Angels Passing (2 page)

Minutes later, the geography of the place clear in his mind, Winter went in search of the management. Ray Brennan ran the superstore from a chaotic suite of offices in two Portakabins on the other side of the car park. He was a big, broad, sandy-haired Irishman with a solid marriage, umpteen kids and extraordinarily few enemies. Winter had known Brennan since his early days as a jobbing builder and had always wondered what really lay behind the bone-crushing handshake and the big smile. No one could be that cheerful. Even with a business this successful to his credit.

Winter wanted to know about security. Brennan’s had grown like topsy: first a builders’ merchant, then a timber centre, and now a retail operation that jigsawed everything for the home and garden onto the three-acre site. What happened out of hours? Where were the cameras placed?

‘Cameras?’

‘You haven’t got CCTV?’

Brennan looked briefly pained, then dismissed the thought with a wave of his huge hand. His brother, Vic, had been banging on about cameras for years, but himself, he’d never seen the point. Most of the stuff that got nicked went out of the yard in the backs of builders’ vans and he had a trusted old boy on the gate to check every load against the paperwork. CCTV, on the other hand, was aggressive. People wanted to enjoy themselves when they shopped. What kind of welcome was a camera in your face?

For a moment Winter thought he was taking the piss but there were clues in this cluttered little office that suggested otherwise. One of them was a wall calender from the Church of Our Lady, a big Catholic pile up near the top of the city. Another was a colour photograph of Brennan presenting a cheque to the Lord Mayor. Clearly Ray’s generosity extended well beyond the police force.

Winter changed tack. He wanted to know about tomorrow’s sale. Did the discounts apply to the pricier stuff?

‘Sure.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the top-of-the-line goods you don’t have to plug in. Like cordless drills and sanders. Like Workmates. Like brushes and paint. Like whatever you want. We’re talking up to thirty per cent off here.’

‘So how much? For a cordless drill?’

‘£116 today. £89 tomorrow. Believe me, that’s a steal.’

The word brought a smile to Winter’s face. He was already convinced that tonight’s visitors would be targeting high-value items with a ready market on the dodgier housing estates, and tomorrow’s sale would offer the richest of pickings. Even if you lost a big whack when you fenced the stuff, a vanful of cordless drills would keep you in lagers for at least a week.

Winter leaned forward, explaining about the information received, about the likelihood of some kind of break-in, and about the traps he was planning to set. The site was a nightmare – he’d counted five potential exits – and doing the job properly would call for some serious manpower. Might he take a look at the retail stockroom?

Brennan, more thoughtful now, led the way back across the car park. The rain was lashing down and by the time they made it to the Retail Centre both men were soaked. Items for the weekend’s bonanza were in the warehouse area at the back and the moment Winter saw the Black and Decker boxes piled high on trolleys he knew he’d called it exactly right. In Paulsgrove and Wecock Farm, estates up on the mainland, this lot would go in seconds. Easy, easy money.

‘What’s this?’

Winter was standing beside the biggest of the trolleys. Brennan followed his pointing finger.

‘Security systems. It’s self-fit. You take a screwdriver to the detector thing, and door contacts and one or two other bits and pieces, and then stick that big yellow box over the front door. An hour, max. Can’t fail.’

‘Price? Normal retail?’

‘£99.99. But cheaper tomorrow.’

Winter was beaming. He knew dozens of criminals, Pompey’s finest, who’d lift gear like this by the truckload. They’d hit cities along the coast – Chichester, Brighton, Bournemouth – and target people who didn’t know better, old people especially. For a cut-price five hundred pounds or so they’d offer to install the security system of your dreams – total peace of mind – and the scam would be even sweeter if the gear was itself nicked. Winter could hear them screaming with laughter on the way home. Five hundred quid for an hour’s work and every last penny theirs for the taking? No expenses? No guarantees? No comeback? Fucking re-sult.

Winter beckoned Brennan into a corner of the warehouse, away from the staff. Strictly speaking he should have the rest of this conversation back in the office but time was moving on.

‘How many work in this section?’

‘Couple of lads. Off the New Deal.’

‘I’ll need their names. Plus everyone else on the payroll.’

‘Why?’

‘Because someone’s been speaking out of turn.’ He nodded towards the towering piles of merchandise. ‘I’ll run the names through the computer just in case they’ve got previous. Beyond that we’re talking association. Tonight’s the easy bit’ – he patted Brennan on the arm – ‘believe me.’

It was one of the uniforms, a WPC from Central, who alerted Faraday about a call from the school across the road. A teacher had taken a smashed mobile from one of the kids. He’d been doing a paper round at the flats, almost an hour after Scenes of Crime had arrived, and he’d come across the mobile on the other side of the block. It was lying in the road there, just asking to be nicked, and now she was bringing it over in case it was important.

Faraday intercepted the teacher as she rounded the corner of the flats. The Crime Scene Manager watched him from a distance, intensely curious, then walked over. The rain had stopped again but Faraday sensed it was only a truce.

The CSM produced a plastic evidence bag. He held it open beneath the mobile.

Faraday was looking at the teacher. It was by no means certain that the phone had any connection with the dead girl but he was grateful that she’d spared the time to bring it over.

‘How many other kids touched this?’

‘I’ve no idea. He’s a popular lad. Half a dozen? That’s a guess.’

The mobile was a neat little Nokia, purple with a glitter effect. The plastic case was shattered beyond repair but – intact – it was all too easy to imagine it pressed to the ear of the girl behind the screen.

The CSM still had the bag open and was visibly losing patience. This wasn’t about evidence any more, it was about ownership. His crime scene. His shout.

‘It’s useless,’ Faraday pointed out. ‘Useless as a phone and useless forensically. I suggest we see what the sim card tells us.’

Without waiting for an answer, he shook the little wafer of silicon out of the Nokia and slipped it into his own mobile. The last call had gone to a local number and Faraday made a note before keying up the stored contacts list. There were dozens and dozens of names, ports of call in a busy, busy social life: Katie, Tazz, Anna, Jordan, Peaches, Billy, Azul. He scrolled slowly through them, looking for an obvious lead. Then he glanced up at the teacher, struck by the obvious thought. There were lots of secondary schools in the city but this one might be a good place to start.

‘You keep a daily register?’ he asked.

The teacher was looking at the screen around the body.

‘Of course.’

‘How many absentees this morning?’

‘For my class? Four.’

‘What kind of age?’

‘Year Eleven. Fifteen to sixteen.’

‘We’re not talking flu here?’ Faraday suggested drily. ‘The weather we’ve been having?’

The teacher favoured him with a brief, cold smile.

‘I doubt it.’

Her gaze returned to the screen. The heavy plastic was billowing in the wind and every now and again a gust lifted the bottom of the structure, permitting a moment’s glimpse of wet denim. Finally, Faraday asked the inevitable question.

‘It’s a question of ID.’ He nodded towards the body. ‘If you’d prefer not, I’d quite understand.’

The teacher bit her lip, saying nothing. Then she nodded and Faraday took her by the arm, stepping carefully around the Crime Scene Manager. A flap at the back of the screen permitted a view of the body. The teacher stood motionless for a while, staring down at the dead girl’s face. Finally, she looked up at Faraday.

‘Do you know her?’

‘No.’

‘Would you know her?’

‘That age? In school? Definitely.’

She glanced down again, one last look, then brushed away a tear. It was an abrupt gesture, anger as well as sadness, and she didn’t say another word until Faraday had escorted her back to the corner of the building. Faraday had his mobile out again. There was an issue over whether circumstances warranted calling in a Home Office pathologist and he knew he owed his Detective Chief Inspector a call.

The teacher accepted his outstretched hand. She hoped the Nokia would be a help.

‘I’d phone her mum if I were you,’ she muttered. ‘They normally store the number under “M”.’

She ducked her head and then turned and hurried away. The DCI was engaged, so Faraday scrolled through to ‘M’ on the Nokia’s contact list and found an eight-digit number under ‘Ma’. He wrote the number down, then put a call through to the force control room at Netley. They kept a reverse phone book on computer and, within seconds, Faraday was scribbling in his pocketbook again. Mrs Jane Bassam. 27, Little Normandy. Old Portsmouth.

Old Portsmouth?

Faraday frowned, looking up at the roof. Old Portsmouth, while barely a mile distant, was a middle-class enclave for professional couples and wealthy retired folk, light years away from the violence and chaos that passed for life on this estate. Kids from Somerstown were into organised shoplifting before they left primary school. Kids from Old Portsmouth took piano lessons and sailed dinghies. If he was right about the mobile, if it really had belonged to the girl behind the screen, then what on earth was she doing here?

Two

FRIDAY
, 9
FEBRUARY
,
mid-morning

Jane Bassam occupied a modest post-war house in a quiet cul-de-sac near the Anglican cathedral. There was an S-registered Renault in the drive and one of her front windows featured a poster advertising a forthcoming performance of the Verdi Requiem. Dawn Ellis and Bev Yates exchanged glances. Neither of the two DCs had much taste for breaking bad news but year on year scenes like these seemed increasingly to go with the territory. In Ellis’s view, it was odds-on that they were about to plunge this woman’s world into chaos.

It was still pouring with rain. They got out of the car, pushed through the garden gate and sought shelter under the tiny porch. The door opened as soon as they rang the bell and Ellis found herself looking at a tall, thin, striking-looking woman in her late thirties. She had a long fall of auburn hair and the designer wire-rimmed glasses suited the gaunt boniness of her face. Barefoot in her jeans and V-neck red sweater, she stared blankly at the proffered warrant cards.

‘Mrs Bassam?’

‘That’s right.’ The woman glanced at Ellis. ‘What do you want?’

Yates was peering beyond her, into the gloom of the tiny hall. Ellis suggested they might talk inside.

‘Of course. Come in.’

Mrs Bassam led the way into the lounge. The curtains had been pulled back but it was still very dark. Mrs Bassam paused by the door and the moment the light went on Yates’s attention was drawn to a big framed photograph on the wall above the mantelpiece. A girl in her early teens was leaning back against a set of railings. She had the kind of face that would turn any man’s head, an innocence tainted by something deeply arousing. Even in death, sprawled across the wet pavement, that suggestion of mischief hadn’t quite left her.

Ellis had seen the photograph, too.

‘Is that your daughter, Mrs Bassam?’

‘Yes, it is. Why do you ask?’

‘Is there anyone else here? Your husband maybe?’

‘No.’

‘A neighbour then? A friend?’

‘No.’ She shook her head, alarmed now. ‘Nobody.’ She looked from one face to the other. ‘Has something happened to Helen? Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?’

Ellis explained about the body at the foot of the block of flats. There was a long silence. Nobody could say for certain that the dead girl was Helen Bassam, not until the body had been formally identified, but already the laws of probability suggested that it had to be true.

The colour had drained from Mrs Bassam’s face. Ellis helped her into an armchair, then knelt beside her. The last thing she needed was more questions but it was best to be certain.

‘When did you last see her? Helen?’

‘Last night, early, around seven. We had supper together.’

‘And then she left?’

‘Yes. She was going to a friend’s. She was going to sleep over.’

‘What was she wearing? Can you remember?’

‘Of course.’ Mrs Bassam looked down at her hands, trying to concentrate, trying to fumble her way through this terrible news. ‘Jeans. And a silly little top. Cotton.’

‘Colour?’

‘It was green.’

‘No coat?’

‘No. I told her to take a fleece but she wouldn’t listen.’

‘Any jewellery at all?’

‘Yes.’ She was staring at Ellis. ‘She had a bracelet, a silver thing with charms on it. She wore it all the time, even in bed …’ She shook her head, lost for words.

Ellis looked at her for a moment, then asked about the kitchen. Maybe a cup of tea might be a good idea.

‘Through there.’ Mrs Bassam gestured vaguely towards the open door.

Ellis left the room. Yates settled himself in the other armchair and produced his pocketbook. From the moment he’d seen the photo on the wall, he’d had absolutely no doubts that this woman had just lost her daughter, and everything she’d just said – the clothes, the bracelet – made it all the more certain.

Jane Bassam seemed to know it too. Her eyes were closed and something odd seemed to have happened to her breathing. She was taking little shallow breaths, as if she was surfacing from a deep, deep dive and didn’t quite trust her lungs any more. At length she visibly stiffened, taking hold of herself, back in command.

‘You mentioned a block of flats,’ she said.

‘Chuzzlewit House. Somerstown.’

‘And you say she fell?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they big flats? Tall?’

‘Yes.’

‘Quick, then.’ She nodded to herself. ‘A quick death.’

There was a long silence. From the kitchen came the bubbling of an electric kettle as Ellis made a pot of tea. Yates asked again whether Mrs Bassam wanted to phone her husband. This was a difficult moment for anyone. The body might or might not belong to Helen but in Yates’s experience the burden of something like this was best shared.

‘There’s no point,’ Mrs Bassam said stonily. ‘My husband and I are divorcing.’

‘But even so …’ Yates explained about the mortuary and the ID procedures. Might it be better for Helen’s father to attend?

Mrs Bassam shook her head.

‘He can’t. He’s a lawyer. He’s on a case in London all this week.’ Her eyes strayed to the photo on the wall. ‘You really think it’s her, don’t you?’

‘I can’t say, Mrs Bassam, not for sure.’

‘But that’s what you think, isn’t it?’

Yates looked at her without saying anything. Something in this woman’s face – weariness, resignation, grief – told him that the news hadn’t come as a surprise. Ellis reappeared with a tray of tea. Mrs Bassam watched her filling the three mugs.

‘There were cups in the corner cupboard,’ she muttered.

Her voice trailed off and, as Ellis asked how many sugars she took, Yates found himself looking round the lounge: the chairs and sofa pushed to the very edges of the room, the over-neat rack of magazines beside the television, the carefully arranged spray of dried flowers in a cut glass vase on the bookcase. Compared to the intimacy and clutter of his own domestic arrangements, the room had a chill that central heating would never touch. This woman lived in a show house. It smelled of air-freshener and furniture polish. No wonder the girl was out all hours.

Yates returned to his pocketbook.

‘Do you mind if I take some details, Mrs Bassam? It may save time later.’

‘Of course.’

Yates started on his list of questions. Helen Christine Bassam. DOB 17.10.86. For the last three years, she’d been attending St Peter’s Comprehensive, Southsea. Until this morning.

Yates glanced up.

‘Has she been upset at all?’

‘Upset enough to throw herself off a block of flats, you mean?’

‘I didn’t say that, Mrs Bassam. I’m just asking whether she’d been … unhappy at all.’

Mrs Bassam thought about the question. She had both hands round her mug of tea.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last. ‘Sometimes I think she was born unhappy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well …’ she shrugged hopelessly ‘… she hasn’t been the easiest person to have around, not recently anyway.’

‘You’re telling me she might have been depressed?’

‘I don’t know. Depression sounds so grown-up. Do girls of fourteen really get depressed?’

Ellis had settled herself on the sofa. Now she leaned forward.

‘Where did she go after you had supper?’

‘To Trudy’s. Trudy’s her friend, her special friend.’ The phrase had a bitter edge to it, a flag raised in a strong wind.

‘Trudy …?’

‘Gallagher.’ Mrs Bassam nodded towards the telephone. ‘Maybe you ought to talk to her yourself.’

Yates got to his feet and retrieved a battered address book from a drawer beneath the telephone. Mrs Bassam watched him leaf through for the number and transfer it to his pocketbook. Her hand had found the small gold cross on the chain around her neck and she was fingering it absently, the way you might worry a spot or a scab.

Ellis wanted to know about the relationship between the two girls. Was it especially close?

‘Very. Trudy knew my daughter better than I did. In fact she’s been practically living there these last few weeks. One less worry, I suppose.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘At least I knew where to find her. Some nights I hadn’t a clue where she’d end up. I’m not saying she’d come to any harm; I think she was perfectly able to look after herself. But she was just …’ she frowned ‘… wild.’

‘Wild?’

‘Yes, wild like an animal. And rude too. Hostile. Aggressive. She could be horrible sometimes, believe me.’ She nodded. ‘Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Your own flesh and blood …’ For a moment she gazed sightlessly into the middle distance, and then she began to cry. The tears coursed down her face but she made absolutely no sound. It was like watching a silent movie, and this sudden grief was all the more affecting for the way she’d fought so hard to restrain it.

Ellis got up and tried to comfort her, kneeling beside the armchair again and putting her arms around Mrs Bassam’s shoulders, but she shook her head.

‘Would you mind?’ She gestured hopelessly towards the kitchen. She wanted privacy. She wanted to be left alone.

Yates closed his pocketbook.

‘Do you mind if we take a look at Helen’s bedroom, Mrs Bassam?’

‘It’s upstairs. Help yourself.’

Ellis followed Yates towards the door, then paused. There was something infinitely pathetic about this woman, hunched in her chair in this cold, cold room. So much for the comforts of religion, she thought. In some ways, Mrs Bassam looked more broken than her daughter.

‘Are you sure there’s no one we can phone for you?’

‘Please …’ Mrs Bassam nodded towards the stairs ‘… just go on up.’

Ellis was first into the bedroom, recognising the scene at once. At twenty-nine, you kidded yourself that you were beyond all this but in your heart you knew it wasn’t true: the unmade bed, the floor strewn with discarded bits of clothing, the ripped-out fashion pics Blu-tacked to the wall, the tiny dressing table littered with pots of hair gel and lip gloss. The contrast with downstairs couldn’t have been starker, and Ellis began to suspect that the gaunt, brittle figure in the armchair had simply given up.

There’d have been confrontation after confrontation about this room of Helen’s; it happened in every household. But there were certain kids who blocked the path to a nice simple life. When the shouting began, they shouted louder. Appeal to their better nature, they’d laugh in your face. Threaten them with punishment, even physical violence, and they’d probably get their revenge in first. She knew this for certain because she’d been that way herself, a total nightmare, and it was only the long years of living alone that had taught her how to be human again. The inside of Ellis’s head had once looked like this room and, even now, she could still taste the intoxicating turmoil of those teenage years. Adolescence could take you to the very edge. The trick was to go no further.

Yates had found a pocket diary under the girl’s pillow. It had a picture of Nelson Mandela on the front and he flicked quickly through it, page after page of doodles, squirly spiral shapes that occupied most of January. On the 13th, a Saturday, he found a line of exclamation marks, and a couple of weeks later – the 26th – a big fat question mark. At no point had the girl made any kind of written entries, except for a number at the very front of the diary.

1337? Yates turned to find Ellis.

Ellis was going through the drawer in the dressing table. So far, she’d found a Walkman, CDs by Destiny’s Child and Lauryn Hill, a Boots receipt for £8.95, two sticks of chewing gum, a pocket French/English dictionary, seven National Lottery tickets, a broken watch, a lighter, two more bracelets, a 27P token from a packet of crisps and a building society bank book. The account offered instant access and the name in the front was Helen Bassam’s. Ellis paged slowly through it. Someone was putting £160 a month into the girl’s name, the whole of it withdrawn in ten and twenty-pound hits through a cash card. At fourteen, money was clearly the least of her problems.

‘Forty quid a week,’ Ellis murmured. ‘Can you believe that?’

‘Easy. It’s conscience money, from Dad.’

‘You think so?’

‘Put my life on it. He’s gone off with some bird or other and he wants to make it right with his little girl. It’s shagging money. It makes him feel better about himself.’

‘But forty quid? A
week?
’

‘It’s small change, love. The guy’s a lawyer. The money just walks in through the door.’

Yates had started on a row of books on a shelf beside the wardrobe. A leather-bound copy of the New Testament looked unread but next to it was a much-thumbed paperback collection of poems. Yates opened it. The poems were in French.

‘Here …’

He passed the book to Ellis. As he did so, a photograph fluttered to the floor. Ellis picked it up. The photo was black and white and showed a man in his early twenties sitting at a café table. He had a strong face – curly black hair, dark complexion – and a lovely smile, at once mischievous and wistful. The open copy of
Le Monde
and the glimpse of a busy concourse behind suggested one of the big Paris railway stations. She turned the photo over, peering at the inscription. It was handwritten in red ink, difficult to follow, but at last she made it out.
La premiére entreprise fût, dans le sentier déjà empli de frais et blêmes éclats, une fleur qui me dit son nom
.

She turned to Yates.

‘How’s your French?’

‘Crap.’

‘Me too.’ Her eyes returned to the photograph. ‘What do you think?’

‘Seize it. Faraday does French, doesn’t he?’

Ellis wasn’t convinced. This wasn’t a scene of crime. Nothing bad had happened here, not in the eyes of the law. No, their interest lay in developing a picture of the girl – of the life she’d led, of her friends, her interests, her ambitions, her dreams. Bits and pieces of this jigsaw might help explain her death but with a photograph like this it was all too easy to jump to conclusions. He might be someone she’d met abroad on some school trip or other. God knows, it might even be a photo she’d lifted from someone else, a hook on which to hang a whole winter of fantasies. Girlies could be like that. As Ellis knew.