‘It’s a start.’ Faraday nodded down at the phone. ‘You’ll be belling your own contacts too, no doubt.’
‘Really?’ Winter visibly brightened. ‘So I am on the squad?’
‘Of course. You’ll be driving the intelligence. If you need help in here, I’ll try and sort something out. It’s like a two-for-one offer, you holding the fort on both Coppice and Tartan. That’s the way I sold it to Barrie.’
‘Do I get to leave the office?’
‘I doubt you’ll find the time. Barrie’s one for regular updates. He likes to keep his finger on the pulse. You’re part of the Management Group now, Paul. Top man. Terrific career opportunity. Just think of all those meetings.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m afraid not. Like I said last night, intelligence is key to Coppice. The Givens job looks more straightforward. TIE Karl Ewart, and we’ll know where we are. Nice work, Paul. I told Barrie how well you’ve done.’
TIE meant trace, interview, eliminate. Faraday’s thinking on Tartan couldn’t have been plainer.
Winter was looking glum again. He’d always hated meetings. ‘I’m going to be crap at this,’ he told Faraday. ‘It’s just not what I’m about.’
‘Nonsense.’ Faraday opened one of the evidence bags and emptied the contents onto Winter’s desk. ‘I’d make a start if I were you. Barrie wants us round the table at five and he’d hate it if you had nothing to say.’ He paused, then nodded down at the exhibit label attached to the bag. ‘And don’t forget to sign the docket. Date and time. Yeah?’
The Scenes of Crime team were packing up their equipment by the time Faraday made it round to Salisbury Road. He passed one of them on the stairs, carrying a stepladder and a handful of lighting equipment back to the van outside. DS Jerry Proctor was standing in an open doorway on the top landing, talking to the photographer.
‘Is this the one?’
Faraday was peering in at the room. Proctor’s officers had removed a number of items but it still looked a mess. The spill of sunshine through the window betrayed years of staining on the threadbare carpet, and the walls, a vile shade of lavender, still carried traces of silver fingerprint powder. There was an MFI wardrobe in the corner, the door off its hinges, and more fingerprint powder on the surface of the table that served as a desk. The Dell PC was bagged, ready for dispatch to the specialist computer unit at Netley, and someone had made an effort to tidy the piles of paperbacks and magazines that lay against the skirting board. Faraday knelt briefly, flicking through the magazines. New Statesman. Prospect. Copies of something in French.
A poster over the single bed in the corner caught Faraday’s eye. It showed a young protester struggling to escape the attentions of a couple of helmeted riot police. One had locked him in a choke hold while the other was steadying himself for a decent shot with his raised baton. There was a blur of flags and faces in the background and rags of drifting tear gas gave the photo an almost painterly feel. Across the bottom of the poster ran a couple of lines of text but Faraday’s Italian was far from perfect. He gazed at it a moment longer. A window on a different world, he thought.
Faraday turned back to Proctor.
‘Anything interesting?’
‘Bugger all.’ Proctor shook his head. ‘The stuff I brought over this morning might be useful and there’s bound to be something on the hard disk but there’s no evidence that someone had a go at him in here. We found a T-shirt in the corner in a bit of a state but my money’s on that kicking he got a couple of weeks back because he seems to have used it as a dishcloth since. Might have other DNA on it, of course, especially if he put up a bit of a fight. We’ll make it a submission if you think it’s important.’
‘Prints?’
‘About half a dozen lifts. We’ll run them through AFIS but could be mates, old tenants, anyone.’
AFIS was the computerised fingerprinting ID system. In a matter of minutes it would tell Faraday whether anyone else with form had been in Duley’s bedsit.
‘Anything else?’
‘Just this.’
Proctor retrieved another evidence bag from his briefcase. Inside was a handful of stubby roaches, retrieved - he said - from various corners of the room. They’d found a stash of cannabis too, and on the off chance that someone else may have been smoking apart from Duley, they might also be candidates for forensic submission.
Faraday nodded, postponing a decision. Given the human wreckage Proctor had found in the tunnel, he rather hoped that Duley had spent the evening in a warm haze of dope. God knows, he might have suffered rather less through the ordeal to come.
‘May I?’
‘Of course, sir. Like I said, we’re through.’
Faraday stepped into the room. The herby bitter-sweet scent of cannabis seemed to have settled into the furnishings, into the curtains, into the untidy row of collarless shirts and denim jackets hanging in the wardrobe. He stood in the middle of the room, noted the view from the window, the glimpse of the sea at the end of the road opposite, tried to visualise the face from the PNC printout at home in this cluttered, intimate space.
On a hook on the back of the door hung an olive-coloured beret and a black scarf. There was a brown Buddha bag as well, and Faraday studied it a moment, sensing that this ensemble was something you might affect if you wanted the world to look at you in a particular way. It was an echo of the ID shot. It went with those hooded eyes and tilted chin - another hint of challenge, of proud apartness. Duley, he decided, was a man who took himself with some seriousness.
Faraday looked inside the bag. It was empty.
‘Everything’s with that stuff I left with you this morning.’ Proctor had been watching him.
‘Like what?’
‘Notepad, Pens. Couple of Guardian articles from last week. Some flyer about a Relate meeting. Address book. Rizlas. More weed.’
‘The notepad?’
‘Nearly full. Crap writing, mind. Red ink.’
‘Mobile?’
‘Couldn’t find one.’
Faraday walked over to the bed, lifted the duvet. The bottom sheet had gone. He glanced round at Proctor.
‘Old semen stains, lots of them. Duley was either into big-time wrist shandy or he had a friend. We bagged the sheet in case we need it for analysis.’
Faraday was surprised. None of the statements so far gathered from other tenants had mentioned anything about regular visitors to Number 8. He made a mental note to quiz Winter. Amongst all those exhibits, there’d surely be a note or two, or at least a phone number. On the evidence of this room, Duley seemed to be a man who liked an audience.
Proctor was telling him now about a pile of typescript pages they’d found on the desk beside the PC. He’d only had time to flick through but it appeared to be a novel of some kind, fantasy fiction, lots of funny names. He’d seized it and had the lot sent over to the Intelligence Cell. When it came to stuff like this, he said, there were people better qualified than him to look for clues.
Faraday smiled, trying to imagine Winter’s face when this latest haul of evidence appeared at his office door. Bank statements and address books were one thing; 50,000 words of Duley’s fevered prose quite another.
‘We found this too. It should have gone over to Major Crimes with the rest of the stuff but got left out. You mind taking it, sir?’
Faraday was looking at a postcard. It showed a turquoise bay beneath a tumble of tropical-looking cloud. The sand was bone white, with a scatter of rocks, and in the foreground an empty hammock hung invitingly between two palm trees. For a second he was back in Thailand. Then he turned the postcard over and discovered a Venezuelan stamp. According to the line of tiny typescript at the bottom, the bay evidently belonged to the Isla de Margarita.
Faraday peered at the writing. Red ink again.
‘Same hand, sir. Put money on it.’
‘Duley?’
‘Has to be.’
The card was addressed to Mia Querida, #8, 74 Salisbury
Road, Southsea, Inglaterra. On the left, instead of a message a single scarlet heart. Faraday tucked the card into his jacket pocket, perplexed. Mia Querida?
Back at Kingston Crescent, Faraday put his head round Winter’s office door. Winter looked up at him, stony-faced. He had his jacket off and his tie was loosened. There were two empty mugs on the window sill and the borrowed transistor on the other desk was tuned to Radio Two.
‘Well?’
Winter consulted the pad at his elbow. Duley, he said, was paying fifty quid a week, by cheque, for the bedsit. He was in trouble with British Gas over an unsettled account going back months and had probably fallen out with Southern Electric as well because there was correspondence about suspicious readings from the meter in his room. As far as earning money was concerned, he appeared to make a living from a variety of sources. A part-time job in Waterstone’s as a shop assistant brought him in £174 a week. In addition to that, he did twice-weekly night shifts in a meat-packing factory in the north of the city and occasional freelance translation work for an agency based in Southampton. Add up a week’s takings, said Winter, and you were looking at around £255 after tax.
‘The night shift might be a cash job but on money like that he’d still be pushed.’
‘Anything else job-wise?’
‘Yeah. Here.’ Winter extracted a payslip from the mountain of documentation on his desk. ‘It’s a local authority chitty. Portsmouth City Council. I phoned them up with the reference number. They were iffy, of course, but I got it out of them in the end.’
‘Got what out of them?’
‘Our man.’ Winter nodded at the payslip. ‘He’s been doing a series of workshops on local history at the Buckland Community Centre. Every Wednesday morning. It’s part of some regeneration scheme. They gave me a number for the woman who organises it. She says he’s gone down a storm. It’s mainly women in the class. They all think he’s wonderful, her included. She can’t wait for tomorrow.’
‘You told her what’s happened?’
‘You have to be joking. Why would I ever do that?’ Winter turned his head and gazed out of the window. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? Local history workshops in Buckland? Apparently some of them can even read.’
‘Big class?’
‘She said about a dozen. All ages. Mr Duley’s got the knack, she told me. Really puts a new twist on things, really makes you think.’
He turned back, sorting through the pile of evidence, adding more and more bits to the jigsaw of Duley that Faraday was beginning to put together in his head. Tuesday evenings, said Winter, Duley reserved for Respect. He was on the committee and had evidently volunteered to edit the monthly newsletter.
‘Respect? You mean the George Galloway lot?’ Faraday was woolly when it came to politics. He’d joined Eadie for the anti-war marches a couple of years back but the way the far left was always regrouping had always baffled him.
Winter shot him a look, then opened a website on his PC. The Respect home page featured a scarlet mast-head.
‘Equality. Socialism. Peace. Environment. Community. Trade Unionism,’ Winter read out. ‘Does that help?’
‘And you’re telling me Duley’s into all this?’
‘Absolutely. And not just Respect, either. The rest of the week, except for his night shifts, he’s at it with the stop-the-war lot. Or the anarchists. Or save the Kurds. We’re talking commitment here, boss. Guy never knew when to stop.’ Winter gazed at his notepad for a moment then pushed his chair back from the desk. ‘Doesn’t really help us though, does it, boss? How does any of all that put him in the tunnel?’
Faraday said he didn’t know. Yet.
‘What about the book he’s supposed to be writing? Jerry Proctor mentioned he’d sent it over.’
‘He did, bless him.’ Winter indicated a brown evidence sack on the floor in the corner. ‘I got to page 3. Didn’t understand a word.’
‘It’s in English?’
‘Allegedly. Starkis the Slayer of the Mighty Turk? The Perennial Goth? Biglet the Monster Fireman? Fair play to the man for all that typing but, believe me, I was pleading for mercy.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘You want to take the writing angle any further? Only you might be interested in this.’
He poked around in the pile of documents on the desk. This time Faraday found himself looking at a substantial-looking brochure for something that called itself The 25th Annual Writers’ Conference. This year it had taken place at University College, Winchester.
‘Page 8,’ Winter grunted. ‘Check out the photo.’
Faraday leafed through. Page 8 carried a list of workshops. A large red arrow drew his eye to a box announcing two sessions devoted to crime writing entitled ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ The workshop was to be conducted by Sally Spedding.
‘That was a couple of weeks back,’ Winter pointed out. ‘The Friday and the Sunday, last weekend in June. He must have gone because he’s in the photo I found inside.’
‘You’re good at this, aren’t you?’
‘Fuck off, boss.’
Faraday smiled. The photo showed a group of a dozen or so, most of them middle-aged women. Duley was one of only two men. The group was mustered round what looked like a table in a bar, and Duley had wedged himself between a beaming forty-something with a wild fall of black hair and a much older woman, greying, stern-faced. He had an arm round each of the women and the slightly glazed expression on his face suggested he’d been in the bar for a while.
‘Nothing to him, is there?’
Winter was right. Duley was thin, almost gaunt. Faraday turned the photo over. On the back were a couple of kisses and a scrawled signature that could have meant anything. This must be the woman with the camera, Faraday thought. Delivering the promised print.
‘You think there’s anything in it?’
‘Dunno.’ Faraday was writing down the contact number for the conference. ‘It’s recent, though, isn’t it? And some of these conference things can be wild - bunch of strangers, bed and board, cheap booze from the student bar, all those women falling around … ’
‘Yeah?’ Winter was eyeing the brochure with interest at last. ‘You think it’s too late to take up scribing?’
‘Never.’ Faraday pocketed the number, struck by another thought. ‘Jerry gave me a postcard Duley must have sent. Does Venezuela tie in with anything you’ve got there?’
‘Ah … ’ Winter abandoned the brochure for an envelope at the very bottom of the pile on his desk. ‘I meant to show you.’
He shook the contents out: a handful of Venezuelan banknotes, varying denominations.
‘These were in the address book too. I make it a couple of thousand bolivars. He must have brought them back.’
‘Any sign of a ticket? Invoice? Hotel details? Dates?’
‘No, but we’ve got his passport here. Hang on.’
Winter found the passport and gave it to Faraday. The entrada stamp for Venezuela was on a page towards the end. Aeropuerto de Isla de Margarita, 14 May 2005. On the 17th, same page, Duley had left.
‘Holiday?’
‘No way, boss.’ Winter was sparking now. ‘Who in his right mind goes to the Caribbean for three days?’
Detective Superintendent Barrie convened the first of the Coppice Management Group meetings for five o’clock, ahead of the full evening squad brief. Faraday was there as Deputy SIO, along with six other members of the team. The faces round the table were responsible for every area of the ongoing investigation - from control of various crime scenes to the often tricky issues of family liaison - and it was an early clue to Barrie’s leadership style that he insisted on full minutes, to be circulated within half a working day. He might look like a tramp, thought Faraday, but this is a man who leaves no administrative stone unturned.
Barrie began the meeting by confirming the transfer of the policy book to his own desk. There followed a careful summary of the operation’s progress to date, together with an exploration of possible lines of enquiry. The Intelligence C
ell, he announced, was sorting through a harvest of seized documentation from Duley’s bedsit. Names and contacts from the victim’s address book had already been passed to the DS in charge of the Outside Enquiry Team and appropriate actions were imminent. It was already clear that Duley was a political animal, an activist, with a finger in a number of far left pies. Special Branch would have their own contribution to make and Barrie had invited one of their DIs to attend the next Management Group meeting. Today was Thursday. By the weekend Barrie expected a firm timeline to have emerged, a sequence of events that would enable the squad to plot Duley’s contacts and movements during the days and hours that led to his death.
Winter was sitting at the far end of the table and Faraday was watching him carefully. From the start his body language had made it clear that he didn’t belong there. He was fidgety, bored, out of his natural habitat. He contributed when called upon, confirming that the trawl through Salisbury Road had thrown up a number of useful leads, but he refused to share the stir of excitement around the table at the speed with which Coppice was beginning to motor.
Sure, a picture was starting to emerge of the kind of life that Duley must have led. Of course, there were conversations to be had with political contacts, with students of Duley’s, with anyone else who’d stepped into his busy life. But the real crunch, the way Winter saw it, was motivation. No one took politics seriously anymore, least of all the people Winter knew who were capable of tying someone to a railway line. No, there had to be someone else Duley had upset - and from where Winter was sitting, the serious money had to be on the man’s recent three-day visit to Venezuela. Crack that, he muttered, and we might be getting somewhere. Venezuela meant cocaine. Cocaine took Coppice to Bazza Mackenzie. And to a businessman mate of his, Chris Cleaver. And guess what? Cleaver turns out to be living in a big spread a stone’s throw from the tunnel.
Challenged by Dave Michaels to produce hard evidence of this link, Winter said he couldn’t, not yet, but one or two of the older hands, including Barrie, were scribbling themselves a note. The Detective Superintendent had spent his previous CID service elsewhere in the county, and by the time Winter had finally finished, he looked, if anything, amused. Martin Barrie had heard all kinds of rumours about Winter, about this dinosaur throwback to an earlier school of detection, but he’d never seen the man in action.
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