Borrowed Light (40 page)

Faraday could only agree. Grotesque. Horrible. Atrocious. He’d seen the results himself. It seemed, in some unfathomable way,
to
have changed his life. But why would someone Jewish offer that kind of money?

‘You want the truth? I was ashamed. I’m still ashamed. I’m not a Zionist. I have no wish to live in Israel,
Monsieur
. But these are my people, these are Jews, and what they are doing is wrong. So …’ he leaned forward again ‘… I was
so happy to help. I’ve had a good life, a lucky life. After my wife died, Marc looks after me. Family is important. You think
so too?’

‘Yes.’ Faraday felt himself nodding. ‘Of course.’

‘And so now the little girl. Leila. She’s coming to you? She’s going to be part of your family?’

Faraday left the question unanswered. He wanted to know more about Benoît.

‘He was in the army … my son. He was a paratrooper.
Quel gars
!’ What a lad.

Gabrielle, he said, had met him on holiday in Sharm-el-Sheikh. In those days the resort had barely existed. Benoît loved scuba
diving. Gabrielle was trying to learn.

‘
Et voilà.
He was always generous, Benoît, but that year he came back with a special present.’

‘Gabrielle?’

‘
Oui.
Our little enchantress. You say this in English … no?’

‘Yes.’ Faraday nodded. A weaver of spells. The perfect description.

‘And then they live together for a while, fall in love
properly. My son, he wants to get married.’

‘And Gabrielle?’

‘Not so keen. But she loved him. I know she loved him. Why? Because she told me so. Here, in this room. She called me
papa.
I love this word.’

Faraday said nothing. After Benoît, he thought, a grumpy English
flic
must have been a sore disappointment.

‘So what happened to your son?’

‘He died. He was in a helicopter in Corsica. With the army. The helicopter crashed.
Quelle horreur
.’ He winced, then looked away.

The memory appeared to drive the air out of him. He seemed to physically deflate. His other son fetched a box of Kleenex and
put it on his lap. Faraday, watching the old man plucking for a tissue, sensed that this was something that probably happened
often.

He reached for another madeleine, wondering how far to take this conversation. He’d come to bury a relationship that had mattered
more to him than anything else in the world. That single act, he’d told himself, would leave him with a kind of peace. Now,
thanks to his own preconceptions, he was more troubled than ever. He’d
spent thirty years in the Job learning why you never assumed anything before testing it first. If only he’d paid more attention.

From somewhere deep in the apartment came the sound of a buzzer. Marc left the room. Faraday heard a brief murmur of conversation.
The old man was looking at his watch. Time to go, Faraday thought.

He got to his feet and extended a hand. The old man peered up at him, shaking his head.

‘
Pas encore
,’
he said softly. Not yet.

Confused, Faraday wondered whether to sit down again. Then he recognised the metallic crash of the lift door in the shared
hallway, followed by more conversation. Marc was already out there, already waiting, the sentry at the gate. Faraday was looking
at the flowers on the balcony, the line of terracotta pots, the carefully tended stands of geraniums, marvelling at their
resilience. In the depths of winter, he thought, a blaze of colour and light.

‘Chéri?
’ The voice was soft. He hesitated, then glanced round. The black beret. The hoop earrings. And a huge bunch of lilies from
the florist on the corner.

Gabrielle.

Winter was back at Blake House when Jimmy Suttle arrived. He’d spent most of the day at the QA, keeping Marie company while
she waited for Bazza to regain consciousness. She sat beside the bed, stroking his hand, whispering in his ear, telling him
about Ezzie, about the kids, about how they wanted him home, back safe, and when he finally stirred she nuzzled his bristly
face with her cheek and told him she loved him. The news opened Bazza’s eyes. He seemed to recognise Marie. He even managed
the beginnings of a wink for Winter. But then the darkness overwhelmed him and he drifted away again.

Winter waited for Suttle to come up in the lift. Marie wanted no one to know about what had happened to Mackenzie. It was,
she said, a family affair. No publicity. No agonising to friends. No thunder from the Pompey tom-toms. Just a discreet silence.

Suttle looked knackered. He turned down the offer of a drink and produced an A4 envelope from under his anorak. It had started
to rain again, he said. With a bit of luck he might make it home by nine.

‘So what’s this?’ Winter was looking at the envelope.

‘Little present.’

‘Who from?’

‘All of us.’

‘Including Willard?’

‘Yes.’

Winter nodded, intrigued, then opened the envelope. Inside were
five sheets of A4 paper, single-spaced typing. He glanced at the top page. It seemed to be an intel report. He’d seen hundreds
of these things on Major Crime jobs.

‘So who’s Martin Skelley?’ he said.

‘He’s a face from Liverpool. He’s made a bob or two from the laughing powder and set himself up in a distribution business.
It’s all in there. Help yourself.’

Winter nodded, his eyes returning to the report.

‘But what the fuck’s any of this got to do with me?’

Suttle was already on the way to the door. He paused, looked round.

‘He’s got your toot, mate.’ He offered a tired grin. ‘Your boss might want to get it back.’

Bazza Mackenzie made a full recovery. The original stroke diagnosis was abandoned in favour of something the neurological
consultant termed a ‘minor cerebral event’, a description that Mackenzie viewed as a borderline insult. Nonetheless, he agreed
to take things easy for a while and reluctantly consented to leave the day-to-day management of his affairs to Winter and
Marie.

On the Sunday Winter swapped the black bin liner containing Johnny Holman’s kit for 350,000 euros. He drove Lou Sadler back
to Blake House and wouldn’t let her leave until he’d counted the lot. Once he’d finished, he gave her a lift to the hovercraft
terminal and planted a peck on her cheek before she stepped out of the car. She lingered for a moment or two, amused by this
small gesture of affection, and offered to send Monique Duvall over for a freebie, but Winter wasn’t having it. He’d seen
what freebies had done to Johnny Holman. Thank you, but no.

Two days later, with minimal information from Bazza, he drove to Gatwick airport and met three successive flights from Malaga,
standing in the arrivals hall with a large oblong of cardboard on which he’d inked the word mackenzie. Nobody showed up.

Operation
Gosling,
meanwhile, slowly ground to a halt. The Coroner recorded a verdict of unlawful killing with respect to the four bodies recovered
from the remains of Monkswell Farm. Forensic examination of the Freezee delivery van produced nothing of evidential value,
and exhaustive enquiries in the vicinity of Skelley’s lakeside home failed to unearth any trace of a body. Both Suttle and
Parsons remained convinced that Holman had been driven north and dumped in Derwent Water, probably in the middle of the night,
but supposition never cut much ice with the CPS lawyers responsible for taking prosecutions to court. In the absence of either
Maarika Oobik or the Polish driver, both of whom had vanished,
Gosling
was effectively treading water. After a couple of months bail conditions were dropped
as far as Lou Sadler and Max Oobik were concerned. His passport restored, Oobik left the country within days.

Sixty-four kilos of cocaine had also disappeared. His health improving by the day, Mackenzie maintained a lively interest
in getting a fairer settlement for his nest egg. When Winter denied having the least idea where the toot might have ended
up, he refused to believe him. Three hundred and fifty grand, he repeated, was a stitch-up. Winter, still sitting on the contents
of Suttle’s intel report, still biding his time, could only agree.

Then one night, when he judged Bazza’s mood to be near-perfect, Winter raised a name that he thought might conceivably be
of interest. Mackenzie had never heard of Martin Skelley, but ignorance was never something that cramped his style. By now
he’d dumped his mayoral ambitions and decided to stand as an independent candidate for one of the city’s two parliamentary
constituencies. The general election was barely months away. In dire need of campaigning funds, he told Winter they needed
to sort the fucker out.

‘Fucker?’ Winter enquired.

‘Skelley,’ Mackenzie confirmed.

From Paris, Faraday and Gabrielle returned to the Bargemaster’s House. On his GP’s recommendation, Faraday signed himself
up for a three-month intensive counselling course. This did little for his peace of mind but ticked the boxes necessary if
he was ever to seriously contemplate a return to work.

The sessions with the young therapist developed into a bit of a game, and Faraday kept himself amused by making most of his
past life up. The only episodes for which he had the remotest affection were the early years with J-J and more recently his
relationship with Gabrielle.

Days when he could talk about her became the high spots of an increasingly bleak existence. He described their life together
in great detail and with enormous pride. He understood the size and shape of the mountain they’d climbed together, and he
had genuine respect for the decision she’d finally taken once Leila’s treatment was complete. To accompany the child back
to Gaza and to try and make some kind of life for themselves was an act – in Faraday’s view – of great courage. One day he’d
like to think that the Bargemaster’s House would draw her back, but as the months went by after her departure for the Middle
East he had to accept that this possibility was becoming more and more remote. By June her occasional letters had ceased altogether.
Nor did she ever use the phone.

When his doctor, increasingly alarmed, suggested stronger
medication, Faraday declined. He also refused to accept that he might be suffering from clinical depression. Everything,
he insisted, would pass. And then, fingers crossed, he’d be back to work.

In midsummer he attended the party Lizzie and Suttle threw to celebrate the birth of their daughter. There he met a colleague
of Lizzie’s, a recently divorced journalist from the
News.
Her name was Gill. They had a brief affair which Faraday brought to an end within a week.

Days later a letter arrived from the Personnel Department offering Faraday the post of Theme Champions’ Coordinator on the
Safer Portsmouth Partnership. The department’s head was keen on the challenge this new departure represented and was confident
that Faraday’s wealth of experience would be viewed as a huge asset by the partnership’s various stakeholders. She also pointed
out that the hours would be both civilised and predictable, unlike the ceaseless demands of Major Crime.

That evening Faraday typed a letter to his son, J-J. Faraday said he was glad about some things, sad about others, but on
the whole he thought they’d made a great team. The Bargemaster’s House was his for keeps. Take care, son. God bless. He addressed
the letter and put it on the small table in the hall. Then he lay on the sofa as the light drained from the harbour, listening
to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

At dawn, hours later, Faraday climbed the stairs. It was a flawless August morning, high tide, barely a feather of wind on
the harbour. He stood at the bedroom window, staring out over the water, letting the rich spill of sunshine bathe his face.
After a while he began to swallow the two dozen codeine tablets he’d bought the previous day, sluicing them down with generous
gulps of the Côtes-du-Rhône he’d put aside for Gabrielle’s return.

Seconds before he lost consciousness he thought he heard the distant call of a solitary curlew but – deep within himself –
he knew he couldn’t be sure.

My thanks to the following for their time and advice: Marie-Caroline Aubert, John Ashworth, Jos Axon, Dorothy Bone, Janet
Bowen, Chloe Bowler, Debbie Cook, Nigel Crockford, Diana Franklin, David Grundy, Andy Harrington, John Holman, Jack Hurley,
Cheryl Jewitt, Hamish Laing, Martin Law, Mark Leonard, Heidi Lewis, Terry Lowe, Tina Lowe, Shelly Malan, Peter Mawhood, Clare
Sharp, Danielle Stoakes, Eunan Tiernan, Adge Tilke, Serge Vidal, Ian Watt, Alyson West, and Charles Wylie.

This book came from a journey Lin and I made through Syria, Jordan and Sinai which happened to coincide with the Israeli attack
on Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. After the first sentence, given the circumstances, the story wrote itself.
Anyone interested in what happened in Gaza, and in the wider background, might turn to
Gaza: Au Coeur de la Tragedie
by Yves Bonnet and Albert Farhat, and to
Witness in Palestine
by the indefatigable Anna Baltzer.

A special thank you to my editor, Simon Spanton, and to my wife, Lin. No one could ask for a better travelling companion.