One Under (12 page)

They’d travelled together for a couple of days, shared meals, got to know a little of each other. Still bruised after the encounter with Eadie, Faraday wasn’t really in the mood for company, but when Gabrielle had mentioned a riverside hotel back in the Kwai Valley, he’d made a mental note of the name and location. She’d be meeting a girlfriend there in ten days’ time. This time of year, the huts overlooking the water were cheap. So maybe,
alors
, they might meet again.

Heading south after a week in Burma, Faraday noticed a roadside sign for the hotel and decided there’d be no harm in staying over for a couple of nights. Gabrielle was already in residence, sharing a room with her French girlfriend, a lecturer from one of the Bangkok universities. During the day the two women would hire mountain bikes and disappear into the maze of trails in the surrounding jungle. In the evening Faraday joined them in the hotel dining room, an airy terrace with a fine view of the river.

The Kwai Valley, with its memories of the death railway, fascinated him. He’d visited a nearby museum, walked several kilometres of surviving railbed, picked up a book or two, learned what disease, starvation and forced labour had done to tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war. The last evening they were all together, out on the terrace, he’d talked about it, trying to explain what the surrender of Singapore had meant to a whole generation of Englishmen. Gabrielle’s friend from Bangkok was regularly in Singapore and found it difficult to reconcile the gleaming tower blocks and booming economy with Faraday’s account of the burning godowns and the desperate mobs of stranded white families. But Gabrielle, at the meal’s end, had reached across the table and lightly touched his hand. ‘My father,’ she murmured in her broken English, ‘was at Dien Bien Phu.’

Faraday, who knew very little about French military fortunes in the Orient, could only nod. Days later, passing through Bangkok en route to the airport, he’d made a point of finding a book on the subject. Dien Bien Phu, it turned out, was France’s Singapore, a military defeat so catastrophic and so humiliating that it signalled the end of the French presence in South East Asia.

On the plane home, thinking about it, Faraday had meant to get in touch with Gabrielle. They’d exchanged e-mail addresses and he wanted to know more about her father’s war. How come he’d survived the cauldron of Dien Bien Phu? And what had become of him afterwards, in the prison camp? But somehow, despite the best of intentions, the press of events on Major Crimes had swamped him almost at once, and his memories of that brief interlude, high above the Kwai River, had faded.

Now, he did his best with the rest of the e-mail. As far as he could judge, Gabrielle was back in her native Chartres. She’d picked up her dog and her ancient VW camper from her mother and was working on the book in her own apartment. Being back in the West,
bien sûr
, was a bit strange. She’d couldn’t get over how busy everyone was, and how little time they had for each other, but she supposed it had always been this way and she’d simply forgotten. In closing, she wondered whether one day they might meet again. Joe was welcome in Chartres any time. There was an address and phone number, and she signed off with the hope that he’d enjoy the photos she’d sent him.

Faraday opened the other attachment. Gabrielle, it turned out, had been busy with the digital camera she always carried. None of the shots would win awards for focus or composition but Faraday knew only too well how hard it was to take decent photos of birdlife. He scanned them quickly, recognising a red-throated flycatcher, a river chat and a grey-faced buzzard. Then, touched by this totally unexpected gesture, he pictured again his days in her company.

What had struck him at the time, he remembered, was her sense of self-possession. Here was someone who knew exactly who they were. Travelling in the remoter parts of Thailand was seldom free of incident, yet whatever happened, however frequent the bus punctures or unscheduled detours, she never lost her fascination for the bustle of faces around her.

A greater contrast to Eadie Sykes - impatient, demanding, headstrong - Faraday couldn’t imagine, and as he returned to the photo he’d first opened he tried to pin down exactly why Gabrielle’s company had been so easy. It wasn’t that he’d fancied her. It wasn’t even that he’d ever thought of seeing her again. It was simply, he decided, the recognition of a fellow traveller, of someone for whom life offered a series of imperfectly locked boxes. She had a curiosity he understood, and a scientist’s thirst for trying to make sense of the world. Every passing day seemed to bring her something new, and with her urchin haircut and wire-rimmed glasses she must have sensed the same in him. Hence, now, this e-mail.

Faraday got up from the PC, meaning to return to the kitchen and charge his glass, but beside the wall of books in his study he paused. The Michelin atlas of Europe was on the bottom shelf. He turned the pages until he was looking at northern France. Chartres was half a day’s drive from the Normandy coast. He studied the route for a moment, then tucked the atlas away again and headed downstairs.

 

An Aqua cab dropped Winter in the heart of Somerstown. After a couple of sunny days, the weather was crap again, low cloud and a drop or two of rain, and the forecast on the radio was promising heavier stuff for the afternoon. Winter zipped up his anorak, standing amongst the swirl of chip wrappers and discarded burger boxes beside the battered parade of shops. Only in Somerstown, he thought, would the betting shop have a handwritten notice taped to the window.
Cash removed every night
went the note.
Save yourself the hassle.

The address he was after was round the corner. He followed the line of cracked paving stones, stepping to one side to avoid colliding with a couple of teenage mums with buggies. Both had mobile phones pressed to their ears and for one lunatic moment Winter wondered if they were talking to each other. These days, he thought, you’d rule nothing out.

Hermiston House was an unlovely tower block with a bit of a reputation in the divisional CID office. Social Services had a habit of dumping single parents on the lower floors and some of the kids from families further up the building had long ago bailed out of full-time education. Despite periodic uniformed sweeps to satisfy the storm troopers from the Home Office Inspectorate, truancy was rife on the estate and Winter could cite case after case where kids had discovered that life outside the classroom could be immensely profitable, as well as fun. Shopkeepers round here, Asians especially, had been robbed blind. Drug dealing was frequently in the hands of fourteen-year-olds. Turn up pissed after dark, stray into the wrong areas, and you’d be lucky not to become a crime statistic.

Winter pushed in through the big double doors. The address was on the third floor. Number 34 was at the far end of the corridor. He knocked on the door. He could hear music inside, a girl band, loud. He knocked again, then a third time. Finally, someone turned the music down and the door opened. She looked tiny, barely a teenager. She was wearing a pink top and a pair of briefs and not very much else. There was a huge purple love bite on the side of her neck and and more than a hint of bruising under one eye.

Winter showed her his warrant card. He said he wanted to talk to a Mr Givens.

‘Never heard of him.’ Pompey accent. Wary expression.

‘You live here?’

‘Yeah. What’s this about then? Only I’m busy. Me and Cher -’ She jerked her head sideways. ‘- We gotta go down the doctor’s. She’s snotty again. My mum says she needs looking at.’

Winter made to step into the flat. The girl didn’t move.

‘You can’t come in here.’ She sounded indignant.

‘Why not?’

‘You could be anyone.’

‘I’ve just showed you my warrant card.’

‘Means nothing. Not round here it doesn’t. We had someone said he was from the gas people the other day - fancy ID, all that shit. Friend of mine was stupid enough to let him in. Turned out to be a perve. Had to call the Old Bill.’

‘I am the Old Bill.’

‘Yeah?’ She looked at him a moment longer, troubled, and Winter knew she was softening.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is going to take a couple of minutes. Better we do it now than I come back mob-handed, eh?’

‘Do what?’

‘Let me in and I’ll tell you.’

She frowned, trying to make up her mind. Then a baby started crying somewhere deep in the flat and Winter took advantage of the distraction, stepping round her and shutting the door behind him. The heat inside was overpowering. She must have the radiators turned up full, Winter thought. The baby was howling now, and he followed the girl down the tiny hall. Three steps took him into a bedroom. The baby was lying on a double mattress on the floor, naked, kicking its legs. There was a deckchair propped against the wall, nicked from the beach, and a collection of empty Kronenbourg bottles on a broken-backed chair beside a transistor radio. In the corner of the room was a brand new widescreen television set, three grand at least, tuned to one of the morning chat shows. The sound had been muted in favour of the radio, and Winter wondered what the baby made of Fern Britton watching a black chef toss pancakes.

Winter bent to retrieve a pair of jeans. They obviously went with the scuffed Reeboks in the corner. He inspected the label on the jeans. Thirty-four leg.

‘Who else lives here?’

‘No one. Just me. And her.’ The girl was doing her best to calm the baby.

‘Whose are these then?’

The girl glanced round. Winter was still holding the jeans.

‘My boyfriend.’ She shrugged. ‘He stays sometimes.’

‘Yeah? What’s his name?’

‘It ain’t Givens. I tell you that.’ She picked up the baby and stepped past Winter at the door. Winter had found nothing in the jeans except a handful of change and a top-up card for an Orange mobile. He slipped the card into his pocket.

The girl was in the kitchen, trying to tempt the baby with a bottle she must have been warming up. The baby was watching Winter. Big blue eyes. Just like her mum.

‘What’s your name, love?’

‘Ain’t telling you.’

‘Don’t fuck around. I can go to Merefield House. You know I can.’

At the mention of Social Services, she turned her back on Winter, rocking the baby in her arms.

‘Emma,’ she said at last.

‘Emma what?’

‘Emma Cusden. Don’t go grassing me up to that lot, will you? They’ve been well nice to me lately.’

‘Why would I grass you up?’

‘Dunno.’ She glanced back at him and risked a smile. ‘You ain’t here for coffee, are you?’

Once the baby was settled, Winter took them both through to the living room. The room was bare, the fug even worse. A couple of chairs, scabbed with grease and crusty bits of food, were pushed back against the wall, and there was a beanbag as well, equally knackered. Someone must have been to the tip, Winter thought, and helped themselves.

‘I’m interested in post for this Mr Givens,’ he said. ‘You’d have got some stuff through last month.’

‘Not here.’ She shook her head at once. ‘Not me.’

‘Someone else, then. Your boyfriend maybe.’

‘Doubt it.’

‘You’re telling me you never saw any envelopes addressed to a Mr Givens?’

‘Never.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Course I am.’

Winter nodded. He knew she was lying but that wasn’t the point. In these situations you always took a hostage. Helped no end. He stepped across to her, tickled the baby under the chin.

‘This boyfriend of yours. What does he get up to then?’

‘Get up to? Like what do you mean?’

‘Does he work? Has he got a job?’

‘Yeah.’ She sounded relieved. ‘He’s well busy.’

‘Where?’

‘All over.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Dunno. He never says.’

‘How can I get hold of him?’

‘You can’t. He ain’t got a mobile or nothing.’

‘But he’ll be back?’

‘Yeah, I expect so, sooner or later.’

‘Good.’ Winter was looking at the baby again. ‘Family man, is he? Helpful round the house? Takes his turn with the nappies?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Little Cher here … I expect he misses her, being away all the time like that. Was she awake, incidentally? When he thumped you? Only there’s all kinds of research these days - you know, the effect on toddlers when it all kicks off. Emotional abuse they call it. You ought to talk to someone. Merefield might be the place to start. They’ve got people there that think of nothing else.’ He smiled down at her, a favourite uncle, someone with her very best interests at heart.

The girl was about to say something, then bit her lip. She was beginning to look seriously alarmed. Winter definitely worried her.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said at last.

‘Yes, you do, love. You’ve heard of the At-Risk Register? All those kids taken into care?’

‘Of course I have.’

‘And you know how social workers hate to take chances anymore? Vulnerable little nippers like Cher? Their names all over the papers? All that publicity if they get it wrong?’

Winter strolled across to the window, gazed out, waiting. Everyone in life has something they can’t bear to lose, he thought.

‘Look … ’ The girl was at his elbow. ‘Them at the Social … Karl … you wouldn’t, would you?’

‘Wouldn’t what, love?’

‘Tell them. Only they might get funny again.’

‘About Karl?’

‘Yeah … I mean no—Oh shit.’ She blinked, her eyes suddenly shiny with tears. ‘I should never have let you in, should I?’

 

The call came through to Faraday himself. Alone in his office, he lifted the phone, stiffened a moment, then reached for a pen.