‘Then he’s wrong. If someone did send a Mayday, then I never heard about it.’
‘It’s on the log, black and white, Pendennis Radio Station.’
‘Then why didn’t they take action?’
‘Because Charlie cancelled it.’
‘Why would he have done that?’
‘You tell me.’
‘I can’t. Because I never knew in the first place. Listen’ – he bent forward on his chair, a man whose patience has suddenly been exhausted – ‘I know where you’re coming from and I know what you’re after. Like I say, the forensic’s nonexistent. Your only realistic hope is some kind of witness statement and to get that you’ve got to assume guilt and then trip someone up.’
‘Witness to what?’
For a second, Bissett looked almost sorry for Faraday. Then he glanced pointedly at his watch and bent down to retrieve his holdall.
‘We sailed a good race,’ he said quietly. ‘We did as well as we could and we lost three guys in the process. If I were you, I’d leave it at that.’
Back home, mid-evening, Faraday took a call from Dawn Ellis. She sounded hesitant, almost nervous. She’d been making some inquiries on the Paulsgrove estate after the assault on Scott Spellar and now she wanted a private word.
‘Scott phoned me a couple of times before he got done. He wanted to ask me about Paul Winter.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was really worried about what Paul could do. Paul was talking about arrest on a Class A drugs charge.’
‘Unless he turned informer?’
‘Unless he got close to Harrison again.’
‘Same thing.’
‘I know. Apparently Paul said he could put him away for seven years. Scott wanted to know whether that was true or not.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘I said Paul was right. It wasn’t a hundred per cent guaranteed but seven years wouldn’t be far out.’
Faraday closed his eyes. Paul Winter had been close to the truth in the car. It might have been kinder to have put Scott Spellar away at the start instead of playing Harry Wayte’s game. At least his legs would have stayed intact.
‘Letting him run was a terrible idea,’ he muttered. ‘We’re all so sure that money will sort it.’
‘Whose money?’
‘Ours. As well as Harrison’s.’
‘Well, he didn’t take either. Not after we arrested him that night.’
‘I know. He told me that in hospital.’ He paused. ‘So who set him up for the beating?’
There was a long silence. Informing was strictly for the scrotes. Detectives were better than that. Unless the circumstances were truly exceptional.
‘I think we did,’ Dawn said at last, ‘the day Paul and I called round to give him back his two hundred pounds. There was a guy there. He sussed us. He knew what we were about. I know he did.’
‘Friend of Scottie’s?’
‘I doubt it.’ She paused. ‘Paul was that keen to get the money witnessed. He told me you were insisting. Is that true, sir?’
Faraday was watching the shadows lengthen as dusk stole over the harbour. At length, he sighed.
‘Sort of,’ he said.
Twenty-Three
The meet, this time, was at Harry Wayte’s insistence. His summons caught Paul Winter at home.
‘It’s my day off,’ Winter said. ‘I’m down to cut the bloody grass again. You want me to come to your office?’
‘No. You’re still living in that poxy bungalow in Drayton?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You know the car park by Farlington Marshes? Meet me there in half an hour.’
Winter was at the car park with time to spare. It was a cloudy day, almost completely windless, and he gazed out at the big grey expanse of Langstone Harbour, wondering what had prompted Harry Wayte to leave the office. He’d been rather hoping for news of a series of dawn raids, mounted on the assurance of the names Winter had passed on. That, and a quiet invitation to apply for one of two vacancies on the Drugs Squad which Winter happened to know were imminent. A couple of years working under Harry Wayte would see him nicely into retirement. The thought of saying goodbye to Faraday’s strange interpretation of detective work brought a smile to his face.
Wayte was driving one of the Escorts the Drugs Squad had recently acquired for long-term surveillance work. It had once been a patrol car and although the support mechanics had stripped off the decals and red and yellow stripes, it was still possible to read the word ‘Police’ against the white paintwork. When Winter pointed this out, Harry Wayte just laughed.
‘It’s double-bluff,’ he said. ‘So fucking obvious everyone assumes it can’t be true.’
They were sitting in Winter’s Honda Prelude. He’d played the Chris de Burgh cassette so much lately, it was starting to wear out. Harry reached for the controls and turned it off. Winter had rarely seen him so businesslike.
‘Listen. Those names and addresses you gave me.’
‘Yeah?’
‘One of them was a no-show, but we busted the other two this morning and you were right. They were both doing smack.’
Winter nodded. On these occasions it paid to show no emotion, simply a lift of the eyebrow and the kind of quiet professional curiosity that would give Harry a chance to show off.
‘How much smack?’
‘Couple of dozen bags at one address, all sealed up and ready to go, and … you ready for this?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Nearly a kilo at the other.’
This time Winter permitted himself a low whistle. The sums were awesome. Nearly a kilo, scaled into tiny bags for sale at ten pounds on the street, would be worth in excess of quarter of a million. Harry Wayte, at the very least, owed him a drink.
‘A pleasure,’ Harry grunted, ‘but just tell me one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Where did you get the names?’
Winter eased the window open. It was low tide and the car was suddenly flooded with the tang of drying seaweed. Harry waited for a second or two, then saved Winter the bother of answering.
‘It was that Spanish tart, wasn’t it? That Juanita.’
Winter looked at him for a long moment.
‘How come?’ he said at last.
‘Because all the stuff about Harrison going into partnership is bollocks. The guy’s flat on his back in hospital. He’s kakking himself that these guys are going to muscle in and he’s gone in for a spot of early revenge. Us taking them out suits him nicely. Just a shame we didn’t shoot them.’
Winter was thinking fast. The implications of what Harry was saying were obvious. Juanita had set him up.
‘She thinks Harrison’s shagging Elaine Pope,’ he began.
Harry shook his head, emphatic.
‘That’s bollocks, too. She’s big mates with Elaine, and Dave as well. In fact it was her idea to get Marty a private room at the hospital and put Dave Pope outside. She’s genuinely terrified someone’s going to knock Marty off, and after this morning I don’t blame her.’
‘But she hates Marty. She thinks he’s an animal. She’s had enough of him.’
‘Wrong, mate. She’d do anything for him. Short of getting screwed herself.’
Winter dismissed the thought. He’d been there. He’d had her.
‘Not the way I hear it, you didn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
Harry shook his head and reached for the door handle. Then, halfway out of the car, he paused.
‘That motor of hers you were in. Didn’t happen to turn the light on, did she? Just when you thought it was your turn?’
Winter stared at him. The light was a signal. Dave Pope’s cue. Harry Wayte was laughing now, his big face scarlet.
‘You should send her a bill,’ he said. ‘Services rendered.’
Pete Lamb was waiting for Faraday at the end of one of the wooden pontoons in the Hornet Marina, a five-minute walk from the Gosp
ort end of the harbour ferry. Tomorrow, Faraday knew that Pete would be tucked up with his solicitor, waiting to be formally arrested by the investigating officer sent down by the Police Complaints Authority. The charge, almost certainly, would be attempted murder – and if a court found him guilty, Pete would be facing a long spell behind bars. Under the circumstances, Faraday could only marvel at the way Pete seemed to have taken this possibility in his stride. Shaking Faraday’s hand, he even managed a grin.
The cabin of the Sigma 33 lay open for Faraday’s inspection. He climbed over the low rails, steadying himself on one of the backstays. According to Pete, the yacht was identical to Marenka, same rig, same layout down below. Faraday glanced around the cockpit, marvelling at how small it was. Six grown men would fill this space. Easily.
Pete explained that very rarely would the whole crew be together in the cockpit. On a reach or a beat, every available spare body would be sitting out on the weather side, their legs tucked under the bottom wire, their arms folded over the upper rail. That way, their weight would help nudge the yacht back towards the vertical. The better the balance the better the performance, and on a race like the Fastnet, with its long beats to windward, a quarter of a knot could mean a six-mile lead after the first twenty-four hours.
Faraday went through it in his head, trying to match the theory against the real world of offshore racing. The learning curves might be steep but already he could sense the way a crew might divide and then subdivide: a couple in the cockpit, a couple sitting out, a couple down below. Apartness could make for friction. Especially when there might be a corpse aboard.
‘No,’ Pete said. ‘Often four are sitting out.’
‘So when do they sleep?’
‘On the wire. I’ve done it thousands of times. You just nod off.’
‘All night?’
‘Occasionally. Take a look below. It’s a black hole. Some guys prefer to stay up top.’
Faraday clambered down the steps and into the main cabin. Pete was right. It was tiny: a bench seat to port with a table; a couple of bunks, one on top of the other, to starboard. Aft of the bunks was a cramped little galley with a stove mounted on gimbals. Every available space was filled with cupboards and other storage.
‘And this?’
Faraday gestured at a table and chair tucked into the space behind the steps on the port side.
‘That’s where the nav. lives.’ Pete indicated the electronic log, sonar read-out and VHF radio consoles on the shelf beside the table. ‘And this is the closest you get to privacy.’
Faraday was looking at the row of charts stacked vertically on the back of the table. Eastern Channel. Western Channel. Needles to Start Point. North Brittany Coast. Pulling open a drawer, he found himself looking at a collection of rulers, protractors, dividers, and a battered box of carefully sharpened pencils. This is where Henry would have sat. This is where the man would have powered up his laptop, studied the weather print-outs and spent long reaches of the night worrying himself stupid about his wife. Faraday picked up the dividers and tested the points against the tip of one finger. The irony was all too clear. As far as Ruth was concerned, Henry Potterne, the master navigator, had completely lost his bearings.
Faraday shivered. Even in port, at the height of the summer, it felt cold down here. So what must it have been like for Henry at sea? Tormented by thoughts of his wife’s betrayal? And by the rough justice he’d meted out to Stewart Maloney?
Pete was standing behind him. He gazed around at the tiny cabin, everything tidied away, everything shipshape.
‘This is as good as it ever gets,’ he said. ‘Imagine six blokes with all their gear. Then sails dumped in the middle here. And food. And wet towels. And everything else. Believe me, the place becomes a slum in minutes.’
Faraday wasn’t listening. Forward of the main cabin lay a hand-pumped toilet and a saucepan-sized basin. For a big man, it would be difficult to even turn round in the space available. Beyond that was another door. Faraday opened it. The yacht narrowed in front of his eyes. This was the forecabin. At knee level, filling the triangular space towards the bow, were two bunks.
‘What happens here?’
Faraday was on his hands and knees, peering at the cluttered space beneath the bunks.
‘Storage. Spare anchor chain. Plastic buckets. Sails. Whatever.’
‘And during a race?’
‘You keep everything as central as possible. Lug it into the main cabin.’
‘So it’s empty?’
‘More or less, yes.’
Faraday took a closer look. It was difficult to estimate measurements but if there was room for a man on the bunk above, then surely there’d be space for Maloney underneath.
‘Would anyone sleep in here during the race?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s weight again. We keep the bow riding as high as possible.’
‘So this would be empty?’
‘Yes.’
‘No reason for anyone to come in here?’
‘Probably not.’
Faraday was peering up at the hatch. Releasing the clamps, he pushed hard. The perspex hatch swung up, nearly to the vertical, and the damp, claustrophobic little cabin smelled suddenly of fresh air.
‘What happens up there?’
‘That’s the foredeck.’
‘Could you get a rope down here? To haul something out?’
‘Of course.’
‘Excellent.’ Faraday glanced triumphantly over his shoulder, then gestured up at the open hatch. ‘See? It’s plenty big enough.’
Pete Lamb was crouched awkwardly in the tiny doorway. He’d lost the plot completely.
‘Plenty big enough for what?’
‘Maloney, of course.’ Faraday grinned at him, a moment of the purest pleasure, then reached up to pull the hatch shut.
A copy of Coastlines was lying on Faraday’s desk when he returned to the office. The entire front page, cleared of advertising, was devoted to Kate Symonds’s Port Solent story. The story was headlined ‘So Where Were The Police?’ and featured a grid of photos, including a number of vandalised cars and – much more importantly – a photograph of Elaine Pope snapped on a long lens through a window of her waterside house. Elaine was revealed to be four-hundred-pound-an-hour call-girl Vikki Duvall, and the thrust of the story implied that her continued presence in Port Solent was somehow tied to her cooperation in an on-going CID inquiry. Of the Maloney inquiry there was absolutely no mention.
The front page had Nelly Tseng’s fingerprints all over it. In a series of blistering quotes, she detailed instance after instance when calls to her local police station had produced nothing more than assurances that matters were being dealt with. Port Solent, she pointed out, was attracting more and more money into the city. As a leisure opportunity it had been a brilliant success. Its marina facilities were second to none. Buyers were queuing for the coveted waterfront homes. Yet foreign investors might well pull out unless something was done to stamp out the current plague of trouble-makers. ‘The development that put a smile on the city’s face is now under threat,’ thundered the accompanying editorial. ‘Is it beyond our policemen to deal with the vandals and the high-class tarts?’
The call to Bevan’s office came minutes later. Detective Superintendent Arnie Pollock sat beside him at the eight-seat conference table and it was obvious at once that the meeting would be under his control. He’d just come off the phone from HQ. He’d been talking to the Assistant Chief Constable (Operations) and Pollock’s face was the colour of putty. Headquarters wanted a full report on the division’s current CID workload by close of play and it was his job to make sure they got it. Issue number one was Faraday’s bloody misper. He wanted a detailed account of progress to date and he wanted some solid thoughts about developments to come. His tone of voice left no room for ambiguity. The future of the Maloney inquiry was on the line.
Faraday ignored the threat. He’d brought hi
s copy of Coastlines with him and he was looking at Bevan.
‘Who gave them Elaine’s name?’
‘I did. I think I told you.’
‘And you gave Symonds the OK to use it?’
‘That’s irrelevant. She uses what she wants to use. What you or I might say wouldn’t make the slightest difference. The bloody woman’s out of control.’
‘And you still gave her Elaine’s name?’
‘I had to. It was—’ He frowned. ‘Germane.’
‘Germane, bollocks. Germane to us, maybe. Germane to Nelly Tseng, very definitely. I gave Elaine certain assurances. She hasn’t got a prayer now. Thanks to this.’ He tapped the paper and turned away in disgust.
Bruised himself, Bevan dismissed Faraday’s outburst with a shrug. Elaine Pope was trash. Tarts deserved what they got. There was a long silence, then Pollock cleared his throat. His distaste for scenes like this was legendary. There wasn’t a problem in the world that couldn’t be solved by the careful application of cold logic.
‘Tell me about Maloney,’ he said again.
Faraday was still fighting to control himself.
‘It’s difficult …’ he began.
‘Everything’s difficult, Joe. Just give me the facts.’
Faraday started to review the way the inquiry had gathered pace. Going after McIlvenny had been a mistake. He admitted that. But the circumstantial evidence was strong and he’d have been foolish to ignore it.
‘Facts, Joe.’
‘I’m giving you facts.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re giving me waffle. Fact number one. How can we be sure that Maloney’s come to any harm?’ Faraday blinked.
‘We can’t,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s a reasonable supposition.’
‘Think court, Joe. Would a defence brief agree with you? Would a jury?’
‘These are early days. Once I’ve put bodies in the dock, they’ll go down. I guarantee it.’
‘What bodies?’
‘Oomes and Bissett. And Hartson, too.’
‘On what charge?’
‘Conspiracy to murder. Aiding an offender. They all knew about Maloney. They knew the background, and once Hartson had told them what happened, they knew the guy was dead. The problem they had was disposal. Getting rid of the evidence.’
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