The Price Of Darkness (51 page)

It was a neat enough theory, and Bazza was certainly devious enough to have dreamed it up, but something told Winter it didn’t hold water. For one thing he’d never have shared Misty with a working copper. And for another Winter himself was a reasonable judge of whether people were being sincere or not. Bazza liked him. There was a kinship between them that boiled down to something bigger than self-interest. In many respects, to Winter’s amusement, they had a great deal in common.

So what else might explain a minibus full of naked Russian slappers in the middle of Southampton? Winter’s favourite theory, the more he thought about it, was a dickhead piece of freelance mischief from Brett West. He’d been there in Sandown Road the night Bazza had summoned his council of war. He’d seen his boss ranting about the Pole, demanding redress, insisting on a settling of accounts. And because Westie was a bit literal about these kind of things, taking Bazza at his word, he’d decided to seize the initiative himself. Nothing would please Bazza more, he might have told himself, than a full-page story from a Scummer rag in his scrapbook.

Winter lay back, closing his eyes, the warmth of the Scotch easing some of the pain. If he was right about Westie, then phoning Bazza would be the obvious course of action. Westie would get bollocked for acting out of turn, a thought which put a smile on Winter’s face, but then Bazza was more than likely to take offence again at the Pole’s lack of respect. He’d sent Winter across to Southampton in good faith. They had business to discuss. But instead of listening to Winter’s proposals his newly recruited lieutenant had been subjected to a severe slapping. From Bazza’s point of view this would be totally out of order, and even Winter himself, the victim, would have absolutely no say in what followed. Bazza would go to war and - irony of ironies - the likes of Willard would probably end up with the result they’d intended all along.

That, as Winter knew only too well, couldn’t happen. Not if he was to make anything worthwhile of this new life of his. He was swallowing the rest of the Scotch, resigned to seeing this thing through by himself, when his mobile began to ring.

Caller ID was a blur. He put the mobe to his ear. Faraday.

‘Bastard day,’ he said at once. ‘And it’s bloody late.’

‘Come round,’ Winter replied. ‘If you want to know about bastard days.’

 

Faraday was buzzing at the main entrance downstairs within half an hour. Winter limped slowly to the video entryphone in the hall. He opened his own front door and found his way to the bathroom. He was still swallowing four ibuprofen when Faraday appeared in the hall. One look at Winter’s face told him everything. A truly bastard day.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘Bit of an accident, boss.’ Winter had trouble getting the words out. His tongue felt thick. Nothing worked properly.

‘Accident my arse. Who did that?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Mackenzie?’

‘No.’

‘Would you tell me if it was?’

‘No. But it wasn’t. Believe me.’

‘Someone associated with Mackenzie?’

‘Wrong again. It’s a learning experience, boss. Thick old bastard like me, these things happen.’

‘Learning experience?’ He offered Winter a shoulder, then walked him slowly into the lounge. When he suggested a detour to the bathroom to clean up his face, Winter shook his head, sparking a thick wave of nausea.

‘There, boss.’ Winter was looking down at the sofa. ‘Gently, though, eh? You want a drink?’ He nodded vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Help yourself.’

With Winter settled on the sofa, Faraday found himself a can of Stella.

‘You want to talk about it?’ He tore off the ring-pull and took a deep swallow.

‘This?’ Winter’s fingers briefly touched his swollen face. ‘No, I don’t. You do the talking, boss. I bet it’s Willard, isn’t it? Put you up to this?’

‘Yes.’ Faraday saw no point in denying it.

‘And what did he say?’

‘He asked me to find out what you were up to. Not in those words exactly but that’s what he meant.’

‘Right … Fair question.’

‘So?’

‘So?’ Winter managed to summon the beginnings of a grin, then shrugged, ‘Fuck knows,’ he said at last. ‘I used to be a copper, once. But I think he knows that.’

‘He does. I think he’s more interested in now. You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to, in fact I’d prefer it if you didn’t, but I get the impression he thinks you’re a bit …’ Faraday frowned ‘… out of control.’

‘Then he’d be wrong. This is me, boss. This is who I am.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘You make a decision. Then you live with the consequences. ’

‘I don’t doubt that. Not for a moment. He just needs to know what the decision was. If it’s of any interest, he thinks you were out of your head the last time he talked to you.’

‘Quite the reverse, boss. He happened to catch me at the perfect moment.’

‘And what did you say.’

‘I told him to fuck off. Or that’s what it boiled down to.’

‘And you meant it?’

‘Every word.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’d let me down. Him and someone else. You know a D/I called Gale Parsons? Covert Ops?’ Faraday nodded. ‘I thought she was a clown to begin with. Then I thought she was incompetent. But in the end it turned out a whole lot worse. Like everyone else in the job, she just covers her arse. Get any kind of result for her and I’d end up in fucking New Zealand. How’s that for incentivisation? ’ He groped blindly for the bottle. ‘Maybe I got it right first time. Maybe she
is
a clown. Either way, though, all that bollocks is history. New life, boss.’ He gestured at his face again. ‘New prospects.’

Haltingly he told Faraday about the fuck-up over the Devon and Cornwall cocaine seizure. The stuff had come in from Cambados, two kilos of it, and no one had thought to warn Winter. As a result, he said, he’d been lucky not to have been hurt a whole lot earlier.

‘And I mean hurt, boss. Really hurt. Not this. Not the way I am now.’

‘So you’ve binned the job? For sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘To work for Mackenzie?’

‘Yeah. Does that sound odd to you? Be honest.’

Faraday took his time. He’d left the Bridewell nearly an hour ago. He’d seldom felt so empty, so exhausted, so utterly bereft of ideas.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t.’

WEDNESDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2006.
07.12

 

Faraday awoke to a kiss. Gabrielle had curled herself around him, one leg flung over his belly, the moistness of her lips anointing the soft pockets of skin beneath his eyes. Now her busy tongue was exploring elsewhere.

Aroused, Faraday let her straddle him. Still half-asleep, he lay motionless, vaguely wondering whether the favour was his or hers. Then he was back in the interview suite again, watching Yates and Ellis on the video link getting absolutely nowhere.

Minutes later, his eyes closed, he felt the warmth of Gabrielle’s breath on his ear.

She was right. In a couple of weeks she’d be back in Chartres.

‘So?’ He opened one eye.

‘Maybe we can take a break. Go somewhere nice. You and me.’

‘Like now?’

Faraday stared up at her, trying to mask his disbelief. After all the time they’d spent together, hadn’t she understood anything about a copper’s life? Wasn’t she aware of the difficulty - the sheer impossibility - of trying to build a case, muster evidence, trap a man into a confession? And afterwards, once charges had been laid, hadn’t she realised the sheer weight of paperwork on which a conviction would depend?

For a second or two, while she waited for an answer, he toyed with putting all this into words, with just getting a little of the torment and frustration off his chest, but then he saw the expression on her face, an almost child-like disappointment, and instead he’d rolled over, closing his eyes again, too weary to bother with an explanation. Life, in the shape of
Billhook
, was ganging up on him. He had a killer under lock and key and absolutely no way of proving his guilt. So how, in God’s name, was a holiday supposed to help?

Moments later, without a word, Gabrielle got out of bed. Faraday heard her soft footsteps cross the wooden floor, then the rustle of clothing as she quickly got dressed. He caught more footsteps, down the stairs this time, then the squeak of the lock of the front door as she left the house.

Faraday, up on one elbow now, was tempted to go to the bedroom window, to apologise, to tell her that somehow he’d find the time to fit in a couple of days away, but in his heart he knew it was hopeless. Gabrielle was the best thing that had happened to him in years. For a while he’d believed he could share his life with this wonderful nomad, that there’d be a way, but now he recognised the size of the gulf between them. The last person Gabrielle needed was a grouchy, morose, bad-tempered detective several months short of fifty. The truth was that the job, in the shape of Charlie Freeth, was robbing him of everything. Even hope.

Half an hour later, sitting at the kitchen table, Faraday did his best to temper a growing sense that events were slipping out of control. A night in the cells might soften a little of Freeth’s arrogance. The two D/Cs in his Toyota might turn up something in Fishguard. Even this late in the day, with the PACE clock ticking, someone else on the
Billhook
squad might stumble over a promising lead. In this situation anything would be welcome, anything that would prevent him from having to release a man he knew to be guilty. That single fact, the near-certainty of Freeth walking free, had assumed an importance he’d rarely accorded to anything else in his professional life.

But why Freeth? And why now? He didn’t know. Maybe it was because the man was an ex-copper. Maybe it was because he was demonstrating so clearly the real limitations of the investigative process. Think through the crime you wanted to commit. Pay scrupulous attention to detail. And there wouldn’t be a detective in the world who could lay a finger on you. That’s how tough people like Freeth could make this job of his, and the knowledge of his own helplessness simply deepened his gloom still further.

Could it get any worse? He knew it could. He thought of Winter, with his wrecked face and his broken teeth. Here was a detective unlike any other. He’d won countless victories, taken scalps by the hundred, potted decent villains with an artful nonchalance he’d made uniquely his own.

Faraday himself had certainly had his share of run-ins with Winter. He’d been frequently impossible to manage and had always offered the most elusive of moving targets. His open contempt for the bright new face of police work - transparency, partnership, delivery - had won him few friends in the upper levels of the hierarchy and his cavalier disregard for the rules had driven everyone else mad. But there was a germ of something profoundly reassuring inside Winter, a candle that twenty-plus years in the job had never been able to snuff out. For all his bent little ways, he’d always recognised the difference between right and wrong, between the good guys and the bad. That was a given. That was something on which you could depend. Until last night.

Shocked by the sight of the man, saddened by what he’d had to say, Faraday had taken the long route home to the Bargemaster’s House, parking briefly on the seafront to stare out into the darkness. Even then, he’d known that this was the end of something impossible to measure. Winter had gone over to the enemy. Winter had cashed his chips and left the table with scarcely a backward glance. And he’d done it because at last he’d tumbled that the odds were against him. Now and probably for ever.

Faraday shook his head, wondering how on earth he’d break this news to Willard. Winter, he suspected, had glimpsed for the first time the hardest of truths: that the job had become impossible, that his professional life had been, in the end, a failure. Then came the sound of footsteps as Gabrielle stepped back into the house. She was calling Faraday’s name. And she was singing.

 

Jimmy Suttle stared at the name, not quite believing it. He’d got to the incident room early, knowing that if this hunch of his was right then the least he owed Faraday was a little extra ammunition for the morning session with Charlie Freeth. Extra ammunition? He checked again, aware of the hot stir of adrenalin flooding his body.

Between the sixteenth of June and the sixth of July, according to Tracy Barber’s records, Frank Greetham had been an inpatient at The Orchards. He glanced at his watch, wondering whether to try and check out Greetham’s medical records. The details of his GP would be on the Coroner’s file. He could put a call through to the practice, try and elbow his way into the morning queue of patients, try and make a case for confirming this one single fact, but already he knew that it would be wasted effort. To access any medical data required, at the very least, a Court Order. The medical community was, at every level, fiercely protective when it came to patient confidentiality.

There had to be another way. He eyed the phone a moment, then checked back through his pocketbook. He still had Sam Taylor’s number. Taylor’s wife answered on the third ring. Suttle introduced himself and asked to talk to her husband.

‘He’s on the early shift at B&Q,’ she said. ‘Can I help at all?’

Suttle, about to say no, changed his mind.

‘It’s about Frank Greetham. I understand he was in The Orchards for a spell. During the summer.’

‘That’s right. Sam went to see him. Poor man, he was in a terrible state.’

‘Why was he admitted? Do you happen to know?’

‘Sam thought it was something to do with all the pills he was taking, but you ought to talk to him yourself. He’d know. He was very pally with Frank. He thought the world of him.’