Angels Passing (6 page)

The news that the girl was dead visibly shook the Afghan. That she’d fallen to her death from a block of flats seemed to make the news even worse. He sat down very slowly. Under different circumstances, Ellis would have offered him a stiff brandy.

‘You didn’t know?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Of course not?’ It was Yates this time. ‘You’re telling me you’re surprised?’

Niamat didn’t seem to understand the question. He was looking at Ellis with an expression close to panic.

Help me, he seemed to be saying. Give me a moment or two to get to grips with this thing.

Yates again, leaning forward across the table. Already this could have been the interview room.

‘We understand you were close.’

‘We were friends, yes.’

‘You and a fourteen-year-old girl?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why of course?’

‘Because I taught her.’

‘At school?’

‘No, at home.’

‘Whose home?’

‘Hers.’

‘You went round to her own house to teach her?’ Yates was losing his bearings. ‘Did her mother know?’

‘It was her mother’s idea, her mother’s invitation. That’s how we met. She was doing so badly at school that her mother wanted extra teaching. I have a card in the window of her local shop. French and mathematics. I’m very cheap. She rang me.’

Yates exchanged glances with Ellis. No wonder Mrs Bassam had been so bitter about her daughter’s infatuation. Not only had Helen Bassam lost her heart to this man but her mother – with the best of intentions – had been responsible for bringing them together in the first place.

Ellis asked Yates to organise some teas. While he was at the counter, she pressed the Afghan further. How often did he and Helen meet? When had he last seen her?

Niamat was still trying to remember when Yates returned with the teas. He put Ellis’s question a little more bluntly: ‘What were you doing last night?’

‘I was with friends.’

‘We’ll need their names. We’ll want to talk to them.’

‘Of course.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Nowhere. We have no money. We stayed at home.’

‘And watched television?’

‘The television was on, yes.’

‘So what did you watch?’

The shock and the helplessness had gone now, replaced by something much closer to anger. Yates, with his usual tact, had sparked this man, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than listing the previous night’s programmes one after the other.

‘You think I’m lying? You want to know what they were about? I’ll tell you.’

He began to lay out the plot of last night’s ITV drama, and Ellis sensed the gift he so obviously had for one-to-one contact. He used his hands a lot, explaining a particularly crass narrative twist, and after a while Ellis started to wonder whether even a drama as crap as
At Home with the Braithwaites
might have some merit.

Yates seemed to have lost interest. He reached for the sugar bowl, stony-faced, and it fell to Ellis to produce the photograph. She turned it over, showing Niamat the inscription on the back.

‘Is this your writing?’

Niamat barely looked at it.

‘Yes, I wrote it for my wife.’

‘
Wife?
’ Yates was back in the loop. ‘You’re telling me you’re married?’

Niamat nodded. Seconds later, Ellis was looking at another photograph he’d produced, colour this time. The shot had been taken indoors. His wife, unveiled, was raven-haired with full lips and a melting smile. Her name, he said, was Elif. One day, should Allah will it, she’d be able to join him here in England.

‘You’re seeking asylum?’

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘My father was in the army. He never liked the Taliban and in the end they shot him. After that, they came looking for me.’

There was something so simple and matter-of-fact in the way Niamat put this that Ellis knew at once it must be true. He’d fled with three others. His mother had sold the family’s land and $9000 had bought Niamat’s passage to London. He’d come through Iran and Turkey, avoiding soldiers and wolves on the border. A sand dredger had taken him from Istanbul to an Italian beach near Bari and from there he’d ridden north on a series of lorries. The last one, thanks to Eurotunnel, had landed him in Dover. It was night-time and it had been raining. The security man, to his surprise, hadn’t touched him.

‘This stuff about the flowers.’ Yates was examining the back of the photo. ‘What was Helen supposed to make of that?’

‘I’ve no idea. It comes from a Rimbaud poem, “
Aube
”. It’s a beautiful poem. It’s about dawn. It’s about the beginning of the world. I told you, the quotation was for my wife.’

‘It’s a love poem then?’

‘Of course, if you read it that way.’

‘So why give it to Helen?’

‘I didn’t,’ he said stonily. ‘She stole it.’

Back at Southsea nick, half an hour later, Yates and Ellis found Faraday working through a mass of emails in his office. He’d started a Policy Book on Helen Bassam’s death, a running log listing every new decision on the inquiry together with a brief rationale, and it lay open on the desk beside the computer. Half an hour earlier, according to Faraday’s scrawl, Scenes of Crime had phoned to confirm that the blood patterning on the pavement around the dead girl’s body was consistent with a fall from height.

‘Rocket science,’ Faraday murmured, aware of Yates’s interest. ‘What about our Afghan friend?’

Yates described the conversation in the café. In his view, Niamat Tabibi was talking a load of bollocks. Odds-on he was shagging the girl though he appeared to have a solid alibi for last night. Ellis said nothing. The open email on the screen had come from the Superintendent in charge of Community Safety at force headquarters in Winchester. He wanted Faraday’s thoughts on a rumoured sighting of a pied billed grebe in the bird reserve at Farlington Marshes, and so far Faraday’s reply had stretched to three paragraphs.

‘I’ve had the headmaster on from St Peter’s,’ Faraday was saying. ‘The girl was at school there. Her grades have been going from bad to worse and lately she hasn’t been turning up at all. They’re setting up a case conference with the welfare but there’s obviously no point any more. The head’s got a stack of pupils wanting to attend the funeral. It seems she had lots of friends.’

Ellis turned away. This morning’s developments were now public knowledge. Helen’s name had been released to the media, featuring in news reports on local radio. Whether Helen Bassam was popular or not was beside the point. Nothing caught the adolescent imagination more than the prospect of a good funeral, preferably in the rain.

‘I don’t see it the way Bev does,’ she said quietly. ‘I think the Afghan guy’s kosher.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning they were just friends. That wasn’t what she wanted but that’s all she got. The rest was fantasy. She made him up.’

‘Wasn’t the mother convinced they were screwing?’ Yates enquired. ‘Or am I imagining things?’

‘The mother’s loonier than her daughter. The husband’s gone, that’s the clue. Break a marriage like that and you’re left with a bloody great hole. Niamat filled it, don’t ask me how, but he did. That’s not breaking the law, not so far anyway.’

Faraday smiled and turned back to his computer, putting the finishing touches to his email. It turned out he’d seen the grebe himself, only a couple of days ago. The bird had blown in from America, an orphan borne east on the ever-deepening frontal troughs.

Yates read the email over Faraday’s shoulder, rolling his eyes when he realised what it was about. He’d never understood Faraday’s passion for birdwatching, least of all when the jobs were piling up like this. Finally, he took Dawn Ellis’s elbow and steered her towards the open door. Only when they were in the corridor outside did Faraday call after them.

‘There’s an overtime job on tonight,’ he said, ‘Brennan’s.’

Winter had the details in the CID office. Hartigan was authorising a scaled-down stake-out at the DIY superstore, five uniforms and three CID. Cathy Lamb was working out the details and the briefing would be over at Fratton at six sharp. Winter’s money was on a bust around midnight. Allow a couple of hours afterwards for the paperwork and they’d all be in bed by three at the latest.

He sat back in his chair, hands clasped behind his neck, beaming up at Bev Yates. Dawn Ellis, who was mates with Cathy Lamb, wanted to know what had swung it with Hartigan. According to Cathy, the Ops Supt wouldn’t go beyond a dare-you squad car, the cheapo option. Now he was spending serious money. How come?

All eyes turned to Winter. Part of his legendary reputation for getting results rested on the fact that no one in the office really knew him. He was loud and boastful, and gloried in a congratulatory lager or two when his latest punt came good, but he rarely shared his trade secrets, preferring to hide behind the word ‘hunch’. The fact that there were no forms for hunches never bothered him in the least. On the contrary, he revelled in his contempt for paperwork, believing that a good detective spent as little time at the keyboard as possible.

‘Well?’ It was Ellis again.

Winter glanced at his watch then shrugged.

‘Some bloke belled Crimestoppers,’ he murmured. ‘Never fails.’

Five

FRIDAY
, 9
FEBRUARY
,
early evening

Faraday was still at his desk when the file arrived from the Child Protection Unit. They were currently fielding twenty referrals a day from every corner of the county and this morning’s request hadn’t been actioned until after lunch. More to the point, the keyword ‘Doodie’ had found no echoes in the database, and only a PC with a good memory had recognised the nickname from inputting additional details a month or two back.

The fax stretched to two pages, a digest of information from every agency in the city touched by Doodie’s young life. His real name was Gavin Prentice and his date of birth put him at ten years old. He’d first appeared on the police radar screen nearly nine months earlier after an incident in Somerstown. A neighbour had watched him setting fire to a wheelie bin, something at which Doodie evidently excelled, and she’d called the police. In the dry, spare prose of the local beat man, Gavin Prentice had a history of nuisance, and a number of other householders had confirmed similar incidents. Several days later, his mother was invited to attend Central police station where her son was given an informal warning by the duty Inspector.

Faraday reached for a pen. Doodie’s mother went by the name of Denise Prentice and lived in one of the busier Somerstown blocks, five minutes’ walk from Chuzzlewit House. There was a mobile number entered beside her name but a later note suggested the phone was no longer operational.

After this first brush with the law, Doodie’s young life went rapidly out of control. Entries from the Educational Welfare Officer established that he was no longer attending school. Automatic notifications to Social Services and the Youth Offending Team had followed the visit to Central, but letters to Mum from both organisations had gone unacknowledged. Two months later, Doodie had been detained again, this time in Woolies where he’d been caught nicking Pokémon cards. A second informal warning had followed but Doodie plainly hadn’t been listening because – within three weeks – he was back in front of the Inspector after breaking into an empty property in Southsea and – once again – getting busy with the matches. There’d been no element of gain in this escapade but the Inspector had nevertheless issued a Final Warning.

Doodie was still a child, of course, but the age of ten marks the start of legal responsibility, and when he started taking a hammer to parked cars, reaching through the shattered glass to lift whatever he could, he found himself before the magistrates in the Juvenile Court. On 17 November last year, he’d been given a two-year Supervision Order. That meant reporting for regular sessions with a supervising officer at the Youth Offending Team, a woman called Betsy, but she’d quickly recognised that parts of Doodie lay way beyond her reach, and he’d been referred on to the city’s Persistent Young Offender project. In a parting shot, Betsy had described her brief relationship with young Gavin as ‘particularly challenging’, a form of words which clearly did Doodie scant justice. The kid was a nightmare.

Faraday quickly scanned the rest of the fax. He had regular dealings with the PYO project and admired the woman who ran it, a combative fifty-three-year-old, Anghared Davies. Dealing with tearaways as young as Doodie required a great deal of patience as well as a preparedness to take substantial risks, and he scribbled himself a reminder to give their office a ring first thing Monday. Doodie would have been assigned an individual support worker, maybe even two, and in theory they’d been seeing him on a near-daily basis. In the meantime it was important to get hold of the kid, and the best place to start was his home address.

He reached for the phone. The CPU fax had been right about Denise Prentice’s mobile: the number was no longer available. Faraday checked his watch. Half past five. Dawn Ellis, to his certain knowledge, was out on another inquiry, while Bev Yates would be driving over to Fratton for the Brennan’s briefing. Tonight, he was due to meet Marta for a drink before going on to a concert in the Guildhall. That still gave him an hour or so to pay a visit to Doodie’s mum.

Denise Prentice lived on the seventh floor of Raglan House, another gaunt sixties block which always reminded Faraday of the wastelands of Eastern Europe. Sodden chip wraps and pizza boxes clogged the gutters in the street outside while an upended supermarket trolley lay in the pool of light outside the main entrance. Bucharest, maybe. Or East Berlin before the Wall came down.

Doodie’s mum lived in 703. Faraday rang the buzzer on the speaker phone but got no reply. He buzzed again and this time a voice answered. It was a woman’s voice, husky with fags. Faraday announced himself. He was a policeman. He wanted a word in connection with Gavin. The speaker phone went dead. Nothing else happened.

At length Faraday took advantage of a returning resident to get inside the building, standing beside the guy as the lift creaked slowly upwards. These people could smell the Filth. He knew it. At the seventh floor he got out of the lift without a backward glance, making his way around three sides of the block until he found 703. The nearest of the overhead lights was out but even in the gloom he could see that the door lock, a Yale, had recently been replaced.

He knocked twice. He could hear kids inside and the blare of a television. The television was really loud, a cartoon of some kind, and it took four more knocks, ever harder, before the door opened. Faraday found himself looking down at a tiny girl. She was wearing a grubby, food-stained vest and not much else. How she’d ever managed the door was beyond him.

‘Is your mum there?’

A woman appeared, shooing the girl away. She was thin and blonde with a sharp face and stained teeth. Her Gap T-shirt was cut low enough around the neck to show a fading love bite and there was a dark blue tattoo in the shape of a flower beneath her left ear. She looked exhausted.

Faraday held up his warrant card while she struggled to push the door closed against the weight of his body. Finally, she shrugged and gave up.

The flat was cold and bare, and smelled of dogs and old chip fat. Through an open door Faraday could see three kids, all young, sitting on the lino in front of the television. Even the little girl who’d opened the door had ceased to take any interest in the new visitor.

‘You’re Mrs Prentice?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’ve come about Gavin. Is he here?’

The woman gave him a long hard look. A bit of make-up, Faraday thought, and a decent meal and she’d be halfway attractive.

‘No,’ she said at last, ‘he ain’t.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I fucking am.’

‘Mind if I take a look?’

‘Help yourself. Everyone else does.’

She leaned back against the wall and folded her arms while Faraday looked quickly round the flat. The bottom had fallen out of the single armchair in the TV room while the kitchen seemed to house little more than a microwave, a packet of Coco Pops and an empty carton of milk. There were the remains of a Chinese in a dog bowl on the floor while rubbish was spilling out of the black plastic sack in the corner. The open window above did little for the smell. Mrs Prentice had lit a cigarette. Faraday stepped carefully round her. Down the tiny hallway were two bedrooms. One contained an unmade bed with a smaller mattress beside it. The other door was locked.

‘What’s in here?’

‘The dog.’

‘Is that the kid’s bedroom?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’ve got a key?’

The look again, garnished with a smile that Faraday didn’t altogether trust.

‘Good with dogs, are yer?’ She produced a key from her jeans pocket and tossed it towards Faraday.

The moment he inched open the door, the dog lunged towards him. He wasn’t a big dog, a Jack Russell maybe, or a mongrel, and Faraday managed to hold him off for long enough to confirm that the room was empty. Three beds side by side. What looked like sleeping bags. Plus a Pompey poster on the wall. The dog was yapping fit to bust. Faraday shut the door.

‘You want it locked again?’

‘Of course I fucking do. They’ll have him out otherwise.’

Faraday locked the door and returned the key. The woman stared him out. She’d been pretty once. Definitely.

‘Where’s Gavin then?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’

‘When does he normally come in?’

‘Pass.’ She sucked in a lungful of smoke, tipping her head back to expel it again. ‘Pub quiz, is it? Only I’m really busy.’

Faraday persevered. What really pissed these people off was staying calm. Lose your rag, and they’d walk all over you.

‘Gavin’s ten,’ he pointed out. I expect he’ll be home for tea soon.’

I doubt it. He’s off somewhere.’

‘Any idea where?’

‘Not the slightest.’

‘What about last night? What was he up to last night?’

‘Haven’t got a clue.’

‘You didn’t see him last night?’

‘Nope. Nor the night before. Nor the night before that. He comes home when it suits him. Like most men.’

‘He’s ten,’ Faraday reminded her. ‘And he’s your son.’

‘So?’

She stepped into the kitchen, grinding out the remains of the cigarette in the sink. Faraday wondered how quickly you’d get used to the stench.

‘You’ll have a photo,’ he suggested.

‘Of Gav?’ The woman was grinning now, taking the piss. ‘You from the telly or something? Gonna make him famous?’

For a moment Faraday toyed with explaining about this morning, about what they’d found outside Chuzzlewit House, but decided against it. Mrs Prentice was way beyond caring, least of all about a nice middle-class girl from Old Portsmouth lying dead in the rain. Looking at her, Faraday could hear the phrases already. Shit happens. Big deal.

‘The name Doodie,’ he began. ‘Does everyone call him that?’

‘Who?’

‘Your Gavin.’

‘Doodie?’ She mugged a big, stagey frown. ‘Never heard of it. His name’s Gavin. I calls him Gavin. The kids calls him Gavin. Everyone calls him Gavin. OK?’

‘So where does he sleep at night?’

‘Loadsa places. His nan’s. Friends. Loadsa places.’

‘But you don’t know? You don’t check?’

‘No point. He’d only get in a strop and then I’d never see him at all, would I? Thing about Gav, he’ll always come back. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But he’s like the dog, can’t do without us. Know what I mean?’

‘Food?’

‘He gets by, looks after himself. Never hungry, not my Gav.’

‘And school?’

‘Hates it. Can’t be doing with it. Hits the teachers, even women teachers. He’s wicked that way, really naughty. Like I tell them, they’re better off without him.’ She laughed – a short, mirthless bark of laughter – then nodded towards the front door. ‘That it then?’

‘What about his dad?’

‘What about him?’

‘Does he live here?’

‘With us, you mean? Are you out of your mind?’

‘You’ve got a name? A contact number?’

She was back against the wall, arms crossed again. She offered Faraday a slow shake of her head. No, she didn’t have a name. She’d long got the tosser out of her life and there was no way he’d ever get back in. Woman’s right. Woman’s privilege. Now fuck off and leave us alone.

Faraday nodded, thanking her for her time. He’d doubtless be back and he wanted her to know that.

‘Do you have a mobile?’

‘Binned it.’ She nodded back towards the kitchen.

‘Any other way I can get hold of you?’

‘Yeah. Write me one of those nice letters with a big fat cheque inside. Know what I mean?’

She pushed herself off the wall and pulled the front door open. From the kids’ bedroom came the sound of barking again. Then the little girl was back in the hall, clutching at the bottom of her vest. She gazed up at Faraday, big brown eyes, then reached for her mother’s hand.

‘Where Doodie?’ she whispered.

The Brennan’s briefing over, Winter settled himself in the corner of the bar at Fratton nick. Bev Yates, who had a wife to pacify, had disappeared home for a couple of hours but Cathy Lamb had stayed on, determined to screw a couple of drinks out of Winter in return for her efforts to get him to Portugal. Winter, recognising a peace opportunity when he saw one, was only too delighted to oblige, extending the compensation to the offer of a curry afterwards. The stake-out was due to kick off at ten o’clock. Plenty of time for a vindaloo.

Cathy shook her head. A pint of Stella would be nice but she had a couple of things to attend to before they settled in at Brennan’s.

‘But I thought you told me Pete was away?’

‘He is. You think I’d be sitting here with you if he wasn’t?’

Winter grinned. One of things you liked about Cathy Lamb was the way she always took life head-on. When she’d caught Pete shagging a young probationer from Fareham nick, she’d first thrown him out and then done her best to give the girl a real hiding. Now, with Pete at last back in harness, she couldn’t get enough of him.

‘When’s he back, then?’

‘Next week. He’s on a job in Germany.’

Out of the force now, Pete Lamb was working for a big Pompey-based insurance company, investigating dodgy claims. The work took him away a good deal, doing absolutely nothing for Cathy Lamb’s blood pressure.

‘You need a holiday, skip.’ Winter reached for his Pils. I know just the place.’

‘Wouldn’t have the tickets as well, would you?’

Winter tipped his glass in salute.

‘I mean it. The place sounded perfect.’

‘So why didn’t you bloody go?’

‘I meant for you, Cath, you and Pete. If you’re really lucky it might even rain. Then you wouldn’t have to get up at all.’

Cathy ignored him. Several members of Willard’s Major Crimes team had appeared at the bar and one – to Winter’s amusement – had given her a little wave. Now he came over and whispered something in Cathy’s ear. Cathy stared up at him, astonished, and he nodded in confirmation before returning to the bar.

Winter didn’t even bother asking. There were certain categories of gossip that Cathy Lamb could never keep to herself and he sensed that this might be one of them. She sat motionless for a moment or two then leaned forward.