Fresh blood had appeared through the crêpe of the bandage on his wrist. The fact that Winter plainly didn’t care deepened the alarm on Hennessey’s face.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Take your pants off.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, take your pants off. Then lie down on the bed.’
Winter had already looped the ends of two lengths of rope he’d picked up from Joannie’s potting shed.
Hennessey hadn’t moved.
‘I meant it about the money,’ he tried again.
‘Fuck the money. I know where that money came from. I know how you earned that money. That’s the last thing I’d want, believe me.’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘Yes, in a way.’
‘Should I know your name?’
‘No.’ Winter nodded at his belly. ‘Get them off.’
Hennessey pulled down his underpants and stepped out of them. His eyes never once left Winter’s face.
‘You meant it about the bed?’
‘Yes. Just do it. Before I get fucking annoyed with you.’
Hennessey crawled onto the bed and lay face down.
‘Turn over.’ Nothing happened. ‘I said, turn over.’
Winter lashed out with the rope, scoring an angry scarlet weal across Hennessey’s buttocks. He did it again, and then a third time, until it occurred to him that Hennessey was crying, his huge white fleshy torso shaken by uncontrollable sobs.
Finally, Hennessey rolled over. His glasses had become dislodged, giving his face a strange, skewed look. Never had Winter seen anyone so vulnerable, so pathetic. Quickly, he unlocked the handcuffs and pulled Hennessey’s arms back over his head. With the cuffs on again, Hennessey’s wrists were now anchored to the brass rail that ran along the top of the bedhead. Back at the foot of the bed, Winter was about to remove the surgeon’s socks when he had second thoughts. He knew exactly the tableau he wanted to create, the effect he wanted it to have, and he realised that socks, especially red socks like these, would help. Immeasurably.
The loops at the end of the lengths of rope he slipped over each of Hennessey’s ankles. Winter pulled them tight, then looked for anchor points in the master bedroom to tie them off. Grab handles on both walls were perfect. Winter tightened each of the ropes until Hennessey’s legs were scissored open. In the en suite closet, he found a big roll of Elastoplast which he used to tape Hennessey’s mouth. On the shelf above, from a largish bag marked SURGICAL, he took a scalpel, a pair of metal dilators, a pair of forceps and – a late thought – a pair of rubber gloves. Back in the master bedroom, he laid them carefully on the pillow beside Hennessey’s head.
The surgeon watched his every movement, plainly terrified. Winter looked down at him, and winked.
Back up in the saloon, still gloved, Winter began his search. He was as methodical as he’d ever been – every drawer, every cupboard, every crevice, every last inch of space Hennessey might have used as a hidey-hole – and when, after an hour, he’d turned up nothing, he went through exactly the same procedure in the guest bedroom and the little galley.
Around lunchtime, still with no result, he at last found them under an astrakhan rug, back in the master bedroom. They were in a thick, battered envelope with the address of the Advent Hospital on the front. He shook them out onto the bed, looking down on a shot of Nikki McIntyre, her legs up in stirrups, her genitalia exposed. The other photos were variations on the same theme, different angles, different framings, insistently explicit. These were shots Hennessey had looked at time and time again, pulling them out of the envelope and spreading them over the bed. These were the shots he pawed over, drooled over. This was the way he went to sleep every night.
‘Clinical aids?’
Hennessey had his eyes closed. Winter gave him a shake, forcing him to look at a couple of the photos.
‘For the file or the album?’
Hennessey just stared up at him. Finally, he closed his eyes again and turned away. He’d had enough of this, more than enough, but Winter was far from finished.
He bent down low, his lips to Hennessey’s ear.
‘You knew she was here, didn’t you? You knew where to find her and you came looking.’ He paused. He was word perfect. He’d been rehearsing this conversation for days. ‘Do you go there every night? The Abbey? That nice hotel along the way? Do you slip into the club downstairs? Have you got a table at the back? Do you listen to her singing? Do you remember all those times when she was yours? Your patient? Your slave? Do you come back here afterwards? Fetch out this lot? Have another look? Remember what she felt like? No gloves on? Is that what you do? Eh?’
Winter’s hold-all was over by the steps. He’d got a fresh roll of film in the camera. He circled the bed, taking shot after shot, Hennessey’s favourite angle, total exposure. He’d give some of these to Parrish, little souvenir, little reminder of a scam that very nearly came off. Two guys with money to burn. Two guys after services to hire. Twenty grand each. One wanting revenge. The other, an escape to invisibility. Play both ends against the middle and you ended with a murder so perfect that there wasn’t even a body. A murder so perfect that people like Faraday would go digging up whole apartment blocks on a fool’s hunt for a nonexistent corpse. A murder so perfect it would buy you a whole new life.
The film rewound, Winter circled the bed and settled briefly in a chair by a porthole. Hennessey was watching his every move.
‘Were you going to fuck off, then? After here? Just nod or shake your head. Go on. Just do it.’
Hennessey didn’t react. His eyes were filled with tears again.
‘What about your name? Were you going to change it? New passport? New ID? New life?’
Again, no reaction. Winter pursed his lips for a moment, regretful, then fetched the hold-all. Hennessey stared at the drill as Winter went slowly through the choice of bits, weighing each in his hand, eyeing Hennessey’s lower body. 2mm? 5mm? 10mm? Something big enough to make a serious hole? Finally he settled on a 7mm, tungsten-tipped for longer life.
‘Brand new.’ He showed Hennessey. ‘That’s supposed to be hygienic, isn’t it? Less chance of infection?’
This time he didn’t wait for a reaction but laid the drill beside Hennessey’s head and busied himself with the photos, returning them to the envelope.
‘These I get to keep,’ he explained, ‘just in case there’s enough of you left to think about going to the police. OK?’
Winter glanced up at Hennessey. He thought he detected the faintest nod, but he couldn’t be sure. He told him again about the photos, before tucking the envelope into his hold-all. Any kind of investigation, and the photos would go to all kinds of interested parties. OK? This time, for sure, Hennessey understood.
‘Good.’
Winter crossed the cabin and knelt beside the opposite porthole. The shag pile carpet was secured with anodised battens where the floor met the outward curve of the hull. With a screwdriver, he loosened a batten, then levered it free. He’d rolled the carpet back less than a metre when he found the inspection hatch.
‘This would go into the bilges, wouldn’t it?’
He glanced over his shoulder. Hennessey’s eyes were shut again. He might have been dead already.
‘Shame,’ Winter murmured, ‘making a mess like this.’ He pulled the carpet back, exposing the entire hatch, then retrieved the drill from the pillow. Hennessey didn’t move a muscle. When Winter pulled the hatch open, there was darkness beneath and the hollow slurp of water against the hull. At full stretch, Winter could reach the roughly textured interior of the hull. He pressed the trigger and the screech of the drill echoed back at him, amplified by the empty bilges; then, to his infinite satisfaction, the tungsten tip began to bite into the GRP. Revenge smells of hot glass fibre, he thought, pushing down even harder.
Forty minutes later, Winter stepped off the boat and made his way back along the pontoon. There was a public call box outside th
e marina office. When he got through to the newsdesk on the Jersey Evening Post, he gave them the name of Hennessey’s motor cruiser and the number of the marina berth. The owner was having a rather special party. They’d be crazy if they didn’t get down there sharpish, and crazier still if they didn’t take a photographer.
‘Big story,’ Winter promised. ‘Exclusively yours.’
When the reporter pressed him for details, he repeated the name of the boat and told him it belonged to a national figure.
‘Like who?’
‘Bloke called Hennessey. He’s a gynaecologist. Been in all the papers.’
The brief silence told Winter he’d rung a bell or two. Asked for his own name, he laughed and hung up.
Stepping out of the call box, Winter ducked his head against the driving rain. He’d already chosen the restaurant, a first-floor bistro across the road. Two o’clock, he thought. Perfect for a late lunch.
With the restaurant emptying, he settled at a window seat with an uninterrupted view across the marina. He ordered skate with chips and a light salad, and sent the first bottle of Chablis back because it wasn’t cold enough. Three glasses down, with the food yet to appear, he offered a private toast to Hennessey, still bound and gagged aboard his £115,000 hideaway. He’d drilled two holes. He was no expert in hydraulics, but already Crazy Lady was visibly nose-down beside the pontoon.
The reporter arrived while Winter was busy with the skate. There was a photographer as well, with an aluminium camera case, and Winter watched while they hurried along the pontoon, bodies bent against the weather. They both clambered aboard Hennessey’s boat, and it was several minutes before the journalist reappeared, running back towards the marina office. Winter returned to the last of his skate, imagining the photographer making the most of the tableau he’d so carefully prepared. Humiliation, he’d decided, deserved the widest possible audience. He smiled to himself mopping up the caper sauce with the remains of his bread roll, then reaching for the menu again.
By the time Winter had finished his lemon sorbet and paid the bill, Crazy Lady was attracting a great deal of attention. Among the figures clambering aboard were two paramedics in hi-vis jackets. He was curious to know what they might find in the master bedroom, but a glance at his watch told him there was no point hanging round to find out. With luck, he thought, Hennessey might just have succumbed to a heart attack.
The restaurant obliged Winter by phoning for a cab. It took five minutes or so to arrive, a sleek Peugeot with a guy young enough to be his son at the wheel. Winter threw his hold-all onto the back seat and settled cheerfully beside it.
‘Airport, please,’ he said. ‘Flight’s at half-four.’
Epilogue
Friday, 7 July, 1400
Just over a week later, Dawn Ellis ran into Rick Stapleton at Fratton nick.
‘I just wanted to say thank you,’ she said, waiting for the plastic cup to drop in the hot-drinks dispenser.
‘Thank you for what?’
‘Keeping Kennedy out of my knickers.’
Rick smiled. On the basis of statements from Kevin and Shelley Beavis, Kennedy had been charged with GBH in relation to the Donald Duck incidents. In view of his previous convictions, he’d been refused bail and was now on remand in Winchester prison.
Rick waited for Dawn to finish with the machine, then inserted a coin of his own. There was something bothering him about Addison. He was OK now about the guy being innocent, but why hadn’t he fingered Kennedy? The bloke had put on all kinds of pressure to enlist his editing skills. According to Shelley, he’d even made verbal threats. Wasn’t it obvious that the mask was Kennedy’s plant?
‘Of course it was.’
‘So why didn’t he tell us?’
‘Because he was certain he’d get the verdict in court. Plus he wanted to protect Shelley. He thought she’d be genuinely at risk if Kennedy thought she’d been talking.’
‘Really? Was she that great a shag?’
‘It’s nothing to do with shagging. He believes in her. He’s convinced she’ll go the whole way.’
‘Yeah, and some …’
The best part of a year with Rick should have prepared Dawn for this. There was no way he wouldn’t interpret every human relationship in terms of body fluids. Motives like generosity or belief just didn’t figure.
‘Listen.’ Dawn was watching Rick over the brim of her milkless tea. ‘There’s something else you ought to know about Addison.’
‘What’s that?’
‘He’s gay.’
‘Gay? Who says?’
‘Shelley.’
‘And you believe her?’
‘I do. It takes time with Shelley, but you get there in the end.’
Rick was staring at her. Disbelief gave way to bewilderment, then irritation, and finally an expression dangerously close to embarrassment. He should have known. He should have picked up the clues: the obsessive tidiness, the way the guy dressed, his enjoyment of the subtler touches, the icy self-control. It was all there. And he, of all people, had missed it.
‘You wanted a result,’ Dawn pointed out. ‘And you thought you’d got one. Why bother with the rest of the story?’
Rick was still staring at her.
‘Have you told anyone else?’ he asked at last. ‘About him being gay?’
‘No.’
‘Thank fuck for that.’ He checked both ways down the empty corridor. ‘Our little secret, eh?’
Faraday escaped early from an informal sandwich lunch with Hartigan and drove north through the city, out towards Petersfield.
His divisional boss, somewhat to his surprise, had been almost effusive. The Hennessey investigation, by confirming that the surgeon was alive, had been a masterly demonstration of exactly what lengths Hartigan’s CID squad would go to in a bid to establish the real truth in a misper inquiry. The bag of bones and pig offal recovered by the POLSA team on the Gunwharf site wasn’t, alas, enough evidence to warrant any kind of charge against Parrish, but the developers, nonetheless, had been generous in their thanks. It was, wrote the company’s MD, a perfect example of the police and big business working in partnership for the greater good of the city as a whole. The consequences of disinterring that same bag a couple of years down the line just didn’t bear thinking about.
Willard, in an earlier meeting, had been somewhat blunter. As far as Hennessey was concerned, the whole job had been down to Winter. He’d set the hare running and he’d led most of the pursuit. Not because he’d been especially conscientious or dutiful, but because the guy’s MO was starting to verge on professional suicide. Pursuing hunches was one thing. Doing what Winter had done – declaring total UDI and running his very own investigation – was quite another. Only the fact that his missus was dying had kept his name off the internal charge sheet.
And Addison?
Both Willard and Hartigan had ignored it. Never underestimate the persuasiveness of circumstantial evidence. Never penalise guys hungry for a quick result. Mistakes happen. Gold star to young Dawn for sticking with it. Damages, alas, for Mr Addison. But here’s hoping Lee Kennedy goes down.
Faraday’s route took him past Bedhampton. Winter’s bungalow was up there somewhere, and as far as Faraday knew, his wife was back in residence, buoyed by a care package from social services. One of her daily visitors was evidently a psychiatric nurse, and Faraday hoped that he or she had the time to spare for Winter as well. It was still far from clear exactly what had happened in Jersey, but the front-page splash in the Jersey Evening Post, gleefully pinned to noticeboards in police stations throughout Portsmouth, had been explicit about Hennessey’s luck in escaping with his life. Another hour or so and the guy would have been history. As it was, the journos had got there in time. Thanks to an anonymous phone call.
Had Winter somehow been implicated in this little stunt? Faraday didn’t know, and the fact that Hennessey had set his face against any kind of formal investigation made it unlikely that he’d ever find out. Pumped
dry and repaired, Crazy Lady had already slipped away, bound for God knows where. Winter, meanwhile, was now on extended compassionate, trying to do his best for Joannie. Forty paracetamol had done nothing for her prognosis, but, fingers crossed, she might just see the summer out. Unlike Vanessa Parry.
Matthew Prentice lived in an estate on the southern edges of Petersfield. The houses, judging by the rash of extensions, had once been council but were now privately owned. Prentice lived in the one with a purple door near the end of the street. Faraday knew he’d be in because the young lad he’d talked to at the café had phoned him and said so.
‘He wants a word,’ he’d mumbled. ‘Said it would be cool if you called round.’
A middle-aged woman in jeans and a nice-looking blouse opened the door. To Faraday’s surprise, she turned out to be Prentice’s mother.
‘It’s my house,’ she explained briefly. ‘He’s in the front room.’
Faraday remembered the face from the car park after the funeral: the gelled hair, the diamond ear-stud, the tilt of the chin shadowed by a couple of days’ growth of beard. Prentice got up from the sofa and extended a hand. Another surprise.
‘Well?’
Faraday wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Prentice was looking confused.
‘Is this, like, official? Only—’
‘Of course it is, Mr Prentice. You got a message to me. You’ve got something to say. So just say it.’
Prentice was looking at the carpet. Faraday was aware of the open door behind him. Was the mother still outside in the hall? Was this her idea?
‘It’s about that woman,’ Prentice began.
‘Vanessa Parry?’
‘The woman who died. I was gonna leave some flowers.’
‘Yeah, without your name on. I saw them in the car park. In the back of that motor of yours. Brave man. Say you’re sorry. Leave a blank for your name. Then piss off.’
Despite his every best intention, despite telling himself that he had to stay calm, be grown up about it, Faraday knew it would come to this. A moment’s recollection of the photographs, a single remembered glimpse of the interior of the crushed Fiesta, and he’d thrown the rulebook out of the window. Maybe Winter had a point. Maybe, in the end, it came down to this. Red, the colour of anger. Red, the colour of blood.
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