One Under (16 page)

 

Back at Kingston Crescent, Faraday put his head round Winter’s office door. Winter looked up at him, stony-faced. He had his jacket off and his tie was loosened. There were two empty mugs on the window sill and the borrowed transistor on the other desk was tuned to Radio Two.

‘Well?’

Winter consulted the pad at his elbow. Duley, he said, was paying fifty quid a week, by cheque, for the bedsit. He was in trouble with British Gas over an unsettled account going back months and had probably fallen out with Southern Electric as well because there was correspondence about suspicious readings from the meter in his room. As far as earning money was concerned, he appeared to make a living from a variety of sources. A part-time job in Waterstone’s as a shop assistant brought him in £174 a week. In addition to that, he did twice-weekly night shifts in a meat-packing factory in the north of the city and occasional freelance translation work for an agency based in Southampton. Add up a week’s takings, said Winter, and you were looking at around £255 after tax.

‘The night shift might be a cash job but on money like that he’d still be pushed.’

‘Anything else job-wise?’

‘Yeah. Here.’ Winter extracted a payslip from the mountain of documentation on his desk. ‘It’s a local authority chitty. Portsmouth City Council. I phoned them up with the reference number. They were iffy, of course, but I got it out of them in the end.’

‘Got what out of them?’

‘Our man.’ Winter nodded at the payslip. ‘He’s been doing a series of workshops on local history at the Buckland Community Centre. Every Wednesday morning. It’s part of some regeneration scheme. They gave me a number for the woman who organises it. She says he’s gone down a storm. It’s mainly women in the class. They all think he’s wonderful, her included. She can’t wait for tomorrow.’

‘You told her what’s happened?’

‘You have to be joking. Why would I ever do that?’ Winter turned his head and gazed out of the window. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? Local history workshops in Buckland? Apparently some of them can even read.’

‘Big class?’

‘She said about a dozen. All ages. Mr Duley’s got the knack, she told me. Really puts a new twist on things, really makes you think.’

He turned back, sorting through the pile of evidence, adding more and more bits to the jigsaw of Duley that Faraday was beginning to put together in his head. Tuesday evenings, said Winter, Duley reserved for Respect. He was on the committee and had evidently volunteered to edit the monthly newsletter.

‘Respect? You mean the George Galloway lot?’ Faraday was woolly when it came to politics. He’d joined Eadie for the anti-war marches a couple of years back but the way the far left was always regrouping had always baffled him.

Winter shot him a look, then opened a website on his PC. The Respect home page featured a scarlet mast-head.

‘Equality. Socialism. Peace. Environment. Community. Trade Unionism,’ Winter read out. ‘Does that help?’

‘And you’re telling me Duley’s into all this?’

‘Absolutely. And not just Respect, either. The rest of the week, except for his night shifts, he’s at it with the stop-the-war lot. Or the anarchists. Or save the Kurds. We’re talking commitment here, boss. Guy never knew when to stop.’ Winter gazed at his notepad for a moment then pushed his chair back from the desk. ‘Doesn’t really help us though, does it, boss? How does any of all that put him in the tunnel?’

Faraday said he didn’t know. Yet.

‘What about the book he’s supposed to be writing? Jerry Proctor mentioned he’d sent it over.’

‘He did, bless him.’ Winter indicated a brown evidence sack on the floor in the corner. ‘I got to page 3. Didn’t understand a word.’

‘It’s in English?’

‘Allegedly. Starkis the Slayer of the Mighty Turk? The Perennial Goth? Biglet the Monster Fireman? Fair play to the man for all that typing but, believe me, I was pleading for mercy.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘You want to take the writing angle any further? Only you might be interested in this.’

He poked around in the pile of documents on the desk. This time Faraday found himself looking at a substantial-looking brochure for something that called itself The 25th Annual Writers’ Conference. This year it had taken place at University College, Winchester.

‘Page 8,’ Winter grunted. ‘Check out the photo.’

Faraday leafed through. Page 8 carried a list of workshops. A large red arrow drew his eye to a box announcing two sessions devoted to crime writing entitled ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ The workshop was to be conducted by Sally Spedding.

‘That was a couple of weeks back,’ Winter pointed out. ‘The Friday and the Sunday, last weekend in June. He must have gone because he’s in the photo I found inside.’

‘You’re good at this, aren’t you?’

‘Fuck off, boss.’

Faraday smiled. The photo showed a group of a dozen or so, most of them middle-aged women. Duley was one of only two men. The group was mustered round what looked like a table in a bar, and Duley had wedged himself between a beaming forty-something with a wild fall of black hair and a much older woman, greying, stern-faced. He had an arm round each of the women and the slightly glazed expression on his face suggested he’d been in the bar for a while.

‘Nothing to him, is there?’

Winter was right. Duley was thin, almost gaunt. Faraday turned the photo over. On the back were a couple of kisses and a scrawled signature that could have meant anything. This must be the woman with the camera, Faraday thought. Delivering the promised print.

‘You think there’s anything in it?’

‘Dunno.’ Faraday was writing down the contact number for the conference. ‘It’s recent, though, isn’t it? And some of these conference things can be wild - bunch of strangers, bed and board, cheap booze from the student bar, all those women falling around … ’

‘Yeah?’ Winter was eyeing the brochure with interest at last. ‘You think it’s too late to take up scribing?’

‘Never.’ Faraday pocketed the number, struck by another thought. ‘Jerry gave me a postcard Duley must have sent. Does Venezuela tie in with anything you’ve got there?’

‘Ah … ’ Winter abandoned the brochure for an envelope at the very bottom of the pile on his desk. ‘I meant to show you.’

He shook the contents out: a handful of Venezuelan banknotes, varying denominations.

‘These were in the address book too. I make it a couple of thousand bolivars. He must have brought them back.’

‘Any sign of a ticket? Invoice? Hotel details? Dates?’

‘No, but we’ve got his passport here. Hang on.’

Winter found the passport and gave it to Faraday. The
entrada
stamp for Venezuela was on a page towards the end.
Aeropuerto de Isla de Margarita
, 14 May 2005. On the 17th, same page, Duley had left.

‘Holiday?’

‘No way, boss.’ Winter was sparking now. ‘Who in his right mind goes to the Caribbean for three days?’

 

Detective Superintendent Barrie convened the first of the
Coppice
Management Group meetings for five o’clock, ahead of the full evening squad brief. Faraday was there as Deputy SIO, along with six other members of the team. The faces round the table were responsible for every area of the ongoing investigation - from control of various crime scenes to the often tricky issues of family liaison - and it was an early clue to Barrie’s leadership style that he insisted on full minutes, to be circulated within half a working day. He might look like a tramp, thought Faraday, but this is a man who leaves no administrative stone unturned.

Barrie began the meeting by confirming the transfer of the policy book to his own desk. There followed a careful summary of the operation’s progress to date, together with an exploration of possible lines of enquiry. The Intelligence Cell, he announced, was sorting through a harvest of seized documentation from Duley’s bedsit. Names and contacts from the victim’s address book had already been passed to the DS in charge of the Outside Enquiry Team and appropriate actions were imminent. It was already clear that Duley was a political animal, an activist, with a finger in a number of far left pies. Special Branch would have their own contribution to make and Barrie had invited one of their DIs to attend the next Management Group meeting. Today was Thursday. By the weekend Barrie expected a firm timeline to have emerged, a sequence of events that would enable the squad to plot Duley’s contacts and movements during the days and hours that led to his death.

Winter was sitting at the far end of the table and Faraday was watching him carefully. From the start his body language had made it clear that he didn’t belong there. He was fidgety, bored, out of his natural habitat. He contributed when called upon, confirming that the trawl through Salisbury Road had thrown up a number of useful leads, but he refused to share the stir of excitement around the table at the speed with which
Coppice
was beginning to motor.

Sure, a picture was starting to emerge of the kind of life that Duley must have led. Of course, there were conversations to be had with political contacts, with students of Duley’s, with anyone else who’d stepped into his busy life. But the real crunch, the way Winter saw it, was motivation. No one took politics seriously anymore, least of all the people Winter knew who were capable of tying someone to a railway line. No, there had to be someone else Duley had upset - and from where Winter was sitting, the serious money had to be on the man’s recent three-day visit to Venezuela. Crack that, he muttered, and we might be getting somewhere. Venezuela meant cocaine. Cocaine took
Coppice
to Bazza Mackenzie. And to a businessman mate of his, Chris Cleaver. And guess what? Cleaver turns out to be living in a big spread a stone’s throw from the tunnel.

Challenged by Dave Michaels to produce hard evidence of this link, Winter said he couldn’t, not yet, but one or two of the older hands, including Barrie, were scribbling themselves a note. The Detective Superintendent had spent his previous CID service elsewhere in the county, and by the time Winter had finally finished, he looked, if anything, amused. Martin Barrie had heard all kinds of rumours about Winter, about this dinosaur throwback to an earlier school of detection, but he’d never seen the man in action.

He signalled for Faraday to stay behind in the office once the meeting had broken up.

‘He hates us, doesn’t he?’ He nodded at the empty conference table. ‘He can’t stand any of this.’

 

Daniel George was the moving force behind Respect in Portsmouth. Faraday got contact details from Duley’s address book then returned to his own office. The call found him in seconds. George evidently helped his wife in the family business, an all-hours café in Southsea’s Albert Road. On the phone he sounded guarded about Duley but said he’d followed the story in the
News
and agreed to meet at half seven. He had a bit of time free and Faraday was welcome to come to the café.

Faraday took DC Tracy Barber with him. The squad meeting had been shorter than usual and they’d had time to catch up over a snatched pint upstairs at the bar. At Faraday’s prompting, Barber had phoned a contact in the force Special Branch office about George. It turned out that his SB file went back years. There was no way Barber’s contact was going through the whole thing but he’d given her the essentials.

Sixty-three years old. Early career as a researcher at LSE, then a series of lecturer posts in various universities. Active on the far left - International Socialists and Socialist Workers Party - since 1968. Fought the rightward drift of New Labour and lent his weight to the stop-the-war campaign in Portsmouth.

‘The guy sounds solid,’ Barber had told Faraday. ‘SB thinks we’re talking root and branch socialism.’

One Minute To Midnight was a cheerfully bright café lodged between a second-hand book store and a sprawling antiques shop in Albert Road. According to Barber’s Special Branch contact, the place was extremely popular with students and one look at the price list in the window told Faraday why. Corned beef hash with spring cabbage in fish sauce and garlic, £2.95. Moroccan-style fishcakes with couscous and a home-made chilli sauce, £3.65. At those kinds of prices, Faraday told Barber, he might start eating here himself.

Inside, there was barely room to edge between the tightly packed tables. The air was blue with smoke and there was a powerful smell of cannabis. At the counter at the back of the café, Faraday’s enquiry about Daniel George was greeted with a nod by the woman chopping onions beneath a line of posters advertising various upcoming music gigs. It seemed they were expected.

‘He’s up in his office.’ She nodded at a flight of nearby stairs. ‘Look for the light under the door.’

The stairs were in semi-darkness. Up on the top landing, Faraday found the office door and knocked. An answering grunt invited them in. George was sitting at a desk working through a list of figures. The window was curtained and a pool of light from the lamp at his elbow spilled across a litter of invoices. On the wall above the desk was a poster for a Rembrandt exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, a brooding self-portrait that seemed to echo the weariness in George’s face. In daylight, thought Faraday, this room would look a mess. There were books and magazines everywhere, piled on the threadbare carpet, and hundreds of photocopied flyers spilled out of a couple of cardboard boxes behind the door. In some respects it reminded Faraday of the busy chaos of Duley’s bedsit. The same dismissal of orderliness. The same faith in the printed word.

George pushed his chair back from the desk and turned to greet them. He was a tall man, stooped, his eyes pouched with exhaustion behind the thick glasses. He was dressed for the allotment, old shirt, torn cardigan, but there was an additional echo of Martin Barrie in the steadiness of his gaze. This was someone you’d be foolish to underestimate.