One Under (7 page)

Winter sat down again behind the desk. He had a picture of that bare, neat sitting room, so suddenly abandoned, in his head. Not one decent murder, he thought, but two. He contemplated the possibility, then retrieved his address book from his jacket pocket and lifted the phone again. What he needed now, what he always needed in this situation, was a great deal more information about the man himself. Givens had been at St Mary’s Hospital for a while. A job like his, carting medical specimens around, it was odds on he’d be in and out of the mortuary.

Winter dialled a mobile number. It took a while to answer. At last, a voice he recognised, gruff Pompey accent. Winter was on his feet again, peering out of the window. The smile was back on his face.

‘Jake? It’s Paul Winter. Fancy a pint?’

 

Faraday was back at his office, gazing at the Operation
Coppice
policy book. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been through this little ritual, contemplating the bareness of that first page, wondering quite where all those entries he’d be making over the days to come would lead.

The policy book was his anchor, a detailed aidememoire that would steady the investigation as the seas got rougher. Every decision he made, every tiny step he took along the path towards some kind of result, would go down on these pages. In months, maybe years, to come, a glance at a single entry would remind him why he’d authorised a particular action or convened yet another meeting.

At first, in his early days of heading complex enquiries, this fanatical exercise in record-keeping had seemed completely over the top, but experience had taught him that the policy book could prove invaluable. Defence solicitors could be ruthless picking holes in the conduct of a particular operation, and he’d seen fellow officers crucified in court for decisions that had long ago slipped their memories. The policy book, he’d learned, could be a shield as well as an anchor.

Reviewing the day’s progress, he began to scribble a log of events. He’d got as far as removal of the body parts from the tunnel when he heard a knock at the door. It was Tracy Barber. She wanted a word.

‘What time’s the post-mortem, boss?’

‘Half eight.’

‘You want a lift?’

The offer surprised Faraday. Pending the construction of a new mortuary at the city’s Queen Alexandra Hospital, Home Office post-mortems were being conducted at Winchester, half an hour away. On the motorway it was an easy drive. Why the concern?

Tracy muttered something about owing a girlfriend a drink. She could drop Faraday off and pick him up when the pathologist was through. Faraday knew it was bullshit.

‘You want to chat?’ He gestured at the empty chair. ‘Help yourself.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘What, then?’

Barber studied him a moment. She’d worked with Faraday for more than a year now and thought she knew him. Holidays, she told herself, were supposed to make you relax.

‘You just seem … ’ She shrugged. ‘ … Uptight, that’s all.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yeah. It’s not a crime, boss, no one’s going to report you. But … you know -’ She nodded down at the policy book. ‘- It’s still early days.’

Faraday nodded. Early days. She was right. He glanced at his watch, toyed with accepting her offer, then told himself it was unnecessary. The post-mortem could drag on for hours. A body this mangled would stretch the pathologist and the mortuary attendants to the limit.

Barber, uncomfortable now, was waiting for a decision. Faraday smiled up at her, then got to his feet.

‘Kind of you.’ He slipped on his jacket. ‘But no, thanks.’

 

The motorway out of the city began at the end of Kingston Crescent. Faraday eased the Mondeo onto the slip road and joined the thin stream of northbound traffic. One or two French lorries were still rumbling out of the commercial docks, last arrivals off the Le Havre ferry, and beyond them Faraday could see the darkening spaces of the upper harbour. The sun had gone now, buried behind threatening towers of cloud to the west.

Faraday reached for the radio, searching for a concert. He tuned to Radio Three and the haunting brass of Mahler’s Fifth brought a smile to his face as he slipped the seat back a notch or two, making himself comfortable. Was he really as stressed as Barber seemed to think? And, if so, was it anyone’s business but his own?

He thought about the proposition, knowing only too well where it led. For well over a year now Eadie Sykes had been living and working in Australia, and the relationship had survived on a drip feed of e-mails increasingly empty of anything but the bare facts of their working lives. He’d been lashed to the wheel of Major Crimes. She’d been making documentary films. The prospect of meeting her again after all this time had slightly alarmed Faraday, and on the long flight from Heathrow he’d begun to wonder whether this protracted, arm’s-length affair of theirs could really survive the next three weeks.

The answer, of course, was no, and from the moment she’d met him at Bangkok airport, tanned and brimming with news, he’d known they were more than half a world apart. He represented a closed chapter in her busy, busy life. She’d done provincial England. She’d moved on. For someone with her talents - courage, looks, energy, plus an implacable determination to succeed - Australia was irresistible. She had an apartment on Manly Beach. She had the ear of a wealthy businessman happy to fund any film she wanted to make. The crews she used were the sassiest guys in the world. And, as the reviews she’d collated for Faraday’s benefit so amply showed, she was making it. Big time. So why on earth would she ever want to come back to Portsmouth?

They’d taken a ferry to a diving island called Koh Tao. A contact of Eadie’s in Sydney had pre-booked a sumptuous bungalow overlooking a secluded cove, and they’d settled in. The first couple of days, jet-lagged, Faraday had slept a lot. Whenever he’d woken, chilled by the powerful air conditioning, Eadie had been out somewhere, swimming or walking, or making new friends at the beachside bar on the other side of the bay. The second night, refreshed now, Faraday had proposed a meal at a recommended seafood place in the next bay. They’d ridden to the restaurant on a couple of rented Honda motorbikes. Even now, Faraday could still feel the sweet kiss of the night air on his burning face.

The meal had been a disaster. While Faraday sank a series of Chang beers, Eadie toyed with a glass of Perrier. She’d given up alcohol, she explained, because she’d found sobriety more of a turn-on. Glummer by the minute, Faraday had then listened to her brisk dissection of his life. He was in the wrong job. He had the wrong priorities. He’d settled, all the time she’d known him, for second best. He was a great copper, no question about it, but where on earth was the satisfaction in chasing a bunch of arsehole kids round a dump like Portsmouth? And as for birdwatching, how much fun was that?

Listening to her skating over the surface of his last three years, Faraday had managed to keep his temper. She’d always had a gift for the right phrase, a certain glibness that served her well professionally, but she didn’t come close to the things that made him tick. She didn’t understand how birdwatching was so much more than birdwatching, how the dawn chorus in the New Forest could open the door to the secret rustling world of water voles and stoats, of daubeton and pipistrelle bats. She had no inkling of the satisfactions of pausing in some forest glade, cupping an ear, filtering out the busy clamour of the wrens and the robins until there was nothing left but the trill of a wood warbler, high on a beech limb, singing its tiny heart out. To Eadie these kinds of pleasures were evidence of abnormality, of incipient depression, of a stubborn refusal to get stuck into real life.

With the latter phrase, Faraday could only agree. That’s why he did it, he explained. Real life knocked on his office door every day of his working week, and without the birds, without the solitude, he really would be a headcase. At this point Eadie had leaned across the table and taken his hand. It was the first time since they met that she’d shown the faintest interest in physical affection. Yet her touch felt like the reassuring pat of a nurse or a doctor. He’d be fine, she seemed to be saying. Just fine.

Faraday remembered looking at her, surprised by the smallness of the truth on which he’d stumbled.

‘You haven’t a clue who I really am,’ he said quietly. ‘Have you?’

Next morning, alone, he’d gone snorkelling in the bay. By the time he got back to the bungalow, she’d packed and left. No note. No adieu. Just a sea urchin planted in the very middle of his pillow, still wet from the tiny cove beneath the terrace. The message it sent was all too obvious. Picturing it now, as the Mondeo sped north towards Winchester, Faraday wondered yet again if he was really that hard to get at.

 

By the time Faraday had found a parking spot, Ewers was ready for the post-mortem. Gowned and booted, he was on the phone to his wife in Bristol. Outside the office, Jerry Proctor was in conversation with the Scenes of Crime photographer.

Through the open doors beyond the line of stainless steel fridges Faraday could see the room where the post-mortem would take place. The head and two sections of torso occupied one of the tables and there were body parts heaped on a nearby trolley. Ignore the harsh glint of neon on the tiled walls, thought Faraday, and this could be a scene from a butcher’s shop.

Ewers was off the phone now. He appeared at Faraday’s elbow, snapping on a pair of surgical gloves. Given the circumstances, he looked remarkably cheerful.

‘Shall we … ?’

He led the way into the post-mortem room. Braced for the smell, the sweet stench of death, Faraday caught Proctor’s eye. Like Ewers, he seemed totally unmoved by the offal on the trolley and Faraday began to wonder how he coped. A couple of years before his recent spell in Iraq, Proctor had volunteered for a posting to Kosovo, disinterring bodies and subjecting them to forensic analysis ahead of a firm ID. Maybe the leftovers from a Balkan civil war armoured you against scenes like this, Faraday thought. Maybe that was the trick.

Ewers was already at work, assembling the body parts, addressing the overhead microphone as he inspected a smashed hand or a loop of viscera before carefully adding it to the growing jigsaw on the slab. To the head he paid special attention, inspecting the pulped flesh and sinew where the neck had been torn from the rest of the body, parting the matted hair to study the state of the scalp and running his fingers over what remained of the man’s features. The nose had gone, one eye was missing completely, while the other hung down on a white thread of optic nerve, glistening and sightless. Faraday stared at it for a long moment, sickened.

Ewers handed the head to one of the mortuary technicians and muttered something else for the benefit of the microphone. Already, from the tone of his voice, Faraday could sense that little of real forensic value would come out of the post-mortem. The body was simply too damaged. There were certain physical observations that could be safely made - height, shoe size, hair colour, approximate weight - but the rest of the evidence had been utterly smashed by the impact. If you wanted to eradicate any trace of prior damage, thought Faraday, this is exactly what you’d do.

As Ewers moved on to the more intact of the two legs, Faraday’s mobile began to trill. He stepped out into the fridge room. It was Willard.

‘Sir?’ Faraday was peering back through the open door. Ewers seemed to have found something on one of the legs.

Willard wanted to know how the post-mortem was going. Barrie had kept the new Head of CID briefed all day.

‘Fine, sir. But don’t hold your breath. The bloke’s a mess.’

Willard grunted something Faraday didn’t catch then asked him about his plans afterwards. Just now he was camping in a rented flat in Winchester. He needed a word or two with Faraday. Maybe a drink after the post-mortem?

Faraday was still watching Ewers. The invitation, he knew, had the force of an order.

‘Of course, sir. I’ll bell you when we’re through.’

 

The Eldon Arms straddled the fault line between Portsmouth and Southsea. Within easy walking distance of the nearby law courts, it attracted a handful of barristers every lunchtime, offering a spread of real ales to go with a snatched lunch, but in the evenings it became a locals’ pub, favoured by a noisy mix of builders, students, petty criminals and the odd lecturer from the university. The walls were clad with bookshelves and there was a house spaniel with three legs. The place was at once intimate, smoky and - if you had the need - deeply private. Winter loved it.

He’d already found a corner table by the time Jake Tarrant arrived. Winter spotted him by the door, gelled blond hair, full lips, Madness T-shirt and jeans, giving someone he obviously knew a little wave. Seconds later, he was beside Winter, telling him to drink up.

‘Stella top, son.’ Winter was feeling better by the minute. ‘And a packet of roasted peanuts.’

Tarrant returned with the drinks and nibbles, settled in the chair across the table. Although Winter had known him for at least ten years, he still hadn’t a clue how old he was. Some days at St Mary’s, rushed off his feet by a traffic jam of post-mortems, Tarrant could look almost middle-aged. Other times, afternoons especially when the pressure had eased, he might just have left college. Either way, with his boundless energy and easy wit, he’d always made trips to the mortuary a real pleasure, and Winter’s affection for the boy had been shared by countless other detectives. Jake was also handy on the football field, a gifted defender, and for a couple of seasons he’d guested in the Pompey CID team, transforming their prospects in the local league. Coppers liked Jake Tarrant. Not only could he handle most centre forwards but he also held his own when it came to conversation at the bar.

‘Mr Winter … ’ He raised his glass. ‘Good to know you’re still with us.’