One Under (56 page)

They shared a passion for Leffe Blonde, for lengthy tramps through the rain and for Hector Berlioz. They both read the left-wing press, and found themselves talking incessantly about the West, about the traps that affluence left in its wake, about the simmering discontent in the rougher parts of cities on both sides of the Channel.

Faraday explained about Somerstown and Portsea, and kids who preferred to take their chances living rough rather than submit to another night at home. Gabrielle recounted a week in the
banlieux
to the north-east of Paris, a brutal reminder, she said, of the gulfs that were opening up in French society. Parched after months of nothing but
Coppice
and
Tartan
, Faraday lapped greedily at each new conversation. This wasn’t Thailand; this was something far richer, and far more complex.

The next day, in Gabrielle’s ancient camper, they headed south. The country roads were empty. Staying on a campsite near Montbard, they hired bikes and cycled miles along the Canal de Bourgogne. The weather was glorious, the afternoon heat softened by a breeze that stirred the waterside trees. Further south, they camped by a lake in the Auxois, and Faraday spent the afternoon on the deserted gravel beach, watching Gabrielle swimming from buoy to buoy, an effortless crawl that she sustained for the best part of an hour. Afterwards, lying beside him on the towel, she fingered a pattern across his chest and kissed him softly when he pointed out a flight of ducks disappearing towards the far end of the lake.

‘
Je t’aime depuis le début
,’ she murmured. ‘
Ça te va?
’

A week later, after a wet interlude trekking across the limestone battlements of the Cevennes, they plunged into the Languedoc. Faraday had an address for Ginnie Bullen from her twin sister. Find a town called Lamalou-les-Bains, she’d said. Drive further west along the valley of the Orb. Look for a suspension bridge across the river to the left. Another couple of miles and you’ll find a village called Vieussan. The woman at the post office knows Ginnie well. She’ll take you the rest of the way.

Ginnie Bullen, it turned out, lived at the far end of the village, in a plain, two-storey stone-built house perched on the edge of the cliff that hung over the river. At the back of the house, sheltered from the wind that howled down the valley, was a small walled garden.

The villager summoned by the postmistress did the introductions. Ginnie Bullen looked more weathered than the face Faraday remembered from the photo. Her greying hair was savagely cut. She had dark eyes, almost black, deeply set in a bony face. She was wearing a filthy T-shirt and a torn pair of jeans, and there was fresh soil on her hands.

‘You know Ollie? Poor you.’ She barked with laughter, wiping her hands on a tea towel, inviting them in.

The house felt cool after the heat and dust of the street. The flagstoned room where she lived was at the back. Through the open doors Faraday could see rows of carefully tended vegetables. Huge heads of lettuce. Plump courgettes. Tomatoes at bursting point.

Already, Ginnie was gossiping to Gabrielle about the area, about the years she’d spent here, about her neighbours in the village, and as the conversation quickened Faraday caught the flattened accents of the Midi. Her French, delivered at machine-gun speed, was fluent. She talked with her hands, too, matching Gabrielle gesture for gesture, pulling a face at some memory or other, abrupt, sardonic, slightly baleful. This woman has rooted here, he thought, like a vine. She’s tough. She draws whatever sustenance she requires from the sunshine and the stony soil. She needs nobody.

She produced a plastic cask of red wine, and found some bread and cheese in the big antique wardrobe she seemed to use as a larder. Then she shooed them out into the garden, rustled up a couple of battered ornamental chairs, spread a rug at their feet. The sun was beginning to dip now, towards a ridge of mountains in the west, and Faraday could hear the distant growl of a tractor.

‘They’re bringing in the
vendange.
’ Ginnie was hacking at the loaf. ‘Everyone’s pissed by eight.’

Faraday at last got round to explaining the reason for his visit. He’d been working on a major investigation. There were one or two loose ends he still needed to tie up.

‘You really are a cop? How wonderful.’ Ginnie was pouring herself another glass of wine. ‘Should I get myself a lawyer? Only there’s a divine young
avocat
with a weekend place near here.’

Faraday thought that wouldn’t be necessary. He began to talk about the body in the tunnel. Ginnie interrupted.

‘You mean Duley,’ she said stonily.

‘How did you know?’

‘Ollie wrote and told me when she got home. Come to think of it, she mentioned you too. You made quite an impact from what I can understand.’

Ginnie said something to Gabrielle in French. Gabrielle began to laugh. Faraday reached for his glass. The wine was truly foul.

‘What else did Ollie tell you?’

‘She said the village had been overrun with policemen. She also said there hadn’t been any trains for a couple of days, which I take to be a bit of a blessing. She was over here at the time, of course, Ollie. She told me the village was still full of gossip when she got back. Funny that, isn’t it? How it takes bad news to really bring
les Anglais
out of themselves?’ She laughed, plunging a fork into a corner of cheese.

Faraday wanted to know more about Duley.

‘You had a relationship,’ he suggested carefully.

‘I took him to bed. Once. There’s a difference.’

‘But he came to see you afterwards. In Buriton.’

‘He did, more’s the pity. Pathetic bundle that he was.’ She dismissed the memory with a toss of her head. Sometimes you got these things wrong. ‘
Tant pis
.’

‘Wrong, how?’

‘You want me to make you a list? He was self-obsessed. He was boring. He could talk of nothing but himself and his own wretched situation. And on top of that I’m afraid he was hopeless in bed. It was probably the booze but in the end he fell asleep on me.’

Gabrielle was smiling again. Faraday sensed she liked this woman.

‘Tell me about the tunnel.’

‘Nothing to tell, really. The poor lamb was desperate to make us understand how unhappy he was. The tunnel was just another way of putting it. He went up there for effect. He slept in there to shock us. It was pure melodrama. With someone like that, you need a great deal of patience. I’m afraid I had none. That’s why Ollie and I left early to come back here. I couldn’t stand another minute of the man.’

Faraday nodded, then helped himself to a chunk of bread.

‘I understand you bought him a padlock.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you why he wanted it?’

‘Yes. He had some half-baked idea about tying himself up. He said he had a point to make. To be frank, I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.’

‘Did you tell your sister about this?’

‘God, no. I felt guilty enough about the boy as it was, having him around all the time like that. The last thing Ollie needed was anything else on her plate.’

‘How many keys came with the padlock?’

‘Two. He kept one. I had the other.’

‘Why was that?’

‘He wanted me to untie him, unlock him, whatever.’

‘When?’

‘Sunday night. In the tunnel. At four in the morning. On the dot.’

‘He
said
that?’

‘Word for word. And then he made me swear I’d do it. We were sitting in the car in Southsea by this time, outside his flat. That was the Friday. I’d had to run him back from Buriton. The poor lamb refused to get out until I gave him an answer.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I said yes. He was talking nonsense, obviously.’

‘But he wasn’t, was he?’

‘No, as it turned out, he wasn’t.’

‘And you left the next day? On the Saturday?’

‘That’s right, that’s what we decided, Ollie and I, spur of the moment thing, once I got back to the cottage … though he couldn’t have known that,
le pauvre
. He was still assuming we’d be off on the Tuesday.’ She laughed again, a toss of the head.

Faraday gazed at her. In the end, he thought, it was simple. Sally Spedding had been right; Peter Barnaby too. Duley had never meant to kill himself. The tunnel had been a performance, a tableau, conceived and mounted for Jenny’s benefit. This was how much she’d meant. These were the lengths to which she’d driven him. He’d taken it for granted, of course, that she’d summon help. But just in case that didn’t happen, he’d come up with a fallback - someone he’d trust with a spare key, someone he thought he’d impressed, someone who thought he mattered, someone who’d turn up in the darkness and set him free. The plan must have seemed foolproof. Except that Ginnie Bullen had better things to do. And Andy Mitchell wanted him dead.

‘Mad,’ Faraday said softly.

Ginnie caught the word, shook her head, reached for the bottle.

‘Rubbish.’ She snorted. ‘Madness is interesting. Duley was a child.’ She shaded her eyes against the dying sun, looking for Gabrielle. ‘
Encore du rouge, ma petite?
’

If you have enjoyed

ONE UNDER

 

Don’t miss

 

THE PRICE OF DARKNESS

 

Graham Hurley’s latest novel featuring DI Joe Faraday

 

Coming soon in Orion hardback

 

Price £9.99

ISBN 978-0-7528-6884-4

 

Uncomfortable in the heat, Winter followed the funeral cortège as it wound up the narrow path towards the cemetery. From here, high on the rocky hillside, he could sense what had drawn the dead man to Cambados. Not simply the lure of Colombian cocaine, delivered wholesale across the Atlantic. Not just the prospect of ever-swelling profits as he helped the laughing powder towards the exploding UK marketplace. But the chance to settle somewhere remote, somewhere real, to make a life for himself among these tough, nut-brown Galician peasants.

The cortège came to a halt beside the ruins of the Santa Marina church while the priest fumbled with the gate of the tiny cemetery. Winter paused, glad to catch his breath. The view was sensational. Immediately below, a tumble of houses crowding towards the waterfront. Further out, beyond the estuary, the aching blueness of the open sea.

Last night, after an emotional tour of his brother’s favourite bars, Bazza had ended up locked in an embrace with Mark’s girlfriend’s mother. Her name was Teresa. She was a plump, handsome woman who walked with the aid of a stick and, as far as Winter understood, the funeral arrangements had been entirely her doing.

The priest had accepted her assurances that Mark had been a practising Catholic. The friends he’d made had secured a plot in the cemetery. God had doubtless had a hand in the jet-ski accident, and Mark’s death doubtless served some greater purpose, but the only thing she understood just now was that her daughter’s life would never be the same. Bebe had been only months away from becoming Mark’s wife. There would have been children, lots of children. God gives, and God takes away, she’d muttered, burying her face in a fold of Bazza’s linen jacket.

The mourners began to shuffle upward again, and Winter caught a whiff of something sweet, carried on the wind. Beside him, still hungover, was a lifelong friend of Bazza’s, a survivor from the glory days of the eighties. The last time Winter had seen him was in court, a couple of years back. He’d been up on a supply charge, coupled with accusations of GBH, and had walked free after a key witness had changed his mind about giving evidence. Last night, by barely ten, he’d been legless.

‘What’s that, mush?’ He had his nose in the air.

‘Incense.’ Winter paused again, mopping his face. ‘Gets rid of bad smells.’

 

Late evening, the same day, Winter was drinking alone at a table outside a bar on the waterfront. The bar belonged to Teresa. According to Bazza, she’d won it as part of a divorce settlement from her husband, an ex-pro footballer, and for old times’ sake it was still called the
Bar del Portero -
the keeper’s bar. Winter had been here a lot over the last couple of days, enjoying the swirl of fishermen and high-season tourists, conscious of the black-draped photos of Mark amongst the gallery of faces from the goalie’s past.

Tonight, though, was different. Bazza and his entourage had disappeared to a restaurant and, to be honest Winter was glad of an hour or two on his own.

The first he knew about company was a hand on his shoulder, the lightest touch. He looked up to find a tall, slim Latino helping himself to the other chair. He was older than he looked. He had the hands of a man in his forties, and there were threads of grey in his plaited hair. The white T-shirt carried a faded image of Jimi Hendrix.

‘You’re a cop,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Who says?’

‘Me. I know cops. I know cops all my life. You tell me it’s not true?’

‘I’m telling you nothing. Except it’s none of your fucking business.’

There was a long silence. The Latino produced a mobile and checked for messages. Then he returned the mobile to his jeans pocket, tipped his head back against the chair, and stared up into the night sky.

‘We’re wasting time, you and me. Señor Winter. I know who you are. I know where you come from. I know …’ He shrugged, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Winter leaned forward, irritated, pushing his glass to one side.

‘So why bother checking? Why all this drama?’

‘Because we need to talk.’

‘About what?’

‘About you.’

‘Yeah?’

‘
Si
… You want to tell me what you’re doing here? In Cambados?’