The Price Of Darkness (5 page)

‘Yes but …’ He frowned, struggling to find the right word. ‘
Change?
Is that all it is? You’re telling me you spend years and years trying to put the likes of Esme’s dad away and then suddenly, bang, you’re working for him? That’s just
a bit of a change
?’

Winter took his time answering. Finally he said the two jobs weren’t as wildly different, as totally incompatible, as most people might think. The best thief-takers could have made equally blinding careers as quality criminals. You needed focus. You needed cunning. You needed to dream up all kinds of ways of getting people into the deepest shit. Above all, you needed not to care about the human consequences of the job you did.

‘What you were
really
after,’ he said, ‘was a decent war record. You need to be putting blokes away on a regular basis. I took lots of scalps, hundreds of the fuckers. And you know how? By making friends with these people. You do that in pubs, in low-life caffs, in holding cells, and then - when the time is right - in interview. By then, if you know what you’re about, these people think you’re their best mate. Most of them are seriously fucked up. Either that or they’re plain inadequate. They like you. They trust you. They’re absolutely fucking positive you’ve got their very best interests at heart. And you know what you do next? You put an extra big smile on your face. And then you screw them.’

‘You make it sound like acting.’

‘That’s right. You play a part. It
is
acting. And the better you are, the more blokes you pot. I’ve done it most of my life. I’m an expert. Believe me.’

‘I do.’ Stuart fell silent for a moment. Then he glanced up at the mirror again. ‘Have you had this conversation with my father-in-law?’

‘Bazza, you mean?’ Winter met the eyes in the rear-view mirror, then lay back against the seat, staring up at the vanity light, letting the question settle in his aching head. ‘Yeah, several times. But you know what it is with Bazza? The bloke just never fucking listens.’

‘Should he?’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘
Should
he listen? Should he understand what a great actor you are? I mean let’s not piss around here. You’re family now. He’s let you close. I’m in the risk business. I do it every day of my working life. I know how to calibrate these things. For my money, Mackenzie’s wildly exposed.’

‘Thanks to me, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

Winter shrugged, fingered the stitching on the cold leather, admitted how odd the situation must seem to anyone with half a brain. But in truth, he said, the invitation had been Bazza’s. He’d made the running. He’d offered the deal, negotiated the terms, made an improvement here and there on Winter’s prompting. And now, for a sum approaching twice his annual CID salary, plus a windfall bonus or two, ex-D/C Paul Winter was on a trial contract. Depending on results, the arrangement might continue. If it fell apart, the consequences could be awkward.

‘How awkward?’

‘Very.’

‘We’re talking violence?’

‘We’re talking serious damage.’

‘To you?’

‘Oh yes. Big time.’

‘That sounds like blackmail.’

‘That’s your word, not mine.’

‘But am I close?’

Winter smiled, refusing to answer. They were back in the city by now, closing on the forest of cranes that badged the final stages of the new development at Gunwharf Quays.

‘Drop me at the gate here,’ Winter said suddenly. ‘I could do with the walk.’

 

After the warmth of Cambados, the night air felt chill. Winter trailed through Gunwharf, hauling his bag behind him, avoiding clusters of Portsea youth loudly debating which waterside bar to hit next. At the prices they charged here, he was amazed they could afford to drink midweek. No wonder volume crime was on the up again.

Winter lived in a third-floor apartment in Blake House, one of two waterside blocks that put a shine on the residential side of the Gunwharf development. For £550,000 he’d bought a view of the harbour, two en-suite bedrooms, a video entryphone and a state-of-the-art kitchen that still defied his attempts to make sense of the instruction manuals. Eighteen months after moving in, he’d yet to risk using the oven.

He dumped his bag in the master bedroom and wandered through to the living room. He’d left the big picture windows curtained against the sunshine, and now he drew them back with a flourish. If anything brightened his glummer moments it was this: the lights of Gosport across the water, the shadow of a big yacht ghosting through the harbour narrows, the faintest tootle of a trad jazz band aboard one of the charter boats that offered evenings afloat for anyone with lots of friends and a couple of grand to spare.

All his working life Winter had dreamed of a view like this. Every day it changed. Every day it offered something new, something different. He’d always regarded Pompey as theatre - the faces, the mischief, the ever-thicker tangle of plots and subplots - and now, thanks to the move into Gunwharf, he’d found himself a seat in the front row. This was a city with a pulse. From here you could almost reach out and touch it.

He stood by the window for a moment or two, waiting for the view to work its usual magic, but nothing happened. Four days on the Galician coast had been his second taste of life inside the bubble that was Bazza Mackenzie’s world. These were people he’d known for most of his professional career. As a working detective, he’d held their files on various jobs. He knew what they drank. The kind of women they fancied. The kind of madcap expeditions they still organised to the more remote Pompey away games. But this time he’d had to become one of them.

A couple of weeks back, once he’d agreed terms with Bazza, they’d insisted on including him on a weekend expedition to Middlesbrough. They’d flown up there on a chartered jet, half a dozen of them. Bazza had arranged transportation at the other end. Expecting a couple of hired Mercedes, Winter had stepped off the Learjet at Newcastle Airport to find himself looking at a Hummer, desert brown, tinted windows and a mounting for a heavy machine gun on the roof above the cabin. Bazza had insisted on driving the thing himself, tying Pompey colours to the whiplash aerial and ploughing the widest of furrows through the bank holiday traffic on the way to the ground.

Inside the Riverside stadium, they’d trooped upstairs to the hospitality box and settled in. By half-time, with Kanu on fire and Pompey ahead, they were calling for more Moët. By the end of the match, celebrating with a toot or two, they were arguing over which escort agency to call. Winter had ended up with a pale nineteen-year-old from Lithuania. She’d done her best under the circumstances but in the end he’d felt sorry for her. She’d shown him photos of her nipper back in Vilnius. She was a nice kid.

Winter turned away from the window. He’d never realised how useless money could be, how little - in the end - it really bought you. The trip up north had been a laugh, no expense spared, but flying back next day with a planeload of hungover middle-aged criminals, he’d started to wonder how you could ever survive a life like this. Limitless Moët. As much cocaine as you could handle. The girl of your choice. The finest restaurants. Plus the best seats in the casino afterwards. But who, in the end, cared a fuck about any of that?

Bazza, he now realised, didn’t. Winter had watched him carefully over those couple of days. He’d footed most of the bills and clearly enjoyed the chance to buy huge helpings of showboat anarchy, but when the Moët came round he barely touched it, and he’d even shaken his head at a second line of coke. No, what had really mattered was the fact that he could do it, that he could flaunt his wealth, because wealth was power and power was the currency that Bazza enjoyed spending most of all. In that sense, thought Winter, the entire trip, doubtless like others, had been yet another billboard for Bazza’s achievements, for the journey he’d made, for the distance he’d come since the 6.57 days. Not that he’d ever, for a second, forget about the football. The fact that Pompey had ended up screwing Middlesbrough 4-0 had put the biggest smile on his face.

Winter drifted into the kitchen in search of a couple of paracetamol, still faintly depressed, thinking again about what he’d heard about last night’s scene in the Spanish restaurant. Getting that pissed, that out of control, just wasn’t Bazza’s game, not any more. So maybe Stuart was right. Maybe Mark’s death really had shaken him. Winter found the tablets, then caught sight of the answerphone winking through the open door. Returning to the lounge, he bent to the machine. Bazza’s throaty rasp. What a surprise.

‘I need you up here first thing.’ He sounded impatient. ‘There’s a train at half six, gets to Waterloo around eight. I’ll be at Costa Coffee. OK?’

 

Faraday pushed the remains of his pasta aside to look at the photos again. Gabrielle had just printed them out.

‘You managed to find it OK?’ He recognised the distinctive shimmer of the mudflats beside Langstone Millpond. Gabrielle must have taken this first shot an hour or so before sunset. In the rich yellow light the mud had the consistency of warm chocolate.

‘
Bien sûr.
I found a map. Upstairs.’

‘But how did you know where to go?’

‘I looked on the Internet. I found a site. The man who makes this site, he was there yesterday and again this evening. He counted. I counted. Me? I won.’ She laughed, nodding at the photo. Against the sun, the birds had lost their whiteness but their sheer number was deeply impressive. Faraday began to count but quickly gave up.

‘You know what these are?’

‘
Oui
. In French we say
aigrettes
.’

‘Little egrets.’

‘The same,
d’accord.
So maybe
petites aigrettes.
’

‘So how many?’

‘I count two hundred and thirty-one. The man, he says two hundred and nine. He has the website. He has to write the figure. I say that makes him …’ she frowned. ‘…
prudent
?’

‘Cautious.’

‘
Oui. Mais c’est spectaculaire, n’est-ce-pas
?’

Faraday wasn’t sure whether she meant the photo or the birds themselves but either way it made no difference. Egrets were one of his all-time favourites, a slim, elegant, china-white bird, a member of the heron family. In twos and threes they could freeze him in mid-step. En masse, like this, and he wouldn’t have moved for hours.

‘You were lucky,’ he said. ‘And I’m bloody jealous.’

The last time he’d seen little egrets in these numbers was five or six years ago, on nearby Thorney Island. A colony of them had found a roost in a clump of trees behind the sea wall, and Faraday remembered the evening he’d ventured slowly closer, hugging the cover of the dyke until the dazzling whiteness of the trees had resolved itself into hundreds of individual birds. He described it now, the shuffle and mutter of the birds in the branches overhead, the way they made space for each other, the way that more and more of the colony returned from a day on the mudflats until every tree was
complet
. Later, he said, J-J had drawn a picture of the scene, each bird suspended like a Japanese paper lantern, impossibly decorative.

‘Your son? He saw them too?’

‘Of course. He was there with me.’

‘But the noise they make. Tonight …’ She gave a little bark, a small hard sound, then followed it with a
gullagulla-gulla
.
‘C’est comme ça?’

‘
Oui, absolument
.’ He was laughing.

‘You think it’s OK?
Authentique?
’

‘Definitely.’

‘
Et
J-J?’ She pronounced the J with a softness Faraday had always loved.

‘He’s deaf. I told you.’

‘I know. But the sound, the calls they make. He can’t ever hear this thing.
C’est dommage … non?
’

She was right. It was a very big pity. For the benefit of his deaf son Faraday had spent years and years trying to figure out ways of translating sound, rather than meaning, into sign language but had finally given up. J-J was simply missing one of the senses that gave depth and dimension to the world around him and there seemed no way to compensate for this loss. How do you describe the colour red to a blind man? It was impossible.

‘Here …’ Gabrielle had another shot, a close-up, four egrets pegged to a branch, each bird gazing out in a different direction. ‘Funny,
n’est-ce-pas
?’

Faraday reached for his plate. In his experience some individuals took to birding with an acuity that appeared to be entirely natural. They knew what to look for, taught themselves to remember details of plumage and flight, quickly absorbed the kind of knowledge that put a blur of movement through the binoculars or a perfectly framed moment of stillness into a wider context. How a sudden irruption of waxwings would indicate a failure of the berry crop in Scandinavia. How the presence of an exotic American visitor, like a yellow-billed cuckoo, might signal the presence of powerful frontal systems over the Atlantic on which the bird had hitched a lift.

Gabrielle was like this. To her, Faraday thought, birds were simply one more key to understanding the way that everything else hung together, a quest that appeared to have occupied most of her adult life. Maybe this gift of hers for catching and classifying the tiniest detail, something seasoned birders called jizz, had grown out of her career as an anthropologist. Maybe the study of man - his origins, his social habits, the way he organised for peace and war - led inexorably to the biggest picture of all.

‘You remember the Vendée?’ He stabbed at an olive.

‘
Oui.
’

‘Purple herons? Marsh harriers? Blue-headed yellow wagtails?’

‘
Oui.
And the
gentilhomme
in white.’ She pushed her chair back, stood briefly on one leg, her arms held out in front of her, her fingertips touching, in imitation of the white stork they’d seen. There were several breeding pairs supplied with specially built nesting platforms in the marshland south of Brouage, and they’d spent the best part of an afternoon watching this single specimen, utterly motionless, half-curtained by reeds, waiting to snap at a passing grasshopper with its magnificent bill.