A Bleeding of Innocents (9 page)

‘Who found the link? What link?'

‘Page flew him to Cartmel races last weekend. Donovan found it in the flight records at the airfield. Frank, what's this all about?'

‘Donovan!' Shapiro exploded. ‘God damn it, girl, don't you know—?' Then he stopped, made himself breathe deeply, made a wry apologetic gesture with his hand. He sat on his desk and gently shook his head. ‘No, of course you don't. How could you? I haven't told you and I'm damn sure Donovan hasn't.'

‘Told me what?' She took the chair he indicated.

‘It's my fault, I should've had the guts to send him home. He's not fit to work, his judgement's shot to hell. You may find it hard to believe but he doesn't usually behave like this.'

‘Like what?' asked Liz. She still didn't know what it was Shapiro thought had happened.

‘Donovan blames Carney for what happened under the viaduct. There's no evidence, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. Alan had been working up a case against Carney and he wasn't far from a break-through. All it needed was for someone to take his nerve in both hands and decide he could get Carney off his back for longer by putting him behind bars than by paying him off.'

Jack Carney started in the construction industry, he knew its weaknesses. He knew that when a builder had a crew going all out to meet a stiff completion date with the threat of a penalty clause hanging over him he needed luck on his side. He simply couldn't afford unexplained accidents, predatory vandalism, or people beating up the nightwatchman and making off with the next day's supplies. Get such a man at the right time and put it to him in the right way – as a suggestion that understaffing was causing a lot of his problems and with more people, supplied by someone who understood the construction industry, the job would run like clockwork – and he'd go along with it.

He'd sign them up. No matter that they give their names as Michael Mouse, David Duck, and Charles Windsor. No matter he'd never see them carrying a hod, wielding a saw, or pouring concrete. No matter that he'd never see them at all except on pay-day. The accidents would stop, the vandalism would stop, even the thefts would drop to the usual level of shrinkage. All right, so ten per cent of his payroll would be going to men who redefined the whole concept of casual labour. But the job was getting done and it's cheaper to pay a few phantoms than to run into penalty clauses.

‘It's just another form of protection racket,' said Shapiro. ‘But it works because the victim's able to hang on to his self-respect. He can convince himself that the extra manpower on the site, even if you can't see them most of the time, is making the thing run sweeter. He knows better really, but he has a vested interest in believing it. As long as the financial burden doesn't become too heavy, he'll pay.'

‘That's what Carney's been doing?'

‘He's been doing more than that,' said Shapiro, ‘but that's what Alan was working on. He picked up word that one of the builders – Jim Potter, a local man, he was being hit for this time and again – was getting angry enough to do something about it. Of course, he didn't want to be the one to stick his neck out for everybody else's benefit. He'd give evidence against Carney – well, McMeekin actually, all the arrangements went through him – but only if some other people would as well.

‘So that's what Alan was doing: talking to builders and persuading them they'd been taken for a ride long enough. It was coming together – slowly, you know how it is, nobody wants to be the first. Then all at once the thing died on him. Nobody was talking any more. Nobody was in when he called, and nobody'd say why.'

‘They'd been got at.'

‘They'd been got at,' agreed Shapiro. ‘Specifically, Jim Potter, who'd been just about ready to talk. Now he'd clammed up. It seemed safe to assume that Carney had put the frighteners on him but he wouldn't say so. All we knew was that when Alan first approached him he had two children and an Alsatian dog he thought the world of.'

Liz felt herself paling. ‘And now?'

‘Now he just has the two children. That's what Lucy called Donovan about. Lucy's a tramp, she spends a lot of time around building sites and the like, and she keeps her ears open. If she hears anything he could use she calls him. It's her main source of income; I also think she's sweet on him.'

Liz tried to imagine anyone being sweet on Donovan, even a tramp, and failed. She gave a little shake of her head. ‘What did she hear?'

‘We never found out. She said she knew why Potter had suddenly lost his nerve. She said she knew where the dog was. Donovan and Alan were on their way to meet her when they were hit by the car. We looked for Lucy afterwards but nobody's seen her since that night.'

Liz drew in a long, soft breath, understanding how Donovan had used her and why. ‘I see why Donovan thinks he was set up.'

‘Oh, so do I,' said Shapiro. ‘There's every chance he's right – you can't conduct an investigation in total secrecy. If Carney got wind of it he'd be prepared to take action, and maybe that's the action he'd take. Hit the victims and you risk frightening them so much they go to the police. If you show you can hit the police, where do the victims turn then?

‘So yes, it's a real possibility. But I won't prove it's what happened by doing what Donovan wants: giving Carney the third degree in the hope of extracting a confession. What I'll get for that is a phone call from the Chief Constable and a writ from Carney's brief, and that'll be the end of it. This fish I have to play carefully. But Donovan thinks I'm afraid to tackle him. He was always going to make an excuse to go round there himself. I'm sorry, I should have warned you.'

She found herself defending Donovan. ‘The link he found is real enough, Carney confirmed it. It doesn't seem to lead anywhere, and both he and McMeekin have an alibi for last night.'

‘What did Donovan say? Has he dropped us in it?'

She shook her head. ‘He got a bit stroppy with McMeekin, that's all.' Her eyes widened. ‘I suppose, if he's right about this, it was McMeekin who was driving the car.'

‘No, this would be out of his league. Carney'd bring in a hired man with a stolen vehicle, both of them long gone by now.' Shapiro gave a thin smile. ‘Or of course it could still have been an accident, in which case some local worthy's leaping out of his skin every time his phone rings.'

The more Liz thought about it, the more annoyed she became. ‘That's why he wanted me to meet him at Page's instead of here. That's why he wanted to go straight to the basin instead of coming back here first. He didn't want to risk running into you. The crafty sod.'

Shapiro nodded ruefully. ‘Well, we didn't make him a detective sergeant for his simple, open nature.'

‘You didn't make him one so he could run the division either,' growled Liz. ‘He set me up, deliberately, knowing he could use me to do things you wouldn't let him do. I won't have that, Frank. If I can't trust him, I can't use him.'

‘It's not that you can't trust him.' Shapiro tried to explain. ‘You could trust him with your life. It's just that – always, but more right now – Donovan thinks with his instincts instead of his head. He's a good copper, he cares about the job and he'll put himself out on a limb to do it, but he can't seem to grasp that making an arrest isn't worth a damn if you can't get a court to uphold it.'

‘He's a detective sergeant,' Liz echoed, not without some irony. ‘If he hasn't grasped that yet, when are you expecting him to?'

Shapiro didn't answer directly. He pressed his hands together and spread his fingers in a curious gesture of supplication. ‘Liz, it's up to you, but – you don't think maybe we could haul him in here, drag him over the coals, threaten him with everything up to and including public flogging, then – well – let him off? He was out of line with you, I know that. But he's had a rough time. Maybe he shouldn't be back in harness yet but that's my mistake, not his. He's a good detective, he's done some good work. If he's earned a bit of tolerance he'll never need it more than now.'

Liz frowned, fighting the urge to accept his argument just to please him. ‘But police work is not about what policemen need. It's about what the paying customers need: protecting the innocent, apprehending the guilty – all that stuff. In the last hour he's distressed a bereaved husband, put at risk the case against a target criminal, and made his inspector and his chief inspector look like a couple of idiots. I'm sorry for him, Frank, but either he's responsible for his actions or he isn't. I can't have a loose cannon rolling round the deck.'

‘No,' agreed Shapiro. ‘You're right, of course.'

He said nothing more. Liz said nothing more. But she felt first her resolve and then her face beginning to crack. He had done too much for her in the past for her to refuse him a favour now. ‘God damn it, Frank,' she exploded softly, ‘you make sure he knows this is positively his last chance.'

Shapiro grinned. ‘Thanks, Liz. You won't regret it, I promise.'

But when they went together to Liz's office, grim expressions tacked firmly in place, the room was empty. Donovan had left his warrant card on the desk and gone.

On Monday morning, while Shapiro was juggling the available manpower, Liz went back to the house in Rosedale Avenue. The motorbike was gone from the street, she noticed. She didn't ring Page's bell. She was looking for someone who had been a neighbour of Kerry's for long enough to know her the way Sister Kim knew her, to have celebrated triumphs and drowned miseries with her, to have shared her gossip.

There were six flats. One was the Pages', one was empty; she worked her way from the art student in the attic to the man in the basement who'd been thrown out by his wife but none of them had been in the house more than eight months. They knew the Pages only casually; they knew nothing against them but they didn't know much about them either.

Then Liz had a little luck. The man in the basement, who wanted to get rid of her because he was going to be late for work, remembered that Kerry Page used to work with a nurse in the next house, that they had been friends for ten years. She went next door, found the buzzer labelled J. Perrin, and managed not to look surprised when Julian Perrin came to the door.

He was Kerry's age or a little older, of medium height, delicately built, with slender hands and a pale sensitive oval face. He had finely textured mid-brown hair but didn't look as if he'd have it much longer. His eyes were softly hazel, red-rimmed from crying.

Liz said gently, ‘You've heard about Kerry then.'

Perrin sniffed and nodded. He took her inside. His flat was almost identical to Kerry's, but decorated simply in the Japanese style.

Liz sank on to a low settee and wondered if she'd be able to get up again. ‘I understand you were friends for a lot of years.'

‘I loved her,' the pale man said simply. Liz realized that he did not mean the same by that as David Page meant, but he meant it sincerely.

‘You worked with her?'

‘Kerry Carson and I trained together. We went on the wards together. Until she went to Rosedale we never went more than a few days without seeing one another, if only for a snack in the canteen.'

‘When did you come to live here?'

Perrin smiled, a sad and tender smile. ‘Soon after she did. She moved here when she left the hospital and I followed as soon as I could. I didn't want us to lose touch. She never came back to Castle General, not once, not even to say hello. I couldn't get a job at Rosedale so I came to live near her.'

‘Did it work?'

‘Oh, yes,' he said happily, remembering, ‘it wasn't me she wanted to get away from. We stayed friends. Even after she was married we'd eat together whenever she was alone. Usually she came to me. If I went to her flat I always started cleaning it, which drove her up the wall.'

‘It wasn't you she was getting away from, you said. Was it someone else? Was there some reason she left the hospital? More than a change of scene or a better salary, I mean.'

‘I don't think so. Why?'

‘Only that you're the second person who's told me she cut herself off from the people she knew at the hospital. That's a little odd when she was still living in the same town.'

‘Well …' Perrin said it so slowly that Liz knew there was something he wasn't saying and went on regarding him levelly until he felt pressured into saying it. ‘In fact I think she did keep in touch with someone from the hospital. A doctor. He came looking for her once, a year or so ago, and only about a month ago I saw them going into a restaurant. I don't think he's at Castle General: he looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't put a name to him. But there was a doctor's sticker in his car window.'

It was the first mention Liz had heard of another man in the dead woman's life. She wanted to be sure what he was saying. ‘You think they were having an affair?'

Perrin shook his head in quiet conviction. ‘No, I don't. Maybe he was someone she used to know; maybe he was offering her a job. I don't believe she was unfaithful.'

‘People are,' Liz reminded him. ‘Why not her?'

‘She was happy.' Liz was watching him carefully so that she would not only hear his reply but know how to interpret it. But Perrin's response could not have been less ambiguous. He wasn't jealous of David Page: Kerry's friendship was all he wanted and he'd had it. ‘She loved her husband. She was happy with her life. She wouldn't have risked spoiling it.'

Liz nodded. ‘Would she have been interested in a new job, do you suppose?'

The nurse shrugged. ‘Perhaps, if it was a good offer.'

‘Was she short of money then?'

Perrin looked startled. ‘Lord, no. They had two good salaries coming in, enough to run two homes and that big car. With no children they'd really more than they knew what to do with. They put the surplus into a life assurance scheme.' He smiled again but his face started to break up. ‘She used to joke about how much they were worth dead.'