Angels Passing

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Exactly.’ Willard tipped his head back and sucked in a lungful of air. ‘So tell me, Mr Winter, how come you’re so sure about Louise Abeka?’

  Winter took his time. Later, upstairs in the bar, people recalled the tiny smile on his face as he pulled the polythene evidence bag from his pocket. That very definitely wasn’t the way you played it. Not with Willard at the head of the table.

  ‘This was waiting at the café first thing this morning.’ He held up the bag. ‘Eddie Galea gave me a bell and told me about it.’

  He passed the bag along the table. Inside was a white envelope with Louise Abeka’s name on it. The writing was in capitals, two ‘K’s in the surname.

  Willard stared at the bag.

  ‘What’s inside?’

  ‘Finch’s ring. The one she drew for us.’ Winter folded his arms. ‘And she’s really, really upset.’

  Thirteen

  MONDAY, 12 FEBRUARY, mid-morning

  Back at Southsea police station by ten o’clock, Faraday met Cathy Lamb on the stairs. One look at her face told him that the working week was already a nightmare. On top of the serial flasher had come word of three overnight break-ins along the same Southsea street. In one case, the householder had been kipping at his girlfriend’s place and had returned to find only marks in the dust where everything valuable had once been. In another, the couple had gone to bed pissed, been robbed, and had only woken an hour ago. While the third house was occupied by a deaf eighty-three-year-old, puzzled by the damage to her kitchen door and the sudden absence of the telly.

  Cathy tallied each of the break-ins. Her own calculations suggested that Bill the Burglar would have made, at most, a couple of hundred quid from his night’s work, but that wasn’t the point. The similar MO argued for a break-in thief prepared to risk being disturbed by the occupants. A situation like that could easily lead to serious violence. So how, exactly, was she supposed to magic yet more bodies to plug this latest hole in the Pompey dyke?

  Faraday was looking at the Edward King painting that dominated the wall behind Cathy’s left shoulder. The artist had added a garish tangerine lustre to the bombed-out ruins around the cathedral, a touch that Faraday had at first put down to insanity. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe disaster really was the colour of scorched brick.

  ‘Well, sir?’

  The ‘sir’ was an especially bad sign. Sooner rather than later, Faraday was going to ask a question or two about Pete Lamb passing on Faraday’s address but this definitely wasn’t the time. Cathy was clearly stretched to breaking point.

  ‘You’re telling me there’s no one left?’

  ‘No one who’s not committed.’

  ‘Anything else come in?’

  ‘Only a couple of calls for you.’

  ‘And?’

  Cathy mentioned the warden at Chuzzlewit House. It seemed that a tenant on the twenty-third floor, a neighbour of a Mrs Randall, had just returned from Spain. Apparently he had some information about some kid or other.

  Faraday nodded, still engrossed in the picture. What would this artist make of today’s city? Unbombed but madder than ever?

  Cathy was explaining about the other call. The duty pathologist had rung from the morgue at St Mary’s and would appreciate a word or two. She paused, expecting some kind of decision from Faraday about the break-ins, then stared in disbelief as he threw her a brief smile and headed up towards his office.

  He found the pathologist’s number on his desk. It rang for an age before anyone answered. It was Jake. The pathologist had gone but Jake knew what he’d wanted to say. It was about the young girl, Helen Bassam.

  ‘You took blood for tox?’

  ‘Yeah. It’ll go to Southampton this afternoon. Should get a result by the end of the week.’

  Faraday glanced up at the calender above his desk.

  ‘You’re telling me Friday?’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s something else.’

  ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘The girl was pregnant. Pathologist reckons a couple of months max.’ Faraday heard Jake stifle a yawn. ‘Just thought you ought to know.’

  With the door shut and the big office empty, Willard left Paul Winter in absolutely no doubt that he’d just made a very silly mistake.

  ‘There are some things that you never fucking do. And one of them is make me look a prat.’

  His voice was very soft. Winter was still sitting at the long conference table. Willard was standing over him, his jacket off, his physical bulk blocking the light through the window.

  ‘We understand each other? You get information like that, like you tabled just now, and you give it to me first, or Sammy Rollins, or Dave Michaels. There’s a routine here, a way we do things. This isn’t some game we made up for your benefit. You’re not here to make a big impression. You’re part of a team, no more, no less, and you either play by the fucking rules or I’ll have you back in uniform checking tax discs on Cosham High Street. OK? You get that? Same wavelength, are we?’

  Winter nodded. Situations like these, body language was all-important. He bowed his head, suitably contrite, wondering how quickly he could get the conversation round to Kenny Foster. Someone would have to go and talk to the man. And he knew exactly who it should be.

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ he murmured.

  ‘You’d better be.’

  ‘Won’t happen again.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘So, ah …’ he looked up ‘… about Foster.’

  ‘Absolutely no chance.’ Willard nodded towards the door. ‘In a minute or two you’re going to walk down that corridor and talk to Dave Michaels. And when you get there, he’ll have a couple of jobs for you. If you’re lucky, it might be going through the rest of those CCTV traffic tapes. Otherwise, it might be something really boring. You get my drift?’

  In the heart of Old Portsmouth, Faraday parked his Mondeo across from the cathedral and walked north along the High Street. In three days, he’d built himself a mental picture of Jane Bassam. She’d have been distraught already about her daughter’s behaviour, about her divorce, about her job. There’d been nothing in her life that hadn’t gone catastrophically wrong. And then, on top of it all, came the moment when she had to confront the biggest crisis of all. Faraday knew about losing people. Once death robbed you of someone special, you’d give anything for another second or two in their company. Were daughters as irreplaceable as wives? He simply didn’t know.

  His footsteps faltered as he turned into the cul-de-sac. Jane Bassam’s house was two from the end and he stayed on the pavement for a moment or two, thinking of the freezing bungalow at Freshwater and the long days before Janna’s funeral when life without her was beyond his comprehension.

  The door opened to Faraday’s second knock and he found himself looking at a thin, tall woman dressed entirely in black. She had a gaunt, bony face shadowed with exhaustion but there was something about the eyes behind the rimless glasses that told Faraday he’d got it wrong. She had green eyes, like her daughter, and they shone with resolve. For whatever reason, this woman appeared to have found a kind of peace.

  ‘Mrs Bassam?’

  She invited him in. The living room was chill and spotless. There were cards of condolence in a perfect line along the mantelpiece, and a single red rose in a fluted vase on the table beneath the window.

  Talking about post-mortems in situations like these was never easy and Faraday was still trying to soften the news when Mrs Bassam interrupted.

  ‘So what did they find?’

  Wrong-footed, Faraday gazed at her.

  ‘Your daughter was pregnant, Mrs Bassam.’

  She nodded, utterly calm.

  ‘And should I be surprised?’

  ‘I don’t know. That was going to be my question, or one of them.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘It’s too early to say. We’ll be doing blood tests but the results won’t be back for a day or two.’ He paused. ‘Did Helen use drugs at
all? That you’d know about?’

  This time, Faraday thought he detected a flicker of pain, or perhaps anger.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because her father has expressed some worries on that score. She seemed to be spending a lot of money.’

  ‘You’ve talked to Derek?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you believe him?’

  ‘I believe he was worried, yes. And it’s a matter of record that she was getting through that allowance of hers.’

  ‘Worried?’ She’d seized on the word, suddenly vehement, her icy composure gone. ‘You really believe he was worried? A man who walks out on his wife and daughter? A man who wouldn’t, for a second, dream of putting his own flesh and blood before that woman of his? May I let you into a family secret, Mr Faraday? Girls need their fathers and Helen needed hers more than most. Don’t ask me why because he didn’t deserve her but she did everything to get him back. I’d give you chapter and verse but frankly it’s all a bit late in the day. At Christmas, do you know what he did? He sent her a postcard and a cheque. From Antigua. And do you know what else there was in the envelope? A photograph.’

  Without another word, she left the room. Faraday heard the brisk clump-clump of her footsteps on the stairs, then movement overhead. Seconds later, she was back. The photo showed Derek Bassam squatting on a beach. He was wearing a pair of shorts and a new-looking Nike T-shirt. Nestling beside him was a younger woman, early thirties, in a blue bikini. Both of them were beaming at the camera, their hands gesturing at a message scrawled on the wet sand. ‘Happy Christmas, darling,’ it read. ‘We love you.’

  Mrs Bassam was watching Faraday.

  ‘Does that qualify as evidence, Mr Faraday? Do you take that into account when you think about what killed my daughter? She spent most of Christmas in tears. Then I didn’t see her for three days.’

  Faraday blinked, then did the sums. The pathologist had estimated the tiny foetus at eight weeks. Maximum.

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘Where do you think she went?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m asking you, Mrs Bassam.’

  ‘She went to see him, of course. She went to see her nice Afghan friend. I expect she stayed with him in that ghastly slum of theirs. I expect she shared his bed. Because that’s what you’d do, isn’t it? Faced with something as crass as that.’

  Faraday looked at the photo again. Under the circumstances, crass was a mild description. What on earth had Derek Bassam expected? Did he really think this grotesque little billet-doux would sort things out with his abandoned daughter?

  ‘It must have been difficult,’ he murmured.

  ‘It was, Mr Faraday, and now you’re telling me she was pregnant.’

  ‘Did you know? As a matter of interest?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. Helen had difficulty telling me the time of day. That’s how bad it got. You know something? You know what really hurts? It’s not losing my husband, I can cope with that. In fact in many ways it was a blessing. No, what really hurts is losing my daughter. Not because she’s dead. Not because of what happened on Friday night. But because of everything that happened before that. The day Derek left is the day I lost Helen. She became someone else, Mr Faraday, and she never came back.’

  Faraday rocked back on the sofa. Listening to this woman was like trying to survive in a hurricane. The blast of her anger was almost physical, a bitterness all the more forceful for being so well expressed. Earlier, he’d wondered about sharing the secret of Helen’s intimate tattoos but just now he wasn’t sure that Mrs Bassam was ready for a debate about the difference between toi and vous.

  She was on her feet now, looking down at him. Yet another man soiling this tormented world of hers.

  ‘So what are you going to do, Mr Faraday?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘About Niamat. I don’t know much about the law but fourteen’s young, isn’t it? To be pregnant?’

  Faraday nodded. Sixteen was the legal age of consent.

  ‘We can’t act on supposition,’ he pointed out, ‘not without proof.’

  ‘You need proof of obsession? Isn’t my word good enough? That she was crazy about him? That she’d do anything for him?’ She reached down for the photograph of her husband. ‘The only thing that surprises me is that it took this to get her pregnant.’

  Faraday was trying to remember Dawn Ellis’s description of the contents of Helen Bassam’s drawers.

  ‘Was she on the pill, your daughter?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘You never discussed it?’

  ‘No. We discussed love, when we were still talking, but never sex.’

  ‘And the drugs your ex-husband mentioned? Had you ever …’ Faraday gestured round ‘… come across anything at all suspicious?’

  ‘Never. Helen came late to all this, Mr Faraday. Until Derek left, she was a child. In less than a year she became something else. God knows, he might be right. It could have been drugs, alcohol, solvents. I’ve no idea. In my situation, you don’t ask because you fear the consequences. One step out of line, one false move on my part, and she’d just blow up. Screaming fits, tantrums, foul language. On a couple of occasions, she even attacked me physically. Once with a glass. Here, in my face. I had to fight her off, Helen, my own daughter. We were down there on the carpet, wrestling. She was like an animal, completely out of control.’ She took a tiny step backwards, then steadied herself. ‘You’re a policeman, Mr Faraday, a detective. I expect you deal with hard evidence – facts – and I don’t suppose that any of this is of the slightest relevance, but let me tell you something. Helen and that little scrap inside her didn’t simply die, they were murdered. Don’t ask me who by because it’s not that simple. And don’t ask me why because I just don’t know. But murder is the word we should be using. Her life was taken against her wishes. It was just blown out, like a candle. Because that’s the kind of world we live in, God help us.’

  Faraday stared up at her. Merry Devlin was right. Quotes like these would be irresistible in the hands of a certain kind of journalist.

  ‘Has anyone been in contact from the News?’

  She blinked at him, her eyes moist behind the glasses.

  ‘Yes. And I told them to mind their own business.’

  Faraday got to his feet. ‘Very wise,’ he said. ‘But don’t think they won’t be back.’

  Willard was as good as his word. By lunch time, Paul Winter was at the front desk at the city’s civic offices, waiting for an escort to the CCTV control room.

  He’d been here on a number of occasions, as had most working detectives. Key areas of the city were now under twenty-four-hour surveillance from a network of over a hundred cameras, monitored by two-man crews in the control room. These guys played guardian angels for long, twelve-hour shifts, keeping track of tens of thousands of locals as day blurred slowly into night. Their take on Portsmouth was unique and Winter wasn’t the only veteran who looked ruefully back over decades of freezing his arse off in unmarked cars and wondered how surveillance could have become so warm, dry, and –above all – safe. No more abuse from passing drunks. No more giveaways from lippy street kids who could smell the Filth a mile off.

  Minutes later, Winter was making himself comfortable in the control room. In the six weeks since his last visit, they’d acquired two more potted plants and a brand-new catering-size tin of Gold Blend.

  ‘Milk, one sugar?’

  Winter nodded. He was gazing at the banks of colour monitors racked beyond the control desk. The system was brilliant, no question, but there was something slightly eerie about chopping up the city’s life this way. Concentrate on one monitor, zoom the camera, and you were watching some student trying to get his leg over a giggling redhead in a bulky anorak on the beach by South Parade Pier. Pan another camera in the Commercial Road shopping precinct, wait for the focus to settle down, and you were with the rest of the guys at the control desk, trying to work out if the bloke bent over th
e brand-new Muddy Fox was nicking it or not.

  ‘Over here, mate.’

  Winter turned to find himself looking at a pile of video cassettes on a smaller desk at the back of the room. Dave Michaels wanted him to check out coverage on half a dozen cameras over a twelve-hour period last Friday. The time frame straddled the approximate time of death established for Bradley Finch at the post-mortem and might – with a definite on the registration – yield a positive sighting or two of the white Fiat.

  The desk was fitted with a monitor, plus video machines to play and record. Winter could toggle the tapes into fast forward and reverse but even so he knew – barring miracles – that he’d be a video slave for the rest of his working day. He looked quickly through the tape boxes, matching the label on each to a specific camera on the wall chart beside him. Most of the CCTV cameras covered hot spots in the south of the island – the nightclubs along South Parade by the pier, the Leisure Centre at the Pyramids by Southsea Castle, the pubs on Spice Island beside the Camber Dock. These locations became a battleground on Friday and Saturday nights but the further north you went, the fewer cameras had been installed. One day, he thought, the whole bloody city would be taped, every single street, every single house, but for now video coverage had crept no closer to Hilsea Lines than a couple of cameras on major roundabouts half a mile away. He sorted out the relevant tape, and slipped pictures from the Portsbridge interchange into the play machine. To save video tape, this coverage was restricted to single still frames captured every two seconds.

  Winter sat back, gazing at the screen as cars hop-scotched towards the camera. By six o’clock on Friday night it was already dark and under the orange loom of the big street lights it was by no means easy to suss a white Fiat. He toggled into fast forward and the traffic became a blur. What if the Fiat had had a maniac at the wheel? What if he’d been doing seventy and had shot past in the brief couple of seconds between still frames? He shook his head, toggling back on the picture speed, trying not to think about Kenny Foster. Willard, just to make his day, had told Dave Michaels to sort out another couple of blokes to pay a visit to Foster’s garage. Not just that, but one of them – on Willard’s specific instructions – was to be Gary Sullivan. Winter shook his head, appalled at how vindictive the man could be, reached for his coffee and toggled the video into fast forward again.