Heaven's Light

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Tough enough to cure her?’

  ‘Tough enough to make her think.’

  ‘Well…’ Liz frowned. ‘I suppose that’s a start.’

  Tully sipped his juice while Liz filled in with the rest of Jessie’s story. Back last year, in June, she’d been taken to hospital with an overdose. Over the next six months or so, she’d half lived at home while Liz had tried to find help. She’d arranged a full assessment from the city’s Drugs Advisory Service, and they’d come up with a care plan, the basis of which was counselling and Jessie had submitted grimly to a series of weekly sessions but none had done much good. She’d put on a bit of weight and she’d seemed a little happier in herself, but Liz knew she was still seeing Haagen. She’d disappear for days on end without any explanation. Often he’d try to phone her at home, pretending to be someone else. Only Merrist House had finally parted them.

  ‘So I reckon I’ve got about six months,’ she said briskly, ‘to do something about it.’

  Tully regarded her over the remains of his orange juice. He had very pale skin and there was a deep tiredness in his eyes. ‘So where do I fit in?’ he said at last.

  ‘I want advice. I need to know what to do, how to go about it.’

  ‘Have you told the police? The drugs squad?’

  ‘Yes. I spoke to someone last year. Nice man, very helpful. CID, drugs squad, whatever he was.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He took all the details, wrote everything down, but Haagen’s still around, I know he is, and even if they get him, arrest him, he’ll only end up in court, and what good will that do?’

  For the first time, Tully smiled. ‘Why do you say that, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Because some clever lawyer will get him off. Either that or he’ll get the soft option. Community service or working in someone like Hayden’s bloody office. Just like last time.’

  ‘He’d been in court before?’

  ‘Yes, a couple of years back. He’d been stealing or breaking into cars or something. God knows what. Hayden thought he was some kind of genius. Thought he deserved a second chance.’

  Tully was nodding now. ‘I remember,’ he said. ‘Hayden gave him jobs around the office. Part of the conditional discharge.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And he went right out and did it again.’

  ‘Exactly. So what does that make Hayden? Apart from gullible?’ She looked at Tully, expecting an answer, but he said nothing. Liz could feel herself getting angry, remembering the rows they’d had. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Mike,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mind Hayden giving the boy a helping hand, even the odd meal. I just think he should have drawn the line at his own daughter. You’ve no idea. I watched that boy devour her, body and soul. It was terrifying, quite awful. But what can you do?’

  Tully sighed. ‘So you want him away? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘I want him a million miles away. I want him so far away he’ll never bother Jessie again.’ Liz hesitated. ‘That’s why I wondered about getting him out of the country.’

  ‘You mean deportation?’

  ‘Yes. His second name’s Schreck. It’s a German name. He’ll have a German passport – at least, I assume he does.’

  For a while Tully sat in silence. Eventually, he took Liz’s empty glass to the bar and returned with another Campari and soda.

  ‘You’ve got two problems with deportation,’ he said, settling behind the table again. ‘One is the lad himself. I seem to remember Hayden saying he’d been brought up here. He was adopted or something. That means he’ll have citizenship. Almost definitely.’

  ‘And the other problem?’

  ‘Even trickier. Under European law, he has the right to live here anyway. As far as I know.’

  ‘Even if he’s …’ Liz made an angry gesture with her glass, ‘… a junkie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘Of course it is, but there you go.’ He gazed into the middle distance again. ‘The alternative is to put together some kind of evidence. Take out a private prosecution. Drag him along to court yourself. You know where he lives?’

  ‘He’s still in the basement place he shared with Jess. Elphinstone Road. I checked this morning.’

  ‘And we know what he looks like?’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of photos. I found them in Jessie’s room.’ Liz opened her bag and took out a white envelope. She emptied the photos onto the table. Tully picked one up. Haagen was sitting cross-legged on a beach, grinning at the camera.

  ‘We normally charge twenty-six pounds an hour,’ Tully said. ‘That buys you everything except disbursements. There’s VAT on top, of course.’ He paused. ‘In your case, let’s say fifteen pounds an hour.’

  Liz blinked. For some reason she hadn’t expected Tully to be quite so businesslike.

  ‘And what does fifteen pounds an hour buy me?’

  ‘Surveillance. Leg work. If we’re to pull in the goodies, we need to poke around a bit.’

  ‘Goodies?’

  ‘Evidence. And it has to be admissible. In court. Which brings you back to square one.’ Tully looked briefly apologetic. ‘You haven’t got much faith in the police because you haven’t got much faith in the courts. Getting him into the dock a different way solves nothing. A court’s still a court. Whichever route you take.’

  Liz did her best to absorb the logic, testing each link in the chain, forced to concede that Tully was right. Natural justice demanded that Haagen be put away. Any mother, any parent, would surely agree with that. But the courts, for God knows what reasons, seemed to have other ideas. She sipped at her Campari, watching the landlord putting up a poster for the cathedral’s latest organ recital, reflecting bitterly on just how powerless she’d become. Jessie was 19. Like any other adult, she could choose whoever she liked to wreck her life.

  At length, deflated, she turned back to Tully. If anything, he was looking even gloomier.

  ‘But as a friend, Mike, what would you do?’

  ‘In this situation?’

  ‘Yes. Say you had a daughter, say you had Jessie, say there was a Haagen, what would you do?’

  Tully sat back, his eyes on the ceiling. Then he ran a tired hand over his face, smothering a yawn. ‘If it was me,’ he said, ‘I’d go and see a friend.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing.’

  ‘A different kind of friend. And when I saw him, I’d give him an envelope.’ He glanced sideways. ‘You follow me?’

  Liz returned the look, totally blank. ‘No,’ she said. ‘What’s in the envelope?’

  Tully was silent again. He seemed to be conducting some kind of inner debate. At length, he frowned.

  ‘Ten thousand pounds,’ he said quietly, ‘which is about the going rate.’

  Kate Frankham heard the phone from the street. She ran up the stairs to the front door, fumbling for her key, remembering the promise she’d made to the secretary of the local Labour Party. The woman was a stickler for punctuality. She’d said she’d phone at eight and Kate had promised faithfully she’d be in.

  The cordless telephone was on the small occasional table in the hall. She picked it up, trying to picture her diary for the next couple of weeks. The meeting to elect the next parliamentary candidate was rumoured to have been fixed for early March. Deliberately, she’d rescheduled her counselling sessions to leave every evening free.

  ‘Kate Frankham,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Can I help you?’ She heard a far-away series of clicks, then a man’s voice, clear as a bell. He was asking her how she’d been coping. He said he missed her more than he could say. She frowned.

  ‘Hayden?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘In Singapore? Already?’

  ‘Yes. Got in tonight. It’s four in the bloody morning. Unbelievable place. You’d love it.’

  He began to tell her about the suite they’d given him, the way the sitting room was furnished, the map they’d forgotten to supply with th
e bed.

  ‘Map?’ she said blankly, at last unbuttoning her raincoat.

  ‘It’s huge, enormous, I’ll need a bloody map to get out.’

  She could hear him laughing at the other end. He sounded slightly drunk. She tried to think of something to say, something that might short-circuit his account of the meal he’d just eaten and clear the line for the incoming call.

  ‘Must cost a fortune, phoning me like this,’ she said, when he paused for breath. ‘You know how hotels load the bill.’

  ‘It’s free, my love. Zhu’s picking up the tab for everything.’

  Kate stiffened at the mention of Zhu’s name. She’d met him a couple of weeks back when he’d come down to check on progress at the Imperial, and Hayden had insisted that she join them both for dinner. Normally, she had no difficulty getting on with people, indeed it was one of the talents that convinced her she’d make a good MP, but Zhu had remained stubbornly beyond her reach. After an hour and a half’s conversation, she hadn’t been an inch closer to knowing the man, and that had bothered her.

  She bent to the phone. Barnaby was still talking about the meal. He wanted to know where, in Portsmouth, he could buy fresh pigeon.

  ‘Is he there with you?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Zhu.’

  ‘No, he’s off somewhere else. He must have a place of his own here.’

  ‘And has he told you what he’s up to? Flying you out?’

  ‘Not really. He’s got some kind of programme for me, things he wants me to see. Then there’s the hotel side, of course. I think he must own some. Not this one. He doesn’t seem to know the people behind the desk.’

  Barnaby began to describe the hotel again, a child’s excitement with a new toy, and in the background Kate heard the tone that announced another call waiting. Someone was trying to get through and, thanks to Barnaby, they couldn’t. He was telling her about the giveaways in the suite. Might she find house room for a pair of pearl-backed hairbrushes and a leather-bound ’96 diary? Kate muttered something about a visitor knocking at the door. She had to go. Maybe he could phone back later.

  ‘Later?’ she heard him laughing again. ‘I told you, my love, it’s four in the morning.’

  She looked at the phone a moment. Nothing was more important than the selection meeting. The sooner she got to know the date, the easier it would be to concentrate her mind on those vital ten minutes when she had to stand up in front of all those people and convince them she’d make a bloody good MP. Barnaby was talking about a prison now, and she closed her eyes, slipping the phone back onto the base station, cutting him off. It began to ring at once and she lifted it to her ear again.

  Another male voice, rougher this time, but no less familiar. ‘It’s Billy. Just to wish you good luck.’

  ‘Oh?’ Kate sank onto the stairs, pulling her coat around her.

  ‘Yeah. The meeting’s been postponed. It’s on the twenty-seventh now. Monday night.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘They just told me.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Sally, the secretary.’ He paused. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘I’m standing too.’ He laughed. ‘Just in case anyone’s still interested in socialism.’

  Chapter Six

  Charlie Epple’s final session with the estate agent was even briefer than the first. They met on the pavement in Old Portsmouth beside the block of newly completed maisonettes. Charlie had his eye on number three, the one with the red door. The estate agent had the key and Charlie followed him from room to room, interested chiefly in the outlook. The last time he’d been round he’d had too much to drink, and he couldn’t remember how far up you had to go to get a clear view of the sea.

  The maisonettes were built on three floors. Across the road stood a length of thick, stone-blocked fortifications known locally as Hot Walls. Beyond lay the harbour mouth and the deep-water shipping lane, a regular succession of ferries and warships so close you could almost reach out and touch them. There was an apron of beach on the seaward side of the walls and, since childhood, Charlie had been crazy about the place, sunbathing on the tarry pebbles, hurling himself into the sea from the top of the nearby Round Tower. Being able to live here, with this fabulous view as a neighbour, would be truly wild.

  The estate agent pushed open the door to the living room. From the little bow window the view was curtained by Hot Walls. Even on tiptoe, almost touching the ceiling, Charlie could see only a thin grey strip of the Solent, with the humpy silhouette of the Isle of Wight beyond. He mounted the stairs again. On the top floor there were bedrooms and from here the view was perfect. Charlie grinned, getting to the window in time to watch a cross-Channel ferry nosing out of the harbour mouth. It was huge, slab-sided, as big as a block of flats. For the time it took to rumble past, it shadowed the street outside.

  Charlie stood in the empty bedroom, transfixed. ‘How much was it?’

  He heard a rustle of papers behind him as the estate agent looked for the purchase price. ‘A hundred and thirty-nine thousand, sir,’ he said.

  Another ferry had appeared from behind the squat grey mass of the Square Tower. It was French this time, one of the elegant Brittany Ferry boats inbound from the Normandy coast.

  ‘Hundred and ten,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I’m not sure the price is subject to negotiation, sir.’

  ‘Better check, eh?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  The agent retreated down the stairs. Charlie heard him talking on his mobile. He knew the developers were desperate to find buyers and his only worry was that £110,000 was too generous. Maybe he should have offered £100,000. Or less. The estate agent was coming back. £110,000 would, after all, be acceptable.

  ‘Great.’ Charlie produced a cheque book. ‘Who do I pay?’

  Mike Tully took lunch on the seafront, sitting in his Cavalier, tackling the corned-beef sandwiches he’d made first thing. Every now and then he checked up and down the road, trying to guess which way Owens would come. Straight from the suite of Special Branch offices at central police station he’d take the fun-fair route. Called out on some other job, he could appear from anywhere.

  Tully finished the last sandwich and brushed the crumbs from his lap before dipping into his briefcase. He still had the photos Liz had shown him the previous evening and he was almost certain now that the boy Haagen was one of the names Owens had mentioned on the phone. The call had come last week, entirely unsolicited. Owens had talked vaguely about a National Front ‘event’ and wondered whether Tully had picked anything up. The intelligence had come down from Special Branch sources in London, together with a list of names, though there was nothing specific in terms of dates or targets.

  Tully hadn’t been able to help but after last night he’d called Owens back, suggesting a meet. Owens had been less than enthusiastic. For one thing, his missis was ill and he was supposed to take the dog to the vet. For another, he was swamped by paperwork. The Home Office had ordered yet another manpower review. If he buggered up their bloody self-assessment form, he’d probably be out of a job.

  Tully propped the photos on the dashboard, thinking of Liz. Recently he’d seen less than usual of Barnaby, partly because the man was so busy and partly because Zhu was as keen as ever on keeping them professionally apart. Tully was still doing work for the Singaporean, feeding him a series of reports on potential bid opportunities in the city, but in all conscience he knew he was getting out of his depth. After more than a decade in the game, his expertise was pretty wide – anything from insurance fraud to the protection of commercially sensitive data – but Zhu’s appetite for intelligence and analysis seemed limitless. His success with the Imperial Hotel, delivered on a plate by Barnaby, had fuelled a non-stop stream of telexes from Singapore and the sheer scale of his ambition had begun to make Tully just a little nervous. What on earth made him think he could buy an entire industrial estate? Wh
at would be the point?

  A jogger struggled past, then another, heads down against the bitter wind. They were both women, both middle-aged, and Tully thought again of Liz, wondering what she’d made of their conversation in the pub. It was the first occasion he’d spent with her alone, and he hadn’t felt at ease. Living by yourself, you lost the knack of being comfortable with people, and the sheer depth of her anger had made him even warier than usual. Folk in that state were unpredictable, which made his parting aside about the ten grand all the more dodgy. A line like that, quoting the going rate for a contract killing, was the sort of half-joke you probably limited to men. They would be impressed but do fuck-all about it. Women, on the other hand, were a lot more ballsy. Mothers, especially.

  He picked up the smaller of the two photos. He was still examining it when the windscreen was briefly shadowed by Owens’s thin frame.

  Tully leaned across and unlocked the passenger door. Owens must have parked his car and walked. He was wrapped up against the wind, his neck swathed in folds of scarf. He got in and shut the door. He unbuttoned the thick coat and handed a blue file to Tully without a word. He had a pale, thin face, with lank strands of greying hair combed sideways across his skull. In another life, Tully thought, he would have made a perfect undertaker.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I thought you wanted the SP,’ he was eyeing the photos on the dashboard, ‘so I sorted something out.’

  Tully opened the file. The photograph clipped to the standard ID form looked more recent than the prints he’d got from Liz. It had been carefully scissored from a newspaper and it showed a head-and-shoulders shot of Haagen that might almost have been posed in a studio. His face was half turned to the camera. Clever lighting emphasized the hollows of his cheeks and the smile was knowing, rather than manic. His hair was closely cropped and a small silver swastika hung from his left earlobe. Clearly visible, beneath his left eye, was a two-inch scar, running diagonally towards the corner of his mouth.

  Tully compared the photo to the shots on the dashboard. The scar was new. ‘What happened? How come the scar?’