A Bleeding of Innocents (6 page)

Beech trees lined the road to the airfield. A blink of autumn sun washed the copper leaves with light. Flame-like, they flickered in the breeze of his passing. At least, Donovan thought they were flickering. If he was wrong about that then Shapiro was right and he shouldn't be riding the bike yet.

Actually the ride in the sunshine and the fresh air was doing him good. His head felt clearer than at any time since the – incident. Shapiro insisted on calling it that in the hope that it might have been an accident. Donovan knew better. He'd been there. True, his memory was hazy and nothing he could recall labelled it indelibly as murder. But he had been round stupid men and drunken men, and he had been round killers, and he knew the difference. He knew the difference between a car out of control and one controlled very precisely in order to crush men's lives out against a brick wall.

All he had seen of the man who had hit them was a pair of feet. But he knew from the way they walked, from the way one rolled him over – because it was quicker and easier than crouching over him and less likely to result in blood on his clothes – that there was nothing random, nothing careless, about what had happened. The man had walked back to see if the job was done. Donovan owed his life to the fact that an apprentice painter and his girl had done all they could think to do in the back of a van reeking of turpentine and wanted a take-away before the Chinese chip shop shut.

Now the clean air pouring through his visor blew away some of the black rage and other garbage that had been stuffing his head and he was finally getting the thing into perspective. He was sorry to be off the case but what Shapiro said made sense. And Shapiro, if cautious, was a good detective. If there was a way of having Clarke's killer he would have him; if he was a pro it would be obvious then. And Shapiro would have to listen to Donovan's theory as to who sent him and why.

In the mean time Donovan was better working on something than nothing and the Kerry Page case was indisputably murder. He had half expected to come back from sick-leave to find ten years' worth of files on his desk with a note from Shapiro to up-date them. He'd already decided he'd walk if that happened.

The sign on the road welcomed him to Castlemere Airport, a pretentious description of one runway, one hangar, a windsock, and a caravan posing as air-traffic control. Castle Air Services was the only business using the field regularly. Starting with an RAF-surplus DC3 Joe Tulliver spent ten years ferrying mixed freight round Europe for marginal profits before realizing that the way to make money was to specialize in low-weight, high-value cargoes. Like people.

With the motorways filling up people were looking for a better way to cover long distances. Businessmen, racegoers, hospitals needing urgent supplies, and factories waiting for spare parts provided him with a thriving trade. By the time David Page joined the firm in the late eighties Tulliver was running a four-seater, an eight-seater, a light freighter, and a helicopter. His turn-over wouldn't have matched British Airways'but then neither would his problems.

Tulliver's office was a corner of the hangar glassed in so that the telephone didn't have to compete with engine tests. An expansive Yorkshireman with a high pain threshold as far as checked jackets were concerned, Tulliver met Donovan at the hangar door. For a moment the detective was impressed by his courtesy; then he realized the man was watching his Skyvan taking off. When the boxy little freighter was a dwindling speck against the vast sky over the Levels they went inside.

‘Bad business,' grunted Tulliver. He dropped heavily into the chair behind his desk, kicked another towards Donovan. ‘How's the lad taking it?'

‘About how you'd expect,' Donovan said, carefully noncommittal. ‘Know him well, do you?'

‘I've known David for fifteen years.' Tulliver spoke slowly. ‘He used to ride out here on his bike after school: just to watch at first, then I gave him odd jobs to do. He got his private pilot's licence when he was eighteen or nineteen. Then he was coming out here after work – he had a job in the bank, spent most of his pay flying. When he got his licence up-graded I took him on. That's about three years ago.' He sighed. ‘It was a mistake. Don't misunderstand me, he's a good pilot, when I've had enough of this business I'd like to see David running it. But I used to make a packet out of hiring him the Cessna. Now he gets all the flying he wants and I have to pay him.'

Donovan supposed it was a dour Yorkshire joke. ‘You've had no problems with his work, then.'

Tulliver regarded him levelly. ‘If I'd had problems with his work, lad, he wouldn't still be here. There's a word for unreliable pilots. It's Unemployed.'

‘Funny,' murmured Donovan, ‘my boss thinks that's the word for policemen who don't file reports.'

Tulliver gave a broad grin. ‘I think I'd like your boss.'

Donovan wished he hadn't said it. ‘Yeah, we all did, and it didn't do him a pick of good because now he's dead. But that isn't my case. The Pages: did you ever see them together?'

Joe Tulliver was a bluff man, unpolished, a man with little in the way of refinement. But he had not built a good business without learning something about people. He heard the grief still sharp in Donovan's voice and realized this was something that had happened recently; and noting the healing wound on the man's temple and the stiff way he moved he supposed this was the sergeant who survived and his boss the inspector who died in the incident behind Castlemere gasworks the previous week. The other thing he heard in Donovan's voice was that he didn't want to talk about it.

So he answered the question. ‘All the time. She used to go with him sometimes if she wasn't working. She was a nice girl, and David's been like one of the family for ten years. Most weeks they'd drop by our house at least once.'

‘This weekend?'

‘No, not this weekend. They were at the cottage, weren't they? Mostly it was during the week they came to us. We didn't go there: you couldn't swing a cat in that flat of theirs. There's not a lot of David but she was a big girl, she damn near filled it on her own.'

‘Why didn't they move somewhere bigger?'

‘I think it suited them well enough. It was Kerry's flat before they were married, just round the corner from where she worked. It meant she didn't need a car, and she could get home for a couple of hours if she was on a split shift. But any time they had a day off they went to the cottage. That was where they were at home. The flat was just for convenience.'

‘They liked the solitude, then.'

Tulliver raised one bushy eyebrow. ‘They were only married two years. Of course they liked the solitude.'

Donovan twitched a saturnine grin. ‘They were OK, then, were they? It was working out?'

Tulliver knew what he was asking. ‘They were more than OK. They were very happy. David thought the sun shone out of her navel, and I reckon she loved him too. All their off-duty time they spent together: he'd go to the flat to be with her, she'd come out here to be with him. They weren't just in love, Sergeant, they liked one another. If you've got it at the back of your mind that maybe David Page blew his wife's head off with a shotgun, forget it.'

Donovan was still thinking about something Tulliver had said earlier. ‘The car's his then. Did Kerry drive it much?'

The big man thought. ‘Not really. I mean, she could drive. But David needed it to get to work so it was always here with him. No, David did most of the driving.'

‘Only she was in the driving seat when she was shot.'

Tulliver shrugged. ‘I suppose she liked to keep her hand in. If they ever gave up the flat she'd need a car of her own.'

‘Yeah, maybe that's it.' Donovan was trying to picture them together. ‘She was taller than him, was she? You said she filled the flat.'

Tulliver considered, shrugged. ‘A shade taller, a bit broader. But you expect it the other way round, don't you? What's big for a girl is still small for a man.'

‘So given the right circumstances – not much light, say, and them sitting down, and her sitting where you'd expect to see him – you could maybe mistake one for the other?'

Tulliver's eyes narrowed as he thought about it. ‘In the car? If whoever it was expected to see David driving? Well, maybe. If she had the collar of her coat up about her hair, say. She was fair too. Maybe in the dark you wouldn't notice that her hair was curly and there was more of it. Maybe, if you were planning on shooting one of them, you wouldn't be taking that long to weigh it up.'

Donovan was almost literally chewing it over. He found himself gnawing on the inside of his cheek and stopped. ‘Do you know any reason someone would want to kill Page?'

Tulliver didn't answer immediately but when he did it was with conviction. ‘No. David hasn't any enemies, he's not that kind of boy. He's inoffensive. He doesn't get into trouble.'

‘You've never caught him making – oh, I don't know – unauthorized flights, landings he couldn't explain?'

Tulliver's eye was stern. ‘I told you, laddie, I've no complaints about his work. I plan to make him a partner, all right? When he's ready to buy in this business'll be in both our names. You think I'd be doing that if I didn't trust him? Besides which, you seem to be confusing us with British Airways. Yes, we do international flights – Longchamps for the racing, Frankfurt for the Book Fair, that sort of thing. But he doesn't fly to the same places regularly enough to be of any interest to smugglers, say. I can't see it, Sergeant. I can't see David Page getting mixed up in anything crooked.'

Thinking was making Donovan's head ache. He knuckled his fist into his eye. ‘Then suppose it wasn't something he did that made him a target but something he saw or heard. They're pretty small, these planes, aren't they? I mean, the passengers are right up there with the pilot?' Tulliver nodded. ‘So anything they were talking about he'd hear. You keep records of who's flown where, when, and for what purpose?'

‘Of course.' The big man reached for a heavy black-bound ledger with the entries made by hand. ‘How far back do you want to go?'

Donovan shrugged. ‘Let's start on Friday and work back.'

He was expecting the job to take an hour and the results to be inconclusive at the end of it. He could hardly believe his luck when he found what he was looking for on the first page. And what he found filled him with a kind of unholy excitement that he had to keep the lid on until he could leave Tulliver's office.

He didn't want to waste time so he telephoned before leaving. Inspector Graham was in Clarke's office. ‘I've found something. It could be important and it could be urgent. We need to talk to Page. Where is he?'

‘I sent him home,' said Liz. ‘To the flat.'

‘Can you meet me there?'

‘Now? Why, what have you found?'

Tulliver had taken himself out into the hangar so it wasn't that Donovan couldn't talk freely, more that he didn't want to. ‘I can't explain on the phone but it's got to be significant. I can be there in fifteen minutes: will you meet me?'

‘All right,' said Liz, and before she could ask for more detail he'd rung off.

She was parking her car in the avenue of slightly rundown Victorian houses, many of them converted into flats, a hundred yards from the nursing home, when a roar like a Harrier taking off preceded Donovan's motorbike round the corner. It slewed to a halt, spitting grit. Liz waited in the open door of her car while he took his helmet off. Then she said, ‘What's all this about? What have you found out?'

His urgent stride carried him up the steps to the front door. ‘Come on, I'll tell you inside.'

She didn't move. ‘Sergeant.' When he looked back she tapped her finger on the roof. ‘In the car.'

He frowned, puzzled and irritated. ‘But—'

‘The car.'

When he had folded his long legs inside, and shut the door because she made it clear she was waiting for him to do so, she said – quietly, without rancour, but also firmly: ‘A few ground rules, Sergeant. You don't bounce me around. I'm happy for you to use your initiative but this is my case and I want to know what you're doing and also what you're thinking. When I know why you want to, I will decide if we talk to Page again, and what we say. But we're going nowhere until I know what you suspect and why.'

For a moment Donovan looked like a sparrowhawk who's been mugged by a sparrow. Then he blinked resentfully and explained. ‘What if Kerry wasn't the intended victim? What if it was Page? Anyone who knew them would be expecting him to be behind the wheel. His boss says you could make that mistake – particularly if it was dark and she was wrapped up warm.'

Liz had considered the possibility without reaching any conclusion. ‘Did Tulliver know someone who might want Page dead?'

‘No. But I might.' Liz heard the electric thread running through his voice and wondered if it should be warning her of something. Clarke would have known, and probably Shapiro, but she didn't know him well enough. ‘I looked at his flight log. Last Saturday week he flew a party up to Cartmel for the races.'

Liz knew the pause was for dramatic effect but did not mind humouring him a little. ‘Who?'

‘Jack Carney.' He said it with a kind of tight-lipped triumph. ‘Maybe the name doesn't mean much at Headquarters but he's the closest thing we've got to the Godfather. What trouble we have with organized crime is down to Carney. It's always someone else does the time but Carney pulls the strings. He's an evil sod, and he'd buy a hit if he thought it'd keep him out of jail.'

Liz's eyes were searching his narrow face. She had not realized how ravaged he looked. ‘So what are you thinking? That Page was running errands for this man, that he tried to cheat him – something like that?'