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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Charisma
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‘I
know
that. Jenny, I know how absurd this is.'
‘Have you said anything to her? Does she know how you feel?'
‘Of course I haven't,' he said scornfully. ‘What would I say? “Here's my alibi, Inspector, here are my fingerprints, and by the way will you leave your husband and run away with me?” ' Then his tone softened. ‘All the same, I think maybe she does know. People do, you know, when other people are attracted to them.'
Her eyes gaped at him but he seemed oblivious of their meaning. She said tightly, ‘You don't say.'
He stopped the car with a lurch, careless for once of how skilfully he manipulated the controls. There was entreaty in the gruffness of his voice. ‘Jenny, help me here. I don't know what to do. I know what I ought to do but …' He tailed off, unable to think of a reason to do what he wanted instead of what he should.
By degrees Mills regained her composure. If she was shocked
it was not her place to show it. She was his fixer: of course he told her that he'd embarked on a relationship that could jeopardize everything they'd achieved. She took a deep breath.
‘Michael, what do you want me to say? It's all right, go for it? The world owes you a bit of happiness? That may be true but it really isn't relevant. She's a married woman. Other men can go lusting after married women but you can't.'
He slapped his useless legs furiously. ‘Why not? Because of these?'
‘Of course not,' she snapped, ‘that's only a physical problem, I never saw one of those defeat you yet. You can't get involved with Mrs Graham because of the man you are and the job you do. How can you tell other people how to behave if you're embroiled in adultery? Oh, I know it's been done before. But not by you. Whatever you are, Michael, you're not a hypocrite. If you can't speak from a platform of absolute honesty you won't speak at all. You couldn't lie to save your life.'
‘So maybe it's time to think of doing something else,' he countered. ‘Maybe I've already done all the good I'm going to. Maybe now it's time I looked for something else to do, let someone better equipped carry the torch.'
Mills shook her head. ‘You don't mean that. This isn't just a job to you, it isn't even just a way of life. It is your life, your reason for living. Your reason for getting into that chair and hauling yourself round the country when it would be so much easier to settle down quietly somewhere and live on welfare. It wasn't much of a hand your God dealt you but I'll say this for you, Michael, you never looked like throwing it in before.'
‘I'm not talking about throwing it in,' he retorted angrily, ‘I'm talking about retiring. I'm fifty-two years old. I'm due a bit of happiness. If not now, when?'
She sighed. ‘God help me, Michael, if I thought it would make you happy I'd give you my blessing. But you've never taken anything you didn't earn: how are you going to live with taking another man's wife? You'd be wretched. And it'd be the end of this love affair between you and God. He might forgive you but you never would. He's your best friend and you'd never be able to look Him in the face again.
‘Michael, your whole life's been one of sacrifice. It's what you are, where your authority comes from. I can't see you getting anything but despair out of sacrificing your mission for your own desires.'
‘What if it's what she wants too?'
‘Her soul's in her own keeping,' Mills said coldly.
‘And mine is in yours?' His voice was bitter.
‘You wouldn't be talking to me if you were comfortable with this. You'd talk to her and tell me what you'd decided. You know there's no future in it. Yes, you could give up everything for her and tell yourself that turned it from a spot of adultery into a great romance. But you'd regret it for the rest of your life. Believe me, Michael, I know.
You
know. We both know what's important to you, and whatever this fire in your blood is telling you right now, it isn't the satisfaction of the flesh.'
She wasn't saying what he wanted to hear. Hurt and under siege he responded with a cheap jibe. ‘That's easy for you to say.'
She was his friend. They'd been together five years. She'd given up everything for him: her friends, her prospects, any life outside the mission. Faithful and uncomplaining, she'd put his needs ahead of hers in every particular; she'd done things for him that only close friends would do. She deserved better than that. Icily she turned away. ‘Act your age, Michael. Stay away from her.'
He was bitterly ashamed of himself. That didn't make his burden easier to bear. A stubborn anguish ran through his voice. ‘I don't know, Jenny. I don't know if I can.'
The gospel meetings began shortly after eight and lasted a couple of hours, the last enthusiasts straggling away about ten-thirty. Sunset was around half-past eight.
Donovan reckoned there were two prime times for something to happen: about nine when the meeting would be in full swing and the wharf dark so that a careful man could move around unseen, and about ten-fifteen when the faithful would throng out of the tent and a man could pass unnoticed among them. On the whole he favoured the earlier time: the more people who were around, the harder it would be to find privacy. But when he slipped off
Tara
under cover of dusk and took up his watch from the alley where he found Charisma it was with the bleak knowledge that he might be standing here for ninety minutes before anything happened, or three hours before he could assume nothing was going to happen.
What he was hoping for – though with the mission here for a fortnight there was no reason for it to be tonight – was that someone from the camp would slip away for a meeting with a leading light of the local drugs trade. Eight months ago it would have been Jack Carney or someone acting for him. But where he was now there were men in peaked caps to discourage nocturnal excursions, and if any of Castlemere's lesser gangsters had taken over where Carney left off word had not reached CID.
That made it harder to crack down on but, if anything, more important. If the mission was smuggling drugs the quantity on offer could be enough to confirm Scoutari, or whichever of the pretenders made the deal, as top dog. Stopping him now would prevent a lot of misery. Donovan hadn't much sympathy for people who took drugs but on a purely practical basis supposed that, as with tetanus, prevention was better than cure.
If he was right about this, and he knew there was room for doubt, what they stood to gain was worth more than his time
alone. He hadn't asked for help because of the risk that he was wrong. If there were no drugs it would be hard enough to apologize to Shapiro for wasting his own time without having to account for someone else's. Also, if Drugs Squad were involved the danger of giving the game away increased with every extra body employed.
The first indication that it mightn't be a wasted vigil came soon after he'd settled himself in the dark passage. The door of the caravan opened and the bearded Breton emerged. The glow of the tent showed him stretching, wandering about aimlessly, then taking a seat on a mooring bollard with a clear view of
Tara.
Donovan had left a light burning in his bedroom to suggest occupation.
After a minute the caravan door opened again. Donovan heard footsteps and two figures passed between him and the water. One, from the shape of it, was Kelso. The other could have been Brady. The Breton stayed where he was, watching the wharf and the boats.
In daylight Donovan could not have followed without being seen. But the darkness was undiscriminating: it covered their secret activities and it covered his. He let the two men get forty metres ahead – any closer and they might have heard him, any further and he could have lost them – then slunk out of the alley and along the wall. He watched the look-out, silhouetted against the glimmer of the water, but there was no sign that he'd been seen. Of course, the man was looking the wrong way. Hugging the buildings on his left, and when they ceased to be buildings the shadow of the broken walls, Donovan followed the two men to Cornmarket.
There was a bad moment when he heard the sound of running feet on the tow-path behind him. He shrank into a bricked-up doorway and the man trotted past without knowing he was there. A moment later the murmur of voices told that the running man had caught up with the others, clearly believing that their departure had gone unnoticed and he could now do more good closer to the men he was there to protect. In that he was right. It certainly made Donovan's job harder.
They followed the tow-path – the two men first, the Breton ten metres behind, Donovan forty metres behind him – to the lock, then turned for the shunting yard. Where the diminishing cover of the derelict buildings petered out and the wasteland of Cornmarket began Donovan dropped further back. The only other thing he could do to avoid being seen was abandon his pursuit and he wasn't prepared to do that.
The shunting yard came down to the tow-path, victims of the same march of progress. Inside were only the carcasses of dead rolling-stock. It was a good place for a quiet meeting: one man on the path could stop anyone creeping up unnoticed. When the other men entered the yard the Breton stayed behind.
Donovan was half expecting that, had already decided what to do: cross the spur at Doggett's Lock, run like hell up the far side and cross back at the stone bridge half a mile further on, coming down on the shunting yard from the unwatched side. At least, he assumed it would be unwatched. There was only open country beyond, and nobody in his right mind would cross the lock in the dark.
Since the handrail went almost nobody crossed in daylight. Once he caught some boys daring one another and put the fear of God into them. He didn't consider this hypocrisy: he knew he could cross safely, was fairly sure they could not. He hadn't done it in the dark before. At least it was dry: the black timbers went as slick as oil in the rain.
It occurred to him – belatedly, Shapiro would have said – that a squad car in Brick Lane could intercept anyone leaving. He had a mobile phone; now something was definitely happening he would have asked for back-up if he could have made the call without giving himself away. But it was a still night, even soft voices would carry. He thought he'd be out of earshot once he reached the bridge.
He crossed the lock like a wire-walker, head up, arms lightly spread, feeling with his toes for the stumps of the handrail waiting to trip him. When he was safe on the other side he allowed himself a little half-smile and wondered why he'd thought it would be difficult.
There was some low scrub along the bank. He hugged it, bent double, until he'd passed the look-out, then he began to run. There wasn't a proper path on this side but there was a track and the ground was level. He loped swift and easily as a wolf until he reached the hump-backed bridge where the tow-path switched banks.
Squatting behind the parapet he had the mobile in his hand when he heard the car. There were no lights and he couldn't tell if it was arriving or getting ready to leave, but the men from the mission were on foot so this was the buyer. They'd hardly complete the deal at this meeting. A smart supplier wouldn't deliver till he was ready to leave town: the last thing he wanted was a greedy dealer putting the stuff round while he was still in the area. They
were here to show samples of the merchandise and to agree a price.
Donovan was afraid that he was too late: that he'd taken too long crossing the lock and the buyer was leaving. However quickly Shapiro acted he couldn't stop the car leaving Cornmarket, and once it joined the traffic it would disappear. The only chance of an identification was if Donovan got close enough to see. If the driver would switch on his lights he could get the number, maybe the backwash of the instruments would show him a face. He shoved the mobile back in his pocket and made for the sound.
He hadn't missed as much as he'd feared. Reaching the rendezvous first the car had waited in darkness and silence for the men from the mission to arrive. At the sound of footsteps the driver started his engine, announcing his presence and preparing for a swift departure if at any point that seemed a good idea. But he still didn't turn his lights on.
A door opened and a man got out on the passenger side. The brief flare of the interior light showed a muscular figure of medium height with straight long hair slicked back in a pony-tail. Then the door closed and the light went out. It was the merest glimpse, he was still fifty metres away and the man's back was towards him, but Donovan recognized him.
It was no surprise. Jimmy Scoutari had been one of the prime contenders to replace Carney since word got round that the Castlemere Godfather wouldn't be home for Christmas. He was a younger man – though too old for a pony-tail – and lacked Carney's style. Scoutari saw no point in posing as a legitimate businessman with offices and a Filofax and standing orders to some of the town's more prominent charities. He was interested only in those things that made him money or made him feared. Carney was a gentleman thug: Scoutari was a player.
He wasn't as clever as Carney so he wasn't as dangerous, and probably he wouldn't last as long, but as a nasty piece of work he bore comparison with the all-time greats. Donovan's last reservation about this vanished. The men from the mission might conceivably have fancied a walk, the car might have lost its way in Brick Lane, but Jimmy Scoutari was here to buy drugs.
Then Donovan made a fundamental miscalculation of the kind that had dogged his career. No one doubted his courage, his commitment or his integrity, but Liz was not the first senior officer to mistrust his judgement. The sensible thing to do at this point was creep back to the bridge and use his mobile to tell Shapiro
what was happening. There was nothing more he could do. He couldn't arrest a minimum of five men, some of them undoubtedly armed and all of them dangerous, single-handed.
Besides which, he didn't have to. Nothing vital was going to happen now. They weren't going to swap vast quantities of drugs for vast sums of money and vanish from the face of the earth. Donovan's wire-walking had achieved all he should have wished for: he'd witnessed a secret meeting between men from Davey's mission and a known criminal. With that information Shapiro could go to work on both parties and would find evidence enough for convictions. There wasn't even any hurry. There would be a final meeting between Kelso and Scoutari before the mission left town when they could be taken with the goods in their possession.
But Donovan wanted more. Always he wanted more. Instead of retreating he crawled forward, hoping to overhear what was being said. The inevitable consequence of that, that he couldn't then use the mobile without himself being overheard, didn't occur to him until it was too late.
Though the cinder surface of the yard grew a thriving flora of weeds there wasn't cover enough for a grown man. But a row of wagons was rotting away at the end of the line five metres from the car: if he could reach them undetected he could crawl between the great rusting wheels until he was almost as close to the action as the players. He'd get a better view of their boots than of their faces but he should hear their conversation while the inky shadow under the bogies would keep him safe.
The meeting hadn't yet got down to business. The two sides were still jockeying for advantage. Picking his way across the open ground, Donovan was acutely aware that if Scoutari decided it was time to view the merchandise and the car lights came on he was a dead man. When the bulk of the last wagon came between him and them he melted against it in weak-kneed relief.
He could hear clearly. Kelso addressed Scoutari with stolid politeness as ‘Mr Scoutari'; Scoutari addressed Kelso as ‘You'. They talked numbers. Donovan was startled by the range of drugs on offer, as if the mission were a travelling emporium: heroin, cocaine, cannabis, Ecstasy, LSD. Scoutari was interested in them all. They haggled over quantities and price.
They reached a provisional agreement, then Scoutari wanted to test samples. Kelso produced a fat envelope from his pocket, Scoutari produced a torch. They used the bonnet of the car as a table. For some minutes Scoutari wielded tiny implements that
glinted in the torchlight and sniffed or tasted the results. Each time he grunted a grudging satisfaction.
Donovan kept wishing someone would shine the torch around, catch a few faces. He knew who he was watching, with the possible exception of the man he only thought was Brady, but he'd have liked to be able to say he'd seen faces. But the beam remained resolutely on hands: Kelso's dealing out the samples, Scoutari's picking through them. He set the torch on the bonnet and worked within its beam. Once, adjusting the angle, he let it slip and the vibration of the ticking engine rolled it on to the ground. Someone picked it up and put it back.
Finally they reached the bit Donovan was keenest to hear: details of how money and merchandise would be exchanged. Kelso wanted a delay, Scoutari wanted his hands on the goods. They compromised: a week hence, with the proviso that Scoutari wouldn't put it on the streets until the mission left town.
The meeting broke up. Scoutari put his torch in his pocket and got back in his car. Without farewells, still without turning his lights on, the driver moved off immediately and the sound of the engine faded towards Brick Lane.
That left the massive figure of Kelso standing apparently lost in thought amid the half-bricks and ankle-high weeds. Donovan couldn't think what he was waiting for, why he didn't leave too. After a moment he realized uneasily that he'd lost track of the man with him. Maybe he was taking a leak. It was too late to search the place now; even so …
He wasn't kept wondering for long. He was lying belly-down under the wagon and something tapped the sole of his foot. It could have been any lump of metal of approximately the right size and weight but the message raced along his nerves that it was a gun. He exhaled raggedly and his insides clenched.
Brady's voice said amiably, ‘Come on out, the show's over.'

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