No Lovelier Death (13 page)

‘But you’re not denying it?’

There was a long silence, broken - in the end - by Dawn Ellis. She wanted to know what had happened after Berriman and Rachel left the bathroom.

‘I’ve no idea. I think I went downstairs. It was kicking off big time by now. Total chaos.’

‘And Rachel?’

‘I don’t know where she went.’

‘So when did you next see her?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Not at all?’

‘No. Like I said, it was fucking bedlam, blokes out of their head, madness.’

The next thing that happened, he said, was a visit from the neighbour next door. It was obvious they were looking at big trouble because the music was just getting louder and louder. You could probably hear it on the Isle of Wight.

‘And did you know this guy?’

‘Yeah. His name’s Mackenzie. He used to know my mum. He can be a bit heavy himself sometimes, and he set about some of the blokes the minute he came in. They weren’t having any of that so pretty quickly he’s got himself a serious ruck. I remember someone bottling him. That’s out of order too, so …’ he shrugged ‘… I lent him a hand.’

‘By wading in?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Again?’

‘Yeah.’

He described bundling Mackenzie out of the door. His wife was waiting in the street. He knew she’d have called the Old Bill and he was right. The next thing everyone knew there was a army of cops outside - vans, blokes in full ninja gear, the lot. This, if anything, just made things worse.

‘How come?’ Yates sounded genuinely interested.

‘Because it’s attention, isn’t it? It’s celebrity? It’s what we all want? Blokes were taking loads of pictures on their mobes, sending them to their mates, sending them out to the whole fucking world. We all knew we’d made the news. We knew we were going to be famous. The Craneswater ruck. And we were there.’ He shook his head. ‘Weird when you think about it.’

The interview came to an end minutes later after Berriman had described getting in a van for dispatch to Newbury. Faraday scribbled himself a note to make the forensic on Berriman’s seized clothing and footwear a priority. Then he became aware of voices. Berriman had stepped into the corridor and was asking Dawn Ellis for a lift home. Faraday heard Ellis laughing.

‘You think I’m some kind of taxi service?’

‘Of course not.’ Berriman had paused outside the door. ‘Never hurts to ask though, does it?’

 

It was nearly dark by the time Faraday left the Bridewell. Berriman had been released on police bail, walking out into the gathering dusk with barely a backward glance. Reports from the other interview teams spoke of a mixed bag of results. A couple of the suspects had been remarkably gobby. Most had added little to their previous statements. A couple had gone no comment. Come the morning, Faraday and Suttle would begin their first review, piecing together all the accounts, trying to coax them into some kind of narrative. In the meantime he needed to get away.

He threaded the Mondeo through a maze of Southsea streets, avoiding the remains of the Sunday night traffic, and hit the seafront just west of the pier. The last of a spectacular sunset had spilled across the Solent and he could see lights pricking the soft grey shadow of the Isle of Wight. This time yesterday, he thought, he and Gabrielle had been halfway through a perfect weekend. Now, twenty-four hours later, he was almost too tired to find a parking space.

He switched off the engine and wondered whether he had the energy to risk a walk. He needed to clear his head, to fill his lungs with the sweet chill of the night wind, to build a dyke against the images that kept crowding in: the wreckage of the life the Aults had built, their daughter’s sightless eyes staring into oblivion, the turmoil in Major Crime as he and countless others fought to bring this monster to heel. It wasn’t simply a question of spilled blood, of lives needlessly taken. There was something else going on here, something that belonged in a nightmare, and the more he thought about it, the more depressed he became. Berriman had described the experience as weird. Weird was right. But weird was just the start of it.

Nearly an hour later, back home in the Bargemaster’s House, he tried to share this thought with Gabrielle. She’d picked up bits and pieces of news from the radio during the day, enough to anticipate a late supper, and now she was stirring a pot of cassoulet. Another bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône stood open on the kitchen table. The house smelled of garlic and goose fat.

‘
Combien?
’ She couldn’t believe it.

‘Well over a hundred kids. We laid hands on ninety-four. The rest would have gone before we arrived.’

‘Including
les coupables
?’ The guilty ones.

‘Almost certainly. What would you do if you’d just killed someone? Hang around? Tell the world? Wait to get yourself arrested? No -’ he reached for the wine, filled two glasses ‘- the way I see it we’ve got ninety-four witnesses and absolutely no clue where to go next. We’ll crack it in the end, we’ll get some kind of result, but life just shouldn’t be like this. We are what we are because we still have some shred of respect for each other. That’s what makes us civilised. That’s what brought us out of the swamp. Last night tells me that might be coming to an end. Christ knows what happens next.’

Faraday rarely made speeches. He mistrusted emotions as raw as these. He was about to blame the outburst on exhaustion when Gabrielle turned from the stove. She’d been tactful enough to hide her surprise.

‘
Merci.
’ She tipped the wine glass in salute. ‘
À justice
.’

Faraday took a deep swallow of the wine, feeling better at once. Over the past few months, no matter what the pressures, he’d tried to shield this new life of his with Gabrielle. He seldom discussed particular inquiries, or the people he worked with, or the way that one job seemed to fold seamlessly into the next. In the distant past, nearly three decades ago, he seemed to remember volunteering for this treadmill, little realising exactly where the journey might take him. Were things really getting worse? Were people any nastier now than they’d always been? In truth he hadn’t a clue but suspected that Gabrielle’s guileless toast would do no harm.

‘To justice,’ he replied, ‘whatever that might be.’

Later, fighting sleep, Faraday led her to the sofa. Mahler’s Fifth was playing on the hi-fi. Outside, through the open French doors, the softer passages were underscored with the gravely whisper of the rising tide. It had started to rain, a thin drizzle that blurred their view of the harbour.

They lay together for a while, her head on his chest. For months now, funded by a grant from a French university, Gabrielle had been exploring gang culture on Portmouth’s inner-city estates. An anthropologist by trade, she’d been more used to researching Third World hill tribes on the very edges of civilisation but she’d been struck from the start by the parallels she’d discovered in Portsea and Buckland. The same reliance on friends and extended family. The same instinctive reactions in times of feast or famine.

Faraday had always kept the small print of her work at arm’s length, a mark of respect as well as an acknowledgement of her independence, but at times like these he couldn’t resist asking her how it was going.

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I was in Somerstown today. Just for a couple of hours. There were two kids I had to see.’

‘And?’

‘Only one turned up.’

‘So where was the other one?’

‘You’d arrested him.’ She got up on one elbow, touched him lightly on the cheek. ‘I should be angry,
n’est-ce pas
? My precious schedule ruined by some grumpy policeman?’

‘You’re telling me he was at the party? In Craneswater?’

‘Of course. Like most of his friends.’

‘You’ve talked to some of these kids?’

‘Of course not. You’d locked them up.’

‘But you will talk to them? In due course?’

‘
Bien sûr.
That’s my job. That’s what I do.’

Faraday looked down at her, feeling the first tiny tickle of apprehension. Potentially there were issues here. Turf. Procedure. To whom did these kids belong? Were they raw material for a French anthropological treatise on UK gang culture? Or were they fodder for the courts?

‘Maybe we should have regular conferences?’ he suggested. ‘Maybe we should compare notes?’

‘Sure.’ She smiled back. ‘And maybe we shouldn’t.’

MONDAY, 13 AUGUST 2007.
09.12

Willard again. He can’t keep away, Faraday thought.

‘Joe?’ The Head of CID beckoned him into Martin Barrie’s office.

‘This won’t take long.’

Gail Parsons was still in residence, her paperwork spread across the Det-Supt’s desk. She seemed to treat Willard on level terms, two grown-ups with a mutual interest in squeezing the last trickle of juice from the
Mandolin
lemon, and when Faraday stepped in through the open office door it was Parsons who waved him into the empty seat. Squatter’s rights, Faraday thought. Leave it too late, and Martin Barrie will return to find himself banished to the corridor.

‘This is bigger than we thought, Joe.’ It was Parsons.

‘How come?’

‘The city council have been banging on the Police Authority’s door.

They’re not happy. And neither is the Chief.’

‘And that’s our problem?’

‘It could be if we don’t pull our fingers out. You know the way the bureaucracy works. Next thing we know, they’ll start calling for an official inquiry. As if we don’t have enough on our plates.’

Faraday looked blank. His job description suggested he was a detective. The luckless occupants of Sandown Road had doubtless been having a moan about the breakdown of law and order, and after Saturday night he didn’t blame them.

‘But what’s all this got to do with us? Keeping the peace isn’t down to CID. Not last time I looked.’

‘Don’t be obtuse, Joe.’ It was Willard. ‘Gail’s right. Like it or not, we’re all in the spotlight. In a perfect world we’d all keep our heads down, but on this job that’s not an option.’

Faraday nodded, said nothing. Willard’s comments on Sky News had made headlines in the national press. Quoted in a longish article in this morning’s
Guardian
, Hampshire’s Head of CID had refused to retract a word of his earlier interview. Indeed, he’d gone further. The UK, he said, was facing the very real possibility of anarchy. Keeping the peace was a numbers game. There weren’t enough policemen, there wasn’t enough resource. As soon as the kids sussed the odds, the game was up. Not just in leafy Craneswater but everywhere else. If you thought you were safe, if you thought this kind of behaviour would pass you by, you’d better think again.

Gabrielle had spotted the article first, sliding it across the breakfast table for Faraday’s attention.

‘Game?’ she’d queried.

Now, sitting in Martin Barrie’s office, Faraday was still wondering where this debate was supposed to lead. Willard would never have opened his mouth in the first place without sanction from above, and that meant that his comments carried the authority of the Chief Constable. In one sense, it was an obvious tactic, a bid to stifle howls of protest from the likes of the Craneswater Residents’ Association. In another, it was remarkably high risk. Under a government addicted to spin, nothing carried greater danger than the truth.

‘We’re doing our best,’ he said at last.

‘Of course you are, Joe. I’d expect nothing else.’

‘So what else … ?’ He gestured round at the three of them.

Willard glanced at Parsons. Whatever was coming next, Faraday sensed it had been her idea.

‘Witness statements, Joe.’ She was looking at a list of names he’d sent through yesterday morning. ‘What’s the strength?’

‘It’s mixed, as you’d expect. Most of these kids weren’t interested in helping us out. They knew they were looking at trespass or criminal damage and the last thing they wanted to do was land themselves in it.’

‘And the others?’

‘They’re mainly friends of Rachel’s.’

‘And there’s detail?’

‘Lots.’

‘Pretty graphic?’

‘In places, yes.’

‘What about pictures?’

‘The mobes are at Netley. We’re having a session this morning. I’m told there’s yards of the stuff.’

‘And ownership?’

‘The material belongs to whoever shot it. The mobes too, of course.’

‘But you’ve got Regulation of Investigatory Powers Acts on this lot?’ The question came from Willard.

‘Of course, sir.’

Under the Regulation of Investigating Powers Act,
Mandolin
had been obliged to get formal authority to access messages and images from the seized phones. The RIPA forms were a pain to complete. More grit in the investigative machine.

Willard was looking at Parsons again. She bent forward, intense, businesslike, eyeballing Faraday.

‘A lot of these images would have been sent to friends before we seized the mobes, am I right?’

‘I imagine so, yes.’

‘And we could access those numbers from the mobes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then …’ She was looking at Willard now, one eyebrow raised.

At last Faraday began to understand where the conversation was heading. This wasn’t about
Mandolin
at all. This was about politics.

‘You want to get some of this stuff out there,’ he said flatly. ‘You want faces, stories, details, pictures. You want it in the papers. You want it on the telly. You want to scare people stiff. Am I right?’

‘You are, Joe.’ Parsons nodded. ‘We can’t release statements, of course, and we won’t.’

‘Names and addresses? Phone numbers?’

‘No way. Not coming from us. Not directly.’ She paused. ‘You’re working with young Suttle on the witness statements. Mr Willard tells me he’s close to a reporter on the
News
. Would that be right?’