‘You don’t. You leave it.’ Winter frowned, trying to imagine this conversation. ‘So what did you say?’
‘I said I was really, really sorry. I meant it. I said she was a lovely girl.’ He nodded. ‘Yeah … truly fucking outstanding.’
For the first time Winter detected a catch in his voice. He remembered the number he’d found in the paperback. Berriman must have got it from Bazza.
‘Bazza wants names,’ Winter said at length. ‘And, given where Rachel ended up, I’d say he’s got a bit of an interest.’
‘Sure. I hope he’s a patient man.’
‘So why don’t you tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Tell me the way you see it.’ He beckoned him closer. When Berriman didn’t move, Winter leaned forward across the table. ‘You’re still in love with the girl. She means everything to you. You spend half the night reading King Lear, the rest of the time wondering how else you can get her back. Then, bang, she’s gone. She hasn’t run off. She isn’t in Australia. Someone’s killed her. Now that’s a situation a bloke like you isn’t going to walk away from. Not when you were there.’
‘There?’
‘At the party. Feeling the way you do about her.’
‘I see.’ Berriman hadn’t taken his eyes off Winter’s face. ‘Go on.’
‘So tell me what’s gone through that brain of yours. Tell me what you’d do in my situation. Given that Mr Mackenzie has absolutely no fucking time for patience.’
‘I’d jack it in.’
‘You mean that? Seriously?’
‘Yeah. I’d jack it in because you want names and there’s no way I can help you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s not what we do. Not where I come from.’
‘Because I’m asking the heavy questions? Because I was a copper? You think that’s grassing?’
‘Yeah. Once a copper …’ He shrugged then glanced at his watch.
‘What about Mackenzie?’
‘Mackenzie’s different. But the principle’s the same. This is between me and a bunch of other guys. It’s got fuck all to do with you, and fuck all to do with Mackenzie. We sort it out the way we sort it out. Mackenzie would know about that. Back in his time it would have been exactly the same for him.’ He offered Winter a lazy smile. ‘Or have I got that wrong?’
‘Not at all, son, but no one died. Least of all in your own back garden.’
‘So what?’ He got to his feet then stretched. ‘Shit happens.’
He bent for the bag, hoisted it to his shoulder, then nodded a thanks for the coffee and croissants. Winter scribbled his mobile number on the back of the bill and handed it across.
‘You’ll need this,’ he said. ‘Once you’ve had a think about it.’
Berriman glanced at the number, folded it into his jeans pocket and then sauntered away. Two girls at a nearby table watched him until he rounded the corner and disappeared. Then came the beep-beep of a car horn and Winter turned back to see a driver waiting for the lights to change. She raised a hand, looking directly at Winter, and it was a moment before he made the connection. Nikki Dunlop, he thought. Driving a BMW.
Chapter ten
MONDAY, 13 AUGUST 2007. 13.10
It was Jimmy Suttle who brought news of the new Facebook page to the hastily convened management meeting. His late arrival drew a tight-lipped reprimand from Gail Parsons but Suttle barely spared her a glance.
He handed round a set of photocopies. Even Parsons couldn’t hide her curiosity.
‘This went up this morning.’ He’d checked with Facebook. ‘Around half ten.’
Faraday found himself looking at a photo of Rachel Ault. She was leaning against a ship’s rail, her head framed by the wide blue spread of Portsmouth Harbour. The sun was in her eyes and someone must have cracked a joke because the grin had a spontaneity that seemed to Faraday totally unposed. Her friend Sam had been right, he thought. She was a lovely girl.
The page was titled ‘Rachelsbash’ and it took Suttle to point out the obvious.
‘Think RIP,’ he said. ‘Think memorial. It’s the kids’ way of saying goodbye.’
He was right. The page was full of tributes from her friends. Some were awkward. Others were over-sincere. A couple simply buckled under the weight of grief. But every single one was garlanded with lines of kisses. ‘You were chocolate,’ one girl called Maddie had written. ‘Ever in our memories, always in our dreams,’ someone else had managed. ‘LVU4EVR’ went a third, ‘SLPWLL’.
Once, Faraday thought, you said all this with flowers. Now you got together with your buddies, found a little corner of the Internet, and built the victim a shrine.
Another tribute caught his eye at the foot of the page.
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears
Do scold like moulten lead …
Faraday mouthed the lines, tasting the blank verse.
‘King Lear.’ Suttle had seen it too. ‘Act Four, Scene Seven.’
Heads turned round the table.
‘Shit, Jimmy …’ It was Proctor. ‘How come you know that?’
‘I googled it.’
‘Impressive. I thought kids these days never picked up a book in anger?’
‘Wrong. These are posh kids, remember? Grammar School kids. They’ve got a bit of class, a bit of style. This is turning into a national wake. It’ll be the chavs’ turn next. We hold our breath.’
‘What are you expecting?’
‘T-shirts. My money’s on The Craneswater Ruck Survivors’ Club. Up on eBay by the weekend. Serious bidding starts on Sunday.’
Another look from Parsons failed to silence the laughter. She called for a minute of silence in memory of Rachel Ault and Gareth Hughes. Heads bowed round the table and even Proctor closed his eyes.
The meeting resumed. Parsons asked Faraday to summarise the results of Jimmy Suttle’s trawl through the interview transcripts. Faraday did so then flagged the obvious lines of enquiry.
‘Number one, we’ve got ourselves a timeline. It’s not perfect, in fact in places it’s bloody wobbly, but it’s a start. We know when it all kicked off, and once we get a look at the mobe images this afternoon we might be able to tie some of the damage to particular individuals. They’ll become the subject of a separate criminal damage inquiry which I’m guessing we’ll offload. As far as Rachel is concerned, we can put her in the party until about eleven. That’s when the kids trashed her dad’s office. After that she was locked in the upstairs bathroom with Matt Berriman. The next time we see her is in the kitchen, thirty minutes or so later, en route into the garden. She’s very upset and she appears to be bleeding from some kind of facial injury. So the assumption has to be that she’s off next door. She’s had enough. The lad Hughes must have joined her at some point because Mackenzie’s wife found them both by the pool. But we don’t know when he turned up or how he got there. What we do have is this. Jimmy?’
It was Suttle’s turn to hand round half a dozen photocopies. The sight of Rachel on her knees in the upstairs bathroom brought conversation to a halt.
‘Fuck.’ It was Glen Thatcher, the D/S in charge of Outside Enquiries. Another slap on the wrist from Parsons. Language this time. And a bit of respect.
Thatcher mumbled an apology. But where did an image like this come from?
Suttle explained about the discovery of Hughes’s mobile. A series of images had been sent to his number at 23.08. This happened to be the most explicit. The sender, after negative billing checks, had turned out to be someone with a pay-as-you-go phone, but Scenes of Crime had a positive ID on the background tiles in the mobe shots. The only person with whom Rachel Ault had shared a bathroom appeared to be Matt Berriman. Berriman, of course, was also an ex-boyfriend.
‘We definitely know that?’ Still Thatcher.
‘About Berriman?’
‘About him being the only person she had in the bathroom?’
> ‘No, not for sure, of course we don’t. But unless she’s gobbing every one she can lay her hands on, it’s a reasonable assumption. Berriman had just done her a big favour, remember, in her dad’s office. Maybe she was saying thank you.’
‘So Berriman videos her and then sends the pictures to Hughes?’
‘Of course.’
‘To wind him up?’
‘To tell him the way it is. Think dog. Think lamp post.’
Faraday shuddered. Suttle’s metaphor was brutally accurate. ‘Revenge then?’
‘Ownership. The way I see it, he’s telling Hughes his time is up. Rachel’s back where she belongs. And if you’re after proof, then take a look at this.’
‘So we need to be thinking about Hughes’s reaction. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Exactly.’
Heads nodded around the table. Then Jerry Proctor extracted a note from his file. One of his investigators had phoned him with more information about Rachel’s bedroom. Now might be the moment to table it.
‘OK, boss?’ He paused for long enough for Parsons to give him the go-ahead. ‘We’ve got traces of blood on Rachel’s duvet. Not a lot, and there’s no indication of how long it’s been there, but enough to make us ask a question or two. Especially now. With this.’ His massive hand settled briefly on Suttle’s photo.
Parsons understood at once the implications.
‘You’re suggesting Hughes was in the bedroom with Rachel? After he got a look at what she’d been up to?’
‘I’m suggesting it’s possible.’ He glanced down the table towards Suttle. ‘Unless we’re thinking she was somewhere else in that last half-hour before she left?’
Suttle shook his head. ‘No one seems to have seen her. It’s certainly not in the witness statements.’
‘Then it would make sense, wouldn’t it, boss? She does the business on Berriman then goes up to her bedroom. Hughes is the new boyfriend. He might be downstairs somewhere. He might be up there waiting for her. He might be anywhere. Then his mobile goes off. He cops a look at the bathroom shots then goes ape. They’re both pissed. There’s a row. He slaps her around. She does a bunk, runs off into the night, hops over the wall, ends up next door. She’s had enough. She wants a bit of peace and quiet. She wants to think about things. In due course Hughes follows.’ Proctor paused, looking from face to face. ‘Is it just me or does this story tell itself?’
Heads turned towards Parsons. For a moment Faraday thought she was going to ask for a round of applause. Instead, another voice. Jimmy Suttle.
‘That’s terrific, Jerry. Except they both ended up dead. So where does that fucking leave us?’
The Mackenzies had been back in residence for barely an hour by the time Winter turned into Sandown Road. He parked the Lexus outside and sat behind the wheel for a moment. A carpet of flowers covered the pavement outside Bazza’s house, and there were more bouquets outside the Aults. He got out and bent to read some of the cards. Rachel, we loved you, went one. Gone but never forgotten, someone else had written. Our Candle in the Wind, a third.
Winter stepped over a beautifully wrapped bunch of roses and pushed through the open gates. Finding the front door locked, he made his way round the back of the property, skirting the pool. Apart from a footprint or two in the flower beds, there was no sign that Scenes of Crime had ever paid a visit.
The kitchen opened on to the rear patio. Winter found Mackenzie inside, monstering some flunkey or other on his mobile. Next door, in the lounge, he could see Marie fussing around, giving an armchair a nudge, plumping cushions, picking up scraps of paper, putting her own scent back on the place. In the kitchen, even with the windows open, you could smell the chemicals the Scenes of Crime guys had used. Latent prints, he thought. Blood. Whatever.
At length Mackenzie brought his conversation to an end. The bruising on his face, yellows and a livid purple, had the makings of a decent sunset.
‘Nice flowers, Baz.’ Winter nodded towards the road. ‘You should fetch some in here.’
Mackenzie was more interested in the Scenes of Crime team. ‘Those bastards have been through my office,’ he said. ‘They’ve done the filing cabinets, the drawers in the desk, the lot. I know they have.’
‘So what? It’s a waste of time, isn’t it? Now you’re Mr Respectable? ’
‘Too fucking right. And Mr Angry too. You know what we’re up to tonight? Me and Marie? We’re having the neighbours round, the whole fucking street. There comes a time when you want a bit of action for all the fucking council tax you pay and that time is now. So guess who else is coming?’
‘Tell me, Baz.’
He named the local MP, a long-serving Lib Dem with a reputation as a table thumper. In Mackenzie’s view, he too would shortly be earning his keep.
‘I want questions in Parliament.’ He seized a copy of the Daily Telegraph. ‘Have you seen this?’
Winter settled into a seat at the kitchen table. The surface still felt sticky. Chemicals again, he thought.
Mackenzie had opened the paper at one of the feature pages. The article was titled ‘The Morning After The Night Before’. Winter skipped from paragraph to paragraph, aware of Mackenzie hovering above him. He’d yet to put the kettle on. Shame.
‘Well?’
‘He’s got a point, Baz.’
‘She, mate. She’s got a point. In fact she is the fucking point. She’s a mother; she’s got kids of her own; she lives in a nice fancy part of Surrey; her old man toodles off to the city every morning, scores tons of moolah. Everything’s sweet, everything’s cushty. The kids are in private school. They’ve just bought half a chateau in France. They’ve got it well fucking sorted. Then what? She turns on the telly on Sunday morning and - bang - she’s looking at a pad just like hers, same wood panelling, same high ceilings, same fucking taste in wallpaper for all I know. Except it looks like something out of the Blitz. It looks like some fucker’s dropped a bomb on it. Why? Because we’ve lost it with the kids. Totally fucking surrendered. White flag. Doors wide open. Help-yourself time. This isn’t some shithole in Salford or Birmingham. This is Craneswater. This is the bit of England where you pay getting on for a million quid and expect something in return. Like peace of fucking mind, for starters. Or am I wrong?’
Winter looked up to find Marie standing by the Aga, miming applause. In the last twenty-four hours, he thought, she must have heard this a thousand times. At full throttle Bazza could fill an entire newspaper single-handed, the more right wing the better. Any day now he’d consider running for Parliament himself.
‘Write them a letter, Baz.’ Winter tapped the article. ‘Get it off your chest.’
‘No, but look mush, here …’ He frowned, trying to find a particular quote. ‘Here it is. “Violence is like a rash. Unreasoning violence. Inane violence. A violence bred of boredom, of envy, of simple greed. It spreads and spreads. Unchecked it will infect us all. The time for decent people to take a stand is now. Otherwise we may be facing the slow death of a thousand Craneswaters. And by that time, believe me, it will be too late.”’ He looked up, beaming. ‘There, mush. Spot on. Couldn’t have put it better myself.’
‘She’s a politician, Baz.’ Winter had spotted the woman’s byline at the foot of the article. ‘She’s a Tory. She’s got an agenda. She’s beating the drum.’
‘Of course she is, mush. But does that make her wrong? No fucking way. This country’s going down the khazi, mate, and someone needs to get a handle on it.’ He half turned in the chair, looking for his wife. ‘Ain’t that right, love?’
‘Definitely.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Were you serious about young Danny or shall we have coffee?’
Minutes later, with Mackenzie at the wheel, Winter was setting off to find a young drug dealer called Danny Cooper. A couple of Bazza’s older lieutenants, still on modest retainers, had called in to say that the local Drugs Squad were calling house-to-house at certain addresses, eager to have a chat with the lad.
Word on
the street suggested that he’d turned up at Saturday’s ruck with a decent stash of high-quality cocaine. He’d been flogging it for silly money, throwing yet more petrol on the firestorm that had engulfed 11 Sandown Road. There were stories of thirteen-year-olds from Portsea coked out of their heads, of one girl who’d put so much up her nose she’d ended up in a cubicle at the A & E. Some of these stories had featured in the local News, part of their ongoing coverage of a story that had ballooned to national proportions.
‘Peter’s gonna be reading all this shit.’ Mackenzie frowned, gunning the engine. ‘And that man’s no fool.’
Winter nodded. As a Crown Court judge, Peter Ault would doubtless know exactly how Baz had made his money, but like so many other establishment figures he obviously got some weird buzz from finding himself sharing a fence with an ex-drug baron. Unless, of course, his precious daughter ended up dead beside next door’s pool.
‘Lots at stake then, Baz.’
‘Too fucking right.’
‘And this Danny Cooper? I thought he was supposed to be some kind of protégé of yours? The young apprentice? The new kid on the block?’
‘That’s bollocks.’
‘No, it’s not, Baz. You told me yourself.’
‘Did I?’ He shot Winter a look. The Range Rover was misfiring badly.
‘Yeah. You said he was a good lad - sound, solid. You said he read the market well, didn’t take silly risks.’
‘I was talking about the property game.’
‘No, you weren’t; you were talking charlie.’
‘Wrong, mush. Since when do I talk about charlie these days? No need, is there?’
Winter knew it was a question that required no reply. In tight corners like these Bazza had a habit of talking to himself. When the facts weren’t to his liking, he invented a set of new ones. That way he’d still be ahead of the game.
The Range Rover was slowing to a halt, trailing a thin plume of blue smoke. Winter looked up at a block of newly converted flats on the seafront.
‘This is where Westie lives.’ Winter started to laugh. ‘It must be fucking serious.’
No Lovelier Death Page 13
