The Price Of Darkness (4 page)

‘Shit, mush, what the fuck are you about?’ Mackenzie hopped around, rubbing his leg.

Winter muttered an apology. Mackenzie was with his daughter, Esme. Esme’s husband had been waiting for the best part of an hour. The three of them walked across the concourse towards the exit to the car park, Winter in pursuit. No one bothered with introductions, and it wasn’t until Winter was sitting in the back of the big Volvo estate, mopping the sweat from his face, that he was any the wiser. Mackenzie had disappeared.

‘My name’s Stuart.’ Esme’s husband was a tall, bulky man, in jeans and a new-looking suede jacket. He half-turned in the driving seat, offering a perfunctory handshake. ‘My wife says you’re a mate of her dad’s.’

‘That’s right. Me and Bazza go back a while.’

‘Behave himself, did he?’

‘Good as gold.’ Winter’s attention had been caught by an African family trying to wrestle a fridge into the back of a rusting Mondeo. Christ knows where the seven kids would go. ‘You know something?’ He said to Stuart. ‘This country’s fucked.’

Stuart ignored the comment. By now, he was talking to Esme. He wanted to know more about some incident they’d already discussed over the phone. Last night, Winter thought. In the restaurant.

‘Did you manage to square it with the management in the end?’ Stuart was looking for the parking ticket.

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I thought it was just a question of money at first. I went round this morning and gave them a couple of thousand, but then I realised it was more than that. They wanted an apology. I suppose it’s pride. Dad sussed that at once.’

‘And?’

‘
No problema.
He said he was sorry, really sorry, and they said they understood - difficult time and all that - and they ended up having a couple of brandies on it, which is ironic really because that’s pretty much where it all kicked off last night.’ She laughed, reaching for her seat belt. ‘They even gave me half the money back, said two grand was way over the top for that amount of damage. Bit of a result really …’ She glanced behind her. ‘Eh, Paul?’

Winter grunted. He hadn’t been there in the restaurant himself but one of Mackenzie’s younger lieutenants had given him chapter and verse over breakfast this morning. Bazza, he said, had taken offence at something a bloke at another table had apparently said. This was a bit of a mystery because the guy was a local and Bazza didn’t speak a word of Spanish, but nothing got in Bazza’s way in that kind of mood and in the end, when everyone else piled in, it had all got out of hand. Later, back at the hotel, Bazza had dismissed the whole incident. The restaurant had been dead, he’d said, and he’d had more than enough of death for one day. What the place needed was a spot of entertainment and he’d been happy to oblige. Shame these people had no sense of humour.

‘Where’s he off to now?’ Winter wanted to know.

‘London. That’s why he left his car here.’

‘Business?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

They left the airport and joined the motorway. As the Volvo headed south, Winter took advantage of the empty back seat, his legs stretched out, his eyes closed, listening to the murmur of conversation in the front.

Esme was Mackenzie’s only daughter. Winter had known of her existence since the early eighties. By then Bazza had become a target for the city’s Drug Squad, dealing recreational narcotics with enough success to catch a sniff or two of the serious money. He’d binned his job in an estate agency and set about turning the city’s appetite for amphetamines, Ecstasy and quality marijuana into the beginnings of a properly organised business. In this enterprise, he’d had the enthusiastic support of a bunch of mates from the legendary 6.57 crew, Pompey’s army of soccer hooligans, and being Bazza he’d felt the need to add a bit of social tone in the shape of a leggy, well-connected high school dropout called Marie.

Esme had appeared within a year, by which time Bazza had moved on, but over the following decade Pompey’s apprentice drug baron had warmed to the notion of fatherhood and Esme had celebrated her fourteenth birthday by attending a raucous gathering at the local Register Office where her parents pledged each other their undying love.

By now, thanks to the cocaine trade, Bazza was a wealthy man, and by the time Esme herself got married - barely three years ago - he’d acquired a circle of friends from every corner of the city’s establishment. The wedding had taken place at the Cathedral in Old Portsmouth and a handful of the photos taken afterwards had found their way onto the noticeboard in the upstairs bar at the Kingston Crescent nick.

Give or take minor convictions for assault and affray, no detective had ever managed to lay a hand on Mackenzie, and by now - especially amongst the older hands - there was a rueful acceptance that he’d become too successful, too armour-clad, to take down. Criminals as wealthy as Bazza could afford to hire the very best advice from white-collar professionals who’d keep him at arm’s length from the law, and there in the Kingston Crescent bar was the living proof of the immunity he’d so cannily bought himself.

Winter smiled at the memory. The line of beaming faces had included three solicitors, a couple of accountants, two members of the Pompey Premiership team, an architect who’d made a fortune in Dubai, a prominent local journalist, a handful of minor TV celebs, as well as an assortment of builders, publicans and shaven-headed men of leisure who couldn’t wait to get stuck into Bazza’s limitless supply of Krug. Coupled with the reception at the Royal Trafalgar, Bazza’s own seafront hotel, the day had been a kind of coronation. After twenty busy years, he’d become the undisputed king of the city.

An hour into the journey, Winter felt a tap on his knee. It was Esme. Stuart had asked him a question.

‘What about?’ Winter struggled upright, rubbing his face. He wasn’t certain but he thought he sensed a headache coming on.

‘Bazza. Tonight. Back at the airport. He just seemed different, that’s all.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. Definitely. My wife here tells me he’s taken it pretty badly.’

‘About Mark, you mean?’

Winter’s eyes found the rear-view mirror. Stuart was watching him carefully.

‘Of course. It’s not every day you lose someone you grew up with. Not at that age.’

‘Sure, Stu, but you’ve got to be realistic. The two of them were virtual strangers, totally different personalities, chalk and cheese. OK, they shared the same surname, but Mark found it hard sometimes, having to play the elder brother.’

‘Really?’ Stuart sounded surprised.

‘Yeah. Mark and Bazza were always falling out. Back in the early days they shared a dossy old flat in Southsea, just off Goldsmith Avenue, up near the football ground. In fact there were four of them in there - Mark, two of his mates, and Bazza. Mark was on the building sites, earning good money, and his mates were in the same game. Baz had binned school and was flogging crap houses for some toerag estate agent at that point, brilliant at it he was. In fact that’s how he met Marie. Her dad was an architect, had some connection to the business.’

‘Is that right?’ Esme had turned in her seat. She sounded slightly shocked.

‘Yeah. Baz never fancied the tools. Getting pissed on in the rain was never his idea of a good day out. Job for inbreds, he used to say. That was the thing about Baz though, even then. Number one, he was absolutely sure he was always in the right. Number two, he never kept his opinions to himself. It used to drive Mark mad. “Titch” he used to call him.’

‘Who?’

‘Bazza. Your dad. The short-arse. He ignored it, of course, like he ignores more or less everything else in life unless it turns a profit. That’s why he’s been so successful. But that’s the secret, isn’t it? It was the same in my game. The bloke who kept his eye on the ball was the bloke who got on the scoresheet. Regardless of what everyone else might be saying.’

Stuart’s soft laughter brought the conversation to a halt for a moment. He glanced across at Esme, then up at the mirror again.

‘So how come you know all this? About the flat and everything?’

‘Because we busted them. Bazza was ambitious, even then. Plus he’d upset people. In that kind of situation it’s easy to squeeze people for a cough or two. One Sunday morning I had three blokes in the holding cells on possession charges,
three
of them, and they were all dying to stitch Baz up. We had an auction in the end and the scrote I was silly enough to believe put Bazza alongside a couple of thousand Ecstasy tabs. The bloke said he’d bought them in Amsterdam, then shipped them home on the ferry. That kind of weight, we were bound to knock a few doors down.’

‘You did Mark’s flat?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing. Or not much, anyway. A bit of weed, a couple of tabs of speed, but all of it recreational. We tore the place apart, trying to stand the intelligence up. Shame really. Mark had just redecorated.’

‘You pulled them all in?’

‘Of course. Mark was outraged and his two mates weren’t too happy, either.’

‘What about Bazza?’

‘He was clever. The rest of them used the duty brief but he phoned for another solicitor, someone he’d met through the estate agency. This guy was shit hot, ran rings round us. Mid-twenties, he was, mad on football, used to guest in Bazza’s team when they were so far ahead of the rest of the league they could afford to drop a point or two. Fact was, we had nothing on Bazza except the whisper from the shitbag grass, and this brief knew it. It all came down to the passport in the end. Bazza had stuffed the ferry tickets and an Amsterdam hotel receipt in the back, and there was a Dover entry stamp bang on the date we got off the bloke in the holding cell. Naturally we challenged him and you know what he said? He swore blind he’d gone to Holland to buy tulips for his new girlfriend.’

‘Was that my mum?’ It was Esme.

‘Yeah. Before you were born.’

‘She hates tulips.’

‘Exactly. Baz was winding us up. Not just us, but Mark too. They threw Baz out after that little episode, made him find a place of his own. Wise bloody move, says me.’

‘And this solicitor?’ Stuart again. ‘He’s still around?’

‘No. He went to London and made his fortune. You’ll see his name in the crime reports sometimes, exactly the same MO. Get alongside the quality criminals and help them to a bigger fortune. Down here he’d have got the same result with Bazza but it would have taken a bit longer. A young bloke like that, he was impatient. And who can blame him, eh? In the end it’s just money, whichever way you cut it.’

Winter chuckled, gazing out at the blackness of the night, waiting for a response that never came. Finally, he caught a murmur from Esme. She wanted her husband to drop her at home before he ran Winter back to Portsmouth. She was tired. She’d had enough of travelling and she needed to check that the live-in nanny hadn’t done anything vile while they’d been away.

 

Bazza’s daughter lived on a seven-acre spread on a flank of the Meon Valley. Winter caught a glimpse of a sprawling hacienda-style confection in white stucco and black wrought iron as the Volvo purred up the drive. Two double garages formed a right angle at one end, and there was a line of trellis around a swimming pool at the other. A child’s red and yellow tractor lay abandoned outside the front door and there were lights on in three rooms upstairs.

‘Slut.’ Esme got out. Without a backward glance, she walked to the door, unlocked it and disappeared inside. Moments later the lights upstairs went out. Then the front door slammed shut, leaving Stuart and Winter alone in the darkness.

‘She’s knackered,’ Stuart said. ‘You can always tell.’

They set off again. For miles, as they sped down the Meon Valley, Winter was glad of the silence in the car. Then, as the lights of the city appeared, he stirred. He wanted to know why Esme had never used her law qualifications. Bazza had put her through years of university, followed by a pupillage at a leading barristers’ chambers just off the Strand, but to Winter’s knowledge Esme had never set foot in court to plead a case of her own. So what had happened?

‘Me.’ Stuart didn’t elaborate.

‘And the kids?’

‘Yeah. She still wants four. I say three’s plenty.’

‘And she’s no regrets … you know … about a career?’

‘Not in the way you’d expect, no. The kids were a handful, and I think that surprised her, but we’ve got the nanny now, and the horses, and that seems to have done the trick. Most days she’s like a pig in shit, can’t get enough of all that country air. She might be a bit arsey tonight, but that’ll pass.’

‘And you?’

‘I earn the money.’

‘I meant liking the countryside.’

‘It’s fine. Buy that amount of land and no one really bothers you.’

Winter nodded. He felt like a taxi fare in the back. No harm in that.

‘You’re in the City, right?’

‘Canary Wharf. But it’s the same thing.’

‘Investment banking?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like it?’

‘Love it. Most days.’

‘American firm?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded, his eyes still on the road. ‘Tell me something … a guy like you, given what you’ve done with most of your life, all this must be pretty strange, musn’t it?’

‘All what exactly?’

‘Coming in with Mackenzie. Turning your back on the rest of it.’

‘It wasn’t me who turned my back. They sacked me.’

‘Sure, but we’re talking a driving offence, aren’t we?’

‘I was three times over the limit. The people I worked for didn’t even give me a hearing. Sometimes I think they were just waiting for the right excuse.’

‘You sound bitter.’

‘I am. Or I was. But you learn pretty fast that there’s no percentage in all that bitterness bollocks. You’ve got to get on with it. You’ve got to get up in the morning. You’ve got to earn a living, for fuck’s sake. If you want the truth, Stuart, I now regard it as a career decision. Why? Because there comes a time in your life when you know you’re due for a change.’