Deadlight (46 page)

Willard changed the subject. He wanted to know about the Scenes of Crime searches. Compared to Faraday’s exchange with the Vice Admiral, this couldn’t have been simpler.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing at all? All three properties?’

‘Nothing at Phillips’ place. Some traces of old blood in Beattie’s kitchen, probably animal. They’re happy to send it up to Lambeth but they’re talking pigeon or rabbit.’

‘And Gault?’

‘Clean as a whistle, except for the sofa.’

‘What did they get from the sofa?’

‘Urine stains. Someone seems to have pissed on it.’

‘Like who?’

‘Yates says Gault. According to his missus, Gault spent Monday night on the sofa. Full to the brim and totally legless.’

‘Great.’ Like Faraday, Willard had drawn the obvious conclusion. A man who couldn’t make it to the loo was hardly likely to have battered someone else to death. ‘What do we do about the cabby, then? Still worth getting Yates up to Gatwick?’

Faraday was watching the Alsatian. He’d emerged from under the pier and was now splashing around in the shallows. He should have brought a towel, he thought. Otherwise Eadie’s flat was in for the full beach experience.

‘Joe?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Part of me says it’s a waste of time. But then’ … he shrugged … ‘we’ve come this far, we might as well be absolutely certain.’

‘That’s my feeling, too. Get him up there first thing tomorrow.’

Winter took the chance on reappearing in the CID office at the Highland Road nick. Signed off by his doctor, he had no business venturing on to police property but he was determined to have a word or two with Dawn Ellis. He found her sitting at her desk beside the window. Half a dozen other DCs were bent over their PCs, tapping in data from their pocketbooks. No one appeared to register his presence.

Winter looked round, knowing at once that he’d be lost without the comforts of this little world. The piles of uncompleted CPS files. The scribbled Post-its gummed to PC screens. The trophy headlines, ripped from pages of the
News
and pinned on the wall board over the big catering-size tin of Gold Blend. One of them, to his consternation, featured a crumpled Skoda embedded in the remains of a Queen Street newsagent. ‘Hot Pursuit,’
someone had scribbled across the photo. ‘The Movie.’ Unkind, thought Winter.

‘What are you doing here?’

It was Cathy Lamb. She was standing in the doorway, nursing a stack of files.

Winter began to mutter about an address book he’d left in his desk drawer. Numbers he couldn’t do without. Just happened to be passing.

‘Bollocks, were you.’ Cathy nodded back along the corridor. ‘Come with me.’

Winter followed her to the DI’s office. She shut the door and told him to sit down.

‘What’s the matter with you, Paul?’ she said at once. ‘You’ve put Dawn in an impossible position. First you bloody nearly kill her. Now you’re asking her to perjure herself. Does that strike you as fair?’

Cathy meant it. He’d rarely seen her so angry. He spread his hands wide. Abject surrender.

‘They’re going to take my job away, Cath. Put me back in uniform.’

‘So they bloody should. And not before time, either.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve spent half a lifetime getting away with it, Paul. Now they think they’ve nailed you.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘You want a list? Hartigan, for starters. You’ve always made him uncomfortable. Then there’s a couple of thousand guys in Traffic. You know what they feel about us. Scruffs and layabouts. They can’t wait to put you away.’

‘Uniforms.’ Winter did his best to sound dismissive.

‘Sure. But the law’s on their side. And they know it.’

‘What about Willard?’

‘I haven’t a clue about Willard. Willard’s in orbit as far as I’m concerned, way out of my league. I think he’d probably miss you, if only for the laughs, but I’m guessing.’

‘What about you?’

‘Me?’ She looked at him for a long moment, refusing to commit herself. Then she turned away.

‘You’ve been good to Dawn,’ she said woodenly. ‘And I appreciate that.’

‘I thought you said I’d nearly killed her?’

‘You did, but that’s not what I’m talking about.’ She glanced round, angry again. ‘As you well know.’

Winter nodded, remembering the afternoon Cathy had dropped round to the bungalow in Bedhampton, offering her own support to Dawn. He’d watched them through the kitchen window, locked in conversation. Cathy knew as much about Andy Corbett as Winter. Probably more.

Now, she perched herself on the edge of her desk. Life in the office had put a bit of weight on her big frame.

‘He phoned again,’ she said. ‘Can you believe that? Middle of the night? After everything else he’s done to her?’

‘I know.’

Winter produced a VHS cassette and passed it across. He’d been meaning to show it to Dawn but sensed that this was better.

‘What’s that?’

‘Footage from one of the CCTV cameras. Cosham High Street.’

‘Last night?’

‘Two o’clock in the morning.’

‘Corbett?’

‘Clear as daylight.’

‘Definitely him?’

‘No question. His bike’s there, too. Numberplate, everything.’

Winter’s hand was back in his pocket. An audio cassette this time. Cathy gazed at it.

‘You’ve been having chats?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘With Corbett?’

‘Obviously.’

‘And?’

‘If you think I’m in the shit, you should listen to that.’ For the first time, Cathy smiled. She was still staring at the little cassette.

‘May I?’

‘It’s yours.’

She picked up both cassettes and slipped them into her drawer. The sight of her turning the lock gladdened Winter immeasurably. He looked up at her, sensing they’d reached a bend in the road.

‘You’ve been a prat, Paul. And that’s being charitable.’

‘I was chasing a murder suspect, Cath, a kid half the bloody city were trying to find. What was I supposed to do? Give him a little wave and let him get on with it? Of course I chased him. That’s what blokes like me are for. We’re detectives. We go after the bad guys. And when they run, we run after them.’

‘But there are procedures, Paul. Regulations.’ She waved a hand across the clutter on her desk. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know about all this stuff.’

‘Of course I know about all this stuff. Christ, I spend most of my life trying to get round all this stuff. It’s all this stuff that’s made the job so bloody impossible. It’s all this stuff that keeps blokes banged up next door when they should be out on the street. The fun’s gone out of the job, Cath, you know it has. It’s just paperwork now, and covering your arse. That’s why people are so pissed off. Jesus, Cath, the suits should be
pleased
with me. I’m the one guy in this organisation not queuing for early retirement.’

‘Finished?’

‘No. I haven’t. I’ve got a case here. I know I have. OK, I’m a bad boy. OK, I cut the odd corner. But in the end we should be talking results – and you don’t put Darren Geech away by filling in forms.’

‘But you lost him,’ Cathy pointed out. ‘And nearly killed God knows how many people in the process.’

‘Like who?’

‘Like Dawn.’

Winter stiffened in the chair. Cathy had backed him against the wall, he knew she had, but he had a right to be angry as well. Angry about vindictive, po-faced Traffic sergeants trying to put him away. Angry about what had happened to the job. Once upon a time, blokes like Winter would have been given a bit of credit. Now they were an embarrassment.

‘Maybe Hartigan’s right,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s time I went, jacked it in completely. That might make it sweet for everyone. Including me.’

‘You mean that?’

‘Of course I fucking don’t.’

‘Then why say it?’

‘Because it’s hard, Cath. And because so much of it is bollocks.’

She nodded, saying nothing. Then she glanced at her watch.

‘Hartigan wants me in for an off-the-record chat,’ she muttered.

‘About what?’

‘You.’

At Kingston Crescent, Faraday found the Major Crimes suite in a state of some excitement. Nick Hayder emerged from the tiny kitchen at the end. He had three polystyrene cups in one hand and a bottle of Sainsbury’s champagne in the other.

‘What’s happened?’

‘You won’t believe it.’

‘Believe what?’

Faraday followed Hayder into his office. Two DCs were already in there, big grins. One of them was Andy Corbett.

Hayder shut the office door with his foot. He passed the cups around, then nodded at the phone.

‘Took a call round lunchtime,’ he said. ‘Kid by the name of Hollins. Comes off the Somerstown estate. Claims to have seen Geech putting the boot in the afternoon Rookie got it. Not just that, the boy was happy to talk about it.’

‘On the record?’

‘Yep.’

Hayder was pouring the champagne. Corbett took up the story.

‘We were straight round there.’ His eyes went to the file lying on Hayder’s desk. ‘Kid put it all in writing. Full witness statement. And not just him, either. Two other little scrotes as well.’

‘Saying what?’

‘Saying that Geech did it.’

Faraday couldn’t believe it. Getting anyone off the estates to answer their front door was a major result. Securing a signed statement was an urban miracle.

‘They’re happy to go to court? Testify against Geech?’

‘So they say.’

Faraday looked from one face to another. The billion-dollar question.

‘Why?’

Hayder shrugged. Sometimes you had a lucky day, he said. This was obviously one of them. He glanced at the two DCs. Corbett was shaking his head.

‘I put it down to legwork. That and some fucking good decisions from the top.’ He offered Faraday a cold smile, then gestured towards Hayder. ‘Great guvnor.’ He tipped his cup in salute. ‘Great team.’

Back in his own office, Faraday found himself looking at a message from one of the management assistants. A London number beneath a name he didn’t recognise. DI
Pannell? The name was underlined twice, with a scribbled ‘Urgent!’ beside it.

Faraday phoned the management assistant.

‘Streatham nick,’ she told him. ‘Something to do with intelligence.’

Faraday remembered now. This was the DI in charge of the surveillance operation, the mates of Andy Corbett who were keeping tabs on Ainsley Davidson. The last couple of days, Faraday hadn’t given the young ex-con a second thought. Now, with the
Accolade
interviews bogging down, he might conceivably be back in the frame. The thought filled Faraday with gloom. Corbett, next door, was already toasting one success. The prospect of another triumph would be too much to bear.

Faraday put the call through. After a while, a woman’s voice.

‘I wanted to speak to DI Pannell.’

‘I am DI Pannell.’ She sounded icy.

Faraday introduced himself. Pannell recognised the name at once.

‘It’s about Ainsley Davidson,’ she said flatly.

To her evident regret, she’d been volunteered for a meet. If it was to happen at all it would have to be tonight. Under the circumstances, she’d prefer it if Faraday didn’t come to the station. Sorry about the short notice but the job had gone crazy.

‘Where, then?’ Faraday decided he had to go. ‘My shout.’

She named a wine bar in Streatham High Road. Early evening, say half seven, would be best for her. Green Berghaus anorak and a black shoulder bag with half her life inside it.

‘One thing I didn’t mention.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I have to be away by eight. Just in case you were thinking of making a night of it.’

She rang off, leaving Faraday holding the phone. From Hayder’s office next door, the sound of laughter.

It was the work of minutes for Winter to seal one of his spare audio cassettes in an envelope and slip it into the internal post. It wasn’t that he lacked faith in Cathy Lamb. On the contrary, he knew that she’d use every ounce of her newly acquired authority to try and make Corbett pay for what he’d done to Dawn. But internal procedures were famously slow and Winter wasn’t at all sure that a form existed for a wanker like Corbett. No, far better to give him a little push, a tiny preview of the difficult interviews to come. That way, fingers crossed, he might get the hint and bugger off.

A colleague at the next desk watched him addressing the envelope to Major Crimes.

‘Job application?’ He cocked an eyebrow.

‘Yeah.’ Winter was still shielding Corbett’s name. ‘Sort of.’

Faraday took the train to London, sharing a table with three yachties. Two of them were men his own age, seamed faces, deep tans, and as the conversation developed it was clear they’d been away for some time. The talk was of Caribbean anchorages and the gumbo in some beachside bar on Martinique, of the price they’d had to pay for a fill-up of fresh water and the storm they’d weathered on the passage home. Staring out at the neatly hedged fields, Faraday could see Eadie Sykes in a setting like that, and by the time they got to Waterloo he’d begun to wonder whether she needed a mate. There were times when the job got on top of him, and this was very definitely one of them.

The interviews with the three
Accolade
s, he knew for virtually certain, were going nowhere. Sessions after lunch had quickly hit the buffers. Neither Beattie nor Phillips was prepared to add anything to their previous
accounts, and Gault was showing serious signs of alcohol withdrawal. His replies to the simplest questions were fevered and rambling. All he wanted was another glass of lemonade.

Given this obvious lack of progress, Faraday had encountered some difficulty making the case to the uniformed Superintendent for a twelve-hour PACE extension. Only the prospect of case-breaking new evidence from the Aqua cabbie, the guy Bev Yates would be intercepting at Gatwick airport, had persuaded the Superintendent to OK the extra twelve hours. The man might have overheard an incriminating conversation. He might have been asked to make a detour to Niton Road. He might even have found blood in the back of his cab next morning. On the point of leaving his office, Faraday had been halted by the door.

‘But what happens if these three guys are in the clear?’ the Superintendent had wanted to know.