No Lovelier Death (38 page)

‘It doesn’t matter. You have a pen,
chéri
?’ She gave him a mobile number.

‘Where does that take me?’

‘A boy called Connor. He knows about the party.’

‘He was there?’

‘For a little while, yes. But you’re right about the girl. She frightens him. She frightens a lot of the kids I talk to. You should talk to him,
chéri.’

‘He knows I’m a copper?’

‘He knows nothing. Except that I trust you.’

‘And that’s enough?’

‘That’s for you to say.
À bientôt.
’ The line went dead.

Faraday stared at the number for a moment or two. His instinct was to hand it on to Jimmy Suttle. He was in charge of the Intelligence Cell. Leads like this were part of his job description. More to the point, he was much younger than Faraday and if the last week had taught him anything then it was the sheer depth of the gap that had opened up behind his own generation. Even recently he’d fooled himself he understood kids. Now he wasn’t at all sure.

At the same time, though, Gabrielle had entrusted this number to him and not to anyone else. Trust was important to her. She’d just said so. Which meant that Faraday, in turn, should stick to the rules.

He reached for the phone on his desk then changed his mind. Using his mobile would be better.

The number rang and rang.

‘Yeah?’ It was barely a whisper. Faintly, in the background, Faraday could hear an adult’s voice, a woman, plenty of echo. He must be at school, Faraday thought.

‘Who are you, Mister?’

‘The name’s Joe.’

‘Who?’

‘Joe.’

‘Shit.’ Ever fainter. ‘Gabby’s bloke?’

 

Winter was in his office at the Royal Trafalgar when Mackenzie limped in. Winter, who’d tried him several times on his mobile during the course of the day, thought at first that Bazza was pissed. He looked up, seeing this squat, stiff figure with something white supporting his chin.

‘You OK, Baz?’

‘Very funny.’ Mackenzie sank into the chair Winter kept for occasional visitors. ‘Believe me, mush. If I thought there was room for another painkiller …’

Winter got up. One of the cleaning women was chasing a Hoover along the thin strip of carpet outside. Winter gave her a wave and shut the door, turning back to Mackenzie.

‘So what happened?’

‘You know what happened.’

‘I saw the crash. You think I should have hung around?’

‘Don’t be daft, mush. It was the best I could do at the time. I thought it was a laugh. Especially when I told them it was their fault.’

The Filth, he said, had been crap. No sense of humour. Not even an apology.

‘There’s bits of Marie’s new motor all over the road, and their radiator’s leaking stuff everywhere, and I’m hopping around hanging on to the back of my neck, and all they can do is bang on about speed limits and getting in their way. I gave them an earful, mush. Scaring me like that. Blue lights. Sirens. And me twice their fucking age.’

They’d wanted to take him down the Bridewell, he said, on a dangerous driving charge plus sus obstructing the course of justice, but he wasn’t having it. In the end they’d agreed he might have an injury. When he asked for a lift to A & E they wouldn’t hear of it. Health and safety meant they had to call an ambulance. The people in the road thought it was something off the telly. One old girl had taken a shine to him.

‘Two cups of tea and a slice of Madeira and a bit of a sit-down when I said I felt faint. The ambulance blokes said I got off lightly. Necks break easier than you might think.’

‘So how do you feel now?’

‘Shit. And my leg hurts like a bastard. Even Marie feels sorry for me.’

When Mackenzie wanted to look round he had to move his entire body. Winter realised he was checking the door.

‘It’s closed, Baz. What’s the problem?’

‘This whole thing.’

‘What whole thing?’

‘The party. What happened. Rachel and her mate by the pool.

Ault …’

‘And?’

‘Let’s just forget it. Tell you the truth, mush, I got the bloke wrong.

Turns out he’s a cunt.’

‘Who?’ Winter was lost.

‘Ault. He comes back today with his missus. I nip next door, like you would. I tell him how sorry we are, what a shitheap the house is, how he can stay as long as he likes round our place. I couldn’t have been sweeter with the guy. And you know what? He just blanks me.’

‘He’s just lost his daughter, Baz. And he only had one of them to begin with. He’s probably a bit upset.’

‘Upset? Of course he’s fucking upset. Anyone would be upset. But this guy’s giving it to me like I was in court. He thinks I did it, mush - he thinks it was my fault. I could see it. It was all over his face.
Mister
Mackenzie? Who the fuck does he think he is?’

Winter sat back. The implications were clear. No more investigations. No more running round playing the detective.

‘It might not be as simple as that, Baz. Not the way I see it. You’re right to want to get to the bottom of this and you know why? Because they ended up in your back garden.’

‘It’s history, mush. It’s gone.’

‘No, it hasn’t.’

‘No?’

‘I’m afraid not. You remember the Scenes of Crime blokes? Crawling round your place for a couple of days?’

‘Yeah?’ Mackenzie had forgotten for a moment about the pain.

‘They found a couple of sets of prints in your kitchen. One of them was Rachel’s. The other belonged to the lad Hughes.’

‘He’s never been in my kitchen.’

‘He has, Baz. The night he died.’

‘But how do you know?’

‘I just told you. They got lifts.’

‘But how do you know that?’

‘The same way I found out about Danny Cooper and all that blood all over his bedroom walls. I talk to people, Baz. People I trust.’

‘The Filth?’

‘Of course. You think I’m the only one who ever bent the rules? It’s blokes like me, Baz, that keep good citizens like you safe at night. Leave it to the other muppets and you wouldn’t get a wink.’

‘So who is this bloke?’

‘A friend of mine, Baz. He’s got a name but there’s no way I’m giving it to you. Just trust me, that’s all. Think you can cope with that?’

Mackenzie wanted to say no but Winter managed to head him off. The Old Bill might well be back, he said. They were light years from a result and they’d barely survived the weekend’s media storm. Add some serious aggravation from the Craneswater Residents’ Association plus a forthcoming extraordinary meeting of the Police Authority, and they’d suddenly be in the business of reinvestigating old lines of enquiry.

‘That means you, Baz. Or putting it bluntly, us. That motor last night, the Alfa. What happens to it now?’

‘I’ve got a guy’s gonna take it round a place I know for a steam clean. Inside and out. Clean like you’ve never seen clean.’

Winter was shaking his head. Give me patience, he thought.

‘No, Baz. No way that motor leaves the double glazing place. You need a guy round there to strip off the plates, the engine number, anything that can tie it to Westie. Then you either need a complete refurb inside - new carpets, new seats, the lot - plus a respray on the outside before you find the money to ship it abroad and find a buyer. Or you invest in a can of petrol and burn the fucker. I’d go for the petrol option personally, but that’s down to you.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Yeah, and so would you be if you’d done my job. Forensics these days, we’re talking single-cell DNA. Westie would have left gallons of the stuff. I’m telling you, Baz, it’s a no-brainer.’

Mackenzie had the grace to look impressed.

‘So what are you saying then, mush? Only I’ve had enough of going on my knees to fucking Ault.’

Winter sat back, enjoying this rare moment of authority.

‘I’m saying - suggesting - that I do what you wanted in the first place.’

‘Remind me.’

‘Put a name alongside those bodies of yours.’ He smiled. ‘For everyone’s sake.’

FRIDAY, 17 AUGUST 2007.
15.35

Connor said he was fourteen but Faraday didn’t believe him. He was Pompey-thin, with gelled hair, bitten nails and a look of permanent anxiety in his wide blue eyes. A blue Henri Lloyd top hung on his bony frame. On the cusp between childhood and adolescence, he talked in a low mumble with an occasional cackle of laughter when something struck him as funny.

He’d agreed to meet on condition Faraday bought him a Big Bucket at the Kentucky Fried. It had to be the KFC in the Pompey Centre, next to Fratton Park, because Connor was on multiple ASBOs, and most of the rest of the city was out of bounds to him.

Strictly speaking, Faraday was taking a risk on a meet like this. Best practice demanded specialist officers who worked with juveniles all the time and maybe an appropriate adult to sit in. The paperwork alone would have taken hours.

‘How come the ASBOs?’ Faraday helped himself to a chip.

Connor looked round, disappointed at the lack of audience. Rain pebbled on the big glass windows. The place was empty.

‘Assault and battery, bit of happy-slapping, bit of twocking. Yeah, and I nicked a speedboat.’

‘How come?’

‘Dunno. It was just there.’

The boat, he muttered, had been tied to a mooring buoy on Langstone Harbour. Connor and a couple of mates had been eyeing it for a while. They’d waded out at high tide and helped themselves, just for the laugh, but then the tide had turned and they’d found themselves drifting out through the harbour mouth. Only an alert coastguard had saved them from a night in the English Channel.

Faraday vaguely remembered the story from a piece in the
News.
THREE LADS IN A BOAT.

‘So what happened?’

‘The Old Bill was waiting when we got towed back. Five of them.

Well funny that was.’

As well as the ASBOs, Connor was now on curfew. He pushed the chair back from the table, rolled up one leg of his Adidas track bottoms and insisted Faraday take a look at the electronic tag. The curfew, he said, had originally been for ten in the evening. Now it was seven.

‘So how come you were at that party on Saturday?’

‘Never said I was, did I?’

‘But you know about it?’

‘Course. Everyone knows about it. Fucking laugh, mush.’

One of his brothers, he said, had gone. First thing he knew he’d been sitting at home watching the football on the telly with the old tit.

‘The old tit?’

‘Me mum. My brother, see, him and another geezer had found all this wine, bottles of the stuff. He don’t know nothing about wine, Clancy, so he phones the old tit to find out whether it’s any good.’

‘He hadn’t tried it?’

‘No, mush. It was a bottle, like I say, not opened or anything, and there’s loads more where that came from. Clancy, right, he don’t drink wine. But he wants a little earn, yeah?’

‘And your mum?’

‘She don’t know nothing about wine neither, so Clancy says what he’ll do, like, is bring a load home anyway because all the good gear had gone already.’

‘Like what?’

‘Dunno.’ He sat on his hands, shrugging. ‘iPods? Phones? Cameras? Jewellery? Any moolah lying around? Any bugle going spare?’

‘Bugle?’

‘Toot. White. Cocaine.’

‘And was there?’

‘Dunno, mush. Like I say, I weren’t there.’

‘And the wine?’

‘Clancy had a load away.’

‘How did he carry it?’

‘Pillow cases. Off the bed. He had a bit of flange up there, anything to get his dick wet, Clancy. Nicked the pillow cases after, like.’

‘And the wine? He sold it in the end?’

‘Dunno. Might have done. The old tit tried a bottle. Said it was all right.’

Faraday nodded, wondering what Peter Ault would make of this conversation. Precious wines laid down for years. Necked by the old tit.

Connor had barely touched the food. Faraday told him it was getting cold. The boy looked at it a moment then pushed it away.

‘Ain’t hungry, mush. So what’s this about?’

Faraday explained a little more about the party, knowing full well that none of this would be news to the likes of Connor. There’d been loads of damage. Two people had died.

‘And you wanna know about a sort called Bonner, yeah?’

The directness of the question startled Faraday.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘I do.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

‘I need to talk to her.’

‘About them bodies?’

‘Yeah. And one or two other issues.’

‘Yeah, but it’s the bodies really, innit? Cos me and my mates know she’s off her head. I had a ruck with her once. She gobbed at me, just for nothing, like. And you know what? I had a fag on and I put it out in her face … bang …’ One thin arm shot out. ‘Just like that. She went mental. Silly old moose.’

‘That was recently?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’ve seen her since?’

‘Fucking joking, mush. She carries a blade.’

‘All the time?’

‘Yeah. She’s fucking psycho too. Don’t get me wrong, mush. I’d fight her if I had to. No way no bird’s ever gonna slap me around. But you don’t go looking for it, do you? Not in this fucking city. Not the way it is. There are people want to hurt you out there, really hurt you. And she’s one of them. She’s fucking dangerous, mush. Like I say, off her head.’

‘You know where to find her?’

The question put a new light in Connor’s eyes.

‘Why’s that then? You wanna talk to her?’

‘Yes. I just told you.’

‘But you’re serious? You really wanna do it? Arrest her? Get her sent away?’

‘We’d see.’

‘See, fuck. She’s well evil. I’m telling you.’