Deadlight (48 page)

Willard answered the phone surprisingly quickly. Faraday, still propped up on one elbow, told him about Yates. In his view, there were no longer any grounds for hanging on to the
Accolade
s. They were free to go. Willard grunted his approval and told Faraday to sort it with the Custody Sergeants.

Faraday returned the phone to the bedside table and then eased himself out of bed, knowing that he had to get some fresh air in his lungs. Out on the harbour, a lone figure in a smallish yacht was taking advantage of the ebbing tide. Couple of minutes, he’d be out through the narrows and away. Lucky bastard, thought Faraday, hunting for a pair of jeans.

It was gone nine before he got to Kingston Crescent. Three miles on the towpath beside the harbour and a full fried afterwards had stilled a little of the thunder in his head. Calls to the Custody Officers at Central, Waterlooville and Fareham had already authorised the release of all three prisoners, and Faraday left a number for Beattie. He’d no idea how the man was going to make it back to Devon, but whatever happened he ought to take his dog. The Alsatian was still at Eadie’s place, and Faraday still had the key.

Willard had been at his desk since eight, locked in conference with Nick Hayder. Willard had already had a lengthy conversation with the Crime Correspondent on the
News
, confirming the breakthrough on the Somerstown murder, and there now appeared to be every chance of an optimistic in-depth feature highlighting a welcome change of mood amongst hard-core youths on the estate.

From Willard’s point of view, this was a perfect result. More and more, top management were emphasising the
links between crime and social exclusion – and here was a textbook example of painstaking detective work successfully undertaken in a difficult and challenging neighbourhood. Hayder’s squad, said Willard, had managed to turn the tide of apathy and aggression on the estate. The kids were not, after all, beyond salvation. Fundamentally decent, three of them had chosen to come forward and volunteer statements.

As the morning wore on, there were rumours along the Major Crimes corridor that Paul Winter’s hand might lie behind this surprising outbreak of civic duty. There was even word that the youths concerned had mentioned him by name but no one was quite sure why. The younger DCs thought this was bollocks and said so but Faraday, still nursing the remains of his hangover, wasn’t so sure. Winter was a past master at ghosting into other people’s investigations. More often than not, he caused a great deal of confusion, but the results – as Faraday knew only too well – could occasionally be startling.

Not that Willard paid the slightest attention. As far as he was concerned, making the case against Darren Geech had been a scalp for Major Crimes and a memo to that effect landed on the desk of every DC involved in Operation
Hexham
. Andy Corbett taped his to the corridor wall facing Faraday’s office, a gesture that Faraday treated with contempt.

The call from Beattie came shortly before noon. Under the circumstances, Faraday thought he sounded remarkably sanguine. He was in Southsea and he wanted his dog back. Faraday glanced at his watch. Anything to get out of the office.

‘Where are you?’

‘In the middle. By the shops.’ There was a pause on the line. ‘Store called Knight and Lees?’

Faraday told him to hang on. Five minutes and he’d be down there to pick him up. Blue Mondeo, X reg.

Beattie was waiting on the pavement outside the big
department store. He hadn’t shaved and he looked tired, but there was something in his eyes that spoke of a deep satisfaction. Only on the seafront, slipping into a parking bay across from Eadie Sykes’s flat, did Faraday break the silence between them.

‘Dog’s been fine,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Beattie was gazing out across the common. ‘I used to come down here years ago. Saturday nights mainly. Runs ashore.’ He frowned. ‘The Birdcage? The Pomme d’Or?’

Faraday nodded. The clubs had been closed for years, but in his days as a young beatman he’d policed them both. He began to hunt for stories, little anecdotes that might raise a smile, but quickly realised that Beattie wasn’t remotely interested in the past. The silence between them stretched and stretched. Then Beattie looked across at Faraday.

‘No grudges, OK?’ He extended a hand. ‘In your shoes I’d have done exactly the same thing.’

‘You mean that?’

‘Yeah. I might have been tougher … but yeah.’

Faraday hid a smile and shook the proffered hand. For some reason, he felt flooded with relief.

‘I’ll get the dog,’ he said. ‘You hang on here.’

Upstairs, Sykes was out again. A note on the carpet inside the front door established that Rory had gone running with his new mistress at dawn and was now knackered. He’d had a big breakfast and a little nap but might need another walkies before lunch. The note ended with a line of kisses, a gesture which further brightened Faraday’s morning.

Back in the street, Faraday handed the dog over to Beattie. For a moment or two they stood awkwardly on the pavement, not knowing quite what to say, then, on the spur of the moment, Faraday gestured at the pub across the road.

‘Fancy a spot of lunch. My shout?’

Beattie gave the invitation some thought, then shook his head. He’d take the dog for a stroll on the Common, then he was off to the station. The Custody Sergeant at Waterlooville had given him a rail warrant. There was a through train at two. He wanted to get home.

‘Of course.’ Faraday turned to the car. ‘Just a thought.’

Beattie bent to the dog. Then he squatted on the pavement, ruffling the fur behind the Alsatian’s ears, making friends again. The dog licked his hand.

Faraday was in his car. He wound down the window.

‘Good luck,’ he said simply.

‘Sure.’ Beattie was still making a fuss of the dog. ‘Listen. If you’re ever down our way again, time to spare …’ He glanced up, looking Faraday in the eye. ‘OK?’

‘You’re telling me Corbett sold us a dummy?’

Faraday was back in Willard’s office. He’d been through the conversation in the wine bar with DI Pannell, and the Det Supt hadn’t been slow in drawing the obvious conclusion.

‘I think he was over-hasty, sir. Ambition’s not a sin but he ought to be more careful.’

‘Don’t fuck about, Joe. The pillock was trying to snow us.’

‘You might be right.’

‘I am right. The point about intelligence like this, you can make any case you want. He was grandstanding. You were right all along. What else did she tell you?’

Faraday had spent the last hour or so debating where to draw the line on Corbett. It gave him a deep personal pleasure to know that his instincts about the young DC had been right, that the man really was an arsehole, but fellow officers’ private lives were no concern of Willard’s, not unless they got in the way of the job. At length, he shook his head.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And you’re telling me this DI knew Corbett pretty well?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she was happy to talk about him?’

‘Yes.’

Willard gave him a last chance, then pulled open a drawer. Faraday found himself looking at two cassettes: one video, one audio.

‘Cathy Lamb brought these over. I haven’t been through them myself, but if what she told me is even half true then Corbett’s out of here. Harassment? Sexual abuse? Date rape?’ He sighed. ‘You know something, Joe? You’re too bloody straight for your own good.’ He got up and went across to the window. ‘So what are we going to do about Coughlin?’

Faraday was still looking at the cassettes. At length, he straightened in the chair.

‘You want the truth, sir?’

‘Dare you.’

‘I haven’t a clue.’

The billing on Gault’s mobile phone came in five days later. Brian Imber, in his office at Havant police station, phoned through with the news.

‘Gault made a call that Monday night,’ he said. ‘From the hotel.’

‘What time?’

‘Twelve nineteen.’

‘Did he get through?’

‘I assume so. It lasted a couple of minutes.’

Faraday was fighting to remember the exact chronology of events that Monday night. Already he was dealing with another murder, a Southsea housewife who was denying taking the kitchen knife to her errant husband. Coughlin, just now, felt like history.

‘Remind me.’ Faraday was reaching for a pen. ‘Had Coughlin paid his visit by then?’

‘Definitely. Pritchard tried to phone him at twelve two. Gault’s call was after that.’

‘And the number?’

‘It’s local. You want to take a guess at the address?’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘217 Kingsley Road. Subscriber by the name of Warren.’ He paused. ‘That’s the lad’s mum and dad.’

Faraday’s call found Bev Yates in the Southsea Waitrose. Lunchtime, he was doing the weekly shop.

‘Do you remember Gault mentioning making a call from the hotel that Monday night?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Positive. We asked him in that first interview and he said no. Check the tapes if you want.’ There was a pause, then Yates laughed. ‘Means bugger all, though. He was so bladdered he couldn’t remember anything.’

Faraday was already on his feet. His next meeting on the Southsea stabbing wasn’t until two thirty.

‘You finished the shopping? I’ll be outside in ten minutes.’

217 Kingsley Road was a modest, neat-looking terrace house in a quiet street on the eastern edge of the city. There was a poster for a church rummage sale in the downstairs window, and the front door had recently had a new coat of paint.

Faraday paused on the pavement. This bottom end of Kingsley Road overlooked a tiny, tucked-away corner of Langstone Harbour known locally as the Glory Hole. Once used as a dumping ground by various branches of the armed services, this muddy little backwater was rumoured to be a soup of heavy metals but Faraday was in no position to know the truth. It certainly offered a
nicer view than most locations on the island and Faraday could think of worse places to live.

Turning back to the house, he wondered whether anyone would be in. There were no real grounds for supposing that Gault had said anything worthwhile, but gone midnight was a strange time to phone and whatever tiny light this call might shed on the investigation might just be worth the drive across.

A second knock brought a woman to the door. She was large and untidy, a stained beige cardigan pulled tight over a flower-patterned dress. She stared at the proffered warrant cards.

‘Police?’

‘CID.’ Faraday introduced himself, then Yates. Something in this woman’s face told him that the visit hadn’t come as a surprise. ‘Are you Mrs Warren?’

‘That’s right.’

With some reluctance, she invited them in. The house smelled of recent baking. They followed her into the small back room. She didn’t invite them to sit down.

‘What is it, then?’

Faraday explained that they were making enquiries about the death of a Sean Coughlin. Did the name mean anything to her?

She shook her head.

‘Never heard of him.’

‘He was in the navy a while ago, around the same time as your son. Can’t recall the name?’

‘My son’s dead,’ she said at once.

‘I know. And I’m sorry.’ He paused. ‘Sean Coughlin? You’re sure the name rings no bells?’

‘No.’ She folded her arms over her bosom. ‘I’d remember a name like that.’

Yates was looking at a couple of framed photographs on the mantelpiece. In one of them, a young naval rating was posed against a line of railings, glimpses of the sea in the background. The lettering around his cap read HMS
Raleigh
. In the other the same youth was on a quayside, framed by the looming mass of a warship. In both shots – with his toothy grin and his jaunty, stuck-up thumb – he looked impossibly young.

‘What about Paul Gault?’

The mention of Gault at last brought a smile to the woman’s face. Paulie she knew well, lovely man, always cheerful, tried to keep an eye on Mattie, tower of strength.

‘He brings me flowers every twenty-first of May,’ she said. ‘Some of those amaryllis this year, beautiful they were, I thought they’d last for ever.’

‘Do you see him often?’

‘He pops round occasionally, just to see if we’re OK.’

‘Does he ever phone?’

‘Once in a while, yes.’

‘Did he happen to phone last week? Monday? Late?’

Mrs Warren went through the motions of trying to remember. Then she shrugged.

‘I’ve no idea. I don’t know.’

‘Were you here that Monday night?’

‘Yes. I’m always here.’

‘But you don’t remember a call? Past midnight?’

‘No. Maybe there’s been some mistake. No one phones that late.’

Yates stepped into the conversation.

‘We know there was a call, Mrs Warren. We know it happened. We know exactly when it happened. And we even know how long it lasted. Was there someone else who might have taken it?’

‘No.’ She was anxious now. ‘There was only me.’

‘And you don’t remember taking a call? Nineteen minutes past midnight?’

Faraday could hear the ticking of a clock. This woman knew something. It was there in her face, in the way her hands kept returning to the same button on the cardigan, twisting and twisting. She wanted them to stop asking
her about this wretched phone call. Better still, she wanted them to leave her alone, to go away, to get out of her life.

‘Just tell us,’ Faraday said gently, ‘what Paul said.’

‘I …’ She took a deep breath and then shook her head. ‘I can’t remember.’

‘It was Paul?’ Yates this time.

‘Yes.’

‘What did he want? At that time of night?’

‘It was nothing. It was silly. Just, you know … nothing.’

‘But what did he say? It’s important, Mrs Warren. We wouldn’t be bothering you otherwise.’

She looked from one face to the other, trapped. Then a hand reached backwards, blindly, feeling for the armchair. Yates helped her sit down.

‘You know, don’t you?’ Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Women can tell, they can read men like a book.’

‘Tell what, Mrs Warren?’