Turnstone

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘What about this lad, Scott?’

  ‘He’s on his way down.’

  ‘Get what you can from him, will you? Red Rum’s costing us an arm and a leg.’

  Red Rum? Faraday stared at the phone. It sounded like the codename for some kind of major operation but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘It’s the drugs job Harry’s running,’ Pollock explained. ‘And if Harry says he wants the squeeze on the boy Scott, then that’s good enough for me. Just do it, Joe. OK?’

  Abruptly, the phone went dead. Next door, through the speakers, Mick Spellar was at last agreeing that he’d kicked his father to death.

  Three

  The photos arrived shortly afterwards from the Scenes of Crime office at Cosham police station. With Mick Spellar back in a holding cell, formally charged with murder, the interview team had reconvened in Faraday’s makeshift office. He tore the manila envelope open and shook the photos on to the table. They were big, ten by ten inches, full colour, perfect focus, and each of them offered incontestable evidence of the consequences of Mick Spellar’s rage. In one photograph, the old man scarcely had a face at all.

  Winter was studying the photos with interest. At length he looked up at Faraday. By now Scott Spellar was occupying a locked office down the corridor.

  ‘What has he said so far?’

  ‘He’s denied it. As he would.’

  ‘Has he asked for representation?’

  ‘He’s been offered the duty brief.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was outraged. He says he’s got nothing to hide and he thinks that getting himself a solicitor is halfway to pleading guilty.’

  Winter beamed, saying nothing. Then he slid the photos back into the envelope, making sure that the most graphic shot was on top. Against his better judgement, Faraday had decided that it made sense to keep the interviewing team intact but the decision filled him with disgust. Winter, as he knew only too well, loved challenges like this, bluff piled on bluff, until the moment came when he could turn an interviewee upside down and empty him of everything he knew. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act should have put a fence around individuals in situations like these but PACE made no allowances for artists like Winter.

  Now, the detective emptied his coffee cup, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then stood up.

  ‘No point delaying it,’ he said silkily. ‘Is there?’

  By the time Scott Spellar was inside the interview room, his anger was coming close to physical violence. He was wearing stone-washed Levis and a blue Pompey football top and he bent forward over the table, practically nose-to-nose with Winter. No way would he ever lay a finger on his grandad. What kind of fucker would suggest a thing like that?

  ‘Your dad. That kind of fucker.’

  ‘He says I killed him? How?’

  ‘He says you kicked him to death. On the front-room carpet.’

  ‘That’s what he’s saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe. That’s why you can help us, son. Here …’

  Next door, Faraday heard a rustling noise as Winter stripped the cellophane from a packet of cigarettes. After the scrape of the match came a long silence. Then the boy’s voice again, lower this time.

  ‘When’s all this supposed to have happened?’

  ‘This morning. Around nine o’clock.’

  ‘And he’s really dead? This ain’t some wind-up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I can’t have killed him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t even fucking there.’

  ‘Fine, then you’re off the hook son. Just as long as we know where you were.’ Winter paused. ‘So where were you?’

  For the next half hour or so, Winter played the boy like a fish, allowing him plenty of line, allowing him the illusion of freedom, letting him mumble on about spending the night at his girlfriend’s, or his mate’s place, or getting up early and going out for a walk, or any of a dozen other fictions all of which fell apart when Winter, the voice of sweet reason, asked for corroboration.

  Finally, past nine o’clock, the interview came full circle with Scott simply protesting his innocence, a plea untarnished by anything as helpful as an alibi.

  ‘No fucking way,’ he kept saying. ‘Why would I ever do a thing like that? I wasn’t even there.’

  ‘So where were you?’

  ‘Told you. I was out.’

  ‘But where? Help me, son. Tell me where you were.’

  ‘Can’t. Doesn’t matter where. Just out.’

  Winter was edging towards closure. Faraday could feel it. At length, he sighed, letting fear and silence do his work for him. He’d done his best for the boy. He’d tried to see it his way, tried to offer him the benefit of the doubt, but in the end he had a job to do, no matter how distasteful that job might be.

  ‘I don’t believe you, son,’ he said at last. ‘I think you were there in that house and I think this is down to you. Maybe your dad helped. Maybe the pair of you did it. But that’s no defence, not in a court of law, not with something as horrible as this.’

  Faraday stiffened, recognising Winter’s cue to show Scott Spellar the contents of the manila envelope. There was a soft shuffling noise as the photographs spilled across the table, then a moment of absolute silence as the boy tried to make sense of the pulped remains of his grandfather’s face. The work of the Scenes of Crime photographers was seldom pretty. They weren’t paid to disguise the truth.

  Scott’s voice was low, barely audible, pain salted with disbelief.

  ‘Jesus …’ he said.

  Another silence. Then Winter. He was playing it stern this time, the father figure with young Scottie’s best interests at heart.

  ‘I hate to say this, son, but you should maybe take a good look at yourself. It doesn’t matter whether or not you meant it. It doesn’t matter whether or not you lost your temper. All that matters is these, because all that’s left of him is this. Take a look at the next one. Go on, look at it.’

  ‘Told you already. I was with my girlfriend.’

  ‘Name? Address? Phone number?’

  ‘She … oh shit …’

  ‘You don’t want us to talk to her?’

  ‘No fucking point, is there?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because … oh, Jesus, forget it.’

  ‘We can’t Scott, we can’t forget it. That’s not the way things work here. You’re down for murder, son. And even worse, you’re down for kicking the shit out of your own grandad. You know who gets a copy of this lot? Of every single photograph? The jury. And you know what they’ll do when they see what you’re seeing?’

  He let the question hang in the air. Faraday got up and went to the little wired glass window in the door. He felt cheapened. He felt trapped. He felt as banged-up as Scott Spellar. This was grotesque.

  The boy was talking again, but in a different tone of voice, confidential, private, treating his interviewer the way Winter had always designed it, as a friend. He’d been to London. He was involved with some guys. They were dealing dope. Nothing heavy. Just an ounce or two of weed. He’d brought the stuff back and dropped it off and naturally he wasn’t keen to go a whole lot further. Not because it hadn’t happened but because you never grassed on your mates.

  ‘Not even when you might be facing a murder charge? Your own grandad?’

  It was a reasonable question, but Scott ducked it.

  ‘No way,’ he said. ‘No fucking way.’

  ‘Then I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s true.’

  The exchange went on and on, Winter pushing harder and harder, tearing layer after layer of fancy wrapping off Scott’s pathetic little parcel. First it was dope. Then it was something harder. Finally, by the time
Cathy Lamb knocked on Faraday’s door and stepped inside, it was cocaine, a lot of cocaine, and guys so heavy that only a lunatic would cross them.

  Faraday looked inquiringly at Cathy. A break from this would be more than welcome.

  ‘The post-mortem starts in twenty minutes, boss,’ she said. ‘I’ll run you up there.’

  The sight of Sammy Spellar’s thin little body under the pathologist’s knife compounded Faraday’s growing sense of despair. What had happened up on Anson Avenue was bad enough, graphic evidence of a society gone mad, but what was even worse – and what he’d become part of – was the tawdry piece of theatre down in Interview Room One. The fate they were about to inflict on Scott Spellar didn’t bear contemplation. Not if he bent the knee to Paul Winter.

  Stepping out of the hospital morgue, Faraday thanked the pathologist for the sacrifice of his Saturday night. The post-mortem had yielded no surprises – Sammy Spellar had died from a massive brain haemorrhage – but the procedure was mandatory and Faraday would be getting the typed report within days. Before he said goodbye he inquired how the pathologist’s daughter had done at her gymkhana. Her name was Susie and this was her first pony.

  The pathologist took his time peeling off his surgical gloves.

  ‘She won,’ he said proudly.

  Back at his listening post at the Bridewell, Faraday knew at once that Winter had also posted a victory. He was helping Scott Spellar piece together his trips to London, still using the threat of the murder charge to squeeze every last particle of information from the boy. The addresses he visited in London, the amounts he carried back to Portsmouth, the drops he used in the city, even the times of the trains he caught when he couldn’t be bothered to take the car he’d bought on the proceeds of his first six months. Every last detail Winter wrote down, making sure he had it right and making sure that Scott Spellar knew it. These notes of Winter’s were handcuffs, binding the youth hand and foot. Henceforth, if he was sensible, Scott Spellar would do exactly what Winter decreed.

  The formal interview over, he offered Scott another cigarette. The boy told him he didn’t want it. This time last night, life had been really kushti. He’d had money, a job, respect, a girlfriend, the lot. Now, he’d lost everything.

  ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ he muttered. ‘You’ll bang me up. I’m fucked.’

  ‘Bang you up for what?’

  ‘For drugs. Possession. Supply. The whole fucking lot.’

  Faraday heard Winter’s soft chuckle. This was the moment he savoured most of all. This was the moment that would change Scott’s life for ever.

  ‘We could do a deal,’ he murmured. ‘Sweet for you, sweet for me.’

  ‘How’s that, then?’

  ‘You keep me in touch, street-wise. You give me names, addresses, who’s carrying what for who, just like you did just then. In return I give you money. Maybe quite a lot of money.’

  ‘That’s grassing.’

  ‘You’re right. But that way you’ll get paid twice. Once by us and once by Marty Harrison.’

  The name drew an audible intake of breath from Scott. It was the first time that Winter had mentioned Harrison and Faraday could picture the fear in the boy’s eyes. After a moment or two, he tried to laugh it off, pretending he’d never heard of Marty Harrison, but his denial fooled nobody, least of all Paul Winter.

  ‘We know,’ he said softly. ‘We know about you and Marty.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Surveillance. Obs. We’ve got you clocked, son. You want the date and times?’

  ‘You’re winding me up.’

  ‘You think so? You want to give Marty a ring? Check it out?’ There was another silence, longer this time, then Scott’s voice came through the speakers again. He sounded like a child. He sounded close to tears.

  ‘You think I’d grass up Marty?’ he whispered. ‘You must be off your fucking head. The guy’d kill me. He’d chop me up in little pieces and feed me to his dogs. You know what he’s like. Jesus …’

  Faraday shot a look at Cathy then bent to the speaker again as the shuffle of paper came from the room next door. Winter was sounding positively cheerful.

  ‘These notes stay with me,’ he purred. ‘I’m not after a statement, nothing formal, nothing you’ll have to sign, but remember what you’ve told me, and remember that I’m the mate you need if things get out of hand. At the end of the day, son, my gang’s bigger than Marty’s.’ Faraday heard the scrape of a chair, then Winter’s voice again, brisker and more businesslike. ‘You’re right about Class A drugs, by the way. Carrying that stuff in those sorts of quantities is serious shit. Here.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘My mobile number. Ring me when you’ve had a think.’

  Cathy drove Faraday home. On the face of it, he’d done a good day’s work. A murder solved, some priceless intelligence on its way to the Drugs Squad, and every prospect of an informant at the very heart of one of the city’s major drug rings. In anyone’s book, that was a result. But it felt very different.

  ‘Come in for a drink.’

  Cathy followed Faraday into the house. She could count the number of times this had happened on the fingers of one hand. Of all the detectives on the division, she liked to think that she was by far the closest to Faraday, but the kinship they shared had rarely extended to anything remotely social.

  The big lounge occupied most of the ground floor. Framed photographs, most of them black and white, hung on the walls. Faraday waved vaguely in the direction of the kitchen and told Cathy to help herself.

  ‘There’s Scotch and all sorts,’ he said. ‘Open a bottle of wine if you’d prefer.’

  It was a single man’s kitchen, organised, indexed, neat. Faraday stored spaghetti in tall glass jars and had a blown-up copy of the tide table Blu-Tacked to the fridge. Cathy found the Scotch and poured half a tumbler for Faraday before making a coffee for herself. By the time she got back to the sitting room, Faraday was slumped in his favourite armchair, his body half-turned towards the darkness beyond the tall glass sliding doors.

  The ice clinked in the glass when she gave it to him. His gloom was almost visible, a heavy aura that a child would colour black in a picture book.

  ‘It’s J-J, isn’t it?’

  Faraday didn’t answer. He loved this house, perched on the edge of the harbour. He loved its silence, and its space, and the way it had looked after them both for the entire span of the boy’s life. The house, like Joe-Junior, had been a fixed point in an ever more chaotic world. The one had gone with the other. Until last week.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Because you miss him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because he’s never been away before.’

  Faraday nodded, taking a pull at the Scotch, closing his eyes for a moment as it burned its way towards his belly. Once again, he felt like Scott Spellar. Nowhere to turn. No place left to go.

  ‘Gone is a good word,’ he said slowly, ‘and you know what? I don’t think he’ll ever come back.’

  ‘You told me he had a return ticket.’

  ‘He does. He’s due back next week. I’m meeting him off the ferry. But it won’t be the same. I know it won’t.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  Faraday shot her a glance. She was standing beneath a line of Janna’s framed photographs, nursing a cup of black coffee, ever solid, ever sensible. If it hadn’t been the police force, Faraday thought, she’d have made a brilliant community nurse.

  Cathy asked the question again, not bothering to hide her impatience. Faraday was behaving like a child and she wanted him to know it.

  He studied her a moment, weighing some inner decision, then got to his feet and went upstairs. When he came back he was carrying a sheet of paper.

  ‘This came last night,’ he said woodenly. ‘He took his laptop with him.’

  Cathy’s head bent briefly to the paper.

  ‘He’s twenty-two for God’s sake,’ she said, looking up again. ‘He�
��s allowed to fall in love.’

  ‘He’s deaf, Cath. Deaf kids never grow up.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘I do. And twenty-two years alone with him tells me I know the lad, believe me.’

  Cathy nodded, watching Faraday empty the tumbler. She was tempted to sympathise, to offer him the comfort he undoubtedly needed, but she knew the truth was long overdue.

  ‘Maybe that’s the problem,’ she said lightly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The twenty-two years. That tells me you don’t want him to grow up.’

  Cathy was home by midnight. She and her husband lived in a modern house at Portchester, fifteen minutes’ drive from the top of the island. She parked her Escort in the carport, wondering what had happened to Pete. This morning he’d mentioned an evening session with his sailing buddies, but said he’d be back by ten. Despite the usual staffing crises at Fareham nick, he’d managed to wangle the entire weekend off.

  She let herself into the house, turned off the alarm and dumped her keys by the fish tank in the lounge, wondering whether she could manage another coffee.

  Pete should be back soon. It might be nice to sit up and wait for him.

  She looked round, not able to make up her mind, suddenly wearied by all the decisions she seemed to get wrong. Only last year she’d repainted this room. She’d gone for a shade of mid-grey described as ‘dove’ in the colour charts, and on sunny days she liked to think it gave the lounge a certain sophistication. Lately, though, it had just looked cold.

  She drifted across to the phone. There was a single message waiting on the tape but her finger hovered over the replay button. On the table beside the phone was the little collection of mementos she’d harboured to remind herself of the special times. A pebble from the beach at Weymouth, picked up the afternoon Pete had so nearly won the Laser Nationals. A dried cornflower, pressed between two wafers of perspex, plucked from a meadow in the Austrian Tyrol where they’d spent their honeymoon. She’d met Pete as a probationer. From the moment she’d first set eyes on him, there’d been no one else she’d ever wanted.

  Was he really having an affair? She simply didn’t know. She had evidence in spades – the occasional scent of perfume on his shirts, unexplained absences, mysterious phone calls – but the parts of her that would never be a detective were determined to ignore the clues. Maybe he was under stress. Maybe he was going through some early mid-life crisis. Maybe there was some other reason for his drinking and his endless silences. God knows, regular two-week stand-bys for the force Tactical Firearms Unit – on top of everything else – would surely stretch any man to breaking point.