Deadlight (7 page)

‘Try showbiz.’ Eadie knelt quickly and retrieved a print from the carpet. ‘Look at this one. Neat, huh?’

Faraday glanced at the photo. J-J had met the fleet way out off the Isle of Wight, the first time he’d ever been in a speedboat, and he must have transferred on to one of the incoming craft. The shot was taken from midships, and showed the skipper at the wheel with the swell of the open sea behind. The skipper’s face was made for a photo like this, his watery eyes narrowed against the morning sun, and Faraday wondered what those same eyes would have seen, six decades earlier. He’d never quite fathomed the national passion for celebrating military defeats.

Eadie was pointing out the bits of the photo she especially loved. She had big-knuckled hands, almost male, and when she looked up at Faraday he noticed how much damage the sun had done to her face. She looked early forties, Faraday guessed. Maybe older.

‘You make lots of films like this?’

‘Not really. This is for TV. Most of the stuff I do is industrial. Companies mainly, training films, product launches, you name it. TV’s sexy but they never have any money. The other stuff sucks but they always pay on time. So I guess you get to have a choice. Groceries or glory.’ She put the photo to one side. ‘This one’s been fun.’

‘It’s finished?’

‘Rough cut. You want to see it? No problem.’

For a moment Faraday thought she was going to produce a cassette and slip it into the video player and his heart sank at the thought of another hour or so trying to stay half awake, but then she mentioned some kind of office she had in the city. Couple of rooms in Hampshire Terrace. Come up any time.

‘Thanks.’

‘I mean it.’

J-J rolled off the sofa and made for the stairs. It took more than three cans to get him into this kind of state.

Faraday turned back to Eadie Sykes.

‘You’ve been here long? I’m not checking, I promise.’

‘Couple of hours. Your son’s done me proud.’

‘And himself, too.’ Faraday looked down at his own drink. ‘How do you get through to him, as a matter of interest?’

‘I point a lot. But then I do that in real life, as well. Film directors have to stay on top, comes with the turf.’ The grin again. ‘Sounds sexy, doesn’t it? But then you’d have the same problem, being a homicide cop.’

‘You think being a cop’s sexy?’

‘I know it is.’

‘How?’

‘By looking.’

For a moment, Faraday thought he’d misunderstood her. Then the amusement on her face told him otherwise.

‘You should learn to take a compliment,’ she said. ‘It’s really easy once you get the hang of it.’

J-J returned shortly afterwards. Faraday could tell from the splashes across his T-shirt that he’d put his head under the tap. Kneeling on the carpet, he began to collect the prints and slide them into an envelope. Eadie touched him on the arm with her foot, a curiously intimate gesture, and when he glanced up she tapped her watch and then put her hands together and cushioned her head against them. Bedtime.

Watching, Faraday offered to act as translator.

‘No need.’ J-J had given her the envelope. ‘Like I said, we make out just fine.’

J-J was on his feet again. Less awkwardly than Faraday expected, he gave her a little kiss and escorted her across the room. At the door to the hall, she paused and looked back at Faraday.

‘See you for the rough cut.’ She grinned at him. ‘Beer’s on me next time.’

Faraday was in the kitchen by the time J-J returned from the front door. Faraday nodded at the debris in the sink and volunteered to wipe. He wanted to know about London, about the Ansel prints, and most of all about the American woman who bridged the years back to Janna and J-J’s birth.

J-J set to with the squeegee and a tiny square of scourer. He was the world’s worst washer-up and trying to sign at the same time didn’t help. The Ansel stuff, he thought, had been fantastic. Huge unpeopled landscapes. Mountains to die for. And an amazing shot of the moon rising over a township somewhere way down south. The way Ansel had framed these photos looked so, so simple but the woman, whose name was Patti, had explained about the sheer weight of equipment Ansel had hauled around, and J-J had come away half ashamed of the dinky little camera he carried today.

‘You could talk to her OK?’

‘There was someone there who signed. She’d set it up. It wasn’t a problem.’

‘And what was she like?’

‘Pretty. And nice, too.’

‘She talk about mum at all?’

‘She had some photos.’

‘
Photos?
’ Faraday gazed at him. ‘You brought them back?’

‘Yeah. I’ll show you.’

Faraday fought a rising excitement, edged with something darker. He had his own stash of photos, a carefully taped package he hadn’t opened for years. Everything was in there, every last shred of photographic evidence. He and Janna had spent seventeen months together and many of the best moments had found their way on to film. Faraday wrestling with a dinghy on Puget Sound.
Janna in her high-school bikini stretched out on the lawn of a borrowed summerhouse. The pair of them snapped by a friend at Christmas, bodies entwined, gloriously drunk. Photos like these had become stepping stones across the most important period of his life, a route he knew he could trust. Now came the prospect of a fresh perspective.

J-J dried his hands and disappeared into the living room. When he came back, he was carrying a Jiffy bag. He emptied the contents on to the kitchen table and Faraday found himself looking at the woman he’d never stopped loving.

Young. She looked so young.

He picked up the nearest of the photos. The colour had faded a little over the years but there was no mistaking the firm set of the jaw line, the mischief in the eyes, the way her mouth curled up when she smiled.

He’d first met her in a bookshop in Seattle, the corner on the upstairs floor where they kept the biographies. She’d been looking for something on Tennyson. He’d babbled on about the Isle of Wight. His mum and dad lived a mile down the road from Tennyson’s house. Winter weekends he’d walk the three miles out across Tennyson Down to the Needles. The name Tennyson had freighted his adolescence, and here he was, years later, desperately trying to turn all those heavy memories into a conversation.

‘You ever read the poetry?’

He’d confessed he hadn’t. Poetry had always been difficult, remote stuff. He’d tried hard at school but it had never happened for him.

‘No need to apologise.’ She’d smiled. ‘No need at all.’

They’d gone for coffee to a place across the street. Two weeks later they were living together, her place. She’d read him ‘Maud’ in the thin, grey light of dawn. He cared nothing for the poetry, just the sound of her voice.

For sullen-seeming Death may give
More life to Love than is or ever was
In our low world, where yet ’tis sweet to live.
Let no one ask me how it came to pass;
It seems that I am happy …

He picked up another photograph, Janna snapped on a hiking holiday, and the face of the girl Patti came back to him. She and Janna had been friends at college. She lived down in Oregon, and she’d taken the Greyhound north one weekend, camping on the floor of Janna’s tiny apartment. Janna had been pregnant by then with J-J, and the two girls had spent most of the Saturday tramping round the bargain stores, looking for cheap baby clothes. They’d brought back armfuls of trophies to the flat, piling them on the tiny table where they ate, and that night Faraday remembered buying a gallon flask of Californian red. It was the first time the idea of a baby had felt remotely real to him and they’d celebrated for half the night.

J-J pushed another photograph towards him. Janna again, face and shoulders, sitting in a window. Faraday had taken it himself, listening carefully while she talked him through the essentials – F stop, film speed, framing – and he remembered how pleased he’d been with the results. He’d shot a whole roll of them, and this one must have found its way to Patti. He gazed down at Janna’s face. In less than a month, they were due to ship out to England. There, on the Isle of Wight, they’d find a place for the three of them. J-J was due in July. Four months later, she was dead.

Faraday looked up, and swallowed hard. J-J was staring at him, his face a blur. He reached for the kitchen roll and tore off a sheet, holding it out. Faraday shook his head, turning hopelessly away.

It took a while for Dawn Ellis to get to the door. Winter
heard her footsteps down the stairs, then the pause as she tried to work out who it might be. Under the circumstances, a midnight knock on the door was the last thing she needed.

‘It’s me. Paul.’

There was a rattle as Dawn slipped the chain on the door. Then the door swung open and she was standing there in a pair of outsize pyjamas. She suppressed an involuntary shiver at the coolness of the night air. She didn’t invite him in.

‘Something happened? Something wrong?’

Winter shook his head. The last two pints had been a mistake but he was determined to say his piece.

‘Nothing, love, and I’m sorry to get you up.’

She looked at him, bewildered.

‘What is it then?’

‘Just a little … I dunno …’

She disappeared a moment, muttering an apology. Winter watched a cat stalking through the shadows. Nice night, he thought. Nice girl. Back again, Dawn had found a dressing gown. She held the door open, asking him in. Winter shook his head.

‘What is it then?’

She knew he’d been drinking by now. He could tell by the expression on her face. He beckoned her closer. She didn’t move.

‘I just wanted to say you’ve got a friend,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s important, that’s all.’

‘What friend?’

Winter stepped back a pace, looking up at the moon.

‘Me,’ he said.

WEDNESDAY
, 5
JUNE
, 2002,
08.00

Bev Yates drove north, up the long green sweep of the Meon Valley. The second half was barely minutes old in Kobe, and Russia had just taken a one-nil lead. The commentator on Five Live was gloomy about Tunisia’s chances of surviving the attentions of attackers like Igor Titov and Dimitri Sychev but Yates knew they were still in with a shout. Football was funny like that. The experts could stack the odds against you, computing the skills of multimillion-pound players, but on the day there was still room for the odd rogue factor. Like whether or not you really wanted to win.

He slowed for a milk tanker, grinding up the hill out of West Meon. Corbett had phoned him last night. The call had been brief. He was in town, and planned to stay overnight. He’d meet Yates up the road from Ainsley Davidson’s mum’s place in Balham, half nine. OK? Spared the prospect of sharing the journey to London, Yates had poured himself a celebratory Scotch, checked on Freya, and rolled into bed. Melanie, asleep beside him, had scarcely stirred. One of these days, he thought, it might be nice to get round to a conversation.

Jutland Road, Balham, was home for a cheerless terrace of red-brick houses, gazing sightlessly at each other over the potholed tarmac. Number twelve had been brightened with a lick of yellow paint, and there was a spray of pink carnations in the downstairs window.

Corbett’s black Nissan 300-ZX was parked at the end of the street. Yates left his car round the corner and
walked back. Corbett was still deep in his morning paper, scarcely bothering to glance up when Yates’s shadow paused beside him. Yates stood at the kerbside, wondering about the choice of paper. Only girlies read the
Daily Mail
.

‘Two nil,’ Yates grunted, when Corbett finally emerged. ‘Karpin played a blinder.’

‘That right?’

They walked back along the street, avoiding the scabs of dog shit on the pavement. Corbett’s bomber jacket looked new. Leather as soft as that, thought Yates, and you were talking serious money.

They stopped briefly outside number twelve. There was a newish-looking Renault Clio with a back wheel up on the kerb. Someone had run a key down the length of the car and one of the wing mirrors had taken a battering. Yates was looking at the house. The windows upstairs were still curtained and no one had taken in the freesheet at the front door.

Corbett had to knock three times before anything happened. Then came the flush of a lavatory deep inside the house and the sound of someone coughing. Seconds later, the front door opened.

‘Ainsley Davidson?’ Yates offered his warrant card.

Davidson was younger-looking and smaller than he’d imagined. He was wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and his bare toes curled upwards on the wooden floor. The boxers were a startling white against the brownness of his skin and it was more than obvious that he worked out.

He wasn’t pleased to see them and refused to step aside when Corbett tried to push past.

‘You guys ever ask nicely?’

Corbett gave him a look, then stepped back into the sunshine. When Davidson started on about a search warrant, he made it plain they were coming inside. Easy or hard, it made no difference.

Davidson shrugged, then stooped to retrieve the morning post. He couldn’t be arsed to argue. Yates followed him down the narrow hall. The kitchen at the back of the house was bigger than he’d expected, with a conservatory extension into a tiny garden. Whatever else she might have done with her life, Mrs Davidson knew a thing or two about keeping a house together.

Davidson filled a kettle and plugged it in. Corbett was already scanning the contents of a corkboard on the wall.

‘Anyone else here?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who?’

‘Friend.’

‘Like who?’

‘Listen.’ Davidson turned his back on Corbett and looked at Yates. ‘What the fuck is this? You guys walk in off the street, no warrant, no explanation, not even the fucking time of day. You don’t think I have rights here? You think I’m that stupid?’

Yates smiled at him, then opened the fridge door. Three flavours of yoghurt and an opened pack of bacon. He bent for the carton of milk on the bottom shelf and handed it over.

‘Up for the Irish game, are we?’

Willard’s first call came in at quarter to ten. He’d made it to Wyboston Lakes and was about to go into the opening kidnap session, a presentation by a negotiator from Control Risks, but first he wanted an update on overnight developments on
Merriott
. What was happening with the house-to-house calls? Who’d made a start on the CCTV? How were the Scenes of Crime boys getting on? What kind of cooperation was he getting from the media?