No Lovelier Death (47 page)

He’d been to a bullfight with Joannie, years ago, and had taken no pleasure from the experience. The ritual killings seemed to him to be savage and unnecessary. These people gloried in blood, in slaughter, in winding up the bulls and then dispatching them for the sake of some macho thrill. There was lots of talk about how dangerous the fighting bulls could be, lots of headlines when one of the top guys got himself gored, but the bottom line was simple. You loaded the odds. You released the poor fucking animal into the ring. And then you killed it.

A blast from a trumpet and a roar from the spectators signalled the parade that started every bullfight. Winter’s eyesight wasn’t brilliant, and he had trouble making out the details as splashes of colour stalked around the ring, but he sensed the rising excitement from the crowd below. Awaiting the entry of the first bull, it was impossible not to think again about Tommy Peters. He knew the tricks. He commanded a hefty fee. He loaded the odds. And he seldom failed to deliver.

Winter blinked, still trying to focus on the bullring, but it was hopeless.
The girl again. Her innocence. The totally crap card that life had so suddenly dealt her. Her voice, pleading and pleading. Her eyes, staring death in the face. Her beautiful fingers, suddenly lifeless. The wreckage of her lovely face. Could he have done more? Should he have done more?

Winter didn’t know. And that made a surreal evening a whole lot worse.

 

The lights were on in the Bargemaster’s House by the time Faraday got home. He let himself in, recognising the familiar lilt, the voice, the unaccompanied guitar. When she was feeling especially content, Gabrielle would slip her favourite George Brassens CDs into the player and dance. She was doing it now, plaited against J-J, swaying slowly around the living room, her feet bare, her eyes closed, her lips in soundless pursuit of the lyric, and watching them Faraday wondered what his deaf son made of
La Parapluie.

Very slowly, one shuffling step at a time, J-J revolved. He had Faraday’s clumsiness, but as well he had the priceless gift of surrender. He could let go, cast himself off, let the moment take him where it would. Faraday had seen it when he was a child adrift in a world of silence, and he’d always marvelled at the faith the boy must have, and at his courage. The latter, on occasions, had bled into recklessness. J-J sometimes took risks that iced Faraday’s blood. But the compensations, the rewards, were obvious. My extraordinary son, Faraday thought, dancing to a music he couldn’t hear.

‘
Chéri …’
Gabrielle had seen him at last.

She disentangled herself from J-J and gave him a kiss. Faraday let her lead him into the kitchen, unaccountably relieved. Gabrielle followed, made him sit down at the table, fetched wine, asked whether he’d eaten. He hadn’t seen her all day, hadn’t been in touch since she’d phoned him from the bus, en route to try and find Jax Bonner.

Faraday cocked his head, raised his glass, the question unvoiced. She grinned back, nodding.

‘
Oui
.’ she said. ‘I found her.’

‘Talked to her?’

‘
Oui.
’

‘All day?’

‘No. We went to the island. Walked. Watched the birds.’ She broke off.

J-J’s scarecrow body was propped in the open doorway. She signed to him about a place they must have found. He nodded, looked at his father, told him about the saltmarsh south of Bembridge, the path that wound through the bulrushes, how quickly they’d left the kids and the trippers, and how, hours later, they’d been lucky enough to find a spoonbill.

Gabrielle, he said, had thought at first that the bird was a big egret. Same colour, same size. They’d seen it first at a distance, flying low over the marshes, but something about the speed of its wingbeats had told J-J that egret was wrong. Later there’d come another sighting, much closer, and the bird’s long bill with the flattened bit at the end had confirmed J-J’s suspicions. It was only the second time in his life he’d seen a spoonbill and he was glad Gabrielle had been there to share it.

Faraday let this scene wash over him: the music, the warm blush of the wine, his two favourite people within touching distance. J-J understood him. He knew the boy did. He understood his dad’s bleaker moods, his isolation, the moments when he was engulfed by a numbing sense of near-total bewilderment. Those moments had always been there since J-J was still in the nest, but now - on his intermittent visits - he brought a different perspective. Deafness, by some strange irony, had conferred wisdom. By making him more curious, by making him look harder, it had given him a unique entrée into other people’s lives, other people’s heads, other people’s hearts. J-J watched. And J-J knew.

‘You met the girl too?’ Faraday signed.

‘Yes.’ J-J nodded.

‘You talked about Rachel? About her boyfriend?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She hated Rachel,’ J-J signed. ‘She’s full of hate. She hates everything. ’

‘But did she kill her?’

‘No.’ A brisk dismissive movement with the flat of his bony hand.

‘Never.’

SUNDAY, 19 AUGUST 2007.
07.26

Jimmy Suttle left Lizzie Hodson in bed. Half past seven on a Sunday morning, he’d agreed with Faraday, was the perfect time to give a Pompey cab driver a shake or two. Apart from anything else, it would signal a certain seriousness.

The cab firm had given the driver’s name as Grant Mason. He drove night shifts throughout the week and then retired to an upstairs flat in a street of terraced houses in Milton. It was raining again when Suttle parked up across the road. Mason’s cab, badged with Speedy’s scarlet logo, was outside his house. Suttle glanced inside as he hurried past. A satnav housing on the dashboard was empty.

Mason, when he finally clattered downstairs to answer the door, had just got out of the shower. Suttle showed him his warrant card and stepped out of the rain. Mason didn’t seem the least bit surprised by this sudden visitation. He nodded at the stairs and told Suttle to put the kettle on. Half the night driving pissed kids back from the clubs in Guildhall Walk had left him with a bit of a thirst.

Dressed in a tracksuit, his hair still wet, Mason joined Suttle in the kitchen. He was small and thin, edging fifty. He had a smoker’s face, his yellowing parchment skin deeply seamed. He stirred three spoonfuls of sugar into his tea and told Suttle he was welcome to a bit of toast.

Suttle wanted to know whether he’d been driving on Wednesday night.

‘Yeah. Course. I drives every night.’

‘And can you remember that shift? In detail?’

‘Yeah. I looked it up. Barbara on the desk, she mentioned it, said you was interested.’

Suttle had talked to Barbara on the phone. Barbara worked for Mackenzie.

‘So talk me through it, Grant.’

‘It’s Westie, isn’t it? Him? That’s what you’re after?’

The bluntness of the response told Suttle to tread carefully. The going was seldom this easy.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because he’ s a bad man. Not a rascal, a bad man. Always has been, Westie.’

‘You know him well?’

‘I’ve driven him around a bit, as you do. I used to think he was all mouth, Westie, but then you hear things and you get to wonder. Know what I mean?’

‘What kind of things?’

‘Horrible things. Westie used to have these videos sometimes. It was violence, always violence. He’d tell me the plots, what kind of stuff these guys got up to, what you could do with a hammer drill, stuff like that. I could borrow them off him if I wanted. He was generous that way. Half-decent footballer too, in his time. But a psycho, definitely. Me? I prefer cartoons, preferably
The Simpsons
. Told him too. He thought I was taking the piss.’ He peered at Suttle through a haze of roll-up. ‘Like
The Simpsons
, do you?’

Suttle began to sense where this conversation was going. He’s rehearsed, he thought. He’s got all this drivel off pat.

‘It wasn’t just the videos, though, was it?’

‘Fuck, no. Listen to people in this town, and Westie’s got a right reputation.’

‘For what?’

‘For hurting people.’

‘For money? Because someone else was paying?’

‘Nah, mate. Because he fancies it. Because he’s made that way.

Sometimes you’ll be in the cab with him and he’ll be chatty as you like, real gentleman, right laugh. He’ll tell you stories from the old days, back when he was on Villa’s books, and a couple of times he even comped me a couple of tickets down the Park. Don’t ask me where he got them. Probably the players. He drinks in them same bars down Gunwharf, knows a couple of them well. At least that’s what he always tells me.’

‘So where does the money come from?’

‘Fuck knows. Me, I always had him down as a gangster. Maybe he flogs toot. Maybe he pimps birds for a living. I know he’s always shagging around because he tells me, every last fucking detail. There’s supposed to be good money in them foreign birds, Chinese crumpet especially. Wouldn’t surprise me in the least.’

‘And Wednesday night?’

‘Yeah.’ Mason picked a shred of Golden Virginia from his lower lip. ‘That was a strange one.’

‘Strange how?’

He frowned, taking his time.

‘We’re still talking Westie, right?’

‘Right.’

‘OK, so I gets a job at three in the morning. It’s Westie’s address, the place on the seafront. I get myself down there and give him a tap and he’s out of the door like a shot, bang, like he’s been waiting half the night. He’s got a couple of bags with him, not small bags, and he’s sweating fit to bust. That ain’t Westie. That ain’t the man at all. Westie’s Mr Cool. Westie’s Mr Iceman.’

‘So how come?’

‘Dunno, mate. Not then, anyway. Turns out he wants to go to Gatwick. I tell him that ain’t a problem on account of I spend half my fucking life going to Gatwick. I could sit in the car and close my eyes and the fucking motor would
take
me to Gatwick. Know what I mean?’

‘Tell me about Westie.’

‘He’s all over the place, doesn’t know what fucking day it is.’

‘Like how?’

‘Like we’re sitting in the car, driving out of town, and I ask him where he’s off to, like you would. It’s an hour and a half to Gatwick. You need a bit of conversation, something to talk about. So one minute he tells me Spain. Then it’s Italy. Then it’s fucking Greece. Then it’s Spain again. So I say Spain’s nice. Whereabouts in Spain? And you know something? He hasn’t a fucking clue. Lloret? Alicante? Doesn’t matter. As long as he gets there, pronto like. So I says to myself, this isn’t Westie going off on holiday. This is Westie in deep fucking shit.’

‘He told you that?’

‘He didn’t have to, mate. It was all over his face. You could fucking practically
smell
it on him. Westie’s not a bloke who scares easy. He was crapping himself.’

‘But why?’

‘Dunno. I couldn’t work it out. Then he goes all quiet for a bit, won’t say a word. We were up round Arundel by then. That time of night, I take the country roads. Anyway, we’re cruising along and he suddenly tells me to stop. We’re bang in the middle of nowhere, pitch fucking black, and he tells me to pull over. I think he needs to take a piss so naturally I do like he says, pull in. The geezer gets out, Westie, and then disappears.’

‘Disappears where?’

‘Dunno, do I? He’s wearing one of them white raincoats. One minute I see him by the verge, like, as you’d expect. Then he’s found a hole in the hedge or something and he’s gone.’

‘For long?’

‘Dunno. Five minutes?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Haven’t a clue, mush.’

‘But you’d ask him, wouldn’t you? When he came back?’

‘Course.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘Nothing. He just told me to get a move on. It’s getting on towards four by now. It’s a funny time to be in a hurry but I’m not paid to give anyone aggro, especially not someone like Westie.’

‘You think he left something behind the hedge? Buried it?’

‘Dunno. His hands were wet. He kept rubbing them on his trousers.’

‘And can you remember where this place was?’

‘Give or take, yeah. It’s on that road between Slindon and Storrington.’

‘But give or take what?’

‘A mile or so. Maybe less. Like I say, it was pitch black.’

‘But you’ve got the lights on.’

‘Sure.’

‘And you go to Gatwick a lot. You just told me.’

‘Yeah, but that’s normal hours, daylight hours, when normal fucking people want to get to the airport. If there’s traffic about, I takes the motorway. Them little country roads can be murder.’ He looked up, the ghost of a smile on his face. ‘Know what I mean, mush?’

Suttle knew it was nonsense. Clever nonsense, but still nonsense. Someone had marked his card, had a quiet word or two, agreed a script. Westie was an animal. He worked freelance. He made a fortune from pimping foreign toms. He led a colourful life, got himself talked about, hurt people when he was in the mood. Then Wednesday, out of the blue, he does something very silly. Suddenly, he has to get out of the country. But not before an unscheduled stop on a quiet back road miles from anywhere. In real life Grant Mason would never have dared talk about Westie in this kind of detail. Not unless he’d been told to. And not unless he knew Westie would never be back.

‘Did he tell you anything else? Westie?’

‘Just that he was fucking happy to be off.’

‘Nothing about Wednesday night? What he might have been up to?’

‘No, mush. And I didn’t ask neither.’

‘Did you hear about Danny Cooper, by any chance?’

‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘It was in the
News
. Bit of a dealer, wasn’t he? The way I hear it?’ He shook his head, reached for his mug. ‘You gotta watch yourself in this town, mush. I always said so.’