‘No? I thought we were after a photo?’
‘We are, son. Or we will be.’ Winter’s eyes strayed to the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘There’s a restaurant in Petersfield. Mon something. You know it?’
‘Mon Plaisir. What about it?’
‘We need to be there by seven.’ Winter glanced down at his empty glass. ‘Just time for the other half.’
By the time they got to Petersfield Winter seemed to have recovered. Mon Plaisir was a much-reviewed restaurant that occupied the bottom of a half-timbered house in a corner of the town’s main square. According to Suttle, it specialised in French provincial cooking and three-figure bills. He’d been out with several local girls who were dying for a trophy meal there and one day, if he could raise a mortgage, he might give it a try himself.
He found a parking space with a perfect view of the restaurant and switched off the engine. So far Winter hadn’t said a word. He sat in the passenger seat, slowly working his way through a packet of Werther’s Originals, scanning the square for signs of life. At this time of night on a Thursday the middle of Petersfield was dead.
‘Now what?’
‘We wait.’
They sat in the half darkness for nearly an hour. Once, Suttle tried to start a conversation about Winter’s state of health, suggesting a check-up might be a wise move, but Winter ignored him. Around 19.40 it began to get seriously cold and Suttle switched on the engine and turned up the heat but Winter wasn’t having it. The engine off again, Winter peered across at the restaurant.
‘He’s late,’ he muttered.
‘Who is?’
‘Wishart.’
‘Wishart? We’re waiting for Wishart?’
Again, Winter said nothing. Then a cold hand gave Suttle a pat on his thigh.
‘You’re a good lad,’ Winter grunted.
Gone eight o’clock, Wishart finally arrived. The Jaguar coasted past them, a gleam of metal under the sodium lights. Wishart was behind the wheel, even bulkier in a heavy black coat. Beside him was another figure, slighter. Wishart found a parking space near the restaurant and got out, his breath clouding on the chill night air. The passenger door opened.
‘Fucking Maddox.’ Suttle threw Winter a look. ‘You knew about this?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Set it up?’
‘No.’
‘But I thought he’d given her a slapping?’
‘So did I.’
‘So how come?’
Winter shook his head, refusing to go further. Wishart had taken Maddox by the arm. They paused briefly by the parking meter while he checked that they didn’t need a ticket, then they kissed, a long kiss, his gloved hands cupping her battered face. Mon Plaisir lay across the road. Minutes later, without their coats, they were sitting in the window, bent towards each other in the flicker of candlelight across the elaborate table setting.
‘What’s she doing? Your eyes are better than mine.’
‘She’s talking to him. She’s smiling. He’s lighting a cigarette for her. She’s laughing now. Christ knows why, state of her face.’
It was news to Winter that Maddox smoked. Another betrayal, he thought grimly.
‘And Wishart?’
‘He seems pretty relaxed. It’s hard to tell from this angle. I can see her better than him.’
Drinks arrived. Maddox proposed some kind of toast. They touched glasses, kissed again. Then Wishart’s hand disappeared into his jacket pocket.
‘He’s got a present for her. She’s taking the paper off. It’s some kind of jewellery box, long thing, maybe a necklace. Yeah, a necklace, definitely. She’s looking at it, holding it up in the candlelight. Now she’s trying it on. He’s telling her something. She’s laughing again.’
‘And?’
‘She can’t get the thing on properly. He’s got up. He’s sorting out the clasp for her.’
Winter’s eyes were closed now. Slumped in the passenger seat, he sucked on a Werther’s, listening to Suttle’s muttered commentary. He wanted it all, every last detail, every last particle of evidence proving that he’d got this woman so utterly wrong. She’d told Winter she wanted nothing more to do with this man. She’d said he’d chased her, harassed her, beat her, frightened her. She’d asked for Winter’s protection. She’d wanted a sentry at her door. Yet here she was coiled around Wishart’s little finger, his every last wish, another trophy in the big glass-fronted cabinet that was his life.
‘What’s happening now?’
‘You don’t want to hear this.’
‘Tell me.’
‘She’s giving him a kiss. Must be the necklace. Now he’s looking at his watch.’ Suttle began to laugh. ‘Maybe they’ll skip the meal. Get right down to it. Who needs fancy cooking when it’s already on a plate, eh?’ Suttle glanced across the car at Winter. ‘You OK?’
‘Never better, son.’ Winter struggled upright in the seat, pulled his coat more closely around him, then nodded at the clock on the dashboard. ‘That thing right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good.’ Winter smothered a yawn, no longer interested in the peep show across the road. ‘You know how to find the Speke?’
Thirteen
Friday, 27 February 2004
It was Faraday’s decision to press Willard to escalate Congress to a full HOLMES-based investigation. After a night back on the mainland for a meeting with a CPS lawyer on a previous job, he’d taken an early hovercraft, walking the half-mile from the Esplanade to Ryde police station. At this hour the Major Incident Room was still empty. Collecting the key from the front desk, Faraday took the stairs to the first floor and let himself in.
Already, the SIO’s office had attracted a light snowfall of paperwork. Faraday made himself comfortable behind his desk and sorted through the messages that had come in since he’d bailed out the previous evening: a formal list from the Land Registry of island properties owned in the name of R. Pelly; a scribbled note from Tracy Barber confirming a meet with an expert in tides and currents from Southampton University; a photocopied blow-up map of Bembridge Harbour, with properties warranting a visit edged in green highlighter; and a tally of bookings over the last eighteen months on P & O ferries in the name of Chris Unwin. The latter had come with a vehicle registration number and a Southsea residential address, 267 Bath Road.
Faraday gazed at it a moment, knowing another visit would be pointless. Unwin had long since moved on from Bath Road. The vehicle registration, on the other hand, was a breakthrough. Tracy Barber had already accessed the details of the van from the Police National Computer and would be circulating them to all forces first thing.
Faraday’s gaze drifted back over the rest of the messages. Barely a day of serious legwork had already produced a good deal of information. Each of these lines of enquiry would generate further contacts, yet more interviews to be actioned, transcribed and added to the rapidly growing body of evidence that might make a second interview with Pelly a very different proposition. So far the investigation had been exploratory and therefore paper-based. Without the HOLMES computer program, software that would file and cross-index every scrap of information, Congress was already in danger of overlooking a vital lead.
Willard, still at home in Old Portsmouth, was halfway through his breakfast. Faraday talked him through yesterday’s developments and the Detective Superintendent agreed at once to escalate the inquiry to HOLMES. They had a headless corpse and a possible ID. In the shape of Pelly they were looking at a prime suspect with means, opportunity and the first shadowy hint of motive. Pelly and Unwin had certainly fallen out. Pelly was a man who carried a grudge. The hunt now was for evidence of how lethal that grudge might have been.
‘Back-record conversion.’ Willard was thinking aloud. ‘How many indexers will you need?’
Faraday had already decided on six. Three would be inputting current intelligence while the rest would be playing catch-up.
‘DCs?’
‘As many as you can spare, sir.’ Faraday was looking at
the highlighted map. ‘We need to blitz the area around Bembridge Harbour. That’s serious house-to-house.’
Willard grunted something about the New Forest job that Faraday didn’t catch. Then he was asking about what else Faraday had in mind for the Outside Enquiry Team. Faraday touched all the obvious bases. He wanted detectives into all of Pelly’s properties. He wanted interviews with whoever lived there. He wanted to know where they’d come from, how they’d travelled, and what part Pelly played in their lives. At the nursing home itself he wanted further interviews with staff and residents. It might be asking a lot of a gaga eighty-year-old, but the inquiry team had already anchored a timeline on early October, and he needed every scrap of information to try and build a picture of what might have happened over that first week.
‘How about SOC?’
‘On Pelly’s place? I’ll be talking to the Shanklin boys this morning. Pelly’s had four months to tidy up but you never know your luck.’
‘You’ll need to raise an intelligence cell. You want Imber again?’
‘Please.’
‘OK.’
Brian Imber was an ultra-fit 54-year-old DS who’d carved out a force-wide reputation for himself in the war against drugs. A brilliant intelligence analyst, he’d be the key to fleshing out the rumours about Pelly’s people-smuggling activities. In all probability, he’d bring someone with him, maybe one of the Hantspol Field Intelligence Officers.
Willard had evidently finished his breakfast. He said he’d be in the office by half eight. Nick Hayder would fight like a terrier to retain at least a couple of bodies for the clear-up on the New Forest job, but with one or two exceptions on the leave roster the rest of the Major Incident Team had nothing seriously pressing to do. With luck, by lunchtime, Faraday should be looking at an Outside Inquiry team of around a dozen DCs, with a DS in charge back in the incident room, plus another DS to sieve the incoming material as it began to flood in.
‘So who do you want as Statement Reader?’
‘Dave Michaels.’
‘You’re telling me he’s cracked HOLMES Two?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good fucking luck.’
Willard barked with laughter and rang off. The statement reader was a key part of the team, scanning incoming interviews for those all-important titbits that flag the path to a successful conviction. The original HOLMES package was hard copy – mountains of paper – and Dave Michaels had been an artist with the ruler and the felt-tip pen, somehow able to keep the ever-growing jigsaw of inquiries intact in his head. HOLMES Two, on the other hand, now put the whole process on screen, and the DS was famously ham-fisted when it came to key strokes. Not only that, but he had a murderous temper. The last time Faraday and Michaels had worked together on the updated software package, the DS had been briefly hospitalised after putting his fist through his PC screen.
Faraday reached for a pen and circled Pelly’s name. The investigative machine he was about to lead had an awesome reach. Hundreds of man-hours, umpteen databases, forensic tests so precise they could put a name and a date of birth to a three-cell smear of DNA, all of this lay in wait for the gaunt, driven shadow who’d so far kept them all guessing. The man had a certain presence. He made no secret of the short cuts he was prepared to make. When necessary, he dealt in the currency of violence. But was that really enough to drive him to homicide?
Something told Faraday that it wasn’t but, try as he might, he couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was his relationship with Lajla, his so-called wife. Maybe it was something buried in the image that Faraday had carried away from the home the last time he’d been up there: the three of them, Pelly, Lajla and the girl Fida, locked in an embrace, holding each other, comforting each other, keeping the world away from their door. Every investigation has a series of special moments, Faraday thought, when the truth begins to reveal itself. And he had a growing conviction that this was one of them.
‘Sir?’
Faraday looked up to find Bev Yates at the door. He’d slept badly, been roused by an obscenely early call.
‘Winter,’ he explained briefly, ‘thinks he’s laid hands on a photo of Unwin.’
Winter was back at the wheel. A good night’s sleep and a fistful of painkillers had routed the demons in his head and he felt immeasurably better. In an early phone call to Cathy Lamb he’d promised to settle her dry cleaning bill, go easy on the liquid lunches and consult his GP. The fact that he hadn’t touched daytime alcohol since the weekend didn’t matter. Better that his DI put yesterday down to a bucketful of Stella than he bother her with the truth.
He took the slip road off the end of the motorway, and slowed for the big roundabout that fed traffic into the continental ferry port. Suttle was up at the News centre in Hilsea, talking to a reporter about putting Unwin’s photo in the paper.
Last night, at the Speke, they’d scored a result within minutes. Friday evenings featured R and B bands, and one of Winter’s army of informants was best mates with the bloke who sorted out the audio rig. He, in turn, knew exactly who took all the photos and pointed him out in a gaggle of drinkers arguing the toss about Pompey’s chances in tomorrow’s away game. A word in his ear, a drink for himself and his girlfriend, and Winter was on a promise to accompany them both home at closing time for a browse through the photograph album. Suttle came too, and he was the one who spotted Unwin.
‘Has to be him. Complete dickhead. Look.’
He was right. Chris Unwin was on the right in the photo, a tallish, gangly figure with an inane grin and a leather jacket that was several sizes too big across the shoulders. One arm was around a startled-looking guitarist and in his other hand, elevated for the camera, he held a crudely lettered sign that read ‘The A-Lmighty’.
‘Get it?’ Suttle asked Winter. ‘A-L-mighty? A-insley L-ister?’
The photographer from the Speke confirmed Suttle’s hunch. He’d included the shot in his album because he said it summed up the freakiness of that particular night. Lister was playing Southsea after an embarrassment some months earlier when he’d forgotten to turn up. This gig was a freebie for the benefit of his many fans and none of them had been disappointed. He’d played four sets in all, each progressively wilder, and the evening had ended with a hard core of doped-out R and B fans holding an impromptu whip-round to buy their star a diary and an alarm clock. Never again did they want their expectations raised in vain. Ainsley, like the poster said, was God Almighty.
Winter circled the ferry port until he found a parking spot within walking distance of the Immigration office. Last night’s ID parade had developed into a bit of a session. An evening on quality skunk had stilled any doubts Winter’s new friend might have had about the company he was keeping, and he’d willingly offered some thoughts about young Chrissie. Unwin, he’d said, was a liability. Tell him anything and it’d be round the town in half an hour. He was a lunatic that way, trading rumours and gossip for some half-arsed notion that he might win himself friends, and what made it especially sad was his constant habit of boasting about the strokes he’d pulled abroad.
Unwin, according to the photographer, was a part-time people smuggler. He had a toshed-up old van, and a million contacts in the world of French country auctions, and on some trips he quadrupled his winnings by stuffing the wardrobes in the back of the van with asylos he picked up in Cherbourg. There was a place he knew where they waited for a crossing. Lots went on fishing boats and somehow made it to the Isle of Wight. Some, lucky enough to meet our hero, shipped in through Pompey. Never had he been stopped. Never had he made less than one fifty a head. Hence the wad in his back pocket just begging to buy the whole fucking world a drink.
Winter, checking that he still had the original photo, could well believe it. What never failed to surprise him was how obvious most crime was, and how retarded most criminals. ‘These people are shit,’ he’d once told Cathy Lamb. ‘They’re inbreds. We ought to remember that.’
‘Mick Kingston about?’ Winter was s
tanding in the tiny reception area, eyeballing a tall blonde behind the desk. Immigration officers were never less than hostile and this woman, although pretty enough, was no exception.
‘Who wants him?’
‘DC Winter.’ Winter flipped his warrant card. ‘Remind him he owes me.’
The woman checked the card longer than was strictly necessary, then disappeared through a door at the back. Seconds later she returned.
‘He says to go on in.’
Winter stepped round the counter and through the door. The office, part of a Portakabin, had seen better days. Mould was growing on the damp stains beneath the window and the desk was sagging where one of its legs had collapsed. Pervading everything was the heavy fug of tobacco smoke.
‘All right?’
Mick Kingston was demolishing a doughnut from a paper bag. There was a light dusting of sugar on his chin and a smear of jam around the corner of his mouth. His uniform jacket hung on the back of the door.
‘Mr W.’ He got up and wiped his hand on his trousers. ‘Who do we blame for this pleasure?’
Winter produced the photo.
‘Him, since you ask.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Bloke called Chris Unwin.’ Winter wrinkled his nose. ‘Don’t you lot ever open a window?’
‘No point. Heating’s fucked. Open the window and you’ll freeze your arse off.’ He was still looking at the photo. ‘Bloke on the right?’ Winter nodded. ‘Why him?’
‘Suss people smuggling. Said to come through here regularly.’
‘Yeah?’
Kingston got to his feet and bent to a computer at the other desk. A couple of key strokes took him into a database. He began to scroll through.
‘Unwin, you say?’
‘Yeah.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘He’s not on the name manifest.’
‘What’s that? Some kind of watch list?’
‘Yeah. We keep an eye on the obvious ones. The older the van the bigger the interest. Establish a pattern and – bingo! – full turnout. Dogs, scanners, black magic, the fucking works, mate. Blokes like him, no chance.’
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