Blood And Honey (12 page)

‘No problem.’

Faraday began to get to his feet. Webster, not believing his ears, could only look from one face to another. Eventually, his gaze settled on his boss.

‘And me, sir?’

‘You can stay behind, son.’ Irving had the coldest smile. ‘One or two things we ought to discuss.’

DC Paul Winter knew at once that he’d picked his moment. DI Cathy Lamb had just had a lengthy phone
conversation with one of the Assistant Chief Constables and was much heartened by what he’d told her.

The ACC in question, she said, was Terry Alcott, in charge of CID and Special Operations. He’d confirmed to Lamb that he’d taken a call on Saturday morning from Maurice Wishart. Far from being a mate of his, said Alcott, Wishart was simply a businessman he’d bumped into at a social function. He was well connected in defence circles and like many successful men he seemed to have finessed passing acquaintance into something altogether weightier.

The allegations of harassment he’d levelled against DC Winter had certainly intrigued the ACC and he’d moved swiftly to make sure that nothing silly got into the hands of the press. Hence, Lamb assumed, the call that Winter had taken on Saturday afternoon from Willard. But what intrigued Alcott more than Wishart’s crude attempt at pressure were the nuts and bolts of the operation that Winter had put together on DI Lamb’s behalf.

Cathy had filled the ACC in on
Plover
– the alleged existence of the brothel, the modest investment she’d made in surveillance, the rumoured nature of the clientele, the likely presence of Class A narcotics on the premises – and had been delighted by Alcott’s reaction.

Given last year’s abrupt collapse of Operation
Tumbril
, a cripplingly expensive bid to snare both Bazza Mackenzie and the small army of accountants, lawyers and assorted professionals who’d helped construct his multimillion-pound drugs empire, Alcott felt – quote – ‘somewhat aggrieved’. These bastards were giving the forces of law and order the runaround and that wasn’t good for morale. What they needed, what the city needed, was a bit of restorative justice and in the shape of the Camber Court bust Cathy Lamb’s
squad appeared to be supplying exactly that. Both she and Winter had Alcott’s full support. He was delighted by Friday night’s developments, and especially pleased by the first of the arrests. It was bloody time, he muttered on the phone, that a disgrace like Singer reacquainted himself with the word justice. Alcott wanted to be kept abreast of events as they developed and would be pleased to make good any token damage to the squad’s overtime budget. Operation
Plover
, as far as he was concerned, was a definite runner.

Now, DI Lamb was impatient for the latest developments.

‘So what’s happened with Richardson? You’ve interviewed him?’

‘This morning. He got a brief down from London to represent him, a woman called Hersch. The Old Portsmouth flat’s owned by a Lebanese guy, Hakim, and I get the impression Hersch is on the payroll.’

‘How did it go?’

‘It didn’t. Richardson went no comment, wouldn’t give us anything. Friday night he copped for the lot – the cocaine, the girlies, even showed us a recording of Wishart doing the business. This morning? Fuck all.’

‘You got a statement Friday night?’

‘Of course. We didn’t charge him, though, because I was convinced there was more to come. He knew he was looking at a possible seven and he had the whole weekend to get himself in the mood for a sensible conversation. It was all there, Cath, I know it was. In return for a deal, he might even have coughed a name or two on the cocaine.’

Winter sensed that Cathy’s new-found confidence in
Plover
was already beginning to ebb. She was a big, sturdy woman who believed in rewarding loyalty and
hard work with unswerving support, and her preparedness to risk anything for her troops even extended to Winter. They went back more years than either of them cared to remember. They’d had endless head-to-heads over Winter’s wilder initiatives but she was realistic enough to accept that he usually delivered, even if she wasn’t quite sure how.

Now, she was trying hard not to show her disappointment. Winter, she told herself, was right. A weekend thinking about seven years banged up in Belmarsh or the Scrubs would concentrate any man’s mind.

‘So how did you play it this morning?’

‘I told him what to expect. Painted a picture. The food, the company, the animals he’d meet along the way. Richardson’s gay, Cath. He’s got poof written all over him and he’s used to fancy cuisine. How’s a guy like that going to cope with rissole stew on sliced white with half the wing up his arse?’

‘And his answer?’

‘No comment. His brief said we were trying to put the fear of God up him and she’s right; of course we were. And it worked too. He was bricking it. Half an hour alone with the guy and he’d have sold me his mother.’ Winter frowned, denied his just deserts. ‘The brief was a pain. We had a private conversation, just her and me, before we charged him. I tried to point out that she wasn’t serving Mr Hakim’s best interests by putting Richardson away but she wasn’t having it. In fact she accused me of undue pressure on Friday night – oppressive questions, self-incrimination, all that bollocks. These London people just aren’t on the same planet, you ever notice that? Offer them a deal and anyone’d think you just stepped on a turd. Absolutely clueless.’

‘So how did you leave it?’

‘I said I’d see her in court.’

‘And Richardson?’

‘We charged him with living off immoral earnings. He looked kippered. He knows exactly what’s coming his way and I just hope Mr Hakim makes it worth his while.’

Cathy Lamb was looking glum now. A formal charge brought the interview process to an end. Whoever asked Richardson the next set of questions, it wouldn’t be a detective.

‘That’s a shame,’ she said at last. ‘Mr Alcott’s got the highest hopes.’

‘Good.’ Optimism and Paul Winter had always been the best of friends. ‘There’s still Cécile, one of the girlies. She’s in this afternoon.’

‘And the other one?’

‘Maddox. We talked to her on Saturday. Hopeless. She left us for dead. I’d blame it on my age, Cath, but Jimmy was there as well and he did even worse.’

‘But she’s broken no law. What did you expect?’

‘I dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘A bit of cooperation would have been nice. Jesus, we could have been punters the way she treated us.’

‘Serves you right.’ Cathy’s laughter had a hollow ring. ‘Where is she now, this Maddox?’

‘Skiing.’ Winter frowned, hunting for the name of the resort. ‘Courchevel?’

Cathy wasn’t interested. She was still looking for ways of squeezing the best out of
Plover
.

‘So where are we with Singer?’

‘He’s put his hands up to the cocaine. Says it was just personal. Wouldn’t dream of supplying.’

‘Where did it come from?’

‘He won’t tell us but he swears blind it had nothing
to do with Richardson. That’s probably bollocks and when the forensic comes back we’ll prove it.’

Winter went on to tell her about the DVDs seized from Camber Court. DC Suttle had spent most of the morning going through the discs and so far there were no pictures of Singer getting the white powder up his nose, but like Wishart the solicitor had recorded some souvenir bedroom footage. Much of it was extremely graphic and if his wife had any kind of hang-ups about anal sex then she was in for a bit of a shock.

‘He’s in enough shit already.’ Winter laughed. ‘Turns out his missus runs the local branch of Relate; spends her life telling other people how to sort out their relationships. Can you imagine her watching this kind of stuff? The marital dick up some tom’s arse?’

‘Does Singer know we’ve got the DVDs?’

‘No, but he will. And there’s something else, too. Jimmy Suttle picked it up the tenth time he went through the blow-job sequence. The girl Cécile’s on the job while Singer’s telling her office secrets.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like the kind of strokes he pulls for his dodgier clientele. The recording isn’t brilliant but if you listen hard you can get the drift and Singer’s definitely pissed enough to be showing off. How he cooks up alibis for his heavy friends. How he coaches these animals to lie their arse off in the dock. How everything’s possible if the price is right.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Yeah. And under the rules of disclosure, guess who gets to see it?’

‘His defence lawyer.’

‘Precisely. They know what we’ve got so there’s no place for Singer to hide. One call to the Law Society and the man’s fucking history. Sweet or what?’

Winter mentioned a couple of Singer’s clients. The names put the smile back on Cathy’s face. Then came a knock at the door. She looked up to find the squad DS looking for Winter. He’d just taken a call. It sounded urgent. The woman was still on the line.

‘Who is she?’ Winter was eyeing him with interest. The DS consulted a scrap of paper.

‘Maddox?’ he queried.

Tracy Barber and Faraday were killing time in a café in Shanklin. They’d been up to the nursing home to talk to Rob Pelly but he was out on an errand and wouldn’t be back until half past two.

Barber wanted to know where Darren Webster had acquired his tan.

‘Hang-gliding.’ Faraday glanced up from the paper. ‘The boy’s mad about it. Can’t keep him off the cliff-tops.’

‘Are you kidding? Hang-gliding’s for losers. I had a girlfriend once who was silly enough to have a go. One of those sampler weekends, somewhere in mid-Wales. Broke both legs; put her in hospital for six weeks. Poor, sweet girl. Does absolutely nothing for your sex life, an accident like that.’

Tracy Barber snorted at the memory, tidying the remains of her all-day breakfast onto a corner of fried bread. Then she looked up.

‘What’s your situation then, boss? You mind me asking?’

Faraday shook his head, and folded the paper. Coming from someone his own age the question was oddly inoffensive, simply two strangers comparing notes.

Faraday gave her the bare bones. Married young. A
widower months later. One son. No replacement spouse.

‘Has that been tough?’

‘Not after a while, no. My son was a handful. The boy was born deaf. That gives you plenty to be going on with, believe me.’

‘How did you ever get through to him?’

‘Sign. Games. Adventures. I suppose we grew up together, in a way. Then there were the birds.’

‘
Birds?
’

‘Yep. I was at my wits’ end. The boy was four coming on five, and we just weren’t coping, either of us. Then I bumped into a friend of mine; hadn’t seen her for years. Turned out she’d pretty much been through the same thing. The way she coped was through birdwatching. She knew nothing about it, absolutely nothing, but her daughter didn’t either, and she was deaf too. So there was the start to it.’

Faraday smiled, remembering those first trips to the city’s Central Library, walking J-J back home with an armful of bird books. They’d planned it like an expedition, one page after another. First the birds they could see from the Bargemaster’s House, shelduck, mergansers and godwits, then a night with the moorhens and coots that sculled around on the nearby freshwater ponds. After that came the dazzling little egrets that strayed over from Thorney Island, and finally Faraday had discovered the more exotic raptors – merlins and harriers – that put in an occasional appearance over the marshy RSPB reserve at the top of the harbour.

One evening when J-J was still barely seven they’d come across a saker up at Farlington, dive-bombing a flock of terrified seagulls. According to the handbook Faraday carried everywhere the hawk was a stranger to
Britain so it must have escaped from a private falconer. They’d watched it together, standing stock-still on top of the seawall that circled the reserve. Back home that night, after his bath, J-J had spent hours pretending to be the saker, dashing round the living room with his arms stuck out, making the strange tuneless cackle that was all he ever managed.

At the time it hadn’t seemed the least bizarre and Faraday remembered the expression on his infant son’s face as he drifted off to sleep. He’d become something else, an escapee from the confines of his silent world, and the magician who’d conjured this miracle was none other than his dad. Some days later, by chance, Faraday had happened across the friend who’d first suggested birding and he’d bought her a thank-you drink in a nearby pub. Fumbling for a phrase that did justice to this transformation, he’d finally settled for what sounded like a hopeless cliché. ‘We’ve found the lock on the door,’ he’d told her. ‘And we’ve both got a key.’

Real-life expeditions followed as J-J got older. To Titchfield Haven for grey herons. To the New Forest for nightjars, spoonbills, cattle egret, Cetti’s warblers – a taste of Europe on the fringe of England. And one unforgettable weekend, to Bempton cliffs up in Yorkshire, for a sky full of gannets plunging into the boiling waves. This was the weekend that introduced J-J, by now fourteen, to the stills camera, an ancient Nikon that had once belonged to his mother. In a heaving boat Faraday’s ever-eager son had got lucky with the focus ring on the big zoom lens and the resulting shot – perfectly composed – was still pinned to the wall board in Faraday’s office: the diving gannet inches from the water, wings tucked in, a feathered arrow in the ceaseless battle for survival.

Barber, the remains of her breakfast long forgotten, was transfixed. She’d heard rumours about the Pompey-based DI with the deaf son but she’d no idea about the kind of relationship they’d managed to build.

‘You did all that? You and your boy?’

‘And more. But we’re talking years here, years and years. It wasn’t all sweetness and light, believe me.’

‘And now? This J-J of yours?’

‘Gone …’ Faraday looked suddenly wistful. ‘He’s twenty-four years old, his own man, stubborn as you like, never wrong, great cook, total nightmare with the washing-up … But, yeah …’ He nodded. ‘Gone.’

‘Do you miss him?’

‘I did to begin with. Not any more.’

‘You still see him?’

‘Of course. He lives in Pompey so most weeks we bump into each other, catch up, drive each other nuts, father and son. Old story.’