The Price Of Darkness

by Hurley, Graham

  Freeth was refusing to say anything. It was Dawn Ellis’s turn to put the questions. She wanted to know more about Freeth’s interest in moving house.

  ‘I have the SOC log here, Mr Freeth.’ She ducked her head. ‘Like Bev explained, they seized some paperwork of yours this afternoon. It seems you were negotiating to buy a property in …’ she looked up. ‘… Tullaghaught?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you intend to live there?’

  ‘We do, yes.’

  ‘Permanently?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what about Positivo? All your work with kids?’

  ‘It’s over. Done.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘It’s a funding issue. The way things are these days, I’d be spending all my time raising money. That’s not why I set the thing up. Not at all. Julie feels the same way. Education’s a joke in this country. She can’t wait to be shot of it.’

  ‘Just the two of you then? In Tullaghaught?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No Dermott?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘But you do, Mr Freeth, you do. We can evidence your interest in the boy. We can evidence the meet you’d set up in Fishguard. We can prove your intention to move to Ireland, to set up home, to start a new life. Are you really telling me there wasn’t room for young Dermott in all that?’

  Freeth was staring at the wall, refusing to take this line of questioning any further. Faraday noticed the whiteness of his knuckles on the table. Yates was much closer.

  ‘You never had kids of your own, Charlie,’ he murmured. ‘How come?’

  Freeth’s eyes found Yates. Then Ellis.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ he said at length. ‘Not in this world, you wouldn’t. Not in this fucking country, the way it is, the way it’s heading. We’ve lost it, totally blown it, and if we’re talking evidence I can give you a hundred names, a thousand, and all of them kids. Kids from broken homes. Kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Kids who never asked to be born. Kids who find themselves up to their necks in the fucking swamp we’ve made for them. No order. No routine. No direction. Not the first bloody clue who they are. And you know why they end up that way? Because we’ve failed them. Totally. Because we’re gutless. Because we’ve let ourselves become obsessed by money, and gain, and all the other shit. Because we’ve given up on decency and graft, and listening to each other, and trying to make an honest living. Because we lie on our backs and spread our legs and let a queue of arseholes have their way. Kids know that. They see it every day. And that’s important because the people who get really fucked are them, not us. In our sad little lives we think we can take care of it. Kids can’t. Won’t. And you know what? I’m not sure I blame them.’

  There was a long silence. Suttle, watching, mimed applause. Then Ellis bent forward.

  ‘Arseholes like Mallinder?’ she queried. ‘Arseholes like the minister who wouldn’t do right by Frank?’

  Freeth looked her in the eye. A ghost of a smile came and went.

  ‘No comment,’ he said softly.

  Yates called a halt to the interview at 22.26. By now it was clear that Freeth’s cooperation was at an end. He was still denying every charge and refused point-blank to budge beyond a muttered ‘No comment’ when pressed for more information. His body language, though, told Faraday that he knew the game was probably up. This was a man who understood the slow, methodical assembly of evidence. He could measure the point beyond which the sheer weight of a case would persuade a jury. And as Freeth got wearily to his feet Faraday sensed that already he was preparing himself for the years to come. Being an ex-copper in a Cat A prison would never be easy.

  Back at Kingston Crescent the lights were still burning in the Major Crimes Suite. Faraday had kept Martin Barrie abreast of developments during the evening. PACE regulations stipulated that Freeth should be freed by four in the morning. Now was the time to decide whether or not to formally charge him.

  Barrie was in his office attending to a stack of paperwork. DCI Perry Madison sat at the conference table talking on his mobile. Barrie waved Faraday into a chair.

  ‘Well … ?’

  Faraday summed up the case against Freeth. As far as Polygon was concerned, he’d established both motive and opportunity. Freeth had made no secret of his contempt for the political system that had, as he saw it, put Frank Greetham in his grave. The current Minister for Defence Procurement, in his former office, carried responsibility for Frank’s suicide, and Freeth, with his knowledge of firearms, was well qualified to settle that debt. His driving licence qualified him to ride a motorbike. He knew Pompey inside out. He was forensically aware. And when it came to an alibi for Monday the eleventh of September, he was relying, once again, on his partner. He’d spent the day at home with Julie. She’d been off school with a migraine. It happened a lot.

  ‘So where did he keep the bike?’

  ‘We don’t know, sir. It could have been that garage of his. It could have been anywhere.’

  ‘And you really think it was his partner on the back?’

  ‘I think it’s highly likely. We’ll be talking to her tomorrow morning.’

  ‘And the bolt cutters?

  ‘We’ll be submitting the two chains for analysis. I’d suggest another extension but I’m not sure that’ll do the trick.’

  Application to the Magistrates’ Court would keep Freeth in custody for another thirty-six hours. A second application, a further twenty-four hours. But the labs might need longer than a couple of days to come up with a positive match between the two severed links.

  Given a forensic result on the chains, Barrie was worried about tying the bolt cutters to Freeth. Faraday was more bullish.

  ‘We can evidence the fact they were in his garage. He admits it himself. He’s never mentioned any kind of break-in, so we can assume no one nicked them. That leaves either him or Julie in the frame. They were both regular visitors to The Orchards. He admits walking in the hospital grounds. He’d have seen the derelict villa. He’d have noticed the padlock on the gate in the fence. He was looking for somewhere to stash the bike. For his purposes the villa was perfect. All he needed to deal with was the padlock on the gate in the fence.’

  ‘And earlier? When the bike was stolen?’

  ‘The same. In my view young Dermott had seen the bike outside the pub. He knew it was chained up. Their CCTV had been on the blink for weeks. All it took was Freeth and a pair of bolt cutters.’

  ‘He was taking a risk, though, wasn’t he? Going through two chains? With the same bolt cutters?’

  ‘He was, you’re right, but the bigger risk was walking out of the hospital grounds with the bolt cutters. That’s why he left them hidden to collect later, probably that night. What he didn’t anticipate was how quickly we’d be on to the hospital. With our blokes around there was no way he’d risk going back.’

  ‘Indeed, Joe …’ Barrie was smiling. ‘And on your initiative, as I recall.’

  Faraday nodded. The bolt cutters had indeed been the key to Freeth’s door but the real honours, he said, should go to D/C Suttle. It was he who’d spotted the possibility of a link and had chased up the evidence, he who’d badgered the Coroner’s Officer and pinned down the owner of the Kawasaki.

  Barrie nodded, scribbling himself a note. He especially liked Faraday’s use of the word ‘link’. Then he looked up again.

  ‘So what are you recommending?’

  ‘We charge him, sir. We obviously won’t be able to interview him after that but he’s gone No Comment anyway. It’s a pride thing. He’s just never going to make it easy for us.’

  ‘And his partner? Greetham’s daughter?’

  ‘I’ve a feeling she may come across. She’s not that stable. There’s O’Keefe as well, when we tackle the Mallinder hit. In my book the lad knows everything and if we press the right buttons, if we make it easy for him, I suspect he’ll tell us. Freeth wasn’t quite as bulletproo
f as he thought. Passionate, yes. Bitter, definitely. But there’s something else there, too.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a kind of madness. This is a guy who was always thin-skinned. He lets stuff get to him. He was that way in the job and he’s been that way ever since. What happened to Frank was the tipping point. He just couldn’t let it go. He worked out what he wanted to do, decided on a course of action, and after that the rest of the world just passed him by. No one sane does what he did.’

  ‘That’s what we say about terrorists, Joe.’

  ‘It’s true.’ Faraday nodded, struck by the comparison. ‘So maybe Freeth did it for the cause.’

  ‘What cause?’

  ‘His cause. Decency. Honour. Everything Frank Greetham represented.’

  ‘And Mallinder?’

  ‘Freeth punished him. Fatally. For what he did to Frank.’

  ‘So do we charge Freeth for that, too?’

  ‘In my book, sir, yes.’

  Perry Madison had finished his mobile conversation. Barrie told the DCI to bring another chair over but he shook his head. Briefly, Faraday brought him up to speed. The news that the Billhook squad had very probably nailed Polygon’s target as well was clearly a major irritation. Faraday fought the temptation to salt the wound. At the very least, by tomorrow, he wanted his office back.

  ‘So what are we saying, Joe? What are we putting this down to? The guy’s some kind of vigilante? Or just plain crazy?’

  ‘Neither, Perry. It’s payback. It’s a settling of accounts. It’s revenge. Mr Barrie’s right. In a way it’s a terrorist thing. The guys he killed were the enemy. Live by the sword …’ Faraday’s hand chopped briefly down. ‘Die by the sword.’

  Afterwards

  Nearly a week later, after a visit to the dentist, Winter took a cab back to Gunwharf to find a message on his answering machine. It was Marie. She had a little treat in mind. Winter was to pack a bag, enough for a week or so, and be ready by five o’clock. The family, she said, had decided that their newest recruit deserved a bit of sunshine. The word she used was ‘therapeutic’. Spain, Winter thought, listening to the message for a second time. Probably the Playa Esmerelda.

  Bazza arrived at five fifteen. After days of avoiding the bathroom mirror, Winter had decided that his face was definitely on the mend. The swelling had gone down, the lividness of the bruising had begun to fade, and the dentist had made a decent start on capping his broken teeth. Bazza agreed.

  ‘You look brilliant, mush. Good as new. Allow me …’

  He carried Winter’s bag to the waiting cab. A white envelope lay on the back seat. Bazza told him not to lose it.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Moolah. With our compliments.’ He gave Winter’s arm a squeeze. ‘When you get to Gatwick, go to the Emirates desk. They’re expecting you. And have a good time, mush, eh?’

  Winter settled back, feeling the thickness of the envelope. He’d been wrong. Emirates didn’t go anywhere near Spain. He tore the envelope open and counted the notes. Sixty pink ones. He grinned at the cabbie, then looked out at the pale faces in the rush hour traffic, at the straggle of brain-dead students wandering across the road, at a couple of Somerstown toe-rags, two-up on a nicked bike, carving a path through the shuffling army of pedestrians on the pavement. Three grand, he thought, and a week in the sunshine. Easy.

  A girl on the Emirates desk at Gatwick gave him another envelope. Inside was a first-class ticket to Dubai and instructions to look out for a limo driver once he was through immigration. The flight was a blur of champagne. By the time the big jet touched down, Winter was asleep.

  From the airport, at two in the morning, the limo took him along the corniche. Sprawled in the back, Winter stared out at the inky blackness of the Gulf spiked with the lights of fishing boats. Then the motorway swung inland through the city centre and he gazed up at the gleaming tower blocks, trying to tell himself that this fantasy was real.

  The Burj Al Arab stood on an island of its own, linked to the mainland by a causeway. From a distance Winter was reminded of the Spinnaker Tower - the same billowing concrete, the same white bones. Closer, he shook his head at the chorus line of water sculptures - yellows and greens and the deepest reds - that danced around the hotel. Without the Pole, he thought, I’d have seen nothing of this. He rubbed his face, remembering the roughness of the bare Portakabin floor, thinking of Westie’s little jape and wondering whether a beating like that had, in the end, been worth it.

  At the kerbside, briefly, he was overwhelmed by the moistness and warmth of the night air. Then he was back in the air-conditioned chill of the hotel itself. The atrium soared above him. At reception the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life took his details. A flunkey stooped to carry his bag. A pair of heavy lift doors opened. Then came a thickness of carpet he’d never thought possible and the briefest moment at the door of his suite while the flunkey inserted Winter’s entry card.

  Inside the lighting was dim. The bed looked like an altar. There were drapes on the wall behind it, the deepest blue. The flunkey disappeared with a whispered goodnight, leaving Winter inspecting an empty bottle of champagne upended in a bucket of melting ice. He frowned. His eyes returned to the bed. He could make out a shape now, someone moving, a head, a glimpse of a bare shoulder, then a sudden expanse of white sheet as a hand threw back the coverlet. Winter took a step forward, then stopped again, recognising the swell of her breasts, knowing that he’d finally lost it.

  ‘Mist,’ he said.

  It was nearly a week before Faraday was able to take a step back from Billhook and Polygon. Charlie Freeth was formally charged with the murder of the defence minister and refused bail pending preparation of his case. From the remand wing at Winchester Prison came news that he’d assaulted another prisoner in the showers but further rumours about his mental state proved harder to check out. His partner, meanwhile, after a day in the interview suite, had made a full confession.

  The attack on the minister, she said, had been Freeth’s idea, an unmissable opportunity to avenge her father’s death, and she’d willingly agreed to carry the gun and pull the trigger. A day with the revolver in one of the remoter parts of the New Forest had given her the basics, and when the time came she’d marvelled at how simple it had all been. She’d aimed four bullets at the face behind the glass, point-blank range, and nobody had lifted a finger.

  Challenged over the Mallinder killing, Julie Greetham was less forthcoming. Yes, she and Charlie were planning a new life in Ireland. Yes, they’d wanted young Dermott along. And yes, she’d taken an intense pleasure in reading about Mallinder’s death. But whether Charlie had done it, hand on heart, she couldn’t say.

  This, to Faraday, sounded unlikely, but a single interview with Dermott O’Keefe brought Billhook to a successful end. Faraday had plotted a strategy with the specially trained P/C who’d be talking to O’Keefe, somewhat surprised at the man’s willingness to stretch the juvenile interviewing guidelines. The best line of attack, they’d both agreed, lay through O’Keefe’s enormous family. Any threat to them might concentrate the lad’s mind.

  And so it proved. O’Keefe himself, much as his social worker had described, turned out to be a slight youth, obviously bright, with an openness Faraday had never associated with adolescence. Given an assurance that they’d leave his mum alone, he volunteered a full account of the night he and Freeth had waited in Port Solent.

  The movie, he said, had been crap. The wait in the car park went on forever. Only at three in the morning had they driven to Mallinder’s place. Freeth had forced the front door. Standing in the hall, looking at the car keys, O’Keefe had heard the soft phutt of the silenced automatic. Charlie had emerged with two pillows, one soaked in blood. They’d driven to the New Forest, drenched the pillows and the insides of the Escort with petrol, and burned the lot. Weeks later, he was still amazed how fierce the fire had been. A scorcher, he said, with a grin on his face.

  At this point
the D/C enquired whether he’d felt comfortable being party to a murder. The question stopped O’Keefe in his tracks but in the end, after some thought, he simply nodded.

  ‘Charlie told me the bloke was an arsehole,’ he said. ‘And I believed him.’

  Released on bail, O’Keefe now faced charges of vehicle theft and conspiracy to murder, though Barrie agreed on a plea to the judge for leniency on account of the lad’s cooperation. Given the latter, Freeth now faced a second full-blown murder charge.

  Back in his office at Kingston Crescent, much to DCI Madison’s disgust, Faraday found himself preparing the CPS files for both Billhook and Polygon. A private word with Willard had earned D/C Suttle warm praise for his intelligence work on both operations and when the Head of CID dropped by to confirm the lad’s return to full duties, his attention was caught by a postcard pinned to Faraday’s corkboard.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  Faraday glanced up. The postcard, surrounded by a litter of bird shots, showed three women enjoying exotic cocktails beside an enormous swimming pool. The sky was as blue as the water and in the background, rearing into the sky, was the full-bellied shape of a building that at first sight defied description. The best hotel in the world, ran the caption across the bottom, Welcome to the Burj Al Arab.

  ‘It’s from Winter. He sent it from Dubai.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  Without waiting for an answer, Willard unpinned the card and turned it over. Faraday knew Winter’s inscription by heart: 42 degrees. Krug on tap. And a woman who can’t keep her hands off me. Where the fuck did I go wrong?

  Willard spent a moment or two digesting this message before tearing the card in two. Faraday watched the pieces flutter into the bin.

  ‘The man’s a disgrace,’ Willard grunted. ‘Can’t you find something better to look at?’

  Faraday held his gaze for a moment, then pulled his drawer open and began to rummage for the Sellotape.

  If you’ve enjoyed The Price of Darkness