No Lovelier Death

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Authors: Graham Hurley

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No Lovelier Death
Faraday & Winter [9]
Hurley, Graham
Hachette UK (2009)

A judge and his wife go away on holiday and lose everything. While they
are away their 17-year-old daughter throws a party, it goes out of
control, there is a riot, and she and her boyfriend are murdered. A
massive police investigation, stretching the force's resources to
breaking point, is launched with DI Faraday in charge. The judge's
neighbor who has promised to keep a eye on things while he was away
feels he owes the man a debt. And he has his own reputation to think
about. He wants the name of the killer. Perhaps it's the neighbor, Bazza
McKenzie, a man who made his fortune supplying the city with class-A
drugs. Or maybe it's the man in his organization charged with getting
the job done, ex-DC Paul Winter. In Graham Hurley's gripping new crime
thriller Faraday and Winter are finally on the opposite sides of the
law, but they're both after the same thing. Paul Winter is treading his
most dangerous line yet.

Table of Contents
 
 
Also by Graham Hurley from Orion
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT OF ENGAGEMENT reaper
THE DEVIL’S BREATH
THUNDER IN THE BLOOD
SABBATHMAN
THE PERFECT SOLDIER
HEAVEN’S LIGHT
NOCTURNE
permissible limits
AIRSHOW (non-fiction)
Detective Inspector Joe Faraday Investigations
TURNSTONE
THE TAKE
ANGELS PASSING
DEADLIGHT
cut to black
BLOOD AND HONEY AND HONEY
ONE UNDER
THE PRICE OF DARKNESS
 
  
 
No Lovelier Death
 
 
GRAHAM HURLEY
 
 
Orion
 An Orion ebook
 
Copyright © Graham Hurley 2009
 
All rights reserved
 
 
The right of Graham Hurley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
 
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
 
 
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Orion
 
An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group
 
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
 
London wc2H 9ea
 
 
An Hachette UK Company
 
 
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
 
eISBN : 978 1 4091 0691 3
 
ISBN 978 0 75289 906 0 (Export Trade Paperback)
 
 
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
 
 
 
 This ebook produced by Jouve, France
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself
Richard II,
William Shakespeare
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the following for their time and patience: Rory Beard, Klone Boams, Dorothy Bone, Theo Chadna, Martin Chudleigh, Dr Debbie Cook, Nigel Crockford, Shirley Dinnell, Robert Doolan, John Hamer, Mark Harper, Martin Harrison, Jack Heasman, Barry Hill, Jack Hurley, Cheryl Jewitt, Neil Keeping, William Lambert, Terry Lowe, Tina Lowe, Jane Moody, Simon Parker, Lara Pechard, Jennifer Pollitt, Kevin Prior, Dave Sackman, Katie Sage, Christine Searle, Danielle Stoakes, Tony Tipping, Scott Whiffing, Nathalie West, Jessica Wretlind and Charles Wylie.
Bruce Marr and Paul O’Brien from the Portsmouth Preventing Youth Offending Project gave me valuable insights into Pompey youth culture while James Priory, Headmaster of Portsmouth Grammar School, was extremely generous with the temporary loan of a handful of his sixth-formers.
Viv Firman shared her poolside coaching secrets and introduced me to the awesome world of high-performance swimming. Dedication, at this level, is too small a word.
For D/I John Ashworth, a special mention. Along with Roly Dumont and Steve Watts, he’s been with Faraday from the beginning. If the series has won a reputation for authenticity, then much of the credit should go to their collective experience, wisdom and trust.
The usual bouquets to my editor, Simon Spanton, who has piloted the series into extremely challenging fictional waters, and to my wife, Lin, who is - as ever - in charge of the survival gear.
To Jack and Hannah
with love
Chapter one
SUNDAY, 12 AUGUST 2007.
02.29
Craneswater is the best address that money can buy in Portsmouth. Tucked away at the bottom of the island, with a Southsea postcode and regular calls from the Waitrose home delivery service, it offers privacy, neighbourliness and a certain peace of mind. Handsome Edwardian villas behind high brick walls. Ample space for the Volvo Estate and the wife’s Porsche. Invitations to tennis tournaments, with the promise of a poolside barbecue afterwards. Craneswater, Faraday had always believed, was the one corner of Pompey that somehow belonged to another city. Respectable. Civilised. Safe.
Faraday pulled his rusting Mondeo to a halt. It was half past two in the morning. Beyond the
No Entry
tape at the end of Sandown Road, he could see a line of white minibuses. On the other side of the road, two uniformed patrol cars and three white Ford Transit vans. Two of the vans, with their heavy metal grilles, belonged to the city’s Police Support Unit. The third, an incomer, was badged with the logo of the FSU.
The presence of the Force Support Unit was the clearest possible evidence that Detective Chief Inspector Gail Parsons hadn’t been joking. On the phone, summoning him from a hard-won sleep, Faraday’s immediate boss on the Major Crime Team had sounded shaken, even alarmed. Something substantial had clearly kicked off.
There were coppers everywhere: FSU guys in the full ninja gear, little knots of officers staring up at a big house on the left, an obviously harassed uniformed Inspector muttering into a mobile. Further down the road, a guy with a boisterous Alsatian was locked in conversation with a couple of blokes in forensic suits from Scenes of Crime.
Faraday produced his warrant card for one of the uniforms behind the tape. As he lowered the window, the music engulfed him, hammer blows of drum and bass, loud enough to make his bones ache. The uniform bent to the window. Parking was already tight. There might be spaces round the corner. Faraday nodded, still gazing at the scene in Sandown Road. The big house on the left, he thought. Party time.
The car parked, he found DCI Parsons round the corner in a huddle with Jerry Proctor. Proctor was a Crime Scene Coordinator. He rarely attended for anything less than homicide. The music, this close to the big house, was deafening, the shuddering bass line overscored with the drunken yells and whoops of partying adolescents.
‘What’s going on?’ Faraday mouthed. Windows in the house were all curtained, occasional chinks of light framing a glimpse of faces peering out.
Proctor spared Faraday a nod of welcome, then bent again to catch something Parsons was trying to say. She was a small squat woman with a huge chest and a definite sense of presence. Faraday had yet to draw his own conclusions but she’d arrived in the Major Crime Department with a reputation for ruthless self-advancement. Thirty five was young to have made Detective Chief Inspector.
He stepped back into the road. An investigator from the Scenes of Crime team hurried past with a couple of lamps on lighting stands. Faraday watched him as he disappeared into a driveway further down the street. This property, equally grand, was next door to the party house and something familiar about the heavy metal gates snagged in Faraday’s memory. He stared at them a moment, blaming the lateness of the hour and a lingering befuddlement that went with the best part of a bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône. Then he had it.
‘Bazza. Our old mate. Wouldn’t believe it, would you?’
Faraday, recognising the gruffness of the voice, turned to find a familiar looming presence beside him. Jerry Proctor was a big man, slightly intimidating in his sheer bulk, a veteran of countless crime scenes. Faraday rated him highly, trusted his judgement. DCI Parsons had disappeared.
‘So what’s the score?’ Faraday shouted. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Bunch of kids. Hundreds of the little scrotes. The party kicked off early and it’s got worse ever since. If it was my house, and you came back to that, I’d be suicidal.’
‘Who owns it?’
‘Some judge. He’s away on holiday, poor bastard.’
‘And that’s it?’ Faraday was looking at the line of police vehicles, the suited SOC guys, the heads bent to mobiles. Even a riot didn’t merit a response like this.
Proctor shot him a look. ‘No one’s told you? About Baz?’
‘No.’
Proctor studied Faraday a moment, then gestured down the road towards the still-open gates. Somewhere quieter. Somewhere they could have a proper conversation.
Faraday fell into step beside him, picking his way between the mill of officers. Bazza Mackenzie was a career criminal who’d turned his monopoly on cocaine supply into a major business empire. On one famous occasion Major Crime had tried to bring him down. Operation
Tumbril
, largely covert, had been blown to pieces by Mackenzie himself and Faraday was one of the CID officers who’d been hurt in the subsequent post-mortem.
Since then, years down the line, Bazza had gone from strength to strength. Twenty million quid’s worth of washed narco-loot had given him a portfolio of businesses from tanning salons and seafront hotels to property developments in Dubai and Spain. Faraday had never believed in the inevitable triumph of virtue and justice but Bazza Mackenzie, in his new incarnation, was the conclusive evidence that crime paid.
They were standing across the road from number 13, denied access by more tape. The Crime Scene Investigator must have set up his stands in the garden because the back of the house was washed with a hard bluish light. Faraday looked up at the rooftop balcony with its apron of smoked glass. The beach and the Solent were barely half a mile away. From his Craneswater chateau, Faraday thought, Mackenzie was King of the City.
‘He’s still living there?’
‘Yeah. Though just now he’s down at the Bridewell.’
‘We’ve arrested him?’
‘Too right, we have.’
‘What for?’
‘Sus homicide. Two bodies. Both beside his pool.’
 
Winter was asleep when his mobile began to trill. He groped on the floor beside the bed and struggled up on one elbow to check caller ID. Sweet Marie. Bazza’s missus.

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