‘Decent? Fucking right. Fucking well decent. Yeah. Janet and fucking John. What a joke.’
‘And while he was out of the room, you had a look through the rest. Right?’
Tarrant was trying to focus. At length he started laughing again.
‘Wrong,’ he said. ‘I went through the laptop but couldn’t find anything so I went through his drawers, didn’t I? Found one of them little tiny picture card things, for his camera, all wrapped up in cling film. Easy, mush. Straight in the pocket. Wanted to know, didn’t I? Wanted to know what kind of party he’d really been having, the nonce.’
‘He’d been looking at this stuff through his camera?’
‘Must have been. All on one card, they were.’
‘And you accessed the card through another camera? ’
‘Yeah.’
‘Whose camera?’
‘Mine.’
‘Did Rach know?’
‘Never. Still doesn’t.’
Winter shifted his bulk on the desk, relaxed a little. Tarrant’s chin was on his chest.
‘So where’s Givens’ camera now?’ Winter murmured.
‘Binned it, didn’t I? Dropped it in the fucking harbour.’
‘And his laptop?’
‘That too. Return ticket on the Gosport ferry. Best couple of quid I ever spent.’
‘Why? If there were no shots on the laptop?’
‘Cos … ’ He frowned, trying to remember. ‘Cos I wanted it to look like some scrote had done a job on that flat of his. Same with the wallet. Leave it somewhere tasty and it’s gone in seconds.’ He grinned to himself. ‘That poxy newsagent’s place in Somerstown. Cool, eh?’
‘OK.’ Winter nodded, trying to sort out the timeline in his head. ‘And all this was afterwards?’
‘After what? After all them cream cakes? After all them nonce trips to fucking Venice?’
Winter steadied himself on the desk. He knew he was running out of time. Tarrant was beginning to talk nonsense. Any minute now, he’d call it a day. He bent closer.
‘You found the camera card. You knew what he’d been up to. I want to believe you sorted him out, son.’ Winter stared down at him, the anxious father, the trusted mate. ‘I want to know you did what any decent dad would do … Yeah?’
Tarrant gazed up, then nodded. His eyes were moist.
‘Late on a Monday,’ he said softly. ‘Piece of piss.’
‘Here?’
‘There.’ Tarrant gestured vaguely over his shoulder, in the direction of the post-mortem room. ‘Told him I was working overtime. Needed help.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Help, fuck. He was the one needing fucking help.’
‘What about your mate?’
‘Mate?’
‘Simon. Your oppo.’
‘Oh.’ He grinned. ‘Fatboy. On leave. Fortnight in Ibiza. Lucky bastard.’
‘So how did you do it?’
Something in Winter’s voice, just an edge of over-eagerness, brought Tarrant to a halt. He peered up, his eyes half closed.
‘Why?’ he mumbled. ‘Why do you want to know all this stuff?’
‘Because I’m here to help you, son. Because otherwise you’re gonna be in deep, deep shit.’
‘Yeah? Why’s that?’
‘I told you back in the pub. Because mates of mine want to put you away.’
‘And you?’
‘Me? I’m the only one who can stop them.’
‘Yeah?’ Winter knew he wanted to believe him. He bent closer again.
‘You have to trust me, son. I want you to know I understand. Any bloke would, any dad. What Givens was up to was evil. The bloke was vermin. Thank God you had the bottle to sort him out.’
Tarrant gazed up at him, nodding.
‘Yeah,’ he said softly. ‘Too fucking right.’
‘So what happened?’
There was a long silence. Winter edged his body sideways on the desk, watching Tarrant as his eyes found the image on the screen.
‘I whacked him, didn’t I? Under the ear, just round the back here.’ His fingers touched the soft skin behind his right ear. ‘Bloke went down like the squinny he was. Beautiful shot. Beautiful, beautiful shot.’
‘What with?’
‘Rounders bat. Belonged to Rach. She was saving it for when the kids get older.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘I burned it.’
Winter stirred on the desk. A Monday evening, he thought. The door locked. Plenty of daylight left. And all the usual tools to hand.
‘He was dead by this time?’
‘No.’
‘So what did you do next?’
Tarrant was frowning now, confused.
‘What is it with you, Mr W.? What do you really want?’
‘I want to know how you did the rest of it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it matters. Just trust me, son. Trust me.’
‘Yeah, but … ’
‘Listen, son.’ Winter was close again. ‘You helped me out, big time. I appreciate that. You’ll never know how much, but it’s true. Where I’ve been this last year or so, it makes you think. Most of my life I’ve been a loner, a real fucking loner, but now it’s different. Mates are important. So is Rach. So are your kids. You love ’em, don’t you?’
‘Yeah, to death.’
‘Well then.’ Winter’s hand found Tarrant’s shoulder. ‘Trust me. Either we get you out of this or you’re history. You understand that?’
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘You and me, Jake. You and me.’
‘And you mean it?’
‘I do. If you want to stay with your missus, your kids, all that, then you have to give this a shot. Otherwise, son … ’
‘Otherwise what?’
‘I can’t help you.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Exactly.’
Tarrant shook his head as if something had come loose inside. This conversation had definitely taken a turn for the worse. He stared up at Winter.
‘You mean that? About Rach and the kids?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you really need to know the rest?’
‘Yeah. Starting with what happened after you whacked him. It’s the only way, son. Either you tell me, either you get it off your chest, or someone’s going to come knocking at your door. And this time it won’t be me. Right?’
‘Right.’ Tarrant nodded, swallowed hard.
‘So how did you kill him?’
Tarrant stared at the screen, lost for words.
‘I put a cushion on his face,’ he mumbled at last. ‘And then I sat on it.’
‘Did that do it?’
‘Yeah. Big time.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘I got him up on one of the tables.’
‘Was that hard?’
‘Not really. Not if you know what you’re doing.’
‘Good lad.’ Winter gave his shoulder another little squeeze, coaxing the story out. He wanted to know what Jake had done next. Every little detail.
‘Why?’
‘Because it matters, son. For all of us.’
Tarrant closed his eyes. For a moment Winter thought he’d gone to sleep but then he stirred.
‘I stripped him first,’ he said at last. ‘Little runt he was. Pathetic. Nothing to him. Then … ’ He frowned. ‘You start at the bottom. Take the feet off. Here … right?’ His hand crabbed down his jeans until it got to the ankle. ‘Then this bit, lower leg … Split the tibia and the fibia. Going too fast, am I?’
‘You’re doing good, son. Good.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ Winter had begun to relax. ‘Thigh next, was it?’
‘Yeah. Bone saw. Strip the muscle. Big scalpel. Then … ’ His hands were working slowly up his own body, ‘ … the pelvis. Bone saw again. Then slice the arse off him. And his guts too. Water, you need water. Lots of water. Down the drain.’
Winter nodded. The yellow hose pipe, he thought. And bits
of Givens’ insides washing down towards the metal sluice beneath the table. Tarrant was staring up at him, lost.
‘Lungs? Did I do the lungs yet?’
‘No, son, you didn’t.’
‘Deflate them,’ he said. ‘Remember that. Get the air out of them. Otherwise it’s a fucking nightmare.’
‘Deflate them how?’
‘Knife.’ One hand jabbed towards Winter. ‘Ssssshhhh … ’
He began to yawn. He’s bored, Winter thought. He’s relived this so often, it’s sending him to sleep.
‘Arms?’ he suggested.
‘Yeah.’ Tarrant touched his own arms. ‘Top and bottom. Then this lot.’
‘What lot?’
Tarrant reached forward, fingered Winter lightly on the chin.
‘This lot. Knife section through the ligaments. Jaw comes off easy. Then the face tissue. Beautiful. Then three cranial cuts, right?’
His hands were back on his own skull, tracing the lines, one like the brim of a hat, another over the top, forehead to nape, the third laterally, ear to ear.
‘Four sections. Fits a treat.’
‘Fits a treat where?’
‘Here, mush.’ Tarrant patted his own chest.
‘Inside, you mean?’
‘Yeah, course. Where else?’
Winter stared at him, working it through, putting it together, sequencing the actions, imagining the remains of Givens neatly heaped on the cold metal, awaiting disposal. Then, finally, he had it. Tarrant was right. It was truly beautiful.
‘OK.’ Winter grinned down at him. ‘You bagged the bits up.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Yellow bags?’
‘Red. Always red.’
‘OK. That left you with how many bags?’
‘Ten. Wasn’t much to the cunt.’
‘And how many bodies did you have in the fridge?’
‘Ten. Monday, see?’ Tarrant was enjoying himself now. ‘Fresh delivery from QA.’
‘So each of the bags went into one of the bodies? Was that it?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘You slide ’em out of the fridge. Unpick the stitches. Bung a bit of Givens in, one bagful each. Zip ’em up again. Ten minutes max. Easy as you like.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘Afterwards?’
‘What else did you have to do?’ Winter was back in the post-mortem room, trying to imagine the scene. ‘It’s tidying up time, mate. There are bits of him all over the fucking place. Little bits.’
‘Hose.’ Tarrant was frowning again. ‘You hose it all down. Just like normal.’
‘And his clothes?’
‘Burn ’em.’
‘Where? When?’
‘Can’t remember. Must have been later.’
‘OK.’ Winter nodded. ‘And the bodies? In the fridge?’
‘Cremmed.’
‘No one looks inside?’
‘Fucking no way. You think I’m stupid?’
‘But what if they did?’
‘Wouldn’t matter.’
‘Why not?’
‘You use red bags anyway. After PMs.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Yeah. Say it again, Mr W.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Now get off that fucking desk.’
‘Why?’
‘Why d’you think?’ He struggled upright in the chair, one hand wrapped round the vodka bottle, then pushed Winter out of the way. A single image hung on the PC, the two naked kids entwined round each other, the boy trying to avoid his sister’s kiss. ‘There, Mr W.’ He took a last mouthful of vodka. ‘You blame me?’
Winter accepted the bottle, emptied it, wiped his mouth.
‘No, son.’ His voice was soft. ‘I don’t.’
Minutes later, with Tarrant slumped in the chair, Winter stepped out into the lobby. The register was on a shelf by the door. Givens, he knew, had first gone missing on Tuesday 24 May, although the police hadn’t been contacted until nearly ten days later. He opened the register, and leafed back through weeks of entries. On Monday 23 May, someone had recorded the details of ten bodies, shipped down from the Queen Alexandra Hospital. Beside each name was a series of details - sex, age, date of death, post-mortem details, accompanying property - and the signature of the funeral director who’d assumed responsibility for the body on collection.
Winter gazed at the list for a moment or two then returned to the office. Tarrant was sound asleep, curled in the chair. Winter found a sheet of paper and a pen. Moments later, beside the register, he began to copy the list of names.
Twenty-one
Saturday, 23 July 2005, 06.25
Faraday awoke to a perfect summer’s morning. For at least a minute he resisted the temptation to anticipate the day’s events, to pick up the threads from Coppice and ask himself where all yesterday’s conversations might lead. Ollie Bullen, Daniel George, Peter Barnaby, it didn’t matter. All he could feel was the warmth of the sun on his face through the open window and the splash of a mallard or a cormorant as it landed on the water beyond the towpath. High tide, he thought to himself. And the promise of a hot, hot day to come.
At length, yawning, he padded through to his study. A couple of e-mails had come in overnight. One was from J-J. ‘This place is UNBELIEVABLE,’ he’d written. ‘Everything’s fallen apart except the PEOPLE. I’m staying with Gennady. He’s got a sister in a wheelchair and three dogs. One of the dogs is called GEORGE and Gennady says it’s because he’s stupid and comes from TEXAS. Cool or what?’
The e-mail went on, tiny fragments of J-J’s latest adventure, pearls strung together on a string of breathless e-prose. At the end he said he thought he’d be in Moscow for a month yet because there was a problem with getting paid and if you left the place too soon there was no way you’d ever see the money. It was news to Faraday that the Russians were responsible for his son’s salary but he imagined that there must be some deal involved. Either way, he seemed to be having the time of his life.
The other e-mail was from Gabrielle. She said she was getting towards the end of her book. She’d worked harder than she’d ever worked in her life, chiefly because she couldn’t wait to get out of France and back to the Far East, but she was thinking of taking a couple of weeks off and wondered whether Faraday might like to join her. She had the camper and the dog and she’d be heading pretty much wherever she pleased. The first draft of the book should be finished, she wrote, ‘vers la fin d’août’. September, she promised, would be perfect. Rural France empty. The weather still hot. No one around. ‘Ça te dit?’
Faraday winced. Willard was insisting that Barrie drive both Coppice and Tartan full throttle through the second consecutive weekend. September was five weeks away. The prospect of a fortnight in the depths of France sounded hopelessly remote.
Faraday was at his desk by half eight, the window open, his jacket on the back of the chair. It was Babs, once again, who brought him the good news.
‘The TIU e-mailed it through, boss.’ She was carrying a sheaf of paper. ‘I printed it off.’
She gave him the message from the Telephone Intelligence Unit. It came in two parts, both of them courtesy of Vodaphone. The first couple of pages dealt with recent calls on Jenny Mitchell’s mobile. The rest supplied cell site information, as requested, on calls made on Sunday 10 and Monday 11 July.
Faraday thanked her and spread the sheets on his desk. The key to this enquiry, he knew, were the hours immediately before and after the moment when the train entered the Buriton Tunnel. On the Sunday morning Duley had made two calls to Jenny’s phone, one brief, the other lasting nearly forty minutes. Faraday checked the times of the calls, then tallied them against Jenny’s own billing. Duley had hung up at 12.48. After that she’d made no calls until 21.43, when she’d dialled an 02392 number. The conversation had lasted no more than two minutes. At 23.48 another call to the same number, again brief. Then, at 02.58, a third call. This time the conversation had gone on for eight minutes. The same Pompey number
.
Faraday turned to the cell site data. Each call had registered on three cell sites, and by a process of triangulation Vodaphone were able to locate, with various degrees of accuracy, where the caller had been when the call was placed. Mobiles used in cities or towns offered the best fix. In the countryside, with cell sites much bigger, the point of origination was harder to nail down.
The first two calls, according to Vodaphone, had come from the Pembroke Park area of Southsea. Faraday glanced at his big wall map of the city. Pembroke Park was a semi-gated mix of houses and apartments on a biggish site half a mile from the seafront. The address offered an unusual degree of peace and quiet and many of the householders had chosen to retire there.
Faraday brooded, trying to work out what Jenny Mitchell would have been doing in Pembroke Park. Then he remembered her mother. Maybe she lived there. Maybe she had an apartment or a house. Maybe she was still in Malta. And maybe Jenny had a key.
He nodded to himself, turned to the last call, felt himself stiffen at the desk. At 02.58 Jenny had phoned that same Portsmouth number - but this time the call had come from somewhere else. According to the Vodaphone data, her approximate location had been Chalton.
Faraday scribbled down the Pompey number and left his office. Winter, he knew, had an Ordnance Survey map pinned to his wall. Babs was sitting at her desk when Faraday burst in.
‘Chalton?’ he queried.
Babs got up. She’d already located the village. She took Faraday across to the map, indicated a village north-east of Horndean. Half a mile away ran the railway line.
‘I just rang Jerry Proctor to check.’ Babs was grinning. ‘If you drive south from the tunnel on the country roads, Chalton is the first place you start getting a decent signal.’
Faraday gazed at the map a second or two longer. The one confirmed sighting of a car that night had come around 02.50, two miles north of Chalton. If you were Jenny Mitchell and you were driving south, Chalton was the first place from which you could make a mobile call.
Faraday sank into Winter’s chair. At the Netley control room they kept a reverse phone book that tallied subscriber information against any landline number. Faraday read the number that Jenny had dialled three times and waited while the desk operator accessed the database. The woman was back within seconds.
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