Soft Summer Blood

by Peter Helton

  While McLusky had been talking, the superintendent had reached for his freshly charged mobile to check the text message that had just arrived. ‘DS Sorbie injured in the line of duty,’ he read out loud and walked quickly away to his car.

  Four hours later McLusky repeated the message to the CID officers assembled for his briefing in the incident room. ‘Nothing trivial, I hope,’ someone said. There were one or two chuckles in response to the remark.

  McLusky thought of challenging this but could not bring himself to do it. He found Sorbie a constant source of gloom and he suspected that the man drank while on duty. ‘I am sure that most of us – or at least some of us – wish him a speedy recovery.’ Laughter all round. He tapped the eight-by-twelve photographs of the latest victim pinned to the board behind him and the room went quiet. One grainy black-and-white picture, an enlarged passport photo, showed him unsmiling yet alive, the other one dead on his sofa. ‘Leonidas Poulimenos was the last remaining member of the painting quartet consisting of Ben Kahn, who disappeared, presumed drowned, Charles Mendenhall, shot with a thirty-eight’ – he pointed to the relevant pictures – ‘Nicholas Longmaid, ditto. We have found one of the two bullets that killed Poulimenos; it had hit the back wall and – you guessed it – deformed on impact. It lodged in the sofa. But a second bullet is safely inside the victim and might tell us once and for all if we are dealing with the same gun that killed the others.’ He pointed to a column of writing on the whiteboard. ‘Nothing so far connects any of the other victims to the neo-Nazi crap we found at Poulimenos’s place. What does connect them is that they were friends. That they all painted in their spare time – which Poulimenos had a lot of. And all three were present when Ben Kahn jumped, fell, was pushed overboard – take your pick – from a boat called Destiny in 1998. Now …’ McLusky looked for his mug of coffee and found he had already emptied it. He felt very tired all of a sudden. ‘We are working on the assumption that all three were killed by the same person. Poulimenos was shot sometime during the two hours preceding midnight. The fire that destroyed the Bentley could not have been started long before four thirty this morning when a patrol spotted it. They thought they heard a car drive off, possibly a Beetle. Not one of the new Beetles – they sound different – but an old one from the sixties or seventies. They are rare in Britain, so find the damn thing. I want the car history of everyone connected with these killings, dead or alive. Someone might have one stashed away for sentimental reasons.’

  French raised her biro in the air. ‘Could have been stolen for the occasion.’

  ‘Possible but doubtful. A similar engine was heard when Poulimenos’s holiday home was torched. Whoever killed Poulimenos either came back in the early morning or – and that’s much more likely – stayed for hours afterwards. They destroyed a lot of paintings and rummaged around in the man’s shrine to fascism. We also think they removed at least one item from a display case in there, but we can’t yet tell what it was. We have the approximate time of death. Everyone has to be reinterviewed. I want the whereabouts at the time of the murder of everybody, including Mendenhall’s gardeners, all the wives, the housekeeper Mrs Whatshername and David Mendenhall. In fact, I’ll tackle him myself, and you can also leave Elaine Poulimenos and Mrs Longmaid to me and Austin. Dearlove? Internet history and phone records for Poulimenos, when we get them. French? Bank details, suspicious money movements, unusual payments.’ He dealt out several more orders to various officers and civilian operatives and then waved his arms around in an exasperated gesture. ‘Get on with it!’ People moved smartly away to their workstations, computers and phones.

  Only Austin remained. ‘Whoever is behind it isn’t stupid,’ he said. ‘They knew there was CCTV; they chucked the hard drive into the Bentley and then set fire to it.’

  ‘Quite. But they are also utterly cold and ruthless. They spent at least five hours in the house with the dead man lying there.’

  ‘It means they’re either sociopathic and don’t care or they hated Poulimenos so much that the sight of him pleased them.’

  ‘The only thing that’ll please me today will be my head hitting the pillow,’ McLusky said with conviction.

  It was another eight hours before it did as he let himself fall on to his crumpled bed. He checked his messages and emails on his phone for the last time; there was nothing from Laura. He had sent her a few apologetic texts but had not heard from her since she slammed the car door on him on their return from Port Isaac. At the foot of the bed, leaning against the wall, stood the painting Poulimenos had sent him.

  Elliot Kahn’s father Ben was swimming, forever swimming out to sea.

  ELEVEN

  ‘Fuck, fuck, I’m gonna … I’m gonna die. Shit. My heart.’

  ‘You’re not going to die, Jack.’ Fairfield, squatting on the filthy concrete landing, had her left arm around the shoulder of the crumpled Sorbie. ‘Take deep breaths. The ambulance is on its way.’

  ‘My heart is–is–is not right, it’s not slowing down. My elbows are hurting, everything’s gone dark.’

  ‘That’s because it is dark. Here, you take the torch. Sit up a bit. Can you lean against the wall?’ Sorbie, scared to move, fearing his heart might burst at any moment, didn’t answer. ‘Come on, Jack, you’re a tough old bastard. Takes more than that to kill you.’ She pulled and pushed the panting DS until his back rested against the wall.’ The persistent humming on the other side of the door, the musty smells, Sorbie’s panting fear, the ache in her legs from squatting beside her colleague had wiped away her elation but could not tarnish the bright conviction that for once she was in the right place. ‘I can hear a siren. I’ll go down and guide them in.’

  Fifteen minutes later Sorbie was being carried away in a sitting position – he was too panicked to lie down – and slotted into the back of the ambulance. ‘Tachycardia – it’s not uncommon,’ one of the paramedics assured her. ‘Will you go with him?’

  ‘I’ll have to stay here.’ She called to Sorbie as the door closed. ‘I’ll come and see you as soon as I’m done here.’ The ambulance pulled away unhurriedly, without sirens or beacon.

  The first police vehicles had also appeared and the arrivals took their cues from her, waited for her to give instructions, issue orders. It did not last long enough for her to get used to the sensation; a large black Audi arrived and stopped with a crunch of tyres.

  The car matched the dark-suited man who swung himself out of the driver’s seat and marched purposefully towards the gap in the fence which had been widened by the paramedics and was now guarded by PC Hanham who was sweating in the heat. As the man ducked past him through the fence, Hanham thought he could feel the nimbus of air-conditioned coolness still clinging to the officer who didn’t as much as look at him.

  As soon as Fairfield saw him arrive, she knew she had been reduced to a bystander. She had never personally met DI Wheeler but had sat through a self-important lecture by the man during a training day. Keith Wheeler was one of the leading lights of the Bristol drug squad, an officer who had distinguished himself in the ongoing Operation Atrium, with several high-profile arrests and successful prosecutions under his belt. Fairfield thought he was probably five minutes away from making detective chief inspector, and he looked younger than she felt.

  Wheeler marched towards her, his crew-cut head advancing like a bullet. ‘You Fairfield? I’m Wheeler.’ He shook her hand, but just the once. ‘What have we got?’

  Fairfield pointed. ‘Cannabis factory. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘How’d you find it?’

  ‘Dead girl. Got electrocuted. Probably happened here.’ Fairfield found herself talking in the same short machine-gun bursts as Wheeler, who was already marching on towards the building. She kept pace with him. ‘The door handles to the factory are electrified.’

  ‘Yes, that’s not uncommon.’

  ‘It put my sergeant in hospital. He touched both handles.’

  Wheeler stopped and looked at her. ‘Will he be all righ
t?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good, good.’ He set off again. At the ground-floor entrance, also now guarded, he no more than stuck his head inside the door. ‘Can smell it from here.’ He looked up. ‘Place hasn’t been connected to the grid for years.’ He walked off along the side of the building. ‘First gotta find their leccy source.’

  Fairfield, who hadn’t moved, called after him. ‘I might be able to help you with that.’

  Wheeler stopped, turned on his heels and returned as though pulled by a bungee cord. ‘You can?’

  ‘I’m willing to bet they’re stealing it from the garage on Dulcote Row.’

  The drug squad now descended in large numbers on the site and soon established that indeed a short tunnel had been dug to access the electricity supply of the car repair shop. A thick cable had been laid, partly dug into the ground, partly covered with debris, from there to the back of the building where it was fed inside through a hole in the brickwork, disguised under rubble. As soon as the electricity supply was cut at the garage, the engineer at the door upstairs reported that the charge had disappeared. The humming subsided, too. ‘That’s the extractor and cooling fans off,’ Wheeler explained. Fairfield, who had a good idea of how cannabis factories worked, did not get a chance to say so. ‘After you, Kat. You found the place.’ They had by now moved on to first names.

  Despite the engineer’s assurance that the electricity was off, she cringed all over as she pulled back the double door. Immediately on the other side hung sheets of grimy plastic. They pushed through those and found themselves in a subtropically warm plantation of cannabis plants. All were grown in black pots in neat blocks. Suspended on pulleys above them hung grow lamps, three strips per block. Here and there, thick silver hoses connected to extractor fans snaked between them. The smell was very strong but not unpleasant, Fairfield noted.

  ‘Guys, it’s Typhoo! Damn it,’ Wheeler called to the forensics technicians and members of his entourage who now flooded into the place, filming, photographing, taking samples of soil and plants. He made his way through it all, with Fairfield following close behind.

  ‘Typhoo?’ she asked.

  Wheeler did not answer straight away. Right at the back they found a kind of office space with a mattress on the floor, some dirty clothes, a tea kettle and a half-collapsed box of two hundred and forty Typhoo teabags. He flicked a finger against it. ‘I recognized the set-up. Whoever looks after the place likes Typhoo tea and drinks it black. Shame you had to call in the cavalry, Kat, crying shame. We could have staked out the place and nabbed them at harvest time. In about three weeks by the looks of it. But they’ll not be back now.’

  ‘My sergeant had just been electrocuted—’ Fairfield started.

  ‘Yes, yes, don’t fret. It’s just that they get harder and harder to find and I really wanted these guys. Been at it for years all over the south-west. They’re now running out of urban spaces like these – every square inch is being developed. Some gangs move into the countryside, but there everyone knows everyone and people get suspicious, and the costs are much higher. The latest trend is to move into the suburbs and rent a large family home, nice bit of garden around so the neighbours don’t get too close, and then stuff the house with plants and equipment. They get a man and a woman to look after the plants and they pose as a married couple. It’s more elaborate for them to set up, but much harder to find for us.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry I loused it up for you,’ Fairfield said with a tinge of bitterness.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Kat; you found the place – that’s the main thing.’ He made a sweeping arm gesture. ‘Look at it. There must be, what, twelve hundred plants? If not more. Good to take that much herbal off the street. We’ll get Typhoo some other time.’

  ‘Is it really worth it, us expending so many resources on this sort of operation? I mean, it’s only weed. Isn’t it time it was decriminalized?’

  ‘How? You can decriminalize the use of it, but if you do, you just get more of this kind of stuff going on. That girl has died. Your sergeant nearly copped it. The electricity for all this was stolen from the chaps in the garage. And these gangs are often involved in people trafficking, smuggling, violent crimes of all sorts – and other drugs, of course. They siphon millions of pounds out of the economy and don’t pay taxes. I mean, OK, if you want to grow a bit of pot on your windowsill to alleviate the boredom of your little life, you’ve nothing to fear from DI Wheeler – but this lot? You can’t be serious.’

  ‘All right, you’ve convinced me,’ she admitted reluctantly.

  ‘Wait a second, Kat. Tell me you don’t smoke this stuff yourself.’

  ‘Me? Café Crèmes is as strong as it gets with me.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that.’ He made an arm gesture which Fairfield rightly interpreted as an invitation for her to leave. ‘I hope your sergeant makes a full recovery.’

  An hour later she found herself in the Royal Infirmary at DS Sorbie’s bedside. He had recovered but looked more miserable than usual, sitting up in bed and complaining with a bitter, querulous voice Fairfield had not heard before.

  ‘A bit of arrhythmia, but it’s all completely gone. I feel all right, but now they want to keep me in overnight – “for observation”, they said. Look around. Do you see anyone observing? Nope. Does anyone come when I press this button? Nope. Can I get a bloody cup of coffee? Nope.’

  ‘I’m glad to find you so cheerful, Jack.’

  ‘It was a cannabis factory, right?’

  ‘Massive thing – the whole upper floor. Very professional. Remember DI Wheeler?’

  ‘Drug squaddie? Talks like he’d rather be in the army blowing stuff up?’

  ‘Turned up and took charge. He’ll get all the glory, if there’s any to be had. He recognized the set-up by the teabag habit of the caretaker. Said he was disappointed I had called ambulance and backup. He’d have liked to have staked out the place. And I got a whole lecture about the importance of busting cannabis factories and the sterling work the drug squaddies do.’

  ‘Glad I was out of it, then. But this means Bethany Hall had nothing to do with it. She probably found the cannabis factory the same way we did, only she died from the electric shock. The bastards found her dead on their doorstep and drove her down the road and dumped her, hoping we’d think it was suicide.’

  ‘Yes, they can’t be terribly bright if they thought that might fool anyone for more than five minutes. Poor Bethany probably had nothing to do with anything – not with the cannabis, not with Marcus Catlin, and nothing at all with Fulvia bloody Lamberti. We’re basically back to square one. Forget Bethany. If Wheeler gets his Typhoo man, then we’ll stake a claim on the bastard for manslaughter. In the meantime, we’re no nearer to finding Fulvia.’

  A nursing assistant entered the room with a tea trolley. ‘Ah, here’s the tea lady at last,’ said Sorbie. ‘Coffee for me, love.’

  The girl gave Sorbie a less-than-impressed look and consulted the patient notes at the foot of the bed. ‘A nice cup of camomile tea for you, sir.’

  Sorbie fell back on his pillow with the expression of a Renaissance martyr, while Fairfield walked from the room, suddenly feeling cheerful again.

  McLusky had no idea whether a Petit Corona cigar suited him, as Hotchkiss had said, but they probably suited his car. He had pulled over within sight of Jennifer Longmaid’s house on an impulse, telling Austin that he felt the need to fortify himself with a smoke before questioning her.

  ‘I don’t blame you. But what am I supposed to do?’ Austin complained.

  ‘You just sit and breathe deeply.’ After sliding one of the cigars out of the leather case and lighting it, McLusky sat back and blew large clouds of fragrant smoke out of the open window.

  Beside him, Austin practically had his head out of his window, busily avoiding passive smoking. ‘Cigars? Not you as well! Fairfield is smoking cigars – did you know that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why is
she smoking cigars if she doesn’t want people to know she’s a lesbian?’

  ‘She’s bi.’

  ‘Same thing. I don’t think most of Albany Road station can wrap their head around the concept of a bisexual police officer. Some are old enough to have arrested people for it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll take up the habit myself. I’m talking about cigars here.’ McLusky had quite enjoyed the cigar he had smoked at Hotchkiss’s house. He looked at his own hand holding the cigar, blew on the glowing end, trying to decide how he liked it. It was such an old-fashioned thing to do, smoking cigars, but so was smoking, it appeared.

  How much of a bribe had it been to accept the cigars in their leather case from Hotchkiss? He had looked it up: the little cigars alone cost six pounds each. If he had wanted to make a habit of smoking these, he would need to accept regular bribes from the man. He coughed and flung the cigar out of the window – at least five quid’s worth, he thought. He had no intention of sticking to any bargains made with Hotchkiss, so perhaps smoking his cigars was an unhealthy thing to do. He slid the other two cigars from the leather case and dropped those out of the window too. After a moment’s hesitation he threw the leather case after it into the grass on the verge.

  ‘I feel I should arrest you for littering,’ Austin said. ‘Changed your mind about cigars, then?’

  McLusky grunted. ‘These cigars have a bitter aftertaste.’

  ‘Look, it’s her.’ Jennifer Longmaid’s little sports car emerged from the drive of Stanmore House and accelerated past them with her at the wheel. If she had spotted them, she did not show it, not giving their car a second glance.

  ‘Think we should follow her?’ Austin asked.

  ‘Can’t just follow her for the heck of it; we have nothing on her. Can’t follow her covertly without permission from on high and can’t follow her overtly because that’s harassment. No matter; we’ll start with the other grieving widow.’