Angels Passing (31 page)

‘But would it surprise you?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

‘But it’s reasonable, isn’t it? All those late nights? Not knowing where he is? New stuff appearing round the house? Didn’t you ever ask where it all came from? Or was it Christmas every day?’

‘It wasn’t every day. Nothing like.’

‘But didn’t you ask? I would. Your husband comes home with a brand-new set of tools, say, or a television, or a CD player. This stuff doesn’t fall off trees, does it? Not where I live, it doesn’t.’

She gazed at him a moment, then shook her head. Terry had funny ways, she muttered. She’d like to help them but she just couldn’t.

‘You mean won’t. Let’s just get this thing straight. You mean won’t.’

She shook her head again, staring up at him. She’d come to the hotel with a single hastily packed carrier bag and now the contents lay spilled across the bed. A change of knickers. A Littlewoods sweatshirt. Two toothbrushes and a flannel in a polythene bag. A battered copy of a Danielle Steele paperback. Spare clothes for Maisie. A hairbrush. Not much to show for nine years of married life.

Ellis reached for a biscuit.

‘We’ll be listing all that gear at your house,’ she said quietly. ‘We use computers now. It’s easy to check if it’s stolen.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m afraid so. And if that becomes an issue, then so does Maisie.’

‘Maisie?’ She looked suddenly startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘If the gear’s stolen, and we can prove it, that puts your husband inside.’

‘And me?’

‘Some juries might think you’d known about it.’

‘But I didn’t.’ She frowned. ‘I mean I wouldn’t have done.’

‘So you say.’ Ellis made a tiny regretful movement with her hand. ‘But juries can be funny that way. Two people sharing the same house. Man and wife. Just how many secrets can you keep?’

‘And Maisie?’

‘Well …’ That same gesture. ‘The care arrangements these days are quite good but it’s never really the same, is it?’

‘Same as what?’

‘Having a proper mum.’

Paler than ever, Mrs Harris stared at Ellis. She wanted help. She wanted a way out of all this.

Ellis offered her a smile and then stood up, brushing the biscuit crumbs off her skirt. It was a couple of steps to the window. She stared out at the rain for a moment and then beckoned Yates over. The hotel abutted onto the funfair at Clarence Pier. During the winter, the place was empty, the cars on the Waltzer shrouded with tarpaulins. Etched against the grey skyline stood the gaunt steel tracery of a ride called Skyways. Out of season, still and abandoned, scenes like these never failed to move her.

She fogged the cold glass with her breath and then drew a little butterfly.

‘You ever come here as a kid?’ she murmured.

‘All the time. Mad for it when I could con the money.’

‘I meant in winter. Like now.’

‘
Winter?
’ Bev stared down at her. ‘Why would you ever want to do that?’

Ellis smiled, then returned to the bed. Mrs Harris hadn’t moved. Ellis took the conversation back to Friday night, back to the moment when Terry Harris had stepped out of the house en route for Petersfield, and asked Mrs Harris to go through it all again. She wanted every last detail. Above all, she wanted times. The woman stared up at her, then shook her head.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve told you already.’

‘But I don’t believe you, Mrs Harris.’

‘You have to. It’s true.’

‘I don’t think Terry went to Petersfield at all. I think he stayed in Portsmouth and at some point that night I think he came back home. You’d have known about that. He’d have woken you up. He’d have had things to say. He might have been in a bit of a mess. You’d have talked. I know you would. And that would have been the kind of conversation you’d never forget.’ Ellis’s fingers found the photo of Maisie again. Mrs Harris wouldn’t look at it.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It was the way I told you before. He was out all night.’

‘In Petersfield?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘But do you believe him?’

This time she didn’t have an answer. There was a long silence, broken by the trilling of Yates’s phone. Only days ago he’d downloaded the opening notes of the theme from
Mission Impossible
.

He turned to the window again, shielding the phone. There was a mumble of conversation. Then he snapped the mobile shut and threw a look to Ellis over his shoulder.

‘You know the video camera that was blagged from the Compton place?’ Ellis nodded. ‘They’ve found a mini-tape at Aboukir Road. Two lots of pictures on it. One of the couple from Compton. The other of a little girl playing a piano.’

‘Wouldn’t be Maisie by any chance?’ Dawn turned back to Mrs Harris. ‘Would it?’

Driving back to Portsmouth, Winter was sunk in gloom. After an hour with Steve Pallister, he’d well and truly hit the buffers. Getting a statement off the bloke hadn’t been a problem. He’d simply repeated his little fantasy about the Friday night cribbage school and happily added his signature at the end. Back in Petersfield, attempts to trace the two local lads he’d mentioned had come to nothing. The mobile phone wasn’t responding and when they’d finally got an address for the other name, neighbours said he’d gone away on holiday.

Now Sullivan was on his mobile to a mate of his in the Petersfield CID office. He’d heard a whisper about Steve Pallister and he’d been trying to check it out since last night. The conversation over, he pocketed the mobile and stared glumly out at the driving rain. On the motorway, beyond a couple of hundred yards, everything was a blur.

‘He’s flogging dodgy booze and fags,’ he said at length, ‘but they can’t evidence it.’

‘Contraband? Through the pub?’

‘Yeah. Apparently it’s a free house. He’s making a fortune.’

‘I bet.’ Winter nodded. ‘And guess who supplies him? Bloody Mick Harris.’

It made perfect sense. The reason Mick Harris paid all those visits to Cherbourg was to stock up on cheapo supermarket booze. Add ten thousand fags a run and the van loads he’d deliver to Steve Pallister would make them both very happy. Pallister would flog the stuff over the bar to selected locals while Mick Harris would pocket a modest percentage of the profits. What better reason would Pallister need to lie his socks off about Friday night?

Sullivan wasn’t convinced.

‘You really think he’d take the risk? Perverting the course of justice? Conspiracy to murder?’

‘Good question, son, but the answer’s yes. All that stuff about the Falklands wasn’t bollocks. I’ve met these guys before. They went out there for Maggie, and Queen and Country, and by the time they came back they felt well and truly shafted. Don’t ask me why or how but that’s the way it was.’

‘But we won, didn’t we?’

‘Yeah, and that’s the puzzle.’ Winter glanced across. ‘It wouldn’t matter tuppence except in situations like these it’s impossible to get at them. Older bloke I was trying to pull in Pompey once summed it up. “Paul,” he said, “I’ve been to places you can’t even fucking dream about, so put your little pad away.” That was Korea, mind.’

‘Korea?’ Sullivan was looking blank.

‘Different war, son.’ Winter frowned at the windscreen and then turned on the demister. ‘Bit before our time.’

It was nearly two’o’clock before Faraday found the time to drive down to the old ABC cinema. It stood between Portsmouth’s main commercial precinct and the big dual carriageway which sluiced traffic in and out of the city. There was a car park across the road, in the shadow of a pair of giant council blocks, and he sat in his Mondeo for a couple of minutes wondering whether or not he really wanted to put Brian Imber’s theory to the test. The worst of the headache had gone now but it had left behind a thick, silty residue. He felt uneasy and vaguely troubled. He’d like nothing more than a plate of something warm and comforting, and after that a longish kip.

The cinema was the usual post-war confection, the sheer brick walls and turreted corners punctuated by metal-framed windows. The entrance doors along the front had been boarded up, attracting layer after layer of peeling fly-posters, and the spray-can kids had gone wild on every available surface. Above the ground floor, not a single pane of glass had survived, and one of the window frames above the big display panel had been pushed out completely, leaving a gaping hole that offered a glimpse of what Faraday might expect inside. Smashed light bulbs, he thought, and yellowing walls daubed with yet more graffiti. Whatever had become of the temple of dreams?

He laced on a pair of the boots he normally wore for birding and tested the big torch he’d borrowed from one of the uniformed sergeants at Highland Road. According to Imber, there was an unsecured window round the side, the favoured entry for local kids. He crossed the road and skirted the front of the building. The window Imber had mentioned was masked by a line of bushes. Someone had been at the security boards with a jemmy and the splintered remains lay in the deep concrete gully that separated the path from the window.

Feeling slightly ridiculous, Faraday checked behind him before straddling the gully. With one leg on the sill, he was committed. There were still tiny shards of glass in the window frame and he briefly regretted leaving his gloves in the car before taking the weight of his body on his arms and swinging his other leg across the gully. Seconds later, out of breath, he was catching his balance on the flight of concrete steps inside.

The stairs led downwards into darkness. Underfoot, in the light from the window, he could see more broken glass. Dimly, where the light gave out, a radiator had been ripped from the wall and now hung drunkenly outwards, secured by pipework alone. He flicked on the torch, tracking the beam to the right until it settled on some kind of door. The place smelled of damp and neglect. Stand absolutely still, ignore the low rumble of traffic from the road outside, and for a moment he thought he heard movement.

Faraday stepped carefully downwards, the ‘crunch-crunch’ of glass echoing back from the stairwell. He pushed at the door and it began to open. Inside, he felt a sudden chill, and the soft clunk as the door closed behind him brought the torch beam whirling round. Take it easy, he thought. Ten metres away from the pavement and already this place has got you spooked.

He edged towards the wall and swept the torch beam across the yawning space ahead. This had once been one of the smaller cinemas, Screen Two or Three. He could remember sitting here, in this same darkness, J-J beside him, settling into a Steve Martin comedy or one of the Oliver Stone movies.
Platoon
had been a favourite of J-J’s. The dialogue was beyond him but he could sit and watch the action sequences for hours on end. Faraday’s torch at last found the long curve of the back wall which had once served as the screen. This was where Charlie Sheen had confronted the realities of Vietnam. And this was where J-J had upset an entire bucket of popcorn when the Viet Cong sprang their major ambush.

The noise again. Footsteps this time. Definitely. Faraday felt his pulse begin to quicken as he followed the strip of carpet up the ramp towards the back of the cinema. The carpet was wet underfoot and twice he detoured to avoid little curls of turd. Another door took him into some kind of vestibule. He paused, listening for movement, then called out, mapping the wreckage around him with the torch. There was more glass, abandoned bottles, crushed cans of Castlemaine and Special Brew, and a pile of charred wood that must once have been a door frame. There was a smell too, more distinctive this time. It was a bitter, acrid stench that tugged at his throat, and he tried to visualise living amongst this chaos. Would people really try and make a home for themselves here? Was life that bad that you’d trade sunshine and fresh air for this sour darkness?

He stood absolutely still for minutes on end, listening. Faintly, he could hear the wail of a car alarm. It went on for thirty seconds or so, then stopped. When nothing else happened – no footsteps, no sign of movement – he picked his way across the vestibule and down a shallow flight of steps at the end. It was lighter here, and as he rounded the corner he could hear traffic again. Then he stopped. Before him lay the cinema’s foyer. The ticket booths and popcorn bar were in ruins, everything smashed. A false wall had been wrenched away and kicked to pieces. Tiles, broken glass and lengths of splintered wood spiked with rusting nails littered the floor, and the area near the boarded-up doors was ankle deep in more empty cans, Stella this time.

Faraday was trying to remember the layout of the old cinema. He’d been right about Screens Two and Three, he was sure he had, but the biggest screen was upstairs. Maybe that was where the kids hung out. Waiting, as ever, for the main attraction.

Not bothering to hide his presence, he pulled a length of timber aside and cleared a path for himself up the stairs. At the top, through the sagging remains of the big double doors, he found himself in another vestibule. The floor was covered with cladding ripped away from cable runs and there were bare wires hanging from the ceiling. Off to the right, exactly where his memory suggested, was another door and another flight of steps. It was dark again, pitch-black this time, and he took the stairs one at a time, only too aware of Anghared’s warning. Structurally unsound, she’d said, closing their last conversation with a sigh.

At the top of the stairs, he knew he’d found Screen One. The long black curve of the ramp stretched away into the darkness. Stripped of seats, it seemed to go on forever. He edged slowly forward, one step at a time down the long emptiness of the ramp, the light from the torch pooling at his feet. Then, without warning, the light from the torch abruptly diffused, dropping into nowhere. Faraday stopped, chilled to the bone, rocking back on his heels. Before him was a void, a drop so sudden and so deep that the torch beam couldn’t locate the floor below. Anghared had been right. This place was a death trap.

Faraday closed his eyes, trying to still his racing pulse, telling himself that he was OK, that he’d got away with it, then he began to step sideways, easing back from the void. He tracked the torch to the left, looking for the door that would take him back to the vestibule, and as he did so, he spotted a shape in the darkness. The torch was shaking in his hand. He couldn’t hold it steady. He was looking at a tent. It was a ridge tent, green, sagging, not big, and it was about a dozen paces away. He swallowed hard. Who, in his right mind, would camp out in a place like this?