Beyond Reach (48 page)

‘That’s amazing.’ Mo was studying the list. ‘Some of these are quality names.’

‘Shouldn’t we be adding your ex-bosses? Just to make a point? There’s still time.’

‘I’d love to, I really would.’

‘So why not?’

‘Because they wouldn’t come, and even if they did I wouldn’t want to talk to them. There are bits of your life it’s better just to forget. Stuff never happened. You were never there. Don’t you ever find that?’ He looked up, catching her eye, then realised he’d touched a nerve. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She ducked her head a moment, one hand feeling blindly for his.

Mo did his best to comfort her. ‘What’s the matter? What did I say?’

‘Nothing. Of course it’s better to forget, Mo, but that isn’t always possible. Do you know what’s happened now?’

‘No. Tell me.’

‘Esme and Stu are selling up. They’re leaving, taking the kids, going to bloody Spain.’ She looked up at him, her eyes streaming. ‘Can you believe that?’

 

Faraday was at Kingston Crescent shortly after lunch. Before he returned to his office, he checked in with Jimmy Suttle. His carefully laid plans for
Sangster
were at the mercy of events. If something had kicked off this morning, taking Jimmy with it, then he’d have to cancel the trawl for familial DNA.

‘Nothing, boss. Quiet as the grave.’

‘Nice one. We’ll do it then, yeah?’

Suttle nodded. It was so quiet he’d had time to leaf through a holiday brochure he’d nicked from the office next door. Lizzie fancied somewhere with a bit of culture. He was all for lying on the beach. Odds on they’d end up in Florence with overpriced cappuccinos and a week touring the art galleries.

‘How about you, boss? Montreal again?’

‘No point. I told you - she’s coming home.’

Faraday returned to his office. A precautionary call to Netley put him through to the Senior Staff Manager.

‘Terry? It’s Joe. Just to confirm we’re ready for the off. You’re still happy we meet the threshold?’

‘No question. Come Monday, you’ll be looking at a trillion names.’

‘Thanks. I’ll bell Birmingham then.’

Faraday hung up. The Serious Crime Unit occupied premises in Birmingham. Familial DNA searches were their responsibility. Faraday’s contact was a woman called Lee. She answered on the second ring.

‘Lee? It’s Joe Faraday.’ He paused. ‘Operation
Sangster
?’

‘Yep.’

‘Do it.’

MONDAY, 16 JUNE 2008. 08.12

Faraday was at his desk early. A relaxed weekend had taken him to Dorset. At Radipole Lake in Weymouth he’d spent a happy hour with bearded reedlings before driving down to Portland Bill for pied flycatchers and ring ouzels resting after their long cross-Channel passage. There’d also been a gaggle of puffins paddling around in the shallows, their beaks full of sand eels, and higher up the cliffs he’d spotted nesting kittiwakes and fulmars. As the sun began to drop towards Lyme Bay he’d returned via a favourite birding site in the New Forest. The sight of a nightjar at dusk, noisily patrolling his territory, had reminded him of Willard at full throttle. The same manic defence of turf, the same eagerness to take on all comers. Faraday had made his way back to the car park by torchlight, sublimely content.

He settled behind his desk and fired up his PC. Anticipating the DNA results from Birmingham reminded him of long-ago days of waiting for O-level results at school. Then, as now, he wondered whether the minimal work he’d put in might somehow conjure a grade or two above his expectations.

He spotted the email at once, number three in a pile of dross. It was flagged ‘High Priority’, addressed to Operation
Sangster
and accompanied by a 37KB attachment. The message was from Lee. It directed his attention to the attachment and wished him luck. Opening the attachment, he scrolled through the list of names. At a rough guess there must have been a couple of hundred. He’d made a point of asking for a non-Y-chromosome search. A few of these names would therefore be female, not because they could possibly have been the rapist but because the DNA familial finger might point at a brother or a dad.

He powered up the printer and ran off two copies of the list. Between them, he and Suttle would now apply various matrices to boil down the numbers into manageable packets. One matrix would look for persons living in Hampshire. Another would target individuals within a certain age group. A third might explore names on the PNC database with a family history of sexual offences.

Footsteps along the corridor paused outside his office. Faraday glanced over his shoulder to find Jimmy Suttle standing in the open doorway.

‘You’re early, boss. What’s this?’

Faraday passed him a copy of the list.

‘Take a look through, Jimmy. See if there’s anything obvious.’

Faraday’s phone rang. He picked it up. It was Willard. An email from Mackenzie’s bankers had gone astray. He wanted to know whether it had ended up with Faraday.

Faraday checked his emails and drew a blank.

‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive. What’s the matter?’ He was thinking about the marked notes. ‘Have they got their million quid back?’

Faraday waited for an answer but Willard had rung off. He turned to find Suttle still at the door. He was staring at the list.

‘Have you seen this, boss? Halfway down. Page two. Under M.’

Faraday reached for his own copy. Suttle saved him the bother. He was standing beside him at the desk, the list still in his hand.

‘There. Look.’

Faraday followed his pointing finger. Jeanette Morrissey, 33 Harleston Road, Paulsgrove, Portsmouth.

‘That’s our Jeanette Morrissey, right?’

‘Must be. It’s the same address.’

‘From
Melody
, yeah?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what are we looking for here, boss?’ Suttle seemed thrown by the name. He’d never done a familial DNA trace before.

‘It means she’s on the PNC, which we know already, and it means she may have some family tie to the rape.’

‘Jeanette
Morrissey
? She’s Madame Respectable.’

‘Sure. Of course she is. But say she has a brother …’ Faraday was already doing the sums. ‘We’re talking 1984 for the Fogle rape. Morrissey’s in her late forties. If the brother is broadly the same age that would put him around twenty, twenty-one at the time of the rape. There’s a geographic link too. Pompey.’

‘You think she’d have known about it? Had suspicions?’

‘I’ve no idea. She’s on remand, isn’t she?’

‘Yeah.’ Suttle nodded. ‘Winchester nick. There’s no point in interviewing her though. She has phoning rights. She could be onto anyone the minute we left her.’

Faraday pushed his chair back and told Suttle to shut the door. They were getting way ahead of themselves. First they needed to find out more about Jeanette Morrissey’s relatives. And Suttle was right: there was no way they should involve Morrissey herself.

‘Open sources, Jimmy. Voters’ register. Births and deaths. Facebook. You know the drill.’

Suttle was backing towards the door. He had a better idea.

‘You remember
Melody
, boss? The lad Tim Morrissey, the victim, kept an address book. He was very organised that way. We seized it in case there were names that might be of interest. Some of them were starred to remind him about birthdays.’

‘You mean mates and so forth? Relatives? Cousins?’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘And maybe uncles.’

Suttle backed out of the office with his list. Faraday studied his own copy for a moment longer then put it to one side, knowing there was no point applying any kind of matrix until they’d eliminated Jeanette Morrissey. Hunches were often a detective’s worst enemy but in this case Faraday sensed that the path to Tessa Fogle’s attacker might well lie through some relative of Morrissey’s. The coincidences of age and probably location were simply too strong. He stared at the name a moment longer then realised the logical next step. Morrissey would probably be her married name, the name of Tim’s father. What
Sangster
really wanted was her maiden name.

He got up and went to the window. The index of births, marriages and deaths was an open source. A phone call or a visit to the library would yield Morrissey’s maiden name. He was still deciding what to do when the phone trilled. It was Suttle. He’d retrieved Tim Morrissey’s address book from the Exhibits cupboard and was in the process of going through it. There hadn’t been as many names as he’d remembered. Already he’d got to S.

‘Either I’m going mad, boss, or this thing’s getting out of hand.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Faraday could sense the quickening excitement in Suttle’s voice.

‘Mackenzie’s place, a couple of weeks back. You remember a tall guy who had something to do with that Trust of theirs, the one Winter was in charge of?’

Faraday was thinking back. The tensions inside 13 Sandown Road seemed to belong to a different age.
Tall guy. The Trust. Winter.
The name came to him. The tumble of greying hair. The twist of scarlet ribbon.

‘Sturrock,’ he said.

‘That’s what I thought. Stay where you are, boss. Don’t move.’

Faraday returned to his chair wondering if the DNA list was already surplus to requirements. Then his door burst open. Suttle seldom ran anywhere.

‘Here, boss.’

The address book was open at a page near the back. Faraday read the entry, read it again, then closed his eyes. It simply wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Not that man. Not that family.

Suttle was still beside him, staring down at the open page.

‘Dimpsy?’ he said. ‘What kind of address is that?’

 

Marie had invited Mo Sturrock for lunch. She took him to Sur-la-Mer, where a month earlier she’d had a somewhat fraught meal with Paul Winter. She’d booked the same table beside the window. Second time lucky, she thought.

Mo settled in. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had time for a sit-down lunch.

‘You deserve it. Baz says the same. This is his idea, not mine. He’s terrible at saying thank you.’

‘It hasn’t happened yet. This is really tempting fate, you know that?’

‘It’ll be fine. Baz knows a winner when he sees one.’

‘The Big One?’

‘You, Mo. You’re the big one.’

He shot her a smile. There was a part of him that had been trying to figure out this marriage of theirs and he still hadn’t quite got it. Was she there to put a coat or two of social gloss on Mackenzie? To raise the tone at 13 Sandown Road? Or was she the kind of woman who needed a bit of rough? Either way it didn’t matter, especially now.

A pretty waitress arrived with a couple of menus. Marie had already recommended the prawns in garlic. Mo pulled a face. He loved garlic but his kids loathed the smell.

‘And your partner?’

‘She’s like me. We used to live on the stuff before the kids came along. The closest we get now is growing it.’

Marie wanted to know more. How had they met in the first place?

‘I was in a pub in Petersfield. Tess was there with a girlfriend. The girlfriend was on the course I was doing at the Poly, second time round. She did the introductions and bingo!’ He smiled.

‘Just like that?’

‘Yeah. Just like that. For me, at any rate.’

‘And Tess?’

‘It took a while. I courted her. It was very old-fashioned.’

‘But you won?’

‘Big time. It turned out she’d been at the Poly the same time as me but that was first time round.’

‘Before you took it seriously?’

‘Before I became a human being.’

‘Do you mean that?’ She frowned at the phrase.

‘Absolutely. Some people take a while to grow up. Maybe that’s why I get on OK with kids. You can’t necessarily have what you think you need. You have to work for it, you have to earn it. It’s a kind of apprenticeship. Life can be tricky that way. Sometimes it takes a while to suss it out.’

‘Apprenticeship? Isn’t that where the Big One comes from?’

‘Yeah. The Big One is a crash course in growing up. At the end of it you’re fit for only two things. Rowing round the Isle of Wight is one of them. Real life is the other. Should I write that down? Give it to Bazza for his speech?’

The news that Mackenzie planned to address the guests at the Victory Gallery had come as a bit of a surprise, especially to Marie. To her knowledge, he’d never made a formal speech in his life.

Mo was intrigued. ‘You think that’s part of the political thing? Staking out his ground? Grabbing a bit of profile?’

‘I hate to say it, but yes.’

‘You don’t want him in politics?’

‘It’s not that. To Baz, politics is like anything else. If he fancies it, he’ll have it. I just don’t see him in the role. Be honest, have you ever met an interesting politician in your life?’

‘No, but then I haven’t looked very hard.’

‘Me neither, but the guys I see on TV are on a different planet to my husband. He’s got a mouth on him. You might have noticed. And he’s got absolutely no time for democracy. To be honest I’d give him a week, and that’s tops.’

‘Have you told him? Broken the news?’

‘Of course I have, but that’s the other thing. He never bloody listens.’

The waitress returned for the order. Marie went for the prawns in garlic; Mo settled for lamb shank and another pint of Kronenburg.

‘Thirsty?’

‘Knackered. Tess says I need to slow down. I’m not used to this kind of pace.’

‘Is she happy about us? About Tide Turn?’

‘Relieved. She’d never admit it, but I think she was starting to worry about what was going to happen next. Not just the money but how I was going to fill my time. Digging veg and mucking out chickens is OK for a month or two, and it’s great being around the kids, but she thinks I need more than that.’