One Under (45 page)

‘OK. Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say she was knocked out by him for a while. And let’s say that when she finally came to and realised how bloody dangerous this man was going to be, she tried to get rid of him. That makes perfect sense to me. That’s exactly what you’d do. But then why is she spending fifty minutes on the phone to him the day he dies?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe she felt sorry for him. You would, wouldn’t you? The state of the man?’

‘Sure, but
fifty minutes
? When she’s trying to draw a line under it all?’

Faraday’s mobile began to trill. He reached for the hands-free cradle. It was DS Jerry Proctor. A guy from SOC had finally managed to lay hands on Jenny Mitchell’s car. It turned out that she shared an Audi A4 convertible with her husband. He’d been driving it today and had only got back home at seven. One look at the tread pattern on the tyres told Proctor’s investigator that there was no match with the casts from the plantation.

Faraday nodded.

‘Did the tyres look new?’

‘No.’

‘And what about the husband?’

‘He was quite arsy. Kicked up about it. Talked about lodging a complaint.’

‘About what?’

‘About you lot.’ Proctor laughed. ‘Apparently you gave his missus a bit of a grilling.’

‘He knew that?’

‘Obviously. I get the feeling she’ll have a solicitor on hand next time. Good luck though, eh?’ He rang off.

Barber had heard every word. She glanced across at Faraday.

‘Duley seemed to think the marriage was on the rocks.’

‘He might have been right. You don’t do what Jenny did without good reason. Not to begin with, anyway.’

‘And now?’

‘She’s got two kids. A house. A life. Like I say, falling in love’s a spell. Spells get broken.’

‘Do you think Duley knew that?’

‘No, I don’t. He
was
the spell.’

They drove on in silence. Faraday knew the question that was coming. This thing begins and ends in the tunnel, he thought. Crack that, and
Coppice
might turn into a modest success.

‘That Sunday night,’ Barber said at last, ‘he had to
get
to the tunnel. He’s carrying stuff with him - chain, the piece of angle iron, rope. He hadn’t got a car. So how did he do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And once he’s inside, are we really saying he could strap himself to the line?’

‘It’s possible. I’ve been through it a million times. He could have wedged the angle iron under the rail by himself. He could have tied his own ankles to either end. He could have wound the chain round his belly, under the rail, round his belly again, tightened it, put the padlock on. All that’s possible. Bizarre but possible. Where it falls down is why? You’d only go through all that if you were making a point. It’s performance again. And for that you need an audience.’ He frowned. ‘Am I wrong?’

 

At Kingston Crescent Faraday attended to a list of messages, nothing really urgent. Then, at his suggestion, he and Barber went for a curry. He liked one of the smaller restaurants on Albert Road, a balti place he used a great deal. He’d got to know the family who ran it and sometimes bought packets of the rarer spices from them. On a Thursday night it would be quiet.

Barber toyed with the menu for a while, eventually settling for a chicken jalfrezi. Faraday, she sensed, was in the mood for a heart to heart, and
Coppice
was a perfect place to start. The last couple of days, to her relief, his post-holiday gloom had visibly lifted.

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

‘I’m fascinated by it. Enjoyment’s not quite the word. You start out believing one thing, one interpretation, and end up with quite another. Duley did a good job. He made it very hard for us.’

‘You think that was his intention?’

‘I don’t know. There’s something that still doesn’t make sense. We haven’t got a real timeline, not for the hours he was in the tunnel, but you’d have to be completely insane to strap yourself to a rail and simply wait.’

‘Maybe that’s the way he was.’

‘Completely insane?’

‘Yes. With some people it’s just a little push, isn’t it? They’re predisposed. They’re halfway mad already. Maybe Jenny did it by leaving him. Maybe it was the beating.’ She shrugged. ‘There but for the grace of God, eh?’

Faraday permitted himself a brief smile. She was right. There were times in his own life, and doubtless hers, when the constant ambush of events became overwhelming. You struggled and you struggled, and then suddenly you gave up. Medics called it the tipping point, the moment when the drowning man stops fighting the ocean, stops regarding it as his enemy. The first chill lungful of water, they said, and then the glad embrace of death.

Glad?

He shook his head. He still didn’t believe it. Not trapped in the darkness with nothing but the certainty of mutilation to fill your last hours. There had to be another explanation. Had to be.

‘How’s Paula?’ He changed the subject.

‘She’s great. Busy as ever. It’s manic up there, especially now. She never stops.’

Barber had a long-term relationship with a desk officer in MI6, Paula Adamson. They’d met on some conference or other, a couple of years back, and had been together ever since.

‘Doesn’t it get frustrating? You down here? Paula up in town?’

‘Yes, of course it does.’ She smiled at him. ‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘And I’d give you the same answer. Except you couldn’t get a train to Sydney.’

‘Couldn’t? Past tense?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘You’ve binned it?’

‘Yep.’ Faraday nodded. ‘We got together in Thailand, as you know. Hopeless. She’d changed. She wasn’t the same person at all.’

‘And you?’

‘Fair question. Maybe I’d changed as well.’

‘Do you miss her?’

‘No, I don’t. I miss what we had, what I think we had, but the more time goes by, the more I start to wonder. Relationships are odd. The right time, the right place, the right person, and it can be quite magical. The mistake is to confuse it with real life.’

‘You never made that jump? Not with anyone?’

‘No, I don’t think I have, not since I was married, at least.’

‘She died, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. And we were young too. That makes a huge difference. Age is no friend of the romantic.’

‘Really? You amaze me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that’s exactly what you are. A romantic. I can say this because you’re safe with me, but I knew it from the start. It’s what makes you so unusual as a detective.’ She smiled at him. ‘You bruise easily, don’t you? That’s why you read Duley so well.’

 

Winter brought the photo to Martin Barrie’s office like the trophy it was. The Detective Superintendent had convened the meeting at Faraday’s prompting, finding space for the entire
Tartan
management team around the conference table. Dawn Ellis was there too, and Winter had the grace to award her the credit for spotting the Jessops letter in the first place.

‘Help yourself, gentlemen. Sorry it’s in black and white.’

Winter was in his element. After a lengthy conversation on the phone, Jessops had e-mailed down the offending shot from one of Givens’ files. Winter had taken a dozen copies of the photo, and now pushed them into the middle of the table.

Martin Barrie was the first to break the silence: ‘So what, exactly, does this tell us?’

‘It tells us, sir, that Givens wasn’t quite as well organised as we thought he was. This one slipped through. Maybe it was finger trouble on the laptop. Maybe he got himself confused between files when he pumped the stuff up the line for printing. The rest of the batch are completely kosher. But a tenner says he’s got a stack of others like this.’

Heads bent again around the table. The photo had been taken in Jake Tarrant’s back garden. In the colour version Winter had recognised the pattern of the living-room curtains. The two kids were playing in the sunshine. There was a blow-up pool with an inch or two of water. Rachel’s daughter was doubled up over the side of the pool. She had her legs spread on the grass and her bum in the air. Her younger brother had tried to mount her. Both kids were naked.

‘I don’t see it,’ Barrie said. ‘Am I thick or am I missing something?’

Winter passed him a copy of the letter from Givens’ files. He read it quickly, then returned to the photo.

‘This is pornographic?’ He sounded incredulous.

‘Borderline, sir. But that’s the point. This is the only one we can find with them in that kind of pose. There were hundreds in the boxes. We went through them all.’

‘But these are kids. It’s a hot day. They’re larking around.’ He frowned. ‘Aren’t they?’

Dave Michaels intervened. He’d seen pictures like this too. And he knew exactly what Winter was driving at. ‘It’s not the kids, sir. It’s the bloke behind the camera. There are numpties out there who’d cream themselves over stuff like this. And maybe Givens was one of them.’ He glanced across at Winter. ‘Where were the parents?’

‘Jake was probably at work. The mum, Rachel, she might have been out. She might have popped next door. She might have gone shopping. She might have been in the bath. I’ve no idea.’

‘You saying she trusted this bloke? Givens?’

‘Completely. The pictures he bunged her for the family album were lovely. Nothing like this. As far as she’s concerned, he’s a thoroughly nice bloke. Trust him with my life. You know the way it goes.’

‘So she would have given him free rein? Left him alone with the kids?’

‘Without a doubt.’

‘That’s grooming. That’s the way these guys operate, ’ said Michaels.

‘Of course it is.’

Winter gazed at the faces round the table. Faraday was the next to offer support. ‘Tell us about the laptop and the camera, Paul.’

‘Of course, boss. Fact is, they’ve both disappeared. They’re high-value items, obviously, but there’s no other evidence of robbery.’

‘What about Givens’ wallet? The cash? The credit card?’ It was Barrie again.

‘I think they were planted, sir.’

‘
Planted?
How does that work?’

Winter was beginning to get irritated. Faraday could see the blood pinking his face.

‘You’ve killed this man Givens,’ he said patiently. ‘You want to lay a false trail. You want someone to find Givens’ wallet and start knocking the shit out of his debit card. What do you do? You prime it with sixty quid’s worth of notes and you leave it somewhere evil.’

‘Remind me.’

‘Somerstown. Some nipper picks it up, nicks the money, does his best with the debit card but ends up selling it. After that, it’s in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. Which is why we spent a week running round after Karl Ewart. Shame Jimmy Suttle can’t be here, sir. He’d give you chapter and verse.’

Barrie ignored the sarcasm. He was still looking at the photograph.

‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘So Givens had wormed his way into Tarrant’s family. Is that what we’re saying?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And once he was in there -’ He tapped the photo. ‘- he helped himself?’

‘Exactly. We talked to Tarrant’s oppo, Dawn and I. Givens had a reputation round the hospital. The blokes thought he was bent.’

‘That’s gossip.’

‘Sure. And then we find stuff like that. As I said, sir, that’s a photo that slipped through Givens’ net. Normally, he wouldn’t dream of printing the dodgy shots. He’d leave them on the hard disk, then view them through the laptop. If he had something really tasty, he could even offer them for sale online.’

‘Is there any evidence of that? In his bank statements? ’

‘No,’ Winter admitted. ‘And to be honest that’s a long shot. Normally, he was very careful. Selling kiddie porn these days isn’t easy.’

‘OK.’ Barrie nodded. ‘So what about Tarrant? The father?’

‘He found out.’

‘How?’

‘He told us yesterday that he went round to Givens’ place one time. Givens wanted him to look at a whole pile of stuff on the laptop and select some shots for Tarrant’s missus. Givens must have left him to it at some point. Maybe he went to the loo, made coffee, whatever. Tarrant is good with computers, knows what he’s doing. He’d have had a poke around. Bound to have done. And then … ’ He spread his hands. ‘ … He’s looking at all kinds of dodgy stuff. His kids, remember. In his own bloody backyard.’

‘You’ll have to evidence this.’

‘I can’t. Not without the laptop or the camera. That’s why they’ve gone.’

There was a long silence. Then Jerry Proctor had a question: ‘You’re telling us Givens was definitely down to Tarrant? You’re saying Jake killed him?’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘That’s a shame.’ Proctor, with his SOC duties, knew Jake Tarrant well.

‘Of course it is, Jerry. We all like him. He’s a player. He’s a good lad. He makes you laugh. But the story here tells itself, doesn’t it? Givens gets himself a job with the hospital. The bloke’s a creep. He latches onto Jake. Gets himself befriended by that poor bloody wife of his. Takes shots of the kids she can’t fail to love. Rachel’s hammering on to Jake about moving to somewhere bigger but Jake’s got a problem because they’re skint and he doesn’t want a bloody great mortgage round his neck. Then laughing boy reveals he’s minted. Not just that, but he’s happy to make them a loan. In exchange, of course, for houseroom. By now Jake’s discovered that the man is perving after the kids. And a couple of months down the road he’s going to be
living
with them. Well? What would
you
do?’

‘I’d tell him to fuck off. Then I’d tell the wife.’

‘About Givens? But then you’ve lost the money. And by losing the money, you’ve lost the new house. There’s always a cleverer way, Jerry. Always.’