Kerswill looked up. ‘Yeah?’
‘You don’t want it, son.’ The ‘son’ had just slipped out. The man was older than McLusky yet he dressed like a teenager and ran around on a skateboard. In broad daylight.
Kerswill looked contrite. After a long silence he spoke slowly, eyes unfocused. ‘I suppose you would call it a mid-life crisis.’ A slow shrug. ‘We were married for what seemed like forever. I just thought I saw my life slipping away, work, home, work, home, the wife at me all the time about money, nothing but work … I mean, they get taken care of when there’s no one there earning, it’s not like they’re starving and I never meant it to be forever. I hadn’t planned it, either. I just flipped one day, took the van and left. I didn’t even take much of my stuff, I was going to go back, only I really needed to get away for a while.’
‘But going back got harder.’
Kerswill brightened up. ‘Yeah, that’s right. The longer I’d been away the more I couldn’t imagine going back. I knew it was selfish but with every day it got even more selfish. I mean, I felt much freer again doing just enough decorating work to keep me going. I could do what I wanted.’
‘Riding a skateboard.’
‘Not just that, but yeah. A powered skateboard is … it’s like magic, it transforms things.’
‘Your own son didn’t recognize you, so I expect you have been transformed, Mr Kerswill.’
‘Well, I had the hair spiked and all that … It said in the papers he’d been to an interview for an apprenticeship when the bomb went off. I wonder if he got it.’
‘I strongly suggest, Mr Kerswill, that you call him and ask.’
Where was the camera? She couldn’t go to Barcelona without a camera. Rebecca toured the flat again, finding yet more of her things to throw into the holdall or stuff into a bin-liner. Five days in Barcelona, what would she need? It was a college trip and they’d be traipsing through museums, Picasso, Miro, Gaudi. Didn’t he fall out of a tram and die? She subjected the clothes she picked up from the floor to a sniff test and dispatched them into holdall or bin-liner respectively. She’d find somewhere else to live when she got back. Liam was all right but he was a bit old, over thirty. There was no way she could introduce him to any of her art school friends, that would really freak them out. A policeman, he would never fit in there. Especially since he was so down on drugs too, any kind of drugs. She couldn’t make him see that there was a difference between hard drugs and, let’s say, a bit of E. He wouldn’t even let her smoke one piddly joint in the house. It got really boring and there was no telly. Why would anyone want to live like that?
Sketchbook, drawing stuff, she’d need that, had packed it, but she wouldn’t go without the camera, the one on her mobile was rubbish. Well, she’d looked everywhere twice, there was only one place where it could be now, and that was Liam’s manky old Polo. She vaguely remembered having it last time he’d given her a lift, perhaps it fell out of her bag. He’d gone to work this morning with DS Austin in his nifty Nissan, why didn’t he get a car like that? They were cute. So she’d go and check, the old wreck was always parked round the corner. The car keys were nowhere to be seen but he never locked the thing, probably hoping it might get nicked but she doubted even a joyrider would go near it.
It was a shame it couldn’t work out because she really liked Liam, he was quite funny and really kind but he totally cramped her style. It made her feel like she was living in two different worlds, living a double life almost, with college friends in one and Liam in the other. She couldn’t really tell him what she got up to with her mates, he wouldn’t approve, and she couldn’t take him with her. He was always busy and on call anyway and liable to be dragged out of bed at unholy hours like this morning. Bed, now that was the one thing she would really miss him for. He was so different from the other guys she had slept with so far, a lot gentler. And a lot rougher, too. Liam always had that puzzled look when he woke up next to her and then he’d break into a smile as though he’d just been given a present. Every time. She’d miss that. She’d probably miss that most.
Halfway up the next street there was the car, with a brick behind the offside rear wheel since the handbrake was as dodgy as the rest of the thing. Some old cars were quite cool but this one was just embarrassing. Rebecca opened the hatchback door. Impatiently she rifled through the empty plastic bags and rubbish — nothing. She opened the passenger door and looked in the footwell then searched the glove box — nothing. There was a letter on the passenger seat. She picked it up. It just said Inspector McLusky on the envelope and no stamp or anything, someone must have dropped it in the car, someone who knew it would be unlocked or they’d have stuck it under the windscreen wipers. Probably someone wanting him to park his eyesore somewhere else. Well, damn, no camera. Where the hell was it, then? She pocketed the letter and slammed the passenger door shut with all the force of her frustration.
Like a biblical column of fire a gas-blue flame rose from the centre of the driver’s seat, reaching up to the roof with a fierce hiss. Seconds later flames and smoke spread out and began to engulf the entire interior. Now all she could see was a dull red glow at the centre of the blackness, filling the car like an evil eye. Incredulous and transfixed by the spectacle, she forced herself to move backwards away from the car, just as the first window blew out.
The further the interview had progressed the clearer it had become that John Kerswill simply didn’t fit the bill. He was far too busy reclaiming his lost boyhood to litter the city with explosives. McLusky hadn’t had much time or inclination to think about the effect the bombs were having on the rest of the city. In sharp contrast Superintendent Denkhaus, in whose office he found himself after releasing Kerswill, had been only too aware, having had to field urgent questions from the press, business leaders and the Assistant Chief Constable.
‘It’s the randomness of the attacks, McLusky, that scares people. I’m told hotel and B amp;B bookings are down by forty per cent. Businesses are hurting. Even if we apprehended the culprit today the damage is already done, people are going elsewhere. And it’s not just the tourist industry that’s suffering, I mean some people have taken their kids out of school.’ Denkhaus stood and turned his back on McLusky while he took in the panoramic view his large window afforded him. Policing had ramifications well beyond crime prevention and detection: it influenced economics and politics and was in turn influenced by politics and dictated to by economics. It was as well if young DIs understood that. He was under constant pressure, not just from the ACC but from the mayor’s office and representatives of the business community. ‘Our citizens don’t feel safe any more, small retailers report a drop in sales. Pubs and clubs get fewer people through their doors. People shop at the supermarkets and spend more time indoors. More worrying still, two major conferences have been moved to other cities and the organizers of the half-marathon are thinking of postponing until the autumn, and the kite festival was nearly cancelled.’
‘Kite festival nearly cancelled?’
Denkhaus turned to face the young DI. He couldn’t remember, did he have children? Not that it mattered. ‘Yes, so you see how far-reaching and unexpected the consequences of these attacks are. It simply can’t be allowed to continue. A valuable yacht was destroyed in this latest outrage. People will seek mooring for their expensive boats elsewhere. If that happens then the plans for the harbourside development could be jeopardized. The development depends entirely on investors having complete confidence that our city is the right place to be.’ Denkhaus quoted almost verbatim from the tirade he had endured from the ACC earlier that day.
McLusky nodded distractedly. ‘Indeed, sir.’ Kite festival, now why did that ring a bell? The bell it rang had an uncomfortable sound. It conjured up a nagging, like a thing he’d forgotten to do, like an unposted letter. He would look in his notes …