know?’
‘It was hand-delivered but no one saw it arrive. They sensibly evacuated the ground floor. It has your name on it, as you can see, nothing else.’ The man slid a scalpel around the sides of the package. ‘Nothing in the wrapping, no resistance.’ He gently folded up a flap of paper. ‘Red plastic container.’ He removed the top of the paper, revealing a red plastic tub with a white lid. The engineer laid his heavily gloved hands on it. ‘Here we go then, I’m opening it now.’
On cue the phones stopped ringing and the lobby fell silent. The plastic creaked as the engineer prised the lid off the container. McLusky strained to see clearly. The engineer produced a plastic screwdriver and gingerly prodded the content with it.
‘Well, inspector, it appears to be full of mud.’
* * *
Twenty-four hours later, while trying to beat the traffic by finding his own intuitive route to the university, McLusky wondered just how long the mud jokes would keep running at the station. Not that Superintendent Denkhaus had found anything even remotely amusing in the incident which had paralysed his station for hours. And he had left him in no doubt about that either. Denkhaus had once more sharply reminded him that his brief was to avoid anything that might sidetrack him and here he went offering his services to Traffic Division. Naturally he wanted the mud-flinging little scrote caught but if McLusky had a mind to have a go then it was definitely to be in his spare time.
Which is why he now found himself driving to the university during his lunch break, in order to spring some muddy suggestions on Dr Louise Rennie. This time he knew where he was going and parked close to the building next to a red Fiesta with its driver window knocked out. He left the keys in the ignition and went in search of Rennie.
For a while he was walking against an outgoing tide of students in the science block but by the time he found the laboratory again the place had fallen silent. From the corridor it looked empty. He knocked on the glass door and entered.