The Take
Authors: Graham Hurley
| The Take |
| Faraday & Winter [2] |
| Hurley, Graham |
| (2001) |
DI Joe Faraday's Management Assistant, Vanessa Parry, is dead. Killed in a head-on car smash. Her funeral is a bitter end to another grim week in the front line of the ongoing war against Portsmouth's surging crimewave. And now the seemingly untouchable DC Paul Winter, master of the scam, has been hurt in a way he could never have imagined: his wife has cancer. It's inoperable and she has barely three months to live. Paul Winter has only one instinct - to lash out. But there's precious little time for grief on a Portsmouth CID squad. A disgraced gynaecologist is missing and his caseload of maimed women is a murder-suspect list from hell. It all adds up to an impossible workload and that's without the suits and the politicians conspiring to make it even harder...
The Take
Graham Hurley
© Graham Hurley 2012
In memory of Norman Shaw
1940–2000
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the following for their time and patience: John Ashworth, Katie Brown, Deborah Owen-Ellis Clark, Roly Dumont, Tony Johnson, Bob Lamburne, Colin Michie, Phil Parkinson, John Roberts, Pam and Ian Rose, Pete Shand, Matthew Smith, Steve Watts, Sandra White and Dave Young. Thanks, as well, to my agent Antony Harwood and my editor Simon Spanton for their encouragement and advice. My wife, Lin, supplied the coffees, the warmth and the laughter – all of them beyond price.
Friday, 16 June 2000
Another grey summer’s day, spitting with rain.
Faraday was one of the last into the crematorium car park, abandoning his Mondeo, buttoning his coat and ducking along the path towards the front of the building. The larger of the two chapels was already full. It smelled of furniture polish and the kind of flowery scent you squirt from an aerosol. Faraday slipped into a pew at the back, acknowledging a nod here and there, aware of the bareness of the place, burying himself in a random page of the English Hymnal.
There is a blessed home, beyond this land of woe
Where trials never come, nor tears of sorrow flow.
Fat chance, Faraday thought, closing the hymn book with a soft but perceptible thud.
The cortège appeared ten minutes later, delayed by a tanker spill on the motorway. The coffin was bigger than he’d expected and he wondered about its weight. Vanessa had been the slightest of women but, in a darkening world, the brightest of candles. She’d brought energy and commitment and an infectious good humour to a job that was never less than daunting. She applied to herself and to others the highest of standards. On bad days, and there were many of those, she’d made going to work a pleasure.
Faraday was still gazing at the coffin, still wondering about the burden these men had shouldered. Could you measure loss in pounds or kilos? Had the undertaker’s men with the bowed heads and the clasped hands seen her wrecked body before screwing down the lid?
Vanessa’s mum was supported on both sides by relatives, her small white face shadowed by an enormous hat. She peered around her, plainly bewildered. Lately, Vanessa had been talking of early Alzheimer’s, trying her best to minimise the harm her mother might do to herself. Hence the weekly supply of pre-cooked meals. And hence, perhaps, the state of the Fiesta’s brakes.
The service lasted no more than twenty minutes. Friends, relatives and, it seemed, half of Southsea police station did their best with the hymns. A vicar who seemed never to have laid eyes on Vanessa talked of her passion for hill-walking. Then came the moment when the canned music swelled and the vicar ducked his head in silent prayer.
Watching the curtains close on Vanessa’s coffin, Faraday thought of the last time they’d shared a proper conversation. It would have been a couple of days ago. She’d had a problem with next month’s duty roster and she wanted to know whether there was a likelihood of any more abstractions. After seven brief months as a management assistant, she knew as well as Faraday that the question was impossible to answer. A stranger rape in Fordingbridge or a drive-by killing in Southampton could rob them of yet more pairs of hands, sending another little administrative tremor through the rapidly emptying divisional CID room.
He and Vanessa had discussed the roster for the best part of half an hour. She was as tireless and quietly efficient as ever, but short of prophecy there was no real way he could help her. In the end, with the sweetest of smiles, she’d nicked the last of his jammie dodgers and scrawled NBC across a yellow sticky, fixing it to the top right-hand corner of the paperwork. NBC was her own contribution to the ever crazier world of performance indicators and management acronyms. In Vanessa-speak, it stood for No Bloody Chance.
The curtains were fully closed now and feet were beginning to shuffle in anticipation of the end of the service. Across the aisle, Willard was exchanging a word or two with his DCI and Faraday caught the lift of an arm as the DS checked his watch. Willard, he knew, was due at headquarters for a conference which started at eleven. If the M27 was open again, he might just make it to Winchester in time.
Faraday returned his prayer book to the back of the pew and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to rid himself of the images that had haunted him ever since he’d asked to see the traffic file. The guys in Photographic spiral-bound the colour prints between blue covers. The shots that really hurt showed the interior of the Fiesta. The shell of the car had deformed beyond all recognition. The engine had come back through the dashboard and the driver’s seat had slipped forward, crushing Vanessa against the steering wheel. The contents of her handbag – money, make-up, two ticket stubs from a recent visit to the UCI – were strewn across the remains of the passenger seat and there were three library books among the wreckage in the footwell. One of them, a Catherine Cookson novel, was webbed with something glistening and scarlet and it had taken Faraday several seconds to realise that he was looking at blood. Vanessa had bled to death. In the dry prose of the post-mortem report, her left femoral artery had ruptured, shock and blood loss killing her before help was at hand.
Faraday opened his eyes again. Heads were bowed. The vicar was intoning a final prayer. Then, from nowhere, a butterfly appeared. It fluttered up the aisle, darting left and right, before coming to a halt, as if making some kind of decision. Faraday stared at it, transfixed, and as he did so it came back down the aisle at head height, zig-zagging towards the door.
Butterflies, like birds, were one of Faraday’s passions, a solace, an escape. He knew about them, knew where to look for their newly hatched eggs, knew the colour of their larvae after the first and second moults. He could map their migration routes, and their habitats, and their distribution. Above all he knew their names, not simply in English but in Latin as well.
The butterfly gone, he gazed numbly towards the curtained altar, letting the dull colours slowly blur. The Red Admiral butterfly, he thought.
Vanessa atalanta
.
Outside, the promise of rain had given way to a thin drizzle. Ignoring an invitation to inspect the floral tributes, Faraday made his way back to the car park. The overwhelming temptation was to look for the butterfly. Was it down by the road, feasting on buddleia and lavender? Or had it flown north, bound for the row of evergreen shrubs that edged the long curve of the drive? He didn’t know, and he realised that he didn’t care. It had come and gone like a ghost. Simply to have glimpsed it was enough. Vanessa Parry would never see her thirty-fourth birthday. End of story.
The car park was beginning to fill with mourners for the next funeral. Unlocking his Mondeo, Faraday suddenly became aware of a white Vectra Estate. It was parked three spaces along from his own car. The driver was wearing a green anorak and his head was turned away. Faraday withdrew his key and walked across. The lettering along the side of the Vectra read
WESSEX CONFECTIONERY
–
TRADE AND RETAIL
. Must be a replacement motor, he thought. No question about it.
Faraday bent to the window and tapped on the glass. The driver ignored him. He tapped again, looking at the huge bouquet with its cellophane wrap laid so carefully on the big cardboard boxes of crisps in the back. The handwriting on the card might have belonged to a child. ‘Sorry’, it said. There was no name.
At last the driver looked round. He had a chubby young face, with a couple of days’ growth of beard. His hair looked freshly gelled and he wore a tiny diamond stud in his right ear. He gazed up at Faraday, vacant, stupid. Faraday hesitated a moment, then wrenched open the door. He knew the traffic file by heart. Matthew Prentice. DOB 21.10.74. Four previous convictions, all for speeding. Just about right, Faraday thought. You were on the mobile that morning. Or making notes on your little clipboard. Or doing any bloody thing except driving properly. Bastard.
The driver was trying to get out of the car. Faraday blocked him with his body.
‘You killed her,’ he said softly. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
Two days later, Sunday night, a woman set out to take her boxer puppy for a walk. She lived in Milton, an area of narrow-fronted terraced houses which lapped the edges of Southsea and Fratton. She had the dog on a lead and she carried a torch.
The woman’s route took her out onto the path which skirted the edge of Langstone Harbour. Five minutes’ walk and she’d be among the ponds and bushes that covered Milton Common, the featureless scrubland between the busy Eastern Road and the water’s edge. It wasn’t countryside, not real countryside, but in one of the most densely packed cities in the country, it offered a rare chance to get away from the hassle and the traffic. The dog loved the place almost as much as she did.
Tonight, for the first time, she was going to let the puppy off the leash. She’d discussed it with her kids and they’d both agreed it wouldn’t be a problem. Tyson was as good as gold. No way would he dream of straying.
She bent to slip the chain around his neck. The dog looked up at her for a moment, as if she’d made some kind of mistake, then bounded off towards the nearest of the ponds. Within seconds, she could hear the rustle of wildlife among the reeds at the water’s edge. Just like Tyson to look for new friends.
Lighting a cigarette, she began to wander towards the pond, taking her time, enjoying the breeze off the harbour. Weatherwise, it had been a crap day – more bloody rain – but the sun had come out late afternoon and the bloke on the telly was promising something half-decent for the next couple of days. If it lasted through to the weekend, she’d maybe take Jordan and Kelly for a treat. Get over to the Isle of Wight for a day on a real beach. The thought of the kids chasing Tyson through the shallows brought a smile to her face.
The cigarette gone, she called the dog’s name. She thought she heard an answering yelp and the usual pell-mell tumble, but she wasn’t sure. She called his name again. This time, for definite, nothing. By now, it was nearly dark. Out across the water, she could see the lights of Hayling Island. Half a mile behind her, the orange glow of the Eastern Road.
Switching on the torch, she followed the path towards the pond. The more noise she made, the better.
‘Tyson!’ she yelled. ‘Tyson!’
Still nothing. For the first time, she felt a prickle of apprehension. What if the bloody animal had got lost? What if it had gone after some duck or other and didn’t know how to swim? She reached the edge of the pond. Her eyes followed the beam of the torch as it swept across the water. A splash as something small and black swam quickly away. But no Tyson.
Then, suddenly, there came a stir in the bushes directly behind her. Flooded with relief, she swung round. She had the torch in one hand, the lead ready in the other. Daft bugger.
‘Tyson …’ she began.
A man was standing in front of her, no more than a metre or two away. He was wearing a tracksuit of some kind and she could see gloves on his hands. She brought the torch up, then screamed. A Donald Duck mask covered his face, and the moment she took an involuntary step back he began to make quacking noises, really loud, like he was laughing. The gloves fumbled at the waistband of the tracksuit bottoms, pulling them down, exposing his erection. She stared at it, then up at the mask again, feeling the chill of the water around her ankles, not knowing what to do. This isn’t happening to me. No way.
The man took a step towards her, the quackings turning into a deep, throaty laugh. Instinct told her to run. The moment she moved, he blocked her path. She could smell him now, the sour reek of cheap tobacco. More quacks. And another step towards her.
For a moment, she just stared at him. Then, from her right, came the sound of splashing and a familiar bark. Distracted, the man in the mask looked away. Seeing the puppy, he began to turn, and as soon as he moved she took her chance. Lashing out wildly with the lead, she caught him around the head. She did it again as he lunged towards her, the tracksuit bottoms still around his knees. Tyson, by now, was yelping fit to bust. Play time.
Later, giving her statement, she couldn’t remember how long they’d struggled. It might have been seconds. It felt like for ever. She’d tried to knee him in the groin, tried to fight him off, but what had brought the nightmare to an end was the moment he’d caught her hand, forcing back her fingers until she was screaming with pain. It was the screams that drove him off. One minute he was all over her. The next, he’d gone. Making her way back towards the lights of the Eastern Road, she’d wept like a baby. That bad, it was. That fucking horrible.
