Deadlight (5 page)

‘Why does that make him an arsehole?’

Yates looked up from his notes. Willard’s was a fair question.

‘It doesn’t, sir. But one of the blokes I talked to took it a bit further. This guy’s off on a transfer to another nick next week so maybe he doesn’t mind having a pop.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said that Coughlin had a terrible reputation amongst the prisoners.’

‘What for?’

‘Bullying.’

‘And nothing got reported?’

‘Apparently not. He seems to have chosen his targets. He knew the weaker ones would keep their mouths shut and he’d take it out on them. But he’d try it on with others too, nothing physical, but little games, wind-ups, you know the way it is inside.’

‘You checked this out with the governor?’

‘He was away this afternoon.’

Willard nodded, scribbling himself a note, aware of a stir of movement amongst the DCs blocking the open doorway to the corridor. Then the bodies parted and a tall figure in a well-cut suit slipped in. He was young, mid-twenties, with neatly cropped hair, steady eyes and the kind of all-over leanness that suggested regular work-outs. Spot him in a magazine, and you’d have said footballer or dotcom entrepreneur. Either way, he wasn’t averse to attention.

He nodded at Willard and apologised for the late entrance. Flat London vowels, and a voice pitched slightly higher than you’d expect. Willard, who clearly hadn’t a clue who he was, demanded a name.

‘DC Corbett, sir. Working with DC Yates.’

‘We’ve been going twenty minutes, Corbett. Where the fuck were you?’

‘On the phone, sir. To the nick.’

‘That’s not an answer. That’s an excuse. On this squad, briefings mean just that. You drop what you’re doing and turn up. End of story. You understand that?’

‘Yes, sir. I apologise.’

Faraday was watching Bev Yates. It had been Faraday’s decision to pair them up and send them into Gosport prison, and just now Bev seemed as curious as everyone else to find out what kind of phone conversation could possibly have kept Corbett out of the squad briefing.

‘Well?’ Willard, too, wanted to know.

Corbett had found himself the corner of a desk by the window. Silhouetted against the light, it was difficult to read his expression. As he produced a pocketbook from an inside pocket and began to flick through, Faraday had the feeling that he was watching some kind of performance. The self-possession, the sheer nerve, was too measured to be spontaneous.

‘His name’s Ainsley Davidson, sir,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve
been going through the list of recently released prisoners, and he’s the one who definitely fits the bill.’

‘What bill?’

‘The job, sir. Coughlin …’

For the first time, an edge of uncertainty crept into Corbett’s voice. He’d just produced a rabbit from the hat. Where was the applause?

‘And?’

‘Davidson was one of the guys who’d been getting a hard time from Coughlin. There’s a lot of stuff about his conviction. Basically, he never held his hands up to being guilty and Coughlin wound him up. It’s a long story. I’m not sure this is the time and place …’ He tailed off, folding the pocketbook and returning it to his jacket.

It was Dave Michaels who broke the ensuing silence. As Receiver, he took first bite at all incoming information.

‘You’re going to let me have that?’

‘Of course, skip.’

‘See me afterwards, yeah?’

The briefing broke up within minutes, stalling on the hard shoulder after a blow-out in the fast lane. Corbett’s showboating would doubtless earn him closed-door bollockings from both Willard and Michaels, but the fact remained that Coughlin’s prison was an obvious place to find a prime suspect. Whether or not Ainsley Davidson was the name to put in the frame was anybody’s guess but for the time being it was Willard’s priority to establish a time-line for Coughlin’s final hours. He wanted to know where the guy had been, who he’d met, who might have clocked him. A receipt retrieved from the premises already indicated a fifty-pound withdrawal from an ATM at 18.46 on Monday evening, and Coughlin appeared to have spent most of it by the time he met his death. Pubs were an obvious place to start. The city’s web of CCTV cameras was another. Willard added the usual health warnings – explore every option,
keep an open mind, work like bastards, and always but always think
court
– while afterwards it fell to Faraday to take care of the routine bits of housekeeping.

Only at the end, amongst the closing rustle of papers, did Willard add a final footnote to the briefing. He was off tomorrow on a five-day course up at Centrex. The course had been booked for the best part of a year and he was buggered if he was going to miss out on it. Naturally, he’d be available on the end of a mobile, but he was lodging the Policy Book with DI Faraday, and he had every confidence that the DSIO would drive the investigation forward. With luck,
Merriott
would be sorted by the time he got back. Otherwise, they’d doubtless get to know each other a great deal better.

He glanced across at Faraday.

‘OK, Joe?’

A couple of miles away at Highland Road police station, Cathy Lamb was doing her best to make sense of the quarterly overtime allocations when Winter appeared at her open door.

Promotion to DI on division had earned Lamb a first-floor office of her own, accommodation entirely in keeping with the rest of the building. The police station had once been the headquarters of the pre-war bus company, an organisation keen to establish a certain architectural tone, and the oak panelling and lead-light window above Cathy’s ample desk had survived acquisition of the premises by Hampshire Constabulary. Indeed, with its heavy oak staircase and imposing boardroom, Highland Road had become one of the county’s showpiece stations, living proof that state-of-the-art policing could march hand-in-hand with delicate and painstaking conservation.

Winter wanted to talk about the Somerstown kids.

‘We’re never going to sort them this way.’ He settled
into the armchair Cathy kept for important visitors. ‘We’re wasting our time.’

In her heart Lamb felt the same, but the last thing you did with Winter was agree with him.

‘You found yourself an OP, then?’

‘Couldn’t have been better placed. But they never showed, did they?’

Lamb, irritated by the ease with which Winter had put her on the back foot, refused to take the bait. Analysis by one of the field DCs in the Crime Incident Management Unit had indicated a definite pattern to the shop blags. Tuesdays and Thursdays, early afternoon, were favourite. Last month or so, you could practically set your watch by them, just one of the reasons Asian shopkeepers were threatening to take things into their own hands. The latter threat, all too credible, had sent Hartigan scurrying for cover. Racial incidents figured importantly in the Home Office performance tables and Asian heavies laying into local white kids could spark all kinds of trouble. The last thing the newly promoted Chief Supt wanted on his precious CV was any kind of race riot.

‘You don’t get lucky every time,’ Lamb insisted. ‘You know that.’

‘So we do it again? And again? Just tuck ourselves up and wait? How much budget are we talking here?’ Winter’s derisive gesture took in the spreadsheet on the desktop PC. ‘You’re telling me there’s money to burn?’

Lamb fought the urge to turn the computer off. Lately, she’d noticed a change in Winter. For a while, after he’d lost his wife, he’d beaten a tactical retreat, spending far too much time trying to maintain Joannie’s precious garden, but the Bradley Finch job had rekindled the old spirit, revived the old trademark deviousness, and lately he’d taken to playing the elder statesman. With five years to serve, the guarantee of a decent pension and absolutely no prospect of promotion, he could afford to offer a suggestion or two. Like now.

‘Suppose you let me talk to a couple of people …’ he began.

Lamb shook her head.

‘Suppose we ask ourselves about this afternoon. Just whose house was this?’

‘The OP? A woman called Doris Ackerman. Used to be married to an ex-stoker before he fell under a bus. Nice as you like.’

‘And you took her through the paperwork?’

‘Of course.’

‘So she knew what you were up to?’

‘She knew we were in her front room with a camera.’

‘Pointing at Patel’s?’

‘Of course.’

‘So who did she phone?’

‘No one.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because the phone was in the hall and I pulled the jack out.’

‘Mobile?’

‘She wouldn’t know the meaning of the word. She’s eighty-seven.’

Cathy gazed at him for a moment. It didn’t really matter whether it was true or not about the phone. The only point of pursuing the argument any further was to test Winter’s footwork. Could he still match you move for move? Anticipate the traps? Box you in with his case-hardened experience and cheerful contempt for procedure? The answer, she knew, was yes. Banging on about Doris Ackerman would get them nowhere.

‘So what’s the big idea?’

She waited for Winter’s slow smile. It didn’t happen. Perhaps, she thought, he’s started taking recently-promoted female DIs seriously.

‘There’s a guy I know runs charlie and smack for Bazza Mackenzie. He’s not near the top of the food chain. He’s
not even halfway up. But he shifts a lot of gear and he’s extremely pissed off.’

Lamb reached for a notepad. Bazza Mackenzie had the local Class A drugs market by the throat. Put in a call for cocaine, or heroin, and it was ninety-five per cent certain you’d be buying from him. Not directly. Nothing as silly as that. But the cash you swopped for doing your head in would, one way or another, almost certainly end up in one of Bazza’s many bank accounts.

‘Go on.’

‘I’m due a meet with this guy. He’s talking next week but he can be ever so flexible if he tries.’

‘You thinking earlier?’

‘I’m thinking tonight.’

‘And?’

‘We have a chat.’

‘But why? What’s he got to do with kids wrecking corner shops?’

‘I dunno but there’s a name he keeps using, crops up all over. This kid’s fifteen, Cath. And Tuesday lunchtimes, I bet he doesn’t go to school.’

Bev Yates and Andy Corbett sat in Faraday’s office in the Major Crimes suite. After a punishing fifteen-minute wrangle with Willard, who was less than happy about having his briefing hijacked by some upstart DC, Faraday was in no mood for more showboating. He wanted to know the real strength on Ainsley Davidson. Not hearsay. Not speculation. Strictly the facts.

‘Sure, sir.’

Corbett laid it out, date perfect, pausing at every bend in the road in case Faraday couldn’t keep up. Bev Yates, a mere spectator, couldn’t believe his ears. Maybe this was what they taught you in the Met. Maybe this kind of arrogance came with the turf.

Corbett had just spent another fifteen minutes on the phone.

‘Number one, Davidson’s a known South London criminal. As a kid, he did a couple of spells in YOIs for robbery, street crime mainly, wallets, handbags, stuff like that. Later he took to TWOCing. According to the screw I’ve been talking to, he was happy to admit it. Loved motors, loved everything about them, couldn’t keep his hands off anything with wheels. He’d steal for the fun of it, for the drive afterwards. Then he got himself in deeper shit.’

‘Like what?’

‘GBH with intent. By this time, he’s twenty-one. His local manor’s Balham. He’s running around with some serious criminals. Then he makes his big mistake. He nicks an Astra. That’s uncontested. He admitted it in court. White M reg from a car park in Wandsworth. Couple of days later, Balham High Road, that same Astra knocks over a woman pushing a pram across the road. The Astra doesn’t stop and the woman dies later in hospital.’

‘That was down to Davidson?’

‘You got it. The car is recovered the following week. Davidson’s prints are all over it, he’s got a dodgy alibi, plus a witness to the incident IDs him on a parade.’

‘So he admitted the GBH?’

‘No way. Not then. Not in court. And not afterwards. A hundred per cent not guilty, m’lord.’

‘What about the prints?’

‘Obviously his. He admits he nicked the Astra in the first place but he insists he never touched the car that day. Never knocked the woman down. Never killed her. Not just innocent, but bitter and extremely twisted.’

‘And he went down?’

‘Sweet as you like. Trial lasted less than a fortnight.’ Corbett paused, glancing sideways at Yates. ‘Seven years, six of them in Gosport. Most of the time on Coughlin’s wing.’

‘And?’

‘The screw’s saying it was party-time for Coughlin. Guy had a ball. Nothing physical. Apparently Davidson’s a tough little bugger. But everything else, every little wind-up you can imagine, access to lawyers, access to computers, stamps for his little envelopes, lots of conversations about food outside the cell when Davidson went on hunger strike, whatever he could dream up to make life a misery. Davidson never stopped trying to prove his innocence. Coughlin did his best to make sure he never could.’

‘How come this screw’s so forthcoming?’

‘Because he hated Coughlin. Like they all did.’

‘Hate’s a big word.’ Faraday reached for a pencil. ‘Bev?’

Yates stirred. His face was pouched with exhaustion.

‘He wasn’t flavour of the month,’ Yates agreed. ‘I’m not sure about hate, though.’

Faraday nodded, then pushed his chair back from the desk and stared out of the window. Beyond a thousand rooftops, the swell of Portsdown Hill. Finally he turned back to Corbett.

‘And your suggestion is?’

There was a longish silence, then Corbett cleared his throat. He sounded pleased with himself, the voice of a man who’d just spared the rest of the squad a great deal of work.

‘Davidson was released a couple of weeks ago.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe he had a debt to settle.’

Two hours later, nearly dark, Faraday was still at his desk. He’d been long enough with Major Crimes to know that the first two days were the most important, not simply because the majority of cases were solved within forty-eight hours but because of the sheer volume of work that went into bump-starting the investigative machine. Lately, he’d taken to keeping a checklist of must-do reminders in his wallet – everything from
elimination strategies and lab submission protocols to poster circulation and funding codes – because rule one on homicide investigations was brutally clear: a single missed detail, a single slip on the rock-face, and you were looking at disaster.