‘Joe.’ Faraday was looking for somewhere to hang his coat. ‘I’m afraid I’m underdressed.’
‘No problem. You need a drink. Come with me.’
She led him by the hand, back across the dance floor, acknowledging a series of fluttery waves. Most of the guests were in their sixties, some of them older, and they were plainly having the time of their lives. A makeshift bar beside the stage offered everything from spirits to a wooden barrel of real ale.
‘Or we’ve got cocktails if you’d prefer it.’ Gwen beckoned the elderly barman. ‘Charlie was in the First Class lounge on the Elizabeth. The real thing. And a great friend of Grace’s.’
Charlie capped the introduction with a shy little nod. His velvet waistcoat had definitely seen better days but Faraday guessed it was probably original. He settled for a pint from the barrel, much to Charlie’s disappointment.
‘You sure I can’t fix you something stronger, sir?’
‘’Fraid not. Beer’s fine.’
The end of American Patrol sparked a cheer from the dance floor. Faraday, glass in hand, followed Gwen to a nearby table. She might have known him for years, a warmth all the more welcome for being so natural.
‘This is my mum.’ Gwen was bent over a frail-looking woman forking her way through a tiny helping of cocktail sausages and Russian salad. ‘Her name’s Madge.’
Faraday extended a hand.
‘Madge … I’m Joe.’
The woman peered up at him and smiled. The eyes were milky with cataracts but she had the complexion of someone half her age. Faraday began to say something inconsequential about the music and the fancy dress then became aware of a voice in his ear.
‘My mum’s been dying to meet you. She’s the one who knows all about you and Grace.’
Faraday looked round, but Gwen was already stepping back onto the dance floor as the band picked up a new beat. She gave him a little wave, then began to jitterbug with a man in white trousers and a striped blazer.
Faraday sank into an empty chair, Madge beside him. He felt like a stranger inexplicably made welcome at someone else’s hearth. There had to be a subplot here, an explanation for these open arms, but he hadn’t a clue what it might be. He reached for his glass and took a long pull at the beer. Then came the gentlest of pressures on his other hand. It was Madge. She beckoned him closer.
‘Gracie thought the world of you.’ She was beaming now. ‘She used to phone me up after you’d gone. Just think what an impression you made.’
She nodded, part encouragement, part applause, the way you might be proud of a favourite son, and over the next hour or so, whenever the music permitted, Faraday began to tease out Madge’s story.
She and Grace had been childhood friends – same school, same church. Before the war, for a couple of summer seasons, Grace had gone to sea with the Cunard line. She’d been a skivvy first, then a waitress, and had finally caught the purser’s eye. She had a good voice, lovely figure, nice temperament, and one evening at an American family’s insistence she’d been given her chance onstage in one of the cocktail bars.
Then came the war and she was back in Southsea just like everyone else, scared out of her wits one moment, bored stiff the next. After the worst of the Blitz, the news had got slowly better. Soon you got to see Canadians and Yanks in the streets. Grace had found herself a GI from West Virginia, nicest manners, generous to a fault, but he went off to the west somewhere, Dorset, Devon, and that was the last anyone ever saw of him. Then the invasion happened, all those thousands of boats, and before you knew it Gracie was back on the liners, the Queen Mary this time, singing for her supper.
‘And you?’ Faraday, on his third pint, was beginning to enjoy himself.
‘Me, dear?’ Madge looked blank.
‘Your war? Did you find yourself a Yank?’
Madge looked at him a moment, the eyes clouding again, then shook her head. The band had stopped for good this time and the dance floor was rapidly emptying.
‘I didn’t need to,’ she whispered. ‘Not a Yank.’
‘You had someone else?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, watching her daughter carrying a tray of drinks around the band.
‘Do you mind me asking who?’
‘Not at all.’ Madge’s gaze returned to Faraday. ‘In fact you should. Gracie was right. Harry would have looked just like you. Especially with this …’ Her thin hand reached out and touched the side of his jaw where the growth of stubble was beginning to sprout into a decent beard. ‘Soon you’ll be looking just like my Harry. Trust Gracie. Always the first to spot it.’
Gwen had returned from the stage. She wanted to know whether her mum was comfy. Faraday found himself answering on her behalf.
‘We’re fine,’ he said. ‘Just fine.’
‘What’s she been telling you?’
‘Family secrets.’ Faraday looked up at her. ‘Who’s Harry?’
Gwen smiled but said nothing. Then, from nowhere, there was suddenly another woman beside her – early forties, same eyes, same build, dressed as a cabin boy. She had a quizzical smile and snapped a salute as Gwen did the introductions.
‘This is Karen, my eldest. Karen … Joe.’
Faraday got to his feet. This family was unrolling before him, a seemingly endless carpet of Pompey generations. Karen was looking from Faraday to her nan, trying to work out the connection. Then she got it.
‘You’re the policeman, right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘OK.’ The smile was warmer. ‘Nice to meet you.’
Madge was going through the contents of her purse. Gwen whispered something in her daughter’s ear, then she was gone again. Karen bent over her nan, trying to help. Faraday watched her a moment, saw the way the old woman leaned into her, total reliance, total trust. Then the thin, pale fingers found the photograph she’d been looking for. She held it out to Faraday, insisted he look at it.
The photo was black and white, curled at the corners, with a watermark down one side that was beginning to lift the emulsion. It showed a smiling young man in his prime with a broad, weather-roughened face and a full beard, carefully trimmed. He was wearing a white roll-necked sweater, heavy-duty wool, service issue. His hair was swept back, no parting, and his eyes were narrowed against strong sunlight. In the background Faraday could see a canoe pulled up on a pebble beach, but it was the face that held you. It was a face full of resolve. This was someone, Faraday thought, whom you’d be wise never to underestimate. Whatever he’d just said, whatever he was thinking, this man meant it.
‘My Harry.’ Madge retrieved the photo and then reached for a paper napkin and dabbed at her mouth.
Faraday, looking down at the face in her hand, didn’t quite know where to take the conversation next. Is this really what I look like, he wondered. Was this why Madge’s daughter had trekked up Highland Road and handed her envelope to the desk clerk? He glanced round. Most of the couples from the dance floor had found seats, helping themselves to platefuls of cold chicken and potato salad, and for the first time Faraday became aware of the presents stacked on a trestle table in the far corner of the hall.
‘I thought this was a wake?’
Karen looked back at him and grinned.
‘It is,’ she said. ‘But it’s also my mum’s sixtieth.’
‘You mean Gwen?’ Faraday was looking for the green dress.
‘That’s right.’ Karen laughed. ‘Two old birds. One big stone.’
‘And the décor? The band?’
‘My idea.’ Karen took a little bow. ‘I know it’s obvious but the oldies love all the dressing up; makes them feel young again. What do you think, then?’ She did a twirl in her cabin boy’s outfit, struck a stagy pose. ‘Twenty-quid hire from a shop in Albert Road. Another tenner and it’s mine for life. Don’t laugh. Next time I have trouble with the mortgage, I’m off to sea.’
She sat down again and drew her chair closer to Faraday’s. Then she reached for Madge’s hand and gave it
a squeeze.
‘Nan misses Gracie, don’t you, Nan? We used to take them both to bingo, Wednesday nights, me and Mum. On a good night we’d blow the winnings in the pub afterwards. You know the George?’
Faraday nodded. The George was a genuine relic, a timbered alehouse deep in Portsea, a stone’s throw from the dockyard walls. With its yellowing photos of long-ago warships and ageing clientele, it had so far resisted canned music and the blessings of Sky Sports.
‘You still go there?’
‘No. Madge doesn’t get out much these days, do you, darling?’
Madge was returning the photo to her purse. Karen leaned across to help her.
‘So what happened to Harry?’ Faraday said at last.
‘He was in some kind of top-secret outfit during the war. Amazing stuff they did. Mum’s got all the details.’
‘And?’
‘Something happened. It was way before D-Day, winter time, but I don’t know what except that Harry didn’t make it.’
Faraday was looking at Madge. She was erect in her chair, her eyes closed. A handful of the musicians had returned to the stage and her head was nodding for the opening bars of ‘Night Train’. Faraday gazed at her a moment longer, unaccountably moved, and then returned to Karen. He wanted the whole story.
‘Harry died?’
‘Yes. My nan never got over it, never married, never looked at another man. Never wanted any of that.’
‘And your mum? Gwen?’
‘She was Harry’s. Mum was two months old when he died. Mum was all Nan had left.’
Faraday reached for his glass and raised it in a silent toast. It seemed worlds away, this story, yet here was the living evidence, dressed as a page boy, that a precious bit of Harry lived on. He could see it in the eyes, in the tilt of the chin, in the readiness of the smile.
Karen was asking him whether he fancied a dance. Faraday eyed the empty floor, then reached for his glass.
‘What about your mum? And you?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘You’ve got husbands? Families of your own?’
‘Kids, yes. Husbands, no. Mum’s divorced, so am I. Nan’s the only one with a clean conscience.’ She grinned, extending a hand. ‘But I suppose you can blame the war for that.’
*
In the brief truce his body had declared between a hangover and the next blinding headache, Winter brooded. Sunday nights, he’d long concluded, were the worst. Fuck all on the telly, a mini-roast for one still cooling in the oven, and the newspaper full of cheating footballers and so-called lifestyle articles. He was gazing at one now. He’d spent most of his adult life peering under other people’s stones and knew the kind of sludge you could find there but was he seriously interested in the memoirs of a practising vampire?
Abandoning the News of the World, he got up to pull the curtains. It was dark outside now and for that he was glad. In moods like this nothing depressed him more than to look out on Joannie’s precious garden. Even in winter, when nothing grew, the prospect of untended borders and unweeded flower beds served as a wagging finger from beyond the grave. Spring would reveal the sheer depth of his neglect – anarchy amongst the daffodils – and then would come the moment when he’d have to bother the rug of a lawn with the rusting mower he kept at the back of the garage. He hated gardening. Only the thought of having to pay some dosser to do the work on his behalf was worse.
Joannie had been gone for nearly four years now, a period of time that seemed – if anything – to shrink with every passing Christmas. With a stoic good grace and a kind word for more or less everybody, his wife had succumbed to pancreatic cancer. At first, to Winter’s immense pride, she’d put up a real struggle and Winter liked to think he’d been a comfort to her through those endless days of tests and consultations, the terrifying truth dressed up in words he couldn’t even spell. Then, quite suddenly, she’d seemed to conclude that all this trouble, all this fuss, simply wasn’t worth it, and it was only later, after she’d gone, that he realised her rapid collapse those last few weeks had partly been Winter’s fault. She simply couldn’t bear another scene. One more bedside ruck, with her husband accusing the oncologist of negligence, and she’d be pleading for a still-heftier dose of morphine. Had he embarrassed his wife to death? Winter simply didn’t know. But Joannie had always been there for him, eternally forgiving, and the sheer depth of the hole she’d left behind had begun to unnerve him.
At first, those early months alone in the bungalow, he’d relied on the job for light relief. As ever Pompey had obliged and on division, working out of the sunny first-floor office at Highland Road, he’d been able to keep his grief at arm’s length. With even more zest than usual, he’d plotted elegant traps for shoplifters, skag heads, and other assorted lowlife. A decent number of these vermin he’d put away – more, certainly, than any other DC – and his strike rate didn’t end with successful convictions. Evidence that wouldn’t guarantee a result in court he used in other ways, spending immensely productive hours with overnight prisoners in the holding cells, listening to the usual rubbish about debts and domestic crises before recruiting these apprentice lags for his city-wide army of informants.
The memory of those days brought a smile to his face. Winter, it was generally acknowledged, was something of an artist when the cell door closed and it all boiled down to conversation. With his matey smile and cheerful bulk he could clamber into any man’s head and make himself thoroughly at home. He’d share gossip, hint at money down the line, invite confidences, sympathise with a pat on the shoulder and a tear or two in his own eye. His colleagues had always regarded him as a loner, reckless and dangerous, a man without a shred of honesty or compassion, but the truly bizarre thing was that the people he arrested – like the countless women he took to bed – rarely had a bad word to say about him. They all opened up to Paul Winter. They all believed every word he said. And even a couple of weeks later, when these new friends of his recognised how cleverly they’d been screwed, they still managed a wry smile at the mention of his name. Seasoned detectives at Highland Road shook their heads at this display of human folly but one or two others, more perceptive, likened Winter to an American evangelist. These people like Winter, they pointed out. And more than that, they need him.
Winter, of course, relished comments like these. To him they came close to the truth of what he did. He was in the ambush business. He was there to lay false trails, to bait traps, to snare his quarries and then bring them face to face with their own frustrations, their own fears, and finally their own fatal dependence on Winter’s goodwill and support. This was how he could tempt a man into grassing up his mates. The odd phone call. A name. Premises about to be screwed. Even, on occasions, the make and number of the motor involved. Information like this, largely kosher, saved thousands on the surveillance budget, and if there was a bill to be paid at the end then it certainly wasn’t Winter who wrote the cheque.
On several occasions his snouts had been badly hurt. One, a small-time drug dealer, had been beaten to death by a bunch of feral adolescents on a Somerstown street. But in every case Winter had simply shrugged. No flowers. No regrets. None of that sentimental old bollocks about good intentions and hearts of gold. No, the point about snouts was simple. They were trash, scum, good for nothing except the next whisper. End of story.
Winter sighed. Transferred off division, he’d spent the last year and a half on the Portsmouth Crime Squad. In theory, mountains of intelligence were supposed to turn Cathy Lamb’s troops into ace proactive thief-takers, ten steps ahead of the game. In practice, though, thanks to the classier villains in the Pompey underworld, it was rarely that simple. These were the once-young headcases that had livened up the eighties with their all-night Ecstasy raves and heroic pillaging expeditions to France and Switzerland. They’d later made a fortune in cocaine and property development and now, in their comfortable middle age, they viewed decent crime as a strictly recreational option, a bit of extra excitement betw
een horse racing in Dubai and a week or two floating around on some mobster’s yacht off Marbella.
These people weren’t stupid. They weren’t on the same page as the young scrots who littered the Bridewell cells on a Monday morning. And, more to the point, they’d had a couple of decades skirmishing with the likes of Paul Winter and knew exactly what to expect. They viewed him, if anything, with affection: spared him a wave when they swept past in their gleaming 4 × 4s, bought him a drink at Goodwood or Fontwell, even offered a derisive bung if he’d promise to get himself a new car coat. The fact that people like these maintained control of the Pompey drug scene was neither here nor there. Sure, they were making huge profits. Sure, half the city knew they were at it. But serious money had its uses and one of the things it very definitely bought you was immunity from maggots like Winter.
Maggots. Winter shook his head. For once they’d found a word that truly hurt him. He’d heard it first at a Gunwharf bar, one Friday night. One of Bazza Mackenzie’s mates was standing an enormous round and tacked Winter’s name on the end of it: Double Bell’s for the maggot in the suede coat over there. A treble if he’ll fuck off out of it. The dig had brought the house down – big sweaty faces, an ocean of shaved heads, wall-to-wall CK T-shirts – and if Winter had weathered this particular storm then it was thanks to years of otherwise untroubled repartee. When the glass of Scotch had finally appeared at his elbow, he’d raised it with a flourish. ‘Old times.’ He’d beamed down the bar. ‘And God help all those poor fuckers who ever thought you lot were class.’
Winter, like any detective, had his pride. He’d always made a point of sailing extremely close to the wind, bending procedural rules to shorten the odds on a particular result, but lately he’d begun to suspect that the sheer force of the tide was against him. Barely a week went past without a new piece of legislation appearing on the Hantspol intranet. Ambitious young superintendents, frequently with degrees, appeared to believe all the guff about sectorisation and problem-orientated policing. The cold-eyed ninjas from Professional Standards seemed to be lurking in every canteen. Even the pre-Christmas piss-up had developed into a glum ruck over pension rights. Feeling older by the day, and dizzied by pains in his head, Winter had finally come across a discussion paper from the Health and Safety people at HQ. It dealt with the gleaming new mountain bikes imported for bobbies on the beat. Mounted PCs should be aware of the scrotal implications of poor saddle posture. In circumstances where an arrest appeared likely, it was advisable to dismount. Winter had circulated this document with a derisive note of his own but the fact that no one appeared to be remotely surprised was probably more depressing than the thing itself. Was this what the job now boiled down to? A risk assessment on mountain bikes?
Blood And Honey Page 7
