Deadlight (9 page)

Proctor nodded. The SOCOs had crawled over everything, front door, hall door, every exterior window and every carpet beneath the window sill inside. Absolutely no sign that anyone had tried to force their way in.

‘What about this plaster cast? The footprint?’

‘Definitely fresh and definitely worth pursuing. But we found bugger all on the bedroom window above, and nothing on the carpet inside. Whoever was standing in the flower bed never went in through that window.’

‘And you’re still telling me the cast doesn’t fit any of Coughlin’s shoes?’

‘No, sir. Too big.’

‘Shame.’ Faraday frowned. ‘So whoever got in, Coughlin let in. Is that a safe assumption?’ Heads nodded round the table. ‘A friend then, is that what we’re saying?’

A hand went up. It was DS Brian Imber. A trim, combative fifty-three-year-old, he’d come down from the
Havant-based Crime Squad to head up the
Merriott
Intelligence Cell.

‘We have to ask ourselves some questions here,’ he said slowly. ‘The man had no friends. This is Billy No-mates. It’s all there in the statements from the prison.’

Dave Michaels threw down his pencil.

‘Yeah … but Brian, he has to have a friend somewhere, doesn’t he? Mates are like …’ He shrugged. ‘He had to have
someone
to talk to.’

‘OK.’ Faraday took the point. ‘So who?’

‘Haven’t a clue, guv. Yet.’

Faraday returned to Imber. The Intelligence Cell was responsible for analysing the calls Coughlin might have made.

‘What about his phone? Where are you on that?’

‘We’ve applied for billings on his land line and mobile. The forms are ready for your signature.’

‘What about 1471? Any joy?’

‘Withheld number.’

‘What time?’

‘Two minutes past midnight.’

Faraday wrote down the time and gazed at it. Coughlin had logged on to the porn site at seventeen minutes past midnight, a quarter of an hour later. Did that mean he’d only just come in? Or was he so pissed, or so preoccupied, that he wasn’t answering the phone beforehand? Had he gone out early, bought the Scotch, stopped for a kebab somewhere, and then gone home for a night in front of the telly? Or had he been out all evening and brought someone back? A stranger, say? Someone he’d picked up? He tabled the suggestion and saw Dave Michaels pull a face. Stranger murders were the toughest of all.

‘Well?’

‘Could be, boss. You look at the shots from Niton Road, it could easily be some stranger. Coughlin brings
him home, gives him a bit to drink, makes a move, gets it wrong, and the bloke takes exception.’

‘
Kills
him?’

‘Batters him. Smashes the place up. Then leaves the porn mags as a kind of message. You’re asking me whether that sounds credible? Yes. You’re asking me whether it happened? Impossible to say. For now.’

Faraday nodded, knowing it was true. The wider they cast the investigative net, the greater the chance that something – some interlocking pattern of events – might slowly start to resolve. In the meantime, all they could do was take it a step at a time, making sure they missed nothing.

Jerry Proctor went through his first list of forensic submissions: tapings, the empty Scotch bottle and an abandoned glass that were ready to be shipped to the Forensic Science Service in Lambeth. The SOCOs had lifted good prints from a number of surfaces in Coughlin’s front room and they’d all been sent over to the force labs at Netley for possible hits on the NAAFIS database. If any intruder had a criminal record, the system would flag up a name.

Faraday knew that Proctor’s SOC team would be spending the next couple of days going through the rest of Coughlin’s flat, swabbing door handles and switches, removing items for chemical analysis, applying specialist techniques to floors and carpets in search of tiny traces of protein that might indicate blood. Only when every last square inch of the flat had been searched would the house finally be available for Brian Imber’s intelligence team. Bank accounts, building society books and credit card statements often flagged new paths in an investigation like this.

‘What about this computer?’ It was Paul Ingham. ‘Anything useful?’

Faraday pushed his chair back from the table and told them what he knew. The computer guy at Netley had
already been on with some preliminary findings from Coughlin’s cloned hard disk. It was a relatively old machine, no real decoding problems. They’d taken a preliminary look at his e-mails without turning up anything significant, but a number of conversations retrieved from chat rooms and newsgroups looked a great deal more promising. Coughlin’s nickname, it appeared, had been ‘Freckler’. More detailed analysis would follow.

It was Brian Imber who asked the obvious question.

‘What kind of conversations?’

Faraday flicked back through his notes.

‘Pretty nasty,’ he said at last. ‘Apparently there’s a protocol in these newsgroups but he appears to have ignored all that.’

‘Nasty how?’

‘Obscene. The man had sex on the brain.’

‘You’ve got details? Special friends he might have made?’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s a thought, though, eh?’

Faces brightened around the table. These men were far too busy to explore the delights of chat rooms for themselves but there was a collective awareness that the internet had added an extra layer of possibilities for anyone determined to make serious mischief. Hence the specialist Computer Crime Unit at Netley.

Imber leaned forward. He had another question. They’d all been at last night’s briefing. They’d all heard what Corbett, the new guy, had to say. So what was the latest on this Davidson?

Faraday gazed down at his pad. The truth was that he didn’t know, not until Corbett and Yates got back from London. He glanced at his watch, wondering why they hadn’t heard already.

‘It’s an active line of enquiry,’ he said woodenly. ‘And I’ll keep you posted.’

Corbett was in his Nissan before he made the call to Dave Michaels. Yates stood at the kerbside, gazing down at him through the open car window. They’d left Davidson and Marie Elliott at number twelve. The two-hour interview had added absolutely nothing to Davidson’s first account of his movements on Monday night. He and Marie had been at it most of the evening. Afterwards, on and off, they’d gone to sleep. Next day, they’d driven to London. Their statements, all too brief, gave them absolutely no opportunity to pay a midnight visit to Niton Road.

From the car, Corbett had finally managed to raise Dave Michaels. Briefly, he described the morning’s exchanges. When Michaels asked for an opinion, a gut feeling, he began to laugh.

‘Davidson’s talking bollocks,’ he said. ‘If he really expects me to believe a word of it, he’s even thicker than I think he is.’

‘And the girlfriend?’

‘In it up to her arse.’

‘So what do we have for evidence?’

‘Leave it to me, skip. I’ll bell you again later.’ Corbett grinned to himself and then put the mobile on the dashboard. Yates, watching, wondered whether he’d been somewhere else for the last two hours. He’d only heard one end of the conversation but that was more than enough.

‘How do you make that out, then?’ He nodded at the mobile.

Corbett gazed up at him. Impatience verging on something close to contempt.

‘You’re telling me you believed that little twat?’ He offered Yates a cold smile, then reached for his ignition keys. ‘I’ve got a couple of calls to make. See you back at the nick.’

Winter got the go-ahead from Cathy Lamb at noon.

Banged up with Hartigan for most of the morning, she returned to Highland Road to find a note from Winter suggesting a search warrant on Shelley Geech’s flat. She lived in a block off Somers Road and he had reason to believe it might repay a visit. Face to face, pressed for a reason why, Winter talked vaguely about conversations with a trusted source. Bloke would never let him down. Chiefly because he had so much to lose if he did.

‘And what does the source say?’

‘The kid’s carrying for Bazza Mackenzie.’

‘You believe him?’

‘I do, boss. And a couple of tenths of smack might put us in the driving seat. We’ve got a choice, haven’t we? Another trillion hours of overtime or a punt on Geech’s place. Take young Darren out, and Mr Patel can make a decent living again.’

Cathy Lamb, her head still aching after the ninety-minute harangue from Hartigan, pondered the risks.

‘You need back-up?’

‘Only Dawn.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Positive. If we hit the big one, you might want to bring in a POLSA team. In which case I’ll secure the premises and give you a call.’

‘Do that. And listen,’ – she gave him one of her sterner looks – ‘watch your bloody step.’

Winter and Dawn Ellis shared a microwaved pasty for lunch, a brief stand-up snack in the first-floor room that served as a help-yourself canteen. Ellis looked exhausted. She’d taken another of the breather calls last night, barely an hour after Winter had appeared on her doorstep. She’d done the usual, tried 1471, but it was number withheld again and she’d not been able to get to sleep afterwards, waiting in the darkness in case the phone should ring a second time. When Winter suggested she do something about it – talk to BT or even have a word with
Cathy Lamb – she shook her head. She’d handle it by herself, she said. She wasn’t that feeble.

After lunch, they took Ellis’s car, found a magistrate to swear the warrant, and then drove to Somerstown. Early afternoon, the estate was quiet. Leaving the little blazered Peugeot amongst a litter of broken bottles in a lay-by off the street, they took the stairs to the third floor. Shelley Geech’s flat was at the end of the walkway. Winter’s second knock brought her to the door. She was a thin, pallid, harassed-looking woman who refused to return Winter’s smile. She wore a 1999 Pompey away top over patched black jeans and inspected the warrant with barely a flicker of interest.

‘That’d be Darren,’ she said.

The boy’s bedroom lay down the hall. The stench of stale chip fat was overpowering and Winter turned to warn Ellis about a puddle of something evil outside Darren’s door. Shelley Geech was banging around inside the kitchen but finally reappeared, a cigarette dangling from her fingers.

‘He’s in here?’ Winter nodded at the bedroom door.

‘Still asleep. Likes to lie in.’

‘Ever go to school, does he?’

‘No.’

Winter pushed at the door. The curtains were still closed, but under the Pompey poster on the wall he could see the hump of a body in the single bed. A dog lay in a hollow of the duvet, a small cairn terrier. Apart from an MFI wardrobe with its door hanging off, the room was bare of furniture.

Winter reached down in the half-darkness and shook the boy awake. There was a swishing noise and a sudden flood of sunshine as Ellis pulled the curtains back. The dog yapped and jumped off the bed.

‘Geech?’

A face appeared from under the duvet, puffy with sleep. It took a second or two for Geech to work it out,
then he was on his feet by the bed. Grubby white boxers. Stick-thin legs.

‘Where’s my fucking dog?’

‘Sit down,’ Winter told him.

The dog started up again, in the hall this time, and Geech made a dive for the open door. Winter caught him and threw him backwards on to the bed. There was a sharp, bony crack as the back of his head hit the wall and Geech yelped with pain. The moment he tried to struggle off the bed, Winter sat on him.

‘The wardrobe.’ Winter had turned to Ellis. ‘But watch yourself.’

Ellis stepped across the room, pulling on a pair of heavy-duty gloves, and began to examine the wardrobe. It was virtually empty inside – grubby-looking jeans hanging on the rail beside a couple of identical bomber jackets, brand new, that were probably nicked. She went through the pockets one by one, then fetched a chair and took a good look at the top edge of the door. Even kids knew how to use a router, hollowing out a little cavity to stash gear, but she could see no trace of interference on the scuffed MDF. Finally, she got down on her hands and knees and felt around in the tiny space beneath the bottom of the wardrobe. It took her a full minute to confirm that there was nothing there.

‘You’re sure?’ Winter was frowning.

Ellis tried again, lying full length on the threadbare carpet.

‘Nothing,’ she confirmed. ‘Clean as a whistle.’

‘Try inside again.’

She did so, pulling the clothes out this time, checking the seams as well as the pockets. Geech watched her, kicking out against the weight of Winter’s body. Geech’s mother, meanwhile, had wandered back to the kitchen.

At last, Ellis abandoned the search and put the clothes back in the wardrobe. She’d found nothing.

‘OK?’ Geech spat the word out. ‘Happy now, are you?’

Winter looked reproachful for a moment, then stood up. The warrant gave him the authority to search the rest of the flat but he knew it wouldn’t be worth the effort. For whatever reason, Rookie had got it wrong.

Outraged, and still half-naked, Geech followed them to the front door, screaming abuse. Most of it went over Winter’s head but the word ‘cunt’ brought him to a halt. He turned on Geech and told him to shut his mouth. Any more crap like that and he’d turn the place over. Then he bent quickly and grabbed the dog. There was a collar round its neck, with a little silver ID disc. Ellis’s eyes were better than Winter’s. The dog peered up at her through a fringe of hair. He could feel it shivering with excitement.

‘His name’s Charlie,’ Ellis said. ‘There’s a local number. 92851933.’

Winter shouted for Shelley Geech. She appeared from the kitchen.

‘Who’s dog is this?’

She peered at the little terrier as if she’d never seen it in her life before.

‘Darren’s,’ she said at last. ‘Never lets it out of his sight.’

‘Had it from the off, has he? Got it as a puppy?’

‘Fuck knows.’ She shrugged. ‘Where’s your phone?’

‘They cut it off.’

‘What was the number?’

‘92874 …’ She frowned. ‘Can’t remember.’

‘Excellent.’ He beamed down at Geech. ‘This dog’s nicked. Stolen property. I’m seizing it.’