The Price Of Darkness (38 page)

‘Yeah … ?’

With some reluctance Taylor described their retirement plans. The cash element of the Gullifant’s pension was going to pay off what they owed on the house with a bit to spare. They then planned to sell the house, invest the money in a little place in Spain, and live off the annuity plus the state pension.

‘It’s cheap, see, Spain. And nicer too. Quieter.’

‘But can’t you still do that?’

‘No way.’ He nodded in the direction of the stadium. ‘This new chairman wants to move the club somewhere else. That means they’ll tear the old ground down and build loads of houses, flats, whatever. With all that going on, no one in their right mind would want a house like this. It’s development again. Can’t bloody win, can you?’

Suttle said he was sorry. He found a card and handed it across. With the door open he turned to say goodbye but Taylor beckoned him back.

‘I don’t want you to think I’m moaning,’ he said. ‘There are blokes worse off than me, much worse off. Did that lass from the
News
mention Frank Greetham at all?’

Suttle shook his head. He couldn’t remember the name from Lizzie’s article. Taylor was nodding at the notebook in Suttle’s hand.

‘Write it down,’ he said. ‘Frank Greetham. Lovely man. Lovely, lovely bloke. Been with Gullifant’s all his working life.’

‘Where do I get hold of him?’

‘You don’t, son. That’s the whole point. He killed himself last month. I was going to give that Lizzie Hodson a ring but I never got round to it.’

 

Bazza had told Thom Pollard to make himself available. Winter found him in the locker room at the indoor tennis centre, a five-minute walk from Gunwharf. His hair still wet from the shower, he was pulling on a pair of tracksuit bottoms. Beside him, on the bench, was a list of names with pencilled notes beside each.

Winter glanced at it. In his late forties, Pollard had a reputation in the city for putting himself around. Fitter than most twenty-somethings, he made a precarious living by mixing tennis lessons with fashion shoots and occasional appearances in various TV soap operas. Teenage girls got silly about him, often finding themselves in competition with their mothers for his attentions. Winter had always liked him. He was wry and funny, with a reckless streak that had always appealed to Bazza.

Pollard consulted the list. His first pupils were due on court at a quarter to ten. There was a café upstairs. Winter had half an hour of his undivided attention. After that he’d have to queue up, like everyone else.

Winter bought two coffees. Pollard was deep in the sports pages of the
Daily Telegraph
. The morning run had put colour in his face.

‘This bloke Cesar …’

‘You met him at all?’ Pollard didn’t look up.

‘Never. So tell me.’

‘Big bloke. Handy too. Used to box a bit, years ago. Nearly turned pro, or that’s what he always says.’

Winter reached across and folded the newspaper. Pollard looked up, amused.

‘Baz says you’re on the payroll now.’

‘He’s right, son.’ Winter nodded at the paper. ‘So a bit of respect, eh?’

‘Good money?’

‘Not bad. Better than working my nuts off for the Men in Black.’

‘Yeah, I heard about that. You want to be careful of policemen. Some of them are nasty bastards. Bent too, if you believe everything you hear.’

Winter ignored him. Bazza had mentioned Pollard giving private lessons to Dobroslaw’s kids.

‘That’s right, I did, a couple of months back. One of them turned out to be good. The kid had real talent plus he wasn’t quite so much of a dickhead as most of them. There were days on court when he even listened to me. Shame, really. If he’d stuck at it, he might have got somewhere.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I took him to Barcelona. There’s a tennis school there. The standard’s really high. I turn up with a handful of kids, plus their mums, and we put them through three days’ intensive coaching. It’s just a taste of what they can expect if they want to be serious about the game but it sorts out the duffers - you know, the ones who’ve got an attitude problem.’

‘And Cesar’s boy?’

‘Was bloody good.’

‘So what was the problem?’

The café area was beginning to fill up. Pollard gestured Winter closer.

‘The deal in Barcelona was this. The mums bugger off to some fancy hotel and go shopping for a couple of days while I sort the kids out. The accommodation’s pretty rough but that’s all part of it. There were three kids and me. We were dossing down in a Portakabin, basically. The first night I’m trying to get to sleep but the kids are pissing themselves laughing. In the end I’ve had enough so I put the light on. Turns out they’ve got this electronic thing, hand-held, some kind of gizmo that gets you on to the Internet. And there they all are, perving on some porn site. Not the usual stuff but
really
heavy - women giving donkeys blow jobs, that kind of shit. Truly vile.’

Winter gazed at him. ‘How old were these kids?’

‘Eleven, twelve …’ Pollard scowled. ‘Much too young for donkeys.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I took the machine off them, told them to go to sleep. The machine belonged to Cesar’s kid. Next day I got on the phone and had a word with his mum, told her what had gone down. And you know what? She just fucking shrugged. Nothing she could do about it. Just gave him the thing back and let them get on with it. Kids will be kids.
Qué será …’

Outraged, Pollard had phoned Cesar. Within half a day the kid and his mum had been on a plane to Gatwick.

‘Did you see him afterwards? This Cesar?’

‘Yeah. He called me over to his place in Southampton. Believe me, mate, this bloke’s impressive. He lives like a king … big, big spread on the outskirts of Chilworth. Tennis court, swimming pool, stables, the lot. But he’s still strict, hard as nails with his kids. Maybe it’s the Catholic thing, Christ knows, but he thanked me for what I’d done and told me how he’d sorted the boy out, and I believed every word. Which is odd, really, isn’t it? Given where the money comes from?’

Winter nodded. Brodie had got more details from the D/I who was running her. Dobroslaw had a successful import/export business, all totally legit, but on the side he was thought to be buying Belarussian girls on forged documents from an agent in London. These girls were lodged, four to a house, in premises in Southampton. With each of them servicing ten punters a day, Dobroslaw was looking at a take of around twenty grand a week from each house. Naturally, there wasn’t a shred of proof to connect the Pole to any of this, but years of trying to nail Bazza on narcotics charges had taught Winter how money could buy the very best in terms of protection. The right financial advice, a clever brief, a series of offshore accounts, and you were home safe.

‘So the kid’s not playing tennis any more?’

‘Not to my knowledge. And that’s just one of the things he’s not doing. Like I say, the guy’s really old-fashioned. Won’t put up with any shit. Christ knows how he ever married that bimbo of a wife.’

‘Right.’ Winter glanced at his watch. ‘Did he ever mention jet skis at all?’

‘Jet skis?’ Pollard shook his head. ‘No. Why?’

Winter explained. The possibility of Cesar backing a big event drew a nod from Pollard.

‘He’d do that,’ he said at once. ‘That’s exactly what he’d do.’

Before it had all kicked off in Barcelona, Pollard had got to know Cesar’s wife a little. Like her husband, she was from Poland. The Polish community in Southampton, she’d said, was enormous, and there was a lot of pressure to get to the top of the pecking order. What spoke loudest, of course, was money but what mattered as well was profile. You had to be
seen
. You had to be
recognised
. And the quickest way to acquire a sprinkle or two of that kind of stardust was to buy it.

‘It’s true about immigrants,’ Pollard said. ‘They just try harder. All that acceptance stuff matters. They want to end up more English than the English, and if spending a couple of bob on some dickhead race round the Isle of Wight does it for them, then so much the better. Cesar wants to join the club. He’s got deep pockets. Because he’s a businessman he’ll call it an investment but actually it’s a lot more than that. Like I say, it
matters
to him.’

Winter smiled. Bazza, in his own way, was doing exactly the same thing. He remembered the garden at Sandown Road, the guests flocking round for the raffle, the endless supply of Krug, Marie’s extravagantly wrapped birthday presents heaped on a table in the lounge. The club, he thought. And all the countless benefits of membership.

‘That’s my lot.’ Pollard was eyeing three adolescents beside the drinks machine. They’d abandoned their rackets on the floor and were debating how many cans of Pepsi they could afford.

Pollard got to his feet, glancing at his watch. Then he picked up the paper.

‘You’re going to have dealings with Cesar?’

‘I expect so.’

‘Then watch yourself. He’s like all these alpha guys. Just hates to lose.’

 

Twenty-four hours of intense activity had failed to locate Dermott O’Keefe. Checks with the Education Department at Southampton Civic Centre confirmed that persistent truanting had brought him to the attention of the Youth Offending Team. Attempts to transfer him to a special school had come to nothing chiefly because no one could ever find the lad, but Suttle - at Faraday’s prompting - had turned his attention to Social Services, and in the shape of a guy dealing with vulnerable young people, he thought he might have raised a lead.

Faraday, unusually preoccupied, had just returned from Kingston Crescent. Suttle had typed up a brief intelligence report on the Gullifant’s collapse but Faraday scarcely glanced at it.

‘So what are Social Services saying?’

‘They want a meet, boss. The guy’s name is Rick Bellinger. He’s been carrying O’Keefe’s file.’

‘Does he know where he is?’

‘He says not. But he still thinks it’s worth getting together.’

‘OK.’ Faraday was unpacking the contents of his briefcase. ‘Let me know how you get on.’

 

Suttle drove to Southampton. Rick Bellinger worked from a big, airy office on the first floor in the Civic Centre. He was dressed for a summer rave - jeans, T-shirt, sleeveless leather jerkin - and his shoulder-length greying hair was in need of a wash. He hadn’t shaved for a while either and confessed the weekend couldn’t come too soon. The caseload lately, he said, had been crippling. Whatever else New Labour had achieved, it didn’t pay to be a kid anymore.

They talked in a small, bare interview room. A nest of fluffy toys and a Coldplay poster were the only concessions to informality.

‘I phoned the lad’s mother just now. Strictly speaking, she needs to sign a form for this to happen but she seemed quite happy so I’ll sort it out later. That OK with you?’

Suttle said fine. Dealing with kids, as he knew only too well, could be a nightmare. Bellinger looked like a refugee from the sixties. Guys that old sometimes took a more relaxed view of the paperwork.

O’Keefe’s file lay on the desk. Bellinger didn’t touch it. He wanted to know whether Suttle had ever met the lad. Suttle shook his head. If only.

‘He’s unusual,’ Bellinger said. ‘Most of the referrals we get, you can bet there’s trouble at home. Broken families, step-parents who can’t cope, various forms of substance abuse, domestic violence, whatever. Trouble’s like sand. It obeys the laws of gravity. It trickles down through all that shit and it’s the kids at the bottom of the pile who get dumped on.’

‘But this Dermott’s the oldest.’

‘Exactly. And that’s not where it ends either. I don’t know whether you’ve been round to the house at all but chaos would be a polite word. There are eight kids in that house and the old man’s out of it most of the time, but in a funny way the whole thing works. So for once we’re not talking a shit home life. Far from it.’

‘So where’s the problem?’

‘Money. They’re skint. Eight kids take a lot of looking after and I’m betting the old man’s booze bill is astronomical. We made sure they’re getting everything they’re entitled to but even so it’s really hand to mouth. Mum’s the one who holds it all together.’

Suttle was trying to reconcile this account with the version he’d heard earlier. According to Faraday, young Dermott’s mother had declared UDI. The fact that her oldest was breaking every law in the land didn’t appear to concern her in the least. No school. No driving licence. No insurance. Regular court appearances. Someone else’s £40K motor in the lock-up round the corner. Surely this was tolerance gone mad?

‘She’s overwhelmed,’ Bellinger said at once. ‘She’s just got too much on her hands. As far as she’s concerned, Dermott’s a good wee boy, well-intentioned, and the rest of it is none of her business.’

‘So why has Dermott gone off the rails?’

‘Well …’ Bellinger smiled, ‘… that’s just it. In a way, he hasn’t. If you analyse his behaviour, ask yourself why he’s done each of these things, then you start getting a pattern.’

Both court appearances, he said, were down to shoplifting. In both cases he’d pleaded guilty and flatly denied he’d gone shopping with a list that his mother or someone else had drawn up. But the fact remained that few fifteen-year-olds stuffed loo roll, bleach and soap powder under their anoraks. They just couldn’t be arsed.

‘So what does that tell you?’ asked Suttle.

‘It tells me that the boy cares, that he
contributes
. In some societies he’d get a medal for what he’s done.’

‘And school?’

‘Bored shitless, like more or less every other kid in the country. But bored shitless because as far as he’s concerned there’s no bloody prospect of learning anything. Listen to Dermott for half an hour and you start realising why kids get into university without knowing how to read and write properly. The only difference is that the Dermotts of this world aren’t prepared to put up with it. When school showed no sign of ever getting better, he walked.’