The Take (9 page)

Quite what the squaddies in Kosovo would make of material like this was anyone’s guess, but Faraday found himself getting more and more intrigued. What point were teacher and pupil trying to make? Was this some kind of artistic collusion, videos made to an agreed plan, or was Addison sending some message of his own?

The signature camerawork offered a clue. The stuff was beautifully shot, beautifully lit, but what was especially revealing were the series of murmured off-camera directions, just audible, to which the lovers always responded. This, presumably, was Addison’s star pupil, the Albanian camerawoman who’d so quickly parlayed a three-year degree course and turned it into a profitable career. She was the one in control. She was the one who plotted the moves. She was the one who stilled the action while she busied around with her camera, hunting for yet another angle. So what was she after, apart from money?

Faraday didn’t know, couldn’t possibly guess, but the longer he looked at the videos, the more he bought the collusion theory. Addison and his star pupil were as one. They must have been close. They must have had a relationship. They must have rehearsed a lot of this stuff, belly to belly, over the three years of her course. No other explanation fitted. The partnership, the mirrored understanding, was simply too close.

So where did that leave the current investigation? As far as the girl, Shelley, was concerned, Faraday assumed they must be at it. As Rick Stapleton had pointed out, screwing an eighteen-year-old wasn’t a crime, but that wasn’t really the point. If Addison was having a relationship with Shelley, and denying it, then he was a liar. And if he’d lied about Shelley, then it was perfectly possible that he’d lie about everything else. Hence the mud and grass on the bottom of his hiking boots. Hence, more importantly, the mask in the garden.

Faraday pulled the second box of videos towards him and extracted one at random. It was a different make to the others, different box, and there was a scrawled name on the label that had since been smudged. He inserted it into the player and reached for the remote. Seconds later, he found himself looking at a girl of about eighteen, fully clothed. She had a mass of blonde curls and a striking face. She was sitting at some kind of table and there was a dark-blue curtain filling most of the space behind her.

A voice from nowhere, a male voice, said, ‘All right?’ Local accent. Gruff, flat-vowelled Pompey. The girl nodded, composed herself, then began to talk to the camera. She wanted to say thank you for this chance to explain why the course was so right for her. She wanted to be as honest as she possibly could. She wanted to explain about her total determination to make it as an actress. The voice, by no means strong, began to falter. She hesitated, swallowing hard, and then a hand went up to her mouth and she began to redden with embarrassment. Moments later, the hand came down again, and her face broke into a wide grin. Different girl. Different message.

‘I don’t know how to say this,’ she began, ‘but I really, really fancy you. I’m not just saying it. I do. I’ve been watching you. It’s the way you walk, the way you hold yourself, the way you use your hands all the time. You’re so, I don’t know,
cool
. And it’s not just me, either. Except I’m the only one to’ – she suddenly held up a square of card – ‘admit it.’ She paused. ‘Wipe the last bit, OK?’

Faraday reached for the remote and fingered the pause button. There was a name on the card, big black lettering, and it took him a second or two to decipher it.

‘Shelley Beavis’, it read. ‘Course 99/M
I
A’.

Seven

Tuesday, 20 June, mid-afternoon

The village of Newbridge straggled along a winding country road on the north-easterly edges of the New Forest. Acorn Cottage was a pebbledash bungalow with flaking yellow paint, drawn curtains and ankle-high grass lapping the crazy-paving path that led to the front door. Paul Winter rang twice, waiting for at least a minute before setting off on a circuit of the property. Joannie was still in the car, debating whether to risk a Werther’s Original on a depressed-looking pony that was nuzzling the trim on the passenger door.

There was a garage to one side of the house with locked wooden doors at the front. Winter peered in, shading his eyes against the glare of the sun. The garage was empty apart from a bicycle, a rusting lawn mower and the usual collection of garden tools. There were oil marks on the concrete run-in that led out to the road, but they appeared to be old. Round the back of the bungalow, Winter prowled from window to window, trying to see through the cracks in the curtains, testing catches, wondering about access. Returning to the front, he gazed up at the alarm over the front door. It looked new, but there were scratch marks visible around the metal where it was seated against the pebbledash and he thought he detected a slight dent. Directly beneath the alarm, the flower bed was overgrown with weeds, recently disturbed, and when he parted them, he found himself looking at twin dents in the dry soil. Someone had been here with a ladder.

At length, he returned to the car. Joannie was standing in the road. The pony had been joined by a friend and they were both studying her with halfhearted interest. She turned away from them at Winter’s approach and did her best with a smile. It was nicer out in the fresh air, she said, though she wasn’t sure she could stand the heat for too long. Winter remembered an old flat cap he kept in the boot for winter visits to Fratton Park for the football. He retrieved it, gave it a slap or two against the rear wing, and handed it over.

‘Wear it backwards,’ he told her, ‘keep the sun off your neck.’

The red-brick bungalow next door to Acorn Cottage definitely looked lived-in. Both windows were open at the front and Winter could see a line of washing in the garden at the rear A woman in her mid-fifties came bustling down the hall to answer his knock. She was wearing an apron and a pair of rubber gloves. Winter showed her his ID card and asked her about the property next door. He was on a missing-person inquiry. Did she know a Mr Pieter Hennessey?

The woman pushed a wisp of greying hair out of her eyes. It was Dr Hennessey, not Mr. And he’d been back only yesterday.

‘You saw him?’

‘Yes.’ She had a soft country accent. ‘Well, the car actually.’

‘What kind?’

‘Black one. Big one. His for sure. I’ve seen him driving it.’

‘And you definitely saw him?’

She frowned, then shook her head.

‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘It was only here two ticks, the car. One minute I looked. The next it had gone. Must have been him, though.’

Winter asked her about the alarm system. Had it gone off recently?

‘It’s always going off. Blasted thing.’

‘And what happens?’

‘We called the police first. Then afterwards there was no point. It’s the wind or something. No one seems to know. My husband got so mad with it he went up there and gave it what for. That’s why he’s lent me a key.’

‘Who?’

‘Dr Hennessey. Every time it goes off, I just go in and reset it. I’ve got the code written down. Scares you to death, them things.’

The woman led the way back to Acorn Cottage and opened the front door, disappearing inside to disable the alarm before inviting Winter in.

‘I’ll be back at home,’ she said. ‘Help yourself.’

Despite the weather, the house smelled damp. Winter slipped on a pair of disposable gloves and moved from room to room, trying to build himself a picture of the life Hennessey had made for himself here. It was a way-station, a pit stop, no question about it. Cheap furniture, bare walls and tatty, unlined curtains that must have come from some other property because barely any of them fitted properly. In the kitchen, there was margarine, bacon, milk, three cans of lager and an open tin of corned beef in the fridge. The milk was still fresh, just.

A room at the back, small and dark, had been used as a bedroom. The bed was unmade and the sagging double mattress was slightly too big for the frame. A pair of sandals lay on the fraying rush mat beneath the window, and there were clothes hanging in the wardrobe by the door. Winter hauled out a light summer suit and held it up beside himself, remembering the ample figure from the hotel video stills. Hennessey was an inch or two under six feet. A thirty-eight-inch waistband sounded about right.

Next door to the bedroom was a poky lounge that Hennessey seemed to have converted into a study. A single cardboard box on the floor served as a dump for old receipts and there was a brand-new Dell computer on a small square table, pushed against the curtains that blocked the flooding sunlight. Winter switched the computer on. While he waited for it to boot up, he reached for the telephone and dialled 1471. The last unanswered incoming call had an 0207 prefix. Winter made a note of the number and then pressed the re-dial facility, curious to know to whom Hennessey had last placed a call. The phone began to ring at the other end. After a while, a woman’s voice.

‘Marina. How can I help you?’

Winter was looking at the prefix on the print-out on the phone – 01534?

‘I think I’ve got the wrong number,’ he mumbled. ‘Where exactly are you?’

‘St Helier.’

‘St where?’

‘St Helier. Jersey. This is the marina.’

Winter apologised and rang off. Another note. Might Hennessey have an interest in boats?

The computer was ready now, and among the files in the directory were two tagged
Patients/A
and
Patients/B
. Winter opened them both, quickly realising that
Patients/B
contained the names of women angry and mutilated enough to have initiated legal action. In all, he counted fifty-two case histories, complete with names, addresses, phone numbers and brief medical details. On the mantelpiece at the back of the room, he’d noticed a box of new floppy disks. He fed one into the computer and downloaded the contents of the
Patients/B
file. Returning to the file directory, he hunted in vain for details of Hennessey’s personal finances, then gave up, browsing instead through a selection of correspondence, trying to imagine the disgraced surgeon banged up in this threadbare bungalow, committing a lifetime’s medical butchery to his hard disk.

One particular letter caught his attention. Judging by the address, a legal-sounding partnership in High Wycombe, it must have gone to his solicitor.

Winter added the letter to the patient files on the floppy, stung by the depth of the contempt Hennessey showed for his patients. First injury, he thought, and then insult. Bastard.

Through the tiny vertical slit in the curtains, Winter could see his wife. She was still standing by the car, his old grey cap perched on the back of her head. She was looking round, very slowly, the way you do when you’re trying to commit a view to memory. She’d always liked the country, which was one of the reasons they’d settled in Bedhampton, on the slopes of Portsdown Hill, rather than find somewhere in the city itself. They had a decent bit of garden at home and they could be out in rural Hampshire within minutes. Here, though, was different. Here really was the country, thousands of acres of forest, and what made this scene all the more gutting wasn’t the fact that she so obviously loved it, but the knowledge that she might never see it again. Hence the expression on her face: pleasure salted with a kind of numbness. And hence Winter’s renewed rage at finding a letter like this.

Abandoning the computer, Winter bent to the cardboard box again. What he wanted, what he
needed
, was a lead on the state of Hennessey’s personal finances. Read properly, a bank statement was as good as a map. You logged the credits and the debits, jigsawed patterns of expenditure, looked for sudden aberrations, followed the footsteps wherever they led. If Hennessey had indeed done a runner, it might well show in the account transactions. If he’d come to grief, that too might have led to a mystery withdrawal. Either way, access to his bank statements would give Winter a flying start.

He found them in a Waitrose shopping bag at the bottom of the cardboard box, wedged into a rusting bulldog clip. The most recent statement was on top, a list of the usual standing orders plus a page and a half of cheque withdrawals. One particular transaction on the second page caught Winter’s eye. On 6 June, Hennessey had withdrawn £115,000 in cash. The sum had been covered by an earlier transfer of £133,000 from a deposit account, leaving Hennessey with an end-of-month balance of nearly £18,000 – a useful nest egg if you anticipated disappearing for a while. Winter made a note of the account number, and then the date of the £115,000 withdrawal, before folding the June statement into his jacket pocket. Getting access to personal finance data was tricky these days and some banks went as far as demanding a court order, but there were still ways and means of smuggling out the odd detail without going through the hassle of applying to a judge.

Several minutes later, armed with the floppy disk, Winter was back with the woman next door. He’d finished at Dr Hennessey’s. He was grateful for her help.

She peered up at him.

‘OK for me to lock up again?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘You think anything’s happened to him?’

‘I doubt it.’

He gave her a pat on the arm, eager to bring the conversation to a close, then paused.

‘Nice man, is he?’

The woman nodded at once.

‘Real charming,’ she said. ‘Real old school. Trust him with your life, you would.’

Faraday sensed the disappointment in Dawn’s face the moment she and Rick Stapleton returned to Southsea CID. He called them both into his office and sat them down. The two boxes of videos were still on the floor, though by now he’d switched off the fan.

‘Well?’ he said.

They’d brought Addison back to the interview room at the Bridewell. The mask, safely bagged, was ready for despatch to forensic for checks, but in Stapleton’s view there was no point waiting for the result from the labs. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, they had just twenty-four hours to hold Addison in custody. The time limit was due to expire in ninety minutes’ time. Unless Faraday managed to secure a twelve-hour extension from Hartigan, they’d have to let him go.

‘Has to be him,’ Stapleton said. ‘Guy lives in the right area. Eats, sleeps, breathes sex. Admits he takes walks where they all happened. Can’t alibi himself for any of the dates. And now turns out to be hiding a Donald Duck mask. What the fuck else do we need?’

Dawn was looking at her hands. Only when Rick got truly excited did he stoop to swearing. Faraday picked up a cassette he’d left on the desk.

‘What about his brief?’

‘She’s advised him to say nothing. He’s still denying it, still insists he’s had nothing to do with any of them. I’ll give him full marks for nerve, sad man.’

‘And the mask?’

‘Says he’s never seen it before in his life. Surprise, surprise.’

Faraday glanced at Dawn. She anticipated his next question, throwing a sideways look at Stapleton.

‘If we were right about the girl putting a phone call through after we saw her, why would he risk leaving it in the garden?’

‘He was at work.’ Stapleton couldn’t hide his impatience. ‘And we were sitting on his front door when he got back.’

‘But we searched that garden after we nicked him,’ she insisted, ‘and the mask wasn’t there then.’

‘We had a quick look round. On the way to the shed.’

‘Wrong. I had a proper look.’

‘Behind the flowers and stuff? Funny, I could have sworn you were with me.’

Dawn shrugged. In certain moods, conversations with Rick were always like this. He’d made up his mind. The clock was ticking. Charge the guy. Bang him up. The small print would sort itself out.

Faraday stooped to the video player. Seconds later, Shelley Beavis appeared on the screen. She did her party piece about wanting to become an actress and then confessed her passion for Paul Addison. As the placard with her name came up, Dawn looked less than surprised.

‘Funny kind of rape,’ she murmured.

There was a long silence. From the harbour, miles away across the city, came the faint parp of a ship’s siren.

‘OK,’ Faraday said at last, ‘so where are we now?’

Stapleton leaned forward on the chair. Irritation heightened his normal glow.

‘The guy’s guilty as fuck, boss. The girl’s irrelevant, I’ve always said so. What we’re after is the wanker who goes poncing around with the mask. It has to be him. Has to be.’

Dawn shook her head, equally forceful.

‘But why? Why would he want to do it? The guy’s educated, good-looking. We’ve got nothing on him from Vice and the college report no complaints. What does he get out of exposing himself?’

‘Pass.’ Stapleton rolled his eyes. ‘I thought we wanted a result, not an explanation.’

‘But what if the result’s wrong?’

‘It’s not wrong. It can’t be. It all fits. Maybe the guy’s tired of all that straight sex. Maybe he’s jaded. Maybe it’s a power thing. Maybe he hates Walt Disney. Maybe he needs to take a few steps back and pretend he’s some inbred retard who only gets it up in disguise. Maybe it’s role-play. Yeah’ – he nodded – ‘maybe it’s that. Maybe he gets a bit pissed at night, and forgets himself and takes things too far.’