Falling More Slowly (19 page)

Mitchell talked loudly, to give the pub the benefit of his wit. ‘Well, if it isn’t the delectable
detective inspectorette
. You just can’t resist my charms, can you?’ He smelled of aftershave and Southern Comfort. His thin wet lips stretched into a broad unpleasant smile. Fairfield realized she had reacted too late. If she slipped off the bar stool now he’d be towering over her by at least a foot and there was hardly space to turn around, the place was so crowded. He slapped a hand on the bar, attracting the attention of those who weren’t already watching. ‘The girl can’t help herself. The little inspector has the hots for me and just can’t stay away. I even had to take out a restraining order against her but here she is again like the proverbial bad penny.’ He was almost shouting now, no doubt for the benefit of the grinning audience at his table. One of his mates was filming the entire scene on his mobile. This wasn’t good. ‘What is this, police harassment or sexual harassment? Haven’t
you got any mates that you have to follow me about? I told you before you’re not my type, sweetheart.’ Waggling his mobile in front of her he lowered his voice and spoke straight into her face from a distance of less than three inches. ‘You must think I’m real stupid if you think you can get to me like this. I could easily make life real difficult for you, love. One phone call from me to your boss Denkhaus and you’re up to your neck in shit. So fuck off, you stupid little bitch.’

Fairfield found that her hand was still holding on to her pint, gripping it hard. The urge to smash it into Mitchell’s face was strong but there was a stronger voice telling her to let go. Let this one go. There are too many witnesses. Say absolutely nothing. Back off. You’ll get him later. Be professional.

It was a career decision. She let go of the glass, took her leather handbag off the bar and used it to create enough space between herself and Mitchell to slide off the stool without colliding with his steamed-up face. The exit seemed a long distance away. She walked across the floor, people making way for her, many eyes following her. The boy with the phone was recording her retreat.

‘Piss off, copper!’ Not Mitchell’s, a young voice brave with anonymity. Someone near the door attempted a la-la-la version of a cop show’s title music. Applause broke out at Mitchell’s table, then she was outside, the door falling shut behind her, muting the noise.

Rain was bouncing off the pavement. Shit. She rummaged in her handbag for her tiny umbrella but it wasn’t there. There was no point in calling a cab, she couldn’t hang around here. It was only water. She struck out towards home through the hard city rain. And if she should cry, in this rain who would notice?

Libby Hart checked her watch. Six minutes to nine, very nearly done. She hated the new late opening hours. But libraries were struggling and it had been decided that more people would use the place if they stayed open late once a week. First Sunday opening, now late opening, soon all-night opening? She didn’t know if this really was improving library use since the numbers had not been worked out yet. She did know they had more problems with drunks when opening late, especially when it rained hard, like it had earlier on. Attracting new clients. Or was it ‘end-users’? What was wrong with calling them ‘people’? The library had changed over the last few years and she didn’t think it was for the better. People now came to watch videos and to use the internet. It certainly meant that more people came to the library without ever taking a book off the shelves. The noise level had risen with it, especially around the computers. You often heard mobiles ringing and being answered too despite the notice at the door asking for them to be turned off.

‘Goodnight, my colleague will let you out.’ She gave the young woman a relieved smile. That was the last one, she was sure. While Doug let the woman out she went on one last tour of the entire library just to make certain there was no one left ignoring the announcements or sitting asleep or hiding between the canyons of shelves, hoping to be locked in.

The woman had left a heavy red book lying on the table where she’d been sitting. Libby picked it up and took it on her tour of the library.
A Chronicle of Crime. Infamous
murderers and their heinous crimes
, promised the subtitle. Why would anyone want to know about this stuff? She had reached the last corner of the library, the quietest one furthest away from the entrance. No one here either, the library was clear. She walked with the book towards the issue desk and wondered what had brought the woman to the library on a rainy evening to study this grisly tome. Grainy images of convicted murderers looked up at her from the cover. She opened it at random.
Woman Kills
Rival: Dumps Body on Wasteland
. Libby hoped the woman who had studied it tonight hadn’t been looking for inspiration. She closed the book with a determined slap and set it heavily on to a trolley. One for the morning shift to sort out.

At the desk Doug had cashed up, locked the sliding cupboards and was now tidying away the last things on the desk. She liked working with Doug. He was near retirement age and only worked two days a week which meant he was a lot more cheerful than some she could mention.

‘I think we’ve done it, Libby.’

‘Yup, I think we have. And it’s even stopped raining.’

‘Good.’ He waved a fat silver biro. ‘Someone left this behind. If no one claims it by the end of the month I’ll have it. It’s nice.’

‘Put your name on it then.’

‘Certainly will.’ Doug ripped a square of yellow notepaper from a block and clicked the biro. It exploded in a gas-blue flash that left a red after-image on Libby’s retina. Doug’s hand was a pulpy red mass and there was blood streaming from his neck. His head trembled and his dimming eyes were fixed at a bloodied horizon thrumming with fear. His body crumpled and slumped behind the smouldering desk. For several heartbeats Libby stared at
the space where he had stood. Then she filled her lungs and ran screaming for the door.

‘Will he live?’ McLusky was standing on top of a desk from where he could appraise the bloodstain on the carpet, the bloody foot- and handprints, arcs of spatters and the bloodied work station where the victim had stood. Scene of Crime were still hunting for bits of tissue as far as twenty feet away from the point of the explosion. The victim had been removed to the Royal Infirmary.

Austin, knee-high to his superior, shrugged. ‘Touch and go. If he does then it’s entirely thanks to his colleague who called the security guard who’s a first-aider. The ambulance would never have got here in time. He was losing a lot of blood from the wound in his neck.’

McLusky took another look at the bent and blackened stub of metal in the evidence bag he was holding. It was all that was left of a polished steel biro, thick as a finger, solid and seductive. Anyone using the library could have picked it up, staff or punter, man, woman or child. It was rigged to blow up as soon as someone tried to use it. A whisky tin, a beer can, a powder compact, a biro. It made no sense. McLusky jumped off the desk. ‘It makes no bloody sense. There’s no rhyme or reason I can see. Who’s he after? Just anyone? Does he have a grudge so vague that it doesn’t matter to him who he blows up?’

‘Perhaps he just likes building bombs and all else is incidental. Or perhaps Sorbie was right, there’s no motive.’

‘Then God help us.’ The large device in the park had merely been the overture, the rapping of a conductor’s baton in order to get everyone’s attention. Now the bomber was playing his tune and leading them a dance.

‘There’s no CCTV in here, I’m surprised. They’re relying on their alarm system.’ Austin nodded his head at the big security gates that would sound an alarm if anyone tried to smuggle out any items.

McLusky looked morose. ‘You’d need a camera between every two shelves. And you could still drop a biro without it being picked up. And that’s basically our problem. The devices are small and can be delivered any time. We have no idea where this guy picked the biro up but it could have been sitting between a couple of books for ages. His bad luck. Someone else could easily have picked it up, put it in his pocket, carried it around then used it miles from here. And then if he’d died we’d never know. We wouldn’t have a bloody clue where it came from.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Forensics have been less than useless so far.’ He gave the item in the evidence bag one more exasperated look then handed it back to the chief technician, who dropped it into his case.

There was nothing more to do here. He had spoken to Libby Hart, the librarian who had witnessed the incident. She’d barely been coherent enough to make sense and had repeated the same things over and over: how he had just crumpled, how his thumb just disappeared, how it all happened so suddenly.

That was the nature of the thing, you couldn’t very well have a slow explosion. It was clear that the woman was deeply shocked and when it transpired that she lived by herself he had made sure she was accompanied home. If she didn’t settle the officer would know to call a doctor who could administer a sedative. All she probably needed was to talk it out of her system and get some sleep. Sleep … McLusky checked his watch: two in the morning. The discovery instantly provoked a yawn. He turned to Austin. ‘We’re done. There’s nothing here. The woman didn’t know where or when her colleague picked the thing up but if he pulls through and tells us then we’ll try and match the area where it was found with today’s book issues. Yesterday’s, I should say.’

Austin scratched the tip of his nose with the nail of his index finger. ‘Ehm … I’m not sure I follow.’

‘Let’s say it was found in the music section then we’ll check on the library computer to see who took out CDs and interview them, see if they remember anything.’

‘Oh, right. And if the guy doesn’t live?’

‘Then we’ll interview everyone.’

‘Oh joy.’ Austin gave the library, still full of crime scene officers, one last disapproving look and wondered just how many people wandered in and out during a day. He hoped fervently he’d never have to find out.

Later the next day at his desk and dealing with the paperwork that had begun to litter it, McLusky felt he was in hiding from the case. Unlike some CID officers he had known who seemed happy to spend most of their working life behind their desks, it made him feel resentful and guilty. This paper and computer stuff had to be dealt with but sometimes it seemed like it was deliberately designed to keep him away from his work. There was enough red tape in this building to tie the entire station in knots. While being new on this patch had kept the mail and paperwork down – compared to what some of his colleagues were suffering – he knew it wouldn’t take long to catch up with him. He threw his biro down in disgust, looked at it for a moment, then picked it up again, weighing it in his hands. It was the brushed steel biro. He was sure he hadn’t bought it and almost certain it hadn’t been a present. Which meant he had picked it up somewhere. Just like the librarian. It was so easily done. Something as simple as picking up a pen could mean you ended up fighting for your life in intensive care, like Douglas Boon who had a hole in his throat the size of a pound coin where part of the pen’s metal casing had hit. He’d been doubly unlucky. The device had been designed to take the victim’s fingers off. Which it had also done. He had lost part of a thumb and the tips of two fingers.

McLusky reached for the only letter that was not internal mail and slid it open using the biro. It contained a narrow slip of paper, densely crowded with lines, typed single spaced. Randomly capitalized words danced through the text. Before he had taken in a single sentence he knew what he was looking at. It was from him.

He withdrew his hands from the paper as though it was on fire and let it glide on to the computer keyboard. One hand crept across his desk in an unconscious search for cigarettes, the other towards the phone, while his eyes remained nailed to the page.

Using the biro and an unopened letter as levers he flipped the page over. Nothing on the other side. It was less than a third of an A4 sheet, typed in a common font.

Bloody hell, did he need a cigarette now. A short and hectic hunt produced only empty packets. The part of his brain not engaged in keying Austin’s mobile number into the desk phone painted scenario after scenario of the future and for once not all of it seemed gloomy. At last Austin answered.

‘Jane, get in here and bring your ciggies.’

‘In where, boss? I’m at the library.’

‘Oh. Thought you were down the corridor. Okay, stay where you are, I’ll find you.’

McLusky only consciously registered that he was driving once he got stuck in traffic for the second green-light sequence at a junction near the harbour. According to an article in the
Post
it was theoretically still faster to drive in the city if your journey was longer than two miles. Anything shorter and a pedestrian would beat the car. Now he wished he had tried it. For one thing it would have allowed him to buy cigarettes. When at last he had fought his way to the back of the library he parked the car on a single yellow line with two wheels on the pavement. He pushed the groaning door shut, leaving it unlocked. For several seconds he stood, unmoving. Then he opened it again, put the keys back into the ignition for good measure and pushed the door shut once more.

A PC guarded the library entrance. Both lending and reference libraries were still closed to the public while a meticulous search for more hidden devices was under way. McLusky’s footsteps echoed in the stone corridor inside the solid Edwardian building. He found Austin in the lending library checking his notes. The DS had spent his time interviewing all the staff that had turned up for work and drawn a blank.

Austin shook his head in answer to his superior’s raised eyebrows. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary, nobody saw anything or anybody suspicious. No one saw the biro. So what was so urgent? A nicotine crisis?’ He held out his packet of cigarettes and box of matches.

‘Swap.’ McLusky handed him the letter inside a sealed evidence bag. ‘Let’s step into the foyer.’

‘Shit, it’s from him. You got him narked with that article and it flushed him out.’ The DS looked at McLusky in admiration. ‘Did you plan it like that?’

‘What? No. No, nothing as clever as that, I honestly had no idea, I’d never heard of Phil …’

‘Warren.’

‘… Phil Warren, I thought she was just another punter.’

Austin read the note twice. ‘He sounds quite a loon. Look at the capitalization. Odd language, too. You can’t smoke in here, public building.’

‘Closed to the public due to pyrotechnical writing accident.’ McLusky inhaled deeply from a freshly lit cigarette.

‘Good thinking.’ Austin lit one for himself. ‘Those capitalized words, could they add up to a message or something? Have you tried stringing them together?’

‘You’ve watched too much Inspector Morse.’

‘It was worth a thought. He’s just mad then?’

‘Mad as a box of frogs. You didn’t really expect anything else, did you? But he’s made contact. It’s a classic “Don’t call me stupid” thing.’

‘He thinks
you’re
a “very Very Stupid Man”.’

‘Good. Underestimating the opposition can be fatal. The important thing is that we got him riled enough to take risks. Contacting me was a big risk. His first mistake.’

‘Shame he didn’t sign it while he was busy making mistakes.’ He fanned the thick smoke between them with the letter. ‘Do you think Forensics will find anything on this?’

‘Apart from my fingerprints? I shouldn’t think so. But you never know. The postmark is central.’

‘That covers several districts, including yours. What he doesn’t tell us is why he’s doing all this.’

‘Oh, but he does. Here.’ McLusky tapped the letter. ‘The madness is out there and I’m going to stop it, or something. He thinks the world has gone mad and only he has remained sane. He’s going to shut us all up.’

‘Yes. He’s threatening you personally though.’

‘That’s the beauty of it.’