The Price Of Darkness

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘We?’

  ‘You.’ She offered him a cordless phone from the pocket of her apron. ‘There’s an extension out in the hall, if you’d prefer. Or you could use the study.’

  ‘No problem.’ Winter took the phone. ‘This’ll do fine.’

  He still had the K-MAX card in his pocket. He dialled the mobile number on the back. It answered after two rings.

  ‘Who is this?’ It was Brodie. That faint hint of California in her voice.

  Winter thanked her for the lunch. She said it was a pleasure. Then she asked what she could do for him.

  ‘We need to meet again. Soon.’

  ‘Of course. This afternoon some time? Round five, maybe? Or tomorrow? Your call.’

  Winter covered the mouthpiece with his hand. He needed a lift to the station and a proper copy of the contract. Esme said yes to both. Winter went back on the line.

  ‘Five o’clock’s perfect,’ he said.

  ‘Fine, though it’ll have to be somewhere central, I’m afraid. Why don’t we say the Savoy again? We could have an early drink. That OK with you?’

  With Barrie still stranded at Winchester, Faraday took temporary charge of Polygon. His first call went to one of the D/Cs who’d been dispatched to interview the registered owner of the Kawasaki. He lived in Southampton, and en route back to Portsmouth the D/C was explaining what had happened with the bike.

  The owner, he said, was a third-year student at Southampton University. He had an evening job as a barman at a run-down pub on the edges of Sholing, a suburb on the city’s eastern edge, and he’d left his bike in the car park all evening, walking out after closing time to find it gone. The bike had been locked up but someone had attacked the heavy-duty chain.

  ‘CCTV?’

  ‘Couple of cameras in the car park, boss, but apparently the recorder’s on the blink.’

  ‘No pictures, then?’

  ‘No.’

  Faraday wanted to know more about the pub. The state of the CCTV system might suggest someone with inside knowledge. How long had the recorder been down?

  ‘The tenant says a fortnight, at least. You can safely double that.’

  ‘What’s the place like?’

  ‘Crap. Full of low life. You’d have to be desperate to work there but apparently the money’s OK. This is a guy who lives on fuck all, boss. I get the impression he can’t afford to be choosy.’

  ‘Did you statement him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Faraday thanked him and put the phone down.

  Responsibility for the SOC teams lay with the Crime Scene Co-ordinator. A recent promotion had given Jerry Proctor the job and since this morning he’d been sharing an office down the corridor. He was a huge man with a wealth of sharp-end experience, and Faraday was extremely glad to have him on board. The SOC team had been at St James for a couple of hours now. Faraday wanted an update.

  ‘They’ve done a preliminary trawl, boss. This is what we’ve got so far.’

  A couple of keystrokes on Proctor’s laptop raised a series of crime scene photos, pumped across from the hospital grounds within the last ten minutes. Faraday found a chair and wedged himself behind the desk, peering at the images. The first showed a long narrow road, edged on the right by a red-brick wall. Proctor’s finger indicated a series of buildings on the left.

  ‘This one’s the Child Development Centre. Beyond that is The Orchards.’

  The Orchards had only been open a couple of years, a handsome crescent-shaped building with a slightly Oriental roofline.

  ‘It’s a psychiatric unit,’ Proctor explained. ‘Takes all sorts. Two wards plus some single rooms.’

  ‘And the other side of this wall?’

  ‘Playing fields for the university.’

  Faraday nodded. The next photos showed the gate that offered access to the hospital grounds. Beyond the gate was an acre or so of wasteland - a wilderness of shrubs, bushes and piles of plastic bags heaped against the same brick wall.

  ‘The lads concentrated here first, poked around in the undergrowth, found nothing.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘They widened the search parameters. By midnight they’d been over the whole site, still nothing. The skipper in charge left a couple of blokes to keep an eye on things and started again at first light. A couple of hours later he got lucky.’

  Faraday found himself looking at a two-storey building with a pitched red roof. Every window and door had been boarded up and the ruin was secured by a two and a half metre chain-link fence. According to Proctor, the building had once served as a self-contained ward, one of a number of villas in the hospital grounds. He keyed the next shot.

  ‘Here.’ He was pointing to a security gate set into the fence. ‘One of the blokes was bright enough to get a groundsman along. This guy had a key to the padlock and you know what? It didn’t fit.’

  The team had called for a pair of bolt-cutters. They went through the padlock and took a good look at the exterior of the building. Out of sight of the path lay a side door. This too had been secured but this time the padlock was missing. Pushing inside, they’d found the blue Kawasaki. The bike featured in the next series of shots. SOC investigators, alerted by the search team, had brought in extra lighting and the bike was on its stand. The paint on the fuel tank had bubbled and close-ups showed damage to the seats and wiring.

  ‘Turns out it wasn’t paint stripper at all but acid, probably sulphuric. Nasty but bloody effective. It’s going to take us a while to try and recover anything useful but I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

  Faraday nodded. This was more evidence, if he needed it, that these people were forensically aware. First the use of a revolver, minimising evidence at the scene. Then the careful selection of a place to dump the bike. Now a thorough dousing in sulphuric acid, effectively removing any possible traces of DNA. Seldom had he come across a job as meticulously planned as this.

  ‘What about access?’

  ‘The main entrance to the hospital is here, off Locksway Road.’ The grid of thumbnails had been replaced by a full-screen map. ‘There’s a roundabout in front of the main building and a one-way system that takes you round the whole site. The bike was found here, on the eastern edge of the site. There’s a building still in use in front of the derelict villa but coming in from the back you’d be home safe. No one to clock you. Nothing but rubbish and scrub.’ Proctor’s thick finger settled briefly on a carefully drawn rectangle close to the perimeter of the site. ‘The access road they used leads straight to the villa.’

  Faraday followed the thin black line. From the villa to Locksway Road, according to Proctor, was five hundred metres.

  ‘So what are we saying?’ He leaned back in the chair.

  ‘My guess is this. They drive in along the access road past The Orchards, just like the woman said. They push the bike round the back. There’s a rough path through the undergrowth.’

  ‘Tyre tracks?’

  ‘The lads have trampled most of it. We’re still looking.’ He frowned, staring at the map. ‘So when these guys get to the access gate round the back of the building, they do the padlock, push the bike in, do the second padlock on the door, then get the bike inside the building itself. Once you’ve got the door shut behind you, you can take your time.’

  Faraday nodded. He remembered reports of the holdall on the back of the Kawasaki.

  ‘They’re carrying the acid?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They douse the bike? Get changed? Stuff the leathers and the helmets in the holdall? Leave?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Replacing the padlock on the gate in the fence?’

  ‘Yeah. That way we’d assume the building was still secure.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then they’ve got options. They’re in civvy kit now, just a couple of guys. The hospital’s wide open. They could have been anybody.’

  ‘But how do they leave?’

  ‘Either back the way they came, w
hich wouldn’t be favourite.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too exposed. For my money they’d just walk through the hospital site and come out the back gate. There’s a neat little estate just here …’ he indicated a tangle of roads north of the hospital grounds ‘… plus a route that takes you out to Warren Avenue and away. They’d have pre-parked a car. Piece of piss.’

  Faraday was still eyeing the map. ‘What about the playing fields? How high’s the wall?’

  ‘Two metres at least. And once you’re over, there’s a longish walk.’

  ‘You’re right. And it’s overlooked.’

  The playing fields backed on to Faraday’s house. He gazed at the screen, lost for words. The thought that these two men might have been visible from his own back window was deeply ironic.

  ‘They’d obviously done a recce, planned the whole thing out.’ Proctor was clearly impressed. ‘All in all, it was a beautiful piece of work. If our lad hadn’t wondered about the gate in the fence, we’d still be looking.’

  ‘Sure.’ Faraday nodded. ‘So how did they do the padlock?’

  ‘Padlocks, boss, plural. Remember, there were two of them. Bolt cutters. Had to be. Just the way we did it.’

  ‘But how do you manage cutters on a bike?’

  ‘You’d slip them under your leathers. It’s not something you’d want to make a habit of but it’s perfectly do-able.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘You’d walk out with them.’

  ‘You don’t think they’d be too big for the holdall?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely, but that wouldn’t be a problem. You’d just carry them.’

  ‘You’re serious? Guys this organised. This careful?’

  ‘Sure. It’s a tiny risk.’

  ‘No it isn’t, Jerry. And you know why? Because these guys don’t take risks.’ Faraday nodded at the site map. ‘We need a Polsa search, every square inch of those grounds. We’re looking for the bolt cutters, and if we’re really lucky we might find the padlocks he went through, though my guess is he’d have taken them with him.’

  ‘Done, boss. Under way.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Faraday got to his feet. ‘Then keep me briefed, eh?’

  At Havant Station, Winter found himself on the same platform as D/S Dave Michaels. Barely weeks before Winter handed in his warrant card, Michaels had left Major Crimes to take up a new posting with the Serious Organised Crime Squad, which operated from a suite of offices at Havant Police Station. Michaels, an age ago, had been with the Met and he still carried with him a whiff of old-style coppering. He’d always shared Winter’s appetite for laying artful traps and keeping occasionally dangerous company and had potted some decent villains in the process. With CID becoming daily more risk-averse, Michaels was one of the few ex-colleagues Winter would describe as a real thief-taker.

  As the train approached, Winter debated whether or not to make himself known. In the event he needn’t have bothered. Michaels, as ever, had spotted him first. He strolled down the platform, nursing a carry-out bag from the station buffet.

  ‘Mr W …’ He was beaming. ‘What a surprise.’

  This time in the afternoon the train was virtually empty. They found a couple of seats either side of a table in a carriage towards the back. Michaels had always been direct to the point of bluntness. To Winter’s relief, nothing had changed.

  ‘How’s Bazza then?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘What’s he up to?’

  Winter explained briefly about his brother’s accident and Mackenzie’s plans to mark his passing.

  ‘That sounds almost legit. Where’s the dodge?’

  ‘I’m not sure there is one. You know Bazza. It’s not money he’s after any more, it’s status. He wants people to give him a bit of respect. Plus he bores easily. Needs to do something with his time.’

  Michaels nodded. He was a big man with a lifelong passion for sport. Like Bazza, he adored football and horse racing and the two men regularly bumped into each other at various venues. The last time he’d seen Mackenzie, he said, was at Glorious Goodwood barely a month ago, the day Kilburn came home in the Maiden Stakes.

  ‘Twenty-five to one,’ he said. ‘And Bazza had £500 on. Always the same, isn’t it? It’s the guys with money who make money.’

  Afterwards, in the bar, Mackenzie had bought a great deal of champagne.

  ‘I took a couple of glasses off him. He was having a moan about some accountant fella from the Revenue who was always chasing him for paperwork. He thought we’d put him up to it. Pain in the arse, he said.’

  ‘Had you?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge. After Tumbril I said we couldn’t afford him any more. He thought that was really funny. Kept telling his mates.’

  Winter smiled, knowing it had to be true. A couple of years back Willard had mounted Operation Tumbril, a covert bid to bring Bazza Mackenzie to his knees. With Faraday at the helm, it had operated in conditions of extreme secrecy. Bazza, alas, had known of its existence from the start, and Dave Michaels was one of the coppers who hadn’t been the least bit surprised when Tumbril retreated to lick its wounds.

  ‘Complete waste of time.’ He was demolishing a bacon roll. ‘A year’s work and what do you end up with? A six-figure bill and blokes all over the city thinking we’d lost it. The point was, they were right. We had fucking lost it. It’s way too late to take down someone like Bazza. He’s made his money. He’s arm’s length now. Plus he’s protected by people who know what they’re doing. Am I right? Of course I fucking am. And you know something else? You’re one of them.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Of course you are. I’m not blaming you, mate. If we’re thinking career move, you’re playing a blinder. When was the last time you lost sleep over getting a RIPA through or having a ruck with the fucking budget manager? I bet you really miss all that bollocks.’

  Winter sat back as the train whined up the long gradient towards the Buriton tunnel while Michaels mused about his latest posting. His new squad at Havant had a target list of local criminals as long as your arm plus a decent budget to try and stitch them up. They could call on surveillance, test purchase, covert ops and a variety of elaborate scams, but a couple of months on this new job had made him wary of banking on success.

  ‘It’s never easy, Paul.’ He wolfed the last of the roll. ‘Some of the blokes we’re targeting will roll over for a bunch of ripped-off iPods at a silly price, they’re that stupid, but the good ones, the quality blokes, they always see us coming, always. And they’re the ones we’re really after. Still …’ he balled his paper napkin and dropped it in the bag, ‘… you’d know about that, eh?’

  Winter was beginning to wonder exactly where this conversation might lead. Michael’s affable matiness had always disguised the sharpest of brains. He obviously knew that Winter was now working for Mackenzie’s organisation. What else might he have picked up?

  ‘Covert was never easy, skip,’ Winter said. ‘You talk to some of the blokes who go U/C and half of them are headcases.’

  Michaels nodded.

  ‘Too right,’ he said. ‘Spend your waking life pretending to be someone else and you end up not having a clue who you fucking are. I’ve seen it time and again. These poor bastards start out thinking they’re Al Pacino but then it dawns on them they’re well and truly fucked, bang in the middle of no-man’s-land, totally on their tod. If they score any kind of result, then some other fucker grabs the credit. If it all kicks off and they end up hurt, no one bloody wants to know, absolutely no one. Watch my lips, mate. U/C sucks.’

  The train was seconds away from the tunnel. Winter recognised the trees and scrub crowding in on both sides of the line. Then, without warning, they were plunged into the roaring darkness.

  Winter could dimly make out Dave Michaels across the table. The whiteness of his teeth told him the Organised Crime D/S was grinning.

  Martin Barrie was back in his office, briefing Faraday on developments at Headqu
arters. The word pressure, he said, didn’t do the situation justice.

  ‘The Chief evidently thinks the politicians are using us as a stick to beat the intelligence people. They’re feeling badly let down. They’re claiming the threat assessment just wasn’t there. The word they’re using is naked.’

  ‘They’re still thinking terrorist?’

  ‘Absolutely. But I gather that’s political too. They’re looking to build the case for everything from ID cards to surveillance on Muslim communities and Goldsmith Avenue is a gift. The cynic in me says their best result would be no result at all.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘We end up drawing a blank. That way they can keep the pot boiling. The faceless enemy within. The need for constant vigilance. You know something? I never realised how many votes there are in fear. Scare ourselves shitless and these clowns will be in power for ever.’

  ‘And the pressure?’

  ‘It’s coming from the Chief. Call him old-fashioned, but he thinks we’re investigating attempted murder. He says fairy tales are for politicians. I must say it’s extremely refreshing.’

  A knock on the door brought Jerry Proctor into the room. For once he had a smile on his face.

  ‘You were right, boss.’ He was looking at Faraday. ‘They were under a bush, covered in leaves. I get the impression we were lucky to find them.’

  ‘The bolt cutters?’

  ‘Yeah. I had a call a couple of minutes ago.’

  ‘Under a bush where exactly?’ Faraday was trying to remember the site plan of the hospital grounds.

  ‘About twenty metres from the back of the derelict villa. Dense undergrowth. Perfect spot.’

  ‘He’s coming back for them then.’

  ‘Exactly. We’ve left it where it is for the time being. So …’ he glanced across at Barrie, ‘… what do you want us to do, boss? Your call.’

  Faraday brought the Detective Superintendent up to speed. The bolt cutters might well yield DNA or fingerprints, though Faraday rather doubted it. Barrie was looking at Proctor.