Authors: Peter Helton
Louise narrowed her eyes. ‘Here’s hoping it wasn’t tempting fate.’ They gently clinked coffee cups.
When the bill arrived, she made a grab for it. ‘
I’ll
pay.’
‘It should be me really. To make up for the debacle we had last time.’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘You think buying me a curry will make up for that? Think again.’
‘Well … I thought it could be a start.’
‘Start somewhere else. Anyway, I checked what freshly promoted detective inspectors earn, so I insist. You can buy me a drink down the road.’
‘Where?’
‘I fancy a snowy harbour scene.’
The Boat House was one of the new, busy and antiseptic bars that McLusky, had he been looking for a place to drink by himself, would have given a wide berth. He’d have preferred almost any
old pub to this blond-wood and brushed-steel bar with its overlit reflective surfaces and carefully dressed clientele, despite the beautiful harbour-side setting. And he generally avoided bars that
felt it necessary to employ bouncers at the door. Even though most of the drinkers were around his own age, he felt the absence of anyone over forty unnerving. It had been Louise’s choice of
venue and she obviously felt comfortable here, even nodded at one or two people she recognized. They found seats, and McLusky forgave the place some of its glitz when he discovered Murphy’s
on tap at the bar. Louise had decided to stick with white wine. The barman who served him looked so well-pressed and fresh-faced, McLusky felt tempted to ask if he was old enough to work there.
Louise, he now knew, was a couple of years older than him, and at work she was Dr Rennie. ‘So what are your own prospects, Doc?’ he asked, when he sat opposite her, sipping his drink
too quickly. ‘If a detective inspector seems such a lowly occupation to you?’
‘I never said it was lowly, I merely remarked that it was not well paid, considering how unpleasant a job it is.’
So she had checked up on his spending power. It wasn’t something he would have thought of doing with her. He’d have simply asked. If he was interested. ‘I get by. And I never
think of it as unpleasant.’
Rennie didn’t look convinced. ‘What about all those thoroughly nasty people you meet doing your job? That would put me off for a start.’
McLusky nodded as though agreeing. ‘I met you while doing my job, of course.’
‘A good point, Inspector.’
They bickered happily on until their drinks were finished. ‘Another?’ he asked, knowing what the answer would be.
‘Take me home, please. Let’s go find a taxi.’
‘We could walk to mine.’
‘Not unless you’ve had central heating installed.’
They passed the bar on the way out. Behind it, one of the barmen, the one who had served McLusky earlier, was being pushed roughly against the optics by a large man with a crew cut and a shiny
leather jacket. He had grabbed the barman by the tie. It was difficult to hear what he was shouting at him, but he punctuated his argument by repeatedly slapping the barman’s face. The barman
made no attempt to pull away, nor did the other two employees try to help him; they just glanced nervously over their shoulders while continuing to serve customers, who seemed not to notice.
McLusky squeezed Louise’s arm. ‘One minute?’ In ten seconds, he was behind the bar, stiff-arming leather jacket away from the barman.
The red-faced man turned on him. ‘What the fuck do you want here? Get the fuck out from behind the bar, pal.’
The man had a light Mediterranean accent; McLusky couldn’t place it. He showed him his ID. ‘Do you work here?’
‘I am part of management.’
‘I’m not impressed by your management skills.’ He turned to the barman, who looked pale, apart from his right cheek, which had lit up scarlet. ‘Are you okay? Do you want
to make a complaint?’
The boy, still terrified, shook his head and withdrew. The part of management in the leather jacket squared up to McLusky. ‘Nobody called you, nobody complains. And I can smell you have
been drinking. So perhaps you are off duty. You have no business here.’
Although he was far from being drunk, McLusky nevertheless knew that alcohol would come into it if this went official, so he decided to bluff. ‘Makes no difference. I don’t like the
way you manage your staff. And I could easily make this my business. I could start by checking their work permits, and your own, working hours, the provenance of your vodka … It could get
very tedious. Not for me, of course. I’ll just make one phone call.’
The man visibly deflated a little. Whether there was anything to hide or not, he probably understood the nuisance value of a narked police force. He shrugged, adjusted his leather jacket.
‘No problems. All over. You and your lady were leaving.’
They did. Rennie’s mood had changed. ‘You were doing so well until then. No police radio, your mobile didn’t go off once. It was almost like a normal date. But you
couldn’t walk past that.’
It hadn’t been a question. He answered it anyway. ‘No, I couldn’t.’
‘So that’s what it’s going to be like?’
‘Of course not. Sometimes I get through a whole evening without arresting anyone.’
They were lucky with a taxi from St Augustine’s Parade. McLusky was glad. Rennie’s mood seemed to have nosedived after what she called his ‘performance’ at the bar, and
he had never been good at placating women, despite having considerable practice at it.
The streets in the centre were well gritted, and no new snow had fallen for a while. A good-natured snowball fight was in progress in Park Street, where two groups of revellers exchanged
missiles from one side of the road to the other, scraping snow off the roofs of cars and sniping from behind them. A snowball splattered against the driver’s window of their taxi; the driver
grumbled to himself, not amused. It was a short ride to Clifton Village. A tourist guide would have described the area as affluent, upmarket, even exclusive. Its mainly Georgian architecture
certainly made it stand out from all other districts, but it had other reasons, too, for feeling superior to the rest of Bristol: Clifton was older than the city itself. McLusky paid off the cab
outside the large Georgian townhouse where Louise owned a first-floor flat.
It was immaculate. The sitting room had high windows, shuttered now against the night. She started the music system with one remote control, the coal-effect gas fire in the grate with another. A
pair of cream two-seater sofas faced each other across an oriental coffee table. The wall opposite the windows was lined with books. The place suited its owner; McLusky told her he thought so.
‘I fell in love with it. It doesn’t have any famous views, or even decent views, but I wouldn’t have been able to afford it if it did. And the Primrose Café is
practically around the corner.’
McLusky didn’t have time to wonder if they were going to have to talk house prices. She swiftly changed the subject and concentrated instead on showing him some ways in which he could make
up for last time. They spent hours in front of the fire before shifting camp to the bedroom.
When McLusky woke in the morning, he didn’t need any time to remember where he was; he hadn’t been asleep that long. He shot a quick glance at the clock on the
bedside table – it was seven exactly – and relaxed again. What had woken him was the clattering of crockery on the tray Louise had set down on the bed next to him. A cafetière of
coffee, glasses of orange juice, and blueberry pancakes with snowy dollops of crème fraiche, dusted with cinnamon. Louise in her black dressing gown was fresh from the shower, her hair still
damp. He reached up and kissed her, but she soon pulled away and poured coffee. ‘I hate cold pancakes.’
He sat up, examined the array on the tray. ‘Pancakes and freshly squeezed orange juice for breakfast. I could get used to that.’
‘Well don’t. I usually do the domestic-goddess thing just once. After that, it’s a bowl of Special K and juice from the carton in the fridge.’
‘Well that’s definitely another person,’ Warren said, peering through Ed’s magnifying glass. ‘But the face and the back of the head are missing.
Crafty bugger. Look, the slice is even narrower than the other two.’
Ed grunted agreement. ‘And it doesn’t match up against the others. Mind you, sooner or later they’ll start knitting together. From the dimensions, I’d say there’s
five more bits to it. Unless they get smaller and smaller.’
‘But why send it in bits in the first place?’
‘He said “why not print it anyway”. Are you going to wait until they’re all here? Why don’t we print them, slice by slice? Someone must recognize it.’
Warren was thoughtful. ‘Look at the way this is cut. The face is missing deliberately. So whoever is sending these must assume we’ll recognize the person. I don’t know, Ed.
Something about these bits gives me the creeps. It’s the lighting, maybe. Or the graininess. And whoever is sending them has some sort of agenda of their own. I don’t like being used.
There’s no way we can print it without seeing the whole picture, to coin a phrase.’
‘Shame. I fancied it as a puzzle. With a prize for the f rst one to get it.’
‘Yeah, I know the type of thing you mean. But we don’t need to use a creepy pic like this one.’ She stuck the three pieces on to the frame of her monitor. A moment later she
unstuck them, laid them on the glass of the scanner and saved the image to her computer.
‘It’s
bloody
freezing.’ Despite wearing gloves, Sorbie’s fingers felt icy. He huddled deeper into the driver’s seat like a truculent
teenager, barely able to see above the steering wheel. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. There wasn’t much to see anyway, only cramped little houses, uncollected rubbish and slush. It looked
like home.
Fairfield didn’t bother acknowledging the sentiment, since Sorbie had said something to that effect a dozen times already since the beginning of their shift. She wasn’t exactly happy
either. Just when the heating at Albany Road had been restored, they had business out here. And this was really a job for uniform. But the number of drug deaths continued to rise, albeit more
slowly, which was why they found themselves sitting in Sorbie’s Golf, parked up in a drab street in Whitehall, watching a public phone box. Fairfield knew street dealers were operating around
here. The phone box was often used to order up a drop of drugs. The area hadn’t recently been targeted by the drug squad, meaning things would hopefully be nice and relaxed. The idea was to
catch some small-fry dealer and scare him enough with a manslaughter charge for supplying contaminated heroin to make him reveal the source of the stuff. In a city this size, they’d be
extremely lucky to catch the contaminated heroin being dealt, but one addict had died in Whitehall, one in neighbouring St George in the last week. This was the right area.
They’d been to a pub at lunchtime, to get something warm to eat and to fortify themselves, Fairfield with a large glass of acidic red wine, Sorbie with a pint of industrial cider. The
cheering effect of both had now worn off, making them ir ritable. Sorbie wished he had used the toilet before leaving the pub.
Since even a rattling drug addict would notice the clouds of hot exhaust from a car with its engine running, they sat in the unheated Golf. The temperature was near zero. After two hours, they
had eventually pounced on one lot of likely candidates but had found nothing more than half an ounce of herbal on the supplier. Fairfield was so disgusted, she told Sorbie to let the lot of them
go. They ran the engine of the car for fifteen minutes, shouting at the heater to hurry up, then waited once more. Another hour had passed since then. They had long run out of casual conversation.
There were things Fairfield might want to talk about, but she wasn’t sure Sorbie was the right person, even though it was he who had made her think about it. A few days earlier, after the DS
had gashed his leg trying to take a short cut through the window in Easton, they had driven to his house in Windmill Hill so he could clean up and change from his torn trousers. Sorbie lived in a
narrow Victorian terrace not unlike the ones around here. She had never been there before. By the looks of it, he hadn’t got around to changing a thing since he moved in, apart from adding
awkwardly parked IKEA furniture and a large TV. It looked like everything in the house had come flat-packed. While Sorbie got changed, Fairfield had taken a good look around downstairs.
‘You’re snooping in my cupboards,’ Sorbie had shouted from upstairs. ‘I can hear it!’ He hadn’t, but he knew Fairfield would be unable to resist. He was still
convinced women only joined the force because they were basically nosy. It had been the freezer door Fairfield had opened first. She had counted three bags of frozen chips. The rest were burgers
and sausages. The greasy chip pan on the electric stove showed every sign of being well used, as did the blackened non-stick frying pan in the sink. Next to the cooker on the pretend marble counter
stood the largest bottle of ketchup she had ever seen; a squeezy bottle of American mustard was keeping it company. The kitchen window over the sink allowed a view of a narrow, empty garden. The
recycling bins near the back door were overflowing with plastic cider bottles and beer cans, the only evidence that Sorbie had been here more than a week. Even the sitting room looked like he had
only just moved in and hadn’t had time to create any kind of atmosphere, yet she knew he’d bought the house four years ago. Sorbie had never mentioned girlfriends, and by the looks of
it, no woman had spent more than five minutes in this room. Or would have wanted to, unless her sole purpose was to sit on a sofa and look at a plasma screen.
Fairfield had heard through the station grapevine that DI McLusky lived in even less salubrious accommodation, over a shop, with second-hand furniture and no proper heating. She had been
wondering since why so many officers seemed to lead marginal lives. And what they expected to get out of those lives. Of course there were plenty of happily married or hopefully engaged colleagues
she could cite, but she suspected at least half of the team had put their social lives practically on hold, simply living from day to day, just treading water, as though waiting for something to
happen, for something to enter their lives from the outside that would decide things for them. One day, when they weren’t working, she would ask Sorbie what he wanted out of life. Apart from
getting promotion. And when he got it, would it make any difference to what he kept in his freezer? Or to anything else in his life outside of work, apart perhaps from his pension prospects?