Charisma by Jo Bannister

like Barbara Wodehouse finally getting through to a particularly dim dog. ‘Arnie and Ray are mates, see. Arnie covers for Ray when he’s with me, and Ray covers for Arnie if he wants to knock off early. Fair’s fair,’ she said virtuously. ‘You’d understand that, sir, you being a policeman.’
    When it was put to him, Carver agreed that that was how it had
been. He was clearly relieved to have it out in the open. ‘I wouldn’t have told you. Arnie’s been a good mate to me, I wouldn’t have shopped him for doing something they could sack him for. But yes, that’s what we did. When I’m up at the Town Hall I can’t leave till Daisy ain’t around. So Arnie clocks me in a couple of minutes after he’s punched his own card.
    â€˜So what was I to do? Tell you I’d seen the girl when I hadn’t? Probably it wouldn’t have mattered, but it might have done. I couldn’t have seen the poor kid. All the time she was in the park I was in June’s bed.’ He looked up then. There was no shadow of guilt in his gypsy eyes. ‘You going to tell them at the Town Hall? You’ll break Daisy’s heart.’
    â€˜ I will?’ exclaimed Shapiro, taken aback. ‘You don’t think maybe it’s a bit late to consider Davy May’s feelings?’
    â€˜We always considered his feelings,’ said Carver indignantly. ‘That’s why I arranged with Arnie, so he wouldn’t see me sneaking out.’
    After Carver had been sent back to his work, trying not to laugh Liz said, ‘What will you do? As an officer of the law and a tax-payer, I mean.’
    â€˜Damned if I know,’ confessed Shapiro. ‘It’s nothing to do with the investigation, that’s plain enough – though we could have wasted a hell of a lot of time if June May hadn’t had the wit to come down here. Let them get on with it, I suppose. Though I may drop a hint to Mr Sedgewick that fiddling the time-cards is in fact fraud.’
    In the event he didn’t have to. In the event, Ray Carver never again enjoyed a bit of fun with June May while her husband polished the candlesticks in the Mayor’s parlour.

2
    All Tuesday the streets of the housing estates and the gardens of the leafy suburbs remained disturbingly empty, and that night the frightened people of Castlemere turned to the one man who seemed to have something to say about the obscenity stalking the town. Their vehicles – for nobody walked to Broad Wharf through the stillness of Castle Place and down the dusky waterfront – were backed up along Brick Lane, blocking the pavements on both sides and narrowing the thoroughfare to the width of one careful car. By eight o’clock Brick Lane was solid and they were parking in Jubilee Terrace.
    It was hard to know what they hoped to hear from the man in the white suit. He was an evangelist, not a clairvoyant: nothing said about him and his presence here, even by himself, suggested he could toss a handful of mixed herbs at a flame and reveal the author of their distress. Yet it seemed to be something of that sort they were looking for.
    For comfort, strength or guidance they could have turned to their own churches, those who espoused one – for Castlemere was a working town with few pretensions towards piety. So it was something on the metaphysical side of moral leadership that they sought, even if they could not have explained quite what, something to do with the white suit and the rolling thunder of the voice and perhaps even the wheelchair.
    They seemed to feel it was more than coincidence that this stranger with his powerful personality and his crusade against evil should arrive in unpromising Castlemere at the one time anyone could remember that there was a job for him to do. They were looking for Merlin, for someone from another dimension to step into the chaos and say, ‘It’s all right, I have it under