The Price Of Darkness (25 page)

It took him a moment or two to realise he had company.

‘Sir?’

‘Bit late, isn’t it?’ Faraday nodded at the desk. ‘What’s keeping you?’

‘Mallinder’s bank details, sir.’ Suttle stifled a yawn. ‘I’ve only just got round to them.’

TUESDAY, 12 SEPTEMBER 2006.
09.34

 

Winter sped north along the Meon Valley. The moment the cabbie had picked him up at Blake House, he’d insisted on a change of station on the radio. Virgin FM was fine for brain-dead thirty-somethings trying to kid themselves they were still young but on a day like today you very definitely needed Five Live.

Already, by the time they got to Fareham, he’d listened to Portsmouth South’s venerable MP expressing his city’s shock and grief at yesterday’s events. Now, in a neat twist, someone had come up with the notion of talking to the football club’s new owner, an ex-Israeli Army sniper of Russian extraction who presumably knew a thing or two about the application of extreme violence.

As it happened, the interview proved to be a non-starter, not least because Alexandre Gaydamak was unavailable, but Winter sat back, his briefcase on his knees, deeply satisfied that Pompey - both the city and the club - had finally earned its place in the sun. Not only had Goldsmith Avenue featured on TV screens worldwide but the Blues had just found themselves at the very top of the Premiership. Not one result, but two.

The Five Live presenter was taking phone-ins on the wider implications of the Pompey hit.

Winter stationed his face in the rear-view mirror, catching the cabbie’s attention. ‘What do you think?’

‘Dunno, mate, but the way this bloody government’s carrying on, I say fair play to the geezer.’

‘There were two of them.’

‘Geezers then. Who cares? Bloody politicians, two a penny. Tell you something, though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It might make someone sort the fucking traffic out. Takes you forever to get anywhere down Pompey. Complete disgrace. Carry on the way we are, and this job won’t be worth tuppence.’

Winter grinned, then leaned forward to listen to an item of breaking news. He didn’t catch the details but he was sure it was in connection with the shooting.

‘They’ve found that motorbike.’ The cabbie was laughing. ‘You’ll never guess where.’

 

The breakthrough sent a ripple down the corridor at Major Crimes. Glen Thatcher, the Outside Enquiry D/S in the Incident Room, had lifted the phone to Faraday the moment he’d taken the call from the D/C on site.

‘Blue Kawasaki, sir. Nine hundred cc. Black and yellow chequers on the front forks. We’ve got it down as nicked four days ago. Has to be the one. Has to be.’

‘Where was it?’

‘In some kind of derelict building - it’s not clear from the report. Seems someone’s poured paint stripper all over it.’

‘But where?’

‘St James’, sir. In the hospital grounds. Turns out that woman from The Orchards was right.’

Faraday stared at the window. In the welter of enquiries last night, he’d almost forgotten about the call from the woman who’d spotted the two figures on the motorbike. St James’ was the city’s psychiatric hospital, a substantial Victorian pile with extensive grounds. Many of the wards had been closed after the shift to community care but it still housed a sizeable group of long-stay patients. Oddly enough, it lay within half a mile of the Bargemaster’s House. Faraday passed it daily en route to work.

He bent to the phone again. First things first.

‘Have you talked to Scenes of Crime, Glen?’

‘Yes, sir. I passed the word on. They’re going to blitz it.’

‘What about the hospital management?’

‘The lads on site are talking to them now.’

Faraday nodded. The scene would need to be isolated. Then would come the interviews, dozens of them. The Outside Enquiry teams would need to quiz anyone in a position to see the long drive that threaded past The Orchards into the hospital grounds from Locksway Road. Many of these potential witnesses would presumably be inpatients and Faraday permitted himself a grim smile, imagining certain D/Cs on the squad trying to tease any sense from some of the St James’ veterans. The guys on the Kawasaki had known exactly what they were about. Clever.

Glen Thatcher was still on the phone.

‘Is there anything apart from the bike?’ Faraday asked him. ‘Leathers? Gloves? Helmets?’

‘Not that anyone’s told me, sir.’

‘Fine. I’ll pass this on to Mr Barrie. He’s up at headquarters this morning.’

 

A bubbling pot of freshly made coffee was waiting for Winter by the time the cab dropped him at Esme’s place. The smell greeted him as she opened the front door and she warmed the welcome still further by giving him a smile. There were toys all over the polished beechwood floor and Winter picked his way between an abandoned sit-on tractor and a yellow mini-slide as he followed her into the huge kitchen. She was wearing an apron and a pair of rubber gloves. The woman from the village who did the cleaning was down with flu.

Esme was as hooked by events in Pompey as Winter himself. She gestured up at a small portable TV wedged between a line of recipe books and a row of glass storage jars.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’

She stripped off the gloves and poured the coffee while Winter helped himself to a stool to watch the TV. A junior government minister in the studio was acknowledging the need for enhanced security. Until now armed protection had been allocated on a strictly needs-must basis. After yesterday all that would change. He sounded, if anything, relieved.

‘Has my dad talked to you this morning? Only he seems to have made a few calls last night and one of them was to a buddy of his in Dubai. This guy spent some time in Los Angeles. He’s got part-shares in a couple of marinas and Dad wondered whether he’d come across this woman you both met.’

‘And?’

‘He says not. Dad thought it was odd, that’s all.’

‘Los Angeles is a big place.’ Winter helped himself to another biscuit. ‘There must be loads of people in her game.’

‘Sure. He just wanted me to pass it on. He also asked me to draw up some kind of contract.’ Her eyes strayed to the television. ‘So what’s your take on this lady?’

‘She’s a looker.’

‘So I gather.’

‘And she certainly talks the talk.’

‘That’s exactly what Dad said.’ She shook her head. ‘My poor bloody mother. Sometimes I wonder why she bothers. A decent lawyer and she could walk away with millions. She’s still got it too. She could have any guy she wanted.’

‘Maybe she loves him.’

‘Yeah, I think you’re right. You know what my mum once said to me? Before they were even married?’

‘No.’

‘She said she’d been mad for him ever since the day they first met.’

‘So why didn’t she marry him earlier?’

‘Because that’s not the way you play it with Dad. He knows exactly what he wants and he’ll be all over you to get it so the trick is to hold off. I’ve done it myself. It works a treat. He’s like a kid. The last word you should ever use is “yes”.’

Winter grinned. The change in Esme’s attitude was startling. She was treating him like one of the family. She seemed to trust him.

‘Here. Have a look at this.’ She passed across a stapled sheaf of A4 paper. ‘It’s just a draft. We can add or subtract as needs be. See what you think.’

Winter glanced through the contract. He was no lawyer but he supposed it made sense. At the end of the document, in the clause dealing with the fee payable for Katherine Brodie’s exclusive services, there was a space left blank.

‘How far is he prepared to go? Has he mentioned a figure?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is it?’

‘Seven thousand a month.’

‘A
month
? That’s a fortune. Or at least for him it is.’

‘Exactly. Dad doesn’t make offers like that, not without due cause.’ She glanced across at Winter again. ‘That’s why I thought we ought to ask a few questions first, find out a little more about this woman.’

‘We?’

‘You.’ She offered him a cordless phone from the pocket of her apron. ‘There’s an extension out in the hall, if you’d prefer. Or you could use the study.’

‘No problem.’ Winter took the phone. ‘This’ll do fine.’

He still had the K-MAX card in his pocket. He dialled the mobile number on the back. It answered after two rings.

‘Who is this?’ It was Brodie. That faint hint of California in her voice.

Winter thanked her for the lunch. She said it was a pleasure. Then she asked what she could do for him.

‘We need to meet again. Soon.’

‘Of course. This afternoon some time? Round five, maybe? Or tomorrow? Your call.’

Winter covered the mouthpiece with his hand. He needed a lift to the station and a proper copy of the contract. Esme said yes to both. Winter went back on the line.

‘Five o’clock’s perfect,’ he said.

‘Fine, though it’ll have to be somewhere central, I’m afraid. Why don’t we say the Savoy again? We could have an early drink. That OK with you?’

 

With Barrie still stranded at Winchester, Faraday took temporary charge of
Polygon.
His first call went to one of the D/Cs who’d been dispatched to interview the registered owner of the Kawasaki. He lived in Southampton, and en route back to Portsmouth the D/C was explaining what had happened with the bike.

The owner, he said, was a third-year student at Southampton University. He had an evening job as a barman at a run-down pub on the edges of Sholing, a suburb on the city’s eastern edge, and he’d left his bike in the car park all evening, walking out after closing time to find it gone. The bike had been locked up but someone had attacked the heavy-duty chain.

‘CCTV?’

‘Couple of cameras in the car park, boss, but apparently the recorder’s on the blink.’

‘No pictures, then?’

‘No.’

Faraday wanted to know more about the pub. The state of the CCTV system might suggest someone with inside knowledge. How long had the recorder been down?

‘The tenant says a fortnight, at least. You can safely double that.’

‘What’s the place like?’

‘Crap. Full of low life. You’d have to be desperate to work there but apparently the money’s OK. This is a guy who lives on fuck all, boss. I get the impression he can’t afford to be choosy.’

‘Did you statement him?’

‘Yeah.’

Faraday thanked him and put the phone down.

Responsibility for the SOC teams lay with the Crime Scene Co-ordinator. A recent promotion had given Jerry Proctor the job and since this morning he’d been sharing an office down the corridor. He was a huge man with a wealth of sharp-end experience, and Faraday was extremely glad to have him on board. The SOC team had been at St James for a couple of hours now. Faraday wanted an update.

‘They’ve done a preliminary trawl, boss. This is what we’ve got so far.’

A couple of keystrokes on Proctor’s laptop raised a series of crime scene photos, pumped across from the hospital grounds within the last ten minutes. Faraday found a chair and wedged himself behind the desk, peering at the images. The first showed a long narrow road, edged on the right by a red-brick wall. Proctor’s finger indicated a series of buildings on the left.

‘This one’s the Child Development Centre. Beyond that is The Orchards.’

The Orchards had only been open a couple of years, a handsome crescent-shaped building with a slightly Oriental roofline.

‘It’s a psychiatric unit,’ Proctor explained. ‘Takes all sorts. Two wards plus some single rooms.’

‘And the other side of this wall?’

‘Playing fields for the university.’

Faraday nodded. The next photos showed the gate that offered access to the hospital grounds. Beyond the gate was an acre or so of wasteland - a wilderness of shrubs, bushes and piles of plastic bags heaped against the same brick wall.

‘The lads concentrated here first, poked around in the undergrowth, found nothing.’

‘Then what?’

‘They widened the search parameters. By midnight they’d been over the whole site, still nothing. The skipper in charge left a couple of blokes to keep an eye on things and started again at first light. A couple of hours later he got lucky.’

Faraday found himself looking at a two-storey building with a pitched red roof. Every window and door had been boarded up and the ruin was secured by a two and a half metre chain-link fence. According to Proctor, the building had once served as a self-contained ward, one of a number of villas in the hospital grounds. He keyed the next shot.

‘Here.’ He was pointing to a security gate set into the fence. ‘One of the blokes was bright enough to get a groundsman along. This guy had a key to the padlock and you know what? It didn’t fit.’

The team had called for a pair of bolt-cutters. They went through the padlock and took a good look at the exterior of the building. Out of sight of the path lay a side door. This too had been secured but this time the padlock was missing. Pushing inside, they’d found the blue Kawasaki. The bike featured in the next series of shots. SOC investigators, alerted by the search team, had brought in extra lighting and the bike was on its stand. The paint on the fuel tank had bubbled and close-ups showed damage to the seats and wiring.

‘Turns out it wasn’t paint stripper at all but acid, probably sulphuric. Nasty but bloody effective. It’s going to take us a while to try and recover anything useful but I wouldn’t hold your breath.’

Faraday nodded. This was more evidence, if he needed it, that these people were forensically aware. First the use of a revolver, minimising evidence at the scene. Then the careful selection of a place to dump the bike. Now a thorough dousing in sulphuric acid, effectively removing any possible traces of DNA. Seldom had he come across a job as meticulously planned as this.