Angels Passing (40 page)

Doodie was off on another little excursion. He ran like the child he was, skipping through the rain, oblivious of danger. He ran to the end of the parapet, coming to a halt at the right-angled turn, then disappeared behind the tower that overlooked the roof space. For the first time Faraday caught sight of J-J’s face. He was terrified. It was there in his eyes, in the slight bend of his knees, in the way he was trying to will his feet to glue themselves onto the concrete. He’d never liked heights, and now his worst nightmare had come true. Jumping the nine feet back to the roof was clearly unthinkable. A step the other way would send him tumbling into the void. He was paralysed with fear.

Faraday shook his coat off and reached up, securing a handhold on the metal grille. He levered his body up and sideways, using a brick abutment to brace his feet. Handhold by handhold, he inched upwards, praying for Doodie not to return. Slowly, sweating again, he clawed his way up the wall. Then, suddenly, he felt the wind on his face. He was half lying on the parapet now, one wet leg bent beneath him. He eased the other leg up, then, very slowly, got to his feet, bracing himself against sudden gusts of wind. Of Doodie he could see no sign. Looking down, he knew, would be sudden death. He inched his body round, keeping his head up, searching for his son.

A face swam into view. It was J-J. His eyes were wide and his face looked chalk white against the darkness. Faraday began to talk to him – hand language, the old conversation. It’s me, he signed. I’m here. Everything’s going to be fine. We’ll sort this out. Just don’t do anything rash. J-J nodded. Slowly, his hands began to move. Behind you, he signed. Look out behind you.

Faraday heard a wild yelp of laughter and turned in time to see Doodie running along the parapet towards him. He was right about the skipping, right about the child’s absolute disregard for the rules. Even the terrifying suck of gravity didn’t seem to give him pause for thought. Even the prospect of a 200-foot fall didn’t, for a single moment, slow him down. This was now a party for three. What a laugh.

Doodie came to a halt a pace away and for one heart-stopping moment Faraday thought he was going to push his way by. There simply wasn’t the space, Faraday wanted to explain. Try and get by me and one or other of us will end up on the pavement. Just like Helen Bassam.

‘Awright, mister?’ The old Pompey greeting. Faraday nodded.

‘Yeah. You?’

‘Yeah. Brilliant, ain’t it?’ He nodded down. ‘All them fire engines. You lives here, do you?’

Faraday wanted to laugh. Did he live here? On the edge? One permanent step from disaster? The answer, he thought, was probably yes.

Who’s your friend?’ Faraday gestured back towards J-J.

‘Deaf bloke. Complete nutter. Cool, though.’

‘Mate, is he?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s the game, then? Up here?’

‘Dunno really. We just fancies it. Here.’ He made a sudden lunge at Faraday, catching him at waist level, and for an instant Faraday imagined himself in mid-air. Then the boy had gone again, screaming with laughter, back towards the corner of the building, and Faraday realised he was still on the parapet. Just.

Faraday could taste the fear. Another moment like that and he’d be over. He knew it. For a single, dizzying moment he looked down and his racing brain took a snapshot of the scene below. A tiny Lego ambulance had arrived. The back doors were open and two stick figures were pulling out a stretcher. There were knots of people gazing up, little blobby faces, and off to the left, on the main road, another squad car was carving a path through the rush-hour traffic. Faraday swallowed hard, turning to J-J again, and as he did so he caught sight of Cathy Lamb on the roof immediately below him. There were two uniforms with her and she was cupping her mouth with both hands.

‘Grab him,’ she yelled, pointing to J-J, ‘and jump this way.’ Grab him? Faraday measured the distance between himself and J-J, and then nodded, bracing himself against another gust of wind and stretching his hand out towards his son. J-J didn’t move. He was looking beyond Faraday, along the parapet, his eyes wide with fear. Then his hands came up again.

‘Behind you,’ he signed. ‘He’s coming back.’

Winter sat in the interview room with Sullivan, waiting for Louise Abeka and Crewdson to reappear. He’d explained the legal consequences if Louise maintained her silence over the events of last week, and left them to make a decision. Shortly, he hoped they would be back with a smile on the girl’s face. If her evidence was as damning as Winter imagined, then Foster would be spending the pre-trial period in a remand cell. A case like this seldom made it to Crown Court in less than six months. Louise could complete her degree, present her evidence and be on a plane to Lagos without the slightest danger of any contact with Foster. Apart, that is, from an hour or so in court.

Sullivan wanted to know why Winter was interested in Mick Harris’s mobile number. He knew he’d got it from Brian Imber because he’d been there when Winter took the call and, as ever, he’d been the one with the paper and pen.

‘Why Harris?’ he asked again.

Winter ignored the question. He could hear the murmur of voices outside. He got to his feet and stepped out into the corridor, thinking it was Crewdson and Louise. Instead, he found himself looking at the Custody Sergeant and a uniformed Inspector.

‘What’s going on?’

The Inspector mentioned an incident at the flats across the road. There was talk of jumpers on the roof. And one of them was apparently a CID officer.

‘Chuzzlewit House?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Shit.’

Chuzzlewit House was the tallest block in the city. Even if you were truly desperate, there were kinder ways of bringing it all to an end. Some kid had gone off only last week but you’d be seriously deranged to even think of a drop like that.

‘Who’s the CID, then?’

‘Faraday.’

‘
Faraday?
As in DI Faraday?’

‘You got it.’

Winter rolled his eyes. He’d long had his doubts about Faraday and this was as much proof as any reasonable human being would need to confirm that the bloke had finally lost it, Some guvnors rode with the punches. Others, like Faraday, took it far too personally. But Chuzzlewit House? Was the job really that bad?

The Inspector was looking at him, a smile on his face.

‘He’s not a jumper,’ he murmured. ‘He’s trying to sort the bloody thing out.’

Crewdson and Louise appeared in the corridor behind him. The Inspector moved to let them through and Winter knew at once that the girl hadn’t shifted one inch. Crewdson confirmed it with a tiny shake of his head.

‘She won’t do it,’ he said.

‘You explained the consequences?’

‘Makes no difference. It’s her decision. I have to respect it.’

‘OK.’ Winter nodded, then poked his head round the door of the interview room. Sullivan was picking at his nails. ‘I want you to sort out Louise with the Custody Sergeant,’ he said briskly. ‘Get her in a cell for the night.’

Faraday stepped in from the rain, his arm round J-J. He could feel the deep trembling in his son’s thin frame. A bird, he thought, injured and scared half to death. He gave the boy a squeeze and brushed the rough stubble on his face with the back of his hand. Then he put his lips to his ear, wondering whether – by some miracle – his hearing might have been restored.

‘Love you,’ he whispered.

J-J looked at him blankly. A paramedic was waiting at the top of the steps, a blanket folded over his arm. Faraday took the blanket without a word and draped it round J-J. Then he borrowed a handkerchief from Cathy Lamb and wiped the rain from his son’s face. The boy was limping badly from the impact when Faraday had pulled him down off the wall but he didn’t appear to have broken anything.

‘The kid?’ Faraday gestured back, towards the wet darkness. ‘Doodie?’

Cathy told him to forget it.

‘We’ll get him down,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

For a second they looked at each other, sharing the unvoiced thought. Maybe it was best to leave the kid there. Maybe it was better to hope against hope that he’d make a mistake, lose his balance, fall to his death on the pavement below. But that wouldn’t happen and in his heart Faraday knew that it shouldn’t happen. There were arrangements to be made. Calls to be put through. Social Services to be alerted. Doodie taken into emergency care. Tomorrow, first thing, the Child Protection Unit would step into the case. An interview strategy would be agreed. And the long struggle to tease some sense from the child in the rain would begin. Whether, at the end of it, they’d be any the wiser about Helen Bassam was anybody’s guess but, just now, Faraday didn’t care.

‘Favour, Cath?’

‘No problem.’

‘Give us a lift home?’

Cathy Lamb stayed for drinks, and then more drinks, and then cooked supper. J-J wedged himself in the bath for an hour – endless changes of scalding hot water – while Faraday perched on the side of the tub, unspeakably thankful that the boy was still in one piece. At first he wasn’t keen to explain what had happened, but slowly and with infinite care Faraday managed to piece the story together.

A couple of the other lads at the PYO project had taken J-J to the derelict cinema. None of them understood sign language but they all agreed that J-J was a pretty amazing bloke, cool in a mad kind of way, and deserved an invite to the place they’d made their own, to the place they called home, to the ultimate den. In the cinema, blessed with a pocketful of cash, J-J had found himself the guest of honour. He’d gone to the off-licence and bought a stack of lager. He’d toured Aldi, the cheapo supermarket, and come away with a bag of goodies. More money had gone to a twelve-year-old called Shannon, who’d disappeared into Buckland and scored enough draw to make the rest of Thursday night a blur.

‘You went back to the cinema? After we’d been in there?’

‘Yeah. The kids know every inch of it.’

‘But what if we’d sealed the place off? Put loads of men in?’

‘They had petrol.’

‘Petrol? How?’

‘In lemonade bottles.’ He shaped them with his hands. ‘They suck it out of cars and fill the bottles up.’

‘And what would they do with it?’

‘Do with it?’ The question brought a grin to J-J’s face. ‘They’d have burned the place down.’

Faraday stared at him.

‘And you? You’d have let them?’

‘Of course not.’

Friday morning, J-J left the cinema with Doodie and walked the mile to Old Portsmouth, where his new friend had the key to a house in the High Street. The house had been empty. They’d drunk some wine and then gone back to the cinema after J-J had spent the last of his money on chicken and chips from the KFC in Commercial Road. Later, Doodie had insisted on taking him to Chuzzlewit House. The roof at Chuzzlewit was where he got his kicks. A drop that awesome really turned him on.

‘But you hate heights.’

‘I know. I was brave, wasn’t I?’

‘
Brave?
’ Faraday shut his eyes a moment, feeling the room begin to spin. Maybe it was the heat, he thought. Maybe I’m a glass or two over the top. Or maybe, just maybe, there’s a limit to what the human brain can take. He’d been right all along about J-J, right to be fearful, right to worry the night away, trying not to imagine the worst. Like Doodie, this boy of his had no fear. Not where other people were concerned. Not when it came to plunging head first into other people’s lives.

‘You could have died,’ he signed.

J-J gazed up at him, briefly troubled by the thought, then nodded.

‘I know.’ His hand fluttered briefly over his heart. ‘I was terrified.’

Downstairs, Cathy had cooked a huge panful of spaghetti with Bolognese made with mince from the fridge and a fierce top-dressing of raw chillis. Faraday broke out a third bottle of Chianti to wash it down. The talk was of good times – of a sailing holiday Cathy was planning with Pete, of how great it was to have a man back in her life – and afterwards, for the first time in a decade, Faraday put on one of his old Beatles albums, vinyl for God’s sake, and they pushed back the sofa, rolled up the rug and danced. J-J was the world’s worst dancer, all arms and legs, but long after Cathy and Faraday had collapsed against the big glass doors at the front he was still whirling around, imagining the tunes in his head. Faraday, hopelessly drunk, couldn’t stop watching him. Deliverance, he thought. Or maybe – for reasons he couldn’t fathom – a kind of redemption.

An hour or so later Cathy crawled to the phone and ordered herself a cab. Peering at the answerphone display, she gestured Faraday across.

‘Message,’ she muttered. ‘For you.’

Faraday, up on one knee, did his best to focus on the line of digits. Finally it dawned on him where the call had come from.

‘Marta.’ He was gazing at his son again. ‘Marta?’

Twenty-six

SATURDAY
, 17
FEBRUARY
,
07.30

Nobody phones me at half past seven in the morning, Dawn Ellis thought. Not on a Saturday. Not without good reason.

She struggled out of bed, dispensing for once with the pot of tea and the wake-up burst of Five Live. She’d left her card with Jill Harris the afternoon she’d been tucked up with her sponge bag and her
OK
magazines at the Travel Inn. Now the woman wanted an urgent word or two, something really serious. She was staying with her mum-in-law in Paulsgrove. Could Ellis come over? Right away?

The roads were empty this time in the morning and Portchester to Paulsgrove was ten minutes. Gilkicker Drive was on the edge of the huge estate, a long street of one-time council houses bought for a song and proudly badged with new porches. Number 35’s already needed a coat of paint.

Jill Harris was wearing a green towelling dressing gown and not much else. She hugged herself, shivering in the freezing wind.

‘Come in.’

The gas fire was on in the front room and it took Ellis several seconds to spot the object propped against the battered two-seat sofa.

‘Where did this come from?’

It was a shotgun, double-barrelled, and it looked shiny enough to be new. Jill Harris was keeping her distance. She stood by the window, tousle-haired, hugging herself. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gun.

‘I’ve had about enough,’ she muttered at last. ‘Honest.’

‘The gun, love. Where did the gun come from?’

‘Mick brought it.’

‘Mick who?’

‘Mick Harris. Terry’s brother. He brought it round last night. Two in the morning. Scared his mum half to death.’

‘Why? Why would he do that?’

‘He wouldn’t say. He just said to hang onto it. He’d never been there. That’s what he said. He’d never been there. He was in a right state.’

‘Never been where?’

‘I dunno and I don’t care but I just want all this to stop. I’m telling you, I’ve had enough. Maisie’s off her head about her dad, won’t sleep a wink, and now this. What kind of a thing is it to get a woman of sixty out of bed at two in the morning? And then hand over a gun?’

‘Is he coming back for it? Mick?’

‘I haven’t a clue. I just thought …’ On the edge of tears, she sniffed. ‘You gave me that card. Remember?’

Ellis stepped across and gave her a hug. Skin and grief, she thought, under the thin dressing gown.

‘You did right, love. I’ll sort it.’ She held her a moment or two longer, then turned to make a phone call on her mobile. Maisie’s tiny face was peering round the door, staring at the shotgun.

Willard had been at his desk in the MIR since seven. Losing one suspect to an arsonist was bad enough. Losing the other to a firearms incident was even worse. For a detective who prided himself on the rallying of troops and assembly of evidence, on the baiting of traps and slow tightening of the investigative noose,
Bisley
was turning into a nightmare. Two more sudden deaths, each of them warranting a separate major inquiry. Already, in twenty-four brief hours, he’d practically run out of detectives.

Willard ran a hand over his face. He’d boxed off the weekend for a visit to Bristol. He’d booked to take Sheila to a show at the Colston Hall, and then a meal at a new restaurant in Clifton. Now this.

‘OK, Sammy.’ Rollins was perched on the corner of the conference table. ‘The guy’s in bed. He gets a knock at the door.’

‘That’s a supposition. But probably, yes.’

‘He was in his bloody jim-jams, wasn’t he? And it’s half one in the morning?’

‘Sure.’

‘So he hears a knock at the door. He goes to answer it. And bam … Goodnight Vienna. Elegant, eh?’

A terrified neighbour, hearing gunfire, had dialled treble nine. Picking their way cautiously down the basement steps, the uniformed patrol had found a body slumped inside the open front door. He’d been shot in the chest, probably twice, and reports from Jerry Proctor’s Scenes of Crime team had made a special point of mentioning the tattoos. Amazing what a mess lead shot can make, Proctor had grunted on the phone. Nothing left of Kenny Foster’s precious cobra except the tail.

‘So where do we start, then? Are we still interested in motivation or do we just let these bastards sort it out for themselves?’

Rollins thought that might not be such a bad idea. Dave Michaels had taken a call from Paul Winter this morning. Winter had heard about the shooting on the radio. The victim hadn’t been identified but mention of St Andrew’s Road and a basement flat had been enough for Winter to draw his own conclusions.

‘He’s thinking Mick Harris,’ Rollins said. ‘Keeps it in the family.’

‘Why?’

‘Winter’s got Foster down for the fire at Terry’s place. That’s the way these guys sort things out. If Mick had the same thought then Foster should have been expecting a visit.’

‘But Foster was on the Isle of Wight that night. I’ve seen the statement he gave to Yates. It all checks out. Yates said so.’

‘But Mick Harris didn’t know that, did he?’ Rollins paused. ‘Say he suspected Foster anyway? And say he heard a whisper? Mick’s the kind of bloke who doesn’t have much time for thinking things through. If his twin brother had gone up in smoke and he thought Kenny Foster did it, he’d be round there smartish.’

Willard wasn’t convinced.

‘What about a gun? Where did he get his hands on that?’

‘SOCO have it down as a shotgun. A new Purdy was listed missing on the job out at Compton, the Wrekes. Dave Michaels went through their file this morning. It all checks out.’

Willard shook his head. Too simple, he thought. Too neat. According to Brian Imber, half this city had one reason or another to want Foster off the plot. Compile a suspect list, do the job properly, and
Bisley
might stretch to next Christmas. He eyed the phone, wondering whether it was too early to call Sheila in Bristol. Saturdays, she normally slept in.

‘Sir?’ It was Dave Michaels at the door. He’d just taken a call from Dawn Ellis.

Willard gestured him in.

‘And?’

‘She’s up in Paulsgrove, with Terry Harris’s missus. She and Harris’s mum got an early morning visit from Terry’s twin, Mick. And guess what he left?’

Willard stared at him for a moment.

‘A shotgun,’ he said slowly. ‘Go on, surprise me.’

‘You’re right, sir. A brand-new Purdy. Prints all over it, bet your life. Plus forensic from the discharge. Sweet, eh?’

‘You kidding?’ Willard shook his head, abandoning the phone in disgust. ‘City like this, who needs fucking detectives?’

Faraday was on his fourth coffee by the time the DS at the Child Protection Unit confirmed a meet time at Havant. The Child Interview Suite occupied the upper floor in a converted police house near the fire station and the pre-interview briefing was now scheduled for 10.30.

‘You found the little bugger, then?’

The question was innocent enough but Faraday’s head was far too fragile to risk a serious answer. The feeling of vertigo, of toppling irresistibly forward, had stayed with him all night and just the memory of the washing flip-flapping across the roof space made his stomach heave.

‘The lad’s with Social Services,’ he growled. ‘They’ll be bringing him up to Havant.’

‘What about his mum?’

‘She doesn’t want to know. The only adult the lad’s mentioned is a priest from the cathedral.’

The DS wanted details. Faraday explained about Phillimore.

‘He’s been close to the boy for a while.’ Faraday was choosing his words carefully. ‘He kept an eye on him.’

‘How?’

With some reluctance, Faraday explained.

‘This guy’s married? Single?’

‘Single.’

‘And he’s been sharing a house with a vulnerable ten-year-old who’s run away from home? How appropriate is that, sir?’

It was a direct challenge. The Paedophile Unit operated from the same suite of offices as the CPU at Netley. These guys were tuned into the slightest nuance as far as kids were concerned and the key word here was ‘vulnerable’.

‘This boy is a force of nature.’ Faraday felt his head beginning to thump again. ‘If anyone needs protecting, it’s probably the rest of us.’

‘They all say that, sir.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

‘People in these kinds of situations. Don’t get me wrong, sir. You’re telling me that the child has been kipping under the same roof as a virtual stranger. I’m just asking whether that’s the kind of situation we should have been tolerating.’

‘I think he’s ideal,’ Faraday grunted. ‘More than that, I think we’re lucky to have him.’

‘We? You mean the child, surely.’

‘No. I mean we.’

Faraday glanced at his watch. The DS at Netley would be bringing a specialist PC up to Havant to handle the interview with Doodie. He wanted at least half an hour for a proper brief.

‘Better make that ten’o clock then,’ Faraday said.

It took Winter several seconds to realise that no one had told Louise Abeka about Kenny Foster. They were back in the interview room at Central, Sullivan nursing a hangover after a piss-up following rugby training. Louise sat across the table, visibly anxious, her solicitor at her elbow. She must have spent her night banged up in the cells wondering how long she’d get for Perverting the Course of Justice, thought Winter. And here’s little me, Mr Sunshine, about to change her life. Again.

He started the cassettes rolling and announced the time. He tallied the names around the table and then bent forward.

‘I’m going to have to ask you again,’ he began, ‘about last week.’

Louise flinched, then shook her head. There was no way she was going to change her mind. Not now. Not ever.

‘There’s nothing we can say to you?’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, then nodded.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what happens, but I am.’

‘Then he must have done something terrible, mustn’t he, this Kenny Foster? Isn’t that a reasonable assumption?’

Hartley Crewdson leaned forward to intervene. Winter reached out, putting a hand on his arm. He was still looking at Louise.

‘Suppose I was to tell you that Foster’s dead?’ he said softly. ‘Suppose someone came along last night and killed him?’

Something happened in her eyes, a tiny spark. Winter could see it. Just the thought of Foster gone had lit a fire in Louise Abeka.

‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was so low he could barely hear it.

Winter told her what had happened, nodding in confirmation when Crewdson raised an eyebrow. There was a long silence. Then Louise beckoned her solicitor closer and whispered in his ear. Crewdson nodded and got to his feet.

‘May I suggest we suspend the interview?’ He nodded down at the cassette decks. ‘My client would appreciate a word in private.’

Doodie and the social worker were already at the Child Interview Suite when Faraday arrived. There was a waiting room downstairs with a couple of armchairs and a low table, and the social worker had sensibly planted herself between Doodie and the front door.

Doodie had been found a change of clothes overnight. The jeans and sweatshirt were at least two sizes too big and made him look like a badly wrapped parcel. He sat sideways across the armchair, kicking his legs, and the moment he spotted Faraday he was up on his feet. An old friend. A familiar face.

‘Mister! What you doing here?’

Faraday explained he was a policeman, a detective.

‘Why’s that, then?’

In spite of the state of his head, Faraday couldn’t resist a smile. It was the sanest question he’d heard in weeks.

Upstairs, he found the DS and the PC from the Child Protection Unit. The PC looked about eighteen – open unlined face, ready smile – and Faraday sensed at once that Doodie would eat him alive.

‘Right.’ Faraday unpacked his briefcase. ‘First things first.’

He went through the events of the last week, adding to the CPU file. Every indication suggested that Doodie had been living rough for large parts of the last couple of years. He was tough and he was streetwise, but above all he seemed totally oblivious of the linkage between cause and effect, between his own impetuous charge at life and the trail of damage he left behind him. His file record could never do justice to what he’d really been up to. Undoubtedly there’d been dozens of other occasions when he’d broken the law but the only incident that really mattered just now was the death of the young girl, Helen Bassam. According to one witness, Doodie had been with her before she fell. A video camera had caught his departure from the flats. This morning’s task was to shed light on the half-hour or so in between.

‘You say she fell, sir.’ It was the PC. ‘Is there a suggestion the lad was involved?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you think it might be possible?’

It was a good question and Faraday hesitated before answering it, remembering the little figure skipping along the parapet last night. Say the boy had tried to push past him and Faraday had lost his balance and fallen? Say he’d given him a playful push just for a joke? Did that qualify as murder? Or a kid’s game with some terrifying photographic evidence at the end of it?

‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I just want to establish the facts.’

The DS leaned forward. DI Faraday ought to be aware that there were rules here, procedures that would constrain the interview. Everything would be videotaped for subsequent use in court. Leading questions were strictly off-limits. The child would be encouraged to explain exactly what had happened, and there was scope for clarification if it wasn’t clear what he really meant, but beyond that the interviewing PC’s hands were tied by the Rules of Evidence. In these matters, the judge would have ultimate discretion. Not the CPU. Not the DS. Not Faraday.

Faraday nodded. It was the standard health warning. The interview itself would take place in the room in which they were sitting. There was a sofa against one wall and a couple of sturdy armchairs. A trio of teddy bears occupied one corner of the window sill and soft-focus pictures of country life hung in a line above the sofa. Looking at them, Faraday wondered what Doodie would make of this adult bid to put him at his ease. The two wall-mounted video cameras would be much more his style, he thought. Another chance to perform. Another opportunity to put his tiny hands around the world’s throat.