A Bleeding of Innocents (25 page)

She looked surprised. ‘Sure. Why?'

‘They'll be closing here. You want to go for a drive?'

There was no enthusiasm in her response. ‘I don't know, dear, it's getting late.'

‘I'll pay. For a driver.' He held up his damaged wrist. ‘I'm a cripple, I can't drive myself. Come on – it's easier than turning tricks.'

For a moment she wavered, undecided. Then she nodded. ‘Where do you want to go?'

He finished the beer with a grimace. ‘Just drive. I need to think and I think better on the move. Wait a minute, I know a place. Yeah, OK, I'll tell you where to go.' He swayed as he got down from the stool and she steered him outside.

They walked for five minutes through the centre of town. A light rain was beginning to fall slick on the grimy pavements when they came to where her car was parked under a street light, as improbable a survivor in that rundown place as the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace.

It was a very ordinary car. Not pink; not upholstered in fake leopard-skin; not even a pair of furry dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. It was a car for shopping in, for visiting her mother, for the occasional luxury of a long drive alone in the countryside with nobody's whims to satisfy but her own. It was part of her private life, nothing to do with her job.

For a moment Donovan forgot himself and headed for the driver's door. The woman diverted him with a hand on his shoulder. ‘Oh no you don't. The state you're in I wouldn't let you drive me on the dodgems.'

He chuckled darkly and walked round the bonnet, pausing as he did so to look back up the street the way they'd come.

The woman looked too. ‘What is it? What can you see?'

‘Nothing. Just thinking, it's a good place for an ambush.'

She leaned across the car to open the passenger door. ‘You've been watching too much telly, dear.'

Donovan folded his long legs inside. ‘No,' he said pontifically. ‘Telly makes sense. Telly plays by the rules. It's real life that beats the hell out of me.'

He told her where to go. For a time they drove beside the canal. Then the black buildings looming over them began to shrink, to separate, to space out and admit the sky. Soon the town fell behind them and Castlemere Levels spread out ahead.

They hardly spoke. Donovan slumped in his seat as if half asleep, except that every time the car went round a corner he looked back. Sometimes there were headlights behind them, sometimes not.

It was a clear night with a gibbous moon climbing. The slow meanders of the river gleamed like a silver ribbon dropped in careless loops, meeting the road and wandering away again. There was a sheen of dew and gossamer on the water-meadows.

Lying back with his eyes half-hooded Donovan still saw the turn-off in time to warn his driver. The trees closed in as they bumped down the gritty track. The moon penetrated the branches overhead unevenly or not at all.

The track ended in a clearing in the woods shaped like a wine-glass, with the rim of the glass a shallow escarpment dropping down to the Levels. The river was quarter of a mile away and the meadows stretched as far as the eye could see.

The woman stopped the car, wound her window down, and exclaimed into the open night, ‘I know where we are. Why—?'

Donovan shrugged. He opened his door and let one long leg dangle outside. ‘Why not? It's a beauty spot, isn't it? Where else would a man take a woman?'

‘You're a romantic, Donovan,' she said, not unkindly. ‘If you'd ever been with hookers you'd know there are three places and none of them's a beauty spot. A cheap hotel, the back of a car, a dark alley. Strolling in the moonlight is strictly for lovers: working girls do it with an eye on the clock.'

The Pages had come here as lovers. Time had meant nothing to them. They had parked and walked down to the river by moonlight, and coupled in the long soft grass to the murmur of the water. Then they strolled back to the car and sat in companionable silence until George Swann stepped out of the darkness and blasted Kerry Page to bloody fragments through the windscreen.

The woman shuddered. ‘You really are a bit weird, aren't you? Fancy wanting to come here.'

Donovan was undisturbed. ‘It's quiet. It's pretty. And the killer isn't coming back here, and even if he did he wouldn't give us any trouble. He saved my neck once.'

Because the passenger door was open the interior light was on. Apart from the moon and the cold sharp pricks of stars it was the only light they could see.

Nothing happened. After a while, a shade petulantly, she said, ‘How long do you want to stay?'

He didn't open his eyes. ‘You rushing home?'

She snorted. ‘Hardly.'

‘A bit longer then. OK?'

She shrugged. ‘You're paying, I'm just the driver.'

‘Yeah.' With his lazy grin and his eyes shut and one long leg trailing into the car park he looked as switched off, as relaxed, as she felt uneasy.

Finally she'd had enough. She opened her mouth to say, ‘That's it, I've had enough – I'll take you back to town or you can damn well stay here,' though the words had yet to form, when she became aware that he was no longer drowsing with his eyes half-hooded but staring into the blackness of the wood ten metres away. She touched his arm and he was rigid, the long muscles tense. ‘What is it?' she whispered, a thread of fear puckering her voice. ‘What can you see?'

The darkness moved and separated, and a piece of it came towards them – black against black the shape remained amorphous but it moved like a man walking. It said, ‘He's seen me, love.'

The woman moaned. ‘Oh, God. I thought you said you'd caught him – the man who killed that girl. You said it was safe, God damn you!'

She was clutching his sleeve. She felt him shrug. He slurred, ‘There's more than one fish in the sea. More than one shark in Castlemere. And baby – what's your name again? – nowhere's that safe. Once the sharks are after you, they find you someplace.'

She said, ‘Then who—?' and her voice shook.

The man interjected quickly. ‘Tell her, Donovan, and you're both history.' Donovan said nothing. ‘All right. Who is she?'

The drunken grin was audible in his voice. ‘She's a hooker. Her name's Gina.'

‘Tina,' the woman corrected him indignantly, then wondered why. She addressed the other man, urgently, the words tripping over themselves in her hurry. ‘Oh listen, mister, I don't know who you are and I don't want to. I didn't want to come here. He paid me to drive him, that's all. I don't want to know your business, I just want to go home. Let me go home. Please?'

‘I've got some business with Mr Donovan,' said the man, explaining carefully. He did not seem to share her haste. ‘I don't want to be interrupted.'

‘No, sure, I understand,' babbled the woman. ‘Look, I'll go. I don't want any trouble. I won't talk to anyone. Anyway, what could I tell them?'

‘All right then,' said the man kindly. ‘But you'll have to leave the car.'

‘My car? But it's miles back to town! I can't walk that far.' Then it seemed to strike her that she was putting her convenience ahead of her safety and her tone changed abruptly. ‘No, sure, that's OK. Keep it. I'll walk. Jesus, mister, please let me go.'

The man nodded. ‘That's OK, Tina. You go now. Go through the woods and you'll hit the road in about quarter of a mile. Wait half an hour, then you can start thumbing. If I come along and see you before that, I'll carve you. You understand?'

She understood perfectly. It was the kind of talk, and he the kind of man, she had no difficulty understanding. It was too dark to see if he carried a weapon but she believed him implicitly. If she disobeyed him he would do as he said without compunction. She knew he would cut her throat with a smile on his face if it would serve his purpose. He was letting her go only because she couldn't harm him.

She almost fell out of the car in her hurry. ‘I'm gone, mister. You do the business you've got to do, it's nothing to do with me.' Her heels were not made for gravel car parks and woody tracks, she was tripping at every step.

‘Thanks a bunch, Gina,' Donovan said slowly.

‘Tina!' she yelled back as she stumbled out of sight.

When she was gone the man said, conversationally, ‘You've done your good deed for the day, Donovan.'

Donovan squinted up at him. There was just enough light from the open door to illuminate the lower part of his face. ‘How's that, then?'

‘You didn't tell her my name,' said Terry McMeekin. ‘If you had, I'd have had to kill her too.'

‘Come on, Terry, who're you trying to impress?' Donovan yawned. ‘There's only you and me here and we both know your limitations. You're not bad at putting the frighteners on people but you haven't the stomach for murder. Not even women. Not even hookers.'

‘You reckon?' McMeekin's voice was barred with irritation. ‘Then why do I keep tripping over you? Why do I keep having to say where I was while you and your governor were playing chicken under the viaduct?'

‘Because you were there,' insisted Donovan. ‘I don't know who was driving – like I say, somebody tougher than you – but you were there. I heard you; I saw you from the waist down. Who the hell else dresses like that round here? You're going down, McMeekin. You aided and abetted the murder of a police officer and you're going to pay for that. The best thing you can do now is give us the driver. That's got to be worth three years to you.'

McMeekin chuckled. ‘You're still talking like a policeman, Donovan. From what I hear you're in no position to be making promises.'

‘I can get you a deal,' swore Donovan. ‘Give me Carney, and the driver, and I'll get you a deal if it's the last thing I do before I sign on the dole.'

‘You don't want much, do you? The man who pays my wages and this top hit-man he hired to do your governor. And for that I don't even walk?'

‘Three years takes a lot of serving. Don't underestimate what I'm offering you.'

McMeekin seemed to be considering it. Then he reached through the open door of the car, fastened big hands in Donovan's clothes, and hauled him bodily outside. ‘Come here.'

Even sober and with two hands Donovan would have been no match for McMeekin. He was as tall but only half as wide, and though he had more than a layman's knowledge of street-fighting he was trained to the use of minimum necessary force. He'd learned a few tricks the Police Complaints Commission didn't know, and didn't want to, but a man in McMeekin's trade must have forgotten more than Donovan knew. He could move faster than the big man, but with one hand in plaster and alcohol dulling his reactions it seemed unlikely to make the difference.

He didn't resist, only complaining mildly as McMeekin hauled him out of the car and slammed him up against it. ‘What are you doing, Terry? You think I'm carrying? Shapiro kept my warrant card: you think he left me a gun?'

‘I heard about your slanging match in the Ginger Pig. Jesus, Donovan, you were some loss to the Diplomatic Corps.'

‘Yeah, well,' grunted Donovan, ‘I suppose it wasn't too smart, shouting the odds in a public bar. You never know who's listening.' Slowly, in the glimmer of light from the car, his face changed with the recollection of what he'd been shouting about. He didn't remember every word but the main thrust of his argument, the reason he'd cornered Shapiro in the pub instead of waiting for him to return to his office, was that the information they now had was enough to make the cat jump. Well, it had jumped.

McMeekin nodded, his voice humorous. ‘That's right. You told half Castlemere that you and Page together could convict us of Clarke's murder. You wanted to use the kid as bait but Mr Shapiro wouldn't wear it. So you stormed out, went on a blinder, and drove up here in the middle of the night with some tom. What did you think was going to happen? Michael Aspel was going to jump out from behind a bush with a big red book?'

Donovan shrugged. ‘So it was stupid. It's been a long day: I was tired, I lost the rag. It wouldn't have stood up in court anyway.'

McMeekin sniffed. ‘That's not what you said in the Ginger Pig. What I heard was, you had it sewn up. As long as you and Page could both testify.' He waited but Donovan said nothing. ‘Guess what, Donovan? You aren't going to testify.'

Donovan felt the alcohol like lead in his belly and his veins. He'd have given anything for a clear head. He'd had a reason to drink, but with hindsight it had been a bad move. McMeekin was either warning him off or threatening to kill him: he wished he could be sure which. It mattered.

He got round it with a spurt of bravado that came out as a sneer. ‘So what now, Terry? You want me to wait while you find out if it's convenient for your man to come over and bust my head in?'

McMeekin sighed. ‘I keep telling you, Donovan, but you don't listen. There's no hit-man. There never was a hit-man. Anything Mr Carney needs doing for him, I do. I look after him. I tidy up for him. If he gets something on his shoes, I clean them. That's all you are, Donovan, something he's trodden in. You'll wipe off.' He sniffed. ‘I thought I'd wiped you off once before. I knew Clarke was finished: I thought you were too. You're a lucky bastard, Donovan. At least, you used to be.'

‘I knew it was you I saw,' breathed Donovan. ‘You were alone in the car? It was you driving? You that hit us?'

McMeekin nodded. He seemed pleased with himself. ‘I don't need help dealing with the likes of you. Not then, not now.'

Now he had his confession it almost seemed that Donovan doubted it. ‘How did you get rid of the car?'

‘The scrap-yard I borrowed it from put it straight in the crusher. It was a half-ton paperweight before you reached the hospital.' The smugness in his voice was intolerable.