"Yeah." Suttle nodded. "And about fucking time too."
Pullen didn't want to know. He was squirming around in the back, trying to ease the bite of the handcuffs. Winter watched him for a moment or two, not bothering to hide his disgust. Then he readjusted his seat and began to toy with the car keys.
"One last question, Dave. What's with Bazza and Valentine?"
"They're mates."
"I know that. I meant with Trudy. Did Bazza know Trude was living with Valentine?"
"Of course he did."
"And he thought Valentine was shagging her?"
"No way."
"No way} How does that work?"
Pullen's eyes found Winter's in the mirror, the look of a man who knows he's gone too far but can't do much about it.
"He warned him off," he said at last. "Told him he'd break his legs if he laid a finger on her."
"That personal?"
"Yeah." Pullen closed his eyes again. "You know fucking Bazza."
Willard sat at his desk in the Major Crimes suite, waiting for Prebble to pick up his extension. According to Joyce, who'd answered Willard's call to Tumbril HQ, the young accountant was busy putting another thousand documents through the photocopier. She'd given him a shout and told him the chief was on the line, top priority. He responded well to pressure, she said, and would doubtless be back in seconds.
Willard, who'd taken a while to tune in to Joyce's sense of humour, scribbled himself a note about an extension to Prebble's contract. Once they had Mackenzie in the bag, the accountant would be working flat out preparing the paperwork for the CPS file. Willard also foresaw endless conferences with the Assset Recovery Agency, the new government body charged with stripping major criminals of their ill-gotten gains. This would be Tumbril's real harvest, the seizure of millions of pounds' worth of property, business holdings, cars and sundry other goodies which Mackenzie had accumulated over the last decade. Prebble had spent the best part of a year sorting out the artful chaos Mackenzie had created around himself, and it would be Willard's pleasure to watch dusk fall on the city's biggest criminal. Up like a rocket, he thought.
Down like a stick.
"Apologies, Mr. Willard." It was Prebble. "Ran out of toner."
"How's it going?"
"Fine."
Willard had already rung this morning, telling Prebble that he'd need a headline summary of Mackenzie's major investments by the middle of next week. Now, he advanced the deadline.
"Monday morning," he said. "On my desk."
Prebble's silence suggested this might be a problem. When he asked why, the accountant had a question of his own.
"What are you going to use this stuff for?" he enquired. "Only it might help me to know."
"Why?"
"Because there's ways I can dress the thing up."
"I don't want it dressed up. I just want a simple breakdown what the guy's worth, where it comes from, what he's into."
"Like a wiring diagram?"
"Yeah." Willard liked that idea. "Exactly."
"You're going to use it for some kind of presentation?"
"It doesn't matter what I'm going to use it for. It just has to be clear. If we can follow the links, see how it all ties up, so much the better. You know what I mean? We discussed it this morning."
"Of course, sir."
"Monday morning," Willard repeated. "OK?"
He put the phone down and sat back in his chair for a moment. Prebble had been right to talk about a presentation. If Sunday furnished the appropriate evidence ideally some kind of drugs-related inducement then Willard would be using the recordings and Prebble's asset analysis to lock in his own boss for the next stages of the operation.
To secure a result when Tumbril finally got to court, Mackenzie had to be seen to be behaving as a major drug dealer. Given a fair wind, that evidence might come from Sunday. Alternatively, Mackenzie might insist on a subsequent meeting for the physical exchange of drugs or money.
Either way, the tapes, photos, and first-person testimony from Wallace would be all the more persuasive with the backing of Prebble's impressive research. The accountant was mapping every corner of Mackenzie's empire, vital reconnaissance if the asset recovery boys were to conduct a slash-and-burn raid of their own.
Willard pushed at the desk with his foot, letting the bulk of his body slowly revolve the chair. The last couple of months he'd put on a pound or two that he regretted, but he'd begun to invest in made-to-measure suits, cleverly cut, and knew that the extra weight remained a secret between him and his bathroom mirror.
He steepled his fingers and gazed out at the rain. Beyond next week, lay the press briefings and the headlines, those glorious moments when Tumbril could at last break surface and give a decent account of itself. Already, Willard was mentally preparing a briefing for the headquarters media unit, an outline account of the violence and intimidation that had smoothed Mackenzie's path to a fortune. This, he'd insist, was the reality that lay beneath the glitzy cafe-bars and the fuck-you lifestyle. The guys on the media unit would shape it into a press release, and Willard smiled at the thought of the subsequent off-the-record conversations he himself would be having with favoured local hacks. Then would be the time to gently muse about bent solicitors and corrupt accountants, about the raft of middle-class expertise on which Mackenzie and his tribe had floated to glory. These people knew who they were, he'd say, and they too should start thinking hard about explaining themselves in front of a judge and jury. Time to make them sweat, he thought. Time to make the bastards understand that not everyone was for sale.
He revolved full circle on the chair and found himself looking at the phone again. Checking his watch, he dialled a number from memory. This time in the afternoon, she was normally up in the living quarters on the fort, sorting out the day's ration of paperwork. Faraday had been right. There were wrinkles here that needed straightening out.
The phone answered on the second ring.
"Gisela?"
Eadie spent the afternoon at the Ambrym offices, sorting out the rushes on her drug project. With J-J already hard at work on the PC, she decamped next door to a small, bare room with a card table, a folding director's chair, and a view of the tiny backyard they used for parking. J-J had brought in a sleeping bag in anticipation of working through the night, and she unzipped it with his blessing and hung it over the window to mask the light before setting up her laptop and starting work.
She'd already been through the interview with Daniel Kelly, selecting the pieces she knew played best, and now she did the same with this morning's interview at the Marriott Hotel, filleting the tape for the moments when Daniel's father met the harder questions head on. The Adobe Premiere editing software supplied on-screen bins into which she could tuck the choicer morsels, and as the afternoon wore on she realised that even in rough-cut form way over length the impact of the video was going to be enormous.
After a break for coffee and a doughnut from the Cafe Parisien down the road, she steeled herself for a look at the footage from the mortuary.
Already this felt like history something she'd done weeks ago and she marvelled at how dispassionate and professional she seemed to have remained. From time to time she could hear her own voice on the soundtrack asking the pathologist or her assistant exactly what was going to happen next, and there was no trace of the bile she'd tasted in her own throat.
Turning away from the laptop as the mortuary assistant began to pack the inside of Daniel's skull with paper tissues, she sensed again that she was putting together something unique. The interviews were extraordinarily powerful. Add footage like this plus shots of Daniel shooting up, and she could already write the headlines.
Excited now, she dug in her bag for her mobile. Her ex-husband Doug had recently been nice enough to enquire how the project was going. Not only had he leased her these offices but he'd negotiated by far the largest of the private donations which had enabled her to seek match-funding. She'd still no idea whe
re the 7000 had come from but she was deeply grateful. The least she owed Doug was a call.
While she dialled his number, she tried to calculate how quickly she could come up with a rough cut. She could make a decent start tonight.
Tomorrow, she was committed to shooting more demo footage in London. A mass protest had been widely advertised and the Guardian was anticipating at least 100,000 on the streets. With luck, though, she could be back by early evening.
Doug answered the moment the call rang through. It seemed he was on a friend's yacht. The wind was crap and it was starting to rain. Eadie got to her feet and peeked out through the window. Doug was right. Big fat drops were darkening the flagstones below.
"Listen," she said. "What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?" "Why?"
"I'll have something to show you." She grinned in anticipation. "Knock your socks off."
It was nearly five by the time Faraday got to Whale Island. To his surprise, he found Prebble still at his desk. As far as he could gather, the accountant never left later than four. Rush-hour trains back to London were a nightmare.
"Hi." Prebble didn't look up from his laptop. "Maybe you should have a look at this."
"What is it?"
"Little present for Mr. W. He wants the easy-read version for Monday."
"Version of what?"
"Here."
Prebble sat back for a moment, gesturing at the screen. A small mountain of documents covered the rest of the desk, some of them decorated with coffee stains. Conveyancing forms. Property leases.
Trustee deeds. Invoices from motor auctions. Photocopied financial information mainly stock market prices torn from newspapers, certain stocks highlighted in yellow.
Faraday turned his attention to the screen. Under "European Properties', Mackenzie evidently owned or had an interest in a farmhouse in Northern Cyprus, an apartment block in Marbella, a vineyard in the Lot valley, and miscellaneous premises in Gibraltar.
"This is for when?"
"Monday."
"Ah…" Faraday permitted himself a smile.
Prebble began to scroll down but an incoming call took Faraday away.
Apologising for the interruption, he stepped across the office towards the open door that led to Joyce's precious archive.
"Gotcha." It was Eadie.
"Good to hear you."
"You, too. Listen. What time are you back tonight? Only ' "I wasn't coming back. Not early."
"No?"
"No. I thought we might go to the movies."
"The movies? Is this Joe Faraday I'm hearing?"
"There's an Afghani film on. A woman director and subtitles. Thought it might appeal. Then maybe something to eat afterwards."
"Joe, that's sweet
"But you can't make it?"
"Afraid not. Listen, there's a guy coming round to the flat to sort the boiler. I fixed for seven. Another cold bath and I'll fucking die."
"Where's J-J?"
"Next door. Working his arse off."
Wearily, Faraday agreed that he'd try and deal with the engineer.
Across the office, in some haste, Prebble was packing up. By the time he'd reached for his coat and shouldered the laptop, Eadie had gone.
Faraday watched Prebble heading for the door, wondering vaguely what other bits of Europe Mackenzie had bought.
The silence was broken by a stir of movement from the archive. It was Joyce.
"Couldn't help overhearing." She grinned at him. "Me? I just love all that Afghani feminist shit."
Chapter seventeen
FRIDAY, 21 MARCH 2003, 18.50
Dusk was falling by the time Winter made it to Gunwharf. He left his Subaru in the underground car park and took the escalator to the plaza at the centre of the shopping complex. From here it was a five-minute walk across the central basin to the residential side of the new development. He'd been up to the harbour side apartment on a number of other occasions, sometimes social, mostly not, and had always been amused by how easy it was for a looker like Misty Gallagher to land on her feet. Screw the right men in this city, he thought, and you end up with a state-of-the-art kitchen and a 700,000 view.
A public footpath skirted the waterfront edges of Arethusa House.
Winter paused by the rail, gazing out. He'd heard newcomers to the city prattling on about other great views. Portsmouth Harbour, they told each other, was like Hong Kong, San Francisco full of mystery and romance and the promise of exotic foreign landfalls. Half close your eyes, they said, and you might already be at sea. To Winter, this was tosh, the kind of drivel you might expect from estate agents or the tourist board. Pompey Harbour was what it had always been: busy, purposeful, a working space. Warships eased away from their dockyard berths and disappeared to sea. Ferries came and went. Fishing boats butted out against the tide. And, a couple of times a month, yachts ghosted in to one or other of the commercial marinas, laden with drugs.
Legal or otherwise, this was where Pompey made a living.
Winter turned, looking up at the carefully stepped face of Arethusa House. Misty's apartment was at the top, a penthouse that Bazza had snapped up before it even got on the market. The curtains were partly drawn against the gathering dusk but the lights were on and from time to time Winter caught a shadowed movement inside. He'd been careful not to phone ahead and he knew she might have company, but there was a reasonable chance, this time of night, that she'd be up there alone.
She answered the buzzer on the entry phone at the second ring.
"Mist? It's Paul…"
"What do you want? I'm busy."
"Just a chat, love. You got any Scotch?"
A moment or two later, Winter heard the door release engage. A lift from the lobby took him up to the top floor. The way the lift opened directly into Misty's apartment never failed to impress him.
She was standing in the big lounge surrounded by cardboard boxes, and Winter didn't need the half-empty bottle of Bacardi on the glass-fronted cabinet to tell him that she was drunk again. Her eyes were swimming and when she tried to move she had trouble staying upright.
"See?" The gesture took in the entire room. "You didn't believe me, did you?"
"Believe you how, Mist?"
"Chucking us out. Two weeks he's giving us. Two weeks last…" She frowned, trying to remember.
Winter stepped into the room. The nearest cardboard box, bigger than the rest, had become a refuge for Misty's collection of stuffed animals. Winter counted two panda bears, a chimpanzee, a wallaby, and a sorry-looking tiger with a tear across its ribcage.
"Trude around?"
"She's out. Some bloke she's just met."
"Who's that, then?"
"Fuck knows. You think she'd tell me?" She took a tiny step backwards, then collapsed onto the sofa. She was wearing a creased pair of white trousers, tight across the arse, and a see-through top in mauve that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. To get to forty and not need a bra, thought Winter, was truly remarkable.
"Next door." She was waving vaguely towards the kitchen. "Usual place."
Winter helped himself to Scotch, topping the glass with ice cubes from the fridge. The big freezer compartment, he noted, was practically empty.
"Where next then, Mist?" He settled companionably beside her on the sofa. She smelled, unaccountably, of cigars.
"Dunno." She shrugged. "Victoria Park? The beach? What would he care?" She peered towards the window and her precious view. "You ever seen that big house of his? Bloke I know says he and Marie have dinner parties, black tie, the works. Invite half fucking Craneswater and spend the evening talking about Waitrose and their kids' bloody education. Who'd ever have thought it, eh? Bazza getting it on with knobbers like that?"
"Gossip, Mist. Pay no attention."
"I never did, until this. Now look at us. Out on the fucking street."
"Yeah?"
She caught the tiny rise in his voice, the inflection that told her he didn't believe a word. She gazed at him, outrage
d.
"Haven't got a clue, have you? Blokes are all the same. It's the women that keep it together, women who sort everything out. Men? When it suits them, they help themselves. Loved it once, didn't he?
Couldn't keep him off me. "Forget the fucking bedroom. Right here, Mist. Right here on the sofa, right here across the back of the chair.
Who's got time to bother with the bedroom?" Fuck and forget. Gotta go now. Bang. Away. Gone."
Winter swallowed a mouthful of the Scotch, surveying the chaos around him. Beside another cardboard box, a litter of unironed clothes and an enormous pile of CDs. Coldplay. White Stripes. Blur.
"What about Trude, then? Is that the two of you kip ping on the beach?"
Trude'll cope. Trude always fucking copes."
"I hear she's back with you."
"Yeah. For all the good it'll do her."
"What about Valentine, then?"
"What about him?"
"Never worked out? Him and Trude?"
"Haven't a clue." She ducked her head, more cautious now, her brain beginning to catch up with the lazy drumbeat of Winter's questions.
"Why don't you ask her?"
"Maybe I have."
"Yeah?" Misty's head came up. "How's that, then?"
"She got beaten up. I think I mentioned it. We get to ask questions about incidents like that, Mist. It's part of the job description."
"And?"
"She was on the rebound. From Valentine. Because Valentine wouldn't fuck her. Strange, eh? Good-looking girl like Trude? Wouldn't make sense, would it? Unless Valentine was otherwise engaged?"
Misty shook her head, said nothing. When Winter got up to fetch the bottle of Bacardi, she first covered the empty glass with her hand, then shrugged, letting Winter pour. Her whole body had gone slack.
Whatever trench she'd dug, whatever position she was defending, had just been overrun. At length, she fumbled for a cigarette.
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