No Lovelier Death (15 page)

Faraday sat back, gazing at the rooftops beyond the car park. Until the judge and his wife returned there’d be no prospect of a proper audit, but Suttle was surely right. Saturday night would have turned into a free-for-all, the Christmas of your dreams. Help-yourself time. A real gift.

‘So we’re saying it’s all down to the chavs, are we?’

‘For it all kicking off? Definitely. For a spot of pillaging, a spot of social revenge - no question. The rest - Rachel, the boy Hughes - I’ve no idea.’

‘What about Rachel herself? Any glimpses?’

‘Plenty. Everyone’s agreed that she was pissed, in fact extremely pissed, but no one’s suggesting she was slutting it up. Apparently she started drinking early, just the way we heard it from her mate, and my guess is she probably never stopped. As things got tricky, she seemed to lose her grip completely. A couple of the girls talk about her being in tears, really emotional, mainly because of what might happen to the house. One of them said she was terrified of her father, especially of what would happen if we got involved. That might be a bit strong but once things really kicked off she’s in a place no one wants to be. All these kids kicking the shit out of the family heirlooms and fuck all she can do about it. Not nice.’

‘What about the incident in the old man’s study? The kids on the desk?’

‘Most of them didn’t see it, not for real. Word got round, of course, like it would, but it was mainly in connection with the lad Berriman. One of the PGS girls said he put the rugby lads to shame.’

‘Did they see Berriman as a chav?’

‘Oddly enough, no. But I think that’s because a lot of them knew him. He’d been with Rachel for years, of course. That made him human, gave him visiting rights.’

The phrase made Faraday laugh. On another double murder, barely a year ago, Suttle had played a blinder, again in the intelligence role. This time he showed every sign of repeating the trick.

Faraday had been thinking hard about Rachel. At some point in the evening she must have left the party and gone next door to Mackenzie’s place. Which meant, in turn, that somebody must have seen her.

‘They did, boss. At least I think they did. And the timeline makes sense.’

Around half eleven, he explained, the wreckers had moved into the Aults’ kitchen. A bunch of Rachel’s mates had been in there, mainly girls, watching in disbelief as a food fight started. Eggs from the fridge. Bags of flour. Bottles of tomato sauce. Jars of pickle. Anything they could lay their hands on.

‘Apparently the stuff was everywhere - mayonnaise, balsamic vinegar, pesto, the lot.’

Faraday nodded. He’d seen the Scenes of Crime shots on Proctor’s laptop. One of the kitchen walls looked like an early Jackson Pollock.

‘And Rachel?’

‘Two of these girls say she came into the kitchen. They remember because she was so upset, as she would be, but there was something else about her. She was holding her hand to her face as if someone had smacked her. One of the girlies tried to talk to her but she didn’t want to know. At one point her hand came down and there was blood around her mouth.’

‘Did she say anything?’

‘Nothing they mentioned.’

‘Then what?’

‘She left.’

‘
Left?
’

‘Went out through the back door. I got a plan of the property from Jerry. Here …’

He unfolded a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. Number 11 Sandown Road was surrounded by a largish garden. The kitchen door, said Suttle, opened onto the side of the garden that adjoined number 13. Getting into Mackenzie’s place via the street wasn’t an option because his electronic gates were locked.

So access had to be over the shared wall.

‘And that’s possible?’ Faraday was gazing at the plan.

‘Jerry says yes. There’s a pile of wood stacked against the wall next to a little gazebo thing. Just here.’ Someone had marked the position with a pencilled cross. ‘He says it would be easy just to climb on the wood pile and hop over the wall. Especially if you knew the garden well.’

‘Which she did.’

‘Of course.’

Faraday nodded.

‘And Hughes? The boyfriend?’

‘Apparently, around this time he was looking for her. One of the rugby guys said he had a conversation with him. He said Hughes was pretty much out of it too.’

‘And what happened?’

‘The witness didn’t know.’

‘What about the girls in the kitchen?’

‘They’d moved on.’

‘So no one saw Hughes leave?’

‘Apparently not.’ Suttle was looking at the pile of transcripts.

Faraday pushed his chair back from the desk, easing the cramp in his legs. Hughes and Rachel had had the run of the house for the best part of a fortnight. Hughes would have got to know the place, got to find out about the short cut to next door. Given the chaos at the party house, unable to find Rachel, he might well have concluded that she’d legged it over the garden wall. In a full-scale riot attention would have been turned elsewhere. It was more than possible, therefore, that Hughes had followed her.

‘Did anyone else leave?’

‘Not that anyone’s saying.’

‘Not Berriman?’

‘Hard to be certain.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘One witness talked of a tall bloke going out through the front door. She remembered because a neighbour or someone had been on the doorstep having a moan about the noise and some of the chavs were trying to barricade themselves in. The tall bloke wasn’t having it.’

‘Did she know Berriman, this witness?’

‘That’s not clear.’

‘Was she a friend of Rachel’s?’

‘She says she was, but one of the interviewers left a note on the transcript. He thinks she was lying. To cover her arse.’

‘So it might have not been Berriman? Is that what we’re saying?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘And time-wise?’

‘That’s not clear either.’

Faraday frowned. Another thought. ‘How come the girls in the kitchen were so sure of the time?’

‘Easy. There was a clock on the wall. It came down during the food fight.’ Suttle was grinning. ‘And it stopped at twenty-five to midnight.’

Faraday reached for a pad and began to construct a timeline. At around nine the first party guests arrive. An hour or so later Berriman turns up with a bunch of his mates. After that comes a small army of intruders. Soon afterwards the first real sign of trouble.

By around eleven, kids are trashing the old man’s study. Matt Berriman intervenes. Afterwards he takes Rachel along to the upstairs bathroom, locks the door. They may - or may not - have had sex together. Either way, she’s last seen half an hour later, stepping out into the darkness of the garden. Her boyfriend, Gareth Hughes, appears to be looking for her. Matt Berriman may - or may not - have left by the front door.

An hour later the Mackenzies arrive back from a dinner party. It’s obvious that events next door are out of control. Bazza intervenes, sparking yet more violence, while his wife makes a treble nine. The call is logged at Netley at 12.39. In the party house Matt Berriman comes to Bazza’s rescue and bundles him out into the street. His wife packs him off home, then waits for the cavalry to arrive.

At 12.51 the first response units turn up. By one o’clock Marie’s relaxed enough to go home and check on her husband. Minutes later she’s back on the street, looking for a policeman. Two bodies beside her swimming pool. Both of them dead.

Faraday went through the sequence afresh, testing every link with Suttle. Then he eyed the transcripts again.

‘What else?’

‘Not a lot, boss.’

‘How about all the charlie? Where did that come from?’

‘No one’s saying for sure, but a couple of Rachel’s lot mentioned the name Danny. None of them are brave enough to take a look at a face or two but the name’s still in the frame. I put a call into Drugs Intel, still waiting on a reply. The coke market’s up for grabs just now, the way I hear it.’

Faraday got to his feet and stepped across to the window. Until Suttle appeared with his bursting files of witness statements, he’d felt remarkably rested after the nightmare of the weekend. Now, confronted yet again with the sheer scale of this investigation, he barely knew where to turn.

At the centre of everything, burned deep into his brain, were the pale dead faces of the two victims. The statements, later, might prove crucial. But at this stage they were simply a kaleidoscope of impressions, a prism through which you caught fleeting glimpses of the last hours of Rachel Ault’s young life. She was pissed. She was distraught. She hadn’t got a clue what was going on. Was that any kind of way to end it all? In a fog of vodka? Weaving from room to room in a house you thought you knew? Driven to seek some kind of solace, some kind of peace and quiet, next door? Wrecked beyond description?

For the umpteenth time he tried to imagine a chain of events that could have taken her to Mackenzie’s place, could have led to a confrontation, could have somehow accounted for a knife plunged deep into her belly. In truth there was a multitude of explanations. Jealousy. Revenge. Blind rage. Alcohol. Payback. Whatever. But where to start?

Faraday shut his eyes a moment. Lately, he knew, the job had started to get the better of him. Now, a vague feeling of inadequacy had sharpened into something much closer to despair. Her face again, her eyes, the way that death had opened her lips. The unvoiced question: why is this happening to me?

‘There’s just one other thing, boss …’

‘What’s that?’

‘One of the chavs, a girl. She’s there in a couple of the statements - more than that, maybe half a dozen. No one’s giving her a name, and no one appears to have known her, but basically they’re all saying the same thing.’

‘Which is?’

‘That she was scary. Really scary. Shaved head. Face furniture.

Tats. The lot. Even her mates seemed to be frightened of her.’

‘Are we talking girlfriends?’

‘Blokes too. No one ever went near her.’

Faraday nodded. Matt Berriman had mentioned someone similar in Ault’s study. Shaved head. Tattoos. Getting the lads to piss on the family photos.

‘Do we have a name?’

‘No. It seems she was with a younger kid, a boy. He was the one who tagged all the pictures.’

‘With the black aerosol?’

‘Yeah. They used a knife too.’

‘A
knife
?’

‘Exactly. The lad did the tagging. She did the rest.’

‘With the knife?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What kind of knife?’

‘No one’s saying.’

‘Shame.’

Faraday remembered the Scenes of Crime shots on Jerry Proctor’s laptop, the shreds of canvas hanging from the artwork on the Aults’ wall. Most of the stuff had been portraits. Faces slashed, he thought. Lives disfigured.

‘We need the mobe footage.’ He was thinking aloud. ‘You want to give Netley a ring?’

MONDAY, 13 AUGUST 2007.
10.59

Winter had waited nearly half an hour by the time Matt Berriman stepped into the office at the swimming pool. He looked up from a month-old copy of the
News
, his patience wearing thin.

‘What sort of time do you call this? Channel swimming, is it?’

Berriman ignored him. He bent low, then stuffed his towel and deodorant into the holdall beneath the desk. Winter had been through the bag already. The weekend’s coverage of the party in the
Sun
and the
Daily Mail.
A packet of Rizlas, a wallet of Virginia Gold and a small cube of blow wrapped in silver foil. A pint of milk. A paperback copy of
King Lear.
And, tucked inside the book, a scrap of paper with a multi-digit number. Out of habit more than hope Winter had made a note of the number. It looked like a phone number but he didn’t recognise the prefix. Later, he might give it a ring.

Berriman was standing by the door now. Watching him swim, Winter hadn’t realised he was so tall.

‘Nikki tell you I was here?’ Winter asked.

‘Yeah. She said you wanted a word.’

‘She’s right.’ Winter wrinkled his nose. ‘Where do you fancy? Only the smell of chlorine makes my eyes go funny.’

They went to a nearby café, La Parisenne, tucked into a triangle of pavement beside the torrent of city-centre traffic. It was Berriman’s choice. He took a table in the sunshine while Winter fetched cappuccinos and a couple of pastries from the counter inside. For mid-morning, the place was packed.

Back outside, Winter eased the collar of his shirt. It was hotter than he’d expected. He was beginning to sweat.

‘Full of bloody students, isn’t it?’ He gazed round at the other tables. ‘Beats me where they get the money.’

‘Most of them are foreign.’

‘This lot?’

‘Yeah. Nik says you’re a cop.’ Berriman had wolfed the first chocolate croissant and was reaching for the other one. ‘D’you mind?’

‘Not at all, son. All that exercise.’ He sat back. ‘Nik’s wrong. I
was
a cop. It makes a difference.’

‘Yeah? How does that work?’

‘It means I know what to look for. It also means someone else pays my wages.’

‘Nik says it’s Mackenzie.’

‘Nik is right.’

‘He’s a bit of legend, that man. Doesn’t put up with any shit. You mind if I give him a ring? Only he tried to phone when I was in the pool.’

Without waiting for an answer, he produced a mobile and keyed in a number. Seconds later he was talking to Mackenzie. Winter could hear the rasp of Bazza’s voice above the kerbside growl of a nearby delivery truck.

Berriman listened while Mackenzie offered his sympathies. It had been a shit weekend for one and all. Rachel was a nice girl. Must hurt like fuck to lose her like that.

‘You’re right. I appreciate it.’

‘Your mum says you’ve been with the Old Bill. Don’t let those bastards grind you down. Talk to my mate Paul. He knows most of them better than their mums do.’