Blood And Honey (35 page)

Tonight, though, was different. Suttle, bless him, had very probably scored a result with Commander Victor Lakemfa, and before Winter decided where to take
Plover
next he needed to know a great deal more about the Nigerian navy.

Google threw up a list of websites. Methodically, Winter began to work through them. After the best part of an hour, comparing one specialist report with another, he’d settled on an image of the country that
would, he thought, have offered someone like Wishart the perfect target.

Like most of Africa, the place was falling apart. Ninety-five per cent of government revenue came from oil, a heavy crude pumped from wells in the Niger Delta. The locals, poor by the standards of most Nigerians, were understandably fed up with losing their inheritance to the fat cats in Lagos, and the area’s youth in particular had gone in for a spot of direct action. Oil platforms had been hijacked. Foreign workers kidnapped. Supply pipelines blown up. One of the navy’s own patrol boats stolen at gunpoint. Late last year, in an incident that had surfaced in the
Daily Mail
, a sizeable Russian oil tanker, impounded by the Nigerian authorities after allegations that it was carrying contraband crude, had simply disappeared from a guarded berth in Lagos docks. One evening 100,000 tonnes of oil tanker lay alongside. By dawn next day it had gone.

Winter grinned. Pompey, on a good weekend, also had plenty of potential for anarchy but he couldn’t remember the local kids ever nicking anything on this scale. So just how would the likes of Commander Lakemfa cope?

The answer, in a word, was badly. Most Nigerian navy vessels had once been high-tech. The Nigerians had paid a fortune to European shipyards for missile-carrying frigates but had never got on top of the training to make them properly operational. Nowadays, most of them never left harbour. The weapons systems didn’t work, the spares situation was a joke, and if you were lucky enough to have a helicopter on the back end, the thing would be too knackered to fly. Year after year, money got tighter and tighter. Thanks
to lousy wages, below-decks morale had hit rock-bottom. The Nigerian navy, in short, was stuffed.

Winter wandered through to the kitchen and poured himself a Scotch. In any inquiry rule one was to put yourself in the heads of the villains, and in this respect
Plover
was no different. The Nigerians had, at all costs, to keep the oil flowing. With their navy in the knacker’s yard, they surely wanted something simple, something matelot-proof, to put the fear of God up the bad boys in the Niger Delta. Winter had already paged his way through Wishart’s company website, and knew that the eleven-metre Marauder was probably the answer to Nigeria’s prayers. The Marauder, in company-speak, could deliver a great deal of fire-power, at great speed, in water as shallow as a metre and a half. They zipped around at forty knots and a driving licence would probably qualify you to command one. At $1.7m each, they were a steal.

Winter stood at the kitchen window, staring into the darkness. Barely half an hour in Wishart’s apartment had offered ample evidence to link the man to Nigeria. Emails confirming flight bookings to Lagos. Messages addressed to the higher echelons at the navy’s Eastern Command HQ. Even the 2004 calendar on the wall over his desk, an arresting shot of a group of black women decked out in green and gold, sharing a joke beside a cage full of lions. From memory, Wishart’s last visit to Africa had been back in late September. Since then, according to Maddox, the trips to Nigeria seemed to have ceased.

Winter reached for the bottle of Scotch. Say the guys in the Road Deaths Investigation Unit were right. Say Victor Lakemfa really did have the ear of government. Wouldn’t that make him an obvious target for Wishart’s heavy guns? Wouldn’t he bombard the Nigerian
with hospitality? Gifts? Straight bribes? Anything, in short, to smooth the path to a big, fat contract? And if, for some reason, Lakemfa hadn’t been able to deliver. Or if, even better, he’d turned Wishart’s courtship into some kind of blackmail demand, extorting ever-larger sums of money for the price of his own silence, wouldn’t that turn him into the kind of threat that Wishart couldn’t afford to ignore?

Winter smiled, tipping his glass to his own reflection in the window, only too aware of the dangers of putting speculation in front of hard evidence. At this stage he still needed to cement the link between Wishart and the luckless Victor.

Back in the lounge Winter sorted through his briefcase until he found the billing on Lakemfa’s mobile. Already, he’d isolated a dozen or so numbers that had been regularly accessed between July and late September. Some of them were working hours only. Three. Lakemfa had also phoned in the evening. Winter scribbled down the numbers, then emptied his glass and checked his watch.

The big double bedroom lay at the front of the bungalow. Winter padded along the hall and eased the door open. In the spill of light he could see the long shape of Maddox’s body under the duvet. She appeared to be asleep.

Winter sat on the edge of the bed and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. Moving out of her apartment at Rose Tower had been Winter’s idea, strictly precautionary, but it hadn’t taken much for her to say yes. After this afternoon’s visit to Mon Plaisir, Winter was at last convinced that Maddox really did want Wishart out of her life. Not only that, but she obviously believed his threats were genuine. He’d
attacked her twice now within the space of a week. Who on earth would need more evidence than that?

She struggled upright in the bed, rubbing her eyes. Winter’s ‘Viva Magaluf’ T-shirt was several sizes too big.

‘What’s the time?’

‘Half ten. Where’s your mobile?’

She peered at him a moment then fumbled in a bag beside the bed. Winter punched in the first of the numbers from Lakemfa’s billing. At length a woman answered, a language he didn’t recognise. Winter grunted an apology and rang off. The second number began to ring. Then came a voice Winter recognised, languid, thickened by a lifetime of cigars and good living.

‘Sweetheart …’ Wishart sounded amused. ‘You’ve come to your senses—’

Winter rang off again, no apology this time. Maddox was staring at the phone.

‘That’s a private number. Where did you get it?’

‘We raised a billing. Wishart’s number was on it. The phone’s registered in the name of Lakemfa.’

‘Victor?’ A smile ghosted across Maddox’s battered face. ‘Sweet man.’

‘You know him?’

‘Of course. He was over here last year. Black guy. Naval officer. Very smooth. Played the gallant. Very funny too.’ She was still looking at the phone. ‘So why did you need the billing?’

Winter ignored the question. With Maddox, life was infinitely simpler if he stuck to being a detective.

‘How come you ever met?’ he wanted to know.

‘Victor’s a chum of Maurice’s. I’ve never got to the bottom of it but it must be business. There’s no other reason he’d spend that kind of money.’

‘Who?’

‘Maurice. It must have cost him thousands.’ She frowned. ‘Steve Richardson would know.’

‘Lakemfa used Camber Court?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Back in the summer. Maurice stood him a couple of freebies. You’d be amazed how much Krug those Muslims can handle.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘That, too.’

‘Who with?’

‘Me.’ She reached for Winter’s hand. ‘Maurice could occasionally be very generous that way.’

Faraday walked Brian Imber the length of Ryde Pier for the 23.15 Fast Cat back to Portsmouth. Imber was due before a circuit judge in Winchester at nine fifteen next morning in order to acquire the Production Order that would unlock Pelly’s army service record. In the meantime, as he’d confided to Faraday in the Indian restaurant, he’d been chasing the secretary of Pelly’s regimental association, a phone number he’d picked up from paperwork seized at the nursing home.

‘The guy didn’t actually serve with Pelly but he put me on to someone who did.’

‘A mate?’ Faraday was nervous of word getting back.

‘Christ no, far from it. The only reason I phoned him was the fact that Pelly didn’t seem to have any mates. The guy that organises the regimental jollies has him down as a loner, real oddball, someone you’d never want to get close to.’

‘He said that?’

‘Good as.’

Faraday came to a halt, his attention caught by a sudden flap of wings overhead, and the two men
lingered for a moment. Beyond the berthing arm and railhead at the pier’s end Imber could just make out the lights of the approaching catamaran. Five miles away, across the blackness of the Solent, the busy glow of Portsmouth.

Faraday pulled his anorak tighter against the bitter wind. He wanted to know more about Pelly. Imber dug his hands in his pockets, started to walk again.

‘The guy I talked to obviously hated him. They’d fallen out big time over something or other and he didn’t have a good word to say about Pelly. These were early days in Bosnia, remember. All the locals at each others’ throats and our lads in the middle. Scary stuff if you’ve just shipped in. You know what the word Balkans means in local parlance?’

‘No.’

‘Blood and honey. Says it all.’

Faraday nodded. Despite the SAS tattoo on his arm, Pelly had in fact been in the Royal Engineers, part of a team of sappers attached to the Cheshire Regiment. The supply lines stretched into the mountains from the coastal port of Split, and Pelly had found himself constructing a secure billet for the Cheshires in a disused secondary school at Vitez.

‘Apparently he loathed it,’ Imber said. ‘And he was really vocal. It wasn’t the work so much, not the graft, just the set-up. We were part of the UN force, remember. We were peacekeepers, piggies in the middle. Most of the guys out there found it pretty frustrating but Pelly went over the top. Crap blue beret. Crap rules of engagement. Crap everything. After a while he started keeping a list of local heavies he wanted to slot. These were real animals, guys who got off on the violence. Everyone knew who they were but it was Pelly who wanted to take them out.’

‘And?’

‘He got warned off. Not just the company sergeant major but the locals too. It seems that Pelly had picked up a bit of Serbo-Croat; got stuck in where he shouldn’t. Bloke I talked to mentioned a particular bar in Vitez, basement place. Pelly was mates with the guy who owned it, a Bosnian, and did him a couple of favours when his pipes burst. The one thing our lads avoided like the plague was taking sides. Bosnian? Croat? Serb? It made bugger-all difference. Pelly ignored all that and didn’t care who knew it. As far as he was concerned the politics were black and white. The Serbs and the Croats were carving the place up between them. The guys on the receiving end were the Bosnians.’

Faraday paused again, hearing the burble of the approaching ferry. His knowledge of Balkan politics was sketchy at best but Bosnia seemed to be figuring more and more in this investigation. Lajla was Bosnian. Many of Pelly’s refugees were Bosnian. Pelly himself might well be feathering a nest over there. And now, thanks to the indefatigable Brian Imber, Faraday was beginning to understand why.

‘How long did the war last?’

‘Three years.’

‘And Pelly was there for the duration?’

‘Yeah, but not in the army. You won’t believe this but the MoD had been caught on the hop. By the time we put our lads in theatre, they were in the middle of a huge cost-saving exercise. Five months into the deployment blokes of Pelly’s rank were offered the chance to bin it.’

‘Bosnia?’

‘The job. What we’re talking here is voluntary redundancy. The terms were quite generous. Pelly put
his hand up like a shot. Bloke I talked to said everyone celebrated on the strength of it – glad to get rid of the bastard, beers all round.’ Imber chuckled.

‘But you’re telling me he stayed on?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know the details yet but he seems to have started some kind of charity. Blankets for Bosnia, humanitarian relief, whatever.’

‘But why didn’t he join one of the existing outfits?’ Faraday had a dim memory of news footage of lorries grinding through the snow, aid convoys manned by a ragtag army of volunteers.

‘Because Pelly’s not the joining type. It’s his way or nothing.’ Imber glanced across at Faraday. ‘This can’t be news to you, surely.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Faraday was thinking of the first time he and Barber had met Pelly – the tautness in the face behind the desk, the way he lashed out at any passing target. ‘What about these reunions? Does Pelly ever go?’

‘God no. They were glad to see the back of him. He’s only on the mailing list because the rules say he has to be.’

They walked on in silence for a while. The odd car drove past, taxis meeting passengers off the late-night crossing. Finally Faraday asked Imber for an opinion. He’d worked with the DS for years now. There were very few others whose judgement, at this early stage, he’d trust.

Imber took his time to frame an answer. Then he tried to put it all together: the timeline, the missing Chris Unwin, that long list of coincidences that seemed to bind Pelly to the headless body at the foot of the cliff. In theory it looked compelling, but there was something, Imber said, that didn’t quite fit. Pelly,
without doubt, was a man who carried a grudge. But his story plainly didn’t end there.

‘What makes you say that?’ Faraday was intrigued.

‘The conversation I had on the phone.’ Imber was searching in his wallet for the Fast Cat ticket. ‘The guy said Pelly was a pain in the arse but he also said something else. Of all the people he knew who were out there at the time, Pelly was the one who really brought it home with him. Why?’ He offered Faraday a bleak smile. ‘Because the bloke genuinely cared.’

It was Maddox who coaxed Winter out of his pyjamas.

‘I’m going to take it personally,’ she said, ‘if you don’t get rid of these things.’

‘What’s the matter with them?’

‘Nothing. I adore paisley winceyette. But just now I’ve got a bit of a problem with self-esteem. Don’t you fancy used goods? Have you got a thing about fading bruises? You’re a detective. Just give me a clue.’

She was stretched full length on the bed, propped on one elbow, sipping a glass of Sainsbury’s Pinot Noir that Winter had liberated from Joannie’s little cellar under the stairs. Naked below the T-shirt, she’d already suggested a break from Winter’s unending list of questions.