Happy Days (26 page)

He poured the tea and asked whether she wanted anything to eat. When she shook her head he told her she ought to get something down her. They needed to stay strong for whatever
lay down the road. No one could live on fresh air alone. Misty didn’t seem to be listening. After a while she turned her head towards him.

‘I need to ask you a question,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s something I have to do.’

‘Go on then.’

‘A while back Trude and I came across something on your answerphone at the flat. We weren’t snooping, I promise. It just happened.’

‘And?’

‘Who do you know in Croatia?’

Winter gazed at her for a long moment, finally understanding where the last few months had come from. The reticence. The faint un-Misty hint of withdrawal.

‘You mean a woman? A woman’s voice?’

‘Yes.’

‘Her name’s Maddox.’

‘And did you go and see her?’

‘Yes.’

‘In Croatia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I had to sort out some stuff.’

‘And did you?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘And does she matter?’

‘No, Mist, she doesn’t.’

Winter took her in his arms and hugged her. She was sobbing now. He let her cry for a while and then found a box of tissues. She dabbed at her face, smudged blue with eyeliner. Then she swallowed hard and looked him in the eye again.

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘Thank fuck for that.’ She started to cry again. ‘Toast, please.’

Later that day, in the Polish city of Lublin, a fight broke out in a bar. Three men who’d been drinking for most of the afternoon disputed the bill, and the owner, a newcomer to the city, had to step in when one of the drinkers attacked the barman. In the resulting chaos the owner headbutted the guy he judged to be the ringleader and broke his nose. Unfortunately, the drinker turned out to be an off-duty cop. Police were summoned and the bar owner was arrested. He spent Christmas Day in a cell and was subsequently charged with assault. A week later an alert administrative assistant at Lublin police station keyed the bar owner’s name into an Interpol database and scored an interesting hit. The news arrived at Hantspol HQ early the following day.

PORTSMOUTH: TUESDAY, 6 APRIL 2010.
THREE MONTHS LATER
.

Gordon Brown called the general election on Tuesday 6 April. He drove to Buckingham Palace, asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament, and returned to Downing Street to launch the Labour Party campaign. That same morning, oddly enough, Bazza Mackenzie got some very bad news.

He was in the War Room with Kinder, Makins and Winter when his mobile rang. All eyes were glued to the live BBC news feed on the big plasma TV Kinder had installed. Gordon Brown was emerging from Downing Street to address a mob of reporters.

Mackenzie bent to his phone. Already visibly irritated, his frown deepened. He brought the conversation to an end and sat back to watch Gordon Brown at the microphone. The election was to take place on 6 May. The future, Brown said, is ours to grasp, a future fair for all. So let’s get to it.

‘Too right, mush.’ Mackenzie got to his feet. He caught Winter’s eye and jerked his head towards the door. They needed to talk. Now.

Upstairs in his office, Mackenzie seized the phone and punched in a number. When he was especially tense he had a habit of sitting on the very edge of his seat. Just now he hadn’t even sat down.

‘Julie? I need to talk to Conrad.’

Winter knew at once what this was about. Conrad Whittiker was Mackenzie’s point man at the bank, the guy who oversaw his various accounts, the senior manager who made all the key credit and loan decisions. Whittiker was a very bad man to cross. Especially now.

Mackenzie was at full throttle. The moment Whittiker came on the phone he let fly. Some muppet had been on about a couple of mortgage payments. She seemed to think there were insufficient funds available. The payment had therefore been blanked. What the fuck was going on?

Whittiker spoke at some length. Winter watched Mackenzie’s face darken.

‘That’s bollocks, Conrad, and you fucking know it. I’ve put hundreds of thousands your way, squillions of fucking quid, and now you tell me there’s a
problem
? What fucking planet are you people on? First you trash the economy, get it so totally fucking wrong we’re all back in the Stone Age, monkeys up fucking trees, then you take it out on people like me. Some of us have a living to make, believe it or not, and you tossers don’t make it fucking easy. So do us a favour, eh? Sort this nonsense out.’

He put the phone down and stared at it, daring it to ring again. It was Winter who broke the silence.

‘Well?’

‘You don’t want to know, mush.’

‘I do, Baz. I do.’

‘They’re threatening to withdraw the overdraft.’

‘Threatening?’

‘They’ve done it. Bang!’ His fist hit the desk and made the phone jump. ‘Just like fucking that. No consultation. No warning. These guys think they
own
us all.’

‘They do, Baz.’

‘Bollocks. You believe that? You really believe all that bullshit? Jesus …’ He turned away from the desk and stormed towards the window. Out on Southsea Common Winter could
see a couple of girls flying a kite. One was very pretty. He thought of saying something but knew there was no point. Bazza in a mood like this was beyond reach.

‘Great fucking timing,’ he muttered. ‘This has to be a spoiler, doesn’t it? There has to be some evil fucker behind all this, some Tory cunt. The Labour lot haven’t got the brains and the Lib Dems are away with the fairies. So who wants to hurt us, mush? Who is it?’

He was talking to himself, a man cornered by months of spending money he didn’t have, a man desperate to put a name and a face to this monstrous twist of fate. In Bazza’s world, as Winter knew only too well, the blame never settled at his own door.

‘Which account is it, Baz?’

‘All of them, the lot. He’s telling me there’s nothing left in the pot.’

‘We knew that.’

‘He means his pot. We’re halfway up the fucking mountain, mush, and he’s just cut the rope. Mortgage payments, direct debits, cheques, credit card payments, the lot, finito. Not another fucking penny, he says. Not one.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘We look elsewhere. We work the phones. We call in favours. Stu’s got a quid or two if it really comes to it. Marie too.’

Winter said nothing. If Bazza was relying on his wife and son-in-law, things had to be really bad.

At length there came a knock at the door. It was Leo Kinder. For days, in anticipation of this morning’s news, he’d been planning a big press conference to launch the
Pompey First
campaign. The London papers would be sending stringers. TV and radio were standing by. The
News
was talking about a big splash on the front page plus a feature inside. This was the raw meat of politics. Even Kinder, Mr Cool, couldn’t mask his excitement.

‘You want me to make the calls, Baz?’ Winter asked.

Mackenzie was still at the window. He didn’t turn round. ‘Of course I fucking do,’ he said.

Misty Gallagher was on the road again. Three or four mornings a week she drove the fifty miles to Salisbury District Hospital. Trude had been in the Duke of Cornwall Spinal Treatment Centre for nearly three months now. It felt like for ever.

Misty found a space in the car park and walked to the unit. It was a long modern-looking red-brick building on the edge of the main hospital site with views across the surrounding downland. In the early days she’d had a long conversation with another relative who visited her son daily, and the woman had been keen to stress how lucky they were to have a place like this on their doorstep. Misty had a very different take on ‘lucky’ and ‘doorstep’ but had kept her opinions to herself.

This morning was Trude’s first visit to the unit’s swimming pool. Misty knew she’d been looking forward to this landmark for weeks. Trude had always loved the water and had swum like a fish since early childhood. Misty signed the visitors’ book and followed the signs to the pool. There was a viewing area on one side, and Misty slipped in through the glass doors, strangely comforted by the familiar smell of chlorine. This, she thought, might be a step back towards a life her daughter could recognise as her own.

Trude was in the shallow end, attended by a physio called Awaale, an absurdly handsome Somali with a smile that would make anyone feel better. Trudy adored him but Misty knew at once that something was wrong. Her daughter was struggling. She was clinging to Awaale. Every time he tried to make her swim free, she wouldn’t have it.

After nearly two months of what the medics called spinal shock, Trude had begun to recover some sensation in her arms and lower body. She could feel the difference between hot and cold. She could register pain and pleasure. The bedside physios had done a brilliant job maintaining her muscle tone, and she
had a full range of movement in every limb. Week by week, she was even getting back in charge of her bowels and bladder. All of this was brilliant news – she wouldn’t, after all, be paralysed for life – but coordination remained a real challenge. Hence the pool.

Misty, aware that Trude seemed embarrassed by her presence, retreated from the pool and bought herself a coffee from a nearby machine. There’d been many moments since the nightmare that had been Christmas when she’d doubted her own ability to carry on. The sight of the hideous metal clamp they screwed into her daughter’s skull. The existence of the ‘specialist swallowing team’, gathered around a neighbouring bed. The endless talk of skin integrity, and renal function, and bladder management. Stuff like this was gross, nothing to do with her beautiful Trude, yet here she was, as helpless as a baby and nearly as frightened as Misty herself.

She finished the coffee and walked through to the day room to wait for Trude’s return, shoulders back, head erect, telling herself to get a grip. They weren’t out of the woods yet, far from it, but compared to the early days – as Winter kept pointing out – Trude was definitely on the mend.

She was there within minutes, wheeling herself in through the door with Awaale providing the lightest of course corrections from behind. Misty was as smitten as Trude. Awaale beamed down at them both.

‘She did great, Mrs G.’

Misty knew at once that Trude had been crying. She turned her head away.

‘I was crap,’ she muttered. ‘This is never going to work.’

Operation
Gehenna
had a new safe house. The ex-D/I who’d gone to Uganda was now back in Soberton Heath, and Winter had been summoned to an address in St Cross, a wealthy enclave on the southern approaches to Winchester. This was handy for Willard, whose office at headquarters was five minutes up the
road. The Head of CID was waiting for Winter in the kitchen of what resembled a Victorian rectory. The place was fully furnished, though Winter’s taste didn’t run to flock wallpaper and heavy drapes. He’d been in upmarket Indian restaurants that felt a bit like this and he wasn’t impressed.

Willard had the kettle on. He assumed Winter wanted coffee. Winter, who hadn’t seen Willard since the day of Faraday’s funeral, was surprised by the change in his appearance. He seemed to have lost a bit of weight and there was something new – almost wolfish – in his face. According to Suttle, Willard had completed the ACPO course and was heavily tipped for an Assistant Chief Constable post in the West Midlands. The Brummies, Winter thought, were in for a bit of a shake-up.

Parsons and Suttle turned up minutes later. Willard had already cleared a space in the dining room. The big window looked out onto a blaze of daffodils, but Willard had pulled the curtains against the world outside. They sat around the table beneath an elaborate chandelier. It might have been the middle of the night.

Willard kicked off. To Winter’s surprise, he already appeared to know about Mackenzie’s exchange with the bank.

‘You’re telling me you set that up?’

Willard ignored the question. Far more important was Mackenzie’s reaction.

‘He kicked off big time,’ Winter said. ‘Just the way I told you he would.’

‘But what’s he going to do for money?’

‘He’s phoning around, calling in favours, leaning on old mates. He’s trying to set up a fighting fund. Baz thinks he’s back in the 6.57. The one thing he won’t do is give up.’

‘Excellent. And his chances of success?’

‘Nil. Add up all the liabilities, all the outgoings, all the unpaid bills, and we’re talking six figures. And that’s
before
the campaign kicked off.’

‘So he’s still going ahead?’

‘Of course he is.’

‘How?’

‘Skelley.’

‘But how?’

‘That’s down to me.’

Willard nodded, then shot a look at Suttle.

‘You told Mackenzie about this guy Beginski?’ Suttle began. ‘Like I asked?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And did he bite?’

‘Of course he did. I put it the way you suggested. I said Beginski was a Polack driver, used to work for Freezee. I told him he was very likely the guy Skelley had asked to drive Johnny’s body up to the Lake District. That’s why he got a big fucking pay-off and did a runner back to Poland. Johnny was what did it for Baz. He accepts he’s probably dead and now he’s thinking all that’s down to Skelley, which is where it becomes personal. That’s why I’m off up to London.’

Suttle nodded. Johnny Holman had been an old mate from Mackenzie’s 6.57 days, a washed-up drunk baby-sitting two and a half million quid’s worth of Bazza’s precious rainy-day toot.

Winter wanted to know where Operation
Gehenna
was heading next. At Suttle’s direction he’d explained to Bazza that Beginski had boasted about the size of the pay-out from Skelley and that his mates had naturally been pissed-off. What did Suttle want him to do now?

‘There’s a woman you need to meet,’ said Suttle. ‘Her name’s Irenka. She’s half-Polish. She runs an agency in Isleworth, Home From Home. She sorts out accommodation for Polish workers. It turns out she’s Pavel Beginski’s sister.’

‘And?’