Cut to Black faw-5

by Graham Hurley

  "Pass."

  "You're telling me you don't know?"

  "I haven't a clue. I've told you, I can't get a word out of her. Who she gives it to is a mystery to me. Always has been."

  "But she came back to live with you, Mist. And she did that because she must have fallen out with Valentine. There's no way you didn't ask her. I don't believe it."

  "Bollocks did I ask her. If you knew the first thing about Trude you'd know she keeps herself to herself. It was like living with a stranger, if you want the truth. Just a shame she hadn't got anywhere else to go. Fucking gloom bag."

  "She's angry, Mist. Angry at you. Now why would that be?"

  "No idea. Ask her."

  "I did."

  "When?" The alarm in her eyes told Winter he was getting warm.

  "Lunchtime, Mist. Today."

  "And what did she say?"

  "She didn't. And she wouldn't, my love, because she's careful when she opens her mouth. Unlike her mum."

  He held her eyes over the table. Alarm had given way to a cold fury.

  Misty got to her feet, clutched the table to steady herself, then yelled at the waiter. She wanted a taxi. She'd had enough of talking to this wanker. In fact she'd had enough of everything.

  Winter gazed up at her, wondering how far to take the rest of the conversation. Aqua would have a cab here in moments. Just time to take a punt or two.

  "Mike Valentine's in deep with Bazza, Mist." He leaned back in the chair. "Maybe shagging someone that close isn't such a great idea."

  "You mean Trude?"

  "No, love." He offered her a matey smile. "I mean you."

  It was gone eleven by the time Sarah made it round to the flat in Old Portsmouth. She'd spent the last couple of hours at the Students'

  Union, celebrating the end of the first draft of her degree dissertation. There was still stuff to do, lots of stuff, but the shape of the thing was there and fifteen thousand plus on the word count deserved a couple of pints of cider.

  She kept Daniel's spare keys in a special pocket in her day sack. She stepped in through the street door and made her way upstairs. Outside Daniel's flat, she paused and knocked. This time of night, unless a miracle had happened, he'd be dead to the world, but it still felt more comfortable to announce her presence.

  When there was no answer she turned her key in the lock and pushed the door open. The flat was in darkness, but the moment she switched on the light she saw that the furniture had been rearranged. This, she knew at once, was confirmation that the video crew had been round. The way the armchair had been positioned nice sense of depth behind the interviewee was exactly what she would have done.

  "Dan?"

  There was no response. She hesitated a moment, wondering whether to leave him to it. He'd be in bed by now, bound to be, and it might be better to come back tomorrow to find out how the taping had gone. With luck, the whole experience something new in his life might have given him a bit of a nudge. He might even have offered the kind of performance, the kind of analysis, she knew lay within him. That's why the smack was such a tragedy. The guy had a brain. The guy was clever. She'd never met anyone so thoughtful, and so articulate.

  She began to turn to leave, then had second thoughts. His bedroom was down the corridor. She paused outside the open door. In the faint spill of light from the lounge, she could just make out the shape of his body, prone beneath the duvet. There was something else, too. A terrible smell.

  "Dan?"

  The smell was vomit. She knew it.

  "Dan? Are you OK?"

  Nothing. Her hand found the light switch beside the door. Daniel was lying on his back, his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. A thick stream of vomit had caked on his face, on the side of his neck, on his shoulder.

  "Dan?" Her voice began to falter. "Dan…?"

  Chapter seven

  THURSDAY, 20 MARCH 2003, 04.40

  The first mid-March London-bound train leaves Portsmouth and Southsea town station at 04.38. This particular morning, the trickle of early commuters included one of the city's two MPs, a cheerfully resilient Lib Dem who never tired of pushing Portsmouth's new image as the south coast's must-visit heritage attraction.

  Pompey, he'd recently assured a visiting journalist from one of the broadsheet Sunday supplements, had at last shed its post-war reputation for poverty, planning mistakes, and limitless aggression. This was no longer the city where a shopping centre the Tricorn was annually voted Europe's Ugliest Building. Neither were Friday nights infamous for sailor-bashing and huge helpings of recreational violence. On the contrary, thanks to inward investment and a forward-looking council, the city was fast acquiring a well-earned reputation for meshing the old and the new. The historic naval dockyard offered a world-class collection of antique warships. The harbour had been given a multi-million-pound refurb. And in the shape of the Spinnaker Tower, the new Gunwharf development would soon boast the tallest structure in southern England. Portsmouth, in short, was on the rise.

  The MP, already late for the 04.38, found himself amongst a gaggle of fellow passengers halted on the concourse by a line of Police Caution tape. Peering over the shoulder of a WPC, he watched two ambulance paramedics bending over a body slumped at the foot of one of the turnstile entries. The youth was wearing jeans and a red football shirt. There were livid splashes of blood around his scuffed trainers, and a brief glimpse of his face revealed the kind of damage you'd associate with a high-impact car smash. Only when the WPC moved, did the MP realise that one of the youth's wrists was shackled to the turnstile by a pair of handcuffs.

  Pressed for details, the WPC did her best. The fire brigade were on their way to deal with the handcuffs. The paramedics were confident the young man would survive the trip to hospital. As so often with these incidents, the damage appeared worse than it probably was.

  "These incidents?" The MP had noticed a blood-soaked pillowslip on the concourse beside one of the kneeling paramedics. "What incidents?"

  "Can't really say, sir." The WPC was looking grim. "Except it's getting worse."

  Faraday awoke to an empty bed. He lay there for a moment, gazing up at the ceiling, tuning in to the cries of the early-morning seagulls.

  Living in the Bargemaster's House beside Langstone Harbour, he could map the view from his window by a medley of different calls. The piping of red shanks and the bubbling call of a flock of oyster catchers would suggest low tide on the mud flats but Eadie's se afront location lacked that kind of variety. A morning like this you had to put up with the angry squawk of black-headed gulls battling for their share of pavement debris from last night's take-outs. From the birding point of view this was a serious disappointment but Faraday had enjoyed enough early mornings in this bedroom to draw a subtler conclusion. As a prelude to his working day, the clamour of warring scavengers was near-perfect.

  The crack between the curtains suggested it was barely dawn. Rolling over, he checked the bedside alarm clock. 06.03. From the nearby living room, came a low murmur from the television. BBC News 24 again, Faraday thought.

  Past midnight, with Eadie still working at her office, the news from the Gulf had finally driven him to bed. US and UK forces had been pounding the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Oil wells were blazing around Basra and there appeared to be every prospect of a counter-attack deploying Saddam's ample supplies of chemical weapons. By now, God help us, the Americans would be fingering the nuclear button.

  Retrieving a towel from the carpet beside the bed, Faraday padded through to the living room. Eadie was kneeling in front of the television, wrapped in Faraday's dressing gown, consulting a clipboard on her lap. Paused on the screen, a single juddering image, was a face Faraday didn't recognise. Definitely not BBC News 24.

  "Tea?"

  Eadie spun round.

  "Shit." She was grinning. "Watch this."

  She glanced down at the clipboard, then zapped the video recorder into fast forward. Seconds later, Faraday was watching the same figure dragging him
self along a badly lit hall. He disappeared briefly through a door at the end. By the time the camera caught up, he was clawing his way into bed. Eadie froze the image again.

  "There."

  "Where?"

  Faraday followed her pointing finger as she touched the screen.

  "It's an empty syringe," She said. "Guy's off the planet."

  Faraday at last recognised the barrel of the syringe hanging from the bloodied forearm and as Eadie pressed the play button again he found himself drawn into what followed. There was a terrifying helplessness in the sight of this young man's battle to capture the duvet on the floor. Time and again, he reached down for it. Time and again, he missed. Finally, he caught one corner, hauled it agonisingly up towards him, then barely half-covered gave up.

  "You found your junkie, then?"

  "Big time."

  "Pleased?"

  "Just a bit."

  "Lucky, eh?" Faraday was watching the eyes slowly close. "Got there just in time."

  "You're joking." Eadie busied herself with the zapper again, putting the video into reverse until there was nothing on the screen but a bulging vein and the slow plunge of the needle. Eadie played the sequence twice. Faraday had never seen anything so graphic.

  "You were there."

  "Obviously."

  "And this is for real."

  "Too right. Real is what I do."

  He nodded, still riveted to the screen. "What happens beforehand?"

  "I do an interview with him."

  "Good?"

  "Better than good. Excellent. The guy was a gift, articulate, strung-out, totally blitzed. Watch this, and no kid in his right mind will go anywhere near drugs. Any drugs. Watch this, and you'd probably give up shandy. Are we whispering result here? Or is it just me?"

  "You said you did an interview with him."

  "That's right. Little me."

  "So who was behind the camera?"

  "J-J-'

  "And the other stuff? Afterwards?"

  "Me. J-J wimped out. Couldn't hack it. Major disappointment. Still' her eyes returned to the screen '- I think I did OK. No?"

  Faraday didn't answer. Only when he'd filled the kettle and found the milk did he feel confident enough to continue the conversation. Anger would get them nowhere. Facts first.

  "We're talking heroin?"

  "Obviously."

  "And you know where this stuff came from?"

  "Federal Express. Guy knocks on the door, you sign the little form, and, hey, it's candy time."

  "I'm serious."

  "OK." Eadie was laughing now. "You don't have to sign the form."

  "You're telling me you were there when it was delivered?"

  "Of course. That's why the interview was such a knockout. These people run on tram lines Four hours between fixes is comfortable.

  Anything over that, it starts to show. Six, seven hours, you start clucking. This guy?" She nodded towards the screen. "Clucking fit to bust. The moment that entry phone went off, he was down the stairs.

  You really think I'm going to ignore what followed? I couldn't have scripted it better. Give me an actor and a million dollars and you wouldn't get a result like that. People sense reality. They sit up and take notice. That's the whole point." She stared at him a moment, uncomprehending. "So what's the problem, Joe? You find all this offensive?"

  Faraday shook his head. It was far too early in the morning to feel so weary.

  "You want to know the problem? The problem is, I'm a cop."

  "I know that. You're after the bad guys. This guy's not a bad guy, he's a victim. That's the whole point. Give him a stage, let him make his case, show what this stuff really does, and you're going to have fewer victims. Trust me. I've just spent a year rehearsing that little speech. Something else, too."

  "What?"

  "I fucking believe it. And so should you."

  Her anger was sauced with disappointment. She'd served up her tastiest morsels, the dish of her wildest dreams, and Faraday had dumped it in the bin. After all this, she seemed to be saying, you've copped out.

  Literally.

  "Let's start with the legal position," Faraday said softly.

  "Sure."

  "You were involved in supply. You were party to possession. They're both of fences "Supply? Crap. I kept the lights on, sure, while he dived downstairs but it wasn't me out in the street. That would have happened anyway.

  It's how all this stuff works."

  "Possession, then. You had a duty to stop him."

  "Stop him? If I'd strapped the guy down, he'd still have made it into that kitchen. We're talking chemistry, Joe, not rights and wrongs.

  That man needed to shoot up. If that wasn't the case I'd still be making videos about Dunkirk fucking veterans. Need is what this movie is about. Need is what those guys out in the street trade on. Need is '

  Faraday cut in.

  "Guys? Plural?"

  "Guys? Guy? Shit, I don't know. Stop playing the cop on me, Joe. I thought you understood. I thought we'd been through some of this together. It's open and shut, my love. It's means and ends. There's a problem out there, a problem like you wouldn't believe, and my little bit of the jigsaw, my responsibility if you like, is to try and put it on tape. That's what I do. That's my contribution. Get this thing right and I just might make a difference. Better that than playing the lawyer." She paused. "Any other crime I might have committed?"

  "Aiding and abetting."

  "Like how? Like he couldn't do it by himself? Like he hasn't done it by himself half a million times before?"

  "Like you could have stopped him. As I just suggested."

  "Are you serious?" She got to her feet and stepped towards him. "Don't you listen to anything I say? I know I'm some dumb fuck from down under but give me credit, my love. The whole point of this circus, this little adventure, is that nothing stops these guys. Offer them detox and there's a shortage of beds. Get them into rehab and most of them do a runner. Put them in jail and you're guaranteed a junkie for life. Little me? I just point my camera and watch. Why? Because a classful of kids might just come to the conclusion, way down the line, that junk isn't worth it." She glowered at him, still furious. "Is anyone at home? Or am I wasting my time?"

  Faraday busied himself with the teapot. He'd seen Eadie in these moods before but he'd never been on the receiving end. Her anger was truly volcanic. It had an almost physical impact. Spill it on the carpet and the flat would be in flames.

  Reaching for the sugar bowl, he watched her prowling up and down. Twice she reached for the zapper, then changed her mind. With it finally in her hand, she stabbed savagely at the BBC News 24 button. Another volley of cruise missiles. Terrific.

  Faraday abandoned the tea and stepped towards her. When she turned to confront him again, he nodded down towards the screen.

  "Show me everything," he said. "From the start."

  Winter was early for the nine o'clock conference in the cluttered first-floor office at Kingston Crescent that served as a base for the Portsmouth Crime Squad. Settling himself at his desk beside the window, he fired up his PC and logged on. A couple of mouse clicks took him into the Daily State, a constantly updated tally of incidents that kept a finger on the city's rough pulse. Amongst last night's excitements a couple of D amp; Ds, a warehouse break-in, and a neighbour dispute was something else that caught his eye.

  Checking the name of the attending DC, he reached for the phone. This time in the morning, the divisional CID office over at Highland Road should be filling up.

  "Bev?" He recognised the voice at once. "Paul. Dawn there, by any chance?"

  "Duty last night, mate. She's gone home."

  "Cheers."

  Winter put the phone down. Dawn Ellis was a young DC on division, one of the few detectives in the city for whom Winter had any respect.

  Recently, after a troubling encounter with a rogue newcomer from the Met, he'd developed an almost fatherly concern for her well-being.

  When h
e finally got through, it was obvious she'd been asleep.

  "I don't know why I bother with the tablets," she muttered. "Think of the money I'd save."

  "Sorry, love." Winter was still peering at the overnight log. "This smack overdose in Old Portsmouth last night, was that yours?"

  "Yes."

  "What happened?"

  There was a pause while Dawn mustered her thoughts. Cathy Lamb, meanwhile, had appeared at the office door. She looked even more fraught than usual.

  "Student called Daniel Kelly." It was Dawn again. "Girlfriend found him dead in bed with a works in his arm. Uniform attended first, then me."

  "And?"

  "I took a statement. Tango One sorted an undertaker. I was out within the hour."

  "Anything dodgy?"

  "Not that I could see. According to the girl, he'd been shooting up for years. Rich kid, nothing better to do with his money. You should have seen his flat. Puts my place to shame." She paused again. "What is this?"

  "There's mention here of a video crew."

  "That's right. According to the girl, he'd been involved in making a video. She thinks the crew may have been with him at some point last night. I left the details in the office. Needs sorting."

  "You've got a number for these people? A name?"

  "Can't remember. It's some kind of production company, begins with "A". Talk to Bev." She smothered a yawn. "Night, night."

  Winter looked up to find Cathy Lamb standing over his desk. For once she didn't seem remotely interested in the details on Winter's screen.

  "My office," she said. "Now."

  Jimmy Suttle and another squad DC were already occupying most of Cathy's tiny office. Winter joined them, shutting the door and wedging himself in the corner. Cathy, it turned out, had just spent an uncomfortable half-hour with the Chief Superintendent. The town railway station had been sealed off at four the morning while fire and ambulance did their best to disentangle an assault victim from one of the entry turnstiles on the main concourse. The young man in question was now occupying a cubicle in the Queen Alexandra Hospital A 8c E Department.