Turnstone

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Pete?’ Faraday gestured beyond her, into the gloom of the tiny hall.

  Cathy shrugged.

  ‘Out somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘Like where?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. I’m only his wife.’

  She looked at him for a long moment, wanting him to go away, but Faraday didn’t budge. Finally, she invited him in. A small table lamp in the lounge threw a soft light on to the sofa. The cushions were still indented with the shape of Cathy’s long body.

  Faraday settled himself in the armchair beside the fireplace.

  ‘What’s the problem, Cath?’

  Cathy shot him a look, refusing him the satisfaction of an answer.

  ‘Are you here as a friend?’ she said at last. ‘Or should I phone for a lawyer?’

  ‘Depends what you want to talk about.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about anything.’

  Faraday shrugged, then lay back against the plump headrest of the armchair, peering up at the clip-framed photos around the wall. Cathy’s grin spoke volumes about her personality. Big-hearted and spontaneous, it lit up her entire face. Most of the photos featured Pete as well, though his smile was more guarded.

  ‘Things been OK between you?’

  Cathy closed her eyes and shook her head. Her voice was very low, as if she was talking to herself.

  ‘I don’t need this,’ she whispered. ‘Truly, I don’t.’

  ‘You may have no choice, love.’

  ‘I do, and I’d like you to leave.’

  Faraday studied her a moment, nonplussed.

  ‘You phoned me this morning,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I was upset.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I’m knackered. I’m serious. I’d like you to go. I’m grateful and everything, and I know you mean well, but I’ll sort this on my own.’ She stood up, reaching out to the mantelpiece for support. ‘No offence,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be better by myself. It’s nothing new, I promise. I’ve been rehearsing for weeks.’

  She offered him a weak smile and nodded towards the door. Faraday got to his feet and turned to go, then paused.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ he said, ‘if that helps.’

  Cathy nodded.

  ‘I know you do,’ she said wearily. ‘That’s what frightens me.’

  Back at the station in Kingston Crescent, Faraday found a note from Bevan Blu-Tacked to his computer screen. He’d had yet another call from Nelly Tseng, the woman who ran the Port Solent management company. She’d made time in her schedule for a meeting tomorrow morning at eleven and she was expecting the pleasure of his company. At the bottom of the note Bevan had added a scribbled order. Be there, it read.

  Next door, the CID room was empty. When he finally located Dawn Ellis, she confirmed that Cathy Lamb hadn’t done anything about organising a surveillance task force for the Port Solent car park. With Cathy away, the current CID strength was now down to just two bodies, herself and Paul Winter. What did Faraday want her to do?

  Faraday was looking at the big white board beside the door on which individual detectives tallied current jobs. The board was covered in black squiggles, crime after crime that was still awaiting attention, and gazing at it Faraday felt a sudden weariness. Would they be chasing shadows for ever, their pitiful resources divided between an ever-growing army of shoplifters, burglars, con men and car thieves? Or might there, one day, be a chance to take the initiative? To turn this depressing game of catch-up into something altogether more bold?

  Dawn Ellis was still waiting for a reply.

  ‘Eleven o’clock tomorrow,’ Faraday grunted. ‘You, me and a woman called Nelly Tseng.’

  An hour and a half later, on the point of going home, Dawn Ellis took a call from Paul Winter. She liked Winter. He was old-style, and shameless, and didn’t much care who knew it. Plump and balding, he ambled around in his car coat, winding everyone else up with his boasts about all the quality criminals he’d nicked. Anyone who wore aftershave that awful deserved her admiration.

  Just now, typically, he seemed to be in a pub. She could hear conversation and the clink of glasses.

  ‘Dawn, love? I’m after a favour.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come here and I’ll tell you. Don’t be long, though. There’s snooker on the telly tonight.’

  She found him deep in conversation with the barmaid at a pub beside the level crossing. He ordered Dawn a Bacardi breezer and another pint of Kronenberg for himself.

  In the corner beneath the telly he explained what he was after.

  ‘The lad we talked to on Saturday, Scottie.’ He beckoned her closer. ‘I took a look round that shit-heap of his up in Paulsgrove. All those trips to London, he must have made a bob or two.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I found eight hundred quid stashed in his bedroom and I seized it. It’s been in the nick safe all weekend, but I gave him six hundred back yesterday morning. Guvnor’s orders.’

  ‘Where did the money come from?’

  ‘Harrison. Must have.’

  ‘In person?’

  ‘Probably. He doesn’t trust anyone else.’

  ‘Then it’s evidence, isn’t it, the money?’ Dawn frowned. ‘Didn’t anyone mention this to forensic? Shouldn’t we be looking for prints here?’

  ‘I told you, love. I had to give it back.’

  ‘Had to?’

  ‘Yeah, guvnor’s orders.’ He spread his hands wide. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘What about the rest?’

  ‘He gets that now. I just need a witness.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Mr Faraday thinks I need watching.’ He leaned across the table and patted her arm. ‘This job used to be fun once. Remember?’

  He drove her to Anson Avenue in his car. Someone had been at work with the spray can again, turning ‘Scum’ into ‘Scummer’. Scummer was a local term of abuse for anyone born in Southampton. Round here, genuine Scummers had a life expectancy measured in minutes.

  Winter knocked a couple of times and then stepped back, looking up at the top windows. ‘Someone’s in,’ he said. ‘I can hear them.’

  He tried again, harder this time, and a moment later the door was pulled open by a thin, pale-faced man in his mid-twenties. He was wearing jeans and a leather waistcoat, and his throat was necklaced with a daisy-chain tattoo.

  ‘Scott around?’

  The man shook his head and flicked the remains of a roach past Winter’s left shoulder. Then he looked at Dawn.

  ‘You that desperate for company, missis?’

  ‘No, unless you’re offering.’

  He laughed, exposing a mouthful of blackened teeth. Winter ignored him. He wanted to know about Scott. Where was he? When was he expected back?

  ‘Why’s that then? You got something for him?’

  Dawn Ellis glanced at Winter. This was a conversation they shouldn’t be having. Not in front of a total stranger. Winter had his hand in his coat pocket. He began to pull out an envelope and then had second thoughts. The man on the doorstep was watching his every move.

  ‘Wanna leave it, do you?’ He nodded at Winter’s pocket and then leered at Dawn again. ‘Only I’m bound to see him later. Me and a few mates.’

  Seven

  All the way to Port Solent, next morning, Faraday was trying to forget that J-J was due back on the evening ferry but even Dawn Ellis, who regarded her boss as seriously remote, noticed how fretful and preoccupied he seemed.

  ‘Is anything the matter, sir?’ she inquired, as they turned into the big car park at the marina complex.

  ‘Nothing, love.’ He gestured at the line of bars and restaurants that fronted on to The Boardwalk, keen to change the subject. ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’

  Walking across the car park, Faraday mused about the brutality of the social contrasts. Millions of pounds’ worth of yachts tied up beside one of the UK’s most deprived council estates. Knick-knack shops selling pot-pourri at six pounds a throw w
hen kids half a mile away couldn’t afford new shoes.

  Dawn let him get it off his chest, then nodded across at the big UCI cinema complex.

  ‘Ever tried it, sir?’

  Faraday gazed at her, wrong-footed.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Then maybe you should.’ Dawn risked a smile. ‘They sell great popcorn and the sound system’s brilliant.’

  Nelly Tseng was a slight, intense, exquisitely dressed Hong Kong Chinese in her mid-forties with a big desk, lots of gold jewellery, and perfect English dusted with just the trace of an American accent. Her eyes were as cold as her handshake and she had absolutely no time for small talk. Faraday had scarcely sat down before she was telling him how successful Port Solent had become. The place was an absolute smash. The bars and restaurants were packed every night and she had a queue of heavyweight merchandisers itching to get into the retail outlets. The last thing she needed now was pondlife.

  ‘Pondlife?’ Faraday inquired mildly.

  ‘Kids from across the tracks. As far as food and beverage is concerned, we’re covered. They can’t afford the prices, not in the bars, and certainly not in the restaurants. But they still come. God knows why, but they do. Have you checked with that superintendent of yours?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you’ll know about the cars. My security guys keep a log. Here.’

  Faraday took the proffered sheet of paper. Talking to Nelly Tseng was like trying to survive in a gale-force wind. Unless you gave a little, you were doomed.

  ‘Terrible.’ Faraday knew the list of vandalised cars by heart. ‘Must be a real pain.’

  ‘Too right. And you see that last one? The top-of-the-range Mercedes? Guy over from Monaco, big investor, looking to fund the next major expansion. And you know what happens to his car? He leaves it outside the multiplex for an hour and when he comes back it’s scored from end to end.’

  ‘I expect it was hired, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s hardly the point, Mr Faraday. He’s thinking clientele. He’s thinking Joe Public. A family spending eighty pounds in a restaurant or the evening in the cinema doesn’t expect to find their car trashed.’ She tapped a perfect nail on the desk. ‘So my Mr Mercedes wants to know why. And so do I.’

  ‘You’ve got CCTV?’

  ‘Of course we have. You’ll have seen the cameras.’

  ‘Then maybe you should upgrade the system.’

  ‘We’re looking at it, Mr Faraday, but you’re talking serious money. My commercial tenants already pay a fortune in rates. So do the residents. So do we. To put it crudely, Inspector, that buys them you.’

  Faraday stole a glance at Dawn Ellis. She looked spellbound.

  ‘I’ll need more than this.’ Faraday gestured at the list of cars. ‘I’ll need times, locations. We look for patterns in cases like this. DC Ellis will be your point of contact.’

  Dawn Ellis mustered a smile. Nelly Tseng didn’t take her eyes off Faraday. She wanted the organ grinder, not the monkey.

  ‘Let’s understand each other, Inspector. We talk the language of results here. That’s why we’re so successful. That’s why we’re setting the tone. Your city needs a future, Mr Faraday, and we’re happy to oblige. No one wants to go back to the swamp, do they?’

  ‘Swamp?’

  ‘Portsmouth. You’ve been thinking small-time too long, Inspector. Things have to change around here.’

  She gestured vaguely towards the window, dismissing the cranes and the tower blocks beyond the low sweep of the motorway, and Faraday gazed at her, masking a hot surge of anger behind a puzzled smile. At length, he got to his feet.

  ‘Swamps can be interesting,’ he murmured, ‘if you’re into birdlife.’

  Before returning to Kingston Crescent, Faraday drove to Paulsgrove. He’d phoned Bevan from Port Solent, asking for an update on Marty Harrison, and when the superintendent had told him that the surgeons had done a second operation and that Harrison would definitely pull through, he felt obliged to pass on the news. The least he owed Scott Spellar was a nudge on the elbow. Get out now. While you still can.

  Outside Spellar’s house, Faraday gestured at the scrawled message on the front door.

  ‘Nice area,’ he grunted. ‘No wonder the kids go off the rails.’

  Dawn Ellis nodded, but said nothing. This was her second trip to Anson Avenue in less than twelve hours, but one of the many lessons that CID work had taught her was the need for discretion. Never say more than you have to. No matter what kind of company you keep.

  There was no response to Faraday’s knock at the front door. Round the back, he peered in through the kitchen window but there was no sign of life. Someone had left a copy of the News on the window sill and Faraday wondered whether it might have been Scott. Over a grainy photograph of five handcuffed men being bundled into the back of a police van, the headline read ‘Drugs Bust – More Arrests’, and Faraday was still wondering what young Scottie must have made of the story when he returned to the car.

  ‘You interviewed the lad,’ he said to Ellis. ‘What’s the verdict?’

  Dawn Ellis took time to frame her answer.

  ‘Straight,’ she said at last. ‘I just thought he was dead honest.’

  ‘But bent as well?’

  ‘As far as the coke and stuff was concerned, of course. But it was a job for him. It paid well. It was pretty exciting. And round here that’s a definite result. He hated us getting at him, hated it. Poor little sod didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘He grassed Marty Harrison,’ Faraday pointed out. ‘Did that surprise you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not?’

  They were waiting at traffic lights at the entrance to the estate. The conversation was going further than Dawn Ellis had intended.

  ‘Paul can be very persuasive,’ she said carefully. ‘He’s clever in situations like that.’

  ‘That’s what he’s there for. That’s why we get results.’

  ‘Of course, sir. I know that. It’s just’ – she shrugged – ‘the kid was really upset about his grandad, you could tell. When he saw those photos …’ She shook her head, and looked quickly out of the window.

  The lights changed to green and Faraday turned on to the dual carriageway. Minutes later, speeding into the city on the spur motorway, he glanced across at Dawn again.

  ‘Harrison’s place was clean,’ he told her.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So why was that, d’you think? Did young Scottie tip him off?’

  Dawn frowned. She’d been asking herself exactly the same question, ever since she’d accompanied Winter to the house last night. Had Scott put two and two together about the imminence of a drugs bust, then he might well have passed the message on to Marty Harrison. But if that was the case, how come Paul Winter was handing him an envelope stuffed with cash, albeit his own? None of it made any sense, and in the end she thought it best to be honest.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He may well have done, but I simply don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think we frightened him?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And do you think he’d relish a meet with the likes of Harrison? Given the fact we’d pulled him in?’

  ‘Obviously not.’

  Faraday nodded in mute agreement. The conversation died while he swooped past a big continental lorry and tucked into the slow lane again.

  ‘Winter knew Harrison personally, didn’t he? Way back? Before my time?’

  ‘I think he’d had dealings with him, yes.’ Dawn was frowning. ‘But they were never mates, not so far as I know.’

  ‘I don’t mean mates. I mean acquaintances. He got a favour or two out of Harrison, the way I heard it.’

  ‘Is that right, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’ Faraday seemed oblivious to the sudden caution in her voice. ‘And I understand it helped our clear-up rate no end.’

  Dawn stared at him for a moment, then looked away. They wer
e nearly back in the city before she broke the silence.

  ‘You want me to tell Paul that? Pass a message?’

  Faraday permitted himself the beginnings of a smile.

  ‘You’ll do it anyway,’ he said softly, ‘whatever I say.’

  Back at the station, the inspectors’ office was empty. Faraday draped his jacket on the back of the chair and gazed at his desk, struck yet again by the way that command seemed to guarantee such total isolation. He’d been a DI for four years now, winning the promotion after a long stint as a DS in neighbouring Waterlooville. The move back on to Portsea Island had brought him much closer to home, and he’d treasured the freedom of being his own boss in a division as busy and varied as Portsmouth North, but he’d never anticipated the distance he’d have to keep between himself and the rest of the squad.

  In part, he’d learned to recognise this gulf as inevitable. It was true what his old guvnors had told him – that the investigative buck well and truly stopped with the DI – but there was something else, too, and the older he got, the more difficult it was to define. It had to do with laughter and a degree of irresponsibility. It had to do with the knowledge that each working day was finite and that a limit existed to what one man could reasonably achieve. Get yourself promoted to detective inspector, and those comforts disappeared. Faraday’s responsibility was no longer one part of the jigsaw, or even two, but the whole bloody puzzle. It was his job to piece it together, his job to conjure administrative order out of chaos, and the longer he did it the harder it was to resist the conclusion that the job was impossible. Being a successful DI meant learning how to survive under a state of constant siege – not just from the criminal fraternity but from his own bosses as well. And in war, as Faraday was beginning to understand, no plan survives contact with the enemy.

  Enemy? Faraday sat back at his desk, visualising his squad next door, the fellow campaigners on whom he had to depend. The fact that most of them had either been poached by other divisions, or were sunning themselves on foreign beaches, was yet another irritation, but Faraday had long since stopped believing that the CID room would ever be up to full strength, and simply counted himself lucky to have acquired such an extraordinary bunch of individuals.