Blood And Honey (3 page)

Faraday answered Webster’s grin with one of his own. He’d lost count of the days when he’d been up before dawn, tucked into a niche on a cliff top or a woodland copse with his binoculars and his Thermos and the much-thumbed notebook he carried to record bird sightings, waiting to read the weather from the clues scrolled across the slowly lightening sky. Miles from the nearest road life took on a totally different feel. You’d feel exposed, yes, but infinitely less vulnerable.

‘I used to live down in Freshwater,’ he murmured. ‘Years back.’

‘You grew up here?’

‘No. Bournemouth. After school I went off to the States for a bit. By the time I came back my folks had moved onto the island. Dad had a health problem, couple of strokes. Mum ran a B. and B. in Freshwater Bay. They had to put up with us for a couple of months before we found a place to rent.’

‘Us?’

‘Me and my wife.’ Faraday looked at him for a moment, surprised by the directness of the question, wondering whether to elaborate, but decided against it. Instead he talked about those first days on the island, the mornings he’d abandon the hunt for a job and simply walk on Tennyson Down, out towards the Needles.

‘I’d never been anywhere like it,’ he said. ‘Not then, not now. God’s country.’

‘You mean that?’

‘Absolutely. And the birds make it better. Ever catch a lark – May, June, way up in the blue – belting its little heart out?’

‘Yeah.’ Webster was grinning again. ‘Yeah … and those bloody gulls, giving us grief when we launch.
Listen to them and you’d think they owned the bloody cliff.’

‘But they do. Nesting time, they’ve got parental rights. Ever think about that?’

‘Never.’ Webster pushed his chair back and stretched. ‘What’s Major Crimes like then? Hectic?’

‘Comes and goes. Just now it’s quiet … which is why I’ve got time to pop over.’ Faraday’s fingers strayed to the last corner of toast.

‘You’ve come on a specific job?’

‘Yes.’

‘One of ours?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mind if I ask which one?’

‘Not at all. Aaron Tolly? Name ring any bells?’

‘Of course. The Ryde Skydiver.’ He glanced towards Faraday. ‘You bring a car over, sir?’

Faraday shook his head. ‘Cab from the hovercraft.’

‘OK.’ Webster checked his watch again. ‘I’m off to Freshwater on a load of calls. Should take a couple of hours. I don’t know how you’re placed time-wise but I could drop you down by the Albion if you fancied it. Pick you up again afterwards.’

Faraday thought about the invitation for a second or two, then glanced towards the window. The rain seemed to have stopped and the first daubs of watery blue were beginning to appear above the rooftops across the car park. At Freshwater Bay a footpath climbed up from the Albion Hotel onto Tennyson Down. It might be a touch muddy, and there’d doubtless be the odd shower, but just now he couldn’t think of a better way of preparing himself for the file review.

‘Great idea,’ he said, getting to his feet.

In the privacy of the unmarked squad Fiesta Webster opened up about Aaron Tolly. The man had been, he said, a pain in the arse. He’d fled to Ryde after a run-in with a Pompey drug dealer. He had no friends, no visible means of support, and a thirst for White Lightning cider that had put him in front of the magistrates on a shoplifting charge within a month. Over the first couple of pints Tolly could string together a sentence or two, even manage the beginnings of a conversation, but after that he talked the purest nonsense. Webster knew women in Ryde for whom twat was too kind a judgement. Tolly, they said, was fit for nothing.

‘No one special in his life?’

‘You mean ladies?’ Webster shot Faraday a look. ‘You have to be joking. Bloke was a disgrace. On a windy night you could smell him from the end of the pier.’

Faraday nodded, settling back in the seat as a row of bungalows gave way to bare fields and the distant swell of Brighstone Down. The crime scene photos of Tolly sprawled by the dustbins had lodged deep in his brain. It was an image that seemed to sum up so many of the case histories that passed through Major Crimes. Young men trapped in cul-de-sacs of their own making, lost, adrift, wasted. At length he mentioned the possibility of some kind of contract.

‘On Tolly?’ Webster laughed. ‘Who’d bother?’

‘Someone he’d pissed off, obviously.’ Faraday was watching the faraway silhouette of a hawk, maybe a falcon, circling high above a copse of trees. ‘How about some Scouser banged up in Albany?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s bollocks, sir. With respect.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I heard the same whisper. It comes from a local guy in Ryde, fancies himself as a bit of a dealer. He’s putting the word around about some kind of contract to see the opposition off. Didn’t want Tolly’s death to go to waste.’

‘Opposition?’

‘Scousers. They’re running serious gear in. Mondays usually, off the Fast Cat. Set your clock by it.’

‘Does DI Irving know about this?’

‘Of course he does. He’s as keen on stitching up the Scousers as everyone else, our Ryde dealer included. This used to be a nice island once. Can’t have scum like that around.’

Faraday grinned, watching the hawk swoop earthwards. Twenty years in the job already told him that Hayder had been right about Tolly but it was still good to have his instincts confirmed. Irving wanted to rev up Major Crimes to take a run or two at the Scousers. That way they might fold their tents and bugger off. Nice try, he thought.

Webster was making good time. In a mile or so they’d be down on the island’s south coast, a couple of minutes drive from Freshwater Bay. The sodden fields beside the road were splashed with sunshine and Faraday could feel the thin warmth on the side of his face. He glanced across at Webster.

‘You like CID?’

‘Love it. Some days are a pain but there’s lots going on if you know where to look. People think this place is toytown – acres of bungalows, old blokes in Morris Minors, nothing happening – but they couldn’t be more wrong. Like I’ve said, we’ve got a drug problem you wouldn’t believe. Bits of Ryde are Smack City, Ventnor too; all these old Victorian spas, overrun with
lowlife. You get blokes down from the north, not just Scousers but all sorts, Manchester, Glasgow, you name it. They drift in for the summer, work in the camps, the hotels, pubs, whatever; then come the winter they sign on, draw housing benefit, and end up selling decent amounts of gear. The DI put an operation together recently –
Edith
. Charge list runs to a dozen or so blokes, all of them up for supply. Not bad, eh?’

He shot a sideways look across the car but they were on the coast road by now and Faraday was gazing out at the startling whiteness of the chalk cliffs stretching away towards the Needles. In conditions like these – racing clouds, sudden bursts of sunshine – the view still took his breath away.

‘You’re happy here?’ He finally turned back to Webster.

‘Of course. But I can’t stay here forever, can I? Not if I want to get anywhere. That’s the problem with the island. Shut your eyes, count to ten, and you’re suddenly forty years old with a wife and three kids and absolutely no chance of ever doing anything else.’

‘What do you fancy then?’

‘Major Crimes would be nice.’ He glanced at Faraday again. ‘Sir.’

‘You think so?’

‘Definitely.’

‘You wouldn’t miss being your own boss? Making your own decisions? You think you could hack it in a bigger team?’

‘If the jobs were half-decent, of course I could.’

Faraday nodded, twisting in the seat and craning his neck backwards as a clifftop path he’d often used flashed by. The Major Crimes set-up had recently been reorganised and there was now a permanent team of
DCs, sorting jobs county-wide, with two years rotation.

‘Vacancies certainly come up,’ he admitted, ‘but not that often.’

‘I know, sir. I keep checking.’

They were in Freshwater Bay by now, driving towards the hotel that flanked the beach. Beyond the low stone wall sunlight danced on the choppy green water. Faraday eyed a tidy-looking fishing launch secured to a buoy, bucking and rolling on the incoming waves, and he wondered what it might be like, measuring out your life to the rhythm of the tides and the seasons.

‘Here, sir?’

Beyond the Albion Hotel Webster had come to a halt beside the path that wound up through the trees to the foot of Tennyson Down. In a couple of hours he’d be back, same place, say half two. Then he paused, reaching back for a file from the briefcase on the back seat.

‘One thing I forgot.’

‘What’s that?’ Faraday had the door open. The wind was cold.

‘We had a G28 this week. Monday it was. Up there.’ He nodded towards the down. ‘Woman from the mainland called it in. Came over to check out the wildlife.’

Faraday shut the door for a moment. A G28 was the Coroner’s form for a sudden death. He’d been away on Monday and Tuesday, and thus missed the incident on the daily force-wide update.

‘What happened?’

‘This woman saw the body at the foot of the cliff. Happens more often than you might think. May have jumped, may have fallen off a boat, God knows. There
must be something about this stretch of coast. That’s four in a year now.’

‘Man or woman?’

‘Bloke. ID’s tricky. Prints are useless because he’d had been in the water a while and the crabs had eaten the flesh off his fingers. We’ve got no clothing to go on either; no tattoos, rings, piercings, nothing.’

‘Dental records?’

‘No chance.’

‘Why not?’

‘There wasn’t a head.’

‘No
head
?’

‘Afraid not. The pathologist’s got a theory about impact forces. If he’d jumped, hit the rocks at a certain angle, it could have snapped the spinal column. The waves would have done the rest. It’s just a theory, that’s all.’

‘But you’re still making inquiries?’

‘Of course, sir. And the RNLI boys are going to take a look with the inshore RIB when the weather quietens down.’

‘Look for what?’

‘The head.’

‘Of course.’

Faraday opened the door again, sobered by the thought of what may have preceded this gruesome discovery. A three-hundred-foot fall from the top would take more than three seconds, a statistic he’d tucked away from a previous inquiry, and three seconds was plenty of time for serious regrets. Standing on the pavement, zipping up his anorak, he was suddenly struck by another thought.

‘Tell me.’ He ducked his head back into the car. ‘What was this woman looking for?’

‘Peregrine falcons, sir.’ Webster had the file open on his lap. ‘I knew you’d ask.’

After the first hour, DC Suttle was beginning to fidget. He and DC Winter had been sitting in the darkened Skoda since eight o’clock, perfect line of sight on the apartment. This time of night, late February, Old Portsmouth was deserted. Barely a decade ago, as Winter had already pointed out, this finger of land that curled into Portsmouth Harbour would have been thick with drinkers making a Friday night of it at the Spice Island pubs. Now, it served as a parking lot for top-of-the-range Mercedes and BMWs, the kind of motors that went with a fancy postcode, a quiet retirement and a glimpse or two of the sea.

Winter was watching a figure in a raincoat across the road, bent against the wind, dragging what looked like a spaniel behind him.

‘Last crap before bye-byes.’ He nodded towards the nearby beach. ‘Another reason you’d never swim from here.’

Suttle was wrestling with the last of the crossword from yesterday’s
Sun
. In Winter’s eyes he was still a boy, barely out of his teens, but a year partnering the older detective in the busy chaos of the Portsmouth Crime Squad had given him an easy self-confidence. He laughed a great deal at some of the madder jobs, and Winter appreciated that, though the current operation – codenamed
Plover
– had so far failed to engage his full attention.

‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.’ Suttle tapped his teeth with the end of the biro. ‘Begins with A. Six letters.’

‘Autumn.’

‘Yeah, but how do you spell it?’

‘A-U-T-U—’ Winter broke off, his hand reaching for the radio. ‘Kilo Foxtrot, Papa India, over.’

A burst of static, then an acknowledgement. Suttle had abandoned the crossword.

‘Stand by, stand by, stand by. Target vehicle a Saab convertible is
left, left
into High Street, Old Portsmouth. Confirmed the subject is driving. Over to you, backup.’

‘Yes, yes.’

Winter watched the sleek Saab convertible pause at the exit from the apartment block, signal left, then pull out onto the empty road. The beauty of this little ambush was the subject’s lack of options. Turn right, and two hundred metres later Singer would be in the harbour.

‘Sweet,’ Winter muttered to himself.

The Saab accelerated past the shadowed casemates of the seaward fortifications. Singer, alone in the car, seemed to be checking his face in the rear-view mirror. Already, one hand on the wheel, he was talking on a mobile.

‘That’d be the wife, then.’ Suttle laughed. ‘Working late at the office. Nightmare day. Completely knackered. Who’d be a solicitor, eh?’

Winter ignored him. The blokes from Traffic were parked beyond the cathedral. He’d worked with them before and he knew they were up for it. They’d sit on Singer’s arse for a couple of hundred metres, then pull him before he got to the roundabout. Winter was laying short odds on a decent stash of charlie, one last toot before Singer drove up to Clanfield to face the missus, and he knew the solicitor wouldn’t have bothered to do anything elaborate in the way of hiding it. In his frame of mind the last thing he’d expect was a
random shake-down. That’s the way these guys led their lives. Total self-belief.

‘How long then?’ Suttle was eyeing the apartments across the road.

‘Couple of minutes, tops.’

‘What about his mobile? What if he rings chummy?’ He nodded at the apartment block.

‘No chance. First off, he’ll bluster, give them grief about unjustified intrusion, all that bollocks. By that time they’ll have his mobile off him. That and the gear.’