Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle)

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘This is nonsense,’ she said. She didn’t sound convinced.

  Suttle shook his head. The day before he’d ghosted himself into another life, Winter had shared a story or two that explained his decision to grass Mackenzie up. One of them had to do with a contract killing in the shell of a hotel near Malaga. Winter had been the sole witness when the gunman stepped into a half-built bar and blew two people away. Minutes later he was still picking tiny gobbets of brain off his best suit. The memory had haunted him ever since and the nightmare had worsened as the prospect of a European Arrest Warrant drew steadily closer. The last thing Winter wanted was the rest of his life in a Spanish prison cell.

  ‘Are you going to tell me more?’ Marie was reaching for her drink.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I promised him I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Do you always keep your word?’

  ‘I try.’

  ‘That’s admirable.’ She offered Suttle a cold smile. ‘Tell me something else then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This friendship with Winter. Do you think he deserved you?’

  ‘That’s a silly fucking question.’

  ‘Is it? Is it really? I trusted that man. I trusted him with our lives. And you know what? He screwed us.’

  Suttle fought the waves of scalding anger that threatened to engulf him. For reasons he’d never understood, he also regarded Winter as family.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He ducked his head. ‘I’m not here to lose my rag.’

  ‘Whatever. I just want you to know how I might feel about it.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘Winter. He killed my husband.’

  ‘Got him killed.’

  ‘Sure. And from where I’m sitting that’s hard to forgive.’

  A silence settled on the conversation. Then Marie pushed her glass away and stood up.

  ‘It’s been a revelation,’ she said. ‘And I mean that.’

  Suttle didn’t know what to do with himself afterwards. It was still early, barely half past seven. He’d set up this conversation in the hope that he might be able to sweet-talk Marie into calling off Bazza’s attack dogs, but blood and battle ties were thick in this city and he was beginning to suspect that the guys he’d met down in Exeter were way beyond listening to the likes of Bazza’s widow. Even if she put the word out, tried to call them to heel, Suttle doubted they’d listen. Winter was a grass. Winter had fucked Bazza over. Winter deserved everything that was coming to him.

  Suttle left the restaurant and walked the half-mile to the Royal Trafalgar Hotel. Barely a year ago this had been the jewel in Bazza’s crown. A fourth AA rosette was living proof that he could cut it as a legitimate businessman, and he’d relished the evenings when he hosted discreet dinners for the city’s movers and shakers, paving the way for his bid to become one of the city’s two MPs. It was Winter who’d sussed that the general election would trigger Mackenzie’s downfall, and so it had proved. With his commercial empire in free fall, Bazza had staked everything on a final throw of the dice. His campaign for Portsmouth North had burned money he didn’t have, and by the time he died, taken out by the Tactical Firearms Unit in a shop called Pompey Reptiles, he was effectively bankrupt.

  The Royal Trafalgar had gone to a rival businessman, a heavyset Pole from nearby Southampton, which made him a Scummer. Suttle paused at the door and then stepped inside. The bar lay beyond reception. This was where the 6.57 would gather for a drink on football nights, reliving old campaigns over a couple of Stellas, and Suttle half-hoped that a face or two would still be around. Maybe he should talk to these people in person, get them to recognise that Winter was history. Maybe Marie had been the wrong place to start.

  The bar was empty. Suttle ordered a Guinness, sensing at once that the hotel was on the skids. One look at the clientele in the adjacent restaurant told him that Dobreslaw, the Pole, had taken the whole operation downmarket. Coach-loads of pensioners from up north were tucking into mountains of chicken nuggets. There wasn’t a soul under sixty-five, and when a guy in a shiny tux arrived to announce a bingo session afterwards, Suttle knew that this was the last place that any 6.57 would show up. The Pole had bought the hotel for a song and carefully destroyed Bazza’s hard-won reputation as a hotelier of serious quality. Revenge, in the ongoing war between the two cities, couldn’t have been sweeter.

  Depressed, Suttle swallowed the Guinness and crossed the road to the seafront. No closer to fending off his new friends, he knew there was no way he was going to tackle the long drive home until he’d settled down. Maybe a walk by the sea. Maybe another pint or two. Anything to shake himself free of the troubling suspicion that life was beginning to gang up on him.

  Lizzie spent the evening alone with Grace. After putting her daughter to bed, she drifted around the kitchen wondering what to make for supper. She’d no idea when Jimmy might be back and had half-expected a call by now. In the end she settled for making a salad with boiled eggs and new potatoes. By gone nine, when he still hadn’t appeared, she loaded a plate on a tray and ate a glum supper in front of a repeat of Shameless. At ten came the news. By now she was seriously worried. What if he’d had some kind of accident on the way home? Far more likely, what if his attempts to head off the threat to their little family had gone horribly wrong? She was on the point of putting a call through to A & E in Pompey when the phone rang. It was Jimmy. She knew at once he’d been drinking.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Southsea.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s complicated. I just wanted . . .’ He tailed off.

  ‘Wanted what? What did you want?’

  ‘It’s hard, my love. It’s just hard.’

  ‘What’s just hard? For fuck’s sake, Jimmy. I’m sitting here waiting for you. We both are. So when are you back?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  Lizzie was staring at the dodgy window. It was open again. Her clever wedge must have dropped out. Great.

  Suttle was trying to apologise. He’d talked to someone he thought might help. Afterwards he’d had a bit of a think, trying to work out exactly what to do. This thing’s really tricky, he kept saying. It’s not as simple as you might expect.

  Lizzie had ceased to be interested. A cold hard anger had iced what was left of her patience. She was alone in the middle of nowhere with an infant daughter and a bunch of lunatics trying to barge into her life. The very least she wanted was her husband back home to take care of them both. Yet here he was, 130 miles away, pissed as a rat.

  ‘So what’s going to happen?’ she asked.

  There was a long silence. In the background Lizzie thought she caught the parp of a ship’s siren. Then Suttle was back on the line.

  ‘Fuck knows,’ he said. And rang off.

  Suttle walked and walked, wondering whether he should drive home. The third pub had been a mistake, and he’d known it, but after the fourth pint he hadn’t much cared, a feeling of release that had taken him by surprise. The temptation now was to get back on the phone, bell a couple of his ex-colleagues, seek a little advice. That way, he told himself, he’d at least have something to show for his evening in Pompey, but the moment he tried to imagine these conversations the more he realised the idea was a non-starter. These guys would suss at once that he was shit-faced. He’d left this city with a decent reputation. Why put all that at risk?

  The cheapest Southsea B & Bs were in Granada Road. By now it was raining. The first three doors he knocked on didn’t answer. The fourth was opened by an Asian guy in a grease-stained Pompey shirt. Yes, he had a room upstairs. Forty-five quid cash. In advance.

  Suttle peeled off the notes, too knackered to barter. The room was horrible: pink bedspread, cracked handbasin, no shade on the overhead bulb, mauve carpet, everything stinking of cigarettes. Suttle lay on his back, staring up. There were damp patches on the ceiling and canned laughter
from the TV in the next room. Forget the TV and the fags, he told himself, and he might easily have been at home. The dripping tap. The draught through the window stirring the thin strip of curtain. The overpowering evidence that someone didn’t care, that someone should have tried harder. The thought sobered him. Lizzie deserved better than this. He reached for his mobile and keyed her number. It rang and rang before going onto divert. He stared at it, perplexed, then tried again. Still no answer. Only on his third attempt did Lizzie answer.

  ‘Are you coming home?’ Her voice was cold.

  ‘I’ve hurt you,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right. So when are you coming home?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll be up first thing. Should be back by—’

  He broke off, staring at the phone. She’d hung up. He shut his eyes. For a minute or two he tried to think of nothing. When he opened them again, the damp patches, the canned laughter and the sour reek of a million cigarettes were still there. Rolling over, he hammered on the thin partition wall.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he yelled.

  Nothing happened. He beat on the wall again. Nothing. Finally he rolled off the bed and went out into the corridor. The door to the adjoining room was unlocked. He pushed it open. The room was empty. He bent to the TV and ripped the plug out of the socket in the skirting board.

  Back in his own room, he sat on the bed, his elbows on his knees. Ten to midnight. At length he reached for the mobile again. He’d stored Gina Hamilton’s number only yesterday. She answered on the second ring.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Jimmy. Jimmy Suttle.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Her voice wasn’t as hostile as he might have expected. He even sensed a a hint of warmth when she asked what he was up to.

  ‘Fuck knows,’ he said.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Pompey. This is a room you will not believe.’

  ‘What room?’

  Suttle tried to explain but gave up. When he tried to pretend a renewed interest in Tom Pendrick she saw through it at once.

  ‘What are you after?’ she said.

  Suttle stared at the rain dripping down the window pane. Good question.

  ‘A meet. A drink,’ he said at last. ‘I need someone to talk to. You call it.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He’d shut his eyes again. ‘I think I am.’

  Lizzie lay in bed. Grace’s cot was beside her. Lizzie had moved it in as a precaution. If anything happened, she told herself, better that they faced it together.

  The last couple of hours the wind had got up. She pulled the duvet closer, buried herself in its warmth, tried not to listen to the noises outside in the garden, but every creak, every sigh, every rustle in the long grass beyond the patio sparked another image. Someone watching. Someone waiting. Someone stealing ever closer to the gaping window downstairs.

  Once she switched on the light and risked a look at her watch. 03.17. In a couple of hours a pale grey light would wash through the thin curtains. After that, God willing, she might sleep. In the meantime she had to fight this sense of welling panic, this certainty that things could only get worse, and to do that she had to concentrate on something amusing, something positive, a single image that might keep the busy darkness at bay.

  She tried and tried, raiding her memories from Gill’s visit. The ducklings in the stream at the bottom of the garden. The horses on the beach the afternoon they’d walked to Straight Point. The expression on Grace’s tiny face when her mum had staggered to her feet after the first session on the rowing machine. For a moment or two this worked. But then the images faded and the darkness crowded back in and she flailed around in her mind’s eye, looking for some place to hide.

  Then, quite suddenly, she had it. She was afloat again, taking her first strokes towards the dock, listening to the big man with the huge hands. He’d told her she could do it. And he’d been right.

  Five

  THURSDAY, 14 APRIL 2011

  Suttle was on the road early next morning. By five to nine he was mopping up the last of a hangover with an all-day breakfast in a café off the Bridport bypass. The rain had cleared overnight and the hills in west Dorset were a vivid green in the fitful sunshine. He stood in the car park, enjoying the taste of the wind, waiting for Lizzie to pick up. After some thought he’d decided to pretend last night never happened. When she finally answered, he could hear banging in the background.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve got a guy in from down the road. He’s fixing the window.’

  ‘Right . . .’ Suttle wondered who was paying but decided not to ask. ‘You OK?’

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘She’s teething again. Don’t forget about tonight.’

  ‘What?’ Suttle was fumbling for his car keys.

  ‘I’m rowing. You need to be back by half five. You think you can manage that?’

  Suttle’s office was still empty when he made it to Exeter. The Office Manager, a resourceful divorcee called Leslie, brought him coffee and a couple of stale biscuits. Luke Golding, she said, was about to be redeployed by Mr Nandy but the lad was still upstairs. She knew he wanted a word.

  Suttle nodded. He was looking at the list of messages on his desk. Leslie had already arranged them in order of priority. The first one asked him to bell the CSI at Scenes of Crime.

  Mark was en route to an aggravated burglary in Totnes. Suttle heard the tick-tock of his indicator as he pulled in to take the call.

  ‘Kinsey’s PC,’ he said. ‘Christ knows how but we got bumped up the queue. They haven’t done full analysis yet but they’ve taken a good look.’

  Suttle was impressed. The techies were as hard-pressed as everyone else in the force and the wait for hard disk analysis often stretched to weeks, sometimes months. Nandy’s doing, he thought. Has to be.

  Mark told him to get a pen. He’d spent a couple of hours with the key data yesterday afternoon and sorted what he thought might be useful.

  ‘The guy’s a businessman, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Building resort hotels?’

  ‘Retirement communities. Top-end stuff. High six figures for a nice view and fancy CCTV.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ For once in his life Mark was laughing. ‘There’s a whole load of emails about a site at a place called Trezillion. It’s hard to get the context without more info but I get the feeling this thing’s still on the drawing board. He’s forever nailing the planning guys to the wall. Telling these people what to do and when. Real fucking arsewipe.’

  Suttle reached for a pen. Mark’s language always enriched a conversation. Scene of Crimes guys were a special breed but Mark was a one-off. Mr Gloom one minute. Mr Yippee the next. Definitely bipolar.

  ‘Where’s Trezillion?’

  ‘Cornwall. North coast. Lovely little bay with nothing but a public lavatory and a bit of car park. Used to be a top bogging spot for gays down from Newquay. You should give it a go before Kinsey gets his hands on it.’

  ‘He’s dead, Mark.’

  ‘Fuck me, so he is. Surprise or what?’ Another growl of laughter. ‘I’ll ping you the meat of this stuff. See what you make of it.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah. We’ve got a single blonde hair from the floor beside Kinsey’s bed. Proves nothing except he might have got lucky.’

  Suttle scribbled himself a note. The Viking, he thought. Definitely worth a return visit.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No.’ Mark confirmed that Kinsey hadn’t belonged to Facebook or any of the other social sites. Neither did he appear to have any close mates worth an email or two. There was, however, one chink in his armour.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The guy was a huge video gamer. Played most nights.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t know how much you know about all this gaming shit but there
’s a service called Steam. It’s a deal you sign up to. You buy games through the site and they organise everything else for you, keep your games in the cloud, help you find friends in multiplayer, keep a record of how you’re doing, sort out the social side.’

  ‘Social side?’

  ‘Yeah. Most of these games you can either play solo against the computer or with other people. The guys you’re playing with have weird screen names. Think cyber handles.’

  ‘Who was Kinsey? What did he call himself?’

  ‘Jalf Rezi. As in you know what.’ Mark invited Suttle to picture Kinsey bent over the rail of his balcony, barfing mouthfuls of chicken jalfrezi into the night.

  Suttle needed to get back to the video games.

  ‘Kinsey was part of a team? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Yeah. Definitely. Some nights he must have played alone. Other nights he logged into a server and went out with his mates.’

  ‘What kind of games are we talking about?’

  ‘I can only give you names, I’m afraid. Most of this shit’s way over my head.’

  He tallied some of the games in Kinsey’s Steam library: Grand Theft Auto IV, Arma 2, Need for Speed, Shift, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Battlefield 2, Civilisation IV, Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Counterstrike, God of War, Team Fortress 2, Wings of Prey.

  Suttle was scribbling fast. He wanted to know what these games were like.

  ‘Haven’t a clue. I’ll email you the guy’s Steam profile. You might need someone younger to make sense of it. These guys live under stones during the day, which is why they’ve all got such shit complexions. Good luck, eh? And tell him to get a life.’

  Kinsey’s Steam profile arrived by email within minutes. Suttle could make little sense of it. Luke Golding, mercifully, was still at his desk. Suttle drew up a chair while the young D/C explained that Henri Laffont, the Swiss engineer, had definitely spent the weekend in Shanghai. Another name off the suspect list.

  ‘Sorry, Sarge.’

  ‘No problem. How much do you know about video games?’