Mean Spirit Part 15

Outside the door they could hear Malcolm padding up and down the hallway.

'I don't understand,' Marcus said eventually.

'He was just there,' Callard said. 'It was there.'

Grayle and Marcus both stayed silent, Grayle thinking it was maybe only the tea-party approach and the Salvation Army hymns that prevented spiritualism from mutating into some kind of dark necromancy. It was there? Jesus.

'I smelled it first. This happens sometimes.'

'A scent of violets.' Grayle remembering some old country-house ghost story.

'No. It was rather acrid and oily and spiced with that ... that smell one tends to a.s.sociate with violent, male l.u.s.t.'

Grayle said, 'Huh?'

Marcus looked uncomfortable.

Grayle was thinking, Justin. Motor oil. The b.i.t.c.h is making this up.

She said, 'Maybe, when you're feeling resentful, you don't get violets.'

Persephone Callard, not even looking at Grayle, said mildly, 'The b.i.t.c.h is not making it up.'

Grayle froze. A log s.h.i.+fted inside the stove.

Outside the study door Malcolm howled once sharply and then Grayle heard the patter of his heavy paws, receding.

XVI.

THE WORD WENT UP TO HEADQUARTERS AND, AROUND TEN P.M., Bradbury himself arrived in Elham, brought in from home.

Bobby Maiden was kept waiting nearly an hour. Sitting alone in the CID room, drinking tea from the machine, while the Superintendent talked first to Steve Rea from Traffic and then to Barrett and then Beattie, G.o.d forbid.

Eventually, Beattie came back, expressionless. 'Mr Bradbury'd like a word. Sir.'

No look of triumph, at least. The clock over the door said 23.54. In the pa.s.sage, Maiden heard a drunk en route to the cells, screaming, 'Tried to touch me up, that f.u.c.ker. You see that? Bleeding police b.u.m-bandits ...'

The door to the DCI's office was ajar. Maiden tapped.

'Come in, Bobby.'

The man strongly fancied as the next ACC (crime) was draped tiredly behind the desk that was supposed, in a couple of weeks' time, to be Maiden's.

Generally loose kind of bloke, Bernard Bradbury. Big, clean, pink hands, but otherwise insubstantial, somehow, a blur materializing in bigger and bigger chairs. Maiden's dad had known Bradbury when the boss had been a young PC up in Wilmslow, where Norman Plod was an old PC. Norman sneering when Bradbury got his stripes at twenty-six, s.h.i.+ny-a.r.s.ed clerk. He'll go far, you watch.

'Sit down, Bobby. With you in a second.' Bradbury was reading statements, looking unimpressed. Maiden's own statement would be somewhere in the pile.

He sat quietly. He was not quiet inside. Inside, he was like a burning building, everything collapsing inwards. Almost expecting Bernard Bradbury to be feeling it, pus.h.i.+ng back his chair from the heat.

But Bradbury, this mild, schoolteacherish presence, was immune to heat. And straight, Maiden thought. This was the man who, two weeks ago, had strongly suggested Maiden apply for the proposed DCI's job.

He shuffled his reports into shape, packed away his reading gla.s.ses, faced Maiden at last.

'Thought you might like an unofficial chat at this stage, Bobby. Or shall we pull in a third party? Up to you.'

'Expect I'd say the same things either way, sir.'

'Would you?'

'Yes.'

'I see.' Bradbury hit the reports with the heel of his hand. 'So this is a pile of manure, is it, Bobby?'

'I think I can smell it from here, sir,' Maiden said.

'Let's not call him Vic,' Bradbury said. 'Let's call him Clutton, shall we?'

'He's the victim, sir.'

'Not necessarily, from where I'm sitting,' Bradbury said.

He talked about Maiden's car. 'Not hedgehog blood,' he said, echoing Beattie.

Maiden said nothing.

'We've got another witness now, Bobby. Girl of twelve doing her homework in her bedroom. Heard the car hit the gate and rushed over to the window. This is the house next door but one to Clutton's girlfriend's house.'

'This girl see the driver, sir?'

'What if I said she did?'

Maiden shrugged.

'Well, she didn't. Not from that angle.'

'Pity.'

'Yes,' Bradbury said. 'All right, let's go back over the sequence. According to your statement, you met Clutton in the Crown just before six. We also have statements from three, ah, respectable local businessmen who were occupying a nearby table. All of whom confirm that the discussion between you and Clutton was, at times ... heated.'

'Not from where I was sitting, sir.'

'A solicitor. An estate agent. And a county councillor.'

'Sorry, sir, I thought you said respectable.'

'Let's not get clever, Maiden. Right Clutton was your long-time informant, correct?'

'Yes.'

'Or your friend, perhaps?'

'There are levels of friends.h.i.+p.'

'You're agreeing that there was a more personal connection between you and Victor Clutton then?'

'We had some history.'

Bradbury hissed softly through his teeth. 'This is really not what I want to be hearing from you, Bobby. What were you and Clutton talking about?'

'He'd asked to meet me. He had some information.'

'About what?'

Maiden sighed.

'Don't p.i.s.s me about, lad.'

'My flat was broken into. I, er ... didn't report it.'

'You didn't report it?'

'There was nothing stolen. And not much damage.'

'You didn't report it?'

'It would have reopened a can of worms I wasn't quite ready to reopen.'

Bradbury drew a long, long breath.

'As you can imagine, I'm already under pressure to fling open the doors to the jackboots from CIB.'

'Mmm.'

'I don't want those b.u.g.g.e.rs clumping round the place if it can be avoided. You're not helping me avoid it.'

'With respect, boss,' Maiden said, 'CIB should have been in here en ma.s.se two year ago.'

'Don't.

'Sorry?'

'I can see your little b.l.o.o.d.y can of worms rolling towards me, Maiden. I would like you to pick it up very carefully and place it neatly back on the shelf behind you.'

'You're saying you don't want to know what we were discussing in the Crown?'

'I said place it on the shelf. I didn't say throw it in the bin.'

'Just that some things have a limited shelf-life,' Maiden said.

Bradbury began to hiss through his teeth again, tapping his knee as though he was trying to keep something off the boil.

'All right,' he said eventually, 'off the record, I think we both know that quite a few people were very glad when that business appeared to have sorted itself out. An inquiry would've cost silly money with no appreciable change in the situation.'

'Except that a senior officer of this division might have been doing serious time by now.'

'And this force would be under the wrong spotlight again.'

'But the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's still-'

'Maiden.'

Maiden shut up.

'I'm trying to help you, lad,' Bradbury said.

Come on, Mr Maiden, I'm trying to help you ... No-one had seen Vic die. No-one had heard him scream, probably because he hadn't screamed. The killer must have been parked, in Maiden's car, out of sight but close enough to watch him and Clutton emerge and go their separate ways on foot.

Maiden said quietly, 'I really, really want the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who nicked my car and drove it over Vic Clutton. Whoever he is. Whoever he's ... linked to.'

Bradbury hit the reports again. 'Lad, there are some people, not ten yards from this office, who think we've already got him in the building. No. I mean you, you daft b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You say in your statement that you and Clutton came out of the Crown and there was your car ... gone. Anybody else in the car park at the time to back this up? Apparently not. So, you've got only one witness to the apparent theft and he's dead. Right. You could've gone back in the pub and used the phone there to report the car stolen. You didn't. You could've called in here not much of a detour, if my geography's reliable. You didn't. You went home. Mr Cool.'

'Did they find any prints on the car?'

'Apart from yours?'

'Oh, come on, boss,' Maiden said. 'Whoever did this didn't even attempt to make it look like a hit and run.'

'Ah yes.' Bradbury leaned back. 'Hit and run. You know a bit about hit and run, don't you, Bobby?'

'This and that,' Maiden said tonelessly.

'Never caught whoever ran you over, did we? Night you snuffed it.'

Maiden said nothing.

'You see, if we open up your famous can of worms, we also find the old rumour that your accident coincided with your ultimately fruitless investigation of the late Tony Parker ...'

'Only fruitless because he died, sir.'

'... whose payroll, at that time, as is fairly well known, included one Victor Clutton.'

'But-'

'Working, I believe, as a driver. And minder to Mr Parker's daughter, Emma, who-'

Maiden stood up. 'That was nothing to do with this, and you b.l.o.o.d.y well-'

'Sit down, Bobby. I'm merely pointing out what's going to be said if we open the can of worms. Sit the f.u.c.k down.'