For a second or two he toyed with the proposition. The ghouls at the mortuary would have a poke at his broken remains. The blokes on the squad might sink a commemorative jar or two and trade war stories. The News would doubtless run some wank feature on the stresses of modern police work. And then there’d come another day and he, like Joannie, would be history.
Winter shook his head, slipped out his mobile, stepped back into the living room. Suttle answered at once.
‘How did you get on with the Bone?’ Winter was eyeing Maddox’s coat. ‘We need to talk.’
Number 79 St Edward’s Road lay on the margins of Thomas Ellis Owen’s Southsea, an early Victorian development which offered naval officers a pleasing alternative to the teeming chaos of life within the garrison walls. This was as genteel as Portsmouth got, an area of sinuous tree-lined crescents and finely detailed terraces, though chaos of a different kind was now lapping at the edges of Southsea’s pride and joy. Some of the gaunt Victorian villas in St Edward’s Road had become residential homes for the elderly. Others housed single men in various stages of mental impairment, consigned to the tender mercies of community care. Number 79 had surrendered to multi-occupation.
Faraday and Imber paused at the gate. Instructions from DS Michaels had told Faraday to ring the second bell from the left. Faraday glanced at Imber. Wowser Productions?
The bell brought the clatter of footsteps up from the basement. The big front door was evidently double-bolted. Moments later Faraday found himself face to face with a pale thin-faced youth in jeans and a washed-out Ripcurl sweatshirt.
‘And you are?’
‘Meredith.’ The youth gave Faraday’s warrant card a cursory glance. ‘I thought you’d be here earlier. Lucky to catch me in.’
The entrance hall was dark and smelled of cats. A newish-looking mountain bike was chained to the radiator, its fat tyres caked with mud. Faraday followed Meredith down a narrow flight of steps and through another door. The biggest of the basement rooms doubled as a workshop and bedroom. A sturdy bench ran the length of one wall with a shelf above it. Half a dozen PCs were networked together with a tangle of cables, while other uncased computers were strewn across the bare boards on the floor, their delicate electronic innards exposed in various states of undress. Imber was looking at the big double bed. The duvet was littered with invoices, magazines and sundry paperwork while a blizzard of yellow stickies covered the lower half of Miss July, the naked poster girl on the wall above.
‘Why Wowser?’ Faraday was looking at a pile of laundry in the corner.
‘My dad’s old dog. Cocker spaniel. He was really cluey, fetch anything.’ Meredith was squatting on the floor beside one of the computers. ‘I’m in the retrieval business.’ He grinned up at Faraday. ‘Wowser Productions. Cool or what?’
Faraday fought the temptation to ask about security. There were bars on the tiny window at the front of the room and the front door had seemed sturdy enough, but he’d somehow expected something altogether more businesslike. Not this student doss.
Meredith had found a couple of stools. He perched on one and offered Faraday the other. The hard disk from Pelly’s laptop lay on the workbench. Scribbled notes on the attached label recorded its progress from Pelly’s desk in the Shanklin nursing home. Seized on the 27th. Logged in on the 28th. DBX files backed up and downloaded the same day. A cable snaked up from the hard disk to the nearest of the PCs.
‘We dump everything onto this baby.’ Meredith patted the PC. ‘All the retrieval is downstream. That way we preserve the original evidence.’
Faraday was beginning to relax. Never be deceived by appearances, he told himself. The world belongs to the young.
Meredith switched on the monitor attached to the PC. He’d been briefed to explore the contents of Outlook Express. On the assumption that emails may have been deleted, he’d concentrated on the contents of the DBX file to which they would have been sent. He’d used specialist software to scan the file, slowly retrieving fragments of the original information. The process, he warned Faraday, was by no means perfect. At best, only fifty per cent of the recovered data would be coherent. But it might, with luck, offer Congress a clue or two.
‘Who mentioned Congress?’ Imber was looking alarmed.
‘It was on the paperwork.’ Meredith waved a thin arm at the enveloping chaos. ‘Helps me to keep each operation separate.’
‘You do lots of police work?’
‘More and more. I’ve been vetted, if that’s bothering you.’
‘Good lad,’ Faraday said drily. ‘So what have you got for us?’
Meredith tapped at the keyboard. Lines of text appeared on the monitor screen. The detectives bent forward, mystified.
‘It’s Serbo-Croat,’ Meredith explained. ‘I was like you guys at first – thought I’d fucked up.’
‘You know what it means?’
‘Yeah, more or less. There’s a Czech au pair down the road. Looks after a little girl, really sweet. She spent some time in Belgrade, speaks the language.’
‘You showed her all this?’ Imber again.
‘I showed her hard copy. Told her it came from the friend of a friend. Got mangled en route. Social thing. She’s cool about it.’
‘And this is all you’ve got?’ Faraday had so far counted what looked like five separate messages, islands of words in an ocean of white space.
‘Yes. They’re not complete, either. It’s like one of those games. The trick is to fill in the gaps but I guess that’s what you guys do for a living so …’ he laughed ‘… over to you.’
He left the workbench and went across to the bed. Under a pile of invoices he found a battered-looking blue file. Inside, stapled to the covering note from SOC, was the au pair’s translation.
Faraday studied it, Imber behind him. Not five messages at all but bits and pieces from an ongoing email exchange. Meredith had disinterred another sheet of paper from the file.
‘This is how it works date-wise,’ he said. ‘I can’t guarantee it but it’s the best I can do.’
Faraday scanned the dates. The first email had arrived on 14th July. It appeared to have come from a member of Lajla’s family. There was a reference to ‘Papa’ never going out because of the summer heat. In another part of the message, after a series of blank spaces, a name: Dragan. Dragan, it appeared, wanted to get in touch with Lajla. He was due in Germany for a church conference. He might find the time to come to Berlin. The message, all too abruptly, petered out.
‘Berlin?’ Faraday looked up.
‘That’s where most of the emails come from. There’s a registered domain name: Autos Bosna. You want the address?’
Meredith was looking pleased with himself. Even Imber was impressed. Another sheet of paper appeared from the file, a Berlin address, neatly typed.
‘Muharem Mujajic?’
‘He’s the subscriber, owns the domain. He’s also the one who sends the emails.’
‘Lajla’s brother.’ Imber was peering at the translation. ‘He’s lived in Berlin with the father since they fled during the war. He must be running some kind of garage there. Germany’s full of Bosnian refugees. Enterprising guy. Must be.’
‘OK.’ Faraday was trying to make sense of the next message. ‘These are all incoming emails, right?’
‘Yes.’ Meredith nodded.
‘Nothing from Lajla’s end?’
‘Not that I can find.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Dunno.’ Meredith was scrolling through the text on the screen. ‘I asked myself the same question. Maybe it’s just a statistical quirk. The fifty per cent we can’t retrieve just happens to include all her stuff.’
‘Or she never replied at all.’
‘Exactly … Look at this one.’ Meredith had paused on the fourth message: 16th September. The sender this time had a different email address.
‘Ba?’ Faraday was looking at the suffix.
‘Bosnia. There’s no domain on this one. Just a subscr
iber address with an ISP. There’s no way I can get past that. Maybe you guys have the right connections …’
Faraday and Imber exchanged glances. Prising subscriber information out of the likes of Freeserve or Yahoo often took months.
Faraday wanted to know which of his translations corresponded to the message on the screen.
‘This one.’ Meredith pointed out three lines near the bottom of the page. There were more gaps than words but Faraday could just tease out the essence of the message. The sender had obviously been trying to talk to Lajla by phone. She was never there – never at home, never returned his calls, never gave him an answer.
‘To what?’
‘Could be anything … look.’ Imber was already on the last message. Muharem again, 27th September, and the message intact enough to suggest a tone of mild reproof. The priest’s friend was a good man, he’d written. If you couldn’t believe Dragan, then who in this world could you ever trust?
Dragan? The priest’s friend? Lajla’s evident reluctance to even acknowledge this series of messages?
Faraday got to his feet. He wanted to know how much more Meredith thought he might be able to retrieve.
‘Maybe another ten per cent. Maybe not even that.’
‘So this is all we have to go on?’
‘Afraid so. But the Berlin address must help, surely.’
Imber had slipped onto Faraday’s stool. Now he reached for the mouse. Returning to the first message, he scrolled slowly down, trying to match the Serbo-Croat to the au pair’s translation, hopscotching from one blank space to another. Finally, he folded the translation into his pocket and glanced round at Faraday.
‘One question we haven’t asked.’ He nodded back at the screen. ‘Just why would anyone want to delete these?’
Winter didn’t bother Suttle with the details of his hospital visit. Denial, after all, had its uses. The Bone was waiting for them in a café-bar in Port Solent. He’d rung twice already, demanding to know where they’d got to.
La Esperanza offered five kinds of espresso plus designer lager at £3.50 a bottle. The view across the Boardwalk towards the yacht basin could have come straight from a brochure. Bit of decent weather, thought Winter, and he’d buy an apartment there himself.
The Bone was sitting alone at a table at the back. The tab for two beers lay beside his empty glass. Winter’s shout.
‘Got a name for us?’ Winter wasn’t in the mood for small talk.
‘No, Mr Winter.’
‘Why all the drama then?’ Winter nodded at the mobile on the table.
‘Just a little whisper I thought you might be interested in. I put the word out about your Nigerian friend. Manager in one of the pubs here told me the bloke had a bit of a reputation with the ladies. They thought he was a nice fella. Generous, too. Put lots of it around.’
‘We’re talking money?’
‘Yeah. Plus he was shagging a couple of women round here. Showed them a really nice time. I’ve only talked to one of them but she was extremely pissed off when he died on her. She’s got a house over the water there, part of a divorce settlement. She used to have chummy over for meals in the evening. Bit of a cook. Apparently she was on a promise of Christmas on the Virgin Islands. She’d even bought herself a new bikini.’
‘What else did she say?’
‘She told me he was wheeling and dealing. She thought it was drugs at first but it turned out he was shopping for boats – big stuff, some kind of bulk order. She hasn’t got a clue about the details but she says he went to Norway a lot. Told her it was business. You can’t move in the house for aquavit. Everytime he came back he brought her a bottle. It’s everywhere. She hates the stuff. Never touches it.’
‘How come she told you all this?’ Suttle didn’t believe a word.
‘I said I was a mate of his. The bloke in the pub told me the Nigerian fella played five-a-side football, decent standard. Joined a team of locals; turned out every Thursday night. I told her I was on the team and she was kushti with that. Especially when I handed over the necklace he’d bought for her.’
The Bone produced a receipt and gave it to Winter. A silver cross with matching chain had come to £39.99.
‘Special offer down Gunwharf.’ He laughed. ‘I told her I’d been trying to get her address for months. I’d had the key to his flat and nipped round before they cleared it out. I knew the necklace was for her because he’d told me about it. Made her cry when I gave it to her.’
Winter beamed at him. Lately, he’d been having his doubts about the Bone but a ruse this elaborate restored his faith. The man was a truly devious little shit.
‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing you’d want to know about.’ He paused. ‘Except one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
His eyes went to the receipt. Winter, with some reluctance, picked it up. When the Bone asked for readies, Winter counted out four £10 notes. For a moment Suttle thought he was going to ask for change.
‘What about the beers?’ The Bone pocketed the money.
‘Jimmy’ll settle up in a minute.’
‘And a drink for afterwards?’
‘Depends.’
The Bone looked at him a moment, then got to his feet. Winter caught him by the door, spun him round, marched him back towards the table. The girl behind the bar had turned away and was watching them in the mirror.
‘Don’t fuck around, son. Just tell me.’
The Bone looked hurt. He spent a while trying to restore the creases in his shirt. Then he glanced up again.
‘This is the woman again,’ he said. ‘Couple of nights before the guy gets killed he tells her he’s being watched. Bloke in a four by four. It’s pitch bloody dark. The bloke’s waiting for him in a lay-by down the other side of the hill, outside that village, Southwick. Follows him up the lane he takes home on his bike. Happened twice. Third time?’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Bingo.’
Twenty
Monday, 1 March 2004
The message was waiting for Winter when he got home. He stepped into the gloom of his bungalow, dumped his dripping coat by the door, and padded down the hall towards the living room at the back where he kept the telephone. The tiny red light was winking on the answerphone and he stood for a moment, paralysed by the remorseless pattern of events beginning to unfold. The red light drew him in, on/off, on/off, and he stared at it, unblinking, chilled by the comfortless knowledge that answering machines and smoke detectors would very probably outlive him. Had Joannie stood here? Anticipated the receptionist’s voice? The abrupt summons to discuss whatever the radiographers had conjured from their CT scans? Had she felt like him? An otherwise cheerful bloke shafted by the traitor in his brain? Utterly fucking helpless?
He bent to the machine, pressed PLAY. It was Maddox. She wanted to know where he was, how it had gone. She was back in the flat. Ring me. Please.
Winter began to laugh. Minutes later, carrying the tray of tea back from the kitchen, he was still laughing.
He lifted the phone.
‘Me,’ he murmured. ‘Why don’t you come over here?’
She arrived within the hour with an armful of flowers from a petrol station down the road. Already, in the shape of Jimmy Suttle and Cathy Lamb, Winter had sensed the shadow that serious illness casts around the invalid. People in the job, he thought, are tongue-tied, awkward; don’t know how to voice their concern. Too many direct questions invite a conversation they don’t want to have. Ignoring the subject completely is a bit of a cop-out. And so they tiptoe round you, over-cheerful, bright-eyed, burying their embarrassment under a mountain of clichés. It’ll be OK. You’ll survive. Just you wait and see.
Not Maddox. She put the flowers on the table, shed her coat and flung her arms around him. She wanted to know exactly what had happened at the hospital. She demanded a minute-by-minute account. With her bluntness and her curiosity, she made him feel he’d been somewhere immensely exotic, a traveller returning from a foreign land.
>
At the mention of the second set of scans, she looked troubled.
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘No.’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I’m fucked.’
‘Does that bother you?’
It was a wonderful question. Winter found himself laughing again. He loved this woman and when she was around – this close, this honest – he didn’t much care about anything else. The prospect of terminal disease, he thought ruefully, isn’t just terrifying. It can also bore you to death.
He gave her a hug. She wanted to know whether his head still hurt.
‘No.’ He gave it an exploratory shake. ‘Wouldn’t fucking dare.’
‘So what happens next? Only we’ve got some tickets to book.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Try me. We can fly Ethiopian Airways to Addis. It’s buses from then on. Change your life.’
‘So where are we going?’
‘Harar. They used to call it the Forbidden City.’
The name triggered a memory deep in Winter’s brain. Hararian, he thought. Maddox’s email address. All those messages in Wishart’s in-box.
‘Arthur Thingy.’ He beamed at her. ‘Am I right?’
‘Rimbaud.’ She kissed him again, then tugged him off the sofa. ‘You should be a detective.’
Later, with the steady drumming of rain at the bedroom windows, Winter asked Maddox about Wishart’s wife. Where did she live?
‘Wimbledon. They’ve just moved.’
‘You know the address?’
‘No, but I can tell you what the house looks like.’ Wishart, it turned out, had been looking for the right property since the back end of last summer. His wife, who was evidently well organised, had trawled the local estate agents, sending her busy husband a regular selection of likely prospects. These, Wishart would share with Maddox at Camber Court – part of the process, she now realised, of trying to get their relationship onto an altogether less professional footing.
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