At lights a mile short of Kingston Crescent, Dawn Ellis joined a lengthy queue of traffic. She’d just asked him about the personal impact of their hours in the mortuary. Winter had been close to death himself. Had the knowledge of all those bodies in the fridge unnerved him? Made him think a bit?
‘No, love.’ He’d shaken his head. ‘Not at all. That’s over. Done. Dusted. I was bloody lucky. This is much more interesting.’
‘What?’
‘This. Jake. Givens.’ He smiled. ‘Fucking nightmare for the boy. Must be.’
‘You think he killed Givens?’
‘I know he did. But he’s been clever, hasn’t he? He must have done it there, must have. He’s got the run of the place. He’s the keyholder. He can come and go as he pleases. Weekends, evenings, he could kill half the city and no one would be any the the wiser. He could carve up Givens like a turkey, turn him into handy little parcels of meat and gristle, and there’d be no forensic trace. That place must be crawling with DNA. Hundreds of bodies have been through it. Probably thousands. You’d never prove anything. He’s home free, isn’t he? It’s beautiful. The boy’s a real star.’
‘So where’s the body?’
‘My point exactly. We haven’t got a clue.’
‘So we give up?’
‘Fuck, no. Of course we don’t. We keep looking. It’ll happen in the end, I know it will. There are cleverer things in this world than DNA.’
Dawn Ellis nodded, inching forward. At length she told Winter to look in her briefcase.
‘There’s a letter in there,’ she said. ‘From Jessops.’
Winter retrieved the letter. It was addressed to Givens. It confirmed dispatch of his latest print order and hoped that he would be pleased with the results. Then, towards the bottom, came an additional paragraph.
You will note that we haven’t printed photo #00015620:30774.jpg. It is the policy of this company, in common with standard industry practice, to treat pornographic material under a special protocol. In certain circumstances we have no hesitation in bringing such material to the attention of the appropriate authorities. In this case, given the degree of ambiguity, you will be pleased to know that we have decided against that course of action.
The latter was signed Bernard King, quality controller. Winter looked across at Ellis.
‘Well, well … ’ He was smiling.
Eighteen
Thursday, 21 July 2005, 17.33
It was nearly six before Faraday got out to Buriton. Tracy Barber had been delayed by a phone call from Special Branch. With their interest in Duley, they were curious to know what Coppice had unearthed and she’d spent a while briefing them on developments to date. Odds on, she said, they were looking at complications in his private life, though it was still too early to nail down the details.
Now, driving into the village, Faraday was wondering quite what to expect. How come this woman who’d made contact knew Mark Duley in the first place? And, more to the point, what light might she be able to shed on the events that had led him into the tunnel?
The cottage lay up a narrow lane, close to the church. There was an ancient Morris Minor convertible parked outside, with the roof down. The car was in beautiful condition, and Faraday paused beside it. There was a wicker shopping basket in the back, full of apples, and a rug covered in dog hairs.
The dog was the first to the door, a moist-eyed spaniel. A woman stood behind it, shading her eyes against the low slant of the sun. It was hard to judge her age. Late forties? Older? Faraday didn’t know. He offered her his warrant card but she waved it away. She’d been expecting him all afternoon. She invited him in.
Faraday introduced Tracy Barber and followed her into the cottage. There was a smell of fresh polish and something with olive oil and garlic was bubbling on the Aga in the big kitchen at the back.
‘Do you mind talking in here? Only I’ve got to keep an eye on supper.’
She was a tall woman, full-bodied, with big hands and a warm smile. She wore a loose cotton dress and wisps of stray hair kept escaping from the scarlet bandanna she wore round her head. Her name was Bullen but she insisted they call her Ollie.
‘That’s short for Olivia, if you’re interested.’
Barber had produced a pocketbook. She checked the date on her watch and made a note.
Faraday confirmed that he was investigating Duley’s death in the tunnel. He thanked her in advance for taking the trouble to make the call.
‘Major Crimes? Is that an assumption or just the label on your door?’
‘Both, I’m afraid.’
‘You think something terrible happened to that young man?’
‘We know something terrible happened to him. We’re just keen to know why.’
‘I see.’ She nodded. ‘Will you take a sherry?’
Faraday said no. He’d appreciate an account of her own relationship with Duley.
‘Not me, Inspector, my twin.’
Her twin sister, she said, was called Ginnie. Short for Virginia. She’d been living down in the south of France for a while now, sweet little house in a village miles from anywhere. She scraped a living as an artist but made enough to finance a trip or two back home. She always came in June, and she always stayed here in Buriton.
‘With you?’
‘Indeed, Inspector. I have a spare bedroom upstairs. Ginnie stays for a month or so, normally. We have a lot of fun together. She can be a hoot when she’s in the mood.’
This year, Ginnie had turned up in early June. She wrote as well as painted, and for the first time she’d been bold enough to enrol herself on some kind of course.
‘It was a weekend thing,’ she explained. ‘Friday to Sunday. Sounded terribly intense.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Winchester. It couldn’t have been more convenient. Frankly, Ginnie could have slept here on the Friday and Saturday night, just commuted as it were, but she thought there was more value in going the whole hog. She’s a bit like that, my sister. It’s always all or nothing. No halfway house.’
Faraday nodded. Sally Spedding, he thought. Her workshop.
‘She enjoyed the conference?’
‘Oh, she did, she did, she enjoyed it very much. In fact she brought a little trophy back.’ She smiled. ‘Our Mr Duley.’
Faraday was trying to keep track of the chronology. The conference had taken place between 24 and 26 June. On the Sunday afternoon Duley had returned to Portsmouth. Sometime later that day, he’d been swifted away by persons unknown and taken to the caravan in Hayling Island. Early next morning, Monday, he’d been dumped in Cosham. The following evening, bruised and battered, he’d met Jenny Mitchell outside the Queen’s Hotel.
‘He came here on the Wednesday of that week after the Fleet Review,’ Ollie Bullen explained. ‘He phoned ahead and Ginnie picked him up at Petersfield station. To be frank, he looked awful. It takes a lot to shock my darling sister, but she couldn’t get over the state of him. His face, Inspector, here, here … ’ Her fingers touched her right cheekbone, her left eye. ‘And when Ginnie got his clothes off, upstairs in the bathroom, the bruising was just everywhere. You know, the way bruises go after a while? That livid, yellow colour?’
‘Did you ask him what had happened?’
‘Of course we did.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said he’d been beaten up the previous week. He wouldn’t go into details but it seemed to have something to do with money. Some people down in Portsmouth, business types. In fact one of them lives up this way. He told Ginnie he was going to have it out with the man. I’ve no idea whether he did.’
‘Did he mention a name at all?’
‘Yes … ’ she frowned ‘ … he did.’
‘Does Cleaver ring a bell?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, it does. That’s funny, isn’t it? Ginnie thought he was making it up.’
Faraday reached for his pocketbook, signalling for Barber to take over.
‘D
id your sister tell you anything about Duley before you met him?’ she asked.
‘Oh yes, she’d told me plenty. This talented young man who scooped up one of the prizes. This gorgeous young thing who’d swept her off to bed. She was full of it, just full of it. Not him, necessarily, but the fact that it had happened. She’s no spring chicken, Ginnie. It did her no end of good.’
‘And what did she make of him?’
‘Of that, to be frank, I wasn’t so certain. She said he was very … ah … wrapped up in himself. This is Ginnie talking. You wouldn’t appreciate the joke unless you knew her.’
‘She’s like that too?’
‘Completely. Utterly. Always has been. That’s one of the reasons she never married, at least that’s my theory. And it also explains what she’s doing in the Languedoc. Normally, she can’t stand other people, has absolutely no time for them. Mark Duley was a very lucky young man. I put it down to booze, myself. That, and the fact that he was so young.’
‘So it was a conquest?’
‘Indeed. Call it a notch on her belt. Before that Wednesday she had absolutely no interest in ever seeing him again. To tell you the truth, the phone call came as a bit of a shock. It was only the fact that he seemed to be in some kind of trouble that persuaded her to meet him at all. One look at him, of course, and it was all very different. You couldn’t just walk away. No one could. Not even Ginnie.’
‘You looked after him?’ It was Faraday again.
‘We did, Inspector. Both of us. Ginnie moved in with me. Mark had the spare room.’
‘And how was he?’
‘To be honest, at first I thought he was on drugs. He just didn’t seem to, you know, connect. He’d just sit where you are now, perch himself on the stool, try and get comfortable, and talk. He never stopped. He’d talk morning, noon and night. And it was always the same thing, the same topic. He was like a man with an itch, a scab. He just couldn’t leave it alone.’
‘Leave what alone?’
‘Some girlfriend of his. He never gave her a name. Just “she”. Ginnie said he’d been the same in bed, at the conference thing. The poor boy was totally obsessed.’
‘He took your sister to bed and talked about this woman of his?’
‘Yes. That’s exactly what he did. She said it was like listening to the plot of some dreadful novel. He just wittered on and on about her. How she was married. How she had young kids. How she was trapped in a marriage she didn’t want anymore. Ginnie didn’t care two hoots, of course, not my sister. She knew exactly what she was after, and she got it, more or less, and the rest was just drivel. That’s her term, Inspector, not mine.’
‘But back here? After he’d … settled in?’
‘Exactly the same. By the Thursday morning, to be frank, we were beginning to wonder what we’d let ourselves in for. He was unrelentingly miserable. Not an easy thing to put up with, not in a tiny cottage like this.’
Faraday nodded. The cuckoo in the nest, he thought.
‘Did he go out at all?’
‘Yes, and that’s another thing. In fact that’s why I phoned you in the first place.’
Duley, she explained, had been nervous of going into Petersfield and looking at him you could understand why. But on the Thursday, at Ginnie’s suggestion, he’d taken himself off for a little walk.
‘Where did he go?’
‘Down the lane there to the pond. If you follow the little road round, it leads to the railway. Go under the bridge, and you’re up in the forest. There are the most glorious walks, Inspector. I’m up there with the dog most days. Keeps us both fit.’
‘And Duley?’
‘He ignored the forest, took absolutely no notice of our directions. Instead of going on under the bridge and then following one of the paths into the forest, he turned left. That takes you along beside the embankment. There’s a fence of course, but I don’t think he took much notice of that.’
‘He went up onto the railway line?’
‘He did. And then he walked into the tunnel.’
Faraday shifted his weight on the stool. He knew every step of this journey. He’d made it himself, only last week. He’d had it photographed, mapped, plotted - the lot.
‘Why the tunnel?’ he asked.
‘That’s exactly what we asked him. He said it was irresistible. I remember the word exactly. Irresistible. He said he stood on that railway track and looked into the darkness, and knew that’s where he belonged. Am I wrong, Inspector, or is that not creepy?’
Faraday nodded. Creepy was one word for it. Dramatic was another.
‘Did you get a feeling that this was some kind of -’ He frowned. ‘- performance?’
‘For our benefit, you mean? No. Definitely not. Most of the time he was talking to himself. We needn’t have been here. I suppose you’d call it a soliloquy. That place, that thing - the tunnel - just fascinated him.’
‘He went back?’
‘He spent the night there.’
‘The night? When?’
‘The Thursday. The day after he arrived. We all had supper. We watched a bit of telly. We were about to turn in. And he suddenly announced he was going for a walk. We weren’t to worry. He might not be back until daybreak. He said it was just something he had to do. Apparently there are little recesses in there, holes in the tunnel wall where you can keep out of the way of the trains. He called them refuges.’
‘Weren’t you worried? Concerned on his behalf?’
‘Well, yes, in a way. But he seemed so certain that he’d be back that we just assumed he meant it. In any case, Inspector, what else could we have done? We weren’t his keepers. We couldn’t lock the poor boy up. And of course at that point we hadn’t the first idea he’d really be spending the night in the tunnel. I think both Ginnie and I had some vision of him sleeping under the stars. That would have been perfect, of course. Most therapeutic.’
Next morning, she said, he was back as promised. He still looked terrible and there was something strange about his eyes.
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t describe it. Ginnie thought he looked like something out of a Renaissance painting. I told her she was being fanciful but maybe she had a point. It was almost an otherworldliness. Do you know what I mean? There was a light in his eyes. He said he was making a journey. He said that twice, I remember. Then there was the music.’
He’d gone to bed for a couple of hours, she said. They’d both been downstairs when suddenly they heard this music. It was choral music. He’d arrived with one of those Buddha bags and it turned out he’d brought a little mini-CD player.
‘What was the music?’
‘Bach. The St Matthew Passion. Do you know it at all?’
‘Very well. There was a performance down in Portsmouth, over Easter.’
‘Excellent. Then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. It wasn’t the whole of the work, not at all, just one part of it. The “Descent from the Cross”. You know the bit I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it was that. He just played it and played it, over and over. Drove us mad, to tell you the truth. I’ve still got the CDs, as a matter of fact. He was kind enough to leave them.’
Faraday nodded. Gethsemane, he thought.
‘When did he go?’
‘He went on the Friday. I know it sounds awful but we’d really had enough by then. Ginnie kept dropping these heavy hints about having to get back to France the following week and in the end I think the message got through. Poor boy. I feel terrible now, just telling you.’
‘Did he go by train? Back to Portsmouth?’
‘No. That was another thing. The plan was to go by train, but when they both got to Petersfield, he said he couldn’t face it.’
‘Face what?’
‘Another train journey. People looking at him. In the end Ginnie had to drive him back. At least that way she’d know he’d got back safely.’ She offered Faraday a weary smile, then shook her head. ‘The
re was something else though, Inspector. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you.’
‘Go on.’
‘When they were in Petersfield, Ginnie and Mark, he made her stop at a hardware store. There’s a place called Basset’s Ironmongers. It’s on Swan Street. He gave her some money and asked her to do him a favour.’
‘Buy something?’
‘Exactly.’
‘What was it?’ Faraday knew the answer already.
‘A padlock, Inspector. With two keys. He kept one. Ginnie was to hang on to the other one.’
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t say, not specifically. All he wanted to know was when, exactly, she was going back to France. She told him Tuesday, because that was the plan.’
‘And when did she go back to France?’
‘We both went. On the Saturday. The afternoon crossing from Portsmouth. It was a last-minute thing, just something we both decided on.’ She turned to the stove and gave the saucepan a stir. ‘We were in the Languedoc by Sunday evening, just in time for a late supper. It was a bit of a relief, to tell you the truth. That man was beginning to disturb me.’
Ollie Bullen had kept the key. She’d handed it over to Faraday, sealed in a white envelope, glad to be shot of the thing. Now, driving back to Portsmouth, he wanted Barber’s view on exactly where this conversation might take them. One lead was Duley’s mention of Chris Cleaver.
‘Winter’s always been convinced he’s tied in with Mackenzie. If Cleaver invested in the Margarita trip, he’d have every reason to want his money back,’ Faraday said.
‘Which might put him in the caravan.’
‘Sure. But what does Duley gain by having it out with him? He’s been beaten half to death as it is. Why risk all that again?’
‘Maybe it wasn’t Cleaver he was after seeing. Maybe he was going to drop by when only his wife was there. That’s Duley’s MO, isn’t it? Always go for the weaker sex?’
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