The Take (26 page)

Faraday was back home by eight. Forensic had gone into the Weather Gage and the building was now in the hands of the Scenes of Crime team. Until they’d completed their fingertip search of the premises, there was very little he could do. A bleak, handwritten notice on the main door announced that the pub was shut until further notice.

In the kitchen, Faraday poured himself a large Scotch, added a finger of water, and retired to the big lounge. With the doors open to the garden, he could smell the falling tide. Winter’s sleight-of-hand, as ever, perplexed him. Not how he managed to pull off coups like this, but why. What was it about his colleagues that made it so difficult for him to be part of a team? Why, in God’s name, was he so determined to step outside the rulebook and run little private investigations of his own?

Last year, after the business with Charlie Oomes, they’d almost been friends for a while, and one night, over too many whiskies, he’d tried to find an acceptable way of asking questions like these. Winter had listened, as matey as ever, and when Faraday had tired of tiptoeing around the point he’d just sat back and put the question himself.

‘You want to know why I go my own way?
You
, of all people?’

Faraday hadn’t understood, and had said so. At this, Winter, not unkindly, had laughed.

‘It’s because we’re out of the same egg, boss. Difficult bastards. And devious, too.’

At the time, Faraday had been slightly shocked. Now, his chair half-angled towards the warm evening breeze off the harbour, he wasn’t so sure. Another Scotch might pin it down, he thought. Another Scotch might fix it.

He awoke to the sound of the doorbell and glanced at his watch. Ten to ten. Nearly dark. He put the empty tumbler on the table and padded down the hall. It was Ruth. She stood in the throw of light through the open door and held out the present she’d brought the evening before.

‘I’m not stopping,’ she said at once, ‘in case you’re worried.’

‘Not at all. Come in. Great to see you.’

She shot him a look as she walked past. The present felt pleasantly heavy. They met again in the kitchen, Ruth in her jeans and denim jacket, her face glowing from a day in the sun. She was running her eyes over the dishes in the sink.

‘Just me,’ Faraday told her. ‘Promise.’

‘Open it.’ She nodded at the present. ‘Please.’

Faraday did what he was told, looking for a knife to ease back the Sellotape.

‘Just tear it. Did I ever tell you how much that pisses me off?’

He looked across at her, wondering whether she was joking or not. The paper came off in a single pull, and he found himself looking at a leatherbound album.

‘Go on, open it.’

The album was full of photographs. They were exquisite, full colour, beautifully captured. Lapwing and grey heron. Dunlin and redshank. Curlew and mistle thrush. As Faraday turned the pages, recognising the backgrounds, he began to realise what she’d done.

‘You took these?’

‘Every one.’

‘When?’

‘Over the course of the year. It was meant as a special present.’

‘It
is
a special present.’ He was looking at a turnstone, the bird perfectly caught on the shimmering mud, the beak engaging with some mollusc or other. ‘You shouldn’t get the wrong idea.’

‘About what?’

It was a direct challenge. He looked up at her again, recognising the cold glint of anger in her eyes. She’s been rehearsing this scene for a while, he thought. Ever since last night.

He didn’t know what to say. He felt completely stupid, completely outflanked.

‘You’re sure this is for me?’ he managed at last.

‘Of course it’s for you. Who else?’

She gazed at him for a long moment, then something softened in her face and she stepped closer, and kissed him on the lips.

‘My poor lamb,’ she said softly. ‘You really haven’t a clue who you are, have you?’

Faraday stared at her, still nursing the album. Then, quite suddenly, she was gone.

Winter made it to the hospital far too late to see Joannie. He stood outside the ICU, trying to work out a line that would get him to Joannie’s bedside. It had been a good evening, an epic evening, and he’d very much enjoyed taking drinks off the rest of the squad. Not that they weren’t working their arses off. No, they’d simply sent out for a bulk order. And Winter had consumed most of it.

Now, at last, a nurse appeared. He knew her vaguely, recognised her face.

‘My wife …’ he began.

‘She’s conscious, Mr Winter. She’s back with us.’

He gazed down at her. She was pretty: brown hair, big chest, neat legs. He was about to ask her name, enquire further, when she beat him to it.

‘I’d come back tomorrow, if I were you. Your wife’ll be with us for a while yet.’

Twenty-Four

Tuesday, 27 June, 0800

The forensic team were about to pack it in when Faraday arrived at the Weather Gage next morning. The hot spell had finally come to an end and the oily green water in the Camber Dock was dimpled with raindrops.

Faraday hurried across the slippery cobbles, spotting the looming figure of DS Jerry Proctor at the front door of the pub. Proctor was in charge of the local SOCO teams, working from a cramped little office at Fareham nick, and he’d been up all night, supervising the room-by-room trawl for the tiniest scrap of evidence that might link Parrish to the missing surgeon. Exhausted now, he was arranging for the premises to be sealed for six hours, doors locked, uniforms front and back, permitting him and his team to get their heads down before resuming the search.

‘What do you think?’ Faraday was watching the rain cascading down from a broken gutter.

Proctor was still in the one-piece paper suit the SOCO guys were obliged to wear. He looked wrecked, and smelled worse.

‘The outhouse round the back. Put money on it.’

‘What did you find?’

‘There’s been blood on the table in there, lots of it. Goes back years according to Winter, but we’ll take the thing away and give it a thorough going-over. If there’s any that’s recent and human, we’ll find it.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah. Someone’s had a vehicle in there recently. There’s fresh oil on the flagstones. Fibres? Rubber?’ He shrugged. ‘We might get a match with the Mercedes, what’s left of it. Then there’s this, through here.’

Faraday followed Proctor round the pub. At the back, beside the outhouse, was one of the plain white vans the SOCOs used. Proctor unlocked the rear doors and propped them open. Sealed and tagged in separate plastic bags were two items. One of them was a solid meat cleaver of the kind the Chinese use, the other a saw.

‘Feel the weight of that.’

Proctor picked up the cleaver and passed it across. Even through the plastic, the steel handle felt cold in Faraday’s palm. Was Winter right? Had Parrish gone to work on the surgeon – dead or alive – in an abrupt reversal of roles? He gave it a practice swing, tried to imagine it chopping down through flesh and bone, then he peered at it more closely. There were tiny dark incrustations on the blade.

‘Blood,’ Proctor grunted, ‘for sure.’

The saw carried the same trademark stains. Under the microscope, there would be tiny nests of precious DNA among the rusting teeth.

Faraday glanced across at the doors of the outhouse. He wanted to have a look inside, put these items in their proper context, try and picture how Parrish might have done it, but he knew that Proctor wouldn’t let him anywhere near. Until the search was complete and the premises were released from his control, the SOCO was boss here. Any suggestion of contamination – a nosy DC, an impatient DI, even a stray cat – could wreck a prosecution case before it even got to court.

The older of Proctor’s two colleagues ambled round the corner of the building. His paper suit was blotched with raindrops and he was in the process of removing the mask that protected his nose and mouth. Faraday had met him a number of times before. His name was Dave.

‘All right?’

Dave nodded. There was someone round the front, he said. Might pay to have a gander.

Faraday checked his watch. The
News
had already been in contact. The reporter had taken down some details over the phone and wanted to send a photographer. A story like this would be front page for sure, especially if they could dress a shot of the pub exterior with the guys in the white suits. The punters, as Faraday had agreed, just loved to see the telly intruding into real life.

Faraday took Proctor and Dave by the arm. Their moment of fame. Dave stared at him.

‘It’s not the
News
,’ he said.

‘Who is it then?’

‘Bloke called Parrish. Says he owns the place.’

Dawn Ellis, parked across from the eyesore that was Kevin Beavis’s house, wondered yet again whether she had really got it right. His daughter, Shelley, was safely parked in the Travelodge. She hated the isolation, and daytime telly bored her witless, but she was as reluctant as ever to get everything off her chest. Last night, after Dawn had turned up with a couple of bottles of decent Rioja and poured a great deal of it down her young throat, she’d finally admitted that she knew who’d done the Donald Duck jobs, but, pressed for a name, she’d still shaken her head. ‘I know, but I can’t tell,’ she’d said.

In strict procedural terms, Dawn had already broken every rule in the book. The last thing you did in any inquiry was buddy up with a key witness. But there was something about Shelley – a vulnerability, a sense that deep down she was struggling to do her best – that Dawn frankly admired. Add her now absolute conviction that they’d charged the wrong guy, and Dawn felt almost justified in pushing so deep into forbidden territory.

I know, but I can’t tell
.

Dawn got out of the car and crossed the road. There were bits of motorcycle engine in the tiny scrap of front garden; she’d last seen them in Beavis’s kitchen sink. The hood of her anorak turned up against the rain, she knocked at the door again, gazing down at the rusting piles of junk.

I know, but I can’t tell
.

Was Shelley being protective? Was that the reason she’d phoned yesterday? Asked for the meet in Southsea? Told Dawn that her dad was blameless? Handicapped? Couldn’t really help it? And was simple loyalty – father, daughter – the reason she wouldn’t venture as far as a name?

The door opened. Kevin Beavis was in a grubby pair of tracksuit bottoms and not much else. He could do with losing a bit of weight about his middle. And he could use a shave as well.

At first, he didn’t recognise Dawn. Then she pushed the hood back and his face lit up.

‘C’mon in, love. How you doing?’

Dawn followed him through to the kitchen. If anything, the house smelled even worse than before. Chip fat and dodgy drains, Dawn thought, watching Beavis fill the kettle after she’d said no to tea.

Beavis wanted to know if she’d seen young Shel at all. He’d been trying to get hold of her the last couple of days but there was no answer at that flat of hers. Probably up London with her mates. Does that sometimes, if she’s got the dosh.

The mention of money took Dawn back to last night. According to Shelley, Kennedy had been paying her for her video performances for nearly a year. The money was pretty irregular and he held most of it back for reasons he never explained, but she’d taken nearly four hundred quid off him and that definitely helped with the bills. She’d got through her student loan in a couple of months and her dad, with the best will in the world, hadn’t got a penny to his name.

Looking at Beavis now, Dawn could believe it. He’d had the decency to wrap an old cardigan round his upper half, but for someone who couldn’t have been more than forty-five, he already had the stoop and pallor of an old man. Dawn was ferociously aware of diet. What you ate was what you were. Kevin Beavis was the walking evidence of what the frying pan and too much sugar could do to you.

He was tipping hot water into a chipped old tea pot. Dawn had a list of dates. She read them out one by one: 19 February; 12 April; and finally, that warm June night just nine days ago when the figure in the Donald Duck mask had struck for the third time.

‘Shit.’ Beavis backed away hastily from the sink. ‘S’cuse me, love.’

He’d splashed boiling water over his bare feet. Dawn threw him a tea towel.

‘I need to know where you were on those three dates, Mr Beavis. We’re talking evenings here.’

‘Haven’t a clue, love.’

He levered one huge foot into the sink and ran cold water over it. He seemed genuinely untroubled by her questions.

‘What about that last date? It was the Sunday before last. What do you normally do Sunday nights?’

‘Pub, when I can afford it.’

‘And the Sunday before last?’

‘No chance. Skint.’ He looked across at her with a slightly wolfish grin. ‘The telly’s free, and Sunday nights they sometimes show good movies.’

‘Can you remember watching anything on the night of the eighteenth?’

‘No chance. Memory’s shot, love.’

‘What about if I get hold of a copy of the listings? Might you remember then?’

‘Yeah, might do. Give it a go. Why not?’

He’d done the other foot now and he gave them both a wipe with the cloth. He seemed pleased by all the attention she was showing him, pleased she was so interested, and Dawn realised that Shelley had been right. He was simple, like a child. He had simple needs, and friendship – attention – was probably one of them.

Dawn decided to change tack.

‘There’s a bloke called Lee. Lee Kennedy. He’s a footballer. Do you know him at all?’

‘Lee?’ The face had come alive again. ‘Of course I knows him. Known him all my life.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. He’s my cousin, ain’t he?’

‘
Cousin?
’

Dawn stared at him. Not just under-age sex. Incest, too.

‘Well, not a real cousin like. Step-cousin? I dunno. Anyway, like I said, me and Lee …’ He crossed two fingers, grinning at her. ‘Do anything for me, Lee would. Tell you something, love, he was the one that told me about that lecturer bloke, Addison, what he was up to with Shel.’

‘
He
told you that? Lee Kennedy?’

‘Yeah, comes round here, tips me off about it, says I gotta do something. That’s when I come and told you lot. Can’t have that, can we? Shel and some tosser twice her age? Ain’t right.’

The memories had taken the smile off his face. He clumped around the kitchen, looking for the bread he had left over from last night, grumbling about the evils of the academic world. No wonder he has no sense of time, Dawn thought. As far as Beavis was concerned, the visit to Fratton nick might have happened years ago.

He left the kitchen for a minute or two and returned with two slices of Mighty White. Next on the list was the toaster.

‘I was mending it.’ He was looking under the table. ‘I had it somewhere.’

Dawn waited until he was upright again. She felt like an old-style copper, come to break bad news.

‘It wasn’t Addison, the lecturer,’ she said quietly. ‘It was Lee Kennedy.’

‘What, love?’ Vague now, still looking for the toaster.

‘Lee. Lee Kennedy. He’s the one who’s been … who’s been having sex with Shelley.’

The word ‘sex’ stopped Beavis in his tracks. He stared at her. He obviously didn’t believe a word of it.

‘That’s crap,’ he said. ‘Not Lee.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Knocking off my Shel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who says?’

‘Shel, for a start.’

Beavis sank into the other chair. Tobacco and a packet of Rizlas were in the drawer on the table. He began to roll himself a cigarette with thick, oil-stained fingers, a tongue the colour of fresh liver. Dawn half-expected him to offer her the roll-up, but he didn’t. Lost in a world of his own, he fumbled around for a match but finally settled for the gas stove.

Cheap shag tobacco, Dawn thought. The kind of smell you wouldn’t forget.

Beavis was back in the chair, looking blankly at the wall.

‘Not Lee,’ he muttered. ‘Girl must’ve got it wrong.’

Back at his desk at Southsea nick, Faraday was rehearsing the moment when Parrish’s name would appear on a charge sheet. It would be the sweetest pleasure to leave a message with Willard’s secretary, and another with the management assistant who worked for Hartigan. Parrish was in a cell over at the Bridewell. Winter and Rick were readying themselves for the first interview. By the end of play, with luck, they’d have the whole shebang squared away. It would be a brilliant result. A brilliant, brilliant result.

He reached for the phone and dialled Marta’s mobile. It was still barely nine, and he wondered whether she’d be at work yet.

The moment she recognised his voice, she told him to hang on. He could hear a radio in the background and something else he couldn’t quite place. Then came footsteps, and the radio began to fade. She’s on the move, he thought, trying to imagine the house she lived in. A newish place, she’d said, over towards Locks Heath. A door slammed shut, then she was back again, her voice low, almost a whisper. Faraday was curious. Was this some new game? Yet another twist?

He began to tell her about Parrish, the way the case had suddenly cracked open, leads spilling everywhere. He was still describing this morning’s scene at the Weather Gage when she interrupted.

‘Listen,’ she said, I have to go. Ring me later. After lunch.’

‘Why?’

‘My husband’s still here, bloody man.’ The voice lower still. ‘Promise you’ll ring?’

She hung up, leaving Faraday staring at the phone.
Husband?

The first of the interviews with Rob Parrish began at 1104. Winter and Rick Stapleton sat on one side of the table in the interview room at the Bridewell, Parrish on the other. He was still wearing the suede jacket Winter had recognised from the Marriott video, though the Virgin Islands T-shirt had now given way to a light denim shirt that badly needed an iron. Offered a lawyer by the Custody Sergeant, Parrish had said no. They could ask him whatever they liked. He had nothing to hide.

While establishing those present for the benefit of the three audio tapes, Winter described Parrish as a publican.

‘Fair?’

‘And restaurateur,’ Parrish drawled.

Winter nodded. He hadn’t had much time to plot this first interview, but he’d agreed with Rick that he would lead, and he saw no point in not going in hard. This interview formed part of an ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Pieter Hennessey. Winter had reason to believe that Parrish could help them in their inquiries. He should be aware that anything he said might be used in evidence against him.

‘OK?’

‘Sure.’

Winter wanted to know about Hennessey, and about Parrish’s movements on the evening of Sunday, 18 June. Parrish’s account, as detailed as possible, would become the source material for subsequent and more detailed interviews. Whatever he said now was the rope that might hang him later.