Falling More Slowly Read Free

empty bookshelf, a metal dustbin and a small battered desk. The window faced out the back overlooking graffiti-covered walls, chaotic pigeon-shit rooftops and the shadowy backs of houses. In the middle distance, between tall buildings, he glimpsed a sliver of the harbour. Apart from in- and out-trays, monitor, keyboard and phone he’d been furnished with a set of car keys sitting on a form for him to sign and an envelope lying across the keyboard which he knew would contain the gaff he needed to log on to the computer.
    ‘Thanks.’ McLusky shivered. He thought he could feel the dampness in the fifty-year-old cement bricks on the other side of the plasterboard, could hear the rustle of their slow crumbling. He pointed to the envelope. ‘This is precisely the amount of paperwork I can cope with. Can you see it stays like that, please?’
    ‘We’ll do our very best, sir.’ Austin’s lopsided grin acknowledged the avalanche of paperwork heading for the inspector’s in-tray.
    The phone on his pristine desk rang. He took a deep breath then picked it up. Anyone could make a mistake. ‘DI McLusky.’
    It was Area Control. ‘Sir, I know this sounds like a job for Uniform, but …’ The young male voice hesitated.
    ‘Go on then.’
    ‘The original call was made by a Mrs Spranger, sounded like a domestic at an address in Redland. We’ve sent twounits so far and both have gone off the air. We always have reception problems in Redland. We’ve since had a mobile phone call from one of the officers and he seemed a bit incoherent. There was a lot of background noise …’
    ‘Okay, we’ll deal. What’s the address?’ He snatched up the keys, turned the form around and snapped his fingers for a pen. Austin unhooked a biro from his shirt pocket and obliged. McLusky scribbled down the unfamiliar address and hung up then pocketed the pen in his leather jacket. Austin opened his mouth then thought better of it.
    ‘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 founda 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?