No Lovelier Death (21 page)

‘I just did. She’s after your advice.’

Faraday winced. The last thing he needed just now was a face-to-face with Gail Parsons. Seconds later he heard her footsteps hurrying along the corridor. She didn’t bother knocking.

‘Joe? You’ve got a moment?’

He followed her into Martin Barrie’s office. To his surprise he found himself looking at a bunch of flowers on the window sill behind the desk. They were neatly arranged in a tall glass vase and for a moment he wondered whether they’d come from Willard.

‘A woman’s touch, Joe.’ She’d been watching him. ‘Something to brighten our days.’

She settled behind the desk and scrolled briefly through a list of waiting emails. One in particular caught her attention. She reached for the screen, turning it towards Faraday. The message had come from Jimmy Suttle. Parsons must have tasked him to take a look at Saturday night’s CCTV footage and Suttle had responded with a barbed query about exactly where she wanted him to start.

‘Hardly helpful, Joe, wouldn’t you say?’

Faraday, oddly cheered by the defiant good sense in the message, found himself defending Suttle.

‘He’s got a point, boss. There are no cameras in Craneswater. The city network doesn’t extend that far. A party on one of the estates and we’d have footage coming out of our ears. Nice people don’t riot.’

‘I was anticipating he might be looking elsewhere.’

‘What for?’

‘Gangs of youths. Kids who might have left the party early. Faces we wouldn’t have seen so far.’

Faraday was trying to grapple with the implications of this search. Pompey on a Saturday night was awash with youths. There were hundreds of kids, thousands of kids. Where, exactly, would you look first?

‘You sound like Suttle, Joe.’

‘Only because he’s right.’

She gave him a look, tight-lipped, disapproving, then enquired about the mobile phone footage retrieved by Netley. She understood they were waiting on a visit from Rachel Ault’s best friend. When did she propose to turn up?

‘She’s coming in at half eleven. Her name’s Samantha Muirhead.’

‘And what do we think she might be able to tell us?’

‘We’re after putting names to faces.’

‘You’re telling me that hasn’t happened yet?’

‘We’ve got ID shots from the custody suites but they’re just the kids we could lay hands on. We need to start thinking about who we
haven’t
met yet. The girl Sam might be able to help.’

Parsons looked Faraday in the eye. He sensed she relished confrontation.

‘We aren’t doing well, are we, Joe? No one thought this thing would ever be easy, least of all me, but we’re losing momentum.’ She nodded at the telephone. ‘I had Mr Alcott on first thing. He’d just had a call from Mike Hancock. As you can imagine, he’s eager for good news,
any
news. The word he’s using is underperformance.’

Mike Hancock was MP for Portsmouth South. Terry Alcott was the Assistant Chief Constable in charge of CID and Special Operations.
Mandolin
’s buck stopped at his desk.

‘Under
performance
?’ Faraday felt the blood flooding into his aching head. Twenty-four hours without sleep over the weekend. The constant drumbeat of phone calls and meetings thereafter. The raised hopes, the false leads, the sheer mountain of evidence, most of it worthless.

And now this: a Senior Investigating Officer who seemed to be paying far too much attention to the noises off. Maybe performance was right. Maybe the press, and TV, and Facebook, and all the rest of the chatter, had taken them into new territory. Maybe this wasn’t an investigation at all. Maybe
Mandolin
had become a piece of theatre.

Parsons was still looking at him, still waiting for some kind of explanation. Faraday, irked beyond measure, didn’t bother to rise to the challenge. In his view the squad was working flat out. Parsons, like everyone else in the world, wanted instant results but already it was clear that this would never be a three-day event. There’d be no short cuts here, no magic wand, no sudden arrests at dawn with the snappers in attendance and a morning press conference to follow. In the end he sensed they were looking at a tight little knot of circumstance, of motivation, of payback. Untying that knot would take time. If Parsons couldn’t see that, if her finger had slipped on the steadying pulse of the investigation, then too bad.

‘We need to be patient,’ he murmured. ‘I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.’

Parsons nodded. It wasn’t the response she wanted. She returned her PC screen to its previous position and bent to the keyboard. She was never less than direct.

‘Martin Barrie comes back on Monday, Joe. My guess is he’ll be taking over as SIO. I’d like something substantial in the bank before then.’

 

Jerry Proctor was waiting in Faraday’s office when he returned, minutes later. Two glasses of cold water had made him feel a little better.

‘We’ve got a result on the stamp mark.’ Proctor surrendered the chair at the desk. ‘I thought I’d run you through it.’

Photos of the pattern on Gareth Hughes’s cheek had been sent through to Napier Associates, a private database in York. They carried details of hundreds of sole patterns. Later, if required, they could match a specific pair of trainers against the Hughes imprint.

‘And?’

‘We’re looking for a pair of Reebok Classics.’

‘You make it sound like bad news.’

‘It is, Joe. This is the Ford Mondeo of trainers, no offence. Everyone’s got a pair.’

‘Size?’

‘Nine to eleven.’

Faraday nodded. Sole lifts only came in three basic sizes. It was the uppers that changed from box size to box size.

‘How many did we seize at the house? Have you checked?’

‘A couple of dozen. More than half of those were within the size range.’

‘Including Berriman’s?’

‘No. He was wearing Nike Air Max 95s.’

‘Shit.’ Faraday turned away and gazed out the window.

‘You’re sure they were Nikes?’

‘Positive. I double-checked.’

Proctor wanted a decision on the seized Reeboks. Should he send them all away for full forensic examination? At £600 a shot for the thirty-day turnaround, they’d be looking at a sizeable bill. The premium service, with a speedier result, would cost another £1400 per item.

‘Ask Parsons.’ Faraday was still thinking about Berriman. ‘It’s her pay grade not mine.’

A knock on the door revealed Suttle in the corridor. Samantha Muirhead had arrived. He wanted to know whether Faraday wanted to sit in on the viewing session. Faraday said yes.

Suttle fetched Muirhead from downstairs. She’d been waiting a while in the front reception area and was fretting about an impending job interview at a café-bar in Southsea. Suttle promised to run her down there as soon as they’d finished.

Faraday joined them in the Intelligence Cell. Suttle had readied the DVD at the start of the Rachel footage. Sam bent towards the screen, watching intently, and Faraday realised she may never have seen any images from the party. Her own phone hadn’t featured on the DVD playlist. Maybe hers didn’t have a camera.

Rachel was at the foot of the stairs, fighting off the attentions of a youth in what looked like a striped rugby shirt. The pictures cut to the living room, Rachel sprawled on the sofa with her head in another boy’s lap. Then she was in the kitchen with Gareth, winking at the camera over his shoulder as he steered her towards the fridge. Faces came and went in the background.

‘That’s me.’

Sam was right. She was leaning against the kitchen table, eating a slice of pizza. Suttle hit the pause button.

‘Those first two guys with Rachel. You know who they are?’

‘Of course. One’s called Slaphead. He’s in the first fifteen. The other one’s really sweet, talented too. He wants to be an actor.’

‘Should we be interested in either of them?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Was Rachel interested in either of them? Or vice versa?’

‘No. They’re mates, that’s all. And Slaphead’s always pissed.’

Suttle nodded, crossing the sequences off a list at his elbow. He played more footage, all of it featuring Rachel with various groups of friends. More names, more dead ends. Then followed an edited sequence showing kids busy destroying everything they could get their hands on. In a court of law this would be prima facie evidence for a criminal damage charge but in every case Samantha was unable to help with names.

After a while she glanced at her watch. Time was moving on.

‘There’s one other thing …’ It was Faraday. ‘People have been telling us about a girl at the party. The way we hear it, she was hard to miss.’

He described the shaved head, the nose rings, the tongue stud, the gallery of tattoos down her arms. Oddly enough she hadn’t appeared on any of the images they’d seen so far.

Sam nodded. She knew exactly who they meant.

‘Scary woman,’ she said. ‘You can see for yourself.’

‘We can?’

‘Sure.’ She looked surprised. ‘It’s on the Facebook page. “Rachelsbash”. ’

‘Since when?’

‘Since this morning. You guys ought to check it out.’

Suttle and Faraday exchanged glances. Suttle turned back to the desk. A couple of keystrokes took him into Facebook. Entry to Rachel’s memorial page was by open invitation. No password.

Sam was watching over Suttle’s shoulder. He followed her prompts. The screen cleared to reveal yet more mobile footage. Faraday felt himself stiffen. These were new pictures, the camera at the foot of the stairs, angled upwards. At the top of the shot a couple of youths were necking cans of Foster’s. One wore his baseball cap sideways, the other was squatting down with his back to the wall, scratching himself. Between them and the camera, halfway up the stairs, the girl with the shaven head was slashing at a painting, big diagonal crosses, top to bottom. The angle of the camera hid the painting itself but Faraday couldn’t take his eyes off the knife in her hand. Right size, he thought. With a black handle.

‘Shit, boss.’ Suttle had seen it too.

Faraday wanted to know what it took to upload material like this onto Facebook. Sam didn’t understand the question.

‘Do you have to be registered? Do you have to be a member?’

‘Of course.’

‘And how easy is that?’

‘You need an email address, a user name and a password. It’s really simple.’

‘And the email address can be Web-based, boss.’ It was Suttle. ‘Something like Hotmail or Yahoo. If you’re thinking sender details, trying to get a handle on whoever posted all this stuff, it’s a nightmare. It might take months. And that’s if you’re lucky.’

‘And tracing the computer it came from?’

‘Total no-no. I’ll check it out with Comms at Netley but Facebook must handle millions of hits every day. Capturing every single IP address? My guess is you wouldn’t even try.’

‘So the sender’s invisible?’ Faraday nodded at the screen. ‘Is that what you’re saying.’

‘Pretty much. We might get lucky but I doubt it.’

Faraday bent forward. The sequence had cut to a close-up of the girl with the knife. Her bony face was pale. There was no shadow of hair on her shaven skull. She was striking, even beautiful. She lunged at the mobile then stuck out her tongue. The tiny silver stud glittered under the nearby wall light. A smile widened into a leer, then she began to lick the lens with the tip of her tongue, blurring the whiteness of her face, before the shot changed again.

Now the ruined portrait filled the screen. Someone had already attacked the picture with a spray can but behind the loops of black paint a man’s face hung from the gilded frame, the reflective smile reduced to shreds of canvas. Faraday recognised the picture from Jerry Proctor’s laptop. The Scenes of Crime photographer had been there twenty-four hours later.

‘That’s Rachel’s dad.’ Sam sounded shocked. ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’

TUESDAY, 14 AUGUST 2007.
15.57

Five minutes with the phone book had given Winter an address for Nikki Dunlop. She lived in a tiny flat-fronted house near the seafront in Eastney, barely half a mile from Craneswater. Twice he’d called round in the early afternoon but both times there’d been no answer. Now he’d decided to park down the road and wait for her return.

Nearly an hour later the BMW rounded the corner at the end of the road and came to a halt at the kerbside. Nikki Dunlop was behind the wheel. The tall figure beside her was talking on a phone. She was at the front door, looking for her keys, by the time he ended the call and got out. Winter watched, beaming. Patience, he thought. Never fails.

He gave them time to put the kettle on, then locked the car and sauntered across the road. It was Berriman who opened the door. He had a puppy in his arms and his face was pinked with exercise. The pool again, thought Winter.

Nikki appeared behind him. The front door opened straight into the sitting room.

‘Invite the gentleman in, Matt. He won’t bite you.’

Berriman stepped to one side. He shut the door and let the puppy run free. He dug in his pocket and unwrapped a wafer of chewing gum. Nikki was watching the puppy as it pounced on a cushion and began to drag it across the room. Then she glanced up at Winter.

‘Tea?’ Her smile was icy.

The minuscule kitchen was at the back. One wall was dominated by a poster for an international swimming meet in Düsseldorf. Shelves on another were home to an assortment of photos, postcards and souvenirs. Some of the photos featured Berriman. Winter was reminded of the kitchen at the boy’s home in Somerstown. Wherever he went, wherever he lived, he seemed to leave a calling card.

Winter helped himself to the kitchen stool. He could see Berriman through the open door to the sitting room. He was draped across the imitation-leather sofa, watching
Countdown.
The puppy kept trying to clamber onto his lap. Sometimes he cuddled it but mostly he pushed it away.