Only a few hands went up, everyone wanted to get going. He dealt swiftly with the questions then dismissed his troops. ‘Right, let’s do it.’
Shuffling of papers. The team were getting ready, most to go out, a few to start sifting through the witness statements already taken.
The relief of having started work began to relax his shoulders. He shook a cigarette out of the packet and lit it, mainly to dampen his hunger. That Danish was a distant memory to his stomach.
‘Sir?’ It was Sorbie, standing by the exit door.
‘Yup?’
‘It’s no smoking in here, sir.’
He grunted an acknowledgement and went to stand outside, watching the detectives troop off, Sorbie and DI Fairfield among them. There’d been no time to talk to the inspector. If she felt resentful about a newcomer of identical rank and seniority being put in charge then she hid it well. Fairfield seemed the efficient type. Very smartly dressed and almost too good-looking for a detective. He wasn’t sure himself what he meant by that but wondered how suspects reacted, most of them young and male, in the interview room, for instance.
At least it had stopped raining for a bit. Austin joined him. ‘Couldn’t scrounge another cigarette, sir, could I?’
McLusky obliged. ‘If you’re going to keep smoking my cigarettes you might as well call me by my name. I’m Liam.’
‘I’m Jane.’
‘You are?’
‘Well, it’s James Austin, so everyone calls me Jane.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Not really. Bit late for that anyway. She lived just down the road in Bath, did you know that?’
‘Did she?’
Austin nodded. ‘She hated it. Too pretentious, too noisy.’
Too noisy. McLusky reckoned here in the park the police made all the noise. Calls, engines, doors slamming, the growls of so-called low-noise generators. ‘It’s beginning to look like a bloody film set out there.’
It was a gloomy day so arc lights had already been set up to make sure crime scene investigators and Forensics didn’t miss anything. This side of the park was out of bounds to the public now, entrances closed off. Lines of uniformed police were doing a fingertip search of the surrounding area. Every bit of debris, down to the smallest wood splinter, was being recovered. A photographer with a large video camera took endless shots of the scene, the surroundings, the entire operation. Press photographers had managed to scramble up through the undergrowth to get as close as possible to the locus of the explosion. They were popping off so much flash photography towards the scene that investigators had to avert their eyes in order to avoid being temporarily blinded. When their protests fell on deaf ears they complained to McLusky.
He sent Austin. ‘Go sort them out.’ The DS sauntered over, then at the top of his voice threatened to arrest ‘the next idiot using a flash for obstructing the investigation’. McLusky approved. He hated the press. Unless he could use them for his own ends, of course.
The chief investigator repaid them five minutes later.
McLusky flicked his cigarette into a puddle. ‘What have you got for us?’
The white-suited man twitched his blond moustache. He probably thought he was smiling. ‘It was a bomb, homemade. We can’t say for sure what type of explosive was used, we’ll leave that to Forensics, though I have my own theory. What I can tell you gentlemen is that the explosive material was probably housed in a thin metal canister.’ He held up an evidence bag containing a triangular piece of torn metal. ‘It’s a bit of a miracle that apart from the boy no one else was injured by the shrapnel but then it’s quite flimsy stuff. Are you a drinking man, inspector? Does this look at all familiar?’
McLusky took it off him and leant back, angling it into the light coming from inside the command unit. Despite the slight blistering he could still make out the embossed writing, Special Reserve and Aged 12 years. The type of metal canister single malts came in. He half-closed his eyes, visualizing the bottle. ‘That’ll be Glenfiddich. I prefer the Ancient Reserve myself.’
‘You’re a connoisseur, then?’ Austin squinted at the bag.
‘Not on my salary.’ McLusky handed it back. ‘Thanks for the preview.’
‘No sweat.’ The man left to rejoin the group of CSI technicians working the area.
‘The public’s new heroes, apparently.’ Austin nodded towards the white-suited army.
‘What, crime scene techies?’
‘So it would appear. American TV series. All you have to do, apparently, is run that bit of tin through the lab and they’ll tell you where it was bought, what the perp has for breakfast and whether he takes water with it. Then you wash it through the computer and it’ll spit out his address. You haven’t seen it either? I can’t get Channel Five.’
‘I haven’t got a telly.’
‘Blimey, that’s radical.’
‘Hardly.’ It was probably just another of those things he’d forgotten to get, like a wife and kids and a group of close friends he could ask round for supper. He did have friends of course but they fell into one of two categories: they were either drinking friends or colleagues and former colleagues. Both those categories he had now left behind in Southampton and he didn’t expect any of them to come and find him. Tabula rasa. He could start over.
Witness statements had been taken and were now being collated in the office inside the command vehicle where for the time being all information came together. House-to-house inquiries were being made at every property that overlooked the park on this side.
‘All right, Jane, so what are we looking at here? Terrorists? Kids? A crank?’
Austin rocked lightly from side to side, making himself comfortable on his feet. ‘Not sure what I think. It could have been a schoolkid prank that went wrong. It was one hell of a bang. Kids do hang out here, though not so much after dark now since the Mobile Muggers have struck here twice.’
‘Could well be kids. It’s the kind of stupid thing they would blow up.’
‘I can’t see the terrorist angle at all. It wasn’t a big enough explosion for that. And there weren’t enough people around. You’d leave it in a crowded place, wouldn’t you?’
‘And you’d spike it with nails to do as much harm as possible.’
‘Then there’s always the crank with a grudge against … gazebos?’
‘Yes, quite. What do we know about the boy who was hurt? Could he have been the one who planted it, only it went off too soon, injuring him in the process? Not forgetting the woman. Stands to reason that the two people who got hurt most were probably closest to the centre of the explosion. We don’t know yet how the bomb was triggered but if it was by remote control for instance then they might of course have been the bomber’s targets. Do we have any news on their recovery or otherwise?’
‘I’ll find out.’ Austin disappeared inside. McLusky took the opportunity to count his cigarettes. Not enough to get him through the rest of the day. He didn’t mind sharing his cigarettes around as long as there were enough of them. Almost without his participation in the process another one appeared between his lips, flaring as he touched the flame from his plastic lighter to it. He walked across the street towards the wet, steaming heap of debris, still being attended by the army of white-suited technicians. The press had given up and returned to their offices, no doubt to fill in the gaps in their knowledge with column inches of speculation. Were he to write the front-page article it would run something like this: At 11.20 a.m. today an explosive device detonated inside a wooden shelter in Brandon Hill Nature Park, destroying it completely. Several passers-by were injured. The identity and motive of the bomber(s) are unknown. End of transmission.