One Under (38 page)

‘Yes, I do. Ewart says it happened around the end of May. The kid found the wallet in the newsagent next to the offie. That’s about a week after Givens didn’t turn up for work. The dates fit with the withdrawals from his bank account. Ewart was buying season tickets a day or two later.’

‘So … ’ Suttle was fighting to get the words out. ‘We’re saying Givens was in Somerstown a week after he went missing? Then disappeared?’

‘Yeah.’ Winter had abandoned his hot chocolate. ‘Either that, or someone deliberately left the wallet. There was cash in it too. Sixty quid. Think about it, son. It’s a clever move. That kind of area, it’s odds on no one’s going to hand the thing in. The cash is easy. Then there’s the card. In the end it’s going to find its way to someone like Ewart. Ewart figures out some scam to empty Givens’ bank account but leaves a trace. We do the necessary and hey … ’

‘You’ve got a name.’ Suttle’s eyes were closed now.

‘Exactly.’

Ellis was looking impressed. She turned to Winter.

‘When did you figure all that out?’

‘I didn’t, love. It’s obvious. If we accept it wasn’t Ewart. If we believe all the business with the wallet. Then it has to be deliberate.’

‘Unless Givens is still alive.’

‘No chance.’

Ellis looked at him a moment. This was turning into a case conference. She glanced round the ward. There were six beds, all occupied.

‘You think we should pull the curtain?’ She gestured up at the track above the bed. ‘Give ourselves a bit of privacy?’

Winter shook his head. His eyes were back on Suttle.

‘No point, love. Look … ’ He lowered his voice. ‘The boy’s asleep again.’

Minutes later, they left the hospital. Dawn drove down into the city, Winter beside her. A scatter of gulls were fighting for scraps beside the Paulsgrove tip and the last of the sunset was dying over the distant bulk of Portchester Castle as they joined the motorway.

‘He’s amazing, isn’t he? Much better than I’d expected.’

‘He’s a good lad.’ Winter was deep in thought.

‘Yeah, but strong too. Has to be, a wound like that. Did you see the size of the knife Ewart had on him?’

Winter didn’t answer. Something was bothering him, she knew. In his own good time he might tell her. Or not.

She edged into the outside lane, took the little Peugeot to seventy-five. Ahead, the ivory spike of the Spinnaker Tower flagged her destination. After she dropped Winter off at Gunwharf, she was planning a drink or two with an old schoolfriend who was about to set up an alternative therapy clinic. This woman had substantial financial backing, plus a client list she already served in their own homes. The invitation was there for Dawn to join the new business and lately she’d begun to take it seriously.

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ She was thinking of Jimmy Suttle again. ‘Too many bad things happen to good people. Bad things should happen to bad people.’

‘Yeah?’ Winter wasn’t interested.

‘You agree, Paul?’

‘Whatever, listen … computers.’

‘What about them?’

‘Givens had one. Either a PC or a laptop.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I’ve got his bank statements. He took out a warranty contract with PC World. Direct debits every month.’

‘So?’

‘I couldn’t find it. Not at the flat. Not when I went through it.’ He paused, frowning. ‘The camera’s missing too. Funny that.’

 

It was Babs who brought Faraday the letter from Vodafone. It had come in the morning post, the first envelope she’d opened.

‘Is this what you’re after, boss?’

She laid the trophy on his desk. Billing on Duley’s mobile number went back six months and covered nine sheets of paper. Someone at Vodafone had been kind enough to do some basic analysis, identifying numbers which cropped up more than once. The calls to all of them were in single figures with one exception: 07967 633524. This too was a Vodafone number, and the helpful analyst had pre-empted a further enquiry from the Hantspol TIU by supplying caller details. Between 2 February and 12 July, Mark Duley had made 487 calls to a Ms Jenny Mitchell, 25 South Normandy, Old Portsmouth.

Faraday stared at the name, aware of Babs still standing behind him. At length he looked round, grinning.

‘Is Winter around?’

‘No, boss, not yet.’

‘Seen DC Barber at all?’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘OK.’ He nodded, tapped the letter. ‘Thanks.’

Babs left the office, closing the door behind her. Faraday lifted the phone to Martin Barrie, but a recorded message told him that the Detective Superintendent was in London all day. Still grinning, Faraday contemplated putting in a call to Barrie’s mobile but then decided against it. On paper, this was the breakthrough he’d been anticipating for a couple of days - the name, the presence that shadowed everything he’d learned about Duley. He sat back in the chair, hearing Sally Spedding’s voice on the phone.
He had no respect for physical distance. He had no perspective. He crowded you. He wanted to shut out the daylight
. Faraday nodded to himself, doing the maths. Four hundred and eighty-seven calls in six months boiled down to an average of three a day.
Crowded
was an understatement.

He went through the billing more carefully, week by week, aware of the way it fluctuated. Duley hadn’t called her at all until the last week in February. Over the next month the volume of calls had grown and grown. By April he was calling her five, sometimes six times a day. In early May it fell off for some reason, a couple of daily conversations at the most. Faraday paused, running his finger down the column of entries until he got to 14 May. From Venezuela, over the next three days, Duley had made eight calls. None of them had lasted less than twenty minutes. No wonder he’d needed to help himself to Mickey Kearns’ war chest.

With Duley back in the UK, the usual pattern of calls had abruptly changed. Instead of the normal series of lengthy conversations, the billing recorded lots of briefer calls, 32 seconds, 53 seconds, 43 seconds - seven or eight of them a day. This non-stop bombardment smacked to Faraday of desperation. Something had happened between them. Time and time again, Duley was trying to get through to her, trying to talk to her, trying - perhaps - to put his case. But she must have been resolute because, as May crept into June, the barrage of calls slowly fell away. Faraday reached for a pencil, circled the key date when the pattern changed: 18 May.

Then another entry caught his eye. On 28 June Duley had been on the phone to Jenny Mitchell for fifteen minutes. The following morning, at 09.32, he’d called her again. This time the conversation had lasted nearly an hour. After that more calls, much briefer. Then, on 5 July, a longer chat, ten minutes or so. Two days later three attempts - none successful - to coax her into conversation. Finally, on Sunday 10 July, two last calls. The first, again, was brief. The second, at 12.03, was logged at nearly fifty minutes. By early next morning Duley was dead.

Faraday tidied the sheets of paper, wondering whether he wasn’t committing the cardinal sin. Every detective learns not to load the bare facts. These were simply phone calls. They might have been in business together. They might have been political junkies, bent on dissecting the day’s developments. They might have been discussing the weather. Any of this was possible. Except that every last shred of circumstantial evidence argued otherwise.

In his prize-winning story
Gethsemane
the writer had met the woman in the depths of winter. In real life, according to the Vodafone billing, this relationship had begun on 24 February. From Venezuela, Duley had dispatched a card to his own address. It had been sent to
Mia Querida
, but the day after Duley returned to the UK, something had brought their phone conversations to a close, and - maybe as a direct result - the card had never been picked up. On 26 June, according to the entry in Hantspol’s own Records Management System, Duley had been admitted to A & E after a severe beating. Two days later, a little better, he’d been on the phone to her again. Faraday’s eye drifted back to the first page of entries. In the
Gethsemane
extract the woman had kissed the writer. Was this the Judas kiss? The sweet taste of betrayal? Had it triggered a passionate affair? With consequences too horrible to contemplate?

The answer, Faraday knew, lay in the hours before and after Duley’s death in the tunnel. He reached for the phone again. Babs answered at once.

‘Get onto TIU,’ he told her. ‘Ask them to chase up Vodafone for historical billings and cell site on the Mitchell number. Tell them it’s urgent.’ He read her the number, then put the phone down.

 

By the time Winter got to Kingston Crescent, Faraday had gone. Babs updated him on the Vodafone development and mentioned that Faraday had been looking for him. Winter grunted something about having had to wait in for a plumber and settled behind his desk. A call to PC World, with the details on Givens’ direct debit payments, secured a promise to get back with details of the equipment under warranty. The morning’s post produced nothing of real interest. He glanced at his watch, wondering whether Dawn Ellis had finished the report she was doing for Faraday about the injuries to Jimmy Suttle. He picked up the phone.

‘You ready, love?’

They drove north, through the city. At the mouth of the cul-de-sac that would take them to Tarrant’s house, Winter laid a precautionary hand on Ellis’ arm.

‘I’ll take the lead,’ he said. ‘That OK with you?’

‘Whatever.’ She shrugged.

Rachel Tarrant was trying to fix the younger kid’s high chair when the ring brought her to the front door. She scowled at Winter, ignoring the proffered warrant card.

‘He’s at work,’ she said. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘We’ve come to talk to you, love. This is DC Ellis, a colleague of mine.’

‘Talk to me, why?’

‘Let us in and I’ll tell you.’

She looked at him, uncertain now, then stepped aside. Both kids were in the sitting room, watching television.

‘We’ll do this in here.’ Winter was already in the tiny kitchen. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’

He nudged the high chair aside with his foot, dislodging a clamp Rachel had fixed to a broken strut at the bottom. Ellis bent to retrieve it.

‘Handy round the house, are you?’ Rachel was watching her attempts to reattach the clamp.

‘Have to be, Mrs Tarrant. Living on my tod.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘Yeah?’ Ellis glanced up at her. ‘Haven’t got any more glue, have you?’

Rachel passed down a tube of No-Nails. Ellis quickly resealed the joint.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Nipper-proof.’

Winter was debating the chances of coffee. When Rachel didn’t offer, he gestured her towards the vacant stool.

‘This is about Alan Givens,’ he told her. ‘There’s a couple of things that are troubling us.’

‘What’s that got to do with me? I thought we’d been through all this.’

‘We have. I just need to check on some details.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like when you last saw Mr Givens.’

‘You asked me that the other night.’

‘I’m asking you again. Only this time I want you to think a bit harder.’

She looked at him, startled, then leaned back against the kitchen work surface.

‘It would have been a while ago,’ she said at last. ‘A couple of months, nearly. May time.’

‘So where is he, do you think?’

‘I haven’t a clue. I ask Jake the same question.’

‘And?’

‘He doesn’t know either.’

‘He’s just gone? Disappeared? No warning? No explanation?’

‘None.’

‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘To tell you the truth, I do.’

‘So why didn’t you do anything about it?’

‘I did. I made Jake report it. He told me he’d gone to the management but it turned out they’d already been in touch with you lot.’

Winter nodded. It was true. He’d checked the Misper log a week ago. On 31 May Human Resources had phoned Kingston Crescent. The duty sergeant had sent a couple of uniforms round to the hospital and they, in turn, had checked Givens’ premises. They’d taken a note of his mobile number but no one had bothered to apply for billing. Since then, nothing.

‘So he disappears at the end of May, leaving you holding his money. Am I right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No phone calls? Texts? Postcards?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Weren’t you worried about him?’

‘Of course I was. People don’t just disappear. Not just like that. Especially not people like Alan.’

‘What does that mean, Mrs Tarrant?’

Rachel turned to look at Ellis. She was in the corner of the kitchen, leaning against the door.

‘It means he was a bit … ’ she shrugged ‘ … vulnerable, I suppose. Needy. You know what I mean?’

‘No.’ Ellis’ eyes were cold. ‘Tell me.’

‘I don’t know. It’s difficult. He lived alone. He didn’t have anyone.’

‘You mean he couldn’t cope?’

‘No, not that. In fact he was very organised, looked after himself, sorted everything out. No, on a practical level he was fine. But that made it even more odd, the way I see it. Alan’s a bloke you can set your watch by. He’s completely reliable. If he says he’s going to do something, he does it. That’s a novelty in my house, believe me.’

Winter laughed. ‘I’ll tell him that,’ he said. ‘Young Jake.’

‘Don’t bother. He never listens.’

‘So Givens … ?’ Ellis wasn’t letting go. ‘You think what?’

‘I think it’s bloody strange. Like I said, one minute he was there, the next he’s vanished. No warning. Nothing. ’

‘So you must have wondered, mustn’t you?’

‘About what?’