The Price Of Darkness (43 page)

‘Forget it. I’ll talk to Glen in a minute. You and I need to lay hands on the CCTV footage. The stuff with the hoodie kid. You seized the tapes?’

‘Yes, sir. They’re in the lock-up.’

‘You’ve got a copy on VHS?’

‘DVD.’

‘Excellent.’ Faraday peered over her shoulder, looking for Suttle. ‘Phone Winter,’ he told him. ‘Make sure he’s still at home.’

 

He was. Faraday pressed the buzzer on the entryphone, stationed his face in front of the video camera, waited for the lock to release on the big main door. Dawn Ellis, who’d never been to Blake House before, wanted to know where Winter had raised the money.

‘He went half shares with that woman of his.’ Faraday was still eyeing the camera. ‘You remember Maddox?’

Ellis nodded. Maddox, a couple of years back, had been the talk of the upstairs bar at Kingston Crescent. Why on earth was an intelligent, well-connected, twenty-something hooker shacked up with the likes of Paul Winter? The answer, it turned out, was as complex as everything else in Winter’s life, but by the time the relationship ended he’d won himself a brand new address.

‘And he’s really working for Mackenzie now?’ They were waiting for the lift.

‘As far as anyone knows, yes.’

‘Our loss then.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Winter was waiting for them upstairs, the door to his flat open, the smell of burned toast in the air. The sight of Dawn Ellis put a big smile on his face. He gave her a buttery kiss.

‘A deputation,’ he said. ‘Either that or you’ve come to fucking arrest me.’

Ellis was touring the big living room. She’d always had a soft spot for Winter, recognising just how effective he could be in situations most of her colleagues would have dismissed as impossible, and years of working alongside him had taught her a great deal. She paused beside the window.

‘These curtains are crap, Paul,’ she said. ‘And so is the colour scheme. You need a good woman in your life. Magnolia’s for wimps.’

‘Help yourself, love. Come round any time. I’ll give you a paintbrush.’

Faraday was on his knees beside the DVD player. Ellis gave him the disc and he posted it into the machine.

‘What’s all this then?’ Winter was intrigued.

Faraday didn’t answer. He began to skip through the disc until he found the first of the traffic sequences that showed the Escort on the night of the murder. En route into Port Solent, the camera had only offered a rear view of the Escort. Hours later, leaving, there was a glimpse of two people in the front.

‘There.’ Faraday froze the image and pointed at the smudge behind the wheel. ‘Who’s that?’

Winter peered at the screen. The resolution was terrible.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ he said.

‘OK.’ Faraday inched forward. The next sequence came from one of the motorway cameras, the quality infinitely better. Winter was on his knees now and Ellis had pulled the curtains to shut out the light. ‘Same question,’ Faraday said. ‘We’re interested in the driver.’

This time the quality of the image was infinitely better but both visors in the front of the Escort were down and only the lower half of each face was visible.

‘Sorry.’ Winter shook his head. ‘Do I get a clue at all?’

‘Afraid not. How about this one?’

Faraday asked Ellis to find the sequence from the car park at Port Solent. This had been recorded earlier on the Monday night, before the murder took place, but had come from a totally different control room.

Winter watched the two figures walking across the near-empty car park. The camera was mounted high, probably on a pole of some kind, and the angle only offered a quarter-profile from behind, but something caught Winter’s attention. Ellis froze the action as the two figures paused beside the Escort. At this distance details were indistinct.

‘You’re asking me about the big guy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Play it again.’

Ellis did so. Then a third time. Finally Winter nodded. The name was fresh in his mind.

‘Charlie Freeth,’ he said. ‘Exactly the same build. Exactly that same slight roll when he walked. Yeah?’ He looked up at Faraday. ‘You spotted it too?’

 

Faraday was back at Fareham within the half-hour. He’d been tempted to accept Winter’s offer of breakfast, mindful of Willard’s instructions to sound the ex-D/C out, but he knew this wasn’t the moment. Suttle was waiting in the office. He had an address for Freeth’s partner but a couple of calls had failed to raise her.

‘She’ll be at school, boss. They normally knock off around three.’ He paused. Ellis had just left the DVD on his desk. ‘You showed this to Winter?’

‘We did.’

‘And?’

‘He thinks it could be Charlie Freeth.’

‘Shit.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So where does that take us?’

Suttle pushed his chair back from the desk, stretched his legs. He’d rarely met anyone as unemotional as Faraday but Suttle was aware that even the D/I was finding it difficult to mask his gathering excitement. At last, after two weeks of largely fruitless effort, here was something that smacked of a breakthrough.

‘Think about it, Jimmy. Here’s a guy who’s forensically aware. He knows what we look for at a crime scene. He knows the mistakes people make. No wonder he didn’t put a foot wrong.’

Suttle was grinning. Faraday had never called him Jimmy before.

‘Is Winter positive about the ID?’

‘No. The image isn’t good enough. But he’s three quarters there so just think it through. It’s odds-on that the kid in the hoodie is O’Keefe. It’s definitely O’Keefe who comes back on the Wednesday night to pick up the car. Why? Because he’s lifted the keys the night Mallinder got shot. That means he was inside the house. And
that
means Freeth was with him. Fits, doesn’t it? Game, set and match?’

‘Sure. Except this guy’s
really
careful, so careful he doesn’t leave a single clue. So if he’s that bloody good, what’s he doing letting O’Keefe come back for the car?’

‘Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe O’Keefe just spotted the keys on the Monday night and lifted them. His family’s living on bugger all. A car like that buys a lot of groceries.’

Suttle was still thinking, still trying to test Faraday’s thesis, still trying to slot the pieces together.

‘OK, boss. Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say it was Freeth in the Escort, Freeth in the house. Why on earth would he want to kill Mallinder?’

Faraday eyed him for a moment.

‘Good question,’ he said.

 

Lunch was Misty Gallagher’s idea. She’d phoned Winter mid-morning. She had some shopping to do in Gunwharf. A Chinese at the Water Margin would make a nice break. Would Winter fancy joining her?

Winter agreed at once. Misty, like Bazza, never did anything without at least three ulterior motives. She obviously had something she needed to talk about. Just what was on her mind?

‘It’s Baz,’ she said at once. She’d arrived late, heaping her bags round her chair and calling for a Bacardi and Coke. ‘He turned up last night. I’ve never seen him like that before.’

‘Like what before?’

‘So upset. He was practically frothing at the mouth.’

It had been late, she said. She was still downstairs, playing online poker. She was about to call a guy in Vancouver when she heard a thump at the back door.

‘That time of night it could only have been Baz, but he’s got a key so I was starting to wonder. Then he obviously found it because the next thing I know he’s walking mud all over my new carpet and telling me everything’s turned to ratshit.’

‘How come?’

‘Some bloke in Southampton. Polish guy. He called him Caesar but that doesn’t sound right. You know about any of this, Paul?’

Winter told her what had happened.

‘And is that all? A little tiff about this
jet ski
race?’

‘Baz thinks that’s plenty. To be fair, Mist, it’s not about the race any more, at least I don’t think it is. He’s just got everything out of proportion. You know the way he is. All he’s got to do is
imagine
an insult. Maybe he needs a regular supply of enemies. Maybe that’s it.’

‘So there wasn’t an insult?’

‘The guy patronised him. I was there. I saw it happen. But it was no big deal. To tell you the truth, we should never have gone in the first place. Once we’d got past the door, we were doomed. The guy ate us alive. And we made it easy for him.’

‘We?’

‘Baz especially. He thinks the whole world’s like Pompey. It isn’t. You know that, I know that, but if it doesn’t suit Baz to listen, then he won’t. It’s his way or nothing and if you have a ruck about it then he’ll just batter you. I’m not talking violence. It needn’t be physical. He’ll just tell you the way he thinks it is. Twenty million quid says he must have done
something
right so maybe we’re all out of order even talking about it.’

‘That’s crap, love. Of course we can talk about it.’

‘Sure, but what do we
do
?’

‘I don’t know. Last night I tried everything. Believe me, Paul, I know that man inside out. Every nook, every cranny. He’s a pussycat, really. Tickle him in the right places and he’ll roll over for you. I’ve done it a thousand times, never failed.’

‘And last night?’

‘Last night was hopeless. It took me a while to get there, to realise, but the truth is he’s bloody unhappy. That’s not Baz at all. Reckless, yes. Daft sometimes, definitely. But underneath he’s a pretty well-adjusted guy. Something’s got to him and I don’t know what it is.’

‘Mark?’

‘Maybe. But they were never really close. You know that.’

‘What then?’

‘I haven’t a clue. That’s the whole point. Except …’

‘Except what?’

‘He mentioned a woman he seems to have taken on. In fact he mentioned her twice. Brodie?’

Winter nodded. Brodie was a media agent, he explained. Bazza’s passport to the world of TV deals and five-page spreads in
Hello!
magazine.

‘What’s she like?’

‘Very pretty. He fancies her, Mist. In fact he’s installed her at the Trafalgar. She’s got an office of her own in the basement.’

‘And a bedroom upstairs? Surprise me.’

‘I couldn’t, Mist. You know the bloke he is. What he wants, he gets.’

‘And she’s come across? Be honest. Pretend I don’t care.’

‘I doubt it. I think she’s too canny for that.’

‘So she’s giving him the bum’s rush? Only that might not be a great career move.’

‘I don’t think career move would matter to her. The truth is Bazza’s out of his depth with these people. Telly, the media, even the business with the Pole over in Southampton - it’s a different world. Bazza doesn’t speak the language. And that pisses him off.’

Misty was still interested in Brodie.

‘He thinks there’s something not quite right about her. He told me that.’

‘What does he mean?’

‘I’ve no idea. That’s why I’m asking you, Paul.’

‘Maybe he thinks she’s a dyke.’

‘No, love. That’s not what he thinks.’

‘What then?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I can’t. Because I don’t know.’

‘Really?’ She reached for his hand, gave it a little squeeze ‘Baz can smell Filth. He’s got a real nose for it. Have you ever noticed?’

‘You’re telling me …?’ Winter did his best to look shocked.

‘I’m asking you, Paul. Asking you.’

‘Then I don’t know.’

‘But you think she might be?’

‘Anything’s possible.’

‘And if she was, would you ask yourself why you’d never noticed? The famous Paul Winter? Eyes like a hawk?’

Very slowly it was beginning to dawn on Winter that he wasn’t talking to Misty Gallagher at all.

‘He sent you, didn’t he?’

‘Who, love?’

‘Bazza. He turned up last night and said his piece, and told you to pass it on.’

She gazed at him a moment, then shook her head. ‘He didn’t even have to, love. Like I said, we know each other inside out. I don’t even have to guess anymore. I
know
.’

‘Know what?’

‘Know what to do. You’re right, though. He fancies the knickers off this woman and being Bazza he’s honest enough to treat me to the details. He’s been listening in to a couple of her calls. Why? Because he wants to know more about her private life, who she’s shagging, how often, what turns her on, all the usual crap. But what he hears makes him very, very uneasy. And just a little bit pissed off.’

‘He thinks she’s undercover?’

‘He thinks she might be. And that, as you can imagine, Paul, is more than enough.’

‘For what, Mist?’

‘I’ve no idea, love. It’s just a word in your ear.’ She bent towards him, cupping his big face in her hands. Then she reached for the menu. ‘Shall we order?’

 

By mid-afternoon Suttle found himself looking at Charlie Freeth’s service record. He’d talked to the D/I in charge of Human Resources, keeping details to a minimum. Freeth had come to
Polygon
’s attention with regard to certain events. D/I Faraday, as SIO, needed a feel for the career this man had made for himself. Within the hour, on the promise that Faraday would sign the accompanying Data Protection form, a twenty-six-page file arrived by e-mail.

Suttle hurried through it, looking for anything that might add to the profile he was trying to build. Freeth had joined up at the age of twenty-three. Within four years he’d finished his CID apprenticeship and was serving on division at Portsmouth North.

Suttle sped on, reading quickly through Freeth’s annual assessments. His performance had won cautious applause from a series of D/Is. Freeth, wrote one, had ‘an unusual empathy with certain kinds of offenders’, a kinship which seemed to bear out exactly what Suttle had learned last night.
He was a good listener,
Winter had said.
He knew exactly which buttons to press.
Suttle smiled, his eye caught by another plaudit, more barbed this time. D/C Freeth, in the opinion of a different D/I, ‘sometimes needed to be aware of the boundaries between sociology and the discharge of his professional responsibilities’. What exactly did that mean? Had Freeth strayed too far from the path beaten by countless fellow detectives? Had he put social theory in front of hard-earned experience? Had he, in short, gone soft?