Angels Passing (36 page)

‘To protect the kids?’

‘No, to protect us. We’ve allowed ourselves to become caged, Mr Faraday, and it’s a very great shame. Physical contact is where comfort begins. Believe me, it’s difficult to reach out when you’re not allowed to touch.’

Faraday was still thinking about Helen.

‘So how hard did she push all this?’

‘Very hard. And when I said no, it simply added insult to all her other problems.’

‘No to what?’

‘No to going to bed. No to making love. No to giving her what she thought she wanted.’

‘And what was that?’

‘A baby.’

Faraday reached down for his cup.
Pour vous
, he thought. The coffee was cold.

‘You knew she was pregnant?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes. Her mother told me a couple of days ago. That’s why I thought it important we meet.’

‘And what did Mrs Bassam make of all this?’

‘All what?’

‘You and Helen. Her daughter behaving like this.’

‘It was extremely difficult. As I explained, Jane and I were close but the truth is that Helen came between us.’

‘She thought you were …?’ Faraday didn’t know how to end the sentence.

‘Screwing her daughter? Yes, she did. Which made life in that little house even more hellish. In fact Jane even went to the Dean about it.’

‘The Dean?’

‘My boss. He’d heard the rumours of course but there’s a natural reluctance to believe something like that until the need becomes truly pressing. We had an exchange of views.’

‘And?’

‘He believed me but thought I was being foolish. Reckless is the word he used. He thought I should put the Church before Helen, and indeed before Jane. I disagreed. In my view, God comes first.’

‘They’re the same, aren’t they? God and the Church?’

‘Not necessarily, Mr Faraday.’ The smile had returned. ‘Sadly, there can sometimes be a difference.’

He lifted the cat from his lap and offered it to Faraday. There was more coffee in the pot downstairs. Faraday took the cat and let it settle, wondering what else was to come. He wasn’t altogether convinced by Phillimore’s account but if the bit about the Dean was true, the man certainly had a mind of his own. To take Jane Bassam away for the night after a scandal like this was an act of some courage.

From the kitchen there was the trill of a phone, then the mutter of conversation as Phillimore answered it. Moments later, he was back upstairs again, empty-handed.

‘That was Jane, I’m afraid. In a bit of a state.’

Twenty-three

THURSDAY
, 15
FEBRUARY
,
15.00

Winter thought nothing of the envelope waiting for him at Fratton nick. It was A4, manila, with something hard and oblong inside, a book maybe. It had been hand-delivered after lunch and one of the counter clerks had brought it up to the MIR.

It turned out to be a VHS cassette. There was a play machine in the big office at the far end of the corridor and Winter made himself a tea before slipping the tape in. At once he recognised the setting: the damp stains on the wallpaper beside the door, the pulled curtains that didn’t quite meet in the middle, the thin strip of daylight in between. Kenny Foster, he thought. Another mauling.

He checked the envelope again. Blue biro. Clumsy capitals,
‘MR DETECTIVE WINTER’
. Like he was trying to take the piss. He turned back to the video. Foster had appeared on screen in his trademark jeans and singlet. He must have a whole drawer of singlets, Winter thought. He must buy them by the dozen, one per fight. The camera edged the other man into view. He was huge – six two, six three. The cropped bullet-shaped head was too small for his shoulders and he stood absolutely still, staring Kenny Foster out. He wore black, paint-stained tracksuit bottoms and an enormous pair of scuffed trainers, and his arms hung down beside his body, his fists already bunched.

Foster was kneeling on the carpet, massaging his heel. His feet were bare and Winter caught sight of a blue dagger tattoo stabbing at his ankle. For once he’d abandoned the twist of red that tidied his ponytail in favour of green. He got to his feet, did a couple of lazy stretches, and then winked at the camera. Winter watched, fascinated. The last person you’d want to be just now was the big man with the tiny head.

The fight began. Foster circled his opponent the way a plasterer might check out a dodgy wall, wondering which bit to start on first, but the other guy wasn’t going to be so easily psyched out. Instead he simply adjusted his balance, lumbering sideways on those huge feet, watching Foster’s every move. Foster stopped. Abruptly, his fists went down. He started to laugh. Then he extended a hand. Confused, the huge man went to shake it, assuming this formed part of the opening ritual, but the moment he relaxed Foster was inside – short, vicious jabs to the body, then a neat uppercut that was only inches wide. The other man gasped with pain. Already you could see the panic in his eyes. Foster took half a step backwards, then drove his head into the man’s face. His hands went up, then down again as Foster slammed punch after punch into the soft flesh beneath his ribcage. The liver, thought Winter. Always the liver.

The big guy was on his knees now, blood pouring from his broken nose. Foster took another step backwards, giving himself space, then half turned his body and karate-kicked the crimson face with his heel. The blow jerked the tiny head back and Winter watched the blood splatter on the wallpaper behind. The scream from the video brought a couple of DCs in from the office across the corridor, then a couple more. They gathered round the set, kids watching a fight in the playground, enthralled as Foster hauled his opponent back up onto his knees before driving another flurry of punches into the wreckage that had once been his face. By now, the big man looked like something out of an abattoir – raw meat – and seconds later he was sprawled across the carpet, plainly unconscious.

Foster studied his knuckles a moment, stirred the inert body with his foot, then peeled off his singlet. Down on one knee, he used the singlet to mop the blood from his victim’s face. Then he was on his feet again, four-square in front of the camera. He held up the singlet, then pointed a finger at the lens. The gesture was all too obvious and Winter felt the stir of bodies around him. You, Foster was saying. You next.

Sullivan had joined the group. Winter stopped the video and put the machine into rewind. Everyone else was waiting for a reaction. Winter ejected the cassette and slipped it back into the envelope. Then he caught Sullivan’s eye.

‘Foster give you his home address?’ Sullivan was staring at him.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but Dave Michaels has got it.’

Faraday didn’t wait for Hartigan’s management assistant to ring through to the inner office. Twenty-three years in the job, and he’d seldom felt so angry. He stepped through the half-open door and pushed it shut behind him. Hartigan was behind his desk, signing a pile of letters.

‘Jane Bassam’s got
News
journalists crawling all over her,’ Faraday said. ‘They’ve phoned three times so far and now they’re threatening to send a photographer.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it.’ Hartigan barely spared Faraday a glance.

‘Did you have a hand in this, sir? Was it your idea?’

‘Of course it wasn’t. As I understand it, they’re already taking an interest in Mrs Bassam. Something to do with her teaching days. I’ve simply added a note to the file. Informally, of course. Editor level.’

Faraday gazed at him, astonished at his recklessness. The Coroner had yet to hold an inquest. Leaking any information before the official verdict on the girl’s death was courting prosecution.

Hartigan, carefully laying his pen to one side, wouldn’t have it. He insisted he held no candle for the press, far from it, but there were important public issues at stake and he wasn’t about to ignore them.

‘I don’t know about you, Joe, but I refuse to sit on my hands while all this stuff is going on. We have responsibilities here. We have to draw a line. I simply will not tolerate fourteen-year-olds getting off their heads on heroin. Not on my patch.’

‘Can you prove that? About the heroin?’

‘As a matter of fact I can.’

‘How?’

‘By talking to the pathologist.’

‘And have you done that?’

‘Of course I have. Do you seriously think we’d be having this conversation otherwise?’

‘And what did he say? The pathologist?’

‘He agreed with me that there was nothing to rule out heroin.’

‘He agreed with you? What does that mean? I talked to the man this morning. What he said was that it
could
be heroin. Not a definite. Not for certain. Not one hundred per cent. A maybe. You’ve turned it round. Not only that but you’ve made him party to this pantomime.’

‘Joe, I—’

‘No, sir. Listen to me. The girl’s mother is quite adamant that she wasn’t doing hard drugs. She’d have noticed. She’d have seen the symptoms. And I agree with her.’

‘Joe, that’s a supposition, nothing more. These things are notoriously tricky.’

‘Are they?’ Faraday paused for a second, then took a deep breath. ‘OK, let’s say it was heroin. Let’s say it was smack off the street, stuff she scored from some two-bit dealer. Where were the traces of all the other rubbish they cut it with? Or are we talking pure here?’

Hartigan hadn’t moved. His mouth had tightened into the thinnest of lines.

‘I happen to have been back to one of the drugs DCs in the CIMU, and since you’ve asked the question, let me share their intelligence with you. Number one, heroin’s never been so cheap in this city. Number two, it’s never been so pure. If those aren’t good reasons to run the flag up the pole, perhaps you’d be good enough to tell me why. This is never an easy job, Joe, far from it. But I must say life would be a great deal simpler if I felt you had our collective interests at heart.’

This was tosh and Faraday knew it. ‘Collective interests’ was one of those management phrases that Hartigan put so much trust in. He had dozens of them stored away, bits of glue to stick all those self-important memos together.

‘We still can’t be certain the girl was doing smack,’ Faraday insisted. ‘And it’s irresponsible to think otherwise.’

‘Is it?’ Hartigan offered him a cold smile. ‘You’ll know that Jane Bassam’s ex-husband has a different opinion.’

‘Bassam’s got a serious guilt problem, as well he might.’

‘That’s another supposition. I don’t think it helps progress this debate a single inch.’

Progress this debate?

‘There are lives on the line here, sir.’

‘I couldn’t agree more, Joe. And there might be lots more Helen Bassams.’

‘I’m talking about her mother.’

‘I know you are, and for the record I want you to know that I find this whole business deeply, deeply repugnant. I hate the bloody press as much as you do but under the circumstances I think you’ll agree they do have their uses. Of course the mother is going to be upset. What mum wouldn’t be? But it’s means and ends, Joe. And in my judgement, the greater good is served by addressing the largest possible audience.’

‘And that’s that?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Faraday nodded. He’d taken this exchange as far as he could and there was no point in pressing it any further. The greater good, in Faraday’s opinion, had more to do with Hartigan’s career prospects than ridding the streets of heroin but the drugs and public awareness issue was increasingly the currency of advancement.

Faraday thought of Brian Imber that night in the restaurant when a couple of pints of Kingfisher had swamped his inhibitions. The day that Hartigan stood up for legalisation and lobbied for a major push against the big dealers was the day Faraday would believe he had a real commitment. For now, he was simply playing to the gallery.

Hartigan was watching him carefully. Whatever his other failings, the man had an acute appreciation of body language.

‘Are you with me, Joe? Or must we go through this whole tiresome business again?’

Faraday shrugged. The last thing he was going to give Hartigan was the satisfaction of an apology.

‘I have to say I think you’re wrong, sir,’ he said stiffly. ‘Our enquiries are still ongoing. As the Coroner’s Officer well knows.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘It means I’ll keep you briefed.’ He pushed back the chair and stood up. ‘Depend on it.’

Kenny Foster lived in a basement flat in St Andrew’s Road, a stretch of tall Victorian villas that ran north from the bars and one-stop convenience stores of Southsea’s Elm Grove. Sullivan parked the Escort and shot Winter a look.

‘I’m coming in with you.’

Winter shook his head.

‘No chance,’ he said.

He got out of the car without another word, then paused at the kerbside, extracting the video cassette from the envelope.

‘Hang on to this, son,’ he said. ‘Might come in handy.’

Sullivan took the envelope and said again that Winter was potty to confront Foster single-handed.

‘Confront?’ Winter said mildly. ‘This is about manners, son, not all that macho crap.’

Foster must have seen him coming. The moment Winter started picking his way down the mildewed steps towards the basement, the front door opened. Foster was wearing a purple dressing gown and not much else. He held the door open and gestured Winter to step inside. The flat was freezing. Someone had just burned the toast and there was an overpowering smell of damp. Nothing in the dark little front room matched the pictures on the videos.

‘Where do you fight then?’

‘Somewhere else, pal. You’d know it if you saw it.’

Winter became aware of a woman’s voice calling from the room next door. She wanted to know who’d just come in.

‘Friend o’mine,’ Foster yelled. ‘Called round for a wee chat.’ Winter was studying a poster of Robert de Niro taped to the wall over the mantelpiece.

‘Doesn’t sound like Simone,’ he said.

‘That’s because it isn’t.’

‘Not the bird the fat guy you just flattened was shafting, surely?’ He turned to face Foster. ‘Guys like you kill me. You’re like dogs, aren’t you? Got to leave your smell everywhere. Can’t pass a lamp post without pissing on it.’ Winter produced the video from his coat pocket. ‘So what’s all this bollocks got to do with me?’

‘Just thought you might fancy it, pal. Change from
Antiques Roadshow
.’

‘Not trying to send another message, were you?’

‘Another message?’ Foster scratched his head. ‘Now why would I want to do that?’

‘Fuck knows. Here. Have it back.’

He tossed it across the room, chest height. When Foster caught it, Winter smiled.

‘Left-handed, are we? Southpaw?’

‘Aye.’

‘And you write left-handed? The envelope that crap came in?’ Winter stepped closer. ‘You want to be fucking careful, my son, and you know why? Because my guvnor hates leaving jobs unfinished. Me? I’m old school, too. Which means I’m only too happy to agree with him.’

For a moment, watching Foster’s face, Winter thought he’d pushed it too far. There was madness in this man, an unpredictability that expressed itself in a thousand little ways. He needed to be top dog, every waking second of the day, and he wasn’t interested in compromise. He eyed Winter for a moment or two, baleful, malevolent, then stepped past him and left the room without a word. Seconds later he was back. He was carrying something in his hand, a garment of some kind, and as he shook it out and held it up, Winter recognised the bloodstained singlet from the video.

‘Dried out nicely, pal. Thought you might like it.’

He tossed the singlet across. Winter let it fall to the floor, not taking his eyes off Foster’s face.

‘In my business,’ he smiled, ‘we call that standard MO. You want to be careful, Kenny, and you know why? You’re doing what all crap villains do in this city. You’re beginning to repeat yourself.’

Faraday stood outside Chuzzlewit House, peering up. Sunshine made all the difference. The last time he’d paced this little square of pavement, the rain had been swirling around the gaunt, twenty-three-storey block. Now the low February sunlight lanced off the windows, a line of dazzling reflections climbing into the blueness of the afternoon sky.

Start all over again. Assume nothing
.

He rang the caretaker’s button on the entryphone at the main door and asked her to let him in. When he stepped through, she was waiting for him outside the lifts. He wanted to know whether Grace Randall was up to receiving visitors, and had to be reminded of the number of her flat.

‘131. Afternoons, she normally takes a little nap. I’ve got a key if you need to get in.’