Beyond Reach (26 page)

‘But why would I have a problem?’

‘Because the spics think they’ve got a lead on what happened to Westie.’

‘What kind of a lead?’

‘I’ve no idea. Maybe the geezer in that bar where it happened spoke out of turn. Maybe bits of Westie turned up where they shouldn’t have. Maybe Tommy Peters has been bigging himself up to the wrong people. Fuck knows. All that matters is that you’re back in one piece.’

Winter said nothing. Last summer’s hit had taken place in a half-finished bar inside a deserted hotel development. One minute he’d been enjoying an ice-cold beer. The next he was looking at gobbets of Westie’s brain spattered across his favourite suit. Shock, real shock, would always taste of San Miguel and newly poured cement.

‘The spic police will be talking to our lot.’ Winter was fighting to contain his temper. ‘Has that occurred to you yet?’

‘So what?’ Mackenzie couldn’t care less. ‘We took a trip out there, we had a nice time, we had a look round Malaga, the boys were off the leash for the night, we came home again next morning. Who can prove otherwise?’

‘The Spanish probably can. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been looking for me.’

‘You’re kidding yourself. All they’d have is a bunch of names off the manifest.’

‘Including yours, Baz. Is that why you didn’t go out yourself? Is it? Just make it easy for me. Just say fucking yes.’

Mackenzie glanced across at him. They were on the motorway by now, nudging 95 mph.

‘You sound upset, mush.’

‘I
am
fucking upset. You spin me some line about a meet at the Dorchester, you never say a word about the spic police or your mate Rikki. Next thing I know I’m standing on the concourse and some bloke’s whispering in my ear. You know what he says? If I don’t get out in the car park pronto I’ll be spending the rest of my life in some khazi of a Spanish jail. Great career move, Baz. The best.’

Mackenzie nodded, saying nothing. Then he wanted to know about the Dorchester. How come Winter thought he hadn’t been up there?

‘Because Marie told me.’

‘When?’

‘I phoned her last night.’

‘She never mentioned it.’

‘That’s because I asked her not to. When I wondered about getting a lift back from Gatwick today she said there was no problem. You’d got a clear diary, fuck all else to do. You know what, Baz? I sweated my bollocks off trying to do right by you, trying to do the best job, and just now I’m wondering why I bothered.’

The first whiff of good news brought a grin to Mackenzie’s face. He turned to Winter again.

‘You’re telling me the contract’s going to be OK?’

‘It’s in the boot.’

‘All of them? All the signed copies?’

‘Ours and Garfield’s. Ez is still out there waiting for Fresnada to come back from Madrid. She thinks it won’t be a problem getting it back off him. Apparently there’s another buyer for the hotel in the wings.’

‘So the contract’s back with us?’

‘Yeah. Like I say, Ez will sort Fresnada.’

‘Result, mush. Total fucking result.’ The Bentley lurched to the right as Mackenzie thumped the wheel. ‘So how did you manage it?’

Winter described the stake-out in the airport car park. By the time he’d arrived in Baiona, the deal was done. His only option was to unpick it.

‘Messy?’

‘Very. We left the lawyer in a bit of a state and the wife without her luggage. Good job, as it turned out. The contract was in the suitcase with her knickers. You won’t believe how many sex toys that woman travels with. She must be repping on the side.’

Mackenzie was laughing now. They were off the motorway and onto the dual carriageway that funnelled traffic down towards Brighton. Spotting a pub, Mackenzie abruptly signalled left. Winter heard the squeal of rubber behind them as the line of drivers in their wake fought for control. The pub was called the Three Ravens. Lunch, Mackenzie announced, was on him. First, a drink or two.

Winter settled for a large whisky. Rikki’s boys, he said, had been brilliant. Once they were back in the hotel in Baiona, they’d summoned the boss for a council of war. Riquelme had driven up from Cambados and decided to smuggle Winter over the nearby Portuguese border in the boot of his Megane. From the border, they could be in Lisbon in time for the mid-morning flight to Gatwick.

‘Worked a treat, Baz. I’m not sure Rikki even stopped at the border. I think they just waved him through.’

‘EU, mush. Bad boys’ charter. We’re all Europeans now.’ He still couldn’t get over the scene in the car park. Maybe, after all, he ought to have gone. Just for the crack.

‘There’ll be consequences, Baz. The lawyer bloke will have taken it hard. So will she. And so will her husband. How well do you know this guy?’

‘Barely at all. It was Rikki who mentioned him in the first place. Said the geezer was sniffing round for somewhere handy to invest his money.’

‘And you never thought cocaine? Even then?’

‘Never occurred to me. The first time I met him he said it all came from gambling. He runs a casino operation in Richmond upon Thames. He showed me the brochures. Classy. I was impressed. Seemed a nice enough guy, obviously had the dosh, so who was I to worry?’

Winter eyed his empty glass then pushed it towards Mackenzie. Rikki, he told himself, would have felt guilty about introducing Garfield. Hence the string of favours over the last couple of days.

Mackenzie returned from the bar. A treble, at least.

‘What about Madison?’

‘He wasn’t there. Not as far as I could see.’

‘What did Ez say?’

‘She wouldn’t say anything. Not about him. You’re right about the hotel, though. She’s crazy about the place.’

‘Too fucking bad. You know what I was going to do with it? Once it was ours? Give it to her and Stu as an anniversary present. It’s their tenth coming up. How sick is that?’

‘Nice gesture, Baz.’ Winter reached for his glass. ‘Here’s to marriage.’

Mackenzie ignored him. He had some news about Tide Turn. Winter’s heart sank.

‘Like what?’

‘Like Marie’s meeting your bloke this morning. I’m surprised she didn’t mention it.’

‘Mo Sturrock?’

‘Yeah. She showed me that article you gave her. The speech he made at the conference.’

‘And?’

‘I loved it, mush. Showed the bloke’s got bollocks. If we’re serious about sorting out these little scrotes it’s guys like him we need. The only problem is the money.’

‘He told me twenty-five K was fine.’

‘Yeah. What he didn’t say was that only buys three days a week. He says he was on forty-seven. For twenty-five we get a part-timer in charge. Won’t fly, mush. You’ll have to sort it.’ He nodded at the menu. ‘Are we eating or what?’

MONDAY, 26 MAY 2008. 15.33

By mid-afternoon, Faraday had been through the
Sangster
file. At Parsons’ suggestion, he’d bailed out of the office and taken it home. This sudden concern for his peace of mind had done nothing to quieten his suspicion that he was being readied for a transfer out of Major Crime but he told himself that there was nothing, at the moment, he could do about it. Better to take advantage of the dusty sunlight in the Bargemaster’s House and concentrate on the task in hand.

He opened the French doors out to the garden, took a precautionary sweep across the glistening mudflats with his binos, and settled down on the sofa with the file.
Sangster
dated back to 1984. On 6 June a Poly student, Tessa Fogle, had spent the evening partying. Her exams were over and she was about to graduate. She lived in a bedsit in Southsea. The house was shared with five other students. Past midnight, after finishing up at the Student Union, she’d gone home and fallen into bed.

The room had a window that looked onto the garden at the back. It was a hot night and the window, according to Fogle’s statement, had been wide open. She’d woken up with someone on top of her. Because of the heat she was sleeping naked on the duvet. She’d tried to fight him off but he’d been too strong. Partially penetrated, she’d managed to wriggle free. When she screamed for help he’d put a pillow over her face. After that she must have passed out because the next thing she knew she was awake, groggy, still drunk and still trembling. Her attacker had disappeared. The window was open. There was a payphone in the hall. She’d dialled 999 and then waited in her room for the police to appear.

Faraday turned to the attending officer’s statement. He and his oppo had found Ms Fogle in a state of some distress. They’d searched the garden, secured the house and questioned other students in the property. The duty D/C had arrived and taken a full statement from Fogle. Her room had been sealed pending a visit from Scenes of Crime and she’d been driven to the Bridewell for medical examination by a police doctor. He’d found no evidence of semen in her vagina but confirmed mild bruising around her vaginal orifice consistent with attempted penetration. He’d also noted her own admission that she’d consumed at least three pints of lager and a bottle of wine that evening.

Next morning, Scenes of Crime had boshed her room. Faraday flicked through the attending officer’s report. Soil on the carpet had indicated entry through the window. Blood had been retrieved from the duvet and sent for analysis. The grouping hadn’t been hers. Semen samples had also been recovered from the duvet, as had skin scrapings from Fogle’s fingernails, but DNA analysis was still a miracle waiting to happen and so the exhibits had been lodged in the Exhibits Store at Highland Road nick.

A smallish squad of detectives, meanwhile, had done house-to-house calls in the immediate area enquiring about possible sightings of a lone male. Nothing. Interviews with a current and previous boyfriends had likewise drawn a blank. Checks on local weirdos went nowhere. By the end of the week, with the
Sangster
file still open, the SIO had concluded that they were dealing with stranger rape.

Faraday made himself a pot of tea and returned to the file. Stranger rape had always been a priority crime not least because the offender was still out there. He’d done it once; he might plausibly do it again. The leads in the
Sangster
case, though, were non-existent. Given the SIO’s conviction that the crime was genuine, that the sex hadn’t been consensual, then the squad had no option but to wait for the next attack.

Mercifully, nothing similar had happened. Tessa Fogle would have graduated, her peace of mind shattered. In the nature of these incidents, she’d have gradually picked up the pieces, tried to learn how to trust men again, done her best to lock the memories away. A year after the incident, a member of the investigative team had been in touch, assuring her that
Sangster
was far from over. By then, according to his entry on the file, Fogle was living with her parents in Petersfield.

In 1995 the national DNA database had been established. An attempt had been made to tease a DNA profile from one of the
Sangster
blood samples but the science was still crude and it had failed. Four years later, a different technique had yielded better results and a procedure known as Low Copy Number had produced a full profile. This profile, indexed against the national database, failed to raise a name. This was progress of a kind.
Sangster
’s SIO now knew that Tessa Fogle’s attacker had no criminal record.

Another four years later, in the wake of a Home Office forensic review of undetected serious rapes, Hampshire Police had launched Operation
Alverston.
A Cold Case core team had been formed and more than thirty cases had been identified for re-investigation. One of those cases was Operation
Sangster.

Alverston
’s D/I had been tasked to contact each of the raped women to check whether or not they were prepared to step through the doors that the new DNA techniques might open. Tessa Fogle by then was living in Chalton, a village south of Petersfield. She had three kids. She told the D/I that she’d never mentioned the rape to her partner, and probably never would, but she still nursed a grudge against her attacker and was happy for any investigation to proceed. In the event of an arrest she would, of course, have to prepare herself for the trauma of a court appearance but she decided to face that possibility if and when it happened. Her partner, in the meantime, would remain in a state of blissful ignorance.

Faraday poured himself another cup of tea.
Alverston
’s Cold Case unit drew heavily on DNA familial search techniques introduced a couple of years earlier. These offered the possibility of matching a tiny fragment of anonymous DNA - a bare handful of cells - against profiles sharing the same family characteristics. An operation like this might flag the path to literally hundreds of other samples on the national database, amongst which could be the fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters of the unknown target. Amongst this harvest of criminal names, investigators might find a lead that would take them to the perpetrator. Detectives on cold case units couldn’t believe their luck. This was the golden key. They started knocking on doors nationwide.

Within months, though, there were huge problems. Many of those contacted through the national database had never shared the secret of their criminal conviction with their partners. Their only crime with respect to the Cold Case was a familial DNA match and the last thing they wanted was this unwelcome echo of a long-forgotten past. Representations were made through lawyers. There was an agreement that familial DNA searches raised profound human rights issues. And very quickly the Home Office was obliged to rein in the Cold Case investigators. Henceforth, the authority of an Assistant Chief Constable was required for the pursuit of enquiries.

Faraday put the file to one side to take a phone call. It was Jimmy Suttle. He’d just had Paul Winter on the phone.

‘He says you and he have been having a little chat. This has to be bollocks, doesn’t it, boss?’