Charisma (24 page)

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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Charisma
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Waiting for an ambulance to take away the body of Jennifer Mills and a suitable vehicle to transport a man in a wheelchair Liz was swept by a sudden fierce nausea. The blood drained from her face and behind her knees; for a moment she thought she was going to faint. She put out a hand to steady herself.
Shapiro appeared at her elbow. ‘Are you all right?'
Embarrassed, she shook her head. ‘I don't know. I suddenly felt – shaky.' She couldn't remember anything like this before. She supposed it was the personal nature of the thing: she'd been directly involved with these people. ‘Can you spare me for a couple of minutes? I'll take a walk up the canal, clear my head. I won't be long.'
Shapiro understood, perhaps better than she did. ‘Been a busy old day, hasn't it? Look, there's nothing to hurry back to. Mr Davey isn't going to give me any problems. Why don't you call it a night, go home? Brian'll want to know what's been going on.'
Liz gave a shiver that was only partly the night turning cool. ‘I feel I owe Brian an explanation. But I'm not sure what the explanation is, or even what it is I have to explain.'
Shapiro chuckled, not unkindly. ‘I think your first idea was the best. Have a walk, clear your head. Then go home. Tell Brian everything you can think of and work it out together. You've nothing to be ashamed of, Liz. None of what's happened is your fault.'
Grateful for that, she touched his arm. ‘Thanks.'
The vehicles stopped in Brick Lane. The ambulance men removed the body on a stretcher, Shapiro helped manoeuvre the wheelchair between the bollards. No one gave Liz a backward glance as she turned away.
Walking alone, the canal free now of the terror that had infected Castlemere's dark places for a week, she felt the nausea pass, then the tiredness, then by degrees the confusion that had prevented
her judging fairly her own role in these events. The plain truth was both simpler and more palatable than she had feared. Shapiro was right: she had done nothing improper. She had acted in a friendly but professional way towards a man who, whatever his shortcomings, was no criminal. She had not compromised herself either professionally or personally: that Davey had thought otherwise was his mistake, not hers. Nothing she had said or done, or omitted to say or do, had threatened the investigation: if Donovan thought differently that was his problem.
Or was she being a little too smug – complacent to the point of naive? Nothing had happened between her and Michael Davey. Nothing had nearly happened. But she had been attracted to him. If it had gone on longer, if he'd had the wit not to confront her with it, could she be sure that attraction would not have turned to temptation and temptation in its turn to betrayal? She couldn't.
Of course she couldn't. If circumstances had been other than they were she would have behaved differently: if Davey had been a better man, or Brian a worse one, or she a different woman. It didn't matter. There was no need for her to cover every conceivable eventuality. Leading one life free of major disasters was enough of a challenge for most people. There had been a potential problem; it never turned into an actual problem; there was nothing she would have difficulty telling Brian. It sufficed. Her heart lightened as she walked by the canal.
Because it was too soon for the town to know there would be no more killings she expected to have the tow-path to herself. So she was surprised to hear hurried footsteps and see a burly man with a knapsack come at her out of the dark. His shape was distinctive; the accent when he returned, somewhat distractedly, her cordial ‘Good evening' was conclusive.
‘Mr Kelso? I'd never have taken you for a backpacker.'
If he'd made some similar pleasantry in reply she'd have thought no more of it. But he peered at her, jolted in recognition, then thrust her away in one direction and the knapsack in another. It was clearly meant to reach the canal but he misjudged the distance and it came to rest with a soft, solid thump on the edge.
He'd misjudged Liz as well. His reaction startled her but she rolled with it and when he was at full stretch grabbed his arm, tugging him off balance. He lurched across the path and into the wall; by the time he turned back Liz was blocking his escape. She was no match for him physically but she was as tall as he, she was trained and she was angry. She shoved her face at his and snarled,
‘I don't know what you're up to but whatever it is I'm nicking you for it.'
Kelso could have pushed past her and run. But he must have known he couldn't outstrip a police officer both younger and fitter than he. He could have turned his strength on her, gone for her with his fists; but it was too late to take her by surprise so probably she would evade any attack he made. Even if he disabled her he won only a brief respite. He wasn't going to walk away from this.
For a time he'd thought he might. After the man he knew as Bailie left him standing unhappily on the tow-path, with enough proscribed substances slung over his shoulder to ensure that if caught he'd come out of prison to a pension, he'd thought again about what they were doing and whether the risk had come to outweigh the gain. The risks had grown hugely when they found themselves in possession of a police officer. Whether they freed him, or killed him, or left it to a man they hardly knew to kill him, the stakes were suddenly a lot higher than he'd bargained for.
Like the proverbial donkey starving between two bales of hay, Kelso hovered undecided on the tow-path for some minutes. Then he made up his mind to put what distance he could, actual and metaphorical, between himself and activities at the shunting yard. He was on his way back to the trucks, to return the contents of his kitbag to their place of concealment, when like the angel Nemesis the woman detective materialized out of the gloom as if there were no more natural time or place to take a stroll and bid him good-evening.
Betrayed utterly by his moment of panic, now his only real choice lay between co-operating with her and making matters worse. He knew he was facing prison. But if he could preserve that distance between himself and Bailie he could still hope to avoid a life sentence. He slumped back against the wall with his hands apart and let the breath run out of him in a sibilant paeon of defeat. He said, ‘It wasn't my idea. Topping him. That wasn't my idea.'
Liz had no idea what he was talking about but her blood ran chill. ‘Who?'
‘The mick detective. I just wanted him out of the way till we made some arrangements. It was Joe Bailie wanted him dead. And Scoutari. Not me.' It wasn't true but he thought it might serve. It was important on these occasions to get one's own version in first.
Liz made herself breathe, searched for a voice. ‘Are you telling
me Detective Sergeant Donovan is dead? When – where?'
Kelso waved an arm towards Cornmarket. ‘The shunting yard. Or maybe the canal – Bailie was going to drown him. I don't know, I came away. I don't need any part of killing a copper.'
Liz stared at him. ‘What – just now?' Kelso nodded. Hope sent a surge of adrenalin through her veins. Anger throbbed in her breast. ‘You stupid bloody man! He may not be dead yet. There may be time to stop it.' She took off at a run, as fast as she could and faster than was safe on the dark tow-path.
 
For just a second Liam Brady thought there was a choice. But of course there wasn't and he knew it soon enough. Quietly, without obvious rancour, he promised Scoutari, ‘I'll find you. Wherever you go I'll find you.' Then he dropped over the edge into the canal.
It was deeper than he expected, chest-high cold black water stinking of rot. He stumbled for a footing. There was no current, only the spreading ripples of his own entry, but the bottom was foul with mud and rubbish – broken prams, bicycle wheels, the skeletons of drowned dogs. When he lost his balance and went in over his head the water tasted of stagnation, a century of it, thick and sour and overly biological.
When he clawed the weed from his eyes there was someone above him, a woman on the tow-path who bent and offered her hand. He shook his head, rank water shaking off him. ‘Help me. There's someone in here.'
‘Donovan?' Recognizing her voice Brady blessed the fates that had sent him a professional. ‘Dead? Alive?'
‘He was alive when he went in. That's got to be a minute now. Help me find him.'
She threw off her jacket, then she was down in the water with him. Its cold grip on her chest drove a startled gasp from her, the stench she breathed in made her gag. ‘Where is he?'
Brady circled his hands above the surface. ‘About here. He's tied, he won't be able to get up. And I can't find him.'
They quartered the canal bed, searching with their feet. Even in daylight they couldn't have seen through more than a metre of stagnant water and a veil of green scum. The seconds ticked resolutely by, measuring off the time a man could live without air.
Liz tried to work faster, cover more ground; but she knew that if she moved too quickly she could pass him by and never know it. If that happened he'd die. There simply wasn't time to cover the same ground twice.
Something snagged her foot so that she almost fell. Cursing she kicked free. But as she moved on there was a soft hurried popping as a string of bubbles exploded under her nose, glinting briefly silver as the moon caught their dying. ‘Donovan?' Feeling her stumble over him he'd gambled the rest of his breath to gain her attention. If she'd already turned away, if she'd fallen or otherwise disturbed the water's surface, he'd have died at her feet and the best she could hope was that she'd never know how close she'd come to saving him.
‘Over here!' She didn't wait for Brady but snatched a breath and plunged, groping for where her toes had been. Her feet came off the bottom but it didn't matter, she already had contact with his clothes, billowed out by the water, nudging the backs of her hands like soft blind fish. She found the line of his arm and hooked her hand through it, got her feet back under her and heaved.
For a moment, breaking the surface herself, she thought she had him. His body shifted against her legs, seemed to be lifting. Then the movement stopped and however hard she tugged she couldn't get his head above water. She pulled till her feet slid from under her again.
Brady reached them as she went under. But there was no more time. No time to explain the problem – that Donovan was entangled with something immovable on the canal bottom. No time to find out what and free him. He was an engine that had been running on the smell of petrol for two minutes and now even the smell was used up. The engine was going to stop.
But perhaps she could buy him some extra time – a couple of minutes, something. The idea was forming in her mind even as she was falling and she sucked in as much breath as she could hold before letting his tethered weight drag her under.
She made no effort to extricate him. Instead she groped along his body until she felt his hair – too long as always, but if he survived for Shapiro to complain again he could say with absolute truth that he owed his life to his dislike of barbers – stroking the backs of her fingers. Fisting her hand in his collar, letting her legs float away because she didn't need them now, she found his face and his mouth. She kissed him.
Whatever he'd been expecting it wasn't that. His body convulsed with shock and his head jerked back so that most of the air was lost in a silent explosion between them. Damning him roundly she turned for the surface.
Brady was waiting. While she took on air she gasped an explanation.
‘He's down here, at my feet. He's caught somehow, I can't get him free. But I can breathe for him while you get him free.'
She went down again. It took her a moment to find Donovan, another to find his face. This time he knew what she was doing. He let her fit her mouth over his and took greedily the air she fed him. When her lungs were empty she left him.
Brady surfaced a second later. ‘There's something big down there, a fridge or a cooker or something, the rope's fast in it. Do you have a knife? If I could cut it I could pull him out.'
Liz shook her head. Detectives, least of all women detectives, are not encouraged to carry concealed weapons. Brady started to say something else but she couldn't wait to hear it. ‘I have to get back to him. Find something.' She dived, carrying Donovan's life in her lungs.
When next she surfaced there was no sign of Brady, nor did he appear in the time it took her to catch her breath. ‘You
bastard
!' She thought he'd despaired of success and quit while he could, leaving her alone to decide when she was too exhausted to keep her sergeant alive any longer. That time would come: she couldn't breathe for both of them
ad infinitum.
But it hadn't come yet. Stoking the fury that helped blot out her fear, she went down again.
Looking for Brady she'd lost her bearings, wasted seconds finding Donovan again. By then he was desperate, thrusting his head at her face. She gave him what she had left, returned for more. By now her chest was going like a bellows, cramps sliding knifelike under her ribs.

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