Borrowed Light (4 page)

‘That’s definitely their place.’ It was Marie again. ‘I recognise that tree.’

The reporter said that four bodies had been recovered. A police spokesman confirmed that enquiries were on-going.

Abruptly, the coverage cut to sport. A spokesman at Fratton Park had refused to confirm or deny rumours that Pompey were in
deep financial trouble. Diarra sold to Real Madrid. Jermain Defoe up the road to Spurs. The club sinking like a stone. The
cupboard, player-wise, dangerously bare.

Winter was watching Mackenzie. Since the item on the burned-out farmhouse, he hadn’t moved.

‘Baz?’ he ventured.

‘What?’

‘Fratton Park? You believe all these gloom bags?’

Mackenzie’s head came round. His face was the colour of chalk. He forced a smile.

‘Never, mush.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘Never in a million fucking years.’

Faraday found D/S Jimmy Suttle in an upstairs office at Newport police station. He wanted to know about Gail Parsons. Brisk,
he’d told himself in the taxi from the hospital. Keep it brisk.

‘She’s due any minute, boss. I got a call about an hour ago.’

‘And she’s SIO?’

‘As far as I know. With you as deputy, assuming we hoist this thing in. Be gentle though, boss. She’s not in a good place
just now.’

Parsons, it turned out, had recently lost her dog. She had a boisterous black Labrador called Nelson and he’d come to grief
under the wheels of a bus in Fareham High Street. Nelson was allegedly the closest Parsons came to any kind of private life
and it seemed that photos of the animal still decorated her office at Fratton nick.

‘She took a bit of leave, boss. Fun week in Madeira.’

Faraday smiled. DCI Gail Parsons had been his immediate boss for a couple of years now, a small combative woman with a carefully
thought-through career plan and an impressive chest. The last time Faraday had seen her, a week before Christmas, she’d been
spending every night reading up for her next set of promotion exams. That she’d make superintendent by the age of forty was
in Faraday’s view never in doubt. Whether she’d ever give herself time to enjoy the job was a wholly different question.

‘So tell me …’ Faraday settled in a chair and nodded at the pile of notes on Suttle’s borrowed desk. ‘Where are we?’

Suttle sat back, taking his time. Now twenty-nine, he’d been on Major Crime for a number of years, winning a reputation for
intelligence, charm and the kind of dogged thoroughness that can prise open an otherwise difficult investigation and tease
out a result. Tall, with a mop of red curly hair, he’d partnered Winter for a year or two, a relationship that had taught
him a great deal about the blacker arts of crime detection. He was also brave, a quality that had nearly done for him when
he’d tackled a drug dealer in Southsea and got himself knifed in the process. Lately, thanks to a long period of convalescence
behind a desk, he’d become the must-have Intelligence Officer on Major Crime operations.

‘Remember Johnny Holman?’ he said at last.

The name sank like a stone through Faraday’s memory. He frowned, shut his eyes, tried to conjure a face, an MO, the usual
scatter of previous.

‘Pompey boy?’

‘Right.’

‘Ran with the 6.57?’

‘Spot on.’ The 6.57 had been the hard core of Pompey’s travelling away support, exporting serious violence wherever it was
required.

‘Off the scene now? Semi-retired?’

‘Yeah. And as of yesterday probably dead.’

Faraday raised an eyebrow, wondering which of the body bags in the mortuary might have contained Johnny Holman. In truth he
could remember very little about Holman, but that wasn’t something he was about to share with Suttle.

‘So what happened?’

‘Hard to say, boss. Time-wise we’re talking the small hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning. This is down the south of the
island, out towards Freshwater. The place that caught fire is called Monkswell Farm. It’s not a real farm, not a working farm,
just the kind of pad you might retire to if you suddenly came into a whack of money and you fancied somewhere nice and peaceful.’

Holman, he explained, had always been a motorcycle nut. Most of his life he’d scraped a living from various jobs, mainly in
the auto trade. What money came his way he’d invested in a big Suzuki, and his favourite gig was an annual visit to the Isle
of Man to test his riding skills against the hairier corners on the TT circuit.

‘This is something he seems to have taken pretty seriously, as you would. According to the people I’ve been talking to, he
was a decent rider.’

‘So what happened?’

‘He used to stay for the best part of a week. This is several years ago. On the Thursday he was putting in another lap, nothing
silly, and some old guy pulled out in front of him. Never looked, never checked, bang,
finito.’

Holman, he said, was rushed to hospital in Douglas. They saved his life but it took the best part of three months to put him
back together again.

From his hospital bed Holman hired a Manchester firm to chase an insurance settlement. They scored big time. A million plus.
Enough, easily, to buy Monkswell Farm with enough left over for a few beers.

‘But that’s where it started going wrong.’

‘The farm?’

‘The beers. Holman had always been a drinker, famous for it. While most of the 6.57 were out of their heads on toot, Holman
stuck to the Stella. After the accident it became a bit of a thing with him. Maybe he was still in pain. Maybe it was his
way of coping. Fuck knows. All we know is it started getting the better of him. Too much time, too much money, pissed out
of his head by lunchtime.’

‘You’ve talked to people about this?’

‘Yeah. He was a popular guy – at least he was once. He was a bit on the small side too. Women used to mother him.’

He had a son, Grant, Suttle said. The boy was twenty plus by now and had moved away somewhere.

‘So we’re putting Holman in the farmhouse? The night it burned down?’

‘That’s our assumption.’

‘And who else?’

‘There’s a woman called Julie. Julie Crocker. She used to be a Pompey barmaid, well known around the town, bit of a looker
in her day.’

‘And she hooked up with Holman?’

‘Yeah. Apparently she’d known him most of her life, had a scene or two with him, but after the accident she was the one who
went over there to the island and sat by his bed and tried to make it all better again.’

After Holman’s discharge, he said, she helped him find the kind of place he had in mind and ended up moving in with him.

‘That’s her and her two daughters, Kim and Jess. Kim was seventeen, very pretty, lippy with it, tons of attitude, bit of a
nightmare. The other one, Jess, was younger, fourteen, apparently Johnny’s favourite.’

‘Was?’

‘We’re assuming they were all in residence. All four of them were listed at that address. The local boys were running round
all yesterday. They’ve recovered a vehicle from the property, a Land Rover. It’s registered to Holman.’

Faraday nodded. As ever, Suttle was shaping the first tranche of intel into bite-sized chunks, easily digestible. Most of
this stuff was open source, with a light sprinkling of background gossip from the more reliable informants. In the hunt for
motive, assuming four homicides, he’d have to dig deeper.

‘Timeline?’

‘I’ve a feeling Holman may have been away at some point last week,
but I’ve got to check it out. What we know for certain is that he’s back by the Thursday because the postman delivers a parcel
and he signs for it. Two days later, the Saturday, the youngest girl comes into Newport around lunchtime and hangs out with
a couple of mates. They’re all planning to crash some party or other and young Jessie has plans to kip over at a mate’s place.
I’m not sure why, but that plan never works out.’

‘How do you know?’

‘One of the guys here talked to Jessie’s mate. Something kicked off at the party and got Jessie upset. She phoned her mum
and said she was going to call a taxi and could she borrow the fare to pay the driver once she got home. But here’s the interesting
bit …’

‘Yeah?’ For the first time. Faraday had stopped thinking about the state of his head.

‘Yeah.’ Suttle nodded. ‘According to Jessie’s mate, the mother didn’t want her home. She said to stay in Newport. Kip on a
floor. Do whatever.’

‘But don’t come home?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘No one knows, and in a way it’s academic because our Jessie wasn’t listening. She’d had enough of party night. She wanted
out.’

‘So she called the taxi?’

‘Yeah. The guys here traced the driver. He stood everything up. The girl was in bits in the back. The driver said he thought
it was boy trouble. Floods of tears. Couldn’t wait to get home to Mum. As it turned out, thoroughly bad move.’

‘If she’s one of the bodies.’

‘Indeed.’

Faraday sat back, staring out of the window. On the face of it, the locals had done very well indeed. No wonder Darren Webster
was less than pleased to see him.

‘So where next?’

‘Difficult to say. As we speak, I’m still not sure it’s our call.’

‘You’re kidding. Parsons? You really think she’d pass on something like this?’

‘I’m sure you’re right, boss.’ Suttle checked his watch. ‘Like I said, she’s due any minute.’

The beginnings of a silence settled between them. Then Suttle asked about the accident.

‘You know about that?’

‘Of course I know about that. Everyone knows about it. Some kind of RTA? Am I wrong?’ RTA. Road traffic
accident.

Faraday didn’t say a word. Returning from his visit to the GP, he’d phoned Personnel to warn them that he wouldn’t be back
at work for at least ten days. Pressed for details, he’d muttered something about a car crash in Eygpt but had left a proper
conversation for the moment his boss got in touch. The fact that the phone had never rung had been a bit of a mystery at the
time, but now he realised that Parsons had been away in Madeira.

Suttle was still watching him.

‘So how bad was it?’

‘It was OK. Just a bit of a … you know …’ He shrugged.

‘Was Gabrielle in the car?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘Took a knock or two. Bit like me.’

‘So she’s back?’

Faraday didn’t answer. His partner was rapidly becoming a memory.

‘She’s not back?’

Faraday returned his gaze.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘She’s not.’

Suttle nodded. The young D/S knew a great deal about the sharper bends in Faraday’s relationship with Gabrielle, not least
because he had a talent for interpreting moods and body language.

‘It’s none of my business, boss …’ he began.

‘You’re right. So leave it.’

Suttle shrugged, his eyes still fixed on Faraday. Then came the sound of Parsons’ voice from somewhere down the corridor.
When she was revved up, she had a tendency to shout. Any minute now, Faraday thought.

Suttle was leaning forward across the desk, beckoning Faraday closer.

‘Just get a grip, boss,’ he muttered. ‘Whatever it is, it shows.’

Faraday swallowed hard. He had no idea what to say. Then the door burst open and Parsons bustled in. She seemed to have got
over the dog.

‘Joe. Jimmy. Handover meet in half an hour. The D/I’s office downstairs. Good news from the PM, eh Joe?’

Bazza Mackenzie rarely came to Blake House these days. Which made his sudden appearance on Winter’s video entryphone screen
all the more surprising. A couple of hours ago Baz had abruptly disappeared into his den while Winter and Marie settled into
the prawn salad. Now he was eyeing the CCTV camera over the apartment block’s main door, visibly irritated.

‘Press the fucking button, will you? It’s pissing down out here.’

Minutes later he was in the flat, leaving a trail of wet
footprints across the living-room carpet. Winter couldn’t remember a visit from his boss that hadn’t started with a check
on his favourite view.

Winter joined him at the big French windows that opened onto a generous balcony. In the non-stop theatre of Pompey life, this
was probably the best seat in the house. From here, on sunnier days, Winter could spend whole afternoons with his binos and
a steady supply of coffees, keeping tabs on the busy stretch of water at his feet. Even today, the windows pebbled with rain,
the racing pulse of Portsmouth Harbour seemed to reach into the room. The apartment in Gunwharf, Winter often told himself,
had been the best investment he’d ever made.

Mackenzie seized the binos, tracking a figure on the harbourside walk that skirted the front of Blake House. Then his head
went up and he swept the Gosport waterfront. The Camper & Nicholsons’ marina, Winter thought. Old habits die hard.

‘Look at that one, mush. The big bugger, the blue one. What do you reckon? Three hundred K? Four?’

Winter declined the binos. When it came to pricing yachts, he hadn’t a clue. This was a game Bazza liked to play, largely
with himself. If you’d once had big money, he thought, it must be strange to realise that you could have laid hands on pretty
much anything.

‘Maybe you should have bought one, Baz –’ he headed for the kitchen to put the kettle on ‘– while the going was good.’

‘You think I couldn’t? Even now?’

‘I know you couldn’t.’

‘Then you’re fucking wrong, mush.’ He’d appeared at the kitchen door, his face still shiny with rain. ‘There are dozens of
businessmen in this town who must be crapping themselves just now. Happens I’m not one of them. You OK with that?’

It was a direct challenge. Stay on board or fuck off. Winter asked whether he’d prefer tea or coffee.

‘Stolly, since you’re asking. Easy on the ice.’

Winter kept a bottle of vodka in the fridge. Misty had finally tired of Bacardi and Coke. He splashed a generous measure into
a glass, threw a look at Bazza, then doubled it.

‘You having one, mush?’

‘No.’

‘Why the fuck not?’

For the first time Winter realised that Mackenzie was pissed. There was a madness in his eyes that Winter hadn’t seen for
a while.

‘You want to talk about it, Baz? Or do we just stand here and shout at each other?’

Mackenzie eyed him for a moment. In these moods, as Winter knew only too well, his boss could lose it completely. In his glory
days with the 6.57 he’d been a legendary warrior on football terraces throughout the country. Even the police spotters, the
plain-clothes guys with a memory for a face or two, had paid tribute to the Little Un’s appetite for raw violence. Weekend
after weekend he did Pompey proud, and Winter had once seen a police video compilation of his fiercest rucks. Towards the
end of the sequence, up in Leeds, he’d taken on three guys at once, huge bastards twice his size, and still come out on his
toes.

‘Sometimes it’s good to listen, Baz.’ He was steering his boss into the living room again. ‘Stu knows how money works. Sometimes
I think he invented the stuff.’

‘And you think I don’t? You think all this –’ he waved a vague hand around Winter’s living room ‘– happened by fucking
accident
?’

‘It’s mine, Baz. I paid for it. Or most of it.’

‘And the rest, mush? Where did that come from?’

‘Maddox.’

‘Who?’

‘Maddox. The tom you fancied – you know, my friend from a while back.’

‘The arty one?’

‘That’s her.’

‘Not me, then?’

‘No, Baz. Not you. You pay me well. We have some nice times. No complaints. But this place, since you ask, is mine.’

Mackenzie was looking confused now, and just a little lost. He enjoyed owning people, bunging people, sprinkling them with
a quid or two when the fancy took him. The fact that his first lieutenant, his favoured ex-cop, had a life of his own had
always been a niggle.

He studied his glass for a second or two, then tipped his head back and emptied it.

‘Any more, mush?’

Winter got to his feet and returned with the bottle. Something’s happened, he thought. The death spiral of the last couple
of months has just got deeper.

Mackenzie uncapped the bottle and helped himself. To Winter’s surprise, he poured no more than a dribble. Then he looked up.

‘Tide Turn, mush?’

‘What about it?’

‘You think that should go too? Only it’s costing us a fortune.’

‘Stu, Baz. It’s costing Stu a fortune.’

‘Sure. But get rid of Tide Turn and we could use Stu’s dosh somewhere handier.’

Winter gave the suggestion some thought. The Tide Turn Trust was Mackenzie’s investment in good works, a charity pledged to
get alongside the harder elements among the city’s wayward youth and haul them out of the jungle of a Pompey adolescence.
Lately, it had been prospering under the leadership of a genius Dutch social worker. It had cost a fortune to tempt the guy
over from the slums of Rotterdam, where he’d made his considerable reputation, but Stu had been happy to foot the bills. Henrik
van Oosten had made some startling moves, not least in the area of youth offending, and the media applause was getting louder
and louder. Just one of the reasons why the
Guardian
appeared to be taking Bazza Mackenzie’s bid for the mayorship so seriously.

‘You think you can afford that?’

‘I’m not with you, mush.’

‘This mayor thing. If you really want it, then binning Tide Turn would be the kiss of death. Half the city still thinks you’re
a gangster. The rest have got you down as some Copnor hard case who’s seen the light. From where I’m sitting, that’s probably
very good news. Assuming you get the referendum through.’

A city-wide referendum was the key to Mackenzie’s political ambitions. If it ever took place, and if enough people said yes,
then the mayor would henceforth be elected by popular vote.

‘Gangster?’ Mackenzie looked hurt.

‘Sure. This is Pompey, Baz, not fucking Islington. Gangster plays well. It buys hotels. Café-bars. It creates jobs. It still
goes to Fratton Park. It even sorts out dodgy kids. It’s real, Baz. People know who you are. Local boy.’

‘Made good?’ He was grinning now.

‘Definitely. Big time.’

‘So Tide Turn?’

‘Hang on to it. That’s my advice.’

The bottle again. More vodka. Bit of a celebration.

‘Cheers.’ Bazza got to his feet, swayed a little, checked his watch.
‘Off, now. Need to sort one or two things out.’

‘No, Baz. Sit down. Tell me what’s happened.’

Winter guided him back to the sofa. He could feel Bazza’s muscles bunching under the thin leather jacket. Mackenzie hated
being touched. His eyes were glassy. He stared at Winter.

‘What’s this about, mush?’

‘My question exactly. Something’s happened. So maybe you should tell me what …’ he smiled and patted the sofa ‘… for
all our sakes.’

Suttle drove Faraday to Monkswell Farm. It was raining even harder now, the country lanes towards the south of the island
sluicing water from the surrounding fields. Suttle peered ahead, the wipers on double speed, checking the route against a
scribbled map on his lap. He’d borrowed the Fiesta from the local CID boys. They didn’t stretch to satnavs.

‘Punchy, wasn’t she? A result on this job will set her up nicely.’

‘What for?’ Faraday’s eyes were closed. Half an hour of Parsons at full throttle had robbed him of everything.

‘The Superintendent’s job. She’ll get the exams sorted, no problem. What she needs after that is the next vacancy. There’s
a queue. Like always.’

‘You think she does queueing? You think she
ever
did queueing?’

The thought of Parsons meekly waiting her turn brought a smile to Faraday’s face. At the end of the meeting, oblivious to
Faraday’s lack of input, she announced that Operation
Gosling
would be transferring to the satellite Major Incident Room at Ryde police station. Given her ever-increasing workload on
the mainland, she’d be bossing the investigation from her office in the Major Crime suite at Fratton. Which put Faraday, as
Deputy SIO, in charge of a sizeable team of detectives on the spot.

A tight corner threw him sideways against the passenger door. For a second or two he thought he was in Eygpt again, at the
mercy of another set of doctors, but then the car came to a halt and Suttle was
winding down the window to offer his warrant card to the uniform beside the flapping blue and white tape.

‘Over there, sir. Beside the white van.’

Suttle parked the Fiesta and killed the engine. For a long moment Faraday could hear nothing but the steady drumming of rain
on the car roof and the sigh of the wind in the trees overhead. A thick hedge hid the farmhouse and outbuildings and it was
tempting to wind the clock back half a generation and imagine that he was Suttle’s age, out by himself at the start of a long
weekend, preparing to tramp deep into the countryside in pursuit of chiffchaffs or siskins. In those days he’d have had his
deaf-mute son for company – a whirl of fingers and thumbs, oblivious like his dad to the weather. By the age of eight, J-J
could describe a dozen birds in fluent sign, an achievement which, even now, brought a smile to Faraday’s face.

‘OK, boss? You up for this?’ Suttle gave Faraday’s arm a squeeze.

Faraday looked him in the eye. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Bring it on.’

Suttle grinned at him, another squeeze, then he was out in the rain, wrestling with an umbrella he’d found in the back of
the car, stepping round the bonnet to open the passenger door and offer shelter. Faraday, grateful, walked beside him down
the track towards the farmhouse. The path had been churned up by the fire engines and all the other vehicles that had attended
since, and there were deep tyre gouges on the verge, exposing slicks of glistening clay beneath the sodden grass.

Beside the open gate they paused. The remains of Monkswell Farm lay before them. The property occupied a hollow, slightly
below the level of the surrounding fields. It was a long, squat, narrow building, all four walls still standing, the white
cob walls blackened with smoke. Two brick chimney stacks had also survived the fire, standing proud among the black tangle
of assorted debris, somehow adding to the sense of ruin. Not just a building, Faraday thought, but a family too.

Despite the rain, a couple of Crime Scene Investigators were sieving debris onto a layer of clear polythene beside what must
have been the front door. One of them spotted Faraday and offered a nod of welcome. Inside, among the wreckage, Faraday glimpsed
another figure – tall, a fireman in a helmet and a red tabard, stooping from one pile of wreckage to another. As Faraday watched,
he produced a camera, took a few shots, then scribbled himself a note. This has to be the Fire Investigator, Faraday thought,
the guy who’d try and tease some kind of conversation from the sour breath of the sodden embers. How the fire had started.
How it had spread. And who may have helped it have its way.

The Scenes of Crime caravan was parked next to the barn. Suttle
had already briefed Faraday about the Crime Scene Coordinator in charge of the forensic team. Her name was Meg Stanley. She
was new to Hantspol, not bad-looking, and had apparently scored a university degree in theology before joining the men in
blue.

She was waiting for them in the caravan, a small neat woman in her mid-thirties with a generous mouth and a flawless complexion.
She was wearing a two-piece grey suit that lent her an air of slight severity, and at once Faraday could imagine her behind
a lectern in a pulpit, or robed beside an open grave. This was someone, he thought, you’d be wise to take seriously.

She offered tea or coffee from a nest of Thermos flasks. The fact that the pathologist had found shotgun pellets in all four
bodies had given the forensic search an extra edge. Unless she could demonstrate otherwise, the fire had been deliberately
set.

Faraday was looking at the pile of paperwork beside the laptop on the tiny desk. Incidents this challenging were mercifully
rare. If you wanted to muddy a multiple homicide, a thatch fire was a near-perfect way of reducing everything to sludge. From
the forensic point of view, the hours and days to come would be critical. Any tiny clue spared by the fire. Any evidence that
might begin to chart the final hours of the four blackened corpses in the hospital mortuary.

‘So what have we got?’

Stanley talked them through her progress to date. As the on-call CSC, she’d been alerted twenty-four hours ago after the discovery
of the first body. She’d taken the hovercraft to Ryde, met the Crime Scene Manager on site and framed the Forensic Strategy
that would flag the various pathways forwards. Inside the house itself, once the building surveyor had declared the remaining
structure safe, they’d be working inwards from the areas of least damage. A fire dog trained to hunt for accelerants had been
shipped in from the mainland, and the CSM had led a flash search of the immediate area in case something obvious was staring
them in the face. In the absence of a dropped wallet or a signed confession, alas, she’d briefed the Police Search Adviser
to map out coordinates for a more thorough trawl of the surrounding fields and hedgerows.

Faraday was keeping a mental log, ticking off each action. In his experience no one got to the giddy heights of Crime Scene
Coordinator without seizing a situation like this by the throat. You had to get structure and process into these first busy
hours. You had to fold the forensic priorities into the firefighting operation and make absolutely sure that the cracks didn’t
show. Above all, once the investigative machine was cranked up, you had to make certain that nothing was lost as gaps started
to widen between an army of marauding
detectives, the guys in the Incident Room and the painstaking recovery of evidence out here in the field. On paper or in
the classroom it always looked simple. In reality it could easily become a nightmare.