Angels Passing (11 page)

‘I’m sure it isn’t, Mr Bassam. The post-mortem’s on Monday. It may well be that we’ll have more information after that. If so, I’ll give you a ring.’

Faraday got to his feet, pocketing his pen. Bassam had produced a card:
Gillespie, Bassam and Cooper. 91 Hampshire Terrace
. He gave it to Faraday.

‘Do you have any children, Mr Faraday?’

Faraday studied him a moment. Strictly speaking, it was none of Bassam’s business but for once he was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I have, Mr Bassam. A son. Twenty-three.’

‘No problems?’

‘None at all.’ He offered Bassam a chilly smile. ‘Lovely boy.’

Eight

SATURDAY
, 10
FEBRUARY
,
mid-evening

By seven o’clock, they had a name for the occupant of drawer 17 in the bank of tall fridges at the St Mary’s Hospital mortuary. The Home Office pathologist had taken prints from all ten fingers. The prints had gone straight to the force fingerprint department at Netley for checks against the newly installed NAAFIS system, software programmed with prints from every individual with a criminal record, and within hours they were looking at a result.

Winter got the name on his mobile from a clerk in the incident room. To his intense disappointment, he’d never heard of him.

‘Bradley Finch?’ he said blankly.

‘Yeah. DOB 11.3.80. He’s got previous for burglary and possession with intent to supply. LKA Leigh Park.’

Winter scribbled down Finch’s last known address. Leigh Park was a huge post-war housing development on the other side of Portsdown Hill. He and Sullivan were already on the edges of the estate, trying to tap up an old contact, so the redeployment came as no surprise.

The call had been transferred. Winter recognised the flat Essex vowels of Dave Michaels, the DS acting as Receiver and Statement Reader in the Major Incident Room. His job was to get inside Willard’s head, sieving every incoming document as the mountain of intelligence got higher and higher.

Now he was talking about Bradley Finch: ‘It’s the family address, as far as we know, his mum and dad’s place. We got it off prison records. The ID’s kosher so take it easy, eh? A recent picture would help, if they’ve got one.’

The phone went dead. ‘Easy’ meant that Winter and Sullivan were charged with breaking the bad news. A Family Liaison Officer would doubtless be along later but just now the priority was Bradley Finch. What kind of son was he? Who did he run with? Where had he been these last few days?

Winter could hear the football results from a very loud television in the front room when he rapped on the door. The house was brick-built, with a sagging porch and paving slabs where the front garden should be. There was an ancient caravan parked outside but both tyres were flat and someone had taken a screwdriver to the big window at the back.

‘Yeah?’

The figure at the door was in his fifties, thin and stooped with lank, greying hair. Winter offered his warrant card. He wanted a word or two about a lad called Bradley Finch.

‘What’s he done now?’

Winter ignored the question. He was looking down the narrow little hall. The television was even louder with the door open and he could see a fat woman in a voluminous tracksuit bent over the sink in the kitchen. Watford 2 Portsmouth 2. Some small crumb of comfort before the news got abruptly worse.

With some reluctance, the man at the door stepped aside and Winter heard Sullivan establishing his name. Terry Naylor. Bradley’s stepdad.

‘In here, Mr Naylor?’

Without waiting for an answer, Winter pushed into the front room. The gas fire was on full blast and the sharp bite of roll-ups was overwhelming. Even the ceiling looked yellow.

The woman from the kitchen joined them. She was drying her hands on a tea towel and she stood by the door, weary, apprehensive. More trouble.

‘Mrs Naylor?’

She nodded. Winter was looking pointedly at the TV but nothing happened. At length, he turned it off himself.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news …’ he began ‘… about your boy.’

Winter told them about Bradley, sparing them one or two of the more intimate details. He was brief, factual and offered them his sympathies. These were violent times and it was terrible that stuff like this had to happen, but life could be tough sometimes and it was his job to try and get to the bottom of it all. When Sullivan began to make a little speech of his own, confirming how sorry they were, Winter shut him up with a single glance.

Mrs Naylor had collapsed in the armchair by the door. Her husband remained rooted to the square of coconut matting beside the TV. The space between them spoke volumes.

Winter wanted to know whether young Bradley had been depressed lately. Naylor stirred.

‘You’re telling me he topped himself?’

‘We don’t know, Mr Naylor.’

‘Never. He’d never do that. Would he, Marge?’

The dumpy figure spilling out of the armchair didn’t venture an opinion, just sat there staring into space. Sullivan couldn’t take his eyes off her. This was terrible, he thought. The heat. The smell. The oppressive silence.

‘When did you last see him, Mr Naylor?’ It was Winter again.

‘Dunno. Before Christmas? Must have been.’

‘Doesn’t pop round at all?’

‘Brad? Never. He’s just not like that, never has been. All over the place, Brad. Real gypsy. Eh, Marge? Go on, tell ’em.’

Winter began to sense the picture here. Bradley was Marge’s boy. By the look of the rosary beads draped over the framed Sacred Heart picture over the mantelpiece, there was probably a small tribe of them. Then Naylor had stepped into her life and now he wanted nothing to do with the baggage she trailed behind her. He’d probably been banging on about the boy Bradley for years.

‘Mrs Naylor?’ Winter could charm for England when he felt the need.

‘Yeah?’ She was looking up at him, eyes shiny with tears.

‘Tell me a bit about him. What kind of nipper was he?’

She thought about the question, then sniffed and wiped her nose on the tea towel. He was a good boy really, just never got it together. He’d met the wrong people, too. He was soft in the head that way, easily led.

‘What kind of people?’

‘Horrible people. People in all kinds of trouble. People who didn’t care. People who’d … you know … lead him on.’

‘Is this as a kid?’

‘Yeah, then too. He always chose the wrong friends. That’s why he did so bad at school. Couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle anything.’

‘He’s been away, hasn’t he?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Inside. Prison.’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘He has.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

‘Drugs. He got involved with drugs. I always told him. I knew. You could tell, but he never listened.’

‘What sort of drugs?’

‘Them tablets. Don’t ask me.’

‘But he was selling, too, wasn’t he?’

She nodded, bending before this wind that had blown so suddenly into her life.

‘Yeah, he was.’

‘Recently. Only a couple of years ago. Before we locked him up.’

‘Yeah.’

‘So he must have had a car, mustn’t he? Getting out and about? Keeping his customers happy?’

Mrs Naylor looked across at her husband, pleading for help, but Naylor was busy with another roll-up. At length, she nodded. Winter was right about the car. He’d had an old banger, a wreck of a thing.

‘What sort?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’ She frowned, wanting an end to these incessant questions. ‘I think he once said it was Italian.’

‘Fiat?’

‘Might be.’

‘Colour?’

‘White.’

‘Big car? Small?’

She stared up at Winter, panic-stricken.

‘I dunno. Medium. I dunno.’ She swallowed hard, twisting the tea towel in her lap. ‘He was terrible with money, Bradley, always has been. He just spent it all the time – spend, spend, spend. Lend him a fiver and it was gone, just like that. It was like an illness. He hadn’t got a clue.’ She looked up again. ‘Was he hurt at all?’

‘He was dead, Mrs Naylor.’

‘I know, but—’ She buried her face in her hands. Winter stood beside the chair, a hand on her shoulder. Sullivan stirred uneasily behind him.

‘These mates of his you mentioned. You wouldn’t have any names by any chance?’

She buried her head in her hands. Winter gave her a moment or two and then put the question again. Mates. Blokes he hung around with. People who might be able to help on a terrible, terrible day like this.

At last her head came up. In the space of a minute, she seemed to have aged years.

‘No.’ She shook her head, emphatic, then plucked at the baggy tracksuit. ‘Head like a sieve, me.’

Winter got slowly to his feet, thinking about the scene on Hilsea Lines. Back at the briefing in the incident room, Willard had made a big point of the scarlet thong. It was the first thing he’d noticed, he’d said.

‘What about girlfriends?’

Winter stood beside the chair, waiting for an answer, but Mrs Naylor had had enough. Then there came the scrape of a match and a rattly cough as smoke from the roll-up hit Naylor’s lungs.

‘He never went short.’ He coughed again, then swallowed hard. ‘Had a mouth on him, Bradley. Talk any woman into bed.’

‘He had lots of girlfriends?’

‘Yeah. Never kept them, but yeah.’

‘Anyone in particular? Anyone recent?’

‘Haven’t got a clue, mate. Like I say, it wasn’t like we saw him every day.’

Winter nodded, then gestured casually back towards the stairs in the hall.

‘What about stuff of his? Clothes? Bits and pieces? Mind if I take a look?’

The expression on Naylor’s face – first surprise, then panic – brought a smile to Winter’s lips. He turned and headed for the stairs. Naylor came after him but quickly had second thoughts. There were four doors off the landing at the top. Winter tried them one after the other. Third time he was lucky, switching on the light for a better look.

There were piles of boxes stacked beside the MFI wardrobe, the kind of gear a good burglar could screw in a couple of minutes. Most of it was stuff for the kitchen: food mixers, coffee machines, good quality saucepans, stuff you could shift to housewives on the estate. Winter took a closer look, searching for evidence of a particular outlet, but the goods must have been nicked from stock before they got anywhere near a shelf. There might be serial numbers, though, and if so it should be child’s play getting a match on recently reported break-ins.

He quickly checked the wardrobe and the battered chest of drawers, then backed out of the room and gave Sullivan a yell. When he got to the top of the stairs, he nodded towards the open door and told him to get on the mobile. He wanted a photographer and a van. Quickly.

Naylor was waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Well?’ The grin was back on Winter’s face. ‘What’s the story?’

I was kidding about Brad,’ Naylor mumbled. ‘He’s been here all the time.’

‘You mean living here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘In that room?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So why’s the wardrobe empty? Doesn’t he have a change of clothes?’

Naylor took a little half-step backwards, trying to avoid the traps.

‘When I say living here—’

Mrs Naylor appeared in the open doorway behind him. Her face was scarlet with anger.

‘That’s all garbage. It’s true what he said before. We haven’t seen Bradley for months.’

‘Sure.’ Winter beamed at her, ever helpful. ‘And the fairies left the stuff upstairs.’ He turned back to Naylor. ‘You’ve got a problem here, my old mate, but there are ways and means we can help you. Assuming, of course, you want to keep your missus out of it.’

‘Marge?’ Naylor looked blank.

‘Yeah. Conspiracy to handling.’ Winter shook his head regretfully. ‘In the Crown Court she could be looking at fourteen years. Some juries can be bloody unreasonable.’

The colour had drained from Mrs Naylor’s face. For a moment, Sullivan thought she was going to collapse completely.

Winter was still looking at her husband.

‘So why don’t we go through the story again,’ Winter suggested, ‘starting with those mates of Bradley’s?’

Back home from Southsea police station, Faraday settled down to wait for J-J’s return but the longer he thought about it, the more he realised that he wasn’t up for a lengthy post-mortem on the boy’s love life, not now, not yet. Their life together had revolved around the spillage left over from childhood and adolescence – shared memories of birding trips, days on the beach, occasional expeditions to London – and this new J-J, this refugee from the grown-up world of shipwrecked relationships, was an altogether different proposition. After the best part of a day waiting for the lad to return, he realised that the last thing he wanted was a lengthy conversation about commitment and betrayal.

He thought he’d put the printout from Helen Bassam’s mobile in his briefcase, and he was right. They were all there, all the numbers she’d so carefully stored, and Trudy Gallagher’s even included her nickname. Carrot.

Faraday picked up the phone and dialled the number. On call-out days, he told himself, it was OK to quietly volunteer for extra duty. He glanced at his watch. 18.50.

‘Who’s that?’

She had a Pompey accent, sandpapered by too many cigarettes. It didn’t sound like a young voice at all.

‘Trudy Gallagher?’

‘No chance. Who wants her?’

Faraday gave his name. He could hear music and bar laughter in the background.

‘Old Bill, you say?’ There was more laughter, much closer. This woman had an audience.

Faraday persevered. He was CID. He was investigating a serious incident. He needed to have a word or two with Trudy Gallagher. Was he talking to someone who knew where she was?

‘I’m her mother. I’m the last person who’d bloody know.’

‘I thought this was her mobile?’

‘You’re right. It was until I nicked it off of her. Bills that massive, what else could I do?’ There was another cackle of laughter. ‘She in trouble then?’

It occurred to Faraday that Trudy’s mother might be a shorter cut to the boy Doodie than Trudy herself. Talking to kids, even on an informal non-interview basis, could be tricky. Make one slip and the defence lawyers would be all over you.

‘Maybe you could help,’ he suggested.

There was a moment’s pause. In the background, muted voices. Then the woman was back again.

‘We’re at the Café Blanc,’ she said. ‘Help yourself.’

The Café Blanc was in Southsea: sleek black and white decor, chrome and leather seats, gleaming maplewood floor and lots of smoked glass. It had only been open a couple of months and already it had become the happening place for estate agents, car dealers and young professional folk prepared to pay £3.50 for a bottle of Mexican lager. Word on the street suggested that it was a launderette for washing cocaine money and Faraday was in a position to suspect that the rumour was true.