Deadlight (4 page)

‘No thanks, love.’ Winter eased her gently back towards the open door. ‘Nice thought, though.’

Ellis looked around the stuffy little sitting room. The furniture had seen better days and there was a powerful smell of cats. A copy of last month’s
News
lay folded on the dresser and a limp-looking plant on the mantelpiece badly needed watering. The framed black and white snap beside it showed a much younger Doris arm in arm with a sailor.

Denied a perch in the corner store itself by the nervous Bangladeshi shopkeeper, Winter had phoned Mrs Ackerman first thing from the CID office at Southsea’s Highland Road police station. Mrs Ackerman remembered nothing of her previous encounter with DC Paul Winter, but was happy to confirm that her house was right across from Mr Patel’s corner shop. She often went over for biscuits and cat food. Saved her legs the trip down Elm Grove to the Co-op.

Ellis, as amazed as ever by the sheer depth of Winter’s contacts book, had been curious about this woman’s willingness to convert her front room into a CID observation point. In an area as rough and unforgiving as the Somerstown estate, any association with the Filth was
a guaranteed brick through the window. So how come she was putting out like this?

Winter, predictably tight-lipped, had shrugged the question aside and only when they’d turned up on her doorstep did Ellis realise that the old lady thought they were from Southern Electric. Quite why a power company should have been interested in mounting surveillance on the Patel store was anybody’s guess, but Doris Ackerman was charmed by Winter’s smile and happily let them get on with it.

There were, of course, strict regulations about the use of private premises for covert operations. The standard risk assessment called for prior consultation and a sheaf of double-signature forms, but Winter had seldom let procedure stand between himself and the prospect of a modest result. If Hartigan wanted a bunch of scrotey kids off the plot, and if Cathy Lamb thought a stake-out might do the trick, then so be it. With the clock ticking on, and the wastelands of Somerstown a virtual no-go area, then the time had very definitely come for a spot of creative policing.

Personally, Ellis had thought using the cross of St George to camouflage the camera a crap idea. Winter had spotted the big, grubby England flag in a Fawcett Road junk shop, arguing the price down to fifty pence, and back in the car Dawn couldn’t believe he really meant to use it, but the moment they’d turned into the Somerstown estate she’d had to give him the benefit of the doubt. These same flags were everywhere, hanging over balconies, draped in front windows, knotted to the rusting bodywork of builders’ pick-ups, part of the city-wide carnival that would doubtless carry Sven’s boys into the World Cup final.

In three days’ time, England were playing Argentina. The entire country was readying itself for an epic encounter but here in Pompey – the city which had despatched the Falklands Task Force – the game already
reeked of expended cordite and hand-to-hand combat. Several gallons of lager and a goal or two were bound to kick off the usual mayhem, a source of some anticipatory excitement for the younger uniformed lads who enjoyed – in the parlance – a spot of robust policing.

Winter was morose. The afternoon had come and gone and the expected excitements had failed to kick off. At the morning briefing, Cathy Lamb had put her money on a blag just after lunch. That way, the kids could be ready at school gates across the area, flogging nicked gear to other kids en route home. Accordingly, the corner shop had been rigged with discreetly mounted hi-res video cameras, and the till had been stuffed with marked notes. Only an outbreak of lawful behaviour could keep the likes of Winter, Ellis and the uniformed lads on the pursuit bikes out of the medals.

For the umpteenth time, Winter phoned one of the DCs in the back-up unmarked Fiesta on his mobile. He’d long ago given up on the police net because these days the kids were way ahead in the comms war and routinely used scanners. He knew this because they, too, were nicked and regularly turned up on the shoplifting reports.

The conversation was brief. Winter pocketed his mobile.

‘And?’ Ellis shot him a look.

‘Bored stiff. Plus they’ve been clocked again.’

‘Tell him to move.’

‘They’re going to.’ Winter glanced across at her. ‘You want some really bad news?’

‘About what?’

‘That dead screw in Niton Road.’

Ellis nodded, saying nothing. The Coughlin murder in Niton Road had been common knowledge since mid-morning and there wasn’t a Pompey DC who wasn’t praying for secondment to Major Crimes. The suspicion that none of them – not Winter, not Ellis, not either of the guys in the Fiesta – had made it on to the squad was
galling, to say the least. In overtime alone, a decent murder would pay for a couple of weeks in the Caribbean.

‘Well?’ Ellis said at last.

‘Bev Yates, for starters.’

Dawn absorbed the news. At forty-five, Bev Yates was a veteran DC. His glory days as centre forward on the CID team were long gone and three decades of heavy-duty partying had taken their toll. Nonetheless, with his sleepy eyes and slow smile, he knew he was still a looker and had a recently acquired young wife to prove it.

‘They’ve just had another baby,’ Winter murmured. ‘Did you know that?’

‘Everyone knows it.’ Dawn was studying her fingernails. ‘What a waste.’

‘The baby?’

‘Bev. He was discussing the price of Pampers the other day. Can you imagine that? Bev Yates? Sex god? Into
Pampers
?’

Winter chuckled softly. He’d set up the Minolta from Technical Services on a tripod a pace or two back from the window. The telephoto lens offered a close-up of the Patel shop doorway through a carefully torn rent in the flag and he leaned forward yet again to check the viewfinder. Two Bangladeshi women standing in the sunshine yakking about God knows what. Absolutely no sign of impending trouble.

‘They must do these secondments on purpose.’ Ellis yawned. ‘They know Bev’s really up for the World Cup.’

‘He’d be at work anyway, times they’re showing these games.’

‘Not at half past seven in the morning he wouldn’t. And the later games he’d sort somehow or other. You know what he’s like when it’s something he really wants.’

Winter grunted, saying nothing. Even older than Yates, he had a legendary mistrust of team spirit, chiefly because he’d never seen the point of it. Winter was the detective
who belonged in a museum, a bulky, balding, streetwise DC who made his best moves in a suede car coat and a haze of after-shave. He’d always hunted alone and the fact that he was still around was a tribute to his predatory skills. According to the likes of Hartigan, successful detection relied on good intelligence, disciplined teamwork and the scrupulous gathering of evidence. Winter, with his unrivalled city-wide sources, agreed about the intelligence but viewed the rest as bollocks.

Dawn Ellis, who’d learned a great deal from Winter, rather liked him. Looks like hers could be a handicap in a culture as macho as CID, and the fact that she was a born-again veggie didn’t help. Why a slim, bright, attractive twenty-eight-year-old was wasting herself in the gloom of a Portchester semi was a source of perpetual mystery in the CID room but only Winter, she suspected, knew the truth. That she was lonely, as well as increasingly nervous.

Earlier in the afternoon, she’d mentioned calls she’d been getting, two o’clock in the morning calls, the kind of weirdo calls where the line stays open and all you can hear is breathing at the other end. They’d been happening a lot recently, two or three times a week, and they were beginning to spook her. Winter hadn’t said very much, just the obvious, who might they be, but when she’d shaken her head and said she hadn’t a clue, he’d made a little joke about the length of the list and left it at that.

Now, though, he wanted to know more.

‘There isn’t any more.’

‘Doesn’t he ever say anything?’

‘I don’t even know if it’s a bloke.’

‘Something you’re not telling me?’

‘Not at all. I’m not saying it’s a woman. I’m just saying I don’t know. And that’s the point really. Two o’clock in the morning, stuff like this starts to get to you.’

Glued to the viewfinder again, Winter changed the subject.

‘Tell me about Andy Corbett.’

‘What makes you think I know anything about Andy Corbett?’

‘Because you’re supposed to be shagging him.’

‘Who said?’

‘You’re not shagging him?’

‘We’ve been for a couple of drinks. He’s a nice bloke, breath of fresh air. That’s not shagging, Paul. That’s conversation.’

Winter eased away from the tripod, rubbing the back of his neck.

‘Met, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Rides a big bike? Ponces around in black leather?’

‘What
is
this?’

‘Just curious. He’s another one who’s copped for the Coughlin job.’ He smiled at her. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know that already.’

The squad briefing for the Major Crimes team was delayed half an hour until 18.30. The incident room lay at the end of Major Crimes’ secured first-floor suite of offices at Kingston Crescent. There was space in here for the dozen or so desks that serviced the voracious demands of the HOLMES system, with a perch or two at the edges for all the other specialist officers who would be ducking in and out of the incident room. Other offices down the corridor already housed the Intelligence Cell and the forensic team, and a management assistant was organising more accommodation in a larger room at the far end. By now, the inquiry had acquired an official codename: Operation
Merriott
.

Deep in conversation with Dave Michaels, Faraday didn’t notice Willard’s arrival in the incident room.
Michaels was the DS acting as Receiver, the all-important pair of eyes that scanned all incoming reports from DCs out there in the field. It was Michaels who would serve as the inquiry’s radar, highlighting the first shadowy indications of an emerging pattern.

On a nod from Willard, Faraday called the room to order. Most of the squad had now gathered, DCs from CID offices county-wide, bunched together on any handy surface, curious to know where this inquiry might lead. Only a couple of HOLMES-trained indexers Faraday had managed to poach from Basingstoke had yet to appear.

Willard wasted little time. The victim was a white male, fifty-three years old, unmarried, name of Sean Arthur Coughlin. He worked as a prison officer in Gosport nick and lived alone in a ground floor flat at 7a Niton Road. The flat upstairs was empty and neither set of neighbours on either side had reported any disturbance the previous evening. One of them, an eighty-seven-year-old, was deaf. The other, a young professional couple, had gone to bed early. No joy there.

An anticipatory ripple of approval ran round the room. Already, these men and women sensed an inquiry with legs.

Willard stilled the murmuring voices with a glance. Cause of death appeared to be assault, with or without some kind of weapon, but the post-mortem had barely started and the preliminary results wouldn’t be through until later. The Scenes of Crime team would be knocking off around eight and the premises would be secured for the night. In view of the fact that the house was empty upstairs and down, the SOC boys would be taking their time over the forensic search. Jerry Proctor, the SOC coordinator, was guesstimating a minimum three days for the job.

Proctor himself was in the incident room, a large, bearded, bear-like man who had begun to remind
Faraday of an Afrikaans farmer. Passionate about sailing, his big face was tanned and wind-roughened, and his deep-set eyes had the kind of thousand-yard stare tailor-made for hot, dusty days on the veldt. Willard’s news about the protracted forensic search drew a curt nod of agreement. When Willard asked him whether he had anything to add, he shook his head.

‘Just the shoeprint,’ he said. ‘And the porn.’

Prompted by Willard, Proctor filled in the details. Early afternoon, completing their visual search back and front of the premises, one of the SOC team had found a perfect footprint in a flower bed softened by last night’s rain. The footprint, directly underneath Coughlin’s bedroom window, had been photographed, and a plaster cast had also been made. Early indications suggested a size ten moulded sole, very probably a jogging shoe of some kind.

Willard stirred.

‘Wouldn’t be Coughlin himself?’

‘No, sir. Wrong shoe size.’

Proctor glanced down at his notes, then added a word or two about the magazines on the floor and Coughlin’s affection for the rougher end of the porn sites. Late afternoon, a DS from the Computer Crime Unit had driven over from Netley and removed Coughlin’s Hewlett Packard for detailed analysis. A phone check with the Eastleigh company who managed the porn site had established that Coughlin – or someone using his computer – had logged on at seventeen minutes past midnight. Given the fact that the site remained live for sixteen hours, Coughlin had run up a bill of nearly fifteen hundred pounds.

The laughter this time was louder. For fifteen hundred quid, a porn site owed you something truly special.

Willard took the briefing back to Coughlin. He’d put a two-man interview team into Gosport prison. They’d spent the afternoon talking to Coughlin’s colleagues and
an interesting story was beginning to emerge. Willard glanced towards Dave Michaels.

‘Yeah.’ Michaels took his time. ‘Seems the guy was an arsehole. Bev?’

Bev Yates had been one of the interview team. He’d just returned from Gosport and briefly he paraphrased the findings from half a dozen interviews. POs on the same wing as Coughlin were naturally wary of speaking out of turn, but the agreed consensus on the dead man was clear enough. The bloke was a loner, no friends, no drinking buddies, and precious little small talk. On shift, he kept himself to himself, never overtly aggressive, nothing like that, but not the kind of bloke you’d want to pass the time of day with. Nothing seemed to excite him. Not football. Not women. Not DIY. Not even car boot sales. Ask Coughlin the time and you were lucky to get a reply. Ask him for a loan of his
Sun
and he’d tell you to buy your own copy.