“We’re going to catch this man. I don’t know how long it will take, but we will. He’s dangerous. He hurts people for money, and has no feelings for anyone except himself. But we’re going to take him off the street.”
Mrs DuCaine studied the array of flowers. “When someone in the police force dies, his friends are supposed to rally around him, aren’t they? No-one from Headquarters even called. Liberty’s workmates deserted him because he told them he was moving to your unit.”
“I know.”
“Well, then.” Mrs DuCaine studied the flowers with dry eyes. “There’s nothing more to say.”
Longbright knew she was being dismissed. She turned to leave.
“Take one of the yellow roses,” said Mrs DuCaine, unexpectedly. “It was his favourite colour.”
Longbright selected a rose and turned, to see two horribly familiar figures looming out of the misty rain. With the arrival of Bryant and May, it became obvious that a police presence at the crematorium was not a good idea. One officer was acceptable, but three looked defensive. The rest of DuCaine’s friends and relatives were emerging from the chapel into the cramped anteroom to mourn their lost brother, and a demarcation line quickly developed. DuCaine’s father fired a baleful stare toward the detectives, who moved back onto the porch.
“I thought you weren’t going to come today,” said Longbright, displeased to see them.
“We knew him for years,” May reminded her. “We couldn’t just stay away.”
“And I thought there was a chance
“All right, but please don’t say anything to the family.” She knew only too well how Bryant’s condolences had a habit of turning out.
Bryant thrust his hands deep into his pockets and watched as DuCaine’s relatives moved slowly between the wreaths, reading the cards, rearranging flowers, conferring in low tones. “You know as well as I do that every arrest contains an element of risk,” he told his partner.
“We should have covered all eventualities,” said May.
“We couldn’t, John. The lock on that door should have been strong enough to hold him.”
“But it wasn’t. And that’s an oversight on our part.”
Mr Fox’s weapon of choice was a slender sharpened rod that left virtually no trace of use. Using a skewer to pick the lock of the holding room and attack DuCaine seemed bizarre at first, but the more Bryant thought about it, the more expedient the method became. Their killer had been raised on the streets of King’s Cross, where for many carrying a knife was still considered a necessity of teenage life. But knives were carried to provide a display of defence, not for efficiency of attack. Mr Fox had streamlined the concept, making his weapon easy to hide. The effect of punching it through the neck into the brain was swift and lethal, like causing a stroke. In this case it had worked despite the fact that their young officer’s sharp reflexes made him a difficult target.
May watched as DuCaine’s mother leaned heavily on her husband’s shoulder, staring down at a wreath from the PCU. “They’ll come over if we stay any longer,” he whispered to his partner, leading him away. “We have to go, Arthur. The rest of the family’s coming out.”
Emerging from the chapel were Liberty DuCaine’s grandparents; several aunts and uncles; his brother, Fraternity, and his attractive young sister, named, with a certain amount of grim inevitability, Equality.
“Presumably she doesn’t actually call herself that,” Bryant mused.
“They call her Betty – apparently it was her grandmother’s name.” The pair could replicate Holmes and Watson’s old trick of picking up each other’s unspoken thoughts. After so many decades together, it was second nature.
“Look out, the family’s finished, let’s get out of here,” said Bryant, heading for the crematorium car park. “One tough old Caribbean bird in my life is more than enough, thank you.”
“You’d be lost without Alma and you know it,” said May. Bryant’s former landlady Alma was currently spending her days at the town hall, where she was defending the pair’s right to stay in their Chalk Farm home. The building had been scheduled for demolition. Bryant was meant to have gone with her, but he’d had his hands full for the last few days. The Unit’s investigations rarely proved finite; many had unforeseen loose ends that dragged on long after the cases had been officially closed. As a consequence, Bryant had been staying late through his weekends. There were times, May knew, when his partner used work to avoid his other responsibilities.
As they stepped back onto the rainswept tarmac, DuCaine’s mother appeared around the corner. She waved an enormous rainbow-striped umbrella at them. Bryant tugged his trilby down over his eyes in an attempt to render himself invisible.
“Mr Bryant,” she called. “Do you have a minute?”
“Oh Lord, she’s going to beat me with that umbrella,” he warned, forcing a smile. “Ah, Mrs DuCaine.”
She planted herself squarely in front of him, blocking the route to May’s car. “I need the answer to a question, and no-one has been able to give me a satisfactory explanation. Can you tell me why my son was left alone to guard a dangerous criminal?”
“The criminal was locked in a holding room,” Bryant replied. “We’ve already been through this.”
“A holding room – not a proper cell.”
“We’d been forced out of our old offices, Mrs DuCaine, and were short-staffed. We were having to make do. We’d taken every precaution – ”
“No, you had not. If you had, my boy would still be alive.” Her tone was firm and fair, but there was no simple answer to her complaint. “I could take this much further, you know that. But Liberty thought the world of you two. He never stopped talking about you and the Unit. And all the complaining and compensation in the world isn’t going to bring back my boy.” She peered out at them from under the enormous umbrella, seeking a kind of closure the detectives were not equipped to provide. “I lost my best boy,” she said simply. Bryant saw a tremble in her features, a brief ripple that, if it was allowed to stay, would shatter into public grief.
“If you need any help coping,” he offered, “we have a system in place that can – ”
“We can provide for ourselves; we don’t need your money or your sympathy,” Mrs DuCaine snapped. “Every policeman knows about the dangers involved, isn’t that right?” Her tone softened a touch. “We were just so proud of him. And the move made him happy. But I want the pair of you to promise me something.”
“We’ll do whatever we can,” May promised.
“You have to find this man and bring him to justice. None of us can rest easy until we’re sure that everything possible has been done to catch him. You know you owe it to Liberty.”
“I’m very aware of that,” Bryant replied. “I won’t be able to rest until he’s been made to pay for his crimes.”
“That’s all I ask.” She turned to go, then stopped. “There is one other thing you could do.”
“Name it, Mrs DuCaine.”
“His brother, Fraternity, wants to follow in Liberty’s footsteps. I said no, but he won’t be talked out of it. He did his officer training at Henley last year and got good grades, but they still failed him. We don’t know what happened. He won’t tell me, and nobody ever explained anything to us. I want you to find out what went on up there. If he wasn’t good enough, that’s fine – but my boy is convinced he should have passed, and was still turned down. I don’t want this to have been about the colour of his skin.”
Bryant scratched at his neck, thinking. “I’ll have a poke around in his files and see what I can find out, but I can’t guarantee it will make any difference.”
May cut across his partner. “Don’t worry, Mrs DuCaine, we’ll get to the root of the matter.”
They watched Liberty’s mother as she rejoined the family, leading them to the limousines. “A good woman,” Bryant said with a sigh. “No-one should lose a child.”
“If we’re going to honour her wishes, we need a plan of attack.”
“I don’t think anyone at the Met or the Home Office will be able to give us any help,” replied Bryant, tugging at his hat. “Come on, let’s get out of here before the brother comes over. Head down, don’t look back. He’s a big bugger.”
? Off the Rails ?
7
Falling Angel
