Blood And Honey (52 page)

‘A few sensible answers would be nice. Just for starters.’

‘And Lajla?’

‘I’m sure she’ll oblige.’ Faraday smiled. ‘I gather she’s a bit upset just now but I suppose that’s understandable. You don’t get arrested for murder every day of your life.’

‘
Murder?
Laj? You’re off your head.’ He looked
sideways at his solicitor. ‘I don’t have to put up with this, do I?’

The solicitor told him he didn’t have a choice. Lajla would herself be entitled to legal representation. Her rights would doubtless be respected.

‘Of course,’ said Faraday lightly. ‘The duty brief should be here any minute.’

‘The duty fucking brief?’ Pelly’s face had reddened. ‘What would someone like that know about what Laj’s been through, eh?’

He let the question hang between them. Faraday sensed that Michaels wanted to dive in, wind Pelly up a little more, but Faraday extended a restraining hand. His eyes hadn’t left Pelly’s face.

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’ He smiled again. ‘
Been through?
’

‘Yeah, been through. You people have no idea, do you? You’re clueless. Worse than that, you’ve no fucking interest. Just imagine. You’re eighteen years old. You’ve lived in the same village all your life. You’ve gone to school with the same bunch of kids, boys, girls; they’re like one family, moving on through. Then one day it all kicks off and suddenly you’re back at school, back in that same classroom, except now there are dirty old mattresses on the floor, and a bunch of hairy-arsed soldiers getting their fucking kit off, just gagging to dick you. And you know who some of those animals are? Yeah …’ He leaned forward, stabbing the air between them. ‘The blokes you grew up with, the blokes you called fucking brothers. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine how that must
feel
? Can you?’

He slumped back in his chair, shaking his head, disgusted. His solicitor inched her chair sideways,
widening the gap between them. Even Dave Michaels looked impressed.

Faraday permitted himself the beginnings of a smile. The softness of his voice brought Pelly’s head up.

‘Fascinating,’ Faraday murmured.

Winter was exhausted by the time he made it back home. A meet with Jimmy Suttle had left him feeling helpless and grumpy. Like Cathy Lamb, Suttle had taken one look at Winter and told him he was mad to even think about continuing his pursuit of Maurice Wishart.

DI Lamb was due for a conference with Willard on the direction that
Plover
should now take. A possession charge had been laid against Singer, and the solicitor had also been made aware of his indiscretions on the DVD. The fact that he’d helped his clients fabricate evidence for use in court put Singer in deep, deep shit and celebrations had already started in CID offices across the city. As far as Wishart was concerned, on the other hand, Willard seemed to be cautious about committing too many resources. Available evidence was circumstantial in the extreme. With
Congress
bogged down once again, the Detective Superintendent didn’t want two enquiries that might last months and then dead end.

Dead end, thought Winter, pretty much summed it up. He struggled out of the car, wrapped his coat around himself and then pushed in through the garden gate. The lights were on in the bungalow again, and Maddox met him at the door. He hadn’t phoned her all day. The three calls she’d made, he’d ignored.

‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Work.’

‘
Work?
’ She kissed him. ‘You look worn out.’

Winter nodded, lacking the energy to argue. He’d spent all day building a dam against the real implications of his conversation with the neurologist. Now, with his head beginning to throb again, he felt miserable. The medics, in the end, were right. When the system failed, what’s left of your body took charge. You could try and fight it, of course you could, but what – in the end – was the point?

Maddox wanted to know how the session at the hospital had gone. Winter told her. She stared at him.

‘Shit,’ she said finally. ‘How do you feel?’

Winter shook his aching head and sank into a chair. The last thing he wanted to discuss was the prospect of his own mortality.

‘Tell me something cheerful.’ He was looking up at her.

‘You want a drink? Scotch?’

‘No.’ He shook his head and then winced. ‘You have one for me.’

Maddox disappeared into the kitchen. Winter heard one
glug-glug-glug
, then another. She returned with two sizeable glasses.

‘Here.’ She gave it to him, kissed him again, turned off the harsh overhead light. Winter looked at her in the semi-darkness. She’d been on the net, hunting for deals. There was a flight leaving early next week, Egyptair. They’d have to change planes in Cairo but the price was a steal. Up in the mountains, she said, they could start to sort things out. A change of continent, and anything might be possible.

‘I’ll make you better,’ she said. ‘Promise.’

Winter gazed at her. Next week sounded a wildly optimistic proposition. Just now he’d be lucky to make it to the bathroom. She was talking about Rimbaud, about Harar, about the camels they could rent for
expeditions into the mountains, about the local guides who’d show them the best places to camp. In the evenings, back in Harar, there was a wonderful souk, merchants selling carpets and brassware, and a thousand spices. Winter’s eyes began to close. For the second time in days he was close to tears. He could see this place of hers. He could almost smell it. But it was never going to happen. Then came the sound of a mobile, Maddox’s distinctive call tone.

Winter lay back in the chair, nursing the Scotch. There was a pause while Maddox read the number, then she was on her feet, padding across the living room into the privacy of the hall. Winter caught a muffled conversation, then Maddox’s throaty laugh. A minute or two later she was back beside the chair.

‘A friend.’ She bent and touched his glass with hers. ‘
Fais-moi confiance, mon chéri
.’

Thursday, 4 March 2004

The weather obliged Faraday to meet Willard off the hovercraft. An area of low pressure had been deepening in mid-Atlantic for a couple of days and now the leaden swirl of cloud was pushing up the Channel. All night the wind had been strengthening, and Faraday had awoken to a hard, driving rain lashing at the window of his tiny hotel room.

An hour later, virtually alone in the transit lounge at the Hoverspeed terminal, he waited for sign of the approaching hovercraft. Barely a fortnight ago he’d struck exactly the same pose in the Southsea terminal across the Solent, gazing out at the churn of waves and tatters of wind-torn bladderwrack. This was the twin brother of the gale that had so nearly halted services to Ryde that stormy morning, and Faraday glanced back towards the enquiry desk, wondering whether they hadn’t bothered to announce a cancellation.

Then, very dimly, he saw the approaching hovercraft, a low squat shape wallowing in through the murk. The nearby pier normally offered shelter from the prevailing westerlies but today the wind tore between the rusting supports, lacing the heaving sea with spume. The bigger waves were smashing against the pier itself, huge explosions of creamy brown surf, and Faraday watched the hovercraft dipping and
rolling as the captain clawed his way towards the concrete ramp.

Willard, who’d spent a month last summer on a sailing course, was first off. He ran the twenty metres to the terminal building, bent against the howling wind, then shook himself like a dog once he’d managed to get inside.

‘Brilliant,’ he announced. ‘You pay a fortune at Alton Towers for a ride like that.’

Faraday’s car was parked outside. Willard wanted an update before they went into conference at the police station.

‘We released Pelly last night, sir. Half eight. Bailed him for six weeks. I didn’t try for the extension in the end. Not worth the hassle.’

‘A night in the cells?’

‘No point.’ Faraday shook his head, waiting for a break in the traffic. ‘This is a man who just doesn’t care. He’s telling Dave Michaels this is kids’ stuff compared to some of the things he’s been through. Problem is, we’re starting to believe him.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Zilch. You could drive a bus through the holes in his story, but the longer Dave points that out the less interested he becomes. We’ve never managed to shake him, not as far as his story’s concerned, not once. Eerie, really. It’s like the man already knows he’s home free. How would you explain that?’

‘Christ knows.’ Willard was watching an elderly woman battling her way across the road, oblivious to the traffic. ‘What about his wife?’

‘She went no comment. I put Tracy Barber and the lad Webster in with her. They didn’t get further than her name and address. Tracy said she was really upset, but we can’t do her for that, can we?’

Lajla, he said, had been released last night without charge. She and Pelly had taken a cab back to Shanklin and Faraday himself had watched them drive away. Lajla had been in the back with her husband, her head buried in the folds of his anorak, sobbing.

‘Unwin?’

‘I bailed him as well. We got a full statement. He and his mum took the first hovercraft out. Didn’t even go and see his nan. He’s terrified Pelly’s going to come after him.’

‘He’s probably right.’

‘I doubt it. Pelly’s turned the page. New chapter. New life. We checked with the estate agent this morning. Pelly’s pushing for completion by the end of the month.’

‘What about the bail date?’

‘Good point, sir. But to be honest I can’t see him hanging around for us.’

The formal conference began half an hour later in the office used by the investigation’s DCs. Faraday was in the chair, with DS Dave Michaels offering an overview of statements gathered to date and DS Pete Baker reporting on the ever-diminishing tally of actions still awaiting the attention of the Outside Enquiry Team.

Willard wanted a thorough review of every LOE and was merciless about the small print. Brian Imber, who held the intelligence file, took the Detective Superintendent through each line of inquiry. Forensically, the SOC team had drawn a blank. Nothing in the home, nothing in the garage out the back, nothing in the outhouse Pelly used as a makeshift workshop.

‘What are we trying to stand up here?’ The pad at Willard’s elbow was still blank.

‘We’re thinking Pelly did the guy in the flat downstairs. That’s the one that’s been redecorated. The CSM says they tried everything, the lot. If we’re talking a cleaned-up crime scene, he says Pelly deserves a medal.’

‘We’re saying he took the guy’s head off in there?’

‘Hard to say, sir. The scale of the redecorating tells me there was a lot of blood.’

‘What about disposal of the carpet? Wallpaper? The chair you say he replaced?’

‘We’ve talked to the council people in Newport. There are three tips on the island. Rubbish goes for landfill. Five months later is a hell of a time to start digging, and in any case I’m not sure Pelly would have taken the risk. A bloke who covers his arse the way he’s done might well have stuffed it all in the Volvo and taken it over to the mainland.’

‘And the Volvo?’

‘He says he’s sold it. Bit vague about the new owner.’

‘PNC?’

‘No new details logged.’

‘How does Pelly explain that?’

‘Says he forgot to get the info off the buyer. Told us the guy looked a bit dodgy. Paid cash; shot off. It’s bollocks, of course, but when we challenge him, he just shrugs. Isn’t that right, Dave?’

Michaels nodded. Pelly, he said, was denial on legs. Any more prime suspects like him and he’d be looking for early retirement. The comment raised a ripple of laughter round the table. Willard wasn’t amused.

‘This guy’s taking the piss. Shouldn’t we be doing something about that?’

Faraday could only agree. He asked Imber to take Willard through Pelly’s financial transactions. Imber
had prepared a timeline tracing the various sums that had so suddenly appeared in Pelly’s bank account. Over the last couple of days he’d managed to relate the deposits to cross-Channel ferry bookings for which Pelly had retained the receipts. These receipts had formed part of the haul of paperwork seized from his flat and Imber’s painstaking analysis had revealed that each deposit had been made the day after Pelly’s return from abroad.

‘The deposits were in cash?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sterling?’

‘Euros.’

‘Any indication of where he might have got them?’

Imber shook his head. Pelly had excellent contacts in the Balkans. He’d been going there, off and on, for the last ten years. By his own admission he made money from bringing in asylum seekers – individuals with a genuine case to plead. Some years, he was flush with funds. Other times, like more recently, he was pushed. Maybe the cash deposits were a windfall from a couple of particularly successful trips. Maybe he’d called in long-standing debts or raised a loan from local backers in Bosnia. Or maybe the paper trail – if Imber ever managed to establish such a thing – would lead directly to the headless corpse at the foot of the cliff, but without a firm ID it would be impossible to check. Once again, by either luck or design, Pelly had fenced off yet another line of enquiry.

Willard stirred. Watching him, Faraday could sense the frustration his boss was beginning to share with the
Congress
team. No inquiry should be this much of a wind-up. Ever.

‘We need a name, don’t we?’ Willard sat back,
tossing his pen onto the pad. ‘That’s where this thing begins and ends. The body.’

Imber began to speculate again about Pelly’s possible links with people smugglers. Checks on the status of the lodgers in his Shanklin and Ventnor properties had drawn a blank. They were all legit, either asylum seekers awaiting adjudication or – in the majority of cases – individuals who’d been granted indefinite leave to remain. Nonetheless, it was perfectly feasible for Pelly to have brought in other refugees who were promptly shipped over to the mainland and driven north. Why else would he have wanted a £ 70,000 boat with forty-five knots on the speedo?