One Under (15 page)

‘You’ve checked?’

‘Yes.’ Winter took a swallow of wine. ‘The account’s still active.’

Faraday nodded. There was one major flaw in Winter’s case.

‘There’s no body,’ he pointed out.

‘Sure. But Ewart’s got a car. I’ve checked that too.’

‘How?’

‘Social worker at Merefield. She holds Emma’s file. She had a run-in with Ewart over various issues, went round to where he lives, basement flat in Ashburton Road, clocked the Astra he drives.’

‘That’s a crime scene then. Or could be.’

‘Exactly, boss. I thought you might like to take it further.’

Faraday stared at him a moment, amazed at how artful Winter could be. He was here, after all, to confess his sins. He’d strayed from the straight and narrow. He’d ignored all the careful instructions to stay behind his desk. He’d gone out there, probably on paid time, and turned his back on his
Coppice
duties. Yet now, when Faraday had every right to bollock him, even suspend him from Major Crimes, he could simply plead the imminence of yet another scalp. I found a moment to lift a stone or two, he’d doubtless say. And golly, just look what I’ve come up with.

Winter drained his second glass, then checked his watch. Faraday got up from the sofa and fetched another bottle from the kitchen. When he got back, Winter was struggling to his feet. Faraday told him to sit down again.

‘Be honest,’ he said. ‘Why are you really here?’

Winter gave the question some thought, then leaned forward, his glass in his hand.

‘Because it would be nice to sort two jobs, wouldn’t it?’

‘Together, you mean?’

‘Of course.’ He was beaming now. ‘Be realistic, boss. How else could I ever do it?’

 

Martin Barrie was seldom at his desk before nine, but this morning, after Faraday’s request for an early meeting, he’d persuaded his wife to drop the kids off and left in time to miss the worst of the traffic. To Faraday, used to the bulk of Willard at the desk by the window, Barrie’s was an almost spectral presence in the room. On a sunny day, in the words of one of the more disenchanted DCs, the man was thin enough to piss through.

Not that chain-smoking and a passion for cheese salads had taken the edge off his thinking.

‘It won’t work, Joe. There’s no way.’

‘With respect, sir—’ Faraday had taken him through the intelligence on Givens. He wanted to launch another investigation with himself as Senior Investigating Officer.

‘With respect, it’s nonsense. You’re pushed as it is on
Coppice
. I’ve got eyes, Joe. I’m not blind.’

‘You think I’m not hacking it?’

‘I think this Duley thing is open-ended. I think it’s going to grow and grow. Whether you’re hacking it or not gets us nowhere. SIO on Duley might be expecting a bit much without a deputy. Lead on both of them, and you’d be a headcase in days.’ He frowned. ‘There has to be another way.’

‘Like what? There’s still no DCI. Nick Hayder’s off sick. Petersen’s up to his eyes in the Titchfield job.’

Hayder and Petersen were fellow DIs on Major Crimes. Normally, Alan Givens would have ended up in one of their in-trays.

Barrie was consulting his diary. Then he put a call through to his wife. When she answered, he asked Faraday to give him a moment’s privacy. Faraday returned to his office. He was halfway through an overnight report from Jerry Proctor when the Detective Superintendent appeared at his open door.

‘I had decorating leave booked,’ he said briskly. ‘You’ve given me the perfect excuse. Get the policy book up to date, then leave it on my desk. From now on, I’m heading up
Coppice
and the Givens job as well.’

‘And me?’ Faraday was astonished.

‘Deputy on both. Think of the scope. You can get out at last, kick a few doors down. We’re talking win-win, Joe. Except for my poor bloody wife.’

 

Faraday kept the news from Winter until lunchtime, a small act of revenge that Winter didn’t find the least bit amusing. He was sitting behind his desk, looking glumly at a list of phone calls he hadn’t made.

‘Proctor’s lads have nearly finished at Salisbury Road.’ Faraday was carrying a handful of polythene evidence bags. ‘I’m going for the walk-through this afternoon.’

‘I’ll come with you, boss.’ Winter was already reaching for his jacket.

‘No, you won’t. I want this lot sorted by the time I get back. Should be around three.’

The evidence bags had been delivered this morning from Duley’s bedsit, the first fruits of yesterday’s search. Winter peered at the contents. He could see chequebooks, correspondence, photos, bills, a camera, a thick leather-bound book that looked like a diary of some kind, plus an assortment of other papers.

‘Has this lot been DNA’d? Fingerprinted?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What about Givens?’ Winter looked up at Faraday. ‘Only I was thinking, you know … ’ He shrugged. ‘Me and Jimmy Suttle, the old team … Yeah?’

Faraday shook his head. Operation
Tartan
, he said, had been launched this morning with a squad of four DCs. He’d put a couple of the blokes into Ashburton Road, house-to-house. Already it was plain that Karl Ewart had done a runner, presumably warned off by his girlfriend, but with luck they’d scare up a lead on the details of the car he was driving. The other two guys were chasing the season tickets, making enquiries around Somerstown pubs. The tickets had all been issued in Givens’ name but Ewart had doubtless offloaded them by now.

‘Waste of time.’ Winter was looking pained. ‘You really think they’re going to be talking to us?’

‘It’s a start.’ Faraday nodded down at the phone. ‘You’ll be belling your own contacts too, no doubt.’

‘Really?’ Winter visibly brightened. ‘So I
am
on the squad?’

‘Of course. You’ll be driving the intelligence. If you need help in here, I’ll try and sort something out. It’s like a two-for-one offer, you holding the fort on both
Coppice
and
Tartan
. That’s the way I sold it to Barrie.’

‘Do I get to leave the office?’

‘I doubt you’ll find the time. Barrie’s one for regular updates. He likes to keep his finger on the pulse. You’re part of the Management Group now, Paul. Top man. Terrific career opportunity. Just think of all those meetings.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m afraid not. Like I said last night, intelligence is key to
Coppice
. The Givens job looks more straightforward. TIE Karl Ewart, and we’ll know where we are. Nice work, Paul. I told Barrie how well you’ve done.’

TIE meant trace, interview, eliminate. Faraday’s thinking on
Tartan
couldn’t have been plainer.

Winter was looking glum again. He’d always hated meetings. ‘I’m going to be crap at this,’ he told Faraday. ‘It’s just not what I’m about.’

‘Nonsense.’ Faraday opened one of the evidence bags and emptied the contents onto Winter’s desk. ‘I’d make a start if I were you. Barrie wants us round the table at five and he’d hate it if you had nothing to say.’ He paused, then nodded down at the exhibit label attached to the bag. ‘And don’t forget to sign the docket. Date and time. Yeah?’

 

The Scenes of Crime team were packing up their equipment by the time Faraday made it round to Salisbury Road. He passed one of them on the stairs, carrying a stepladder and a handful of lighting equipment back to the van outside. DS Jerry Proctor was standing in an open doorway on the top landing, talking to the photographer.

‘Is this the one?’

Faraday was peering in at the room. Proctor’s officers had removed a number of items but it still looked a mess. The spill of sunshine through the window betrayed years of staining on the threadbare carpet, and the walls, a vile shade of lavender, still carried traces of silver fingerprint powder. There was an MFI wardrobe in the corner, the door off its hinges, and more fingerprint powder on the surface of the table that served as a desk. The Dell PC was bagged, ready for dispatch to the specialist computer unit at Netley, and someone had made an effort to tidy the piles of paperbacks and magazines that lay against the skirting board. Faraday knelt briefly, flicking through the magazines.
New Statesman. Prospect.
Copies of something in French.

A poster over the single bed in the corner caught Faraday’s eye. It showed a young protester struggling to escape the attentions of a couple of helmeted riot police. One had locked him in a choke hold while the other was steadying himself for a decent shot with his raised baton. There was a blur of flags and faces in the background and rags of drifting tear gas gave the photo an almost painterly feel. Across the bottom of the poster ran a couple of lines of text but Faraday’s Italian was far from perfect. He gazed at it a moment longer. A window on a different world, he thought.

Faraday turned back to Proctor.

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Bugger all.’ Proctor shook his head. ‘The stuff I brought over this morning might be useful and there’s bound to be something on the hard disk but there’s no evidence that someone had a go at him in here. We found a T-shirt in the corner in a bit of a state but my money’s on that kicking he got a couple of weeks back because he seems to have used it as a dishcloth since. Might have other DNA on it, of course, especially if he put up a bit of a fight. We’ll make it a submission if you think it’s important.’

‘Prints?’

‘About half a dozen lifts. We’ll run them through AFIS but could be mates, old tenants, anyone.’

AFIS was the computerised fingerprinting ID system. In a matter of minutes it would tell Faraday whether anyone else with form had been in Duley’s bedsit.

‘Anything else?’

‘Just this.’

Proctor retrieved another evidence bag from his briefcase. Inside was a handful of stubby roaches, retrieved - he said - from various corners of the room. They’d found a stash of cannabis too, and on the off chance that someone else may have been smoking apart from Duley, they might also be candidates for forensic submission.

Faraday nodded, postponing a decision. Given the human wreckage Proctor had found in the tunnel, he rather hoped that Duley had spent the evening in a warm haze of dope. God knows, he might have suffered rather less through the ordeal to come.

‘May I?’

‘Of course, sir. Like I said, we’re through.’

Faraday stepped into the room. The herby bitter-sweet scent of cannabis seemed to have settled into the furnishings, into the curtains, into the untidy row of collarless shirts and denim jackets hanging in the wardrobe. He stood in the middle of the room, noted the view from the window, the glimpse of the sea at the end of the road opposite, tried to visualise the face from the PNC printout at home in this cluttered, intimate space.

On a hook on the back of the door hung an olive-coloured beret and a black scarf. There was a brown Buddha bag as well, and Faraday studied it a moment, sensing that this ensemble was something you might affect if you wanted the world to look at you in a particular way. It was an echo of the ID shot. It went with those hooded eyes and tilted chin - another hint of challenge, of proud apartness. Duley, he decided, was a man who took himself with some seriousness.

Faraday looked inside the bag. It was empty.

‘Everything’s with that stuff I left with you this morning.’ Proctor had been watching him.

‘Like what?’

‘Notepad, Pens. Couple of
Guardian
articles from last week. Some flyer about a
Relate
meeting. Address book. Rizlas. More weed.’

‘The notepad?’

‘Nearly full. Crap writing, mind. Red ink.’

‘Mobile?’

‘Couldn’t find one.’

Faraday walked over to the bed, lifted the duvet. The bottom sheet had gone. He glanced round at Proctor.

‘Old semen stains, lots of them. Duley was either into big-time wrist shandy or he had a friend. We bagged the sheet in case we need it for analysis.’

Faraday was surprised. None of the statements so far gathered from other tenants had mentioned anything about regular visitors to Number 8. He made a mental note to quiz Winter. Amongst all those exhibits, there’d surely be a note or two, or at least a phone number. On the evidence of this room, Duley seemed to be a man who liked an audience.

Proctor was telling him now about a pile of typescript pages they’d found on the desk beside the PC. He’d only had time to flick through but it appeared to be a novel of some kind, fantasy fiction, lots of funny names. He’d seized it and had the lot sent over to the Intelligence Cell. When it came to stuff like this, he said, there were people better qualified than him to look for clues.

Faraday smiled, trying to imagine Winter’s face when this latest haul of evidence appeared at his office door. Bank statements and address books were one thing; 50,000 words of Duley’s fevered prose quite another.

‘We found this too. It should have gone over to Major Crimes with the rest of the stuff but got left out. You mind taking it, sir?’

Faraday was looking at a postcard. It showed a turquoise bay beneath a tumble of tropical-looking cloud. The sand was bone white, with a scatter of rocks, and in the foreground an empty hammock hung invitingly between two palm trees. For a second he was back in Thailand. Then he turned the postcard over and discovered a Venezuelan stamp. According to the line of tiny typescript at the bottom, the bay evidently belonged to the Isla de Margarita.

Faraday peered at the writing. Red ink again.

‘Same hand, sir. Put money on it.’

‘Duley?’

‘Has to be.’

The card was addressed to
Mia Querida, #8, 74 Salisbury Road, Southsea, Inglaterra
. On the left, instead of a message a single scarlet heart. Faraday tucked the card into his jacket pocket, perplexed.
Mia Querida?