Bright Spark (14 page)

“I
remember when a simple desire to get the job done mattered more than money,”
said Harkness, mock wistful.

“We
are they boys to get the job done. Just tell us what to do and make sure we get
paid according to the regulations.”

“I
suppose I’d be wasting my time asking to check your pocket books for book-on
times.”

“Not
at all. They’d all be up to date and consistent.”

“Like
I said. A waste of time.”

Both
men shrugged, resignation mirroring indifference.

“Ok,”
Harkness began, clearing his throat and raising his voice, “I’ll sign off on as
many hours’ overtime as it takes to get this job done.”

“And
get some grub and get back to base to book off,” interjected the sergeant.

“Provided,”
said Harkness, nodding and holding up his palms, “that you do a proper job
without pissing me about and I’ve got something to work with this evening when
you’ve all gone home a bit richer. In fact I’ll stick a couple of hours on the
end if you give me what I need without lumbering me with admin you should be
doing. I intend to be hands off on this one.”

Arms
were uncrossed, sunglasses came off and pens and notebooks came out. The
sergeant pouted and minutely nodded his approval as if making a last minute,
grudging auction bid. Harkness gave them the bare bones of the story, little
more than he’d typed onto the search form earlier but with a few emotive
insights from the post mortem to keep them engaged. A show of hands and a few
minutes of bickering gave him his searchers, a log-keeper and two bodies for
house to house. The last two seemed to positively relish the prospect of
hostile responses from the local pharmaceutical suppliers.

“Let’s
be clear, my overtime offer does not include avoidable arrests. Any irrelevant
collars will be passed to uniform. After all, we can’t waste your specialist
skills on such mundane matters.”

With
a few muted boos and groans, the team unloaded their gear, locked the van and
followed him into Pemberton Court. It was a shame, he reflected, that their
card game at the nick had been interrupted. A briefing there, out of sight of
the natives, would have given them an element of surprise and minimised the
risk of evidence being tampered with, should Firth have any friends. Perhaps
any new sergeant should set aside a small, smoke-filled room and invest in a
green baize table.

He
let the stockiest cop lead up the staircase to the first floor landing. He
carried the ‘enforcer’, a three-foot long cylinder of thick steel which, if
swung with enough commitment, would eventually punch through the hinges or lock
of most doors. The rest of the team filed up the opposite staircase, apart from
the sergeant who walked to the back of the building in case anyone exited
through a window.

The
stocky cop halted briefly in the stairwell exit until the others began to cross
the balcony towards them. They arrived outside number seventeen in a gaggle and
spaced themselves out on either side of the doorway. The stocky cop frowned and
let the enforcer dangle by one handle as he gestured to the doorway and gently
prodded it with one finger. It moved slightly ajar, the mortise lock dangling
from splintered wood, the door frame warped and fractured.

“Looks
like we’re late,” he said. Harkness nodded, shrugged and knocked at the door.
It gave more ground, releasing a musty warmth both sweet and sour.

“Knock,
knock,” he shouted into the shadows. “It’s the police. Warrant to search the
premises. Coming ready or not.”

Harkness
stood aside and nodded to the stocky cop. He dropped his enforcer, turned with
a diffident shrug, gripped the door frame with both gauntleted hands and
plunged a size-12 boot into the door. Hurled open, the door jammed itself on a
well-trodden layer of newsprint and window envelopes. The cop lunged into the
flat, shoulders bunched.

The
team sauntered in behind him, someone muttering, “drama queen.” Harkness
followed, allowing his eyes to adjust to the half-light. No recent tenant had
found a use for curtains yet the sunlight still seemed muted, a dusty gloom
pervading the place. The air had a texture as well as an aroma, so thick with
sweat, grime, burnt electronics and ganja that it was almost visible.

“Clear,”
shouted each of the four cops from different corners of the flat. Two cops
exited to start their canvassing, exchanging paperwork and smirks with their
sergeant as he entered.  Adjusting his crotch once more and lowering his
bifocals, the sergeant produced an already dog-eared search log and stared at
Harkness. Harkness stared back and eventually took his cue.

“You’re
the professionals,” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m going
to gad about like a TV detective while your guys do the real work.”

“Fine.
At least you’re honest. But while I’ve got this here book open, remind me what
you’re after and then give me your signature.”

“Why,
in case I sue?”

“I
hate going to Crown Court. Gives me a nervous rash in a delicate place.”

“What,
your wallet? Fine,” he said, taking the book and well-chewed pen and reciting
slowly as he scribbled. “Here we go then. Anything capable of yielding trace
evidence, such as footwear, clothing, gloves that suspect could have worn while
committing offence. What else? Oh yes. Accelerants or anything they could be
carried in. Matches, lighters and the like. Pertinent paperwork giving us a
relationship between suspect and victim or a motive. Including computer files.
And not forgetting anything that might prove the suspect actually lives here.
That do you?”

“Smart
arse.”

“Thanks.
And I thought these trousers were a bit baggy around the seat. Come to think of
it, maybe if yours were a bit less fitted, that rash wouldn’t trouble you so
much.”

Harkness
stretched a pair of disposable gloves over his hands and inspected the flat,
making his own rough notes, giving the searchers space. The lounge’s focal
point had been brutally shifted. The flat-screen TV that might have been the
most valuable thing in the flat had been ripped away from the plywood box, on
which its base had been outlined in dust, and used to wedge open the side
window that overlooked nothing more than a blank sandstone wall and a side
alleyway of cracked stone, weeds and torn mesh fencing.

There
was a shallow but distinct wedge-shaped gouge in the thick plastic of the
screen, as though the machine had been rendered useless before it had found a
new role. Had rage or clumsiness killed it? Hot as it was, why use it to wedge open
a window when the nearby galley kitchen was strewn with strips of MDF that had
once belonged to cheap drawers and cupboards.

Harkness
peered out of the window, but the concrete below told him nothing. A sudden
thought made him move his grip to the vertical frame, away from the window
ledge. Were they faint scuff marks in the sandstone five feet or so below him,
from the flailing feet of someone who didn’t want to let go?

“Graham.”

“Yes,
master.”

“When
SOCO roll up, ask them to dust the outside of this windowsill as well, would
you?”

“Your
word is law,” said the sergeant, pointedly underlining the comment in the
search log with his tongue between his lips.

One
ancient sofa squatted in the centre of the room, squarely facing the gap left
by the TV with the wedged-open window a short lunge to the right. It exuded
grime and a faint lustre of grease made it seem like a living, sweating
creature. A pattern of burn marks and a midden of crushed cans, overflowing
ash-trays and mouldering food suggested the sofa’s usual occupant was
left-handed.

The
flat boasted one bedroom, one bathroom, no attic and little storage. There was
little room for personal history, and what there was couldn’t easily be hidden.
The one intact kitchen drawer overflowed with essential paperwork, some of it
protected by manila envelopes with the return address of Fitch, Brown &
Snelling, all of it in alphabetical order and bearing the particulars of Nigel
Firth.

Birth
certificate and NHS and National Insurance cards were held together, stained
and creased but intact. Laminated bronze and silver swimming certificates won
by Firth in the late eighties lay encased in plastic sleeves like holy relics.

A
free, fold-away wall-poster, illustrating with telescopically expanding images
the mind-bending scale and structure of the universe, had been taped at the
creases but the corners were unmarked suggesting it had never been pinned to a
wall. At the microcosmic end of the scale, the poster showed electrons whizzing
around nuclei in a blizzard of unfixable, chaotic energy. In a sudden confusion
of nostalgia for his university days and fellow-feeling for Firth, Harkness
felt an under-used part of his brain itch.

A
blurred photograph of a grinning woman with a bouffant perm raising a glass of
wine to the level of her red eyes lay face down at the bottom of the drawer.
Someone had used it to coax a pen back to life, leaving faint scratches and
scrawls on its rear. One corner had been rippled and blackened by a flame that
must have been started and extinguished in the same impulsive second.

A
probation officer’s business card had been paper-clipped to a PNC convictions
print that Firth couldn’t have had unless a cavalier solicitor had passed it to
him. Someone had ticked each and every offence in red ink, awarded low marks
for summary offences and high marks for indictable offences, then written a
tally on the front page with the comment, ‘must try harder’. Shoplifting scored
badly. Arson with intent to endanger life scored well, particularly as it had
been reduced on appeal. Maybe it wasn’t Firth’s handwriting. Maybe it didn’t
mean a great deal. Gallows humour had outlived the death penalty. Needles
prickled behind Harkness’s eyes and his grip on objectivity slackened.

“Let’s
nail this bastard,” he thought, belatedly realising he’d proclaimed it to the
world. 

“Erm,
ok, let’s do that. Fight the power!” replied the sergeant, looking up from his
notes and raising a clenched fist to his temple. 

“Bag
all this carefully. Exhibit each document individually. I’ll want them sealed
but viewable in interview.”

“Aye
aye, cap’n.”

There
had to be better paperwork than this. Firth was literate, Firth cared about the
past. Firth had stationery from the city’s most aggressively litigious lawyers.
Firth also embossed his mementos with emotion. Harkness turned and considered
the bin bag that bulged and reeked in a corner, leaking beer bottles, open
tins, fungal remains in foil trays and shreds of paper.

“You’ll
like this,” he said to the sergeant, who joined him in the kitchen.

“I
promise I won’t.”

“Oh,
yes. Needs specialist search expertise, that bin bag does. And I’m not getting
my last good suit near it. Separate out the paperwork he’s ripped up and
binned. Watch out for needles.”

“Right.
Fine. I’m happy to delegate that. Still, if it wasn’t a murder, I’d tell you to
fuck right off.”

Wandering
back into the living room, Harkness once again noticed the mound of mail and
newspapers jammed under the door. He almost slapped himself. Dropping to his
knees, he began sorting the mail into piles of potential gold and obvious
trash. The bulk of the mail came from bottom-feeding finance houses, loan
sharks with VAT registrations, offering astronomical interest rates on easy
terms to the feckless and dispossessed.

       The
remaining pile of potentially useful mail was further divided. First, there
were thrifty manila envelopes from the benefits agency, probation service and
other public sector monoliths that had been lumbered with Firth. Next were
mid-range white envelopes, most from utility companies demanding money, with a
handful from a local supermarket bearing a handwritten address. Finally, four
business envelopes in ivory, no doubt with heavy grammage and a watermark, once
again embossed with the address of Fitch, Brown & Snelling.

       Legal
privilege was a killer of good cases. The merest suggestion that the police had
played fast and loose with client-solicitor confidentiality could cause a judge
to change the rules of the game and put the cops in the dock. The wagons would
be circled, the police would be roundly excoriated and, to punish them, the
criminal would be set free to do more damage.

Harkness
stared at the watermarked envelopes as if he’d seen a scorpion scuttle
underneath one. He shook his head and picked one up, turned it over in his
hands, scrutinised it from every angle. The chalk lining of his gloves was
beginning to clump and itch against his sweating hands.

He
could be credible and pragmatic. He rolled the words around in his mind. This
was a murder case and he had to join the dots. Firth would in all likelihood
not volunteer the truth. Even if the contents of the envelopes could never be
used in evidence, they could help him jail a murderer. They might even
exculpate Firth. Nothing had to be presented in evidence until the facts were
known. If they turned out to be irrelevant or dangerous, they could be excluded
- there was nothing procedurally wrong with seizing them. How could he make any
kind of judgement until he’d read the letters?