One Under (10 page)

‘Around half one? Two o’clock?’ Suttle ventured. ‘Maybe a car?’

She stared at him, saying nothing. Ellis suggested they all sat down. Mrs Cleaver didn’t move.

‘What happened in the tunnel?’ she asked at last.

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Not at this point in time.’

‘But someone died, didn’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘A man?

‘I can’t say.’

‘Under the wheels of a train … Yuk.’ She shuddered. ‘On the local radio this morning they were talking about him being tied to the line. Who’d do a thing like that? Who’d even
think
about it?’ She waited for an answer. Neither Ellis nor Suttle obliged. At length she folded her arms. She looked angry, as if this latest outrage had been designed for her personally. ‘You know why we moved out here? To get away from all that ghastliness. The city’s full of it. It doesn’t matter where you live.’

‘City, Mrs Cleaver?’ Ellis was doing her best to sound sympathetic.

‘Portsmouth. Actually Southsea, to be more precise. It’s probably meat and drink to people like you but I find it hard to put into words the kind of disgust … no,
despair
… ’ She shook her head. ‘It makes me so
angry
.’

‘Disgust at what, Mrs Cleaver?’

‘The way we’ve become. What we are. What we have to put up with. Out here in the sticks it was supposed to be better, more civilised, and now this.’ There came another tilt of the head as she fought to compose herself. Then she looked again at Suttle. ‘You’re right. I did hear a car. That’s rare, believe me, especially on Sunday nights at that kind of hour.’

‘What kind of hour?’

‘Ten to three. I was awake. I looked at the clock.’

‘Did you see it at all? Go to the window?’

‘No. By that time, it had gone.’

‘In which direction? Towards the village? Or south? Back towards Pompey?’

‘Well … ’ she hesitated for a moment ‘ … that’s the point, really. It went south. Definitely. Very fast, too. Very … you know,
aggressive
. But it didn’t come from the village. No, it came from over there.’ She nodded towards the front door. ‘There’s a lane that goes down to the plantation, becomes a track. That’s where it came from. Not the village at all.’

Ellis and Suttle exchanged glances, then Ellis fumbled in her bag for a pen. While she began to fill out a form on her clipboard, Suttle asked to use the loo. Mrs Cleaver nodded, watching Ellis’ racing pen. There was a problem, it seemed, with the lavatory along the hall. Suttle was welcome to use the one upstairs.

‘What’s this for?’

‘It’s routine, Mrs Cleaver. We call it a PDF, a Personal Descriptive Form. It won’t take long. Just a handful of questions.’

Suttle disappeared. By the time he got back Ellis had finished.

‘That’s it?’ Mrs Cleaver looked relieved.

‘For now, yes. If we need to talk to you again, we’ll phone.’

Ellis checked the number, then she and Suttle stepped towards the front door. Outside, in the sunshine, they paused for a moment before turning to say their goodbyes but it was too late. The door had closed.

 

The news was back with Faraday by lunchtime. The DS in charge of outside enquiries had conferenced with Jerry Proctor, and with the tunnel close to release, the Crime Scene Manager had dispatched members of his team to meet Ellis and Suttle beside the plantation. A call on the Airwave had also brought the Crime Scene Tracker racing back from her office at Cosham police station, delighted to be able to have a second crack at
Coppice
. Yesterday’s search of the woodland path that accessed the railway at the northern end of the tunnel had yielded nothing more than a sackful of drinks cans, crisp packets and an assortment of discarded condoms. No broken vegetation. No footprints. Not the slightest sign that anyone might recently have scaled the fence and clambered up the embankment. Now, the prospects seemed infinitely brighter.

By the time the Scenes of Crime vans arrived, Suttle had managed to raise the local manager of the plantation. He confirmed that a gate at the end of the track would take you directly onto the railway and said he’d been doing his best to dissuade courting couples from using the wood after dark. A series of warnings about stiff fines for trespassing had been moderately effective, while planted rumours in the local pub about dog patrols had done the rest.

‘These dogs exist?’ queried Suttle.

‘Christ, no. They cost the earth.’

Still laughing, Suttle left the Scenes of Crime team to get on with it. He’d already met the tracker from Cosham the previous day, a spirited redhead with a mischievous smile, and he blew her a kiss as he drove Dawn Ellis away. Ellis was still preoccupied with Mrs Cleaver.

‘You think she told us everything?’

‘No. The way I see it, we were lucky to get as much as we did.’

‘So why hold back?’

‘Christ knows. What does the husband do for a living?’

‘He’s a property developer. In Pompey.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I phoned Paul Winter. He’s in Intelligence. He knows everything.’

‘And?’

‘Cleaver’s one of the bad guys. Money coming out of his ears. Bent as fuck.’

‘Ah … ’ Suttle smiled. ‘No wonder she sleeps by herself.’

‘Who says?’

‘Me. I had a look round when I went up there for a leak. The master bedroom’s at the back. Like she said, she sleeps at the front. She’s a slut, too.’ Suttle grinned. ‘The room was a tip.’

 

Winter stepped out for half an hour at lunchtime, glad of the sunshine on his face. There was a tiny park up the road from Kingston Crescent, a couple of benches and half an acre of grass, and he loosened his tie and sat down with his sandwich, wondering whether to wash it down with a pint at the nearby pub. Mention of Chris Cleaver in his conversation with Dawn Ellis had suddenly put all the other phone calls in perspective.
Coppice
, he thought, was beginning to look promising.

Ellis, to be fair, had been extremely cautious. The wife, she’d explained, was a bag of nerves. She’d hated them being there. Couldn’t wait for them to leave. But the business in the tunnel had obviously got to her in some way and an outburst about her former life in Southsea seemed to indicate she might have a great deal more to say.

At this, Winter had chuckled. Helen Cleaver, much as she resented it, was a Pompey girl. Six years at the High School, plus a couple of winters as an upmarket rep in a French ski resort, had raised her social game but in the end she’d married a local, admittedly a Grammar School boy, who even then was devoting his considerable talents to the property game.

Chris Cleaver, to Winter’s certain knowledge, had cheerfully broken law after law en route to his first million. Hookey mortgages. Ruthless pressure on sitting tenants. Massive bungs to any individual, local authority or otherwise, who could conceivably influence the outcome of difficult planning decisions. By the time he and Helen celebrated his thirtieth birthday, young Chris was a major player amongst the several dozen Pompey businessmen who could afford to jet their friends en masse to Grenada without bothering to count the change.

Over the next decade the Cleavers continued to prosper. The purchase of an eight-bedroom spread in Craneswater Park brought them a swimming pool and a view of the Isle of Wight, as well as a whole new set of neighbours. Amongst the latter, equally new to Craneswater, was Bazza Mackenzie, by now controlling every last gram of the Pompey cocaine trade. Winter had never laid hands on the kind of proof that could stand up in court, but what he knew of Chris Cleaver made some kind of association with Mackenzie incontestable. Profit was Cleaver’s middle name. The markups in cocaine were astronomical. A thousand quid spent in Venezuela would turn into ten grand on the streets of Portsmouth. No one with the nerve to call himself a businessman could resist that kind of arithmetic.

Winter chewed the last of the sandwich, still tempted by the prospect of a pint. At the end of his chat with Dawn Ellis she’d sounded nervous about sparking more interest in the Cleavers than ten minutes of conversation could possibly warrant, but Winter knew that was bullshit. A working lifetime as a detective had taught him many lessons and one of them was that there was no such thing as coincidence. If someone as bent as Cleaver found himself within a mile or so of a body in a tunnel then somehow, somewhere, there’d be a connection. Cocaine? Winter didn’t know. Some link to the ever-spreading tentacles of Bazza Mackenzie’s empire? Pass. But these were early days. Pretty soon, one way or another, they’d have a name for the body. At that point
Coppice
would change gear. With a firm ID and a stir or two at the Pompey tea leaves, Winter could see immense possibilities in the weeks ahead.

He brushed the crumbs from his suit and got up, taking a short cut across the grass towards the pub, thinking again of last night’s conversation with Jake about Alan Givens. Outside the pub were a couple of tables. He treated himself to a pint of chilled Stella and returned to the sunshine. People these days seemed not to drink at lunchtime, so he had the patio pretty much to himself. Before leaving the office he’d taken the precaution of jotting down the number of the Pompey FC ticket office. After a morning on the phone to every DIY outlet in the city, it would be a pleasure to get back to serious detective work.

 

Jerry Proctor phoned Faraday at two. Proctor seldom gave way to anything as unprofessional as excitement but on this occasion he let the mask slip.

‘Recent tyre marks,’ he said, ‘down towards the railway. There’s a kind of hollow where the rain gathers. It’s a bit of a mess, lots of churn, but we’ve got the tracks at both ends, plus good sets of footprints.’

‘All the same?’

‘No. I’m guessing but I’d say a size nine, and maybe a seven.’

Faraday nodded, making a note of the time and scribbling down the details. It had rained on Saturday evening, a sudden downpour. He remembered the rainbow afterwards, an almost perfect arch over Langstone Harbour.

‘Boss?’ It was Proctor again. He was reminding Faraday that they’d recovered both trainers from the tunnel. ‘They were Reeboks. The lads are taking a cast of the footprints here now.’

‘Excellent. What else?’

‘Too soon to say. The Tracker’s doing her stuff on the fence. She’s not one for jumping to conclusions but the last time I looked she was smiling.’

‘But nothing obvious?’

‘Aside from the bloke’s credit card and address book? No, boss.’

It took a second for Faraday to realise that Proctor had made a joke. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Stick them in the post.’

After telling Proctor to make sure he was back in time for the evening meet, he put the phone down. Faraday knew that the first forty-eight hours of any major enquiry were absolutely key. In this case
Coppice
was still handicapped by the lack of a positive ID on the body in the tunnel but Proctor and his boys were playing a blinder and it looked odds on that they were close to confirming an access point to the track. What mattered now was blanketing the local area with house-to-house teams. People’s memories were short. One tiny detail could make all the difference. He sat back, pondering a call to the DS in charge of the Outside Enquiry Teams. Then came a knock at his door.

It was Winter. He was looking pleased with himself.

‘May I?’

Faraday waved him into the spare chair. He could smell the alcohol on his breath. Winter beamed at him for a moment, then slipped the middle button on his suit.

‘Anyone tell you about Chris Cleaver?’ Winter enquired.

‘No.’

‘Ah … ’ Winter’s smile widened. ‘ … Then let me have the pleasure.’

 

DC Jimmy Suttle was back at Kingston Crescent by late afternoon. After checking in with the Incident Room, he found Paul Winter standing on a chair in his office, putting the finishing touches to the timeline on his wall board. The line began in the middle of the board. At 02.50, a car had driven away from the forest beside the railway track. Two hours later, at 04.58, train driver David Johns had reported hitting a body in the Buriton Tunnel. To the left and right of these two evidenced facts yawned the big white spaces that Faraday’s team were charged to fill. Who was the body in the tunnel? Where had he been in the hours and days beforehand? What could a man possibly have done to warrant a death like that? And, most important of all, who had been at the wheel of the departing car?

Suttle wanted to know whether the casts had come down from the plantation.

‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded. ‘The big one’s a perfect match. Spot on. The bloke in the tunnel was definitely in that car. Faraday’s creaming himself.’

‘What else?’

‘Not a lot. I’m sure there’s a pile of actions in the Incident Room. If you fancy a couple of hours overtime round the DIY stores, be my guest.’ Winter’s morning on the phone had generated dozens of follow-up calls to individual hardware stores across the city.

Suttle shook his head. He was about to check out a bloke in Eastney who drove a timber truck to the trackside forest three or four times a week. Maybe the person in the car had been out to recce the location prior to Sunday night’s visit. Maybe there’d been a sighting, a lead to the car’s colour or make.

‘Eastney?’ Winter glanced at his watch.

‘Yeah.’

‘Give me a lift?’

‘Where to?’

‘Fratton Park.’

‘Why?’ Winter had never expressed the slightest interest in football.

‘Doesn’t matter. It’s on your way. Just drop me off, eh?’

Suttle knew Winter far too well not to press the issue. As they left the car park and joined the thickening traffic, he wanted to know what the football club could possibly have to do with
Coppice
.