One Under (6 page)

Winter took the proffered colour photos. Four offered varying shots of a solid-looking padlock about the size of a packet of cigarettes. In the other two was a key attached to a simple ring. Faraday was assuming that the padlock had secured the length of chain because two lines of links were still attached. The impact of the train had shattered the fourth link on one side and the second on the other, and the padlock had been thrown free. The key had been recovered from the other side of the tunnel, about five metres from the body, a fact that was itself interesting.

‘What do you mean, boss?’ Winter was still leafing through the photos.

‘The key may have been chucked away after our man was tied down. There were no other items on that side of the tunnel.’

‘Prints?’

‘Nothing recoverable.’

‘What about the padlock?’

‘They found it a couple of metres down the same track, along with bits of old rope. It looks brand new to me. We’ll need a list of retail outlets asap. Talk to the manufacturers. Plot the distribution chain. You know the way it goes.’

Winter examined the shots of the padlock more closely. B&Q, he thought. Homebase. GA Day. Robert Dyas. Plus dozens of other local stores that might flog something like this. The list would go on for ever. Winter glanced up, wondering how wide to cast the net, but Faraday had already turned back to the CSC, querying the allocation of personnel for the second day’s search in the tunnel. Winter lingered a moment longer, then slipped the photos into his file and returned to his office.

Already, he could hear footsteps in the long central corridor outside, and the rise and fall of conversation as people made their way to the Incident Room for the six o’clock squad meet. The fact that Faraday hadn’t quizzed him about the Mispers list probably meant that he’d call on Winter for a summary during the meeting itself. Winter could handle that, no problem, but wondered how he could put a bit of a shine on his afternoon’s work. He was still sprawled in his chair, minutes later, when Tracy Barber appeared at his door.

‘The boss is making a start,’ she warned him. ‘Be nice if you could join us.’

They went down to the Incident Room together. A DS by the door shot Winter a look as he appeared. Evidently the meeting had already begun.

Winter made himself comfortable on the edge of a desk. Faraday was going through the sequence of events that had ended with a call from the Netley control room first thing. Everyone here was aware of how tricky turf issues could be when another force was involved and there was a ripple of laughter around the room when Faraday blamed the London bombings for British Transport Police’s early surrender of jurisdiction.

‘These blokes are really stretched,’ he said. ‘They don’t want to see another tunnel in their lives.’

Faraday picked up the timeline again, tracking backwards to the last train through the tunnel the previous evening. The Sunday schedule, he said, came to an end with the 00.50 from Waterloo, the so-called Matelot Special. That train would have cleared the tunnel by 01.55. According to Railtrack Operations HQ, there had been no freight movements on the line last night. That gave a clear three hours for a man to be tied to the track and readied for the 04.30 from Portsmouth Harbour, which would have entered the tunnel around five o’clock. Seconds later, our man was history.

The DS in charge of Outside Enquiries raised his hand. He wanted to know how certain they could be that the victim hadn’t been dead already. It was a fair question but it seemed to irritate Faraday. He broke off for a moment, talked briefly about the state of the body, and then warned that - in all likelihood - the post-mortem would leave the issue undecided. In his own view, it was highly unlikely that the victim had already been killed. The pile of clothing beside the track suggested that he’d removed everything himself, presumably under pressure, whereas a dead man’s kit would probably have been cut off. Likewise, the lie of the body argued for at least two other people in the tunnel to restrain the victim while he was lashed to the rail. There was an element of theatre, he said, in the events they were trying to put together. Someone had thought long and hard about the impact they wanted this macabre tableau to make.

This conclusion naturally took Faraday into a detailed description of the probable position of the body in the tunnel and there was total silence in the room as his hands shaped the outspread legs, and the way they’d been tied to the angle iron secured beneath the single length of rail. The first set of wheels, he said, had effectively cut the man in half. There’d be a full set of photos available for anyone interested in the detail.

The DS in charge of Outside Enquiries lifted his hand again.

‘The bloke’s legs were pointing at the train?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Tied open?’

‘Exactly.’

‘You think that might be significant? Some kind of revenge killing? Bloke had been helping himself? Messing with the wrong woman?’

‘It’s possible.’ Faraday nodded. ‘Extreme, but possible. ’

This time there was no laughter. While the men remained stony-faced, one or two of the women exchanged glances. This, it seemed, might truly be a murder with a difference. You didn’t have to see any photographs to picture the carnage that a speeding train would have left in its wake. Extreme, indeed.

Faraday was talking about strategy now, about the likely pathways that Operation
Coppice
was about to explore, and Winter watched him carefully as the DI outlined the limits to which he was prepared to cast the investigative net. He hadn’t seen much of Faraday since the DI’s return from Thailand and he was struck by how sombre he seemed to have become. His voice, never assertive, had become softer than ever. He still marshalled the facts in the right order, still held everyone’s attention, commanded respect, but there was an edge of something else in his delivery, as if he’d got tired of picking up the investigative challenge of case after case. Winter had seen this in coppers before. It always seemed to affect the more sensitive ones. There must come a point, Winter thought, when people like these get to see one body too many. And after that it all starts to fall apart.

There was another question, this time about the issue of ID, and Faraday dealt with it deftly enough, but his voice had hardened, a definite edge of impatience this time, and Winter found himself trying to keep his thoughts about the DI in perspective.

He’d learned early on that you’d be wrong to underestimate Faraday. With all the man’s oddness - the birdwatching, the solitary weekends, the deaf-mute son who’d fled the nest - he was still a very effective detective, shrewd in his hunches, stubborn as hell in fighting his corner, ruthless when it mattered. Winter knew that Willard rated him highly, and no one in his right mind would ignore Willard. In his new job as Head of CID, Major Crimes’ ex-boss had already put the squeeze on some of the time-servers, and productive, reliable DIs like Faraday could only - in the end - cash in.

Nonetheless, at this moment in time there was definitely something not quite right about the man in charge of Operation
Coppice
, and when Winter tried to find the exact word to describe it, he knew he ought to keep it simple. Maybe, after all, it wasn’t some midlife career crisis. Faraday, he finally decided, was simply pissed off.

The meeting went on. Faraday called for a summary from Winter on the strength of the Misper list, and Winter obliged. His thoughts on the marital welcome awaiting the missing Arab engineer raised a ripple of laughter but he left no one in any doubt that the list, as currently drawn up, was an investigative dead end. One bloke had looked promising - same colour hair - but he’d disappeared nearly two months back and Winter could see no obvious explanation that could put him in the tunnel.

Faraday, with a cursory nod of thanks, took the meeting onto other areas, chiefly housekeeping items like Incident Room staffing levels and the management of overtime claims, and as Winter’s attention began to wander, he found himself gazing at the faces around him.

He knew most of these men intimately, especially the older ones. He knew who was sharp, who delivered, who you could trust if the wheels came off. He also knew who were the bullshitters, who had a bottle problem in dodgy situations and who was over the side with the prettiest of the five indexers who were sitting in a huddle by the window. He knew that Dawn Ellis, a recent recruit to the squad, was contemplating a new career in alternative therapy, and he knew that Bev Yates was still trying to figure out the exact chain of events that had got his wife pregnant for the third time.

Names, Winter thought. Lives. Reputations. But where had the real legends gone? The hard core of old thief-takers, hard-drinking, occasionally corrupt but immensely successful? The answer, he knew, was simple. Thanks to age, or alcohol, or simple despair at the prospect of retirement, they’d simply faded away, leaving behind them the blackest of holes that no amount of performance figures, or career development, or fancy policy statements could possibly fill.

Because the truth was that no one wanted to be a detective anymore. Today’s policemen had lives and families to go home to. They wanted the reassurance of regular shift work. They hated the very idea of overtime. In fact, with the exception of gutsy kids like Jimmy Suttle, CID had become the posting from hell, and the situation had now got so dire that they had to draft in veterans, retired blokes for God’s sake, just to keep the numbers up.

The squad meeting was coming to an end. Faraday was issuing the standard warnings about screwing down evidence, about grafting hard, about avoiding short cuts. Winter caught Dave Michaels’ eye. Michaels was the DS who’d be acting as Statement Reader once the machine cranked into action.

‘A fucking name,’ he muttered, ‘might be useful.’

 

Back in his office, Winter at last turned his attention to the padlock. Faraday had mentioned it twice in the squad meeting, telling the listening DCs that a great deal of legwork and a big slice of luck might be necessary to pin down its likely point of sale, but nothing at all could happen until the Intelligence Cell came up with a list of local outlets. Winter glanced at his watch, then slipped the photos back into his office drawer. Tomorrow, he thought. This time of night you’d be mad to start calling.

He sat back a moment, then reached in his pocket and fetched out the bank statement he’d lifted from Givens’ flat. Givens had his money with HSBC. The statement was dated 5 July 2005. On 1 June Givens had £7,455.29 to his name. By four weeks later, after a £400 direct debit - presumably his rent - his balance had shrunk to a mere £214.70. Winter fetched a calendar from a neighbouring desk and set about doing the maths.

According to his employers, Givens had failed to turn up for work on Tuesday 24 May. This statement didn’t cover the rest of May, but there was a clear pattern of debit card withdrawals in early June. On the first, second and third of the month, £700 had disappeared from the account each day, and in every case the name against the transaction appeared to be identical. Winter checked, then double-checked. No question about it. Portsmouth FC.

Winter lifted the phone. Dave Michaels was a mad Pompey fan. He answered on the first ring.

‘Dave? Paul Winter. How much is a Pompey season ticket?’

‘Why?’

‘Nephew’s birthday. Thought I’d buy him a little present.’

‘You’d better start saving then.’

‘How much?’

‘For the best seats? Seven hundred quid.’

Winter, gleeful, told him it was cheap at the price, then hung up. Returning to Givens’ bank statement, he traced the next week’s withdrawals. This time, there were only two. On 6 June, £2100. A day later, £2800. Seven more season tickets. Simple. By now, 7 June, the account was nearly empty. No further transactions. Then, on 24 June, Givens’ NHS salary cheque had been paid in, putting him £1857.29 in the black. Three days later, on Monday 27 June, another £1400 had gone up the road to the football club. After that, no one had touched Givens’ money.

Winter went back over the sums, totalling the figures on his fingers. Nothing he’d seen in Givens’ flat had even hinted at a passion for football. So what on earth would he want with a dozen season tickets?

Even now, he knew the answer. Somehow or other, someone had got hold of Givens’ debit card. Maybe they’d rolled him. Maybe the violence had got out of hand. Maybe there was some other explanation. But whatever had happened, they were left with the key to Givens’ bank account but no PIN number. Without the PIN they couldn’t access ATMs or go for a shopping spree. And so they’d be looking for some other way of turning that little plastic wafer into hard cash.

A bunch of season tickets, early July, was the perfect answer. You wouldn’t get seven hundred quid a pop for them but in a city as soccer-mad as Pompey, you could come close. Word would go round the estates. Maybe there’d be bidding. £500? £600? £650? Who cares? Either way, the little scrote who’d dreamed up the scam would be laughing all the way to the offie. Six grand, minimum. How many Stellas was that?

Winter got to his feet and gazed out of the window. In a tiny back garden beyond the car park an elderly man in a pair of baggy shorts was enjoying the last of a decent day. His feet propped on an upturned crate, he was lying back in a deckchair, face to the sun. Winter watched him for a moment or two, still thinking about the Pompey scam. The figures, he knew, argued for themselves. But what was infinitely more promising was the fact that nothing had been heard from Givens himself. No block on his account. No sign that he’d ever tried to staunch the outflow of precious cash.

In theory, of course, he might not have noticed but you still needed a card to order tickets over the phone, and Winter had never heard of anyone whose card had gone missing for a month and hadn’t made a fuss about it. No, every next piece of evidence - his non-appearance at work, the neglected garden, the state of the fridge and now the bank account - argued that Mr Givens was off the plot. Did that make him a likely candidate for the body in the tunnel? Winter still thought not. Back in May, in whatever circumstances, Givens had met his death. Soon afterwards someone had dreamed up a way of emptying his bank account. End of story.