The Gunwharf’s thirty-three acres were broadly divided by the cavernous dry dock which would soon become City Quay. To the north, the leisure and retail complexes were already taking shape: huge grey boxes, metal clad, which would house the shopping malls, pubs and restaurants. Carrying anything heavy this far would be a pain, and logic told Faraday that they should be much more interested in the south-west corner of the site, the couple of acres that abutted directly onto the harbour and the Wightlink ferry terminal. This muddy chaos, criss-crossed by dumper trucks and gangs of sodden navvies, had yet to support the gleaming elevations of Arethusa House, though foundation work had been going on all winter, the steady thump-thump of the huge pile-drivers audible all over the city.
The uniformed Inspector caught Faraday by the arm. The weather had done nothing for his temper.
‘When was all this supposed to have happened?’
Faraday had already had this conversation with someone else in his office. Clearly messages didn’t get passed on.
‘We’re interested in the night of the eighteenth.’
‘That’s ten days ago.’ The Inspector gestured at the churned-up mud and pools of standing water. ‘And you’re telling me we’re looking for footprints?’
‘I’m telling you we’re looking for human remains.’
‘Like where?’
Faraday glanced at the site engineer. As yet he hadn’t fully grasped quite what Faraday and Ferguson were trying to investigate. Were they really saying that someone had turned up with a dead body?
Faraday took him by the arm. Only yards away, there was access to the site from the jetty of the Wightlink terminal. A metal ladder climbed the newly piled seawall, and at the top it was child’s play to squeeze around a poorly secured stretch of fence.
‘Our suspect came in here,’ he explained. ‘That’s the way we see it.’
‘With a corpse?’
‘Probably with parts of a corpse. Maybe a couple of journeys. We don’t know.’ He stepped across a tangle of pipes, aware of the boom of the enormous construction crane revolving slowly above their heads. ‘So how do you build these flats? How do you put them together?’
The site engineer looked relieved. Here was a question he understood. He walked Faraday around the boundaries of the apartment block. Dozens of sunken piles poked up through the yellow mud. These piles, he explained, would be linked laterally, creating a raft of reinforced concrete on which the structure itself would rise. Faraday, trying to picture it, asked about the space beneath the concrete raft. To the naked eye, there would appear to be a gap between the base of the building and the soil beneath.
‘That’s right.’ The engineer nodded. ‘You’ll get voids. Bound to.’
‘But the building is obviously walled on all four sides.’
‘Of course.’
Faraday glanced at the Inspector, but the uniformed man was deep in conversation with Ferguson. He was asking about site security. His POLSA search team included specially trained sniffer dogs, and a look at the on-site video tapes might short-circuit all this guesswork bollocks.
‘Any intruder would be caught on camera, right?’
‘Afraid not, sir.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘There are no cameras.’
The Inspector didn’t believe it.
‘What about patrols?’
‘One guy, on all night.’
‘One guy? For this lot?’ He gazed round. ‘There must be a fortune in gear here. Doesn’t anyone keep an eye on it?’
The site engineer admitted that stuff went missing. Break-ins at night were frequent. Hence the management’s interest in a close working partnership with the police.
‘That’s above my head,’ the Inspector grunted. ‘But I’d suggest more bodies and a decent camera set-up. Still, that’s your decision.’ He turned back to Faraday. ‘What’s the story then, Joe? Bloke climbs up your ladder. Bag full of bits. Then what?’
Faraday scrambled down the earth bank and into the wide trench that surrounded the base of the apartment block. The mud was glutinous underfoot and there were big puddles of standing water, pitted with rain. Everyone else followed.
‘Say he came down here.’ Faraday was looking at the site engineer. ‘And say he dug sideways into this lot.’ He nodded at the banked earth on the inner side of the trench. ‘Or went much deeper into the site, in among the pilings there. What would we be looking at in, say, a year’s time?’
‘An apartment block. Arethusa House.’
‘Starting where?’
‘Starting where we’re standing now.’
‘So everything inside this line would be’ – he was still looking at the site engineer – ‘under what?’
‘Under two feet of reinforced concrete.’
‘So if you wanted to dig it up? Get at it?’
The site engineer at last understood. He plunged his hands into the pockets of his anorak and shook his head.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said bleakly.
Winter had been waiting for nearly two hours in the drenching rain before the golf umbrella finally appeared. It was striped blue and white and the bulky figure beneath held it low, angled into the howling wind.
Crazy Lady was berthed towards the end of the outer pontoon, riding uneasily on the swell. According to the marina authorities, she’d been there for a couple of days, though Hennessey had booked in under a false name. Winter wasn’t good with boats, but he judged the motor cruiser to be about forty feet, moulded in sleek white plastic, with a high exposed bridge at the rear of the superstructure and a wide sitting-out area at the stern where you’d pose with your evening drinks. In a different setting, with better weather and a couple of semi-naked women, it might have come straight from the pages of Hello! magazine. How fitting, thought Winter, watching the umbrella approach.
The early morning flight out of Southampton had brought him to Jersey. He’d taken a cab to the marina, walking the pontoons until he found Parrish’s motor cruiser. When he’d tried the big glass access doors at the back they were locked, but he could see the glow of a television in the saloon and there were clothes strewn everywhere. Over at the marina office, the girl behind the counter thought that Crazy Lady had been on the pontoon for a couple of days, but she couldn’t be sure. When asked for the name of the skipper, she’d just looked blank.
Not that it mattered. Tucked into the meagre shelter of the big seawall, Winter was certain he knew. The same slight roll to the walk. The same impression of size and bulk. And, as he collapsed the umbrella, retrieved his shopping and stepped carefully aboard, the same long, jowly face that had stayed with Winter ever since he saw the Marriott video tape. Hennessey wasn’t dead at all. He’d just been to the supermarket, and now he was due a little surprise.
Winter gave him a minute or two to settle in. Then he picked up a bag of his own, a black hold-all, double-zipped, and began to walk. The portable electric drill and lengths of rope were heavier than he’d thought and he was out of breath by the time he got to the seaward end of the pontoon. Crazy Lady was moored stern-on. Winter paused to pull on a pair of leather gloves, then stepped aboard, feeling the deck stir beneath him. The tall smoked-glass doors still barred the way to the saloon. Winter wiped the rain from his face, then tried one of the doors. This time it wasn’t locked.
Hennessey was sitting at a kidney-shaped table, his thinning hair still tousled where he’d just towelled it dry. A copy of the Daily Telegraph was open in front of him and he was nursing a large glass of red wine. He looked up, confused by this sudden intrusion, this black silhouette against the grey light outside.
‘What’s going on?’
Winter didn’t reply. The tall glass door locked on the inside. Hennessey was struggling to his feet now, penned in by the table. He was trying to reach his mobile. Winter got there first.
‘Pieter Hennessey?’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I asked you a question.’
<
br /> Hennessey paused. Something in Winter’s voice prompted a nod.
‘That’s me,’ he confirmed. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t recall the name.’
For the first time, Winter saw the bandaged wrist.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
‘You have absolutely no right—’
‘I said sit down. You have a choice. Either you do what I say or I’ll hurt you.’
Hennessey, with some reluctance, sank back onto the buttoned velour. Despite his bluster, and his evident unfitness, Winter could sense him measuring up the distance between them. Winter stepped closer, then paused before extending a gloved hand in greeting. Hennessey gazed up, relief flooding his big face.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘For a moment there, you had me worried.’
It was Dawn’s idea to confront Beavis with the video, and it was Faraday who insisted on coming along. With Winter’s unexplained absence, and with an hour to snatch between conferences, he was determined to get at least one job properly sorted.
Beavis, this time, was dressed to go out. He was wearing jeans and an old leather jacket with a faded transfer of James Dean on the back, and just as soon as the rain eased up, he was off to Lidl’s for a spot of shopping. Shel had just rung. Girl never really knew her mind, but it looked like she might be coming for tea. He beamed at Dawn and told her to come in. Bloody weather. Never stopped.
Faraday followed them down the hall. Beavis led the way through to the kitchen, but Dawn called him back. Did he have a video player?
‘Yeah.’ Beavis looked blank. ‘Old thing. Got it off a skip then had a bloke mend it. Works OK though.’
The player was upstairs. There were motorcycle magazines stacked beside Beavis’s bed and the tiny square of carpet was crusted with something yellow and sticky. Over by the window, water dripped steadily through the ceiling into a carefully positioned cake tin. Faraday looked round, wondering about the smell. Dawn had been right. Beavis needed a good scrub.
He was still talking about his daughter. He’d been on at her about Kennedy and, just like he’d thought, she’d told him it was all crap. Lee was like an uncle to her, or maybe a brother. No way would she get involved. He’d also phoned Lee.
‘What did he say?’ Dawn was on her hands and knees, trying to sort out the video player.
‘He said it was crap too. Must be Addison, he said. Just the kind of thing that little bastard would do.’
Beavis looked round for Faraday and nodded, making the point twice. Dawn had introduced him as her boss, but Faraday wasn’t certain he’d made the CID connection. I might be Dawn’s dad, Faraday thought grimly, or some passing stranger she’d pulled in off the street.
Dawn had finally got the video player to start. She hit the pause button and looked up at Beavis.
‘We came across this the other day,’ she held up the video cassette. ‘Thought you ought to see it.’
‘Lovely.’ He settled down on the end of the bed. ‘Why not?’
Dawn exchanged glances with Faraday. He hadn’t seen it either, though a brief conversation in the car coming over had prepared him for most of what followed.
Dawn bent to the video again. The picture wobbled on the screen, then a bed swam into view. It was the big double bed in Kennedy’s upstairs room. Shelley was sprawled across it on her back. She was naked and she was mugging a big stagey orgasm for the camera, her back arched, her head thrown back. Then she collapsed in giggles, earning a reproof from an unseen voice.
‘Shel, for fuck’s sake …’
It was Kennedy. Even Beavis knew it. He was gazing at the screen, fondness spiked with disbelief.
‘Silly bitch,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Stupid cow.’
Kennedy stepped into shot. He was wearing a tennis shirt and a pair of briefs. He took the shirt off first, disappeared for a moment, then returned with a bunch of grapes.
‘Go on,’ he said.
Shelley caught the grapes one by one, positioning them across her body, starting with the hollows at the base of her neck. Then, very slowly, she spread her arms wide, the perfect take-me cameo.
Kennedy was on his hands and knees. He had a grape in his mouth and he crushed it very slowly, letting the juice drip onto her face. Then he began to work downwards from grape to grape, biting into the purple flesh and licking at her glistening skin. The last of the grapes lay in a little cluster between her thighs, and soon it was clear even to Beavis that this daughter of his was enjoying herself. Kennedy’s face was buried between the spread of her thighs and she kept reaching down, both hands on the gleaming baldness of his scalp, making tiny adjustments, fitting herself to him. No one could pretend a pleasure this intense, and when it was over, and Kennedy took her place on the mattress, she had a skill and a theatricality that could only have come with practice. She was eager, too, and by the time Beavis finally stumbled from the room, Kennedy was doing conjuring tricks with an empty bottle of Becks. First you see it. Then you don’t.
Minutes later Beavis was still washing his mouth out in the tiny bathroom. Dawn stood in the open doorway, Faraday behind her.
‘We’re here about the Donald Duck business,’ Dawn said. ‘We need to know who did it.’
Beavis tried to throw up again. Finally, he sat back against the side of the bath. Faraday could hear the steady drip-drip of water into the cake tin next door.
‘Can you believe any of that?’ He shook his head. ‘Bastard.’
‘Who?’
‘Fucking Lee Kennedy. Do you know how old that man is? Twenty-eight, and he does that kind of stuff with my Shel.’ He reached for a flannel and wiped his mouth. ‘Bastard.’
‘Donald Duck?’ Dawn queried.
Beavis hadn’t heard her. His voice was almost a whisper.
‘I wouldn’t have believed it,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t. I’ll be honest with you. She’s never been an angel. But that …’ He shook his head. ‘Fucking outrageous.’
Dawn squatted beside him. She wanted to know about the mask. About the three little excursions, out into the night. About the three times Beavis had dropped his drawers and given the women a good look. He stared at her, blinking, trying to follow the logic. At last, he got there.
‘Me, love? You think I did that?’
‘I do.’
‘Them Donald Duck jobs?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’ He wiped his mouth again, this time with the back of his hand. ‘Not me. Wrong bloke.’
‘Who, then? Who was Donald Duck?’
Faraday would remember the silence for years to come. The drumming of the rain on the roof overhead. The drip-drip-drip from next door. And the moment when Beavis finally arrived at some kind of decision, the floorboard creaking beneath him as he staggered to his feet. When he came back, he was carrying a battered old sports bag.
‘Inside, love,’ he said.
Like a retriever, he dropped the bag at Dawn’s feet. Dawn looked at Faraday, who shook his head.
‘You.’ Dawn glanced across at Beavis. ‘You do it.’
Beavis pulled the bag open. The mask was on top, Donald Duck, the manic cartoon smile leering up at them. Underneath, the rumpled black of a tracksuit.
‘There’s trainers and gloves in there as well,’ he said. ‘You want to see them?’
Faraday shook his head, reaching out to stop him as he prepared to rummage through the hold-all.
‘Leave it,’ Faraday said. ‘We’ll need to bag this for forensic.’
Dawn’s eyes hadn’t left Beavis’s face.
‘So who does it all belong to?’ she said.
Faraday braced himself for another silence, more rain, but Beavis hesitated for less than a second.
‘Lee’s,’ he said stonily. ‘This is his gear. He asked me to look after it for him. He wanted me to do it first off, but I wouldn’t so he did it himself.’
‘Did what?’
‘Wore that.’ He nodded at the mask.
‘Lee did the Donald Duck jobs?’
‘And he wore that stuff?’
‘Yeah.’
Dawn was staring down at the contents of the sports bag. Faraday was right, she thought. The smell of roll-ups would have come from here, this house, but the DNA would be Kennedy’s. On the tracksuit. In the trainers. Everywhere. She looked up at Beavis again, just to make sure she had it right, but he was miles away.
‘Should have worked it out for myself, shouldn’t I?’ he muttered. ‘He’d wave it at any fucking woman. Even Shel.’
*
In Jersey, the weather had got worse.
‘Where do you sleep?’
‘Through there.’
Hennessey’s head jerked towards the bow. Twice already he’d complained about the tightness of the handcuffs, but Winter had ignored him.
‘Go on, then.’ Winter gave him a push.
Hennessey shot him one last despairing glance. He’d offered money, a lot of money, for Winter to leave him alone. He’d got out his cheque book and promised a handsome dip into offshore funds, here in Jersey, and when Winter had shaken his head he’d even owned up to five thousand in cash on the boat, his for the taking, but Winter had just laughed. There were some things that money couldn’t buy, he’d said. And this, the sweetest settling of accounts, was one of them.
Hennessey was manoeuvring himself sideways down a flight of four steps. Beyond the bulk of his body, Winter glimpsed a heart-shaped bed draped in a shiny mauve coverlet. Yuk.
Winter told Hennessey to strip.
‘I can’t.’ He gestured helplessly at his cuffed hands.
‘Do it,’ Winter said, ‘or I’ll do it for you.’
With infinite slowness, Hennessey managed to rid himself of his brogues. The corduroy trousers came off next.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘The top’s impossible.’
‘It doesn’t matter about the top.’
‘What?’ Hennessey’s face was the colour of putty. He held out his cuffed hands. ‘There. See that?’
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