Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) (43 page)

Pendrick was brooding. Suttle wanted him to say something. Anything.

‘Well?’

‘Kinsey was an arsehole. He deserved it.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means he’s better dead. It means there’s one less of his breed to fuck things up.’

‘So we owe Tash and Milo a thank you? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Are you surprised they did what they did?’

‘I’m glad he’s gone.’

‘That wasn’t my question. I asked you whether you were surprised or not.’

Pendrick’s head came up. He held Suttle’s gaze.

‘Nothing surprises me any more,’ he said.

Suttle was in Colaton Raleigh by half ten. He stopped for a beer at the pub up the road, brooding on the day’s developments. He’d rarely felt so knackered. The last couple of weeks seemed to have emptied him of everything. He toyed with the pint for a while, then took a couple of mouthfuls and left it on the counter.

At the cottage the lights were off downstairs. He found a note from Lizzie on the kitchen table telling him there was food in the oven but he didn’t even bother to look. Upstairs, he checked on Grace then went into their bedroom. Lizzie appeared to be asleep, her face turned towards the wall. Suttle got undressed in the bathroom, hanging his suit on the door ready for tomorrow morning. He sponged his face, brushed his teeth and spent a long minute eyeballing the image in the mirror. When he returned to the bedroom, Lizzie hadn’t moved. He slipped into bed and turned his back on her.
Enough
, he thought.

Twelve

THURSDAY, 21 APRIL 2011

Lizzie waited until she heard the burble of the departing Impreza before she got up next morning. Suttle must have fed Grace first thing because when she went next door she found tiny gobbets of porridge on her daughter’s nightgown. She took Grace back to bed, knowing she had to get them both out of the house for a bit. The thin curtains had never met properly in the middle and the broad blue stripe told her it was a lovely morning.

‘The seaside, eh?’ She gave Grace a hug.

They took a bus from the stop outside the village store. By half past nine they were in Exmouth. It was a five-minute walk to the seafront. The tide was out and the offshore sandbank was busy with gulls and oystercatchers. Heading east, Lizzie could feel a real warmth in the sun. Imperceptibly, her spirits began to rise.

Curiosity took her to the rowing club. To her surprise the gates were open, the door to the Portakabin unlocked. She parked the buggy at the foot of the steps and lifted Grace out. She wanted to sit her on one of the rowing machines, slide her up and down, pretend they were at the funfair. She mounted the steps and pushed at the half-open door.

After the blaze of spring sunshine, she stepped into the chill of the semi-darkness inside. She could hear someone on one of the rowing machines at the very back of the clubhouse, a steady rhythm, pull after pull, but it was seconds before she could make out a shape in the gloom. A face turned briefly towards her. The rate quickened, then fell back again.

Pendrick.

She knew she should leave. Then she changed her mind. Picking her way over the machines, she carried Grace towards him. He was still rowing, still pushing himself up and down the slide. She stopped beside the readout. Nearly twenty kilometres.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘Since seven. More than three hours.’

‘Christ.’

He was still moving, his rhythm undisturbed. He didn’t look up at her. Finally, she turned to go.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘I have to tell you something.’

‘Please, no.’

‘It’s not that. I promise.’

‘What then?’

‘It’s about this Kinsey thing. They’ve arrested Tash and Milo.’

‘What for?’

‘Theft . . .’ the sweat glistened on his swollen face ‘. . . and murder.’

‘They killed Kinsey?’ Lizzie was staring at him.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I did.’

‘
You
did?’

‘Yeah. I killed the man. It was me who did it.’

She took a tiny step backwards.
Mad
, she thought. Insane.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘You’re making this up. It’s a story. You’re trying to impress me. You’re trying to get us back to wherever you want us to be. I don’t want to know. There’s no point. It’s over.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then enough’s enough. You needn’t say any more.’

‘You’re wrong. I have to tell someone. You walked in. You’re here. All you have to do is listen.’ At last he looked up at her. ‘Will you do that?’

Kinsey, he said, had been getting under his skin for more than a year. The boasts. The money. The big fuck-off apartment. The way he went out and bought himself a crew. Everything. Then came the discovery that he was going to build at Trezillion. And not just Trezillion but other sites up and down the coast. These sites were almost holy. The man was into serious desecration. The man wanted to leave his scent, his smell, everywhere. Why? To make more money. He’d had a conversation about it, warned the man.

‘What did you say?’

‘I told him to drop it. I told him to go and build somewhere else.’

‘And?’

‘He just laughed. He told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. He said the world had moved on. He told me that Cornwall needed people like him. He said it was time I got real.’

After that, he said, they barely talked at all. Whenever they were together, Kinsey made sure there were other people around – other guys, people like Andy Poole, people he could rely on. Pendrick looked up at her. He knew Kinsey was frightened of him because he could see it in his face.

‘And did that make you feel good?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did he do what you wanted?’

‘Of course not. You know that. You’ve seen those vile brochures he had done.’

Lizzie nodded. Pendrick was still rowing, still pulling hard on the machine: 20,762 metres.

‘Is that enough to kill someone? A brochure?’

‘Of course not. It was the girls as well. The Thai girls. He got them from an agency in Exeter. He’d boast about that too, in the boat. He’d tell us what they did for him, what he liked most. He had a special girl. He called her Blossom. Apparently she didn’t speak a word of English and he liked that because he didn’t have to talk to her. What that guy did was unforgivable.’

‘To the girls?’

‘To everyone. He screwed everyone. He couldn’t stop himself. Guys like that don’t deserve a life.’

On the Saturday night, he said, they’d all gone back to Kinsey’s apartment. At first Pendrick hadn’t wanted to be any part of the celebration but Lenahan had talked him into it. Bring a bit of class to the gathering. Give the wee man a shock. And so they’d all walked across to Exmouth Quays and piled into the lift and carried on drinking.

‘It was me who first realised how pissed Kinsey was. He’d been drinking like a schoolgirl all night, knocking back the champagne – Christ knows how much he must have drunk. Then Tash arrived with the takeaway and he was shovelling that in too. There was no way he wasn’t going to be ill. You could see it coming.’

When he started throwing up over the balcony no one else noticed. Pendrick went out there and got him to bed.

‘Why? Why did you do that?’

‘Because I’d made a decision.’

‘About what?’

‘About him, about Kinsey. I’d had enough. I was going to do it.’

‘Kill him?’

‘Yes. I didn’t know how but that’s what I was going to do.’

‘Why?’

Pendrick’s rhythm began to slow and for a moment Lizzie thought he was going to stop, but then he picked up again, ducking his head to wipe the sweat from his eyes.

‘He had this laptop. He said it was in his bedroom. And before he started throwing up he’d promised us all a bit of a show. He called it his PowerPoint. I think he meant it as a joke.’

‘You took a look at the laptop?’

‘I did. I was using his en suite. He loved showing all this shit off. Granite walls. Jacuzzi. The laptop was on his bed. I fired it up and there she was.’

‘Who?’

‘Blossom. The Thai girl.’

‘And?’

‘You don’t want to know. After that the guy hadn’t got a prayer.’

‘So you got him in from the balcony? This is later?’

‘Yeah. I left him on the bed. All I wanted were his door keys.’

‘Where were they?’

‘In his trackie bottoms. I just took them. The state of the guy, I don’t think he even knew they’d gone. Yeah, sweet . . .’

He was speeding up now, pushing hard with his legs against the machine. Tash, he said, had organised the taxi. He’d been the first to be dropped off. He’d waited up until half two and then walked back to Exmouth Quays. He’d approached Regatta Court via the beach. It was pouring with rain and he hadn’t seen a soul. The key to Kinsey’s apartment also opened the main door to the block. Once inside the apartment, he’d gone into Kinsey’s bedroom. Judging by the smell from the en suite, he must have been sick again.

‘Was he asleep?’

‘Spark out.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I unlocked the sliding door to the balcony, went back to fetch him and just tipped him over.’

‘Didn’t he struggle?’

‘Not really. He was still pissed, completely out of it.’

‘And that was it? Simple as that?’

‘Yeah. Call it waste disposal if you like. Afterwards I went back for the laptop and threw it into the dock. I was back home by half three –’ he glanced up at her ‘– and I slept like a baby.’

By midday
Constantine
had finally hit the buffers. Milo Symons, while admitting the theft charge, had refused to answer any more questions about Kinsey’s death, while Tash Donovan was asking her lawyer whether he could make any kind of case against the police for harassment. Why do these people keeping banging on, she kept asking him. Don’t they understand about veggies?

By now, with Houghton’s agreement, Det-Supt Nandy had decided to charge both Donovan and Symons with theft and release them on police bail. They’d have to attend the magistrates’ court on Friday morning, where a decision would be taken about a possible referral to the Crown Court. With respect to any murder charge, Nandy was obliged to accept that lack of evidence put the investigative ball back in the Coroner’s lap.
Constantine
’s MCIT squad had done its best to unearth evidence of foul play but had found nothing. In all probability, by accident or otherwise, Jake Kinsey had taken his own life. Case closed.

Houghton insisted on taking Suttle for lunch. They drove to Topsham, a flourishing village upstream from Exmouth, and went to a pub down by the river. It was a glorious day, warm enough to sit at a table by the water. Suttle insisted he wasn’t hungry but Houghton ignored him. She knew his affection for ham, egg and chips. She even returned with two sachets of brown sauce.

‘You look terrible,’ she said. ‘Is it Kinsey or something else?’

Suttle wouldn’t answer. In one sense it was both. But how on earth could he explain that his wife had been off with a key witness?

Houghton wouldn’t give up.

‘Are you sleeping OK?’

‘Yeah. Pretty much.’

‘Grace all right?’

‘She’s sweet.’

‘Lizzie?’

‘Lizzie’s fine.’

‘So what happened to your hand?’

Suttle fought the temptation to cover his right hand. His knuckles were bruised from last night. He said he didn’t want to talk about it.

‘Some kind of fight?’

‘Yeah. My fault.’

‘And the other guy?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘It
was
a guy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Not Lizzie?’

‘No.’

The food arrived. They ate in silence. Suttle didn’t want to talk about Kinsey or Donovan or Symons or any of the rest of it. He didn’t really want to talk about anything. On every front his life seemed to have come to an end. Much like
Constantine
.

Houghton had other ideas. She told him that Nandy had been impressed.

‘He might not show it, Jimmy, but he thinks you’re the business.’

‘Great. Didn’t work though, did it?’

‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is you tried. He likes that. He loves people who answer back.’

‘Is that how you got to be a D/I?’

‘Partly.’ She nodded. ‘Yeah. He likes people who argue their case. You did just that. He can’t fault you for running with it. And he can’t fault you for effort.’

He eyed her for a moment. He felt immensely weary.

‘Is all this meant to be some kind of compensation prize?’

‘That’s infantile, if I may say so. You’re better than this, Jimmy.’