‘I can’t say, Mr W.’
‘You don’t have to, Col. Because it’s all changed again. And that means it’s all going to be OK.’
‘Changed how?’
‘I saw Mr Mackenzie this morning. He said not to worry.’
‘Not to worry how?’
‘He meant it was OK to tell me. Something’s happened. Things have changed.’
‘Really?’ Relief flooded into his face. For a moment Winter thought he was going to get a kiss.
‘No problem, son.’ Winter patted his knee. ‘Just tell me what you were going to tell me. Then you get to keep the hundred quid and I’ll fuck off. How’s that?’
‘It’s not the money, Mr W.’
‘Of course it’s not.’
‘I’d have done it without the money. For you, I mean.’
‘Fine, so what happened?’
Leyman turned his head aside, his brow furrowed, his eyes closed again.
‘First I went to the place you and me used to go.’ He named a pub in Albert Road. ‘Frankie was there. Frankie’s always there. He wanted to know where I got the money but I never told him. We had a couple of drinks then went round to Kev’s place.’
‘Kev Sangster?’
‘Yeah.’
Winter nodded. Frankie Drew and Kev Sangster had been hard-core members of the 6.57, both mates of Mackenzie. Winter hadn’t seen them for years.
‘And?’
‘We phoned for a takeout. A Chinky.’
‘And?’
‘I told them about Waterloo. The charge of the Household Brigade. Said they were welcome any time, you know, like you do.’
‘And?’
‘Then I asked about Johnny. Like you wanted.’
At first, he said, they hadn’t given much away, but Frankie had made him stop at the offie in Albert Road for a couple of bottles of vodka and some lagers, and pretty soon they were talking about Johnny again.
‘And what did they tell you? About Johnny?’
‘They said Mr M had been good to him, looked after him, given him money.’
‘And what else?’
‘They said Mr M never did anything for nothing.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Johnny did something in return, looked after something.’ Leyman’s eyes were wide. He desperately wanted Winter to be pleased. ‘Two million quid’s worth of cocaine? Tucked away for a rainy day?’ He blinked. ‘Does that sound about right?’
Confirmation on the ID of the fourth body got to Faraday shortly before ten o’clock. Pembury was on the phone with a perfect match against Robbie Difford’s dental records. Unless a fifth body was to be found in the remains of Monkswell Farm – increasingly unlikely – then Johnny Holman was still alive.
‘We obviously need to find him, Joe.’ Faraday had contacted Parsons with the news. ‘Will you talk to the media or shall I?’
Faraday assigned the task to a D/C in the incident room. An old passport of Holman’s had been recovered from the office in the barn, and although the photo showed a younger man, Faraday was prepared to run with it. Calls to local press and TV outlets secured a promise to broadcast the mugshot, which was scanned and emailed within minutes.
Faraday summoned Suttle to his office and told him about the positive ID.
‘Difford’s car,’ Suttle said at once. ‘Holman must have taken it.’
Faraday nodded. He was numb with fatigue. He should have thought of this already. Why did it take Suttle to prompt him towards something so obvious?
‘Circulate the details,’ he muttered. ‘Flag the bugger up.’ Within the hour, force-wide, uniforms and CID would find themselves looking at the latest twist in Gosling’s brief history. Breaking news for busy coppers.
Suttle made for the door but then turned back.
‘I hate to say this, boss …’ he began.
‘I know, I know.’ Faraday held his hands up, an involuntary gesture of surrender.
‘You want to talk about it?’
Faraday stared at him for a long moment. Then he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’
‘Wait here. Give me five.’
Faraday had no memory of waiting. For once the phone didn’t ring. Then Suttle was back again. He’d organised the heads-up on the Corsa. He looked, if anything, stern.
‘We have to box this off, boss.’
‘What?’
‘You. Whatever it is. People are talking already. Even Parsons’ll notice in the end.’
‘What are they saying – as a matter of interest?’
‘Most of them know you had an accident. The guys with half a brain think you maybe came back too soon.’
‘And the others?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
Faraday nodded. He’d never bothered much with canteen gossip but knew that certain things never changed. If you reached the giddy heights of D/I then you were always in line for a kicking.
‘So?’ Suttle had sat down.
Faraday shook his head. This was the timeline from hell. He literally didn’t know where to start.
‘I went through the windscreen,’ he said.
‘You what?’
‘Had a crash. Hit a tree. I was asleep at the time.’
‘And everyone else?’
‘The driver died. Guy called Hanif. Sweetest man—’ Faraday broke off, stared at the wall.
‘So why …?’ Suttle brought him back, touching his own face.
‘Why no scars? I had a baseball cap pulled down over my face to help me sleep. It must have …’ He shrugged, lost for words.
‘So you remember nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘And Gabrielle? She was there too?’
‘In the back.’
‘And?’
‘You tell me.’
‘But she’s OK?’
‘She’s back.’
‘In one piece?’
Faraday stared at him, realising that he didn’t know the answer. Then he shut his eyes, hearing a voice telling Suttle exactly the way it had been: coming round in hospital, trying to piece his life back together, trying to let his body heal itself, aware all the time that something profound seemed to have happened. Not simply a roadside tree. Not simply the body of the driver slumped beside his. But another bend in the road – sharper, altogether more alarming.
‘I’ve lost track, Jimmy. I’ve lost faith, focus, whatever else you need to get through. I wish I could make a better job of describing it but I can’t. Nothing seems to matter. This … me … whatever. I wake up in the morning and there’s just nothing. I’ve still got the directions somewhere but I don’t give a shit any more. And you know what happened last night?’
‘You went to bed early. Sane man.’
‘I drove to Salisbury. Gabrielle’s living in some godforsaken B & B. She’s brought a little girl back from Gaza.’
He explained about Leila in the Burns Unit, about the white phosphorus, and about Gabrielle, incandescent with anger.
‘It’s changed her, Jimmy. Me? It’s probably the accident. Gabrielle? It’s the little girl. This is pretty tricky stuff, but you know what? It gets worse.’
‘How? Why?’
‘She wants to adopt. And to make that easier she thinks we ought to get married.’
‘Right …’ Suttle nodded. ‘And is that a bad thing?’
The question appeared to take Faraday by surprise. He stared at Suttle for a long moment, began to voice a thought, frame an answer, had second thoughts.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘No, it’s not.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe that’s the problem. That I don’t know.’
‘Do you still love her?’
‘I love us. I love what we were.’
‘And now?’
He shook his head, his lips shaping the same unvoiced thought, the man trapped underwater, his last lungful of air slowly leaking away.
I don’t know.
They studied each other for a long moment. Then came a knock at the door. It was D/C Patsy Lowe. Suttle had asked her earlier to accompany him to Cowes. They had to take a look at Lou Sadler, the madam who ran the escort agency. Was Suttle still up for it?
Suttle glanced at Faraday. Faraday was staring into space. He waved a hand in dismissal.
‘Off you go,’ he muttered vaguely.
Winter was back at his apartment in Gunwharf by midday. He made himself a coffee and settled on the sofa, aware of the rain blowing in from the harbour. He’d been to see both Frankie Drew and Kevin Sangster. At both addresses he’d had to wait for ever to get them out of bed.
Drew occupied a squalid basement flat in one of the streets to the north of Albert Road. Semi-naked, he’d picked his way through the litter of empty bottles strewn over his living-room carpet, complaining bitterly about the students upstairs. They get pissed all the time, he said, and play shit music. When Winter asked him about Johnny Holman, he said he couldn’t remember a thing. When Winter pushed him harder, he told him to fuck off.
Kevin Sangster, if anything, was in a worse state. He shared a flat with a Filipina of uncertain age. Either he or his lady friend had a gastric problem because the place stank of vomit. This time Winter wanted to know about the money. According to Leyman, Sangster had nicked the rest of the hundred quid. He’d said it without any rancour, as if the money had really been Sangster’s all along, but Winter wasn’t having it. He’d calculated the Chinky and the booze at around fifty quid, and when he spotted two twenty-pound notes tucked beneath an ashtray, he’d helped himself. Sangster saw him do it, demanded the money back. It was Winter this time who told him to fuck off, an invitation which sparked the information he was after.
‘That’s fucking mine,’ Sangster yelled. ‘I was the one who told him.’
‘Told him what?’
‘Told him about Bazza’s little fucking nest egg.’
Now, draining the last of the coffee, Winter was still brooding on this latest development. The last couple of years had taught him never to expect the whole story from Bazza. The key to his world was power, keeping the upper hand, and the currency he dealt in was information. He gave it to you in tiny parcels, carefully weighed, forever keeping the tally in his head. Who knew what. Who’d said what to whom. Who owed him. Who didn’t. Winter, who’d always had a very similar MO, had been amused at first. It had felt like a game, and there’d been days when he’d definitely stolen an advantage or two. But lately, this last year especially, he’d begun to tire of watching his back, of interpreting and reinterpreting the most casual asides, of studying the man’s body language for clues to the real story. Wearing a blindfold, as he’d once told Bazza, does nothing for your sense of humour nor for your self-respect. And so here he was, stumbling around in the dark again while his boss laid plans to take over the whole fucking city.
Was it really worth it? Sweeping up after a bloke who simply refused to establish any sensible ground rules? Who vested so much faith in his own judgement? Who appeared to believe that no Pompey door could resist the weight of his shoulder?
In truth, he didn’t know. He’d got used to the money and the lifestyle, and in the shape of Marie and maybe even Stu Norcliffe he’d found real friendship. But all of us, he told himself, are tiny whirling fragments in the teeming chaos of Bazza’s busy little brain, and there was something slightly Roman in the realisation that he might face the downturned thumb at any moment. The prospect of that kind of endgame, the pitted brick wall at the end of the cul-de-sac, was beginning to haunt him. If not Bazza, he thought, then someone else might be in charge of the firing squad. Maybe Willard. Maybe Faraday. Maybe, God help him, Jimmy Suttle.
He glanced at his watch, then fumbled for the remote. At moments like these, bleakly introspective, he always sought comfort in the TV news. He switched on the set, waiting through the final moments of Bargain Hunt. Then came the bulletin. Lloyds Bank was trying to fight off seizure by the government. Business leaders were warning about a surge in unemployment. Winter emptied his cup, wondering whether anything remotely interesting had made the local segment at the end. Then, without warning, he was staring at a photograph of Johnny Holman. He looked years younger, exactly the way Winter remembered him from his CID days. The newscaster was reminding viewers about the recent tragedy on the Isle of Wight. Four bodies had been recovered from a burned-out farmhouse and police were keen to trace the grinning pockmarked owner, who appeared to have gone inexplicably missing.
Winter hit the mute button. Johnny Holman. Alive and kicking. He tasted betrayal. He felt physically sick. Suttle, he told himself, must have known all along.
Chapter Ten
WEDNESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2009. 13.03
Lou Sadler had a fourth-floor apartment on the seafront in Cowes. The curtains were drawn across the biggest of the windows at the front and on the entryphone beside the communal front door there was no name listed beside Flat 8.
Suttle buzzed for a third time, enjoying the thin sunshine after all the rain. According to the D/S on the Vice Squad, Sadler drove a scarlet Renault Megane convertible with leopardskin covers on the seats. Suttle had already checked the parking lot to the rear of the building. The Megane was occupying a space in the corner. Unusually for a cabriolet, it had been fitted with a tow bar.
‘Yeah?’ A woman’s voice, drowsy.
Suttle introduced himself. He was a police officer. He and his colleague would appreciate a conversation in relation to a recent incident on the island.
‘What kind of incident?’
Suttle wasn’t prepared to go into details. The door buzzed open. There was no lift.
Concrete steps led up, two flights per floor. The carpet had seen better days but there were some nicely framed photos on the walls. Heeling yachts under full sail during Cowes Week. A dramatic sunset flooding the Solent in gauzy yellows and golds. Sadler was waiting for them at the top, barefoot on the landing, her arms folded over the front of the navy-blue dressing gown. She was a big woman with a strong face and a tumble of auburn curls. She wore a thick gold bangle on one wrist and sported a huge ruby ring on her other hand. Her fingernails were the same colour as the Megane.
She looked at Suttle’s warrant card, then nodded at the open door and followed them into the apartment. Patsy Lowe was still catching her breath. Suttle paused outside the kitchen. Among the clutter in the sink was an upturned bottle of Moët. In the hall a thin blue plume of scent curled up from a fresh joss stick stuck in a flowerpot. The flowerpot was home to an extravagant fern, and the blaze of sunshine from the living room at the end of the hall threw frond shadows across the parquet floor. Sadler must have pulled the curtains while they were making their way up, Suttle thought, wondering who else might be in the apartment.
Sadler led them through to the living room. It was bigger than Suttle had somehow expected, the decor spare, almost Japanese. Carefully plastered white walls. Occasional rugs on the polished maplewood floor. From the big picture window, the curve of the promenade framed a view he recognised from one of the photos in the stairwell. A line of dinghies bobbing on the tide at their moorings. The low swell of the mainland beyond.
Suttle and Lowe took a seat on the black leather sofa. Sadler, still standing, wanted to know exactly what they were after.
Suttle briefly explained about the fire at Monkswell Farm. It was his understanding that Sadler knew Johnny Holman.
‘That’s right.’ She nodded. ‘I did.’
‘Did?’
‘He’s dead – isn’t that what I heard? The fire you just mentioned?’
‘No.’ Suttle explained about the post-mortem findings. Johnny Holman, as far as they knew, was very much alive.
‘So you guys need to find him, is that it?’
‘Of course.’
She nodded. The news that Holman had survived the fire didn’t appear to spark any reaction.
‘You were friends with Holman?’
‘I knew him
.’
‘Well?’
‘We did business.’
‘What kind of business?’
Sadler looked from one face to the other. She seemed irritated. She’d obviously been in bed. She carried a strong smell of recent sex.
‘Should I phone for a lawyer? I mean, is this official or what?’
‘It’s a conversation,’ Suttle said. ‘Four people died in that fire. We need to know more about Holman. We need to talk to his associates, to people who knew him. You can call it background if you like. Anything you know about Mr Holman would be helpful.’
‘But you know what I do for a living, right?’
‘We know that you run an escort agency. Is that relevant?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what I did for Johnny. He wanted company from time to time. I made that happen.’
‘Company?’
‘Girls. Women.’
‘He bought them?’
‘He paid my fees. It’s all legal, invoiced, receipted. I’m a business-woman, not whatever else you’re thinking.’
Suttle scribbled himself a note, aware of Sadler watching him. The Vice Squad D/S had been sure that Holman was on a freebie. Not, it seemed, true.
‘Was it always the same woman? The same girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ The laugh was derisive. ‘Because he fancied her, I imagine. Because they got on. Don’t ask me what they did because I don’t know. All I ever care about is that my girls get treated nicely and everyone has a fun time. Whatever else happens is their affair. Does that sound illegal?’
‘Not in the least. Did I suggest it was?’
‘No, but— Forget it.’ She checked a watch she’d produced from the pocket of the dressing gown. It was a man’s watch, heavy, a Rolex. ‘Is that it? Only I have to be on the road by half one.’
Suttle shook his head. He wanted a name and contact details for the girl Holman had been seeing.
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’ The girl, she explained, had gone home to Estonia. Her name was Kaija. It was unlikely she’d be back.
‘Why?’
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