One Under (8 page)

He wanted a proper account of what had happened. The way he’d heard it, Winter had looked death in the face. There’d been talk of cancer and all kinds of diagnostic bollocks, and some exotic operation that probably cost a fortune. Whatever the real story it must have worked because here he was, Jake Tarrant’s favourite detective, fit as a butcher’s dog. One DC, he said, had been running a book on Winter’s chances of survival and Tarrant had corpsed when he’d heard the odds.

‘What were they?’ Winter was intrigued.

‘Three to one.’

‘On me dying?’

‘Other way round. Most of the blokes didn’t fancy death’s chances.’ Tarrant cackled with laughter. ‘Me? I had a tenner. Pillock still owes me.’ He leaned forward over the table. ‘So talk me through it. Pretend I know nothing.’

Winter did his bidding. He was still trying to do justice to the crippling headaches that began it all when Tarrant interrupted again. ‘There was some bird involved, wasn’t there? Amazingly tasty piece? Funny name?’

‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded. ‘Maddox.’

‘Real looker? On the game in some fancy knocking shop down Old Portsmouth? Am I right?’

‘You are, son. You are.’

‘So what happened there, then? How come she fell for a fat bastard like you?’

‘Class attracts class.’ It was a question Winter had heard a thousand times. ‘You wouldn’t know it, but it’s true.’ He returned to his story, described the visits to the consultant up at the hospital, the CT scans and finally the news that a tumour was nesting in his brain. ‘This size … ’ He cupped his hand. ‘Saw it myself on the screen. Big as a tennis ball. No wonder the codeine didn’t touch it.’

The consultant had begun the search for a neurosurgeon. The operation would be complicated by the fact that the tumour had come through the sinus and was now growing on the nearby vein. Getting rid of it risked cutting the blood vessel.

‘That’s a litre of blood a minute.’ Winter nodded. ‘I remember writing it down. Anything goes wrong, they’ve got five minutes to sort you out before you’re running on empty. Encouraging, eh?’

Tarrant nodded. He wanted to know where the story went next, more details, and Winter realised how easy it was to forget what this fresh-faced mortuary technician did for a living. He must have looked inside a thousand skulls, Winter thought. None of this would be remotely surprising.

He voiced the thought but Tarrant shook his head. The neurobod had been right. Unusual condition. Tricky bit of plumbing. Who’d been silly enough to pick up the challenge?

‘American bloke. Phoenix, Arizona. Maddox did the legwork, bless her. Found him through a blog on the Internet. Another English guy who’d had the same problem.’

‘I was right then. Must have cost a fortune.’

‘It did.’

‘How much?’

‘Ninety-five thousand dollars. Plus another seven for fares and whatnot. Call it sixty grand in real money.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yeah?’ Winter reached for his drink. ‘You think I had a choice?’

‘No, but -’ Tarrant shrugged. ‘- That’s a mortgage job. How many blokes do you know have got sixty grand to spare?’

‘Doesn’t matter, son. Situation like that, you’re up against the wall. Some days, tell you the truth, I would have jacked it in. One morning I even asked Maddox to put a fucking pillow on my head. Yeah -’ he nodded ‘- that bad. Other days, though, the drugs they give you do a good job. She’d drive me round, Maddox. We’d go places, just waiting for this American bloke to get back to us with a decision, and you’d stop, maybe down the coast somewhere, West Sussex, no one around, and the sun would be setting, and you’d get out of the car, right old state, wobbly as fuck, but then you’d smell the air, maybe even take your socks off and go for a little paddle, sand between your toes, the water not at all bad, and you’d think well, fuck it, there’s a bit of me left yet and you’re not having it.’

‘You?’

‘It. Death. God. Darth Vader. Whoever. Doesn’t matter. If there’s a chance, you grab it. The price on the box doesn’t matter. Sixty grand? A hundred? A million? It’s just money, son. It doesn’t count. You don’t even think about it. It’s what’s
inside
the box that’s going to float your boat.’

‘And this woman? Maddox? She was with you the whole time?’

‘Yeah. Never left me, not once. Tell you the truth, she was a headcase. She had this mad plan to take us both off to Africa. You ever heard of Arthur Rimbaud? ’

‘No.’

‘Me neither. Not before I met her. But Rimbaud turned out to be a poet and she loved everything about him. He ended up in Ethiopia and we were going too but it all got too difficult in the end so we went to Phoenix instead.’

‘For the op?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How was it?’

‘Beautiful. The week before it happened I was shitting myself. If I didn’t die on the table I thought I’d end up a basket case. Wheelchair. Towel to dribble in. Potty underneath. Crap television. The works. And you know what? I had cheeseburger and chips the night before, they gave me a couple of big fat pills to sleep on, and then it was six o’clock in the morning and the whole pantomime kicks off. Injection I never even felt, faces going all blurry, then it’s four hours later and there isn’t a bit of me that hasn’t got a tube hanging out. Maddox loved it. Nearly died laughing.’

‘She stayed with you afterwards?’

‘For a bit, yeah, until I was on my feet.’

‘And then?’

‘She fucked off down to South America. I got a card just before Christmas. Load of Indians weaving carpets. Ecuador? Christ knows … ’

Winter broke off and shrugged. He missed Maddox more than he cared to admit but this wasn’t the place to say so.

Tarrant was draining his pint. Winter reached for his empty glass.

‘Same again, son?’ He got to his feet and picked his way towards the bar, glad of the chance to get away for a moment or two. Not counting Maddox, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d let his guard down like this. Tarrant was cannier than Winter had realised. If times got tough at the mortuary, the boy might consider a year or two with CID, guesting in the interview suite.

Back at the table, Tarrant wanted to pick up the threads again, talk about what life felt like when you’d been so close to losing it, but Winter wasn’t interested. Life, he said briskly, was a big fat peach. What mattered now was making the most of it, something he fully intended to do. Had he changed at all? Of course he had. Were his priorities different? You bet. Was he about to take this conversation any further? No fucking way.

‘There’s a bloke called Givens.’ He beckoned Tarrant closer. ‘Something tells me you might know him.’

‘Alan Givens?’ Tarrant looked surprised. ‘At work, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sure I know him. He hasn’t been around a bit lately but … yeah … ’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s all right.’ Tarrant was frowning. ‘Why?’

‘He seems to have disappeared.’

‘
Disappeared?
How?’

‘I’ve no idea. And neither do your bosses.’ Winter took a swallow of Stella, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘How well do you know him?’

‘So-so. He’s a bit of a loner, really. Drives one of the delivery vans. Bimbles round the city with trays full of samples. Picks them up from QA, from our place, sometimes from GP surgeries, delivers them to the analysis labs. He used to drop by the mortuary when we had anything for him but, like I say, we haven’t seen him for a while. Tell you the truth, I assumed he’d got another job.’

‘Elsewhere, you mean? Outside the hospital?’

‘Dunno.’ Tarrant shrugged.

‘Local, is he?’

‘No. I can’t place the accent but it’s definitely from the north somewhere. I’m not sure what he really thinks of Pompey. The times we got to have a real chat I got the impression he wasn’t that struck, but I may have been wrong.’

‘You think he might have moved away completely?’

‘Might have done, though I’m sure he would have mentioned it.’

‘Is he married at all? Girlfriend? Anything like that?’

‘Not that I know of. It’s not that he wasn’t friendly - don’t get me wrong - but some blokes are just a bit shy, you know what I mean? Haven’t got a lot to say.’

‘Sure.’ Winter’s was picturing the bank statements. ‘What about football?’

‘Football?
Givens?
’ Tarrant began to laugh. ‘I think not, Mr W. That’s one of the things that pisses him off about the town. He once told me he’d got away from home because everyone was soccer-mad. Then he finds himself down here. Blue Army. Pompey till I die. He hates all that. Thinks they’re all hooligans. Can’t begin to understand what all the fuss is about.’

‘Not into season tickets, then?’

‘Shit, no. Why do you ask?’

Winter didn’t answer. Instead, he wanted to know whether Givens had any enemies.

Tarrant looked blank.

‘
Enemies?
What would that be about?’ He gazed at Winter a moment longer, then the penny appeared to drop. ‘You think … ?’

Winter shrugged.

‘I dunno. That’s what it looks like. On the other hand, it might be down to something else. Maybe he’s had a stroke, lost his memory. Maybe you’re right. Maybe Pompey’s got to him. Maybe he’s gone home, back up north.’ Winter nodded. ‘Yeah, maybe that’s it.’

Tarrant’s eyes had strayed to the big screen on the far wall. A team in blue were running out of a tunnel. The roar of the crowd found an echo in the handful of drinkers who’d turned to watch.

‘Pompey.’ Tarrant was grinning. ‘The Saints game at Fratton Park back in April. Four-one and it could have been a hatful. If this is like my local they’ll be playing the DVD most nights. That’s another thing that gets Alan going, all the bollocks about Scummers. He had a go at me once about it. We were having a brew in the office and I had a dig at the Scummers, the way you do, and he just couldn’t understand it. So what’s so bad about living in Southampton? he said. Southampton?
Scummerdom?
Can you believe that? A grown man? In this town? I had to be stern with the fella, told him to watch his mouth.’ He smiled at the memory, still looking up at the screen. ‘Didn’t work, though, did it? Not according to you, Mr Winter … ’

 

In the end, Faraday and Willard were too late for the pub, so Willard elected for a curry instead. The Midnight Tandoori lay towards the bottom of the town. As Willard had anticipated, it was virtually empty.

Willard edged his bulk behind the table and reached for the menu. Promotion, Faraday had already decided, sat rather well on the new Head of CID. The three-piece suit looked as expensive as ever and there was something in his manner that spoke of a deep sense of satisfaction.

On Major Crimes Willard had set a crippling pace, refusing to accept second best from anyone on the team, fighting battle after battle with his masters at HQ. A DCI who knew him well had a theory that Willard couldn’t function properly without someone to batter, and he was fearless when it came to choice of target. There were placemen way up the pecking order for whom the then-Detective Superintendent had nothing but contempt, and the fact that they outranked him simply added to his furious sense of injustice. There had been times in his office, back at Kingston Crescent, when Faraday had felt tempted to leave the room rather than endure another second of Willard’s end of the phone call. ‘Totally unacceptable’ had been one favourite phrase. ‘Pillock’ another.

Now though, from the giddy heights of Detective Chief Superintendent, Willard appeared to have mellowed. He was the top detective in the force. What he said mattered. No one could spoil his day.

The waiter gone, he got straight to the point. ‘It’s about Winter,’ he said. ‘And this is in strictest confidence. ’

‘Of course, sir.’ Faraday nodded.

‘You’re happy with him so far?’

‘Yes.’

‘No dramas?’

‘None.’

‘And he’s doing the business?’

‘Yes. There’s been nothing to really stretch him so far but that’s about to change.
Coppice
is a runner. Intelligence will be key.’

‘Good.’ Willard held Faraday’s eyes. ‘I want you to keep an eye on him, a real eye. How much do you know about POCA?’

POCA was police-speak for the Proceeds of Crime Act. Most working detectives had given up on the small print but in the right hands, according to colleagues whom Faraday respected, it could make life very tough indeed for major criminals.

‘Confiscation orders? Tainted funds? Co-mingled assets?’

‘That’s it.’ Willard nodded. ‘This is the Exocet missile most lawyers think we can’t even unpack. They’ve got a point. The legislation looks a nightmare but the principle couldn’t be simpler. If a bloke’s life is paid for by crime, we can have it off him, every last button, house, car, bank account, the lot. It’s up to him to show the court how he legally got it all and if he can’t do that, he’s fucked. Beautiful piece of lawmaking. Should be the jewel in our crown.’

‘But it isn’t.’

‘No, and one reason for that is no one really understands it. We all fight shy. We struggle through the act, all six million clauses, and then we give up and back to business as usual. It’s got to change, Joe. And it will.’

Faraday nodded. He didn’t doubt Willard for a moment. A while back, Operation
Tumbril
had tried to take down a drug baron called Bazza Mackenzie, Pompey’s living proof that dealing in cocaine paved the way to serious wealth.
Tumbril
had been a covert operation, known to just a handful of officers, and both Willard and Faraday had been badly burned when it blew up in their faces. Two years later, from a desk in headquarters, Willard was clearly plotting his revenge.

Now he was talking about the need for a ‘champion’, a detective who could spend a year or so spreading the word about POCA, getting alongside fellow officers, putting their darkest fears to rest, explaining how the legislation worked. This missionary task, in Willard’s opinion, needed an older man, someone with a record as a good thief-taker, someone indeed with an intimate knowledge of exactly what made criminals like Bazza Mackenzie tick.