Angels Passing (10 page)

Like most detectives, Winter loved the feeling of specialness that came with a posting like this. For once in your life you were free to concentrate on decent crime. No more bimbling around after scrotes nicking bicycles. No more fruitless hours nailing down some twelve-year-old vandal with a taste for keying new motors. No, this was the real thing. Get the chemistry right – the right faces, the right crack – stir in a helping of murder or rape, and you’d be pushed to find a happier way of filling your time. Add the fact that it could be incredibly lucrative – dozens of hours of overtime – and you were in piggy heaven.

Willard launched the briefing with an account of events on Hilsea Lines. The bloke who’d discovered the body had now been eliminated from enquiries – his story checked out – but the house-to-house enquiries were still ongoing. No one, to date, had seen anything suspicious or unusual in the way of vehicles below the ramparts, but then it was a piss-awful night and anyone with any sense was tucked up indoors. The SOC team was still combing the area around the body but Jerry Proctor anticipated releasing the scene by nightfall. The POLSA search was complete and all waste bins in the area had been emptied and sieved. Once again, nothing. Not even a name.

There was a stir around the room. To detectives with serious experience, this was looking very promising indeed. To find a body without a shred of ID on it was itself an indication of foul play.

Willard was introducing his core staff. One of the regular DSs on Major Crimes would be in charge of outside enquiries, tasking the two-man teams of DCs. These individual ‘actions’ would be sourced from the other DS, who would serve as Statement Reader as well as Receiver, combing incoming testimony for the beginnings of a pattern that might flag pathways forward. This constant, self-renewing circle of seek-and-find would generate huge amounts of data, inputted into the HOLMES computer program by a couple of keyboard operators. In theory, the system had fine-tuned years of investigative experience nationwide but Winter, for one, knew how quickly it could run out of control. HOLMES was a monster. The more you fed it, the hungrier it became.

Willard, of course, had known this from the off. So far, headquarters had coughed up ten DCs but he left his little squad in no doubt that he’d be banging on Operational Support’s door for extra resources if circumstances demanded more bodies. These were early days, he kept saying, and priority number one was a solid ID. The Misper list was a non-starter but detectives all over the city were working their informers for rumours about some major ruck. Had anyone gone missing? Might the death at Hilsea be drugs related? In the meantime, a separate line of enquiry was examining the log recording Friday night’s stop-checks. Had the traffic cars pulled anyone suspicious? Filed a report that might link with our friend up there on the ramparts, dangling in the rain?

Within days if not hours, Willard said he was confident of establishing a positive ID. The post-mortem was due to start any time now and with luck they’d get a result from fingerprints if the guy had a criminal record. Failing that, if they were really pushed, there’d be dental records or a tip from some punter following a media appeal through TV, radio and the local paper. One way or another, they’d come up with a name and then the serious work would begin.

He looked round at the watching faces. Most of these guys he’d met before, detectives who’d passed through the MIR on previous jobs, and he wanted them to know they had his confidence. He expected them to work bloody hard, to think on their feet and to understand that nothing mattered more than a solid result. There was nothing certain yet. It might even turn out to be some bizarre twist on suicide. But there were already indications that they were dealing with murder, and if that was the case then everything, but
everything
, had to be nailed down in black and white. Think evidence, he said. Think court.

There was a pause while he glanced towards his deputy, Sammy Rollins, the DI who’d phoned Winter earlier.

‘What are we calling this, sir?’

Every operation had a codename, the label that would attach itself to a thousand computer files. They were drawn from a list held at headquarters.

‘
Bisley
,’ Willard grunted. ‘Operation
Bisley
.’

Minutes later, Winter bumped into the DC he’d been paired with for initial enquiries. He was a tall lad in his early twenties. His name was Gary Sullivan and he’d just driven down from Petersfield. He had bitten nails, an uncertain smile, a mop of curly red hair and a tie with a fuzzy pattern that Winter put down to bad taste.

They were standing in the cubbyhole at the end of the corridor that served as a kitchen. Winter spooned Nescafé into two mugs and asked how long he’d been out of uniform.

‘Three months,’ he said, ‘next Monday.’

Winter’s spoon wavered a moment, before plunging into the sugar bowl.

‘Excellent,’ he murmured.

Faraday was forty minutes late for his meeting with Derek Bassam at Southsea police station. He parked his Mondeo in the yard at the back and checked with the desk clerk that Bassam was still there.

‘He’s out the front, sir. Been through
Frontline
twice.’

Frontline
was the force newspaper, free to the public at every police station, a digest of cheerful faces, award ceremonies and upbeat articles on high-tech policing. Read
Frontline
, as Bassam had obviously done, and you’d start believing that the police had it cracked.

Faraday pushed through the double doors to the waiting area by the front entrance. Derek Bassam was a large, solid-looking man in his late forties. He was wearing an open-necked shirt under a battered leather jacket. His greying hair was cropped fashionably short and he had the kind of tan that can only come from an expensive mid-winter break. Dressed like this, Faraday would have put him down as a successful car dealer or full-time yachtie, not a lawyer at all.

He got to his feet. Faraday ignored the proffered handshake, holding the door open and directing Bassam down the corridor to the right. The interview room was a bleak, oblong space that had once served as a stationery store. There was a single desk, four chairs and a ‘Be Aware’ poster on the wall. The poster urged householders to secure their doors and windows against casual intruders and Faraday wondered whether to point it out to Bassam. Instead, he asked him to take a seat.

‘So who gave you my details?’

Bassam began to bluster about mutual friends.

‘We have no mutual friends, Mr Bassam. And I’d be grateful if you could answer the question.’

Bassam stared at him. Good living was beginning to cushion his chin, and his face, close to, was mapped with tiny broken blood vessels.

‘I’ve come here to talk about my daughter—’ He began.

‘Nothing happens until you give me a name, Mr Bassam. Then we can talk about whatever you like.’

‘OK.’ He shrugged. ‘You know Pete Lamb?’

‘Yes.’

Bassam held his gaze, unprepared to go any further, and Faraday found himself wondering why he wasn’t surprised that this breach of faith should be down to Lamb. When push came to shove, Cathy’s errant husband was reckless enough to trade anything for a favour, and life as a private investigator obviously relied on getting professional men like Bassam onside. Later, at a time of his own choosing, Faraday would sort the matter out, but the last thing he intended to do now was give Bassam the satisfaction of taking this part of the conversation any further.

‘So how can I help you, Mr Bassam?’ Faraday slipped into the chair opposite.

Bassam leaned forward, confidential, man to man.

‘It’s about Helen. As you might imagine, it hasn’t been the easiest twenty-four hours but there are one or two points of detail that it might be worth discussing.’ He paused. ‘You’ll know that her mother and I are divorcing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well …’

He eased the chair back from the table and then propped his elbows on his knees. With his body bent and his head bowed, it was an almost supplicatory pose. He wanted to be frank about one or two things. He wanted Faraday to understand.

‘Understand what, Mr Bassam?’

‘That my wife, my ex-wife, hasn’t taken any of this well. In fact she’s had a kind of breakdown. The marriage going wrong, me leaving, she simply hasn’t been able to cope.’ He looked up at last, seeking eye contact. ‘I’m not blaming her, Mr Faraday. It’s nothing like that. I’m simply trying to explain why Helen went off the rails. In some ways, I suspect it was inevitable.’

Faraday heard the first faint trill from the alarm system hard-wired into his head. Off the rails? Helen? It was his turn to lean forward.

‘What are you telling me, Mr Bassam?’

‘You won’t know about the shoplifting but I’m starting to think it doesn’t end there.’

‘Your daughter was shoplifting?’

‘I’m afraid so. This was recently, just a couple of weeks ago. It was one of those boutique places in Southsea. Helen had the sense to get a phone call through to me before the store owner called you lot and I managed to talk her out of pressing charges. Nice woman. Blonde.’

Faraday began to relax. He’d checked the automatic crime recording system for any entries on the girl but it wasn’t unknown for data to go astray. The fact that Jane Bassam hadn’t volunteered any of this wasn’t her fault. Under the circumstances, she’d probably been too shocked to even remember it.

‘You mentioned other stuff …’

‘I did. Helen had obviously been shoplifting before. She as good as admitted it to me afterwards. Clothes, of course, but make-up as well, stuff from Boots. Apparently all the kids do it. To be frank, I don’t think they understand about money any more.’

‘But you were giving her an allowance, weren’t you? A generous allowance.’

‘That’s just it. I was. £160, first Monday of every month.’

‘So where did all that go?’

‘Good question. She wouldn’t tell me. I pressed her, believe me I pressed her, but she hasn’t been easy to handle recently.’ He studied his hands for a moment. ‘You’d have ideas, wouldn’t you, getting through money like that?’

He glanced up, challenging Faraday with the ghost of a smile, but Faraday stared him out. This was a fishing expedition, he told himself. This man, as slippery as any experienced lawyer, wanted to find out exactly how much Faraday – as SIO – really knew about his precious daughter. That way he might be able to limit the damage. And that way, more to the point, he might be able to address his own guilt. Girls especially needed their dads. A house without a father was a standing invitation, in Bassam’s own phrase, to go off the rails.

‘You think she was using drugs?’

‘I’m afraid it’s more than possible.’

‘What kind of drugs?’

‘I don’t know. My poison comes in a bottle. What do kids use these days? Ecstasy? Cocaine? Heroin? I haven’t a clue.’

‘Did you see her regularly?’

‘Not as regularly as I should.’

‘Was there some kind of arrangement?’

‘To begin with, yes. But my partner and Helen …’ He shrugged, making it plain where his real loyalties lay. The girl would have seen this, Faraday thought. She’d have seen her dad’s awkwardness, his reluctance to risk this new relationship of his, and she’d have drawn her own conclusions about where to head next. Why that journey should have ended on top of a block of flats in Somerstown was anybody’s guess but there were parts of Helen Bassam’s story that were at last beginning to slip into focus.

‘Tell me …’ Faraday began. ‘Did she ever mention a lad called Doodie?’

Bassam thought hard about the name, then shook his head.

‘Not to me. She was out and about with some pretty strange people, that was another worry, but I can’t recall—’

‘What kind of strange people?’

‘Kids mainly, kids her own age, but losers, you know? The kind of kids who bunk off school. The kind of kids who hang around Commercial Road all evening, just looking for trouble. There were a couple of lads she used to talk about, and then there was a girl called Trudy. I don’t think Trudy had been to school for months.’

‘Neither had Helen. Not regularly.’

‘No.’ He nodded, sombre. ‘So I understand. Have you talked to Trudy at all? About Helen?’

‘No, Mr Bassam, we haven’t.’

‘I see.’

There was a long silence. Then Faraday enquired about the Afghan. Had Helen ever mentioned a man called Niamat Tabibi?

‘No, but her mother did. I gather there was some kind of private tutor deal to begin with but she became almost manic about him. Believe me, he got it in the neck for everything.’

‘And you never mentioned any of this to Helen?’

‘Of course I did, but she just refused to talk about him so I never formed a judgement either way. He may have been important to her, he may not. She’d just clam up. She was good at that, Helen. In fact she was world class.’

Faraday produced a pocketbook and scribbled himself a note, remembering Dawn Ellis’s take on this strange relationship. In her view, the Afghan had become a kind of substitute father. No wonder Helen Bassam hadn’t tainted him with exposure to the real thing.

Bassam was talking about his daughter again, about the many ways he’d let her down, about the amends it was too late to make. If he’d known then what he knew now, he’d have made some very different decisions in his life. He’d have stayed in his marriage. He’d have made it work.

Faraday let the little speech wash over him. He’d disliked this man from the moment he’d answered the phone. He resented the way Bassam had tracked him down, and he resented most of all having to listen to all this confessional drivel. If Derek Bassam had a real problem dealing with his own guilt then there was professional help available. He was a wealthy man. He could could buy himself a session or two of counselling. God knows, he could even try the church. Detectives were there to solve crimes, not offer forgiveness.

‘Is there anything else you want to tell me about Helen?’

‘No, that’s pretty much it really. I just thought, you know …’ He looked at his hands again and then shrugged helplessly. ‘This isn’t something you’d wish on anyone.’