Beyond Reach

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘You have to be fucking joking.’ Mackenzie uncapped the Scotch. ‘Have you tried to talking to Stu lately?’

  ‘Stu’s different.’

  ‘You said family.’

  ‘Stu’s her husband. We’re family. You and me. Maybe even Paul.’

  ‘Great. And you really think that would keep her mouth shut? When this animal is crawling all over her? She’s a woman, love. Women lose it totally, just piss it up against the wall then get all absent-minded afterwards.’

  ‘You’d know that, would you?’ Marie had stopped stirring the Béarnaise sauce.

  ‘Of course I fucking would. You think I’m blind? Deaf? I’m telling you, Ezzie’s lost it.’ He threw an arm towards the darkness beyond the kitchen window. ‘We may as well leave all the doors fucking open tonight. Let them help themselves.’

  ‘Who’s “them”, Baz?’ Winter was determined to head off a full-blown domestic.

  ‘The Filth. The Old Bill. Madison’s lot. Your lot.’

  ‘But what, exactly, could she have told him?’

  Mackenzie lowered his head, staring at the tattoo on the back of his right hand. This was the crux and he knew it.

  ‘She could have told him lots, mush.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like what we got up to in the old days. The way we did it. The way we shipped the toot in. How we handled distribution. How we washed the money. All the fun and games we had getting all those old bastards out of all them houses we bought for development. She was part of all that, Ezzie. She saw it happen.’

  ‘She was a kid, Baz.’ It was Marie again. ‘She was a teenager. All she was interested in was boys and crap music.’

  Winter nodded. Laying the foundations of Mackenzie’s empire had never been a pretty sight. Investing narco-loot in run-down property had been exactly the right decision but there’d been a lot of intimidation on the way, plus helping after helping of carefully applied violence. Yet Marie was right. The last thing on Ezzie’s young mind had been where the money they all enjoyed might have come from.

  ‘What about later?’ Bazza was brooding again. ‘What about Dubai? Spain? The yacht charter business in Gibraltar? What about all that?’

  ‘All legit, Baz. As Ezzie well knows. Fuck me, she drew up most of the contracts.’

  ‘Sure. But what about …’ Bazza frowned, hunting for the killer fact that would cement his argument. ‘Westie?’

  There was a long silence. Winter could smell burning.

  ‘I know nothing about Westie,’ he said.

  ‘Yes you do, mush. You were fucking sitting there.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Baz. As far as Westie and me are concerned, it never happened.’

  ‘What are you saying, mush? You didn’t fly down to Spain with us? I didn’t give you twenty-five grand in notes? You didn’t wait for Westie in that building site of a fucking hotel? You didn’t watch Tommy Peters blow his face off?’

  ‘It never happened, Baz,’ Winter said again. ‘I’ll deny everything. Not that Ezzie knows …’

  Both men fell silent while the tacit question hung in the air. Brett West had once been Bazza’s favourite enforcer but last year he’d broken every rule in the book. And been killed for it.

  Marie had abandoned the sauce.

  ‘Esme doesn’t know,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Bazza didn’t believe her.

  ‘Positive. She never liked Brett anyway, always did her best to avoid him.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘He tried to come on to her one night. She’d bumped into him in some club or other. This was years back. She was silly enough to accept a lift home.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘The fuck I don’t. Why didn’t you tell me at the time?’

  ‘Because there was no point, Baz. I had a word myself.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him never to go near her again. Otherwise you’d have him killed.’

  ‘And I did too.’ Bazza nodded, happy at last. ‘Serves the cunt fucking right.’

  He poured more Glenmorangie, toasting Tommy Peters. The twenty-five grand he’d paid for the hit? Cheap at the price.

  Winter wanted to get back to Madison. All he could say on the evidence of this afternoon’s conversation was that Ezzie was in deep.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning we have to think hard about how she relates to us from now on.’

  ‘I’m not with you, mush. Relates? She’s my daughter.’

  ‘Of course, Baz. I’m thinking about the business. If she’s off shagging a cop it might be wise to keep her at arm’s length.’

  The thought that this affair might still be alive and kicking seemed not to have occurred to Bazza. ‘You’re not serious. You can’t be.’

  ‘I am, Baz. She loves him.’

  ‘But he’s the Filth.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And he’s there to screw us. Like they all are.’

  ‘Sure. But she doesn’t see it that way. Not yet.’

  ‘You think she will?’

  ‘Of course she will. These things never last. We’re talking sell-by date, Baz. I give it a couple of months.’

  ‘Marie?’ he turned to his wife.

  ‘I think Paul’s being optimistic. Men are like that.’

  ‘So what’s your take?’

  ‘I think this guy Madison does it for her. I think you have to accept that might be the case.’

  ‘Never.’ Mackenzie shook his head as if something had come loose inside. ‘No … not fucking ever.’

  Marie shrugged. She seemed to have lost interest in cooking. She reached for a cloth and began to wipe the work surface.

  Bazza swallowed the malt and reached for the bottle again. He was looking at Winter.

  ‘There’s another way of looking at this, mush. And right now I’m wondering why I didn’t think of it before.’

  ‘What’s that then, Baz?’

  ‘It’s a set-up, the whole thing. Those bastards have put Madison into play. They’ve told him to cosy up to Ez. They’re paying his gym bills and bar bills and what the fuck else he spends on her. And when the time is right, they’ll get him to turn her against us.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He’ll get her to come looking, have a nose around. He’ll tell her to start lifting stuff, photocopying stuff. Like I say, turn her against us. Evil bastards.’

  Winter was looking at Marie. To his surprise, she appeared to be taking her husband seriously. Bazza hadn’t finished. His forefinger was out, jabbing at Winter’s face.

  ‘It’s Spit Bank all over again, mush. They’re running an operation. I bet it’s even got a fucking name.’ He frowned. ‘You remember last time? The fort? The scam they ran with the undercover guy? What was the name of the bloke in charge of the operation?’

  ‘Faraday.’

  ‘You know him at all?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You think he might be at it again? You think he might know?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, Baz.’ Winter sat back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling. ‘You want me to find out?’

  Chapter eight

  THURSDAY, 22 MAY 2008. 07.23

  Faraday was still shaving when he took the call. It was Jimmy Suttle. He’d flagged Jeanette Morrissey’s VW camper in case it raised a hit on an ANPR camera. Charlie One, the force control room, had been onto him first thing. ANPR means Automatic Number Plate Recognition.

  ‘They’ve found the camper, boss.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s in a car park up on Hundred Acres. Same registration. Burned out.’

  Hundred Acres was an area of woodland ten miles inland from the city. It was popular with dog-walkers and Pompey families wanting a breath of country air. Faraday had been birding there a couple of times, with disappointing results.

  Suttle had more details. A van driver delivering milk to the outlying villages had
spotted the fire at around four in the morning. Appliances from Wickham had attended, followed by an area car from Fareham. The duty D/C, alerted by mention of a VW camper, had driven out for a look and matched the plate to Suttle’s flag.

  ‘The number plate was still in place?’

  ‘So the guy says, boss. I talked to him a couple of minutes ago.’

  Faraday was weighing the significance of this oversight. Professional criminals normally removed registration plates and filed off engine block numbers before torching vehicles. That way they muddied the investigative trail. In this case that hadn’t happened.

  ‘There’s something else, boss. I’ve been talking to one or two people on the estate. One guy said Munday was supposed to be shagging some fifteen-year-old in the children’s home in Skye Close.’

  Faraday had his mobe tucked into one ear. With his other hand he was still trying to shave.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Skye Close is close to the Scene, up on the other side of the road there. Munday was pissed. Say he wandered out of the estate, came up through the hospital site. Say he fancied it. Say he’d phoned ahead and got the girl out of bed to meet him somewhere.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s just a theory, boss. Maybe somebody else knew what was going on, somebody with an interest of their own in the girl, somebody who wanted Munday off the plot.’

  ‘And ran him over?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Having nicked the camper?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Faraday wiped his face with a flannel, thinking about the implications.

  ‘We’ve got a name for the girl?’

  ‘Hayley Burridge. Apparently she’s still in pieces.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Munday.’

  It took Winter a while to pick the bones from last night’s conversation. He got up early, swallowing a couple of ibuprofen to still his thumping head. A second mug of tea took him out onto the balcony of his apartment. From here he had a third-floor view of the harbour and he stood at the rail, watching an early ferry emerging from the mist that coiled in from Spithead.

  Five years ago his ex-bosses had mounted a covert bid to bring down his current employer. They’d done their sums, concluded that Bazza Mackenzie had netted at least seventeen million quid in narco-loot, and decided to get every penny back. To make that happen, they needed to snare him in serious criminality, something that would stand up in court, something that would open the doors of his ever-swelling empire to the avenging angels of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency.

  It hadn’t worked. Operation Tumbril, to the best of Winter’s knowledge, had been run from offices within HMS Excellent, a navy training establishment on Whale Island. Undercover officers had been brought in from London. A forensic accountant had been hired. And between them this little band of fanatics had dreamed up a plan to entrap the city’s most successful criminal. The bait had been the chance for Bazza to buy one of the offshore forts that guarded the approaches to Portsmouth. They knew he loved profile. The fort was attractively priced. And a rival bidder seemed - on the face of it - only too happy to take part-payment in cocaine.

  Tumbril, as far as the bosses were concerned, had been the force’s best-kept secret. But Bazza’s connections reached deep into every corner of the city and word of the covert operation seeped out. Winter still remembered the rumours that had swept across CID offices force-wide when Tumbril exploded and the shit hit the fan. Geoff Willard, then an ambitious Detective Superintendent, was one casualty. Joe Faraday, with day-to-day operational control, was another.

  The two men had weathered the storm in very different ways. Willard - as bullish as ever - had dismissed the humiliation by Mackenzie as a close-run thing and secretly vowed, one day, to get even. His career, for reasons that Winter still didn’t understand, seemed to have prospered in the aftermath and he was now Head of CID. Faraday, on the other hand, hadn’t. He was still a D/I, still plodding from crime to crime, still dogged by a reputation as a weirdo loner with a passion for birdwatching and a deaf and dumb son.

  Winter had never shared this take on Faraday. Over the years, especially on division, he’d had his run-ins with the D/I. Like any boss, Faraday had tried to control Winter’s wilder excesses - his impatience with paperwork, his over-reliance on informants, his delight in playing one criminal off against another - but despite their regular confrontations Winter had sensed Faraday’s grudging respect for his maverick D/C. Winter, in the end, delivered. And Faraday, who was a bloody effective copper, was canny enough to value that.

  More recently, since Winter had binned the Job and crossed to the Dark Side, there’d been occasions when the two men had shared a drink or two. There’d always been a hint of mutual advantage in these meets - especially over last year’s double homicide that had left a couple of bodies beside Mackenzie’s pool - and the fact remained that Faraday had been the only cop who seemed to understand the logic of what Winter had done.

  He was wise and damaged enough to recognise the kind of pressures that Winter had been under. And, like Winter, he seemed to have concluded that the Job was rapidly becoming impossible. The bad guys - proper criminals - were way ahead of the game. Families had given up trying to teach the difference between right and wrong. Kids ruled the streets. And all this while police trainees had their empty heads filled with nonsense about Proportionality, Human Rights and Victim Focus. No wonder Faraday was starting to look so old.

  Winter stepped back into the kitchen to refill his mug. He knew the two of them would never be mates because Faraday didn’t do mates. But even that was a kind of bond because Winter, like his ex-boss, was also a loner.

  He poured the tea, eyeing the clock on the kitchen wall. Half eight. Way too early for a chat.

  Faraday got to Hundred Acres by nine. The blackened shell of the VW camper stood in one corner of the gravelled car park. Most of the windows had shattered and the heat of the fire had melted all four tyres. A sharp, sour tang still hung in the air and shreds of charred fabric swam in the puddles of standing water left by the fire crew.

  Steph Callan was deep in conversation with a uniformed patrolman beside a traffic car. She barely acknowledged Faraday’s arrival. Faraday parked his Mondeo and walked across to the camper van. A single glance at the blackened front told him that the bumper was damaged at shin height and one of the wipers was missing. Inside, nothing had survived but the scorched metal framework of the seats and the remains of the oven and the sink in the back. There was a strong smell of petrol.

  Callan finally came over. She was looking at the remains of the camper.

  ‘Thanks for the call,’ she said.

  ‘D/S Suttle had it flagged. You were on the contacts list.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I’m here. Call me old-fashioned but in our neck of the woods we talk to each other.’

  ‘You’ve got my number. Be my guest.’

  She stared at him a moment, then shrugged and turned away. Moments later, she changed her mind.

  ‘Jeanette Morrissey’s got some relatives down the road. But I expect you know that already.’

  Faraday said he didn’t. How come Steph knew?

  ‘I looked in the phone book. I’m nosey that way.’

  ‘And you’re sure they’re relatives?’

  ‘Not yet I’m not, but there are only two Morrisseys listed. One happens to be in Newtown. Our man in the traffic car there says it’s a couple of miles away. I know you guys hate coincidence but right now it’s all we’ve got.’ The smile was icy. ‘The Fire Investigation guys will sort this lot out. Shall we pay the Morrisseys a visit?’

  Faraday wondered about mentioning Hayley Burridge, the girl in the children’s home, but decided against it. Suttle was going to talk to her this morning. Better to wait.

  They drove in convoy out of Hundred Acres. The road swooped left and right through miles of trees, then dropped down to the village of Newtown. The address from the phone book took
them to a line of smallish bungalows overlooking a field of cows. Number 17 was on the end.

  ‘How are we going to play this?’ Faraday was gazing at the property. The pebbledash was stained a dirty yellow and the woodwork around the windows and front door badly needed a coat of paint.

  ‘Up to you, boss.’ She nodded at the garage tucked away on one side. ‘I’d love to know what was in there over the last couple of days.’

  They pushed in through the gate. There was a knocker on the front door but no bell. Faraday rapped three times. Nothing. He tried again, without success, then pushed the letterbox open and peered in. The narrow hall looked gloomy. There was an overpowering smell of urine. Cats, he thought. Or someone with a problem.

  He turned to Callan but she’d stepped across to the adjacent window, her nose pressed against the glass, her eyes shaded against the glare of the sun.

  ‘Here, boss. Don’t quote me but I think she may be dead.’ Faraday took a look for himself. An old woman was curled in an armchair, angled away from the window. Her dress, crusted with food stains, looked several sizes too big. Her hands, small and bony, lay knotted in her lap, and her mouth hung open.

  Callan knocked on the window, then managed to get the latch free. At this, the woman stirred, staring blankly at the wall.

  ‘Mrs Morrissey?’ Callan was shouting.

  The woman tried to struggle to her feet, gave up. A cat padded in through the open door and jumped onto her lap. Callan glanced at Faraday, then nodded at the open window.

  ‘Shall we?’

  Faraday helped her clamber in, then followed. The smell here was even worse. Callan was looking down at the old lady, smoothing her uniform.

  ‘We’re police, my love.’

  ‘You what, dear?’

  ‘We’re police. Coppers. Come to have a little chat.’

  She peered up at Callan. Her eyes were milky in the gloom and the expression on her face spoke of nothing but confusion. Strangers coming in through the window? Whatever next?

  Faraday took Callan into the hallway. The woman was old, possibly demented. There were special procedures here. Anything worthwhile in the way of evidence would have to be gathered in the presence of an Appropriate Adult. Otherwise it could be ruled inadmissible.