Turnstone

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Always, love. Just do it.’

  Faraday turned away, refusing to take the file back, wondering which of his three in-trays to tackle first. Exchanges like these with Cathy always exhausted him, partly because she was so tenacious, but mainly because she was right. It was a fact of life that those with the fattest wallets and the loudest voices always got more than they deserved. Sadly, even Neville Bevan wasn’t immune to pressure from the likes of Nelly Tseng.

  *

  When Paul Winter hadn’t heard from Scott Spellar by four o’clock, he decided to drive to Anson Avenue and try and find him. The deal had been explicit. As soon as he’d seen Marty, he was to give Winter a ring. He wanted to know what Harrison had said, how he’d reacted, what plans he might have shared. Only then would Winter start serious negotiations about the promised two hundred pounds.

  Crawling north through rush-hour traffic, Winter knew that he was up against the clock. The Drugs Squad was based at Havant nick and rumours were sweeping through their CID room that a bust was on for first light tomorrow morning. Winter had been on the phone to a mate only an hour ago. The canteen manager had been asked to prepare fifty-five doggy bags. Doggy bags contained the sausage rolls, apples, crisps and Kit-Kats that would fuel the guys on the sharp end, and an order that big could only mean that Harry Wayte’s boys were going to execute a number of warrants, four or five different addresses at least. For an operation as major as Red Rum, it made perfect sense.

  Anson Avenue was in its normal state of torpid chaos: abandoned cars, sullen kids, and a lurching drunk who was doing his best to piss into a pillar box. Winter gave him a toot and waved a finger as he drove past. The guy could barely get the thin yellow stream up above waist level.

  At the top of the road, Winter turned the car round and then parked outside number seventy-three. He killed the engine and then gazed up at the house. Word must have spread about Scott’s appearance at the Bridewell on Saturday night because someone had already been at the front door with a spray can. ‘Scum’ went the simple message.

  Winter checked his watch, wondering whether the boy was in. One way or another, he badly needed to get him alongside Harrison. If Scott came back with serious intelligence – a sudden change of address, say – then Winter would make his name with the Drugs Squad. If, on the other hand, he simply passed on the warning then Winter would have planted his very own grass bang in the middle of the city’s number one network. A tip like that, as long as the boy kept his nerve, would guarantee Scott Spellar a place in the sun. Harrison would owe his young gopher. Big time. And where, Winter wondered, might that lead?

  Getting out of the car, Winter smiled. These were the kinds of strokes he enjoyed pulling most, stepping outside the system, turning his back on the paperwork, running private informants, inching his way into the heart of the action without anyone – anyone – being any the wiser. Then, at a time of his choosing, he would cash in all that information, all those carefully harboured secrets, step into the spotlight and take the applause he so richly deserved. Criminals, serious criminals, needed detectives like Paul Winter. The fact that there were few of his breed left was one of the reasons crime was getting so out of hand.

  He pushed in through the gate and rapped on the door. The paint from the spray can was even fresher than he’d thought. At length, a girl appeared, opening an upstairs window. She had nose rings and long black hair.

  ‘Yeah? What is it?’

  Winter asked for Scott. She said he wasn’t in.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Downtown somewhere.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘No idea.’ She peered down at him. ‘Are you the filth, then? Only he said you were a fat bastard.’

  For once, Winter didn’t know what to say. Then he gave her the finger, turned on his heel and went back to the car. Gone downtown, he thought. Good sign.

  *

  Faraday was home by seven. Upstairs, in the study, he checked the PC but there were no more e-mails from J-J. Was he really going to flog his return ticket? Was this really the time to pack up twenty-two years of fatherhood and start again?

  There was an unopened bottle of malt in the drinks cabinet in the lounge. Faraday poured himself three fingers, added ice, and drank it in the garden, watching a distant jet-ski trailing curtains of water on the Hayling side of the harbour. With pressure high, the breeze was from the east, and the insect-buzz of the jet-ski finally drove him back indoors. His glass recharged, he put on some music – the Goldberg Variations – and tried to bury himself in the tinkling arpeggios. Anything to stop him thinking about J-J. Anything.

  Twenty minutes later, the glass empty again, he abandoned Glenn Gould, hauled himself upright on the sofa and headed for the stairs. The diaries were in a cardboard box at the back of J-J’s wardrobe. He hesitated for a moment, then opened one at random, settling himself on J-J’s bed. The diaries had been written up in school exercise books with drawings and text from J-J’s class teacher, and from Faraday himself. This daily tally of events had passed back and forth between home and school for years, bridging the gap between the child’s two worlds, and as J-J had learned to write, his own scrawled contributions had appeared as well.

  This one was an early diary, June 1981, and looking at the crayoned sandcastle, Faraday was suddenly back on the beach at Eastney. J-J was four, a boisterous little blond kid with his mother’s grin and his father’s patience and a bunch of friends from the neighbourhood kindergarten who spoke the rumble-tumble language of infants world-wide. J-J’s nanny had the weekends off. Dad was in sole charge.

  The kids were building an elaborate fortification against the rising tide. At Faraday’s prompting, it had drainage channels, paper Union Jacks and a big fat sand palisade behind a semi-circular apron of pebbles to cushion the breaking waves.

  The kids had danced around, shrieking with excitement, determined that their castle should survive, and then suddenly there came the heavy drone of Merlin engines and a Lancaster bomber appeared, flying parallel with the shore, and the other children ran down to the tideline, pointing up at the huge plane as it soared into a graceful wingover, leaving J-J squatting on the wet sand, slowly patting a turret into shape, quite oblivious of the commotion behind him.

  That was the moment when Faraday realised that J-J would always be different, that there would always be parts of the world beyond his reach. And that was the moment, too, when J-J glanced round, and saw that his buddies had left him. By the time he joined them in the shallows, the Lancaster was a speck in the distance, heading for an anniversary fly-past over the naval dockyard. He tried to share his friends’ excitement, to pretend that he too had seen the huge black beast, but Faraday recognised the bright little smile for what it was. The boy was being brave.

  Walking home that afternoon, he clung to Faraday’s hand. At tea, he barely touched his boiled egg. With the plates and cups cleared away, Faraday drew big fat aeroplanes on the A4 pads he kept everywhere to hand, and when the sketches drew no response, he began to circle the room, his arms outstretched, banking and weaving around the furniture, until the sight of J-J’s face brought him to a halt. The child was weeping – and the moment etched itself deep into Faraday’s unconscious because his tears were silent. He made no show of his grief. He didn’t howl, like normal kids. He just sat there, with the tears rolling slowly down his face, utterly inconsolable.

  That night, with J-J in bed, Faraday had sought advice and, days later, as soon as his shifts permitted, he made the visit to the library. Within a week, birds had begun to appear in the diary, little stick creatures flying over the smudgy blues and greens of the harbour and the foreshore, and by the end of the year Faraday had recognised the wisdom of his friend’s suggestion. When he met her at the school carol service, an oddly joyous event scored for kids who hadn’t got the faintest idea about music, she’d been delighted by J-J’s progress. He was happy again, and secure, and watching him trying to figure out what to do with a tambour
ine, she put Faraday’s own thoughts into words. Birds can be kinder than people, she’d said.

  Six

  Faraday, for once, had left his mobile downstairs. Roused from deep sleep, he fumbled his way towards the bedroom door and then negotiated the stairs one by one in the half-darkness. Beside the sofa, he struggled to get the world into focus.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Cathy. There’s been a shooting.’

  Faraday rubbed his eyes. The paleness of the light beyond the curtains told him that it was still early.

  ‘A shooting? Where?’

  ‘I’m still trying to find out. It’s complicated.’

  ‘Who’s dealing with it?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘Not from our end, no.’

  Faraday could sense the panic in her voice. Cathy never panicked. He glanced at his watch. 06:39.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you at the office.’

  Cathy was sitting on her desk, swallowing her second coffee by the time Faraday arrived. Her face was the colour of putty.

  ‘It’s Pete,’ she said at once. ‘He’s shot a guy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nearly killed him. It’s still touch and go.’

  Harry Wayte had called the bust for four-thirty. The priority address had been in North End and Pete had led the five-man TFU up the stairs after Harry’s boys had done the front door. In the master bedroom he’d found the target tucked up with his girlfriend. The guy had dived for something under his pillow and Pete had yelled at him to freeze but he’d taken no notice. Suspecting a gun, Pete had opened fire.

  ‘And?’

  Cathy looked away.

  ‘It was a sim card,’ she muttered. ‘I guess the guy was going to swallow it.’

  Faraday eased her into a chair. A sim card sat in the back of a mobile phone. It stored the numbers from previous calls and – recovered intact – it could save hours of painstaking investigation.

  Cathy pushed hopelessly at the desk, making the chair revolve.

  ‘So far they’ve found nothing in the house,’ she said quietly. ‘No gear, no money, no paperwork, absolutely nothing.’

  ‘What about the sim card?’

  ‘Just a list of numbers. Nothing to warrant a charge. And it gets worse. There was a baby in the bedroom, too. Little kid of fourteen months in a carrycot on the floor. The News are on to it already.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘The girlfriend phoned them. She’s the mother. She’s gone potty, as you can imagine.’

  Faraday looked at the ceiling a moment, wondering how much worse the damage could get. The News was the city’s local paper. A circulation of seventy thousand gave it considerable weight and it used every tabloid trick in the book to fatten daily sales still further. Given Cathy’s brief description of the morning’s events, Faraday shuddered to think about the midday placards on the city’s streets. Bevan, as senior uniformed officer on the division, would be well and truly in the firing line.

  ‘There’s more.’ Cathy nodded towards the open door. ‘Do you mind?’

  Faraday shut the door with his foot. It was way too early for the eight a.m. shift and even the cleaners had yet to arrive. He turned back to Cathy.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I think Pete had been drinking.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He came in very late last night. I could smell it on him.’

  ‘Anyone else know this?’

  ‘I dunno. Apparently they’ve asked him for a blood sample, but so far the doctor hasn’t turned up. He phoned me from Havant nick. He’s well choked.’

  Faraday nodded. Requests for blood samples were automatic after a shooting, part of the inquiry procedure, though Pete Lamb had a legal right to refuse.

  ‘I know,’ Cathy said, ‘but it doesn’t look great, does it? Not if you’ve got something to hide.’

  Faraday had to agree. Driving under the influence was bad enough. Going in mob-handed with a sliding-stock Heckler and Koch and a headful of last night’s booze was unthinkable.

  ‘They’ll throw the book at him. Any trace of alcohol, and he’s fucked.’

  Cathy stared up at him, shocked. Faraday rarely cursed.

  ‘You think so?’

  I know so. And for the record I have to say it makes sense.’

  Cathy’s eyes widened still further. She made a loose, slightly pathetic gesture with her right hand, bridging the gap between them. Was it OK to talk like this? Could Faraday respect a confidence?

  ‘No problem,’ he said at once, reaching out for her hand and giving it a little squeeze. ‘I’m just telling it the way it is.’

  He paused a moment, wondering what on earth had driven Pete Lamb to the bottle. The TFU guys went through extensive psychological profiling before they got anywhere near the firing range. Any hint of a drink problem, or poor resistance to general stress, and they were chopped from the course. Pete Lamb had always struck him as ideal TFU material: level-headed, self-confident, cool under pressure. So how come he’d ended up in a state like this?

  Cathy was staring blankly at the wall.

  ‘There’s one question you haven’t asked me.’ She looked up at Faraday. ‘Don’t you want to know who Pete shot?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Harrison.’ Cathy swallowed hard. ‘Marty fucking Harrison.’

  Faraday phoned Paul Winter at home.

  ‘What’s this about then?’ he asked sleepily. ‘World War Three?’

  Faraday told him about Harrison. He wanted to know whether Winter had caught up with Scott Spellar since the night they’d threatened him with a murder charge.

  ‘Yeah. I saw him yesterday morning.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Gave him his money back. Like you said.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing. We had a little chat, you know, but nothing you’d want to get excited about.’

  ‘He’s not working for you?’

  ‘He’s not working for anyone. If he’s got any sense, he’ll fuck off out of it. He’s convinced that half of Paulsgrove have him down as a grass and he’s terrified Marty Harrison will get to hear of it.’

  ‘I doubt it. Not for a while, anyway.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Harrison’s in intensive care. Harry’s boys busted him this morning. He took a bullet from the TFU.’

  Faraday told Winter what little he knew. Then he went back to Scott Spellar. Harrison’s premises had been clean. Just the way you’d expect if someone had tipped him off. He let the thought sink in, then wondered aloud whether Winter hadn’t had a longer conversation with the lad than he’d let on.

  ‘I’m not with you. You think I’d tell him Harrison was under the cosh?’

  ‘I think you’d want to run him. It may be the same thing.’

  ‘But you really think I’d jeopardise an operation? For a scrote like Spellar?’

  ‘It’s a question. That’s all.’

  There was a long silence, and Faraday began to suspect he’d pushed it too far. An allegation as serious as this, if it was to lead anywhere, needed hard evidence – evidence that Faraday simply didn’t have. Finally, he heard Winter stifling a yawn.

  ‘I’m back to bed, boss,’ he said. ‘If that’s OK by you.’

  The News broke the Harrison shooting in their midday first edition. Placards outside the city’s newsagents read ‘Police Shoot Father In Dawn Raid’. The bust had happened on Neville Bevan’s patch and all morning the phones had been ringing in the superintendent’s outer office with inquiries from other branches of the media. Local radio and television wanted briefings on the background to Red Rum. For how long had the raids been planned? How good was the intelligence that underpinned them? How come armed police had burst into a house that sheltered a sleeping baby?

  With immense patience, Bevan referred each of the callers to the headquarters press office at Winchester, but a couple of the more persistent
journalists managed to pin him down for a quote or two. The drugs war, he pointed out, was both dirty and dangerous. The men and women on the Drugs Squad, though not directly his responsibility, regularly put their lives on the line. If mistakes occasionally happened then it was deeply regrettable, but the police invested enormous amounts of time and effort in operations like Red Rum and there’d been absolutely no reason to doubt the intelligence. Other addresses raided across the city – many of them occupied by people who were close to Harrison – had yielded a rich harvest of Class A drugs. That, strictly off the record, might help to put the thing into some kind of perspective.

  Just after lunch, Faraday bumped into Bevan in the corridor. The superintendent looked him in the eye and then beckoned him into a nearby office which happened to be empty. The hospital was putting Harrison’s chances at sixty-forty. Given the passage of the bullet three millimetres beneath his heart that made him a very lucky man. In the meantime, a senior officer from another force had been called in to investigate the circumstances of the shooting and Pete Lamb had been suspended from duties while the initial inquiries got under way. How was Cathy coping?

  ‘I’ve sent her home, sir. She’s pretty upset.’

  Faraday was trying to work out whether Bevan knew about Pete drinking. He’d reluctantly agreed to take the blood test and it would only be a matter of days before the results came back.

  ‘I understand Lamb’s doing the Fastnet.’ Bevan was looking at a calendar on the wall. ‘Is that the case?’

  ‘Absolutely. He’s had leave booked for months.’

  ‘And when does it start?’

  ‘This Saturday. Though I think he’s over in Cowes from Thursday evening.’

  ‘Good.’ Bevan nodded. ‘Best bloody thing.’

  Late afternoon, Faraday made time to drive up to Cathy’s Portchester house. The curtains were drawn in the front room and he thought at first that she must be asleep, but eventually she came to the front door. She was wearing patched jeans and an old T-shirt with a print of Freddie Mercury across the front. She looked drawn and weary, and the mascara under her eyes had smudged where she’d been crying.