Mean Spirit

Vic looked pained. ‘Mr Maiden, I’m trying to help you here.’

‘All right,’ Maiden said. ‘Say it happened. In fact, to go further, say your friend was indirectly commissioned by one of my fun-loving workmates.’

‘Yes.’ Vic nodded sagely. ‘I would say you’re on target there, Mr Maiden. Making it difficult to be too hard on the boy, as I see it.’

Maiden flipped over a diffident palm. ‘Almost impossible.’

‘Good enough. All right, say this lad was a mate of Dean’s and therefore sees me as an uncle, sorter thing. Confides. Not happy at all about the associations he’s been forced to make, when all he was trying to do was pay his way through college. Art student, yeah?’

‘Art critic, too,’ Maiden said.

‘Well, he probably found the work in question a bit … what’s the word?’

‘Passe?’

‘You know what these youngsters are like, Mr Maiden. If you can tell what it is, it’s not art. Getting to the point, though, what happened, there was a raid on this flat. Up the Hillholm? A student party?’

‘Right.’ About three weeks ago. Tip-off. Beattie had gone in with DC Darren Guttridge. Very disappointing, Beattie said next morning.

Vic Clutton smiled. ‘That’s what they said, is it? Likely what happened, there may have been a preliminary visit. Substances removed to a place of safety, sorter thing, while new friendships is forged.’

So an art student found in possession of serious substances had been spared prosecution in return for carrying out minor favours for Beattie and Guttridge. Maiden shook his head sadly.

No wonder the lettering was neat.

Maiden wondered if his impending promotion was general knowledge, but Vic didn’t appear to know about it.

‘Congratulations. That would make you the governor, sorter thing. Be in a position to change things, put certain careers on hold? Like you make recommendations to on high, and they’d have to listen to you, am I right?’

‘Mmm … to a point.’

‘Be your responsibility to clean out your own kitchen is what I’m saying.’

‘That is the point.’

Vic nibbled his glass. ‘All right. Listen. This is no more than hearsay, so don’t go taking it down on no tablets of stone, yeah?’

Maiden spread his hands. No notebook, no wires.

Vic Clutton brought his head and his voice right down.

‘Who’s your favourite ex-policeman?’

‘Go on.’

‘Word is he’s never got over it,’ Vic said, addressing the table. ‘You probably understand the psychology of this better than me, being filth, but first and foremost he saw hisself as a copper. Officer of the law, sorter thing. No matter he made the odd half million greasing Parker’s wheels, it was all in a good cause. Keep the streets clean and tidy for the ladies of decent Rotarians and such.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Law and order, Mr Maiden. Mr Riggs still believes he was the best thing ever happened for law and order in this town.’

Maiden bent to try and catch Vic’s expression. Vic still didn’t look at him, talking to his drinks mat.

‘All right, you’ll say, but he’s down in Birmingham or somewhere now and in the private sector, probably making so much straight money he has no need to grease anybody’s wheels no more.’

‘Well, not the same wheels.’

‘But the point is, Mr Maiden, he’s still smarting. If he hadn’t gone — and he’s said this … very, very bitterly, I’m told — if he’d been still around, he was in direct line, within eighteen months at the most, for the great and exalted post of Assistant Chief Constable of West Mercia. A position very much suited to his lifestyle and social skills, Mr Maiden.’

‘I’m sure he looks really smooth at the Private Security Companies’ Ball.’

Vic said, ‘There could be a danger, Mr Maiden, in taking this too lightly, sorter thing.’

‘You’re saying he’s still got an interest up here?’

‘Got a very deep personal interest in you,’ Vic said. ‘Almost obsessional is what I hear.’

‘From whom?’

‘Drink up, Mr Maiden,’ Vic said. ‘My lady’ll have my dinner on the table.’

These days Elham got unplugged at five-thirty. Now, close to seven, it was dark and damp and already empty. In the hotel car park, the symbols of small-town wealth were awaiting removal to the outlying villages: a Series Seven BMW, a Mercedes next to a Lexus next to the space where Maiden had parked. Now a space again.

It was close to the road, not far from a streetlamp.

‘Bugger,’ Maiden said. ‘This hasn’t happened to me in quite a while.’

‘It don’t take them five minutes these days, Mr Maiden. Even the kids. You have an alarm? Mind you, nobody takes any notice of an alarm these days. Specially if it only lasts a few seconds, which is all they need.’ Vic glanced around. ‘Sod’s Law. All these Mercs and Jags and they go for your … what was it?’

‘Golf. Four years old.’

‘Not your week, Mr Maiden. Sorry I can’t give you a lift, but I’m on foot. Being a local now.’

Maiden said it was OK. Not that far for him to walk either. He might call in at the station and report it. If he could face the humour.

‘Car thieves. Joy riders. I despise those bleeders.’ Under the sterile sodium streetlight, Vic frowned briefly. ‘You take care, Mr Maiden. If you’re walking, stick to the main roads, sorter thing.’

No stars in the sky, only a chemical haze. Elham by night: like being inside a giant warehouse storing nothing much at all.

Maiden walked past the shut-down Carlton cinema. Past the bus station, where late buses and a tea-bar were social history. Past the late Tony Parker’s Biarritz Club in its cage of scaffolding — about to become possibly the only building that ever went upmarket by being turned into a McDonald’s.

He didn’t call in at the police station. He would phone.

He’d changed the lock on the flat himself. Not a brilliant job, but it would hold. If they really wanted to get in, they’d get in.

They. Someone working for someone working for someone working for Martin Riggs. He saw Riggs’s face — the broad forehead, the long, narrow chin, the almost translucent skin. Head like a light-bulb. Was it really possible that Riggs was still, in some undetectable way, employing Beattie, maybe a couple more policemen … and monitoring Maiden’s movements?

And wanting Maiden to know?

He changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, called the station and reported the theft — WPC Lisa Starling tutting sympathetically. ‘The Crown, eh? They’ve been advised to install CCTV that many times!’

Maiden was aware of his hand shaking when he put down the phone, aware of how hard and fast he was breathing.

Riggs would have been gratified to see this.

OK. Lose it. He made himself a cup of tea then went into the bedroom, closed the door and sat on the side of his bed. Put on the blue-shaded table lamp. Quiet light.

He sat for several minutes, at first conjuring the image of Riggs in the air three feet from his head. Holding it there, summoning all his negative emotions about Riggs. And then letting go of them. Watching the lightbulb head go dimmer, fade, disappear.

And then straightened his back, systematically relaxing his body, starting with the toes, working upwards, tightening muscles and then letting them go. Finally, inhaling slowly, aware of the air entering his nose and throat and expanding his lungs. Fixing his attention on a point in his throat, he held the breath for ten heartbeats, then exhaled through his nose.

The throat being the first chakra.