“No.”
“Well, then…”
Faraday accepted the point with a curt nod. He was still curious to explore exactly what had happened back before Christmas but at least he now understood Willard’s determination to keep Wallace and the u/c operation under wraps. Quite how Imber would react when he discovered he’d been out of the loop was anyone’s guess but that, he told himself, would be Willard’s problem.
“You want to answer that?” Willard drew Faraday’s attention to his mobile. Faraday glanced at the number. Cathy Lamb.
“Do you mind, sir?”
“Go ahead.”
Faraday stood up and retreated to the far end of the office. Behind him, Imber was still pressing Willard about the Gunwharf flat. Faraday paused beside the window, gazing out through a gap in the Venetian blinds. From the tone of Cathy’s voice, he knew at once that it was bad news. J-J, she said, had been arrested at a petrol station in North End. Word that he was wanted had been out for several hours but he’d fallen into their laps after a call from the forecourt manager. J-J had been acting suspiciously beside one of the pumps. He’d filled an empty two-litre bottle with unleaded and appeared to have no intention of paying. Control had dispatched an area car less than a minute away and after a brief chase J-J had been detained.
Faraday closed his eyes.
“Chase?”
“He legged it, Joe. And I understand there was a bit of a fracas.”
“Is he OK?”
“Upset. I’ve talked to the Custody Sergeant at Central and he’s aware of the situation. We’ve taken the case over from division because of the Scouse involvement but Highland Road have volunteered Rick Stapleton and Alan Moffat to handle the interview. I understand from
Winter that you pretty much know the circumstances. Daniel Kelly? The student who died last night?”
Faraday was following a flock of racing pigeons as they wheeled over the nearby rooftops. Head north, he thought, and leave all this chaos behind you.
He bent to the phone.
“What’s the charge?”
“There isn’t one. Not yet. We’re waiting on interview.”
“What about someone who knows sign?”
“The Custody Sergeant’s phoning through the names on the qualified interpreter register. So far, he’s drawn a blank.” She paused. “It may have to be you, Joe. We can’t wait forever.”
“Great.” Faraday glanced at his watch, realising there was no point prolonging the conversation. Like it or not, Willard had to know. He thanked Cathy for the call and returned to the table. Willard knew at once that something had happened.
“OK?”
“Afraid not, sir.” Faraday offered him a bleak smile. “Know a good solicitor?”
Within the hour, Faraday was ringing the entry phone at Central police station. A uniformed PC let him in and the duty Inspector emerged from an office up the corridor. From deep in the building came the rattle of bars and a yell from someone desperate for a fag. To Faraday’s relief, it didn’t sound the least like J-J.
“Your boy’s in the cells. I’m afraid he’s still cuffed.”
“Is that necessary?”
“I’m afraid so. He’s been’ the Inspector was choosing his words carefully ‘less than helpful.”
Faraday nodded. He wanted to know whether Hartley Crewdson had arrived. For the time being, J-J could wait.
“We’ve put him in one of the interview rooms. You want tea or anything?”
“No, thanks.”
Faraday followed the Inspector to the suite of interview rooms. Hartley Crewdson was a solicitor with a successful criminal practice in the north of the city. He specialised in defence work, representing a never-ending stream of young tearaways from the Paulsgrove and Leigh Park estates. Faraday had never had personal dealings with him before but was aware of the man’s reputation. Half the DCs in the city thought Crewdson was a menace. The rest viewed him as a genius, the brief who could spot the weakness in any prosecution case. If you found yourself in a really tight corner, they said, then Crewdson’s was the number you called.
The Inspector knocked lightly on the door before going in. Crewdson was sitting at the interview table, leafing through a thick file. His taste in suits and ties was never less than flamboyant, and for a man in his late forties, he’d won a big following amongst the more impressionable female clerks at the magistrates court.
“Leave you to it?” The Inspector nodded at Faraday and left, closing the door behind him.
Crewdson got to his feet. Faraday accepted the proffered handshake, curious to know why Crewdson had phoned him with the offer to represent
J-J.
“Paul Winter gave me a ring,” he said briefly. “He thought you might need a bit of support.”
Faraday permitted himself a thin smile.
“Winter’s right. You’ll not have spoken to the lad?”
“Hardly. I was waiting for you to arrive.”
“But you’ve talked to the Custody Officer?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It’s not as bad as you might think.”
“Really?”
Faraday shed his jacket and sank into one of the four chairs. According to Crewdson, the evidence against J-J was at best thin. Winter and Suttle had photographed him arriving at Pennington Road. There was no evidence he’d left in possession of drugs. Neither had they seen money change hands. Eadie Sykes had volunteered a statement establishing that no drugs had been present in the student’s flat, and in the shape of the videotapes, she appeared to have behavioural evidence to prove it. According to Sykes, the drugs had been dropped off early in the evening. She herself had taped the fixing sequence and everything else that followed. In terms of supply, J-J was therefore home free.
“What about the business with the petrol?”
“That’s a mystery. No one knows.”
“OK?” Faraday sat back. “So what do we do now?”
“I suggest he goes no-cpmment.”
“Why?”
“Because that way we leave nothing to chance. The last thing we need is your boy saying anything’ he smiled ‘silly. The lad’s going to be upset, bound to be. We can use that later, if they try and make anything of the no-comment.”
“In court, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“You think it’ll come to that?”
“No. Not if we’re sensible.”
Faraday sat back a moment, trying to order his thoughts. The thrust of Crewdson’s defence was obvious. J-J was about to become yet another stroppy, tight-lipped interviewee.
“That means it’s down to us to make the case,” he said at last.
“Exactly.” Crewdson was smiling again. “But it’s them, Mr. Faraday. Not us.”
Minutes later, the interview strategy agreed, Faraday went to find the Custody Sergeant. To his relief, it was someone he knew. The two men masked their mutual unease with a brisk exchange of nods. When Faraday enquired about someone to sit alongside J-J during the interview, the Custody Sergeant confirmed he’d drawn a blank on the two registered interpreters within the county.
“One’s on holiday in Egypt. The other isn’t answering her mobile.”
“You’ve tried out of area? West Sussex? Surrey? Dorset?”
“To be honest, no, sir. I know the ACPO guidelines favour sticking to the register but we’re up against the PACE clock. The lad needs communication support, no question, but…”
The Sergeant spread his hands. There was a brief silence, broken by Faraday.
“You’re asking me to do it?”
“I’m asking whether you’d mind, sir.”
“You think it’s appropriate?”
“I think we ought to move things along.”
“Good idea.” Faraday eyed him for a moment. “Do you mind if I see him before we start?”
“Of course not.”
The Custody Sergeant lifted a phone and summoned one of the jailer
s. A burly woman in a white blouse appeared moments later, and led Faraday down through the station to the cell complex at the end. Faraday had made this journey countless times before as a probationer, as a young CID aide, as a serving DC yet never had it occurred to him that he would, one day, be on the receiving end of all this watchful attention. The bleakness of the place had never hit him quite this way before: the harsh neon lights, the institutional greens and whites, the way that the jangle of a bunch of keys echoed around corner after corner.
J-J was in a cell towards the end of the corridor. A concrete plinth beneath the window served as a bunk, and through the hatch in the grey steel door Faraday could see his son stretched full length on the thin sponge mattress. His eyes were closed and his bony wrists lay handcuffed on the rumpled bottom of his T-shirt. Faraday had never seen anyone looking so solitary, so cut off, so alone. Already, in the stir of air as the jailer unlocked and opened the door, he could smell the harsh tang of petrol.
J-J, hearing nothing, didn’t move. Faraday glanced back at the jailer.
“Mr. Crewdson?”
The woman nodded and left. Faraday heard the key turn in the heavy door before she set off down the corridor. He reached out and touched J-J’s face with the back of his hand. The boy’s eyes opened, staring up at him, the way he might greet a total stranger. Faraday tried to coax a smile. When nothing happened, he turned his attention to J-J’s wrists. The handcuffs were double locked, and the skin was raw and inflamed where the steel edges of the cuffs had chafed. J-J struggled upright on the mattress, holding his wrists in front of him the way you might carry a precious object.
“They hurt?” Faraday signed.
J-J shook his head. His face was pale and he wouldn’t meet his father’s gaze. When Faraday gave him a hug, he could feel a tremor running through his thin frame.
“What happened?”
Approaching footsteps paused outside the cell. A key turned in the lock and Faraday glanced back to find Hartley Crewdson stepping into the cell. The jailer was preparing to lock them in again.
“We need these cuffs off,” Faraday told her. “He’ll be fine now.”
“I’ll talk to the Custody Sergeant.”
“You do that.”
Crewdson, a tall man, was looking down at J-J. He must have been in this situation a thousand times, Faraday thought. Another youth colliding head-on with the judicial system. Another plea before the magistrates.
Faraday did the introductions. J-J offered the faintest of nods but his father was unsure whether he really understood what was about to happen.
“You’re going to be interviewed,” he explained. “Two policemen, two detectives. They’ll be asking you what happened. All you need tell them is your name and date of birth. Everything else…” He glanced at Crewdson for support. “Just shake your head.”
“That’s right.” It was Crewdson. “We know already what really happened and there are ways we can prove it. The detectives you’ll be talking to may push you to make mistakes. As long as you say nothing, that can’t happen. Everything’s going to be fine. Just do what we say. OK?”
J-J was staring at his father as Faraday translated Crewdson’s assurances into sign. Then his gaze transferred to the lawyer. This stranger might have been trying to explain the rules of a particularly complicated game. J-J’s face was quite blank.
“You understand what we’re saying?” Faraday signed.
J-J’s slow nod put a smile on Crewdson’s face. He reached out and patted J-J on the shoulder, then turned back to the door, calling for the jailer through the open hatch. J-J watched his every movement, something new in his eyes, and Faraday’s heart began to sink again.
The interview started forty minutes later. Rick Stapleton had driven across from Highland Road, bringing another detective Alan Moffat with him. Faraday had been in charge of both DCs for three years on division, and once again he tried to defuse the awkwardness of the situation, this time with a brisk handshake. Stapleton was a lean thirty-three-year-old, openly gay, a detective whom Faraday had always rated extremely highly. Moffat, a slightly older man, had served on the Force Surveillance Unit before returning to the grind of volume crime. Neither man returned Faraday’s smile.
The bare, white-walled room was equipped with both audio and video facilities. Central had been chosen to pilot video recordings of all interviews, and two cameras mounted high on the wall offered coverage of the table that dominated the room.
Stapleton and Moffat sat on one side of the table, J-J and his father on the other. Hartley Crewdson fetched a spare chair from an adjoining room, and stationed himself to J-J’s left.
Stapleton raised an eyebrow and glanced at Faraday.
“OK?”
Faraday nodded, watching Moffat as he cued the video recorders. The audio machines were on the table, backed against the wall. Moffat sat down again, leaving Stapleton to reach for the printed checklist and go through the preliminary announcements that preface every interview. Stapleton introduced himself and Moffat, confirmed the time and place, established that the interview was being recorded, and then turned to
J-J.
“Please give your full name and date of birth.”
Faraday signed the request. J-J looked confused for a moment, then shrugged. Surely his dad knew the answer? There was a brief silence before Faraday supplied the details. Stapleton glanced at Moffat. This was new territory.
“Your lad’s supposed to speak for himself.” He frowned. “If you see what I mean.”
Stapleton returned to his script. After explaining what would happen to the recorded tapes and CDs, he glanced quickly up, looking at J-J, before ducking his head again.
“You do not have to say anything,” he read. “But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” He paused, then looked at Faraday. “You want to tell him all that?”
“I just did.”
“And he understands?”
“Of course he does.”
“Good. So let’s start with yesterday. As I understand it, you’ve been involved in the production of a video. Would you like to tell us something about that?”
Faraday hesitated a moment, then passed on the question. A shake of J-J’s head would have been enough for “No comment.” Instead, J-J bent towards the table, eyeballing Rick Stapleton, inviting the detective into his life, offering him a long account of exactly how he’d first met Eadie, how he’d shot black and white stills for her Dunkirk documentary, how she’d taught him to use a video camera, and how his involvement in Ambrym had slowly extended into a research responsibility for her new drugs project. The work, he signed, had been brilliant. Hard, but brilliant. He’d met loads of people. And Eadie had been right. Everyone should know about this stuff.
“Who’s Eadie?”
“My dad’s girlfriend.”
“And the research was down to you?”
“Yes. I had to find the people we were going to tape.” He extended his arm and mimed a syringe. “The users.”
For Faraday, struggling to keep up with the blizzard of sign, this experience was quickly becoming surreal. This was the last year of J-J’s life going onto the CDs and audio cassettes. Whatever happened to “No comment.”?
When Stapleton paused to scribble himself a note, Faraday shot a look at Crewdson. The solicitor was gazing at J-J, appalled.
Stapleton took up the running again. When did J-J first meet Daniel Kelly?
“Couple of days ago. There was a girl called Sarah. I think she really wanted to be part of the video, help us make it. She thought it was a cool idea. She knew Daniel and told me about him.”
“You met him?”
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
“Lost.”
“Lost?”
“Confused. Sick.” J-J clawed at his heart and pulled a face. Faraday hunted for the right word. “Woun
ded,” he managed at last.
“Did he have friends?” Stapleton didn’t take his eyes off J-J’s face.
“I don’t think so. Only Sarah.”
“What about family?”
“His mum’s in Australia. He never sees his dad.”
“Would you say he was vulnerable?”
“Definitely.”
“An easy target?”
Crewdson leaned forward, reaching towards J-J, trying to still those busy hands.
“This is totally inappropriate,” he told Stapleton. “You’re leading my client on.”
“You think so?” Stapleton’s eyes were stony. “I’d say we were simply establishing the facts. Mr. Faraday?”
On the point of supporting Crewdson’s protest, Faraday realised that the question was directed at J-J. When he signed it to his son, J-J merely shrugged.
“I haven’t got a problem,” he signed back, looking at Stapleton. “Ask me whatever you want.”
Faraday hesitated. The temptation now was to treat these answers with a certain degree of latitude, if only for J-J’s sake.
“My son would prefer if you kept to the point,” he muttered at last. “He’s happy to help with the facts.”
“OK.” Stapleton’s gaze lingered on Faraday for a moment or two, then he returned to J-J. “Let’s be clear about the situation here, Mr. Faraday. Your job was to go and persuade Kelly to be in this video. Kelly was a mess. That’s why you were there, that’s why you went to see him in the first place. Do you really think he was in any fit state to make a sensible decision? Be honest.”
There was a brief pause while J-J thought about the question. Finally, he shook his head.
“The second time I saw him he was in a terrible state.” The clawing motion again, then the syringe. “He needed heroin. He hadn’t got any.”
“The second time you saw him?”
“Yesterday. Before we did the interview.”
“Did he want to do the interview?”
“I…” J-J was frowning “…don’t know.”
Once again, Faraday was tempted to embellish the answer. J-J’s despairing shrug, though, spoke for itself. Stapleton looked down at his notes, taking his time.
Cut To Black Page 20
