Borrowed Light

by Hurley, Graham

  Winter approached it step by step, knowing that this was what he’d come to find. On the very edge of the hole he stopped. The light of the torch pooled at the bottom. Water, he thought. He half-closed his eyes, trying to gauge the shape of the hole, its depth, the storage possibilities it offered. How much earth would you pile on top? And how much space would that leave for whatever you wanted to stash underneath? He was crap at this kind of exercise. He didn’t have the kind of brain that could compute figures and turn out any kind of decent result. All he knew was that it was a big hole. And that you didn’t do this much digging without a bloody good reason.

  He took a step back. The surrounding earth had been beaten flat with countless footprints but there was a sizeable pile of soil and something more matted beyond. He stepped across and gave it a poke with his shoe. Then he scooped up a handful and took a sniff or two. Horse manure. No question.

  He was on the point of returning to the house when his mobile began to ring. He fetched it out. Bazza Mackenzie. He stepped back towards the hole, the torch off, the phone to his ear.

  Mackenzie wanted to know where he was.

  ‘London.’

  ‘Seen Peters?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Tried?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well fucking get on with it, mush. I didn’t give you all that moolah for nothing. We have a problem here. I may have mentioned it. And you know what? The guy’s onto me again this afternoon. He wants a meet. He wants to talk money. And I get the impression he’s not dicking us around.’

  ‘You still think he’s the one?’

  ‘Peters? Do I think he’s nicked off with all that toot? Do me a favour, mush. Just fucking listen for a change. The guy knows I was holding. He’s skint. He’s not happy when I tell him to fuck off. And so now he’s helped himself. Since when do I make all this stuff up?’

  ‘So why does he need to talk to us?’

  ‘Good fucking question. Why don’t you find out?’

  ‘But there’d be no point, would there? Not if he was sitting on all that toot. He’d just cash in and move on. Why bother with conversations he doesn’t have to have?’

  ‘Fuck knows, mush. Ask him.’ The phone went dead.

  Winter was still gazing at the hole. He could hear the soft moan of the wind in the trees. After a moment or two he turned back towards the house. Before he left he couldn’t resist a look inside. He switched on the torch again and headed for what must have been the back door. The door itself had been torn off its hinges and tossed to one side, presumably by the firemen. Winter stepped inside the thick cob walls. Above his head, through a lattice of charred beams, he could see a star or two. The smell was stronger here, the smell that reminded him of the bin liner he’d collected from the old lady, and underfoot he could feel the greasiness of the sodden ash.

  The beam of the torch settled on a pile of rubble that must once have been a kitchen. He recognised the bones of a fridge. An Aga. A circuit board that might have belonged to a telly. The torch found the gleam of a bottle, then another, then a third, and Winter tried to imagine what kind of life Holman must have lived here. The booze, in the end, had done for him. And now this was all that remained.

  Winter shivered, all too aware that his own life was close to a disaster of this magnitude. Not because he’d necked too much Stella or hooked up with an Estonian tom, but because he’d let the likes of Bazza Mackenzie go to his head.

  As a working cop, he’d always known that a decent criminal was constantly ahead of the game. With half a brain and access to the right advice, you’d be stupid not to make decent money. That’s the way it worked. That’s the way society was set up. You filled the courts with infant shoplifters and drugged-up inbreds, hit the right performance targets and took promotion with a smile on your face. Pretty soon you were fluent in bollock-speak and counting the weeks until you hit your thirty and could cash in that big fat pension. That’s what the blokes were doing more and more. That’s what got them through.

  But Winter hadn’t done that at all. No. Winter had been stitched up by the likes of Willard and Parsons and hung out to dry on a u/c operation that had nearly got him killed. Therapy had arrived in the shape of Bazza Mackenzie. With him had come good money and a few laughs. Bazza had trusted him. They’d all trusted him, the whole family. His name was dog wank among the people he’d left behind, but Winter hadn’t cared a toss. He was cruising. He was at 30,000 feet. He had money, respect, a nice car. He even had stolen shares in Misty Gallagher.

  So where had it all gone wrong? And what the fuck was he doing in some khazi of a crime scene, mud all over his Guccis, trying to figure out what to do next? He glanced up then ducked his head, feeling a flurry of rain, knowing that there were decisions, important decisions, he couldn’t afford to postpone any longer. Staying with Bazza Mackenzie would put him away for the rest of his life. Either that or something worse.

  He shook his head, trying to rid himself of a growing sense of helplessness, following the torch beam back towards the door and the darkness beyond.

  An ambulance took Colin Leyman to A & E at the Queen Alexandra hospital. He was admitted to one of the bays in the major injuries area, where his condition was assessed by one of the duty nurses. When she tried to discover exactly what had happened, Leyman shook his head. He was pale with shock. His huge body was trembling. He was in acute pain. There was no way he could talk.

  The duty nurse went to find the Registrar, who confirmed a double fracture of the jaw. Mr Leyman would have to spend at least one night on a ward pending an operation under general anaesthetic in the morning. Both fractures, as far as the Registrar could tell, were towards the back of the jawbone, one on the left, one on the right. Fractures that close to the joint were extremely difficult to repair with metal plates. In all likelihood Mr Leyman’s jaws would be wired together for at least six weeks.

  As Leyman was wheeled away to the X-ray department, the nurse drew the Registrar to one side. She’d been on duty a couple of days ago and had seen an identical injury, this time on a youngster. Double fracture, left and right.

  The Registrar, deep in another patient’s file, looked up. He too remembered the earlier case.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Remind me to follow it up tomorrow.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  FRIDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 2009. 12.16

  DCI Gail Parsons took the midday hovercraft over to Ryde. She’d chaired the morning’s forensic management meet, agreeing the schedule of samples to be submitted for further tests and pressing the new Crime Scene Coordinator for any inferences she felt able to draw from the pitifully meagre harvest of evidence retrieved from Monkswell Farm. Like most CSCs, Meg Stanley had been reluctant to commit herself beyond the known facts. Firstly, the fire had been deliberately set. Secondly, all four retrieved bodies had been dead before the fire caught hold. And thirdly, a large hole had recently been excavated in the garden to the rear of the property. The latter would suggest the removal of items that had been buried earlier, but there was no evidence to indicate what these items might be. Nor was there any confirmed link to the fire itself.

  D/S Jimmy Suttle had volunteered to save Parsons the walk from the hovercraft terminal to Ryde police station. Now they were sitting in the office she’d taken over from Faraday, who had already briefed Parsons on the latest intel developments. She wanted Suttle’s thoughts on the best way forward.

  Suttle had been anticipating this conversation. Thanks to Faraday’s state of mind, he’d never had such a free hand on a Major Crime job. The last week on Gosling had taught him a great deal about the challenges facing the SIO and her Deputy, and Suttle sensed that every fresh development offered a new fork in the investigative road. His own role had been limited to intel, but now, seeing the bigger picture, he realised what could be at stake.

  Parsons was waiting for an answer. Which of Gosling’s many lines of enquiry deserved most attention?

  ‘Lou Sadler,’ h
e said.

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because she knew Holman. Because she probably keeps dodgy company. Because she keeps stalling on a photo she owes us. And because she’s lying.’

  ‘Lying how?’

  ‘She gave us an address for the girl Kaija Luik in Cowes. It seems to have been empty for weeks.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘We knocked on doors up and down the road. Like I say, no one’s seen any movement there since Christmas.’

  ‘This is a flat?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a flat upstairs as well. No reply there either.’

  ‘Who owns this place?’

  ‘Lou Sadler.’

  Parsons nodded. She wanted to know more about the photo.

  ‘This is a shot of the girl? Luik?’

  ‘Yes. She must have at least one because the girl would have been up there on the website. I’ve phoned her a couple of times to get the thing pinged across but there’s always an excuse. Her webmaster’s still away. He’s not returning her calls. Whatever.’

  Parsons was frowning now. Why hadn’t she been told about this before? She’d talked to Faraday only this morning.

  ‘It must have slipped his mind, boss. We discussed it yesterday.’

  ‘Really?’ Parsons raised an eyebrow. ‘So what are you suggesting?’

  ‘I think Sadler’s bullshitting us. I think the girl’s been living at some other address, and for whatever reason Sadler doesn’t want us to know where. That in itself is interesting. I could go back to her, press her for more detail, but from where I’m sitting, boss, there’s a better way.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We put her under obs.’

  Mention of surveillance drew a wince from Parsons. Her battle with the D/S over the cock-up at Winter’s Gunwharf apartment had now got as far as the Assistant Chief Constable. Twenty-four-hour surveillance would also cost a fortune.

  ‘But where would it take us?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, boss. If I knew the answer we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’

  ‘But your reasoning, Jimmy. Your rationale.’

  Suttle began to relax. He was enjoying this conversation. Parsons rarely stooped to Christian names.

  ‘Sadler is desperate to keep us lot at arm’s length. That may be because of the business she runs. She says it’s all legit, and she may be right, but in that case there’s no point in feeding us all this stuff. Like I say, the address she gave us is bullshit. It’s clever bullshit but it’s still bullshit.’

  ‘Why clever?’

  ‘Because we’d be pushed to prove she was lying. We can demand rent receipts, run checks on the meter, talk to the utilities people, trace the postman – all that stuff – but in the end she’d just shrug and say the girl must have been kipping somewhere else. That’s not a crime. That’s not something we could have her for.’

  ‘So why did she give you that address in the first place?’

  ‘Because we caught her on the hop. She was in bed when we arrived.’

  ‘A decent hour?’

  ‘Midday.’

  ‘And was she alone?’

  ‘No. I’ve no idea who she was shagging but she made a big mistake letting us in. So –’ he shot Parsons a grin ‘– you take advantage of that, don’t you? Press all the buttons. Make it hard for her. She admitted she had the information there. So there was no way we were leaving without it.’

  ‘Good work.’ Parsons offered a nod of congratulation. ‘So talk me through the obs again. What might it give us?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not for sure. But my feeling is she has lots of fingers in lots of pies. She’s that kind of woman. We need to know about her lifestyle, her mates, her business associates, where she goes, who she sees – you know, persons who might be of interest. All that.’

  ‘And the time frame?’

  ‘A couple of days for starters. See where it takes us.’

  Parsons nodded, then looked at her watch. In principle, she said, she was prepared to run with Suttle’s proposal. Was there anything else she should have been told?

  Suttle shook his head.

  ‘It’s just a shame the sneaky-beaky screwed up in Winter’s flat,’ he said. ‘He might have spared us all this.’

  Winter, back in his apartment in Blake House, had double-locked the door and opened a couple of windows. After a decent breakfast he put on a pair of Marigolds from the kitchen and retrieved the bin liner from the bottom of the airing cupboard, where he’d stored it overnight. He’d spread an old sheet on the living-room carpet. Now he upended the bin liner and carefully emptied the contents onto the sheet. The smell again, stronger this time. Smoke. Definitely. He took a tiny step back, gazing down at the pile of clothes: jeans, red ankle socks with blue hoops, a white Bob Dylan T-shirt, a denim jacket, plus a pair of mud-caked baseball boots. On the small side, he thought. Johnny Holman’s. For sure.

  On his hands and knees, he sorted through the various items, examining them one by one, playing the CSI the way he’d watched them operate on job after job. The T-shirt was white, with the imprint of a young Bob Dylan on the chest. Below was a line of brown splatters that were almost certainly blood. There was more blood crusted on the jeans and the cuffs of the denim jacket. This, Winter knew, was a crime scene. There was evidence here that Jimmy Suttle and the rest of the Major Crime lot would kill for, DNA that would very probably link Johnny Holman to the bodies at Monkswell Farm. In investigative terms this was as good as it ever got, and the very fact that Winter had helped himself, without the slightest intention of handing it in, was yet another bullet for Willard’s gun.

  He went through the pockets of the jeans and the denim jacket, retrieving a handful of coins, a couple of petrol receipts, a slip for a £150 withdrawal from a cash machine, a small Swiss Army penknife and a disposable lighter. He gazed at the lighter for a moment or two, wondering if Holman had used it to set the fire at Monkswell Farm. Even now he could still smell the sour wreckage in what remained of the kitchen. Shame, he thought. Partner, kids, quiet life in the country. All gone up in flames.

  Winter took a last look at the clothes, then bundled them back into the bin liner, trying to visualise what must have happened. As far as he knew from the media reports, the fire had happened early on Sunday morning. If all this kit belonged to Holman, which he assumed it did, then Holman must have been present when the fire began. The blood splatters suggested his involvement in the four deaths. At some point later he arrived at Kaija’s place, took all his gear off, stuffed it in the bin liner. Presumably he’d had a spare set of clothes to hand. But what then? Where had he and Kaija gone?

  Winter took the bin liner back to the airing cupboard and fetched a spray can of air freshener from the kitchen. It was getting chilly in the apartment with the windows still open and he sorted out a fleece for himself from the bedroom. Last night he’d left both Kaija and Monique’s mobiles beside his bed. Kaija’s, just now, was the one he really needed.

  He settled on the bed and studied the numbers she’d stored on the SIM card. To his surprise, there were only five. Maybe she kept another mobile for regular punters. One of the numbers he recognised from Monique’s directory. It belonged to L. Lou Sadler. Three of the other numbers were also capital letters. The fourth wasn’t. He stared at it. Max.

  *

  Faraday couldn’t wait. After he’d given Parsons a lift to the hovercraft he drove home, packed some things for Gabrielle, threw a change of clothing in for himself and set off for Salisbury. For the next couple of days he needn’t devote a single minute to thoughts of Gosling. Parsons herself had said so.

  He was in Salisbury by half past one. He found a car park near the city centre, bought flowers for Gabrielle and chocolate for the child. He also spent half an hour or so browsing in the Early Learning Centre, emerging with a wooden bridge and a pair of matching toy cars in bright reds and yellows. He’d no idea what might put a smile on the face of a five-year-old Palestinian girl, but the idea
of a bridge seemed somehow fitting.

  The hospital car park, early afternoon, was nearly full. Faraday found a space in a far corner and retraced his steps to the Burns Unit. The double doors were still locked, but when he buzzed, a cleaner appeared to let him in. The paediatric rooms, it seemed, were at the far end of the unit. He got as far as the nurses’ station before anyone challenged him.

  ‘So who have you come to visit?’ The nurse was admiring the flowers.

  Faraday mentioned Leila’s name. She was a little girl from Gaza. His partner was helping to look after her.

  ‘Ah, Gabrielle … So you must be the policeman.’

  The nurse stepped into an office and whispered something to a woman sitting behind a desk. The woman got up and beckoned Faraday into the office. She was tall, blonde, nice smile. Faraday was aware of the door closing behind him. He introduced himself. The woman said she was one of the sisters in charge on the unit. Her name badge read nicole lewis.

  ‘Your first visit, am I right?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been busy, I’m afraid.’ Faraday wondered why he was apologising. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Gabrielle?’

  ‘The little girl. I think her name’s Leila.’

  ‘Ah …’ The smile again. ‘Definitely better than she was, poor little mite. The grafts are certainly looking better than they were, and we think we’ve got the infection under control. I’m not sure how much you know about burns, Mr Faraday, but they can be very challenging, especially something like this.’

  Leila, she explained, had suffered chemical burns from white phosphorus. Then she broke off.

  ‘You were there, of course.’