Borrowed Light

by Hurley, Graham

  He bent to the Policy Book. At Suttle’s instigation detectives were rechecking ANPR cameras in the hunt for sightings of Difford’s Corsa early on the Sunday morning. House-to-house enquiries had widened around Monkswell Farm, yielding little more than confirmation that the Holman ménage had been a bit of a pain. There’d been more interviews with school and college friends of the two dead girls, again with little result. The only absolute certainty was the abrupt return from holiday of Robbie Difford’s mother. A Family Liaison officer had been dispatched to Gatwick to meet her and drive her back to the island. It was conceivable, just, that she might throw fresh light on her son’s relationship with the volatile Johnny Holman.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Meg Stanley. She apologised for being early, hoped it wasn’t a problem. Faraday, to his slight surprise, was pleased to see her. It seemed an age since they’d shared a curry.

  She unpacked her briefcase and slipped a typed report across the desk. It looked predictably neat.

  Faraday picked it up, flicked quickly through the dozen or so pages, put it carefully to one side.

  ‘Give me the headlines,’ he said. ‘Start with the fire itself.’

  Stanley nodded. She’d shared the draft preliminary report with the Fire Investigator and he’d agreed that at this stage their conclusions were largely speculative. The fire appeared to have been started in the roof space beneath the thatch. Apart from an empty bottle of vodka beside Difford’s body, there was no evidence of accelerants. A multi-seat fire – setting the thatch alight at several separate locations – would have been all too possible. Bundles of newsprint would have done it, or anything else that could have served as kindling.

  Once the thatch was burning, she said, all you had to do was leave the trapdoor into the roof space – plus a couple of windows down below – open. The updraught would fuel the blaze, and each of the tiny reeds that composed the thatch itself would suck the superheated air still further inwards until the whole of the roof was acting like one huge bellows. This process, said Stanley, had put her off thatched roofs for ever. Thank God her rabbit hutch in Lock’s Heath was tiled.

  ‘Would the fire be visible by now?’

  ‘Not for an hour or so. The old people in the bungalow across the fields reported it at 03.25. By that time, if you’d started the fire, you could be long gone.’

  ‘And once it had taken hold?’

  ‘The place has pretty much had it. The fire brigade ended up with every appliance they could lay their hands on. Even with all that resource, all they could do was wait until it burned itself out. You’re looking at one huge bonfire. Whoever did this got it spot on.’

  Faraday scribbled himself a note. This was no more than he’d expected.

  ‘So what did you recover?’

  ‘The four bodies, obviously, plus everyday stuff that would survive any fire. Basically we’re talking metal: bed frames, the springs from armchairs, cutlery, bits and pieces of circuitry from the electronic stuff.’

  ‘P/Cs?’

  ‘Yep. Two of those plus a laptop. Nothing useful, though. We shipped the hard drives to Scientific Services but they were fried.’

  ‘Mobiles?’

  ‘Same situation. We recovered three mobiles in all. Given where we found them we think we’ve linked them to three of the bodies. That’s Julie and the two girls. Kim’s SIM card was intact. The other two were useless.’

  ‘And Difford? Any sign of a mobile?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  Faraday scribbled another note. Difford’s car, he thought. Maybe he’d left his mobile in the Corsa. Tomorrow he’d ask Suttle to sort out billing. Difford’s mother would have her son’s number, and if Holman had used the Corsa to get away from the farm, and if Difford’s mobile was on the dashboard, then there might just be a chance he’d been making a call or two since.

  He looked up. Stanley had her hands held wide. That, she said, was pretty much it. From the start she’d assessed the job as a nightmare, and nothing that had happened since had changed her mind.

  ‘I feel like I owe you an apology’, she said. ‘I’m used to being more productive than this.’

  ‘When do you release the scene?’

  ‘We’re thinking tomorrow. Around noon. You’ll obviously get the full report as soon as I can manage it.’

  ‘Sure.’ Faraday didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. Monkswell Farm had just swallowed a sizeable chunk of the SOC budget. With very little to show for it. ‘So what’s your take on what might have happened?’

  The word ‘might’ was key. Like Faraday himself, Meg Stanley had little time for conjecture, though in this case there was hardly an alternative.

  ‘I would have thought that Holman has to be the prime suspect. Through the taxi driver we can put him at the farm in the early hours. Holman’s a big drinker. His relationship with Julie is rocky. He’s coming on to her eldest daughter. He’s fallen out with the daughter’s boyfriend. Plus he has access to two shotguns.’

  ‘You found shells from the gun?’

  ‘Yeah, the metal bits on the end. I should have mentioned them.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Four. The PM found lead shot in each of the bodies. Again, location is important. We’re pretty sure now that they were all killed downstairs, two in the lounge and two in the kitchen. Robbie and Kim were in the kitchen. Mum and Jessie were in the lounge. It’s all in the report, page 9.’

  Faraday nodded, trying to picture the scene. Killing four people wasn’t a simple proposition.

  ‘So how did he do it?’

  ‘Good question. The way we see it, he must have used both shotguns. My guess is that they were pre-loaded and ready to hand.’

  ‘So he’d figured it all out? Planned it?’

  ‘Definitely. Waiting until Robbie and Kim were in the kitchen would have made it possible. Two guns to hand. First one couple, then the other.’

  ‘An execution.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘An angry man.’

  ‘Off the planet. Totally insane. Just like everyone says.’

  ‘And the guns themselves? No trace?’

  ‘None. You’d have been the first to know.’

  ‘But he did have the guns?’

  ‘Must have done. As well as the shells, we ended up finding the metal box he used for storage.’

  ‘Empty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Faraday nodded. Through the fog that had once been his brain another thought had emerged.

  ‘What about the alarm system?’

  ‘The guy from the installing company came out to have a look. There’s a chip you can interrogate. It tells you when or whether the alarms have been turned off.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It wasn’t there. Someone had removed it.’

  ‘Holman?’

  ‘I would have thought it’s more than possible.’

  ‘But why would he do that?’

  ‘It gives him breathing space. Or maybe it tells us this is an intruder, someone professional, someone who knows how to cover their tracks.’

  ‘Or muddy the trail.’

  ‘Exactly. Which would take us back to Holman.’

  Faraday nodded. He reminded Stanley about Holman’s visit to the London clinic, the suspicion – not evidenced – that he’d reported some form of sexual dysfunction.

  ‘That would make sense. We found a pile of pornography in that office of his, video and print, plus a load of condoms.’

  ‘Still no sign of an address book?’

  ‘No. He must have taken it with him.’

  ‘Phone numbers he might have scribbled down? Little notes he might have written himself?’

  ‘A couple of bits and pieces. I sent them all over to D/S Suttle.’

  Faraday sat back, trying to clear his mind, trying to assign each of these tiny fragments some kind of priority. Maybe
Parsons was right, he thought. Maybe, in the end, it’s all about the hole they’d found at the back of Monkswell House.

  He asked whether there’d been any kind of re-investigation around the digging.

  ‘We had another go, yes. We sieved every particle of the excavated soil, plus the manure that must have been on top.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect. I did some sums though, if you’re interested.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I gather we might be talking cocaine, yes?’

  ‘It’s more than possible.’

  ‘Right. Cocaine comes in one-kilo blocks. Normally, they’re double-wrapped in industrial clear polythene and secured with brown tape. Each block is roughly the size of a flattish house brick. I did some measurements in the hole, tried to calculate what kind of consignment there’d have been space for.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We could be talking fifty blocks. Easily. That’s a rough calculation, a finger in the wind. But fifty is a conservative figure. I’d be amazed if it was anything less.’

  Faraday was looking for a calculator in the desk drawer. Stanley beat him to it.

  ‘Use mine.’

  Faraday did the sums. The street price of cocaine, as far as he knew, had been sinking recently. At £5 for a wrap, you were looking at £25 per gram, or £25,000 per kilo. On the basis of Stanley’s guesstimate, therefore, Holman could have been sitting on one and a quarter million quid’s worth of toot.

  He showed his workings to Stanley. She shook her head.

  ‘At source we have to assume this stuff’s reasonably pure. We also have to assume this is a wholesale consignment. Whoever buys it down the line will step on it.’ She nodded at the calculator. ‘You should double that.’

  Faraday nodded, put a line through his arithmetic, told her she was right. Sleep, he told himself. I need sleep. Two and a half million quid’s worth of cocaine. Easily the price of four bodies.

  ‘So you think that rules out Holman killing all four of them? You think we might be back to someone taking the cocaine off his hands?’

  ‘Not at all. God knows what happened on the night. I certainly don’t.’

  Faraday smiled. For an ex-student of theology, it was a neat conclusion. He wondered about the possibility of another curry, decided against it. Meg Stanley would be less than impressed if he dozed off on her.

  Stanley had reached for her briefcase, balancing it on her knees. Faraday had noticed her legs in the restaurant – slender, beautifully muscled.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask something personal?’ She inched her skirt a little lower.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Is there something the matter?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was thinking about what you said in the restaurant the other night. Or strictly speaking what you didn’t say.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘OK.’ She looked at him for a moment, her face pinking with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry. That was out of order.’

  She got up, muttered something Faraday didn’t catch and left the office. Faraday gazed at the door as she gently closed it behind her.

  Out of order? He shook his head, reached for her report, slipped it into his briefcase. Bedtime reading, he thought. Can’t wait.

  He got to his feet, then had second thoughts and put through a precautionary call to Parsons. She was still at her office in Kingston Crescent. He ran through the afternoon’s developments and updated her on Stanley’s preliminary report. He was about to outline the actions he’d authorised for tomorrow when she cut him short.

  ‘Winter’s been at home since half past two. Odd, don’t you think?’

  ‘You got obs on him?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve been waiting to get into that apartment of his most of the afternoon. He doesn’t make it easy for us, does he?’ She laughed, then put the phone down.

  Chapter Twelve

  WEDNESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2009. 20.43

  Winter, with half an eye on his favourite wildlife programme, was brooding. In the space of a single day circumstances had seized him by the throat and given him a thorough shaking. First the realisation that Jimmy Suttle had played him for a fool. And now the abrupt end of his stake in Mackenzie’s business empire.

  The latter, in a sense, had come as no surprise. There were limits to the kind of circles he was able to square on Bazza’s behalf, and he knew that two million quid’s worth of toot – if Leyman had this thing right – could easily put them both inside. Old habits, he thought, die hard, and the more he thought about it the more he realised that Bazza’s peasant cunning was to blame for this latest development.

  Bottom line, Mackenzie had always trusted the white powder to make him rich, and on reflection Winter knew he should have anticipated this little rainy-day stash. In a way its exact whereabouts was irrelevant. The Major Crime lot would probably find it, and if that happened then they’d work day and night to link it back to Sandown Road. By that point it was conceivable that his ex-boss might be running for Lord Mayor, an escapade that was already giving Bazza exactly the kind of profile he’d always craved: the buccaneering local boy with his own robust take on the city. Thus far, it hadn’t occurred to Mackenzie that there might be limits to his ambition, but the weeks and months to come were bound to be ugly. Up like a rocket, thought Winter. Down like a stick.

  The near-certainty that he and Bazza were heading for disaster filled Winter with gloom. But far worse, in a way, was his latest encounter with Jimmy Suttle. There’d been moments in Winter’s life, especially during his long tussle with a brain tumour, when the boy had felt like the son he’d never had. He’d been there for him. He’d helped him through the darkest times. When Winter had been close to chucking it in, Jimmy Suttle had first kept the monsters at bay and then chased them away. In some ways he owed his life to Suttle, and ever since then there’d been a warmth, an unspoken kinship that he treasured. Until now.

  Earlier, as dusk gathered over the harbour, he’d fired off a text. I never thought the day would come, he’d written. Thanks a fucking bunch. Now, watching a python swallowing an entire antelope, he wondered whether Suttle would spare the text even a second glance. The world moved on. The boy had plates to juggle, crimes to solve. Winter, all too literally, was history.

  The phone rang twenty minutes later. It was Suttle.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. ‘There are rules here, consequences. You made a decision. That’s fine. That’s your call, your privilege, but don’t blame me when it all turns to fucking rat shit.’

  Winter knew at once that he’d been drinking.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bin it, ignore it. At my age, son, you’re allowed a mistake or two.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re talking about the text you sent, right?’

  ‘Yeah … and the rest.’

  ‘What rest?’

  ‘You know what rest. Baz. The business. All that shit.’

  ‘What are you telling me?’

  ‘I’m telling you it’s over. Finito. I’ve had enough, mush.’ He laughed. He never said ‘mush’. It felt like the final derisive wave of farewell, the departing adieu.

  ‘Don’t fuck about, Paul. This is for real?’

  ‘Yeah. And before you try and fit me up for anything sneaky, the answer’s no. I’ve had enough, son. I think I’ll call it retirement. A little job on the beach maybe in the summer. I might find myself an allotment for the rest of the year.’

  ‘Sneaky’, as they both knew, was code for going u/c. Working undercover, staying alongside Mackenzie but reporting back to the likes of Jimmy Suttle, had absolutely no appeal. Winter had tried it once, before throwing in his lot with Bazza, and it had nearly got him killed. Just now he fancied something gentler.

  He bent to the phone again. ‘So why the call, son?’

  Suttle took his time. The news that Winter had parted company
with Pompey’s cocaine king seemed to have sobered him up. Finally he said he wanted to mark Winter’s card. This was something private, personal, just the two of them.

  ‘Yeah? How does that work?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘I am asking, son. This is Faraday, isn’t it? And Willard? And that other clown? The woman? Parsons?’

  ‘No, mate. It’s little me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Suttle paused. ‘There’s a woman in Cowes. She runs a bunch of high-end toms. It’s an Internet-based thing, Two’s Company. Her name’s Lou Sadler. Johnny Holman knows her. Maybe Mackenzie too.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You ought to have a poke around.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there’s lots she’s not telling us.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Johnny Holman.’

  ‘You’ve tried?’

  ‘Of course I’ve fucking tried. She good as blanked me. We’ve got nothing on her. Not yet.’

  ‘So what makes you think she’ll talk to me?’

  ‘She probably won’t.’

  ‘So what the fuck am I supposed to do? I’m lost, son. You’re talking in riddles. Plus I just told you, I don’t do this stuff any more.’

  Suttle ignored him. He told Winter to find a pen and a bit of paper.

  ‘I’ve got a name for you. Kaija Luik. She’s one of the toms. And she’s Johnny Holman’s special girl.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning she’ll probably know where he is.’

  ‘Holman?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So why don’t you pick her up?’

  ‘We’re trying. You get that for free.’

  Winter stared at the phone. This, he knew, was a fork in the road. Seconds ago he’d been making a difficult peace with one of the bigger decisions in his life. Now this. His copy of the Daily Telegraph was still on his knee. He reached for a pen.

  ‘Spell it,’ he said.

  Fifteen minutes later, busy in the kitchen, Winter heard the buzz-buzz of his video entryphone. He padded through to the hall and checked the upturned face on the tiny screen. Misty Gallagher.