Falling More Slowly Read online

  ‘Right.’ McLusky held up the paper for Austin to read. ‘Where is this place? We’ll take my car, just lead me to it.’

  The car turned out to be a grey Skoda. ‘You sure you want to drive, sir?’ Austin doubted the wisdom of it but got in at the passenger side anyway.

  ‘Positive. Just give me clear directions and in good time. The sooner I find my way round town the better.’ McLusky avoided being driven if at all possible. He hated being a passenger, always had done. ‘Never driven one of these before, though.’ He pulled out of the station car park. It felt good to be holding a steering wheel again. Skodas used to be joke cars, now the police couldn’t get enough of them.

  ‘Go left here. The new Skoda. 180 bhp, they’re okay, actually.’

  ‘We’ll find out if you’re right in a minute. How long’ve you been at Albany Road?’

  ‘Two years. Bath before that, then a spell at Trinity Road.’

  ‘Your accent?’

  ‘I grew up in Edinburgh but we left when I was sixteen. We moved around a lot. Straight across here, sir, and keep going downhill till the next set of lights, then left and left again.’

  Traffic really was appalling but using the siren sometimes made matters worse, people froze or blundered into each other. ‘Keep telling me where I am so I’ll learn the streets. I did spend a couple of hours with the A–Z a while back but it’s not the same.’ After the lights McLusky found a stretch of miraculously drivable road, put his foot down and got blitzed by two speed cameras in short succession before having to slow right down again.

  ‘This is Broadmead, still faster through here this time of day.’

  ‘Trinity Road is district headquarters, right?’

  ‘Right. I hated it. Keep going, but try and get into the left laaaaane.’ Austin gripped the dashboard as McLusky braked abruptly so as to narrowly miss colliding with a biker who hadn’t expected a Skoda doing fifty across the junction.

  McLusky barged on through the traffic. ‘It does move, this thing. What’s the super like? I mean I have met him, of course, once, but that was formal. To work under?’

  ‘Ehm, Denkhaus?’ Austin sounded distracted as his DI drove across three lanes, getting snarled in traffic, weaving, bullying his way through. ‘Up Stokes Croft until I tell you. Ehm, he’s a no-nonsense copper, can suddenly become a stickler for procedure when the mood takes him. I have book-shaped indentations on my head to prove it. Someone suggested it always happens when he tries to lose weight. Sugar cravings.’ He pointed across the street. ‘Not a bad takeaway that, by the way.’

  McLusky came up behind a bus going at walking pace. He worked the horn, mounted the pavement and managed to overtake in the space between two lamp-posts. Just.

  Austin kept his eyes firmly shut until he felt the car regain the road.

  ‘I remember this bit, came down here on my way to the station. But keep up the directions. Albany Road a happy nick?’

  ‘Depends who you’re working with, but yeah, it’s all right, I suppose.’

  McLusky parped his horn at a pedestrian who looked like he might just be thinking of stepping into the road.

  Austin hung on tight and gave directions in good time since the inspector was already cornering with squealing tyres. He didn’t know a lot about the man and half of that was rumour. He was about five years older than himself, he guessed, thirty-three or -four. He’d transferred up to Bristol from Southampton after nearly getting himself killed in the line of duty there. University man and difficult with it, someone had said. And something about being a bad team player. Unpredictable. Not exactly what they needed at Albany. He sneaked a glance at the new DI. He seemed utterly relaxed despite driving at speed in a new town and an unfamiliar road system. Some system. ‘Next left.’

  McLusky didn’t slow. ‘I live down that street over there, next to the Italian grocer’s.’ He cornered and accelerated up the hill.

  ‘Above Rossi’s? What’s it like? Left and directly right again.’

  ‘The grocer’s?’

  ‘Your place.’

  ‘Well … Quite cheap. Totally unmodernized, wonky floorboards, no central heating or anything.’ No heating at all, now he came to think of it.

  Austin shrugged. He could only dream of central heating. He and his fiancée had just scraped together enough for a tiny dilapidated end-of-terrace. Heating would have to wait. ‘I quite like Montpelier, couple of good pubs round there. Go left, no idea what that’s called, and right up the hill.

  ‘Keep going, nearly there. Careful, there’s often dopey schoolkids wandering across this street.’

  McLusky worked the horn again. Austin had never driven through the city at this speed, not even with Blues and Twos. He hated to think what kind of speeds the DI reserved the siren for. McLusky drove up on the wrong side of the road, overtaking everything, barging through, getting a chorus of angry horn play in return.

  ‘Turn right, that should be it.’

  ‘Very leafy round here.’ They certainly had the right place. There was no need to look for the paper on which he had scribbled the name of the house. Just beyond the crest of the humpback street was the scene of the disturbance, unlike any domestic McLusky had yet attended in his eight years on the force. Spectators had gathered on the opposite side of the road. He pulled up and jumped out. They were intercepted by a distraught-looking constable. McLusky showed him his ID.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, sir.’

  ‘I bet you are. What the hell’s going on?’

  The drive of the squat detached house looked like a scrapheap. At various angles stood two squad cars, a BMW and what appeared to have been a green civilian Volvo. All four cars were utterly destroyed, their roofs caved in, windows missing, in fact there wasn’t a single surface left undamaged on any of them. Behind all the battered metal, on the once well-kept lawn, stood an enormous wheeled digger, its engine growling, its hydraulic arm pivoting left and right, threatening two uniformed constables with oblivion. At the house the curtains were drawn at all the windows.

  ‘It’s a domestic, sir. The individual in the cab of the digger is a Mr Spranger and he is the owner of the house. He intends to destroy it.’

  ‘Did he steal the digger?’

  ‘No, he owns that too.’

  ‘He owns the house and he owns the digger? Well, that’s all right then. Why don’t we let him?’ McLusky shrugged. He hated domestics. Everyone hated domestics. There was nothing more tedious on the planet than people who needed the police to sort out their relationships.

  ‘My sentiment entirely, but we can’t. It appears Mrs Spranger is still inside. Though that doesn’t seem to bother him. He’s going to demolish it around her ears. Told us to clear off his property, sir, and when we didn’t he attacked our vehicles. The other cars were already totalled when we got here.’

  ‘Any sign of the woman?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Has anyone tried to enter the premises to see if there really is a woman in the house?’ Because if there wasn’t he’d pull those constables out of danger and let the lunatic get on with it.

  ‘Constable Hanham tried and got chased right round the house by the digger. That’s how the shed and the greenhouse at the back got it.’

  McLusky watched as the burly red-faced man operating the digger took another swipe at an officer. He didn’t like the odds. Spranger seemed to be shouting continuously though no one could hear what he was saying over the noise. He looked like a man about to explode. Perhaps he was going to give himself a heart attack and save them all some bother. ‘Any ideas, DS Austin?’

  Austin scratched the tip of his nose. ‘Perhaps if we rushed the cab from both sides one of us could get to him and pull him off or snatch the keys out of the ignition.’

  ‘Fair enough – you up for it then?’

  The constable vigorously shook his head. ‘With respect, sir, we tried that. He’s locked himself in and I caught a nasty whack on my side when he suddenly swung the thing round.�
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  ‘Are you okay though? What’s your name? Will you need medical attention?’

  ‘I’ll be all right. It’s Constable Pym, sir.’

  ‘Okay, Pym. Request an ambulance anyway. This looks like it has the potential to get painful for someone. And then make sure you keep those civilians out. And move those cars along.’ The number of onlookers on the pavement was growing all the time and several cars had stopped in the lane. There were worried faces at an upstairs window in the house to the left, peering across at the noisy yellow digger swinging its bucket arm wildly from side to side. Pym, in his mud-stained uniform, walked off with a slight limp. The digger churned up the damp lawn with its five-foot wheels, lurching forward another yard towards the front of the house, the constables jumping back but not prepared to give way. They’d soon be with their backs to the wall.

  McLusky didn’t like the look of it. ‘Okay, we can’t play cat and mouse with him all day. I think the fact that he hasn’t actually touched the house yet is a good sign, but all the same. Go round to the right and attract the constables’ attention and wave them off. As soon as they’re clear I’ll try and put the Skoda between him and the house.’

  Austin scratched his nose harder. ‘Do you think that’s wise, sir?’

  ‘No, I don’t, but I can’t think of anything else short of getting Armed Response out and letting them shoot the place up.’ It was his first day back at work on a new force and he wasn’t going to mark it by calling firearms officers to attend a domestic. He got into the Skoda and lightly closed the driver door. To make sure of getting out again he also wound down all the windows, then started the engine. Automatically he reached up to pull down the seatbelt, then thought better of it. This was one journey where a seatbelt might just be a hazard. He started the engine and patted the dashboard. ‘Been nice knowing you.’

  It took a moment for Austin to get the constables’ attention since they were concentrating hard on not getting caught by the swinging bucket arm. When at last they both ran off to the right the digger swung in their direction, the moment McLusky had been waiting for. He drove on to the lawn, wheels not gripping well at first, then surged in a tight curve round the back and left of the digger. The Skoda’s engine whined in first gear as he drove through what was left of brand new bedding plants in a half-moon bed. He was decimating a row of lavenders just as the digger suddenly swung back. McLusky stopped, threw the car into reverse and flew backwards at the huge yellow thing filling his mirrors. Wheel on full lock now but there was just not enough space left to aim the car properly between the front wheels of the monster. His car made contact with the digger’s right front wheel and got bounced back against the other one. The Skoda stalled. Time to get out. He tried the driver door but it wouldn’t open far enough for him to squeeze through. The giant wheel blocked his window too. He could see the digger’s arm travel up, like a fist drawn back before the deciding punch.

  Passenger side. He scrabbled across just as the bucket landed a crumpling blow on the bonnet, bouncing him hard against the roof of the car. A jacket pocket caught on the gear shift. He yanked it free. The door was no use. Head first out of the passenger window, chest and groin scraping painfully over the sill, hands first on the ground, wriggling and kicking himself free just as the bucket smashed through the windscreen and the digger bucked and growled.

  ‘Play with that for a bit, my friend.’ He made off towards the left, on all fours at first, then ran around that side of the house. Evidence that the digger had come through here once before was everywhere. Wheelie bin, recycling, firewood shelter all tossed aside or splintered, a giant scrape along the flank of the house. Spranger must have seen him but by the sounds of it was taking it out on the Skoda, as he had hoped. Around the next corner. An aluminium greenhouse stood crumpled and glassless, the potting shed a slant of splinters. At the back of the house he was faced with the choice between a large curtained picture window and a kitchen door. He tried both, finding them locked. The key was in the lock on the inside of the half-glazed kitchen door. Having pounded his fist on both doors and neither seen nor heard a thing from inside, he picked up a heavy glazed pot full of sodden compost and heaved it unceremoniously through the glass of the kitchen door, shattering it completely. He reached through and let himself in. The pot had broken too and vomited its contents on to the kitchen floor.

  ‘Mrs Spranger? I’m a police officer. Are you there?’ He rushed through the kitchen, the hall and the enormous sitting room with picture window, large modern fireplace and sofas but saw nobody. In the fish-tank twilight produced by the green curtains McLusky kept calling. As he turned to search upstairs a small sound like a grunt or a suppressed groan stopped him. Back in the sitting room he circled the group of furniture. Cross-legged on the floor behind a two-seater sofa sat a middle-aged woman with wild blonde hair.

  ‘Mrs Spranger?’

  She was wearing a quilted sky-blue dressing gown and fluffy white slippers and clutched a brimful tumbler of Southern Comfort. McLusky could smell it. He hated the stuff. The woman looked up, lifted one buttock and farted.

  ‘Mrs Spranger, I’m a police officer, Detective Inspector McLusky. Your husband is threatening to demolish the house. I would like you to come with me to a safe place until … the issue is resolved.’ He sounded like a twit even to himself.

  Her voice was hoarse from crying and shouting and heavy with alcohol. ‘He can fuck off, the two-timing creep. I’ll keep the house, he can fuck off to his tart. Go and arrest the fucking bastard, he trashed my fucking car!’

  ‘We intend to, Mrs Spranger. Only I don’t think it is safe to stay here at present. He seems pretty determined to attack the house with a digger. Come with me, please.’ He reached out a hand, offering to help her up.

  She slapped it away. ‘Huh! I bloody won’t. Go and take the bastard away, that’s what I called you for. Anyway, you could be anybody, couldn’t you? Was that you breaking the windows? Show me some identification.’

  ‘Yes, sorry about the window, I couldn’t attract your attention, Mrs Spranger. I do think it’s urgent that we get you out of here.’ The noise and shouting outside had intensified. He held out his ID but she didn’t look at it. ‘I really think we should leave now, Mrs Spranger.’

  She concentrated on her glass of Southern Comfort. ‘Bollocks to that. He’ll never dare do anything while he knows I’m in here. That’s why the house is still standing. The bastard squashed my car. Arrest him. You’re useless. You’re all useless. Just piss off. He might not love me any more but he loves this house, he’ll never do anything to it.’

  A crashing and the sound of splintering wood contradicted her. McLusky had had enough. Manoeuvring behind the woman he grabbed her under the armpits and pulled her up. She twisted and screeched her protest, slopping Southern Comfort over both of them. As he bundled her towards the picture window the house shook. He’d intended to get her out by the inset door but she suddenly wriggled free and ran to the hall where clouds of brick and plaster dust billowed. She strutted into it, shouting abuse, throwing the now empty glass at her adversary. McLusky plunged after her, the dust stinging in his eyes and lungs, making him cough. The woman’s verbal onslaught had also been cut short by a coughing fit. A large hole gaped where the front door and window had once been and the threatening digger filled the gap, its bucket arm reaching deep into the hall. It jerked up, once, twice, bashing at the ceiling. Mrs Spranger retreated towards him just as the bucket swung sideways and pushed over parts of the first interior wall. He grabbed her arm and hastened her retreat, pushing her in front of him as they were overtaken by another cloud of dust and the crash of falling masonry. In the kitchen Mrs Spranger stalled. ‘Look at the fucking mess in here.’ The walls shook again. It took considerable strength to push the woman out of her kitchen, even though the ground shook under her feet. Once outside he managed to pull her along by one arm while she clutched at her dressing gown and released a torrent of abuse at him, at her husband and at the
constables who took over and ushered her to safety. The street was now full of onlookers, some with cameras and camcorders. The ambulance arrived.

  McLusky kept coughing and spitting out plaster dust as he stood on the lawn to watch the end game. One corner of the house had now collapsed, taking large chunks of roof with it. Most of the debris had fallen inwards. It looked like a bomb site. Spranger was still bashing away, but less frantic now, his expression businesslike. He slowly toppled another stack of bricks, then lazily nibbled at the edge of the roof which disintegrated in a shower of tiles.

  DS Austin joined McLusky on the lawn. ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ He lit a cigarette, offering the pack.

  ‘No thanks, sir, I gave up.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Just the one then.’ Austin eagerly lit his and sucked the smoke deep into his lungs. Then he frowned and checked the brand – Extra Lights. It was like smoking stale air. ‘That was quite a performance, if I may say so, sir. Wish we had it on video, we could sell tickets down the station, make a fortune.’ He jerked his head at the crumpled remains of the Skoda, now lying sideways on the churned-up lawn. ‘You didn’t get hurt?’

  ‘Nope.’ Strange though. He was nervous crossing the street but this hadn’t scared him. Proactive. That’s what the counsellor had called it anyway. As long as he was acting, taking charge, he was fine. Just standing still waiting for something to happen he couldn’t bear. His clothes were a mess.

  Austin sniffed. ‘Southern Comfort? Did you find time for a quick drink, sir?’ For a moment he thought he’d gone too far with this unknown quantity of a DI but McLusky raised a tired smile and brushed half-heartedly at his stained shirt and chinos.

  The noise abated as the digger shuddered to a stop, its engine falling silent. Spranger got out and stood for a while staring at it all, trying to take it in. Half of his house had collapsed. Water cascaded where the digger had bitten through the bathroom plumbing and the spare bedroom had now slid into the kitchen. He could see through into the living room where everything was dull and dirty, covered in dust and debris. Only on the coffee table a glass paperweight sparkled in a thin ray of sunlight. He remembered. It had tiny starfish inside it. Probably not real. They had brought it back from a long weekend in Cornwall one autumn. Twelve years. All disappeared. Everything was fucked up. At least his headache was gone now, though his stomach cramps still came in hot waves like his anger. Two constables approached him across the debris-strewn lawn, reaching for handcuffs. God, they looked more like kids.