The Take

by Hurley, Graham

  As it was, though, Faraday had driven out to the New Forest, beyond Southampton, and spent a couple of priceless hours wading through the still-wet heather, waiting for the first churring of a pair of breeding nightjars. He’d visited them last year and the year before. They arrived in May from Africa, shy, dun-coloured birds, almost impossible to spot in their daytime scrapes among the gorse. Only at night would they emerge, fleeting silhouettes against the last of the sunset as they hunted for insects and moths. They flew in spurts, twisting and gliding, the churring noise issuing from the syrinx in their throats. Stand absolutely still, as Faraday had done, and a couple of handclaps might bring on the birds in big swoopy circles, curious to check out this stranger in their midst. He’d played the game for the best part of an hour, the birds softening his rage about Vanessa, and with the light finally drained from the night sky, he’d driven back down the road to a favourite pub and offered a private toast to her memory with three pints of Romsey bitter. Allies like Vanessa were hard to find. Dead, he knew that the ongoing war would be that much more pitiless.

  He put a couple of slices of bread under the grill and looked half-heartedly for bacon. The fridge, like so much else in the house, was beginning to fall apart. The place needed a thorough going-over. Sills and window frames on the weather side of the property were showing signs of rot and he’d known for months that it was time to get out the ladder and the sandpaper, but the one thing he was never short of was excuses. Another ruck about overtime allocations. Another outbreak of vehicle thefts. Another crisis with a dodgy informer.

  The thought of bacon finally abandoned, he buttered the toast, wandered through to the living room and stood in front of the big glass doors that opened on to the harbour, disappointed to find a thick grey ledge of cloud where the sun ought to be. The light was flat and lustreless. The water was the colour of lead. Even the oyster-catchers, normally so pert, seemed to have difficulty stirring themselves. Sometimes, just sometimes, Faraday felt his whole life could do with a stiff scrub-down and a coat or two of Weathershield. Something to keep the rain away, for Christ’s sake. Something bright for a change.

  Paul Winter, against his better judgement, finally agreed to accompany his wife to the hospital. It wasn’t about taking the time off (though that was the excuse he’d offered her) and it wasn’t that he didn’t think she meant it when she woke him up early and asked him to be there. It was just this thing about the Queen Alexandra. He hated the big hospital on the hill. He hated the kind of people who went there: overweight, ugly, greyfaced. He hated the bossy, in-yer-face posters on the corridor walls: don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t shag. He hated the heads-down weariness you encountered in the lift. And he hated, most of all, the feeling of resignation, of defeat, that overwhelmed you the moment you stepped inside the place. Life was about seizing opportunities, about playing the game to maximum advantage, about staying ahead of the pack. Hospitals, especially big anonymous ones like the QA, were for the also-rans.

  Joannie’s appointment card directed them to the gastro-intestinal clinic. She’d been to the GP twice since Christmas, complaining of pains beneath her rib cage. The first time, she’d come away with tablets for dyspepsia. The tablets had made no difference at all, and the second time the GP had referred her to the QA for tests and a scan.

  By now, she wasn’t eating properly or sleeping well. Winter, cheerfully dispassionate, put it down to her ongoing failure to get on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? As an ex-teacher, she was certain she could get at least as far as £64,000, a conviction which made Winter a willing accomplice when it came to making the calls to the contestants’ line after the show. Sixty-four grand would make all the difference. Sixty-four grand might even put daylight between himself and the likes of Faraday.

  The fact that he’d been paper-sifted out of contention for the DC vacancy on the Drugs Squad – the fact that he hadn’t even made it to the fucking interview board – still rankled, and the knowledge that it was Faraday who had shafted him made the insult even worse. ‘Fails occasionally to see the big picture’, Faraday had written, a form of management-speak that suggested Winter was a law unto himself. This was a judgement Winter himself wouldn’t necessarily dispute, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Winter had got Faraday a result on the Oomes case, and Faraday still didn’t understand that one good turn deserved another. ‘Fails occasionally to see the big picture’. A killer phrase like that, and Winter was lucky not to be back in uniform, posted to traffic cones and the challenge of the lost-property store.

  Winter had read last January’s copy of OK! twice before Joannie’s name was called. She took his arm and followed the nurse into the office at the end. The consultant got up the moment they appeared at the door, extending a hand to Joannie, and as soon as Winter saw the expression on his face he knew something terrible had happened. Bad news was like a smell. There was no disguising it.

  The consultant was tall, with a long, bony face and the hint of a northern accent. While Joannie made herself comfortable, he ducked his head to check a file.

  ‘What is it?’ Winter heard himself say. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Despite everything, he hadn’t once given the possibility of anything serious a moment’s thought. Joannie was as strong as an ox. Twenty-four years of marriage – countless fallings-out, countless makings-up – told him that she was immortal. However badly he treated her, whatever he got up to, she’d been there for him. Her capacity for punishment, for forgiveness, was infinite. Now this.

  The consultant took a tissue from a box on his desk and went through the motions of blowing his nose.

  ‘Mrs Winter,’ he began at last, ‘you’ll forgive me, but I’m afraid there’s no point in beating around the bush. Conversations like this can be difficult. If you feel you need …’ He left the sentence unfinished, nodding at the box of tissues.

  Fucking Kleenex? Winter was on his feet now.

  ‘Just tell us,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  For the first time, the consultant spared him a glance.

  ‘Mr Winter?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Please sit down. There’s no reason to make this more—’

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘And I’m about to answer it.’ He turned his head. ‘Mrs Winter, I’m afraid …’

  Joannie reached up for her husband, tugging him back. With some reluctance, Winter sat down. The consultant’s tone had changed. His eyes were on the file again and he sounded like he was reading a death sentence. Winter had heard judges more sympathetic than this.

  ‘Pancreatic what?’ he said.

  ‘Carcinoma, Mr Winter.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Cancer.’

  ‘Cancer?’ Winter stared at him, suddenly chilled. ‘You’re joking. Joannie? Cancer?’

  There was a long silence. From the waiting room came the rattle of a tea trolley. Then Joannie’s voice, smaller than Winter had ever heard it.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive, Mrs Winter.’

  ‘Can you’ – she hesitated – ‘do anything?’

  ‘Alas, no. We can try and make life easier for you, maybe a small operation, just to tidy things up … but no, long-term, I’m afraid no. This is a particularly aggressive cancer. You have secondaries in the stomach and liver. There are drugs, of course. Palliative treatment. The hospice. But I wouldn’t want to mislead you about the outcome.’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘About three months, Mrs Winter.’ The consultant inched the box of Kleenex towards her. ‘Though even in a case like this it’s hard to be precise.’

  Faraday had been at his desk at Southsea police station for several hours by the time Cathy Lamb arrived for their regular Monday conference. She’d driven down from Fratton nick where she had an office of her own. The old divisions of Portsmouth North and South were in the process of amalgamation into a single super-division, and in the consequent administrative unce
rtainties, Cathy had seized her chance. CID was short of Detective Inspectors to fight the rising tide of so-called volume crime, and with Faraday’s support Cathy had made it to acting DI. Responsibility suited her. She’d been in the job a couple of months now, and she plainly loved it. A big woman, crop-haired with an open, outdoors face, her gaze was steadier than ever.

  ‘How’s your little treasure, then?’ She nodded back towards the big open-plan CID office along the corridor where Vanessa’s replacement was punishing the photocopier.

  Faraday pulled a face.

  ‘She’s got some kind of agency for Beanie Babies,’ he said. ‘She brings the bloody things in every day, trying to flog them. Drives the blokes mad.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell her not to?’

  ‘I did. She doesn’t listen.’

  Faraday got to his feet and shut the door. The new management assistant was called Joyce. She was an overweight American in her early forties, the kind of woman who from day one had presumed an intimacy which didn’t exist. With Vanessa, Faraday had been only too happy to offload endless administrative baggage, including material which was extremely sensitive, freeing up precious time he could devote to something worthwhile. With this woman, that kind of trust was out of the question.

  Cathy seemed amused.

  ‘I hear her husband’s in the job.’

  ‘That’s right. He’s an Inspector at Southampton. As useless as she is.’

  ‘Nice to keep it in the family, though.’

  ‘Yeah, kind of two-for-one offer. Makes life twice as bloody difficult.’

  ‘Is she here for ever?’

  ‘No idea.’ Faraday nodded at the file on Cathy’s lap. ‘What’s the score, then? Anything interesting?’

  Faraday’s own CID boss was Willard, and the Detective Superintendent had made it clear that he expected Faraday to keep a watching brief over Cathy’s stewardship of Portsmouth North. Acting DI at twenty-eight was going some. The girl would need supervision.

  Cathy ran quickly through the usual tally of minor crimes: thefts from vehicles, vandalism, shoplifting, house burglary, warehouse break-ins, and, from the weekend, four serious assaults. In theory, she had six detectives and a couple of Sergeants to do the legwork, but as an ex-Sergeant herself she knew that the staffing figures were largely fiction. It was a rare week when at least a third of her guys weren’t either abstracted for major inquiries elsewhere, sorting out the backlog of training courses they’d missed, or filling in for other divisions stripped even barer than hers.

  ‘Then there’s Winter,’ she added. ‘Called in sick this morning.’

  ‘Nothing minor, I hope.’

  ‘Actually, it’s his wife. He had to take her to the hospital.’

  ‘Winter? Looking after his missus? You’re sure it was him?’

  ‘Had to be. Said it might take all day.’

  Faraday made a note on his jotter. It took real determination to resist change, but in his early forties Paul Winter was still an old-style DC, wholly unreconstructed, a man for whom the difference between criminality and innocence was never less than subjective. As such, he was the perfect specimen of the old Portsmouth Mafia, a brotherhood of like-minded detectives who’d thrived on alcohol, patronage and favouritism in more or less equal measure. Unlike his ex-colleagues, though, Winter had survived the CID culture changes of the eighties and some of the newer intake still viewed him with awe. Winter, they said, had a rare talent for getting inside the heads of the bad guys, for winning their trust and opening their mouths, for tying them into schemes so complex, so byzantine, they defied description. This interpretation of Winter’s MO was both colourful and compelling, but to Faraday, the truth was altogether simpler. On a good day, just, Winter stayed legit. The rest of the time he was as bent as the low-life he gloried in putting away.

  ‘Give him a call,’ he said briskly. ‘No hospital appointment lasts all day.’

  A frown ghosted across Cathy’s face. She was about to dig in, but Faraday didn’t give her the chance.

  ‘How’s Pete?’ he said. ‘Climbing the walls yet?’

  Pete Lamb was Cathy’s estranged husband, a uniformed Sergeant from Fareham nick. As leader of one of the force’s tactical firearms units, he’d been suspended pending the outcome of an internal inquiry after shooting a suspected drug dealer on an early-morning bust. That was bad enough, but what had turned poor threat perception into a potential jail sentence was the result of a subsequent blood test. Breaking every regulation in the book, Pete had been drinking. Thanks to some inspired work by Pete’s lawyer, the inquiry would probably take a couple of years to resolve certain issues about the admissibility of evidence from voluntary blood tests, but in the meantime, still on full salary, he was forbidden to take other paid work.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Cathy said.

  ‘Not bored out of his skull?’

  ‘Never. It’s June. He’s still got shares in the boat, and Cowes is coming up.’

  ‘Is he still living with his mum? Over in Gosport?’

  ‘Not any more. He’s just got a flat in Southsea. Whitwell Road.’

  ‘Nice?’

  Cathy gave him a look, then softened it with a smile.

  ‘Oldest trick in the book,’ she murmured. ‘How would I know?’

  For the third time in as many weeks, Pete Lamb made his way through the second-hand book shop, pushed past the boxes of Reader’s Digests at the back, and clumped up the bare wooden stairs to the office on top. He’d known Malcolm Garrett from Mal’s days as a DS at Fareham, and now that Mal had turned early retirement into a new career, Pete saw every reason to develop the relationship. A tatty room overlooking Southsea’s Albert Road wasn’t the greatest commercial address in the world, but, as Mal kept pointing out, this was just the start. After decades of neglect, the city was beginning to boom. And big money always brought with it the need for special kinds of investigative expertise.

  ‘Bird called Liz Tooley.’ Mal gestured towards the kettle on the shelf by the door. ‘Water’s still hot. Help yourself.’

  Liz Tooley headed the residential sales operation at Gunwharf Quays, an enormous harbourside redevelopment scheme that was fast turning thirty-three acres of ex-Navy land into an aspirational lifestyle fantasy. Already it had sucked in a hundred million pounds’ worth of investment. Retail names like Ted Baker, Tommy Hilfiger and Gap had finally secured a unique retail niche in the city, and plans for three hundred luxury harbourside apartments would no doubt do wonders for Portsmouth’s social mix.

  ‘They’re flogging the penthouses for half a million quid,’ Mal grunted. ‘You put down a grand for starters, then ten per cent, then the balance on completion. They’ve got people queuing round the block. Half a million quid. For some poxy flat. Can you believe that?’

  Pete could. Living in Gosport, on the other side of the harbour, he’d regularly been taking the ferry across, and the view on a sunny morning from the upper deck was more than enough to explain the rush to buy. Gunwharf Quays lay between the cobbled streets of Old Portsmouth, huddled around the harbourmouth, and the national treasure trove that was the Navy’s Historic Dockyard. The site was still chaotic, a busy muddle of diggers and piling-crews beneath the soaring construction cranes, but even without a look at the glitzy brochures the potential was obvious. A couple of minutes’ walk, and you’d be sitting on a train at the harbour station. Ninety minutes later, you’d be at Waterloo. For someone with a London job and a yearning for premium maritime views, Gunwharf Quays would be the dream address.

  Pete was trying to get the lid off the Kenco jar.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘She’s lost a buyer. Not lost him, exactly. It’s more complex than that.’

  The guy had taken an option on three flats, two of them penthouse apartments, all of them with waterside views. One had been for himself. Another for his mother. The third for a South African chum. Once the apartments were ready, the guy would be parting with nearly a million and
a half pounds.

  ‘That makes him worth finding,’ Mal pointed out. ‘Because his time is up.’

  He’d signed and paid for the thousand-pound options on 23 May, making an appointment to hand over the ten per cent deposits two weeks later. The appointment had been for late afternoon on Tuesday, 6 June, and he’d made a little joke about D-Day, inviting the sales girl to mark the occasion by accepting his invitation for dinner. The sales girl had pleaded pressure of time so he’d settled for a meet on site instead.

  ‘He didn’t show?’

  ‘No. And when they tried the numbers he left, they got nothing. His option expires tomorrow, but they’re naturally bolloxed about pissing him off if there’s some genuine reason he never made it on the sixth. So, sunshine, I just thought …’

  Pete had abandoned the coffee jar for a packet of Jaffa cakes, fumbling in his leather jacket for a notepad.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Pieter Hennessey. Spelled P–I–E–T—’

  ‘He’s South African too?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve got the numbers and stuff on a sheet from Liz. Guy’s a surgeon of some kind. Been in the UK for years now. Here.’

  Pete looked briefly at the sheet. With the phone numbers were three addresses, one in Beaconsfield, one in the New Forest and the third in Harley Street.

  ‘Private practice?’

  ‘So I gather. Apparently the guy earns a fortune, though at their prices he’d bloody have to.’ He paused, impatient as ever. ‘What d’you think, then?’

  Pete glanced up, wiping a smear of chocolate from the corner of his mouth. Had they tried the other two buyers? His mother? His mate?

  ‘Yeah. They’ve got phone and fax numbers in Cape Town but no reply so far. It could be they don’t exist, of course. Hennessey says he’s acting as proxy but there’s no real proof.’

  ‘So he could be buying these places as a spec?’