Deadlight (44 page)

‘Pritchard?’

‘Specifically said they all stayed drinking. Had one of them gone after Coughlin, he’d have mentioned it, I know he would.’

Willard ducked back into the slow lane and signalled left for the Waterlooville exit.

‘You’re right,’ he muttered. ‘How would they know where to find the bastard?’

Bev Yates was halfway to Milton before he remembered about the Scenes of Crime team. Gault’s wife and kids had been moved out to hotel accommodation while Jerry Proctor’s boys went through their house, looking for evidence that Gault might have been involved in a beating. As soon as they’d finished, Mrs Gault could have the house back but for the time being she and the kids were occupying a room at the Travel Inn on the seafront.

She was sitting in a chair beside the bed when Yates tapped at the door. A taxi had taken the kids to school at half past eight and she’d spent the last two hours watching morning TV.

‘Do you mind if I … ?’

Yates turned the TV off without waiting for an answer. The kids had left their pyjamas in a pile behind the door and two breakfast trays had been abandoned on the unmade bed. Mrs Gault had obviously made no attempt to tidy up the little room and under the
circumstances, Yates didn’t blame her. Trying to come to terms with the fact that your husband might have killed someone, you’d have other things on your mind.

‘Have they finished yet, your people?’

Yates said he didn’t know. A full forensic search could take days but now wasn’t the time to tell her that.

‘I’ll let you know as soon as I have some news,’ he said. ‘I just need to get a statement off you.’

Mrs Gault didn’t appear to understand. She was a big, bulky woman – similar build to her husband – but there was a softness in her face that began to explain Gault’s outrage the previous evening.
Accolade
’s ex-chef had found himself a cosy berth with this woman – nice house, lovely kids – until he and Dave Michaels had stepped in from nowhere and wrecked it all. No wonder the man had gone potty.

‘Last Monday night …’ Yates began.

Mrs Gault knotted her hands in her ample lap. Angry, reproachful, it was more than she could do to look Yates in the eye.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Your husband went to the function.’

‘That’s right.’

He’d left early. A cab had called for him. After he’d gone, she and the kids had walked round the corner for a video.
Toy Story
.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve got kids.’ It was an accusation.

‘Two. If I look knackered it’s because I am.’

‘Girls?’ A tiny smile.

‘One each. Where we live there’s no video store so we have to rely on telling them stories.’

‘That’s good.’ She nodded approvingly. ‘Stories are good.’

‘Yeah?’ Yates’s pen still hovered above his notebook. ‘So tell me about Monday night. Paul went out. What time did he get back?’

‘Late. Very late.’

‘You were still awake?’

‘I was. I was worried about him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because …’ Her eyes went to her lap again. Her husband’s a pisshead, Yates thought. And she doesn’t want to admit it.

There was a long silence. Yates could hear the whine of a vacuum cleaner up the corridor.

‘Does he get violent?’ he asked at last. ‘With the drink?’

‘No, no.’ She looked up, colour flooding her face. ‘Never violent, no, not Paulie.’

‘You’re sure about that? Never threatens you? Never comes home off his head and makes life difficult?’

‘No. Never. He likes a drink, Paul. Always, he likes a drink, too much he likes a drink, and then sometimes …’

‘What? Sometimes what?’

‘Sometimes he gets … you know … so he falls down.’

‘And Monday night?’

She gazed at him a moment, then offered a small, regretful nod.

‘He fell down.’

‘What time was this?’

‘Late, I told you.’

‘How late?’

‘Gone two in the morning. I had the light on upstairs. I was waiting for him. I heard the cab come. The driver was kind, helped him to the door.’

‘You saw the cab?’

‘I was downstairs by then. I had the front door open, ready for him.’

‘Was there anyone else in the cab? Can you remember?’

The frown again, intense concentration. Then she shook her head.

‘I can’t remember. It was dark. I don’t know. All that mattered was Paulie, that he was safe.’

The cab gone, she’d tried to get her husband up the stairs but in the end she’d left him on the sofa in the living room, wrapped in an eiderdown.

‘What sort of state was he in?’

‘Drunk. Very drunk.’

‘I know that but …’ Yates gestured loosely at the space between them. ‘Was he hurt at all? Had he been in any kind of fight?’

‘
Fight?
’ Her voice rose. ‘I tell you something about my husband, Mr Policeman. I’ve never seen Paulie fighting in my life. Not until yesterday. Not until you came into our house. He’s like most men. He talks big, talks tough, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone. He’s not like that. Paulie?
Fight?
’

Yates was still trying to picture Gault sprawled on the downstairs sofa, dead to the world. There were questions here that he had to ask, but already he sensed that she knew the truth about this man of hers: that Gault, behind all the bluster and the booze, was a puppy dog.

Yates leaned forward.

‘You went to bed and left him to it.’ He took care to spell it out. ‘How can you be sure he didn’t get up again? Leave the house?’

For a long moment, Mrs Gault considered this proposition. For some reason, it seemed to have distressed her.

‘I locked the front door and kept the key,’ she said at last.

‘You thought he might go out again?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Sometimes he does that. A little walk. The fresh air. But that Monday night? No. He stayed on the sofa. Even when … you know … he should have been in the lavatory, he stayed on the sofa.’ She tipped her head back, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘He’s never been that bad before. Never.’

The first interview with Beattie began at half past ten. His solicitor had made it plain that her client was only too
happy to help in whatever way he could but would limit his replies to the circumstances surrounding Monday night. Any discussion of events aboard
Accolade
, in particular concerning Matthew Warren, were off-limits. If the police were interested in any of that, then their questions – in Beattie’s view – should be more properly directed to the Ministry of Defence.

‘If only,’ Willard had grunted, hearing this news.

Now, with the interview under way, Faraday and Willard sat in a small, bare room down the corridor. An audio feed enabled them to monitor the exchanges, a process that plunged Faraday into gloom. Beattie had obviously had a bad night. His voice was gruff, his answers bare of anything but the facts. He’d driven Phillips to Portsmouth. They’d booked into the Home Club, adjoining rooms. They’d met in the bar for a pre-dinner drink. Paul Gault had joined them on table five and they’d sunk a fair amount of wine. Afterwards, more drinks in the bar, then an excursion to the Alhambra. The barman at the Home Club had heard about lock-ins at the hotel. The place might be good for a nightcap or two.

‘What was it like when you got there?’

‘Crap … but it didn’t matter. We got stuck in. Gault especially.’

‘What were you talking about?’

‘I can’t remember. Stuff from way back. You talk a lot of old bollocks on occasions like these but I suppose that’s why you go.’

They’d been there maybe half an hour by the time Coughlin turned up. Gault had been the one to recognise him. Phillips was all for offering him a drink but Coughlin hadn’t hung around. Afterwards, Gault had blathered on about Coughlin, threatening all sorts, but he was too far gone to do anything about it.

‘Did he leave the hotel at all?’

‘No.’

‘Did he leave the bar?’

‘Yeah. We’d been at it since seven. No one’s got a bladder that big.’

The bloke behind the bar, Beattie said, had obviously wanted them out. They’d shown no interest in going so in the end he phoned for a cab. The cab called first at Gault’s place. He’d been in a real state by then and needed help to make it to the front door. The cabby had done the honours and his wife, poor soul, was there to haul him inboard. After that, the cab had taken them back to the Home Club. End of story.

Faraday and Willard conferred about the CCTV tapes. From memory, Faraday confirmed that a cab had dropped two passengers at the club around two o’clock in the morning. On the face of it, the timings were a perfect fit.

Willard pulled a face.

‘So when did anyone get the chance to have a pop at Coughlin? Doesn’t work, does it?’

Faraday agreed. When the first interview session came to an end, he and Willard sat in the uniformed Superintendent’s office reviewing their strategy for the rest of the day. The interviewing DCs had done their best, taking Beattie back over every element in his story, but already it was obvious that the ex-Master-at-Arms had nothing to add. Time after time, he’d met their questions with a stony ‘No Comment’, and when one of the DCs ventured on to new turf, enquiring about shipboard attitudes to Coughlin, Beattie had refused point-blank to rise to the bait.

From Fareham police station, more bad news. Phillips, Beattie’s mate from Plymouth, had made it plain that he’d be suing Devon and Cornwall for wrongful arrest. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to connect him to anything as bizarre as a murder. He’d spent a pleasant evening in the company of a roomful of old shipmates, got legless afterwards, and woken up next morning with a thumping headache. Thanks to the Alhambra, his days
on the Bacardi were well and truly over but any suggestion that he might have given Coughlin a kicking was totally out of order. Like Beattie, he’d given an account of his movements on Monday night and, like Beattie, he’d now withdrawn his cooperation. With some reluctance, Faraday was therefore obliged to accept the obvious: that another hour or two of ‘No Comment’ would get them nowhere.

Close to midday, Willard announced his departure. He had an important meeting at the Home Office and needed to be there for half two. There were cars going back to Pompey all the time so maybe Faraday could bum a lift. Heading for the door, Willard paused to take a call on his mobile. He listened for a moment or two, grunted a couple of times, then brought the conversation to a close.

Faraday, wondering whether he should bother monitoring a second session with Beattie, was already on his feet.

‘Dave Michaels just took a call from the MOD.’ Willard was pocketing the cell phone. ‘Vice Admiral Wylie mean anything to you?’

Faraday shook his head. One of Wylie’s staff was evidently keen to set up a meeting. The Vice Admiral had an office in Portsmouth and was due down at lunchtime. There was a window in his schedule early afternoon and he’d be grateful for a word or two with a senior member of the
Merriott
team.

‘So what does he want?’ Willard asked.

Faraday remembered Yates’s enquiries at the Ministry of Defence.

‘We’ve been chasing a guy called Harrington. Mark Harrington. He was First Lieutenant in
Accolade
and promised to come back on that missing Ship’s Investigation report. Maybe he talked to the brass instead.’

‘Yeah. Maybe he did.’ Willard glanced at his watch. The meet at the Home Office was suddenly a pain in the
arse. ‘You’ll stand in for me? Find out why they pulled the bloody report? Yeah?’

Faraday nodded. He recognised an order.

‘Of course, sir.’ He smiled. ‘My pleasure.’

Dawn’s call found Winter at the city’s dog pound, prowling from cage to cage, wondering whether the time hadn’t come to get himself a pooch. So far nothing had caught his fancy except a young, pugnacious-looking boxer, who eyed him through the wire before jumping up, throwing his head back, and howling. I’ll call him Rookie, Winter thought, and see if he gets the joke.

Dawn was back at work, chained to her desk in the CID office at Highland Road.

‘How come? I thought you were going to take another couple of sickies?’

‘No chance.’

She told him about the two a.m. call. She hadn’t slept a wink since and now she felt like death.

‘You get the number?’

‘Call-box in Cosham High Street, down by the station. That’s why I came in. Reverse phone book.’

‘And what time was this?’ Winter had his pen out.

‘Two eighteen.’

‘Leave it to me, love.’ Winter was making faces at the boxer. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

Whale Island lies to the north of Portsmouth’s continental ferry port, a lozenge-shaped scrap of land colonised for generations by the Royal Navy. Traditionally the home of HMS
Excellent
, the navy’s gunnery school, it had lately become the UK headquarters for Fleet Command.

Faraday crossed the bridge from the city and coasted to a halt beside the guardhouse. A sentry manning the barrier already had a note of his name and phoned through to the Vice Admiral’s office for an escort.
Waiting in the warm sunshine, Faraday watched queues of cars disappearing into one of the big cross-Channel ferries. One day, he thought, it might be nice to spring a little surprise on Eadie Sykes. Two return tickets for Le Havre and a week in between for some serious eating.

The escort turned out to be a smart young Wren with a bright smile and terrific legs. Faraday left his Mondeo in the bay behind the guardhouse and together they walked across towards the building that housed the administrative offices. Faraday, she said, was lucky. The Vice Admiral was the busiest, most in-demand boss she’d ever worked for. Laying claim to even fifteen minutes of his precious time was nothing short of a miracle. Faraday, who’d never heard of the Vice Admiral, was tempted to come clean but decided against it. Whatever the navy wanted to get off its chest, it clearly couldn’t wait.

‘Inspector?’ A tall figure advanced across the office, silhouetted by the light streaming in through the big sash windows.

‘
Detective
Inspector.’ Faraday shook the outstretched hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’