Happy Days (12 page)

Birdy cackled with laughter, then began to cough. Within seconds Mona was at the door. Birdy beckoned her into the room with a tiny backwards jerk of his head and whispered something Winter didn’t catch. She nodded and fetched the hoist before glancing across at Winter.

‘You want to help me here.’ It was a statement, not a question.

The nurse folded down the duvet, releasing a gust of foul air. Birdy’s bum was swaddled in a big disposable nappy, crusting brown at the edges, his pale skinny legs poking down towards the bottom of the bed. A reinforced plastic sheet lay beneath the nappy. The nurse disconnected Birdy’s catheter, gathered up the ends of the plastic sheet, which folded around the bulk of his torso, and linked them to the lifting strap that dangled from the hoist. The hoist was operated by a remote control. The strap tightened and Birdy began to rise from the bed.

‘Wheelchair?’

Winter did her bidding. He jockeyed the chair into position beside the bed and then stepped back. Birdy was still in midair, revolving slowly beneath the hoist, his arms and legs slack, his chin on his chest, his eyes closed. Inch by inch, the nurse released the tension on the strap, lowering the flaccid bundle of flesh and blood onto the wheelchair. He must have been through this a million times, Winter thought. Poor bastard.

‘Feet?’

Winter knelt on the cold linoleum, stationing each of Birdy’s feet on the wheelchair’s metal supports. His flesh was icy, the nails yellow and brittle. Then Winter stood aside as the nurse
wheeled Birdy into the bathroom. When Winter enquired whether she needed any other help she shook her head.

‘We’re fine.’ She said.

Grateful for the chance to leave, Winter gave Birdy a parting nod and left. Out in the street, heading back to his car, he slipped a thumb under the gummed flap of the envelope and took a look at the passport. The photo didn’t really do justice to the sternness of the expression he’d tried to muster in the Post Office booth, but the rest seemed completely authentic. Beside the Lexus he paused, glancing back towards the house, knowing that the image of Birdy dangling from his hoist would be with him for a very long time. The guy was completely kippered, totally parcelled up, utterly at the mercy of whatever might happen around life’s next corner. That’s me, Winter thought, as he slipped the passport into his jacket pocket.

That same morning, an hour or so later, Suttle received an abrupt summons to Gail Parsons’ office. At first he assumed she wanted a debrief on the morning’s top story. Yet another young mother had been stranger-raped after a break-in, this time in front of her two-year-old son. This latest incident was the fourth in a series of similar city-wide attacks and there was every reason to assume that they were linked. Suttle had been building the intel file for several weeks now, uncomfortably aware that his own wife was the perfect target for the mystery rapist, and anticipated a detailed grilling from Parsons. Wrong.

She waved him into a seat in front of her desk and made sure the door was shut.

‘This is about Mackenzie,’ she said. ‘And Winter.’

Suttle blinked. He hadn’t thought about Winter for weeks, not – to be honest – since Faraday’s funeral.

‘So what’s happened, boss?’

‘This …’ She had a file open on the desk. She passed across a two-page report. Suttle scanned it quickly. Yesterday’s date. And the signature of a uniformed Inspector who rarely let the
manic drumbeat of events get in his face. On this occasion, though, it had evidently been very different.

Suttle looked harder. ‘Safer Neighbourhoods Initiative’ rang a bell.

‘This is the community policing thingo?’

‘Hearts and minds, Jimmy. It might not be to your taste, nor mine, but that’s not the point. At ACPO level, believe it or not, these things matter.’ She nodded at the report. ‘As you can probably gather.’

Suttle hadn’t seen the pencilled comments at the foot of the last page. The Chief’s handwriting was unmistakable: flamboyant, beautifully formed, 90 per cent indecipherable. Suttle looked at the front page again, confirming that the Chief and his secretariat were on the circulation list, and then returned to the hieroglyphic at the end.

‘So what does he say?’

‘He says this is unacceptable. He says it has to stop. What he means is that this man is not to get anywhere near the democratic process.’

‘Mackenzie?’

‘Of course.’

‘So who stops him?’

‘Good question. I was rather thinking that Winter had an idea or two.’

Suttle read the report again, properly this time. The Safer Neighbourhoods Initiative, or SNI in the parlance, had organised a series of public meetings. The most recent had taken place a couple of evenings ago at a comprehensive school in the north of the city. For once, to the Inspector’s delight, the SNI had managed a decent turnout. He hadn’t done a headcount but he estimated more than two hundred punters in the school assembly hall. Audiences like this – concerned, civic-minded, determined to add their voices to the swirl of public debate – deserved to have their worst fears about policing and public order put to rest. With that in mind, the Inspector had
assembled an impressive PowerPoint presentation, using a blizzard of stats to prove that North End, Copnor and all the other bits of Pompey at the top end of the island were as safe – if not safer – than anywhere else in the kingdom.

Bazza Mackenzie, though, had other ideas. He’d arrived early, in company with a couple of other guys, and commandeered prime seats in the front row. Thanks to the
News
, plus his own efforts, there was a growing buzz across the city that Mackenzie might be heading up some kind of challenge in the coming general election, but it hadn’t dawned on the Inspector that his carefully organised meeting was about to be hijacked.

Suttle read through to the end of the report. This was the work of a very angry man, but it was hard not to smile at some of the choicer quotes.

‘Mackenzie actually said all this stuff?’

‘As I understand it, yes.’

‘Have you talked to anyone else at the meeting?’

‘Of course not. The man’s a police officer. He’s got ears. He’s got a brain in his head. We don’t need corroboration.’ She nodded at the report. ‘The moment the likes of Mackenzie stand up and start telling us how to do our job, we’ve got a problem.’

Suttle could only agree. Halfway through the PowerPoint, seconds after the Inspector had been underlining how much police time went into hi-vis patrols, and how the community could therefore sleep easy at night, Mackenzie had got to his feet and told him he was wrong. The reality, according to Bazza, was exactly the opposite. Pissed kids. Rowdy students. Dickheads pulling stunts on cross-country bikes. Mad drivers burning rubber on some of the wider side roads. Drunks pissing in next door’s hedge. Incident after incident, each carefully logged by Pompey’s tyro politician.

At this point other voices had been raised, all in support of Mackenzie, and in the end the Inspector had abandoned the PowerPoint in a bid to regain some kind of order. By now
something told him that most of this chorus of dissent had been planted, probably by Mackenzie himself, but it made little difference. The evening, he wrote, had been a public relations disaster, made infinitely worse by the fact that this full-on drivel had come from a man whose business success had been entirely based on the profits from a decade or so flogging Class A drugs. ‘I get the impression this might be the first of a series of similar stunts,’ the Inspector warned, ‘which I find personally troubling and professionally offensive. Maybe we should be putting Mackenzie where he belongs instead of giving him a platform like last night’s.’

This was a sentiment with which any Chief Constable would doubtless concur. Hence Parsons’ summons to Suttle.

‘He’s serious,’ she warned. ‘And I don’t blame him.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We find Winter.’

‘And then what?’

‘We get him onside. Take him at his word.
Enlist
him, Jimmy.’

‘You think it’s that desperate?’

‘I know it is.’ Her hand touched the phone. ‘I had Mr Willard on before you came. I think he’s realised the damage Mackenzie could do if he really does stand for Parliament. We’re not just talking the city, Jimmy. This thing could go national. This is just the kind of idiot stunt the media love, and I bet he’s planning others.’

‘He won’t get the thing off the ground. It won’t fly. The bloke’s a dickhead. He can’t string two words together. The other candidates will hammer him.’

‘That’s not the point. It’s the campaign that’s going to do the damage, not the result. You know what? Sometimes I start to wonder about democracy. Maybe it’s more trouble than it’s worth.’

Suttle laughed. He assumed she was joking, but one glance at Parsons’ face told him otherwise.

‘You don’t think that?’ she asked. ‘You don’t think there’s something wrong with a system that lets the likes of Mackenzie stand for Parliament? You don’t think that’s an insult?’

‘No.’

‘What is it then?’

‘A failure.’

‘Whose failure?’

‘Ours.’ Suttle tapped the report. ‘This guy’s right. We should have scooped Mackenzie up years ago.’

‘But that’s exactly it, Jimmy.’ Parsons was angry now, leaning forward over the desk. ‘We have to stop him. And if it’s Winter who can make that happen, then so be it.’

Suttle sat back, taking his time. To the best of his recollection, he said, it was Willard who’d brought the courtship of Winter to a grinding halt.

‘How?’

‘By insisting on total control. By binding Winter hand and foot.’

‘You think there’s a better way?’

‘I know there is. Because I know Winter. We burned him once before, you know we did, and people like Winter have a long memory. Like it or not, we have to be ready to let him have some kind of guarantee.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like me, for starters.’

‘As Winter’s handler?’

‘Of course.’

Parsons said nothing. Then her eyes strayed to the phone.

‘I happen to agree with you.’ Her voice was low. ‘The problem is Mr Willard. He doesn’t like Winter, not at all, and there’s no way he’ll let the man boss any kind of negotiation.’

‘With respect, boss, that’s daft. We’re not talking negotiation. Winter, believe it or not, is a bright man. He’s also a realist. He knows there’s no way he’s going to be in charge of
anything except his own survival. And that’s why he wants to do this thing through me.’

‘You’re telling me he doesn’t trust anyone else?’

‘I’m telling you he did once and it didn’t work out. So I guess the answer is yes.’

‘OK …’ Parsons was frowning now. ‘And if Mr Willard won’t have it?’

‘Then we have to find someone else to put in alongside Mackenzie.’

‘You think that’s possible? In the time we have left before the election?’

‘No, boss –’ Suttle returned the inspector’s report ‘– I don’t.’

Bazza Mackenzie had left a message on Winter’s mobile to be at the Royal Trafalgar by eleven o’clock. Minutes later a reminder in text form had arrived. This kind of attention to detail was a novelty in Mackenzie’s world. Winter, reading the text for a second time, could only assume that Kinder had taken over completely. That, or something truly important was about to kick off.

‘His name’s Makins,’ Mackenzie grunted, ‘Andy Makins. He’s downstairs in reception, and a little bird tells me he’s exactly what we’re after.’

The three of them – Bazza, Kinder, Winter – were sitting in the basement office Mackenzie had taken to calling the War Room. A huge street map of the Portsmouth North constituency dominated one wall. The map was divided into electoral wards, and someone – presumably Kinder – had taken the trouble to record ward-by-ward voting patterns in the most recent local election.

On the adjoining wall was a display of
Pompey First
posters, while the area to the left of the door had been converted into an impromptu darts arena. Mackenzie himself had raided the Internet for photos of the likely candidates standing for Pompey North in the coming general election, and each of them had
been allotted his or her space on the
Pompey First
dartboard. As a guide to Mackenzie’s gut take on how best to triumph at the hustings it was crude but unsurprising. You chose your favourite arrows. You took careful aim. And then, one by one, you did your best to nail the bastards.

This strategy, as far as Winter understood it, had won little traction with Kinder, who favoured putting the New into New Politics by completely blanking the opposition. That way, he contended, they could hug the inside lane in the coming elections, demonstrating time and again that
Pompey First
had a uniquely special rapport with the locals. Kinder’s word for this was traction. Neither Bazza nor Winter had a clue what he meant, but they both sensed that his tolerance of the darts arena was at least a nod in the right direction.
Pompey First
was grounded.
Pompey First
spoke a language people understood.
Pompey First
would do exactly what it said on the tin.

A long conference table occupied most of the rest of the office, a declaration of collective intent over the coming months, and on his few visits to the War Room Winter had noticed that Kinder always sat at the head of the table. That gave him chairman rights at every meeting he summoned, and – much to Winter’s surprise – Mackenzie didn’t appear to object. Kinder, he’d once told Winter, was a real pro. Given the kind of money he was paying him, the man could sit wherever he fucking liked.

Kinder wanted to know more about Makins. He, like Winter, had never heard of the guy. Where had he come from? What was he offering?

‘He’s a journo,’ Mackenzie said, ‘or at least he used to be. That feature piece in the paper last month? Gill Whatever-her-name-was?’

‘Reynolds,’ Kinder said.

‘Yeah. Nice lady. Did us proud.’

‘Did
you
proud, Baz. I’m not sure she grasped what we’re really trying to achieve. Nice try.
Nul points
.’

‘Whatever.’ Mackenzie shrugged. ‘All I know is she phoned
me last night, told me about this bloke Andy. The way I read it, he’s exactly what we’re after. The guy’s young, savvy, spends most of his time on the Internet. Plus he’s really in tune with the kids, knows what makes them tick, what turns them on, which is more than us lot fucking do. Gillie says he’s got some ideas we might use. She also says he’s a fucking genius. So …’ Mackenzie spread his hands wide ‘… I thought it might be worth a sniff or two.’