Closer Still (17 page)

Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Closer Still

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Deacon shook his head in despair. âCan I have that on my gravestone?
He tried to make things as little worse as he possibly could.
'

âSuperintendent Deacon,' said ACC briskly, âyou can have anything you like on your gravestone. And if I don't see a bit of cooperation soon, you'd better get it ordered.'

The Assistant Chief Constable had been given her orders, and she'd given Deacon his. But giving Deacon orders was a bit like feeding racehorse cubes to a mule â he'd take them all right, they just might not have the desired effect.

He understood Higher Up's dilemma well enough. But he couldn't see that the wrong decision would do anything but make matters worse. Until now the dangerous chaos that had enveloped Dimmock had been the responsibility of a few bad men and a lot of foolish ones. From now on it would rest with the men and women who'd sat in a room and decided that today expediency was more important than justice. That a small number of hurt and angry people could be managed more easily than a large number of frightened ones.

And he understood that the object of the exercise was not to achieve anything worth having so much as to be seen trying. That a visible success mattered more than a significant one. But he wanted someone to come straight out and say it.

âLet me get this right. You're looking for something we can call a result so when we call off the searches it's because they were successful, not because they were stupid in the first place, and a much relieved citizenry can slink back into its pubs and armchairs. We make an arrest and the pin slides back in the grenade. But it needs to be the right kind of arrest. Today the Kray twins would be safe, because they're not the right colour.'

ACC (Crime) was regarding him with no affection whatever. âThis situation is not of our making. But it is up to us to get it under control. Yes, Jack, you're absolutely right. I'm asking you to put on a show. I'm asking you to prostitute your craft for the sake of public safety. Find me a credible suspect, arrest him in a blaze of publicity, apologise for the disturbance to some elderly lady in a
headscarf and pull out before there's time for anyone to lose their temper. That way everyone sleeps safe in their beds tonight.'

âExcept the guy we've framed!'

âI'm not suggesting you frame anyone! Are you telling me
all
the crime in Dimmock is committed by white people? That you can't find one Arab, Afghan or Pakistani who shouldn't be helping you with your inquiries into
something
? Find him, arrest him and the panic's over. Tomorrow or the day after I'll go on TV to explain how actually people had misunderstood â that the arrested man wasn't a terrorist, he was involved in nothing more sinister than a credit card scam. People aren't going to rush out to their cars and hit the road again. We'll have got through twenty-four hours that could have set this town on fire, and if the worst damage is to my reputation it'll have been worth it.'

Deacon had no illusions about what she was saying. If public safety demanded a sacrifice, it wouldn't be the guy with the recreational amounts of heroin or the unusual number of mobile phones â it would be her. If the questions in Parliament focused on her judgement, her competence, she'd quietly pick up the can and carry it, even if the price was her career.

So he'd go along with it. Somewhere in his files or his memory was someone in the Romney Road area who was overdue a visit from CID. Someone sufficiently disreputable that his neighbours would be glad to see the back of him. He'd get his due deserts, and Romney Road would get a bit of peace, and the rest of Dimmock would
turn round at Guildford and be back in front of their tellies by teatime. It was a win/win situation.

And the fact that it wasn't what Deacon thought of as policing was immaterial. Today the priorities were different. Today, this was the only way to go. It was the least worst option. He set his jaw. âWhen do we do this?'

âNow.'

Chapter Twenty-Two

Just when you think things can't get any worse â¦

Any road going anywhere, and some that went nowhere, seized solid. Residents of Dimmock desperate to be somewhere else, anywhere else, were now unable to leave due to (a) the throngs of their neighbours with the same idea, and (b) the national media coming the other way.

There was no Dimmock International Airport. There wasn't even a Dimmock Regional Airport. There was a flying club strip twelve miles north of town, and for a couple of hours on Thursday morning it handled more traffic than it had in the previous nine months. There were helicopters. There were executive jets. One enterprising reporter hired a Tiger Moth and the half-crazed crop-sprayer pilot who came with it, on the basis that if he couldn't get a landing slot at the airstrip he could put down in a field.

With the skies over the Three Downs host to the kind of aerial circus last seen in the 1930s, so that the possibility of a bomb plot paled beside the near-certainty of a plane crash, Higher Up rushed through the no-fly zone. After that the reporters either sat in traffic jams or walked into town. It is a curious feature of the news industry that
reporters who will fight their way into a war zone will baulk at walking five miles.

As time passed and nothing much happened â or only the usual things that happen among large numbers of displaced persons: old people got older, children got sick, babies who weren't due for another fortnight got born â the media people grew tired of filming one another getting tired and began to wonder if it was a damp squib. If the absence of black smoke over Dimmock meant that the local Keystones had been right and the situation was contained. If it was time to pick some other crisis off the wire and hope it would prove easier to get to.

Then the front desk at Battle Alley took a phone call from Crichton Construction.

âExplosives,' said Jack Deacon, deadpan.

Sergeant McKinney nodded.

âWhat
kind
of explosives?'

The sergeant gave a grim Caledonian shrug. âAs far as I can make out, every kind. Blasting explosives â they use different ones for different jobs. They're allowed to keep up to two tonnes in a secure bunker on site.'

âBut they've got the guy who was stealing it cornered?'

âAye.' Sergeant McKinney sounded less than enthusiastic. âThat's the good news.'

Deacon's brow lowered suspiciously. âWhat's the bad news?'

âThey've got him cornered in the bunker.'

When he got there Deacon found that there was in fact another bit of good news. The construction site was in open countryside, up on Menner Down six miles north of Dimmock. The main road had already been closed. Since it had been at a standstill since mid-morning this consisted of evacuating the travellers â using the word loosely â across the surrounding fields on foot. There were surprisingly few arguments. Even apart from this new peril, the mood of the evacuees had changed in the cold, boring hours on the road. Most were now content to abandon their flight, their cars and their role in the decision-making process.

Which left a construction site, ankle deep in mud as all construction sites are, with huge arcane machines standing guard like forgotten dinosaurs around the block-built bunker. The only people Deacon could see as he picked his way, swearing, through the mud were other police officers, surrounding the little building at what they fervently hoped to be a safe distance.

âAnd he's still in there?'

âYes.' Superintendent Fuller, who had been trying to sort out the chaos on the Guildford Road when the call came in, reached the construction site while Deacon was still trying to get out of Dimmock. âWe can't see him â there are no windows â but he yelled something through the door ten minutes ago and we know he hasn't escaped since then.'

Deacon nodded. âWhat did he yell?'

â“I don't want to hurt anyone”,' reported Fuller.

Deacon blinked. âSlightly odd comment from a man stealing high explosives, isn't it? I mean, what
does
he want
them for â shifting a tree stump off his lawn? Do we know who he is?'

âYes, we do,' said Fuller. âHe works here. He helped design the new sewer system they're laying from the villages. His name's Stretton.'

Deacon's eyebrows shot into his hairline. âDev Stretton?'

Fuller was surprised at his reaction. âYou know him?'

âDev Stretton? D-d-d-Dev? Damn right I know him,' snarled Deacon. âAnd I'd take what he shouted with a pinch of salt. Maybe he didn't want to hurt Joe Loomis either, but he killed him just the same.'

Having Stretton holed up with the explosives he was trying to steal at least put an end to the charade at Romney Road. Detective Constable Jill Meadows made the conciliatory noises that would normally have been DS Voss's task. People liked Voss, and they trusted him. When he said he was sorry for a disturbance they believed him and quite often tore up the letter of complaint they were penning. Jill Meadows was good at it too. Whereas Detective Constable Huxley could be counted on to throw metaphorical petrol on any conflagration he encountered.

All in all, Deacon found himself thinking, the situation could have been worse. When Dev Stretton left here, in handcuffs or a bucket, the clear-up column in the month's crime statistics would get an immediate boost. One murder solved, one terror plot foiled. And that wasn't the best of it.

If responsibility for the chaos of the last few days had settled on the shoulders of an Islamic fundamentalist,
those residents who'd fled Dimmock would never have forgiven those whose reaction had been to gather about their mosque. And if it had all been a massive misunderstanding, if there never was a bomb plot and half Dimmock had turned gypsy because the drugs subculture that was always simmering away out of sight had turned nastily visible, the residents of Romney Road would never have forgotten that they were blamed for something that was in no way their fault.

But Dev Stretton was the perfect â¦
scapegoat
was the first word that came to mind: Deacon replaced it with
culprit
. A man of mixed race, neither community could be entirely blamed for him; at the same time, neither could shirk all responsibility. To the precise extent that he was a foreigner and an alien, he was also an Englishman and a local. Deacon gave the guy twenty-four hours before the two communities united in condemnation of him. It could be the greatest unifying event in years. Dev Stretton was a born outsider. And the thing about outsiders is, they make people on the inside feel even smugger than usual, and more ready to throw stones.

And because it was such a convenient solution, Deacon instinctively found himself mistrusting it.
Why
? he wondered. Why would a man like Dev Stretton â a middle-class professional â want to blow up anything? Even if he stabbed Joe Loomis in a fit of anger, why would that incline him to steal dynamite nine days later? But he hadn't time to wrestle with the puzzle. When he got his hands on Stretton he'd ask him why. Unless he was in too many bits to answer.

âWe need technical support,' he said to Superintendent Fuller.

âOn it's way. I called the Army.'

âDid you ask for a negotiator?'

Fuller shrugged. âThere are no hostages involved. I thought he was as likely to tell us what's going on as a bleeding heart.' He stopped abruptly, shocked that â with thirty years of intelligent, thoughtful, firm-but-fair policing behind him â in moments of stress he could sound just like Deacon.

Unaware of his discomfort, Deacon agreed. Clearing up their own mess was always his preferred option; except when it came to high explosives. âAnd is he talking?'

âHe says he isn't ready to talk yet. He says if we back off no one will get hurt.'

âDoes he indeed?' grunted Deacon. âAnd he thought that would do it, did he? We'd all go home and watch telly?'

âLord knows what he's thinking,' said Fuller lugubriously. âHe's a young man of twenty-five sitting on two tonnes of assorted explosives. He must have a reason. But it beats the hell out of me what it might be.'

âHave you asked his mother?'

âI've sent Jill Meadows to fetch her but â you may have noticed â the roads are a nightmare. Even if she's at home it could take an hour to get her back here.'

Deacon pulled a face like a shark with indigestion. âWell, someone's got to talk to the stupid sod. I know most of the background â I think that makes it my job.'

âBe careful,' said Superintendent Fuller. He wasn't joking.

âAren't I always?'

Fuller thought for a moment. âNo.' And as the big man gave a grim chuckle and advanced across the mud, he raised his voice a little to add: âPractically never.'

By the time he reached the blockhouse Deacon's boots were leaden with churned up earth. He picked up a stick and a milk crate â there are always milk crates on construction sites though there's never any milk â and sat down to clean them off, leaning his back against the front wall.

For obvious reasons, there were no windows in the dynamite shed. He sensed rather than saw movement through the narrow gap where the door was ajar. He growled, âAfter we sort this out, young man, you'll owe me a new pair of boots. Leather. Hand-stitched,' he added, more in hope than expectation.

Dev Stretton gave a desperate little chuckle. âIt's a deal.'

Which Deacon found encouraging. His knowledge of suicide bombers was happily limited, but the videos they left suggested they hadn't much sense of humour. They talked a lot about historic rights and wrongs, and very little about shoe shopping. So maybe Stretton wasn't entirely â¦

Serious? He'd broken into a powder magazine for a bit of a joke? Because there was nothing much going on and he was bored? No, he was serious enough about wanting the explosives. But perhaps suicide wasn't what he wanted them for.

Deacon gave up picking at his right boot, cranked up his left and tried that. He didn't even turn his head towards
the door. âYou want to tell me what this is all about?'

âI will,' promised Dev Stretton. âSoon. I'm not ready yet.'

âNo? Well,' said Deacon, âthere must be something we can talk about. Cars, rugby, real ale? Or â here's a thought â why you stuck a knife in Joe Loomis.'

There was a pause. Deacon couldn't imagine why. If he meant to deny it he'd had a week to think up a plausible story â surely he wasn't trying to make it up as he went along? And it was a little late in the day to be pleading innocence. He'd broken into a shed full of explosives, for God's sake!

âHe attacked my mother. He hit my mother. I went round to sort him out. He pulled the knife. We fought for it and he lost.'

âI see,' said Deacon. âWell, we know he carried a knife. We know he produced it with very little encouragement. What I can't figure is why he'd agree to meet you, alone, in a dark car park?'

Another, longer pause. âI don't know that either,' admitted Stretton. âI suppose, because he thought he didn't need any help. He thought it would be me left bleeding in the gutter, in which case he wouldn't want any witnesses.'

Deacon gave that a little thought, then nodded. âCould be. Stranger things have happened. But then, why didn't you come and tell me about it?'

Stretton's voice was cold. âI didn't think you'd believe me.'

âWhat â that a man who was known for pulling knives on people finally pulled one on the wrong guy? It sounds perfectly plausible to me. And you're a â what? â a civil
engineer. A professional man, a man who pays his taxes. A man who pays my wages. Exactly the kind of man who'd normally expect to be believed.'

Wrong-footed, Stretton stammered out a response. âI â¦I suppose â¦I panicked. I just wanted to get out of there. And then, when no one came looking for me â¦'

âSure,' nodded Deacon. âYou thought you'd keep your head down and see if we ever thought of you. And we didn't. So nine days later you broke into an explosives shed and took two tonnes of dynamite hostage.'

âThat was â¦ I didn't â¦ I thought â¦' The man inside the blockhouse was getting flustered. Which was very often a good thing in a suspect, but not today. Today if Dev Stretton got flustered he could kill himself, Deacon and most of those maintaining that nervous perimeter.

âOK,' said Deacon sharply, âOK. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, neither of us is going anywhere. Perhaps when you've had another minute to think you'll be able to tell me why.'

For a little while he said nothing more, just sat there cleaning his boots. He wanted Stretton to get used to the idea of having him close and nothing happening. He wanted Stretton to relax. Stress kills, particularly in the presence of high explosives.

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