Angels Passing (37 page)

She fetched a Yale from the office and offered to accompany him up to Mrs Randall’s. Faraday thanked her but said no.

He took the lift to the twenty-third floor. When the old lady didn’t respond to his second knock, he used the key to let himself into the flat. The smell hit him at once, the same sickly mix of almonds and bleach. He stood in the hall for a moment, looking into her bedroom. She was propped up against the pillows in the little single bed, one thin hand cupping the clear plastic mask that fed oxygen to her bubbling lungs. Discarded magazines lapped against her chest and she appeared to be asleep. Faraday crept on down the hall and into the living room. The flat faced south and the view from the window, sunlit this time, took his breath away.

He lingered a moment, watching one of the big Brittany ferries pushing out through the deep water channel. The white of the hull against the blue of the sea belonged on a postcard. He stayed by the window a minute or two longer, waiting for the perfect V of the ferry’s wake to curl against the beach, then retreated to the kitchen.

Assume nothing. Start all over again
.

He opened the fridge, not knowing quite what he was looking for. A carton of milk and an open packet of Cheddar. Six eggs and a curling slice of corned beef lying on a plate. Apart from that, nothing. The cupboards above were full of crockery and there was a glass jar stuffed with tea bags beside the electric kettle. Only when he was standing by the sink did he think to sort through the rubbish.

There was a small swing bin in the corner near the door. An empty tin of mackerel was dripping oil on a twist of newspaper, and when he unwrapped the newspaper it was full of potato peelings. He took his jacket off and dug deeper. Eggshells and the stalky bits from a cauliflower. Then, at the very bottom, he found a small white box. There was a pharmacy label on the side and he pulled the box out for a closer look. Beneath Grace Randall’s name, a neat line of type described the tablets inside. ‘Morphine Sulphate’ it read. ‘One tablet every 12 hours, as required.’

Assume nothing
.

Faraday used kitchen roll to wipe the oil from the box, then carried it through to the bedroom. Asleep or otherwise, there was a conversation to be had here. At the open bedroom door, he paused. Grace Randall was awake by now and didn’t seem the least surprised to find a stranger in her flat.

‘DI Faraday. We met last week.’

‘We did?’ One thin hand shadowed her eyes, as if she were peering into a bright light. ‘How pleasant. Have you been here long?’

Faraday explained about the caretaker’s key. He was a policeman, a detective. He’d come up last week about Helen Bassam and he was back to ask more questions.

‘It’s the kids,’ she murmured.

‘What is, Mrs Randall?’

‘They play with the phone thing. From outside.’ She gestured limply towards the door.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Faraday made a mental note. ‘Tell me about young Helen. Tell me what you remember.’

‘Helen? Lovely girl.’ The voice had sunk to a whisper. ‘She would have made someone very happy.’

‘You wouldn’t know who, by any chance?’

‘What, dear?’

‘You wouldn’t know who she was keen on? Who she was seeing? Did you ever talk about these things?’

Grace put a hand to her mouth and smothered a cough. The slightest movement seemed to exhaust her. She pulled the bed sheet up around her chest, composing herself.

‘It’s so difficult, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘We were all that age once. Me, I was a scallywag. I suppose that’s why we got on so well.’

‘You and Helen?’

‘Of course. I had so much to tell her.’ She nodded, closing her eyes.

For a moment Faraday thought she’d gone to sleep again. Then she sighed.

‘I told her once about a love affair I had. Older men can be good for a girl. I honestly believe that.’

‘She was having a love affair?’

‘So she said.’

‘With an older man?’

‘I imagine so.’ She smiled up at Faraday. ‘It’s names, isn’t it? Always the first to go at my age.’

‘She gave you a name?’

‘I can’t remember. Might it be important?’

It was a good question. Faraday said he didn’t know. He showed her the box of tablets.

‘Are these yours by any chance?’ He read out the label. Morphine sulphate.

Grace fumbled for her glasses.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘MST.’

‘And you take them regularly?’

‘I’m afraid I have to.’ She patted her chest and took a couple of deep breaths. ‘They’re painkillers. The best. The pain just goes.’ She waved her hand. ‘Just like that.’

The pain just goes.

Faraday was thinking about the Thursday night: Helen up here in the flat, another crisis, another rejection, yet another brick wall on the road leading nowhere. Last time Grace Randall had offered him a sherry. Maybe it was just a formality, a social reflex she’d never quite thrown off.

He settled himself on the end of her bed.
Assume nothing
.

‘Do you keep alcohol here, by any chance?’

‘You want a drink, dear?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘In the lounge. Next to the television.’

It looked like the kind of cabinet you might keep glasses in. Faraday opened it. Two bottles of sherry, one half empty. Another of Martini. And a quarter bottle of Scotch. Quite enough to take you up the stairs to the roof. Add twenty mgs of morphine sulphate, scale the retaining wall, have another think about that shitty, shitty life of yours, and gravity would do the rest.

Faraday heard a wheezing noise in the hall, then a ‘clack-clack’ he couldn’t quite explain. He closed the cupboard and turned round. Grace Randall was standing by the open door anchored to a Zimmer frame.

It took her a while to catch her breath. Finally she gestured towards the cabinet. ‘You found what you wanted?’

Faraday nodded. He’d sorted out a card with his direct line at Southsea police station, and now he laid it carefully on the cabinet.

‘My number,’ he said, ‘in case the kids come back.’

Winter shared his news with Dave Michaels. Willard was up in Winchester attending a lecture from a DI on the anti-terrorist squad.

‘Foster’s left-handed,’ he repeated, ‘just like the bloke who tied the knot.’

‘What knot?’

‘The knot on the rope. Finch’s knot.’

‘Gotcha.’ Dave Michaels nodded. ‘And?’

‘Has to be him. Has to be.’

‘Because he’s left-handed?’

‘Yeah, and because he’s a vicious, sadistic bastard who gets off on hurting other people. We’re talking serious head case here, skip. I’m telling you, the guy’s a psychopath. Not only that, he’s got a fucking God complex. He’s the man and he wants the whole world to know it. That’s why Finch looked the way he did, poor little bugger. That’s why he was strung up the way he was. Foster might as well have written us a letter. It’s that fucking obvious.’

‘Evidence?’ Michaels asked drily.

‘It’ll come. He’ll make a mistake because he’s not as bright as he thinks he is. I just hope it happens in time. Before he does it again.’

‘Yeah?’ Michaels grinned, pulling a sheet of paper towards him. ‘Well, I might have some good news for you.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You know the girl? The black girl? Louise?’ Winter nodded. ‘She’s been in touch with one of the students in the house. She wants him to bring some gear up, clothes mainly.’

‘Up where?’

‘Waterloo. Tomorrow morning, eleven-thirty by the Burger King. She’s sending him fifty quid for the trip. He’s over the moon.’

Winter thought hard for a moment. The fact that the girl seemed to be in one piece was good news. But why the elaborate arrangements?

‘Apparently she’s not keen to come back down here. Ever.’ Dave Michaels grinned. ‘Hard to believe, eh?’

*

Faraday treated himself to two pints in the pub across from the cathedral before walking the hundred yards to Nigel Phillimore’s house. His ankle, like his head, felt infinitely better and he was gladdened by the sight of a light in Phillimore’s upstairs window.

Phillimore opened the door. This morning he’d been wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Now he was clad in a cassock.

‘Detective Inspector,’ he murmured. ‘What a surprise.’

Faraday followed him upstairs. Phillimore said he was lucky to catch him in. Evensong had only just finished and he’d normally be at his desk in Cathedral House, catching up with paperwork.

‘You’ve got a moment?’ Faraday found himself looking at the photographs again.

‘I’ve got all evening. Sit down. Make yourself at home.’

Phillimore went downstairs again and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

‘Red OK? It’s only Sainsbury’s, I’m afraid.’

Faraday smiled. Whatever else Angola taught you, this man certainly knew how to put visitors at their ease.

He sat down in the window seat while Phillimore uncorked the wine. The last couple of hours, he’d been haunted by something Grace Randall had said.
Older men can be good for a girl
. Was this an old woman’s fantasy? A phrase plucked from her own life? Or had Helen Bassam sat down and poured her young heart out?

‘There are aspects of Helen’s death we still find … ah … troubling,’ Faraday began.

‘I’m sure.’ Phillimore passed him a glass of wine.

‘One of them has to do with drugs.’

‘You mean heavy drugs?’

‘I mean heroin.’

Phillimore raised an eyebrow.

‘Not much surprises me about Helen,’ he said at length, ‘but that does. I’m sure she dabbled; most kids seem to these days. But heroin?’ He shook his head. ‘Frankly, that would be a bit out of her league.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I can’t. Of course I can’t. Kids keep secrets like everyone else. But heroin’s something she would have mentioned, I’m sure of it. She shared every other trauma in her life.’

‘Maybe she’d have been ashamed?’.

‘You might be right. But it would have showed. I was in São Paulo for a while. I saw a lot of heroin in the
favelas
. If you’ve got a serious habit, it’s not something you can keep to yourself.’

‘Then maybe she was experimenting.’

Faraday explained about the tox results from the post-mortem. The presence of morphine in her bloodstream had opened up another line of enquiry. Somehow or other, it had to be explained.

‘I’m sure.’ Phillimore was smiling at him. ‘It must be strange, putting together someone’s life after they’ve gone.’

Faraday thought about the proposition. ‘But don’t you do that?’ he said at last. ‘Officiating at funerals? Talking about someone you’ve never met?’

‘We do, you’re right. But we’re looking to celebrate, not to blame. I suspect there’s a difference.’

Faraday acknowledged the point with a wry nod. The sunshine, he thought. Not the shadows.

‘Did Helen ever mention a Mrs Randall at all?’

‘An old lady? Up in one of those tower blocks?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Yes, she did. She had a friend called Trudy. Mrs Randall was a relative of some kind. As far as I could make out, they used her flat as a kind of den.’

‘They went there a lot?’

‘Yes. Helen thought the world of her. Home from home was the phrase she used.’

‘Rather like here?’

‘Hardly. Helen came here because she was looking for something that didn’t – couldn’t – exist. She went to Mrs Randall’s because it was warm and comfy. Both of us answered a need, I suppose. But in Mrs Randall’s case it was rather less complex.’

Older men can be good for a girl
.

‘Helen talked to Mrs Randall a lot…’ Faraday began.

‘Indeed.’

‘About all kinds of things. Including her love life. Mrs Randall got the impression that she was seeing an older man.’

‘She was. She was seeing me.’

‘But more than that.’

The smile again, but fainter this time.

‘What exactly are you suggesting, Mr Faraday?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. We have a set of events here. A young girl is found dead at the bottom of a block of flats. She has a history of disturbance. Her family has fallen apart, her relationship with her mother is in tatters. She has traces of morphine in her bloodstream, and alcohol too. She’s extremely upset. She’s extremely vulnerable. And then we discover she’s pregnant. Like I say, a set of events.’

‘You think there’s an issue of blame here?’

‘I think there may be an issue of culpability, yes.’

‘Whose? Her father for leaving her? Her mother for having her in the first place? Mrs Randall for happening to have the key to the roof?’

The phrase stopped Faraday in his tracks.

‘You know about the key?’

‘Of course. She told me.’

‘Why? Why did she tell you?’

‘Because she’d threatened to do this before.’

‘Throw herself off the roof?’

‘Indeed. You could accuse Helen of a multitude of sins, Mr Faraday, but holding back wouldn’t be one of them. That’s why I don’t think she was using heroin. She’d have told me.’

‘So what did you do? When she threatened to kill herself?’

‘I told her that we all have a responsibility, for ourselves and for each other. I also told her that life is a gift, something precious, not to be thrown away.’

‘Did she understand?’

‘Yes, I think she did. Did it make any difference? No, it plainly didn’t.’

‘And did you share this … knowledge … with anyone else? Her mother, for instance?’

‘Jane was in a worse state than Helen. One of the few positive ways I could help was by
not
telling her.’

‘Social Services? Some kind of counsellor?’

The suggestion brought the smile back.

‘I’m a priest, Mr Faraday. I’m a counsellor in a black frock and a funny collar. That’s my mission, my calling. That’s what I do.’

‘But in this case you’re involved, heavily involved. Doesn’t that make it awkward?’

‘Extremely. As the Dean was kind enough to point out.’

Faraday nodded. In the ongoing grind of criminal investigation, it was rare to have a conversation like this. So many tracks to pursue. So many unanswered questions.

He put the wine to one side for a moment.