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Authors: Jo Bannister

BOOK: Charisma
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Brady landed with a splash beside her, glass glinting in his hand. ‘If you can cut a man's throat with a broken bottle you can sure as hell cut a bit of flex.'
It took longer than cutting a man's throat. The glass edge sliced through the plastic sleeve but he had to break the wire filaments almost one by one. He tried to finish the job on one breath and couldn't, had to go up again for fresh air, wasted more time finding where on the flex he'd been working. Soon he needed to breathe again.
To start with he could feel Donovan moving under him, twisting as he offered his face to Liz, his hands to Brady. But as the seconds ticked by first he felt the tension in the long body mount, its movements becoming spastic with urgency, then seep away till there seemed to be no movement at all.
He thought, It's taken too long. We gave it our best shot but it
took too damn long. But though he thought he was attending to a dead man his fingers kept working at the same frantic rate, his brain too numb with disappointment to tell them to stop. His fingertips stung as the effort opened little cuts to the putrid water.
When at last the flex parted Brady hooked his arm through Donovan's, planted one foot against the thing anchoring him and hauled with all his strength, and the flex pulled free. Brady shot to the surface, Donovan shot to the surface and Liz surfaced immediately behind them.
‘Help me get him out,' gasped Brady.
‘No time.' Liz tipped Donovan's head back until only his face, fishbelly white, was above the water. ‘Support his back.' She tore his shirt open, put her ear to his chest. Then she hit him with the heel of her hand. Brady held him while Liz continued compressing his chest, counting as she did. Then she bent her face over his and blew two long breaths into him. His chest rose under her hand. Then she did it again; and again.
A hand touched her wrist gently. Angrily she shook it off. ‘Not yet. It's too soon to say he's dead. As long as there's air in his lungs and I can keep his heart going he has a chance. Continue till exhaustion: that's what the book says, that's what I'm going to do.'
The hand found her again, rising from the water. It was very cold and its grip was weak. But she still thought it was Brady's until Donovan turned his head aside, choking up bitter water, gasping down foul air.
The following morning they gathered in Shapiro's office: Shapiro, Liz, Donovan and Liam Brady.
Donovan left hospital after a night under observation, a reflection less of his powers of recovery than of the fact that he was a stupendously bad patient, ill-tempered and grudging of care. Castle General put up with him until they were sure he was out of danger, then they threw him out.
Shapiro spent the night shuttling between his office, Superintendent Taylor's office and the interview room where Michael Davey was making his statement. He sat down at five o'clock to catch his breath and woke at eight with a stiff neck and creases in his suit.
Liz spent the first half of the night at the hospital being inoculated against water-borne diseases, and the second half explaining to Brian how she came to be French-kissing her sergeant in the murky depths of Doggett's Canal.
Brady collected the same cocktail of vaccines, reported to his controller, then retired to Donovan's boat for a good night's sleep.
Now they were trading accounts. Donovan had heard most of it from Brady, and Shapiro from Brady's controller, but Liz had missed much of the detail. She came straight to the point which concerned her. ‘Your decision not to inform us that you were operating in Castlemere. Had that anything to do with my association with Michael Davey?'
Brady looked blank. ‘Association? It's news to me. Anyway, nothing Davey got up to was of any interest to us. I'd been with the crew seven months, I joined up when they came back from France last October. I knew who was behind the drugs operation, who was involved on the edges and who had no idea what was going on. Davey wasn't involved.'
‘Then why didn't you tell us what you were doing?'
‘Because secrecy is what keeps you alive in this business, Inspector.
If we'd tipped you off, the minute that girl turned up dead in the canal you'd have assumed it was something to do with us. Either you'd have turned us upside down, or for fear of compromising my activities you'd have left us strictly alone. Either would have made Kelso suspicious. The guy's cleverer than he looks, he'd never have made this work for so long if he wasn't.
‘So we did what we always do: said nothing while it was going down. My chief would've been in touch once we'd moved on. You'd have got the arrests here,' he added generously. ‘It suits us for people to think their local force got lucky, it stops them looking any further. But we didn't want Kelso touching until the summer tour was over. You can clean up a lot of towns in three months.'
‘So you'd been with them seven months,' Shapiro said thoughtfully. ‘Long enough to know what Davey was and wasn't involved in. What about Mills? Had you any suspicions about her?'
‘Neither of them was involved with the drugs,' said Brady. ‘I was sure of that.'
‘That's not what I meant. According to Davey, Jennifer Mills killed five young girls, three of them – our two and the one in Le Havre – in the time you were with the mission. Had you no idea that was going on?'
There was the briefest pause, then Brady shook his head. ‘I wasn't watching her. Once I knew the drugs were Kelso's province I stuck with him. That was my job, Chief Inspector. I didn't need another one.'
Shapiro had a habit of nodding gently, sympathetically, all the time he was listening to someone answer questions; right up to the moment that the answer was finished and the interviewee sat back, modestly satisfied with his performance, when he went for the jugular. ‘So why did you put Charlene Pierce in the canal?'
It was hard to know who was the most startled. Liz had heard nothing of this from Shapiro, Donovan had heard nothing from Brady.
Brady was startled too: it was the last thing he expected. He waited too long to deny it. ‘How did you know?'
‘I didn't, for sure,' admitted Shapiro. ‘Till now.'
‘No one saw me and I told no one. I don't understand.'
Shapiro didn't smile. ‘The timing, mostly. She died in the early hours, she should have been found when people started moving on the wharf. Since she wasn't she must have been out of sight before then. Mills didn't hide her, she couldn't serve her purpose until she was found. So she was covered up by whoever discovered
the body, before anyone else was about. Around the time you people arrived.'
‘That's some lucky guess!' exclaimed Brady.
‘Not really. Whoever hid her returned that night to put her in the canal. You'd had a long day, you had supper in the caravan then went to bed. The only one with the opportunity to move the body was the man who went to the chip shop. The same man who knew she'd been knifed.'
Brady didn't know Shapiro very well. Slowly he smiled and held his wrists out. ‘OK, governor, it's a fair cop.'
Remembering the hours they'd puzzled over that sequence of events, trying to make sense of it, Liz gritted her teeth to avoid saying what she thought. ‘In God's name, why?'
‘To protect my cover.' He seemed surprised it needed saying. ‘The girl had been dead for hours, she was way past any help I could give her. But she could still help me: she could get herself found someplace else. I couldn't call you – people like Joe Bailie don't call the police even when they've done nothing. And if someone else had found her you'd have been all over us and ruined everything.
‘Whoever killed her was long gone – and remember, I didn't know who it was, had no idea it was anything to do with me. I thought it was more important to protect an operation that was steadily netting suppliers on the Continent and dealers in England, and would go on doing as long as it continued. So I covered her up – I'd have been seen dragging her over to the canal – and when the day passed without her being found I went back and put her in the water. I hoped she'd float far enough that you'd never know where she'd come from.'
Liz stared at him in astonishment and outrage. ‘She was a sixteen-year-old girl and she was
murdered
! And you hoped no one would notice because it was inconvenient?'
Brady was swift in his own defence. ‘Inspector, she wasn't my job. My job is infiltrating drug networks. To do it I risk my life on a daily basis for months at a time. I can't take on any more responsibilities. I'm sorry about the girl, but I still don't see her death as any reason to trash an important operation.
‘I don't have to tell you all the different ways people die from drugs. They die of addiction. They die of accidents while under the influence of drugs. They die in fights over drugs. They kill to get money to buy drugs. They die of overdoses, of bad stuff and of failure to pay their supplier. It's a plague in every sense of the word.
‘What are you saying? – that if I'd called you first thing on Saturday you'd have looked at the body then arrested the Iron Maiden? I don't think so. It was detective work, not forensic pathology, that found her and that was always going to take time. You'd have gained nothing if I'd called, and I'd have wasted seven months' work. OK, it wasn't an ideal solution, but let's keep a sense of proportion. Charisma was a tom, and she'd been dead for hours by the time I found her, and all you can do for the dead is bury them.'
‘And Alice Elton?' Shapiro asked softly.
‘The kid on the pony?' Brady frowned, failing to make the connection. ‘What about her?'
Shapiro spelled it out. ‘Alice Elton died because of the time it took us to discover who killed Charlene Pierce. If we'd started thirty hours earlier, and had the information the body could then have yielded, and hadn't been misled into thinking the killer hid her for twenty-four hours before putting her in the canal, we might have got to Jennifer Mills while Alice Elton was still alive.'
Brady tried to shrug that off but the words lacked conviction. ‘Cal, who does your governor think he is? – Inspector Morse? No one was going to unravel that mess in three days, however fresh the body.'
Appealed to directly, Donovan made his first contribution to the debate. He said quietly, ‘I think maybe you should shut up now.'
Genuinely confused by criticism he had not anticipated, Brady rounded on him. ‘Watch your mouth, boy. I'll justify myself to your chief if I have to, but I won't be judged by a man who'd be dead meat but for me. I risked my life for you, Cal Donovan, I'll ask you to remember that.'
Liz said with a kind of restrained fierceness, ‘You risked his life for your reputation, Mr Brady. The rest of us will remember that.'
‘I don't believe this,' spat Brady, indignant and exasperated. ‘I'm getting stick from one copper who can't even look after himself, and another who thinks it matters to Drugs Squad if she's playing away with a travelling preacher. What next – the Talmudic view?'
Shapiro had suffered enough serious, vicious, deeply meant insults from fully-paid-up anti-Semites not to ruffle a feather at this one. He said mildly, ‘I'm not an authority, but I think the Talmudic view would be that none of the lives you claim to have saved, including Sergeant Donovan's, balances the death of that child. People who take drugs and those who deal in them choose to do so despite the dangers. They don't deserve your sympathy.
And Donovan took his job, as you took yours, in the knowledge that there'd be times when he'd have to risk his neck to do it.
‘But Alice Elton was a thirteen-year-old girl riding her pony in a public park in broad daylight, and I can't think of anything you could offer in mitigation if your actions stopped us getting to Mills before Mills got to her.'
Something his oldest friends wouldn't have believed befell Liam Brady. He coloured, the flush working up slowly from the neck of his sweatshirt. He said tautly, ‘You can't know that.'
‘No,' agreed Shapiro. ‘But it's a distinct possibility. I don't know you well enough to know if it'll cost you sleep, but it should do.'
Brady stumbled to his feet. ‘I don't think we're achieving anything. If you have a complaint, make it to my chief. As for your homilies, those you can keep.' He left, groping for the door as if he'd momentarily lost his bearings, and Shapiro made no effort to detain him.
Donovan came to his feet like a cat uncurling. ‘Excuse me, sir.' He too was gone before anyone could call him back; had anyone wanted to.
He overtook Brady quickly enough that his superiors could eavesdrop without the indignity of putting their ears to the keyhole. ‘We're not finished yet. There's still some stuff I want to know.'
Brady eyed him warily. ‘Like?'
‘Your chief – did he know I was your prisoner?'
‘Yeah. He agreed the prize was worth the gamble.'
‘Did he know about Charisma?'
Brady's eyes flared. ‘Hell, no. He'd only have worried about it. I hoped no one would know. I was unlucky Only for running down the Iron Maiden when he did Shapiro wouldn't have known either.'
‘Jesus God,' exclaimed Donovan in a soft explosion of anger and despair, ‘she killed five young girls. What are you saying? – you wish she'd been allowed to continue her career till a less awkward time?'
Brady began reasonably, ‘I only meant—'
‘I know what you mean. It's the same damn attitude we get from you people all the time: that drugs is the only real game in town, everything else is kids' play. You know something, Brady? I preferred you as a Provo. At least you didn't pretend to be anything other than a ruthless bastard.'
‘Back in your pram, sonny,' growled Brady. ‘You're a long streak
of grief, Cal Donovan, but you're not so big I can't slap you down if I have to.'
‘Sure you can,' Donovan snapped back. ‘When I'm asleep and don't even know you're there. When you've got a gun in my back. You want a fair fight sometime, Brady, I'll give you one – just the two of us, no witnesses, no come-back. Maybe you'll still beat the crap out of me. But it won't solve your problem either way.'
Brady said, soft as a tiger's purr, ‘I'd really welcome your opinion, Cal, as to what that is.'
‘That you've become as big a bastard as the bastards you set out to stop. That in order to pass among them you've acquired the same sort of values. You haven't beaten them, you've become one of them. You're a whore, Brady. You sell yourself for money and a few cheap thrills.'
In Shapiro's office they heard the crack of flesh on flesh and exchanged a startled glance. Still they refrained from throwing open the door.
Donovan took the blow with more dignity than Brady delivered it. His cheek flamed but he looked down with only a cold smile. ‘What does that change?'
‘You don't know what you're talking about.' Brady's voice was rough with anger.
Donovan's was a sneer. ‘You and the preacher, you're both addicts. For him it's the adulation, for you the deceit. “They don't know” – remember? Davey's habit blinded him to what he was being used to cover up, and you tell yourself that you do this for the public good when a man on a galloping horse could see you do it for kicks. And that's the story of your life.

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