The Take (21 page)

J-J was struggling to heft up his enormous rucksack. Faraday gave him a hand.

Love you
, he signed, as the boy grabbed Valerie’s hand and turned to go.

The Country Kitchen was nearly empty by the time Dawn made it down to Southsea. Shelley Beavis sat at a table in a corner of the window, nursing a glass of camomile tea. To Dawn’s relief, she seemed to have incurred no further damage since they’d last met.

‘Your dad …’ Dawn was determined to be businesslike.

Shelley looked startled, as if she’d never suggested this conversation.

‘What about him?’

Dawn gave her a look. It was Sunday. She hadn’t had time off for over a week. This was a kind of favour. The least Shelley could do was stop pretending.

‘I don’t pretend.’

‘Yes you do, love. Addison said so, and he’s right. You pretend all the time. That’s what acting’s about. You pull all these numbers on me and you expect me not to notice. Shelley, that’s not what we’re about. We’re in the noticing game. That’s what they pay us for. OK?’

She leaned back. She could have been this girl’s mother, scolding her for staying out late. Shelley had ducked her head. She looked genuinely chastened, but that, too, might well have been part of the repertoire.

‘Your dad,’ Dawn repeated. ‘You wanted to get something off your chest.’

‘Yeah.’ Shelley nodded, her face briefly curtained by her hair. ‘But it’s going to sound … you know … a bit odd.’

‘Tell me why.’

‘It just is.’ She stared at her glass for a moment, frowning with concentration. Then she looked up. ‘You’ll just have to make allowances. That’s all I want to say.’

‘Allowances for what? Come on, Shelley, just tell me.’

‘For the kind of bloke he is.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that … well … he’s not all there. Actually, he’s never been all there. You don’t suss it at first, not as a kid, because you think all dads are like that. But when you get older and you’ve got friends and so on you realise that most dads aren’t like that at all.’

‘Like what?’ Dawn was staring at her.

‘Like … different. He’s not bad or anything. He’s just missing a bit, in the head. It’s like he had an accident or something once. Maybe he did. He’s been riding those bikes all his life. I just dunno. All I can say is that he’s not a bad man. Not when it comes to the things that really matter. He’s been a good dad. He really has.’

‘You mean it’s not his fault?’

‘Exactly.’

‘What’s not his fault?’ Dawn leaned forward, moving the glass out of the way, repeating the question. This was it. This was what the girl had phoned to get off her chest. Something terrible in her past. Something Dawn had to know. ‘Are we talking abuse here? Is that what you’re trying to say?’

Shelley sat back, her hands picking at a loose thread in her cardigan. She wanted no further part in this conversation and no amount of pressure from Dawn would prise any more out of her. Her father needed a bit of sympathy, a bit of understanding, and that was all she was prepared to say. Dawn, close to losing her temper, pushed and pushed, trying to wheedle out what was really on her mind, but the girl simply shook her head.

Finally, Dawn changed tack.

‘Tell me more about Lee Kennedy,’ she said.

Shelley stared at her. This time, the bewilderment was for real.

‘But I thought you’d been round to see him?’

‘I have.’

‘Then you’d know, wouldn’t you?’

‘Know what?’

‘Know—’ Dawn saw the first flicker of alarm. ‘He hasn’t asked you to …?’

Dawn, at last understanding, got to her feet. She was right about Lee Kennedy running some kind of business. This was about money, as well as sex. She stood beside Shelley’s chair for a moment, but the girl wouldn’t look up at her.

‘He’s pimping, isn’t he?’ she said at last. ‘I should have sussed that days ago.’

Nineteen

Sunday, 25 June, early evening

The Weather Gage was a pub in Old Portsmouth, tucked into a corner of the Camber Dock, the tiny, centuries-old anchorage protected by the curl of shingle known as Spice Island. The first medieval settlement had grown up here, a huddle of roofs around the harbourmouth, just visible from the distant chalk ridge of Portsdown Hill. Fishermen and traders had settled along the lanes and alleys snaking back from the water. In search of Channel access for his infant navy, Henry VII had despatched surveyors and craftsmen to dig a dry dock, establishing the town’s dependence on the tides of war and peace.

Five hundred years later, the Royal Naval Dockyard now sprawled to the north, hundreds of acres of handsome Georgian boathouses, Victorian repairing basins and state-of-the-art workshops, but the Camber Dock still survived: a muddle of fishing boats, tugs, moored yachts and the sleek, deep-throated launches which ran pilots out to the huge container ships inbound to neighbouring Southampton. If you were going to have a pub anywhere, Winter thought, then this would be the place.

The Weather Gage, though, had seen better days. The timber cladding on the upper floor was badly in need of paint, and in rough weather the guttering leaked torrents of water onto the flagstones below. Worse still, the current owner’s bid to grace the area with a brand-new restaurant featuring dishes from the Nelsonian navy had come unstuck after a much-publicised run-in with the environmental health inspectors. Accused of buying dodgy beef, the would-be restaurateur had been fined a total of £4,500.

The guy’s name was Rob Parrish. Winter didn’t know him personally, and neither did Cathy, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Parrish, according to Pete Lamb, was a great mate of Hennessey’s. And Hennessey, until last week, had been a lunchtime regular at the Weather Gage.

By early evening, the weekend crowds had largely gone. Winter left his Subaru in the safety of the nearby Wightlink car park. Local Portsea kids were screwing everything that moved these days and the car park surveillance cameras might just keep them off. The Subaru locked, Winter sauntered back towards the pub. The quayside was cluttered with empty lobster pots and hanks of fraying rope. A big container lorry belonging to one of the fish wholesalers dripped water onto the oil-stained tarmac. Beyond the nearby Wightlink car ferry terminal, huge construction cranes towered upwards over the harbourside Gunwharf Quays site. The area smelled of fish and tar, of seaweed and diesel, and the only note that faintly jarred was a frieze of expensive new maisonettes,
faux
-Georgian in red brick, for incomers with a taste for instant history.

The pub, as Winter had half-expected, was empty. The wood-panelled walls were hung with sepia pictures, wild-eyed trawlermen with pipes and flat caps, and Winter was still trying to work out what had happened to the grubby-looking shacks in the background when a door banged shut in the depths of the building and footsteps came clattering into the bar.

Pete’s description had been more or less right: medium height, mid-thirties, well turned out, blond hair pinned up at the back, nice legs, lots of make-up. She looked, Winter thought, like someone who’d auditioned for a certain role and got it, only to find herself badly let down.

Winter ordered a pint of HSB. It tasted foul. The woman took it back without a word, substituting it with a pint of lager.

‘How come?’ Winter enquired, nodding at the beer as she poured it down the sink.

The woman’s name was Tara Gough. She had little taste for conversation, beyond a series of rather bland comments about the weather and the passing trade, but Winter persevered. The beauty of the next hour or so was the fact that he knew exactly where it had to lead.

‘You want to
eat
here?’ The hint couldn’t have been plainer.

‘Thought I might give it a go. Is there a problem?’

‘Not at all.’ She gave him a suit-yourself look. ‘Are you insured?’

This was fighting talk, but Winter was too canny to succumb. There were other things he wanted to find out first, little things, things that would flesh out the bigger picture.

The restaurant was called Aubrey’s.

‘Why Aubrey’s?’

‘That was my idea, actually. You’ve never heard of him?’

Winter shook his head. Jack Aubrey, it transpired, was the lead character in a series of immensely successful novels set in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. At the time, like the sea-going Nelsonian cuisine, it had seemed a good idea. In fact, a great idea.

‘This area attracts those kinds of people, you know, people who read books, people who like history. We thought we couldn’t go wrong.’

‘We?’

‘The guy that owns it, and me. I ran the restaurant. Still do, for my sins.’

Winter was looking across at the eating area, a dozen or so tables carefully set with prime views across the Camber. Even at this time of night, they should have been filling up with diners for the early sitting, people settling in, a warm hum of conversation.

Winter turned back, one eyebrow cocked, his question unvoiced.

‘Dead in the water,’ she said. ‘And a great lesson in how not to do it.’

Winter bought her a drink. She settled for a hefty slug of Pernod with ice rather than water and, watching her drink it, Winter realised she’d taken more from this pub than the disappointments of running an empty restaurant. Not that she was thinking of sticking around.

‘Ten days and counting,’ she confided. ‘And to tell you the truth, I can’t bloody wait.’

‘Why hang on? It’s a free world.’

‘I can’t.’ She gestured towards the door. ‘You won’t believe the MOT bill I got for that bloody car out there. Plus it’s kids, isn’t it? Once it used to be a ticket to the multiplex. Now it’s the top-up card for the mobile.’

Winter offered his sympathies. She drove a clapped-out old Peugeot 205. She never got paid until the first Monday in every month so bailing out before then would be suicidal.

‘He’d love it if I did that. I’d never see the money again.’

‘Who’s he?’

For the first time, she hesitated. Winter sat back on his barstool, his hands held up in a gesture of apology. Sorry to intrude. None of my business.

‘No, it’s OK.’ She shook her head, annoyed with herself. ‘His name’s Rob, Rob Parrish. He owns the place.’

‘And you were with him? From the start?’

‘More or less. I knew his sister. Rob was a diver, out in the Gulf. He earned pots of money on the oil rigs and came home to spend it all.’ She gestured towards the window. ‘He learned his diving over in Vernon, when he was in the Navy. This place was next door. He said he’d always fancied it.’

Winter nodded. HMS
Vernon
had once stood on the Gunwharf site before the developers moved in.

‘He bought the freehold?’

‘For a song. The place was practically derelict. He spent loads doing it up, adding the restaurant, all that. Then he asked me to sort it out.’

‘For wages or a share?’

‘A
share
? Rob Parrish, cut anyone in?’ She shot Winter a look. ‘This man will screw anyone for money. This is a guy who’d sell his mother for another half per cent. A
share
? You have to be joking.’

An elderly couple arrived, both Americans, and Winter wandered around, looking at the pictures again while Tara served them. From the window beside the door, he could see her rusting Peugeot 205. Blue. N365 FRT.

With the lone Americans shedding their anoraks at a table in the corner, Winter returned to the bar. Had trade always been this dire?

Tara was polishing the counter where she’d spilled beer from an overfilled pint. She had the kind of hands that appear in adverts for the more expensive Swiss watches: long, elegant fingers, perfectly lacquered nails.

‘It was OK for a while,’ she said. ‘We had a good first summer with the tourists and a decent regular lunchtime crowd from Gunwharf. It got busier once they started building, of course, but the management lot used to come in before that, and they’d eat, too. I think they were just glad to get out of the office, to tell you the truth.’

Winter was thinking of Hennessey. It all stacked up. He’d nose around the site, study the plans, choose the apartments he wanted, and when it came to lunchtime the sales girls would point him at the Weather Gage. Simplest thing in the world.

‘They still come in? The Gunwharf lot?’

‘Not after the business we had with the health inspectors. One mention of beef these days, everyone thinks it’s BSE. They never come in now, and who can blame them?’

‘So what happened about the beef?’

Tara was drying her hands on a cloth.

‘I thought you said you were local? It was in the
News
. Front page. Rob did a deal with a guy up in Hilsea. Turned out the meat had been condemned. Somewhere up in the Midlands. How to kill a business for a couple of quid off your butcher’s bill.’ She shook her head. ‘Madness.’

The American, the husband, had returned to the bar. He wanted to know about the steak and ale pie. Was it home-made? Tasty? Tara reached for her order pad and glanced at her watch. The pies were made daily, she said. Chef’s speciality.

‘Even on a Sunday? Hey …’ The American relayed the news to his wife. They both settled for new potatoes and a salad alongside. Plus lots of that nice French mustard.

Tara was still scribbling the order when Winter enquired about the chef. How could they justify the wages with trade this thin? Tara glanced up.

‘Rob does the cooking,’ she said, ‘if he ever makes it back.’

Winter had retired to a corner with his
Sunday Telegraph
and a second pint by the time Parrish turned up. He was a lanky, sunburned man in his early forties. He was wearing patched jeans, a pair of scuffed deck shoes and a white T-shirt. His Rod Stewart crop of blond hair looked dyed, and he sported a thin gold ring in one ear.

He paused inside the door, looking round at the empty bar. He had an elaborate dragon tattoo on the inside of one arm and a tense smile that failed to warm his face. The logo on the T-shirt advertised a Virgin Islands windsurfing school.

Tara was already tapping her watch and nodding at the American couple. Parrish rolled his eyes and disappeared through a door marked
PRIVATE
. The meal must have been microwaved because it appeared within minutes. As did Parrish.

Winter returned to the bar. He’d barely touched his second pint.

‘A word?’ Winter beckoned Parrish over.

Tara was standing by the till. When she saw Winter show Parrish his warrant card, she turned away.

‘Police?’ Parrish said blankly. Flat, south London voice.

‘CID.’

Winter had produced one of the video stills of Hennessey. He laid it carefully on the counter where Tara would be able to see it. The surgeon was standing at the reception in the Marriott, his smile wide, his little eyes fixed on the receptionist’s blouse.

‘Do you recognise this guy?’

Tara was looking too, and Parrish knew it. He picked up the photo, stared at it for a moment, then nodded.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘He comes in here sometimes. Lunchtimes.’

‘Do you know his name?’

Parrish glanced at Tara.

‘Peter someone?’

‘Hennessey.’ Her voice was cold. ‘Used to drink with the Gunwharf lot.’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

Once again, Parrish looked to Tara for help, but this time she spared him the effort of repeating the question.

‘Last week some time,’ she said. ‘Maybe longer.’

‘Mr Parrish?’

The fact that Winter knew his name tightened Parrish’s smile even more.

‘Dunno,’ he said.

‘You can’t remember?’

‘No, I can’t. It might have been longer, like Tara says. Faces are a blur in this trade. New people all the time.’

‘Business OK, is it?’

‘Never better, mate. You eating as well, are you?’

He fetched a menu and spread it on the bar. Winter ignored it. He wanted to establish how often Hennessey had used the pub, how well Parrish had got to know him, whether or not he’d been showing any signs of stress lately, whether or not he’d talked about going away at all. He wanted to know about the three apartments he’d reserved for himself over at Gunwharf, whether he was serious about exercising the options, and quite who the other two might have been intended for.

To all these questions, Parrish offered little more than a grunt and a shrug. He didn’t know the guy at all well. Short-handed as always, there was precious little time for social chit-chat.

‘Was he always alone?’

‘Always.’ It was Tara this time.

‘He was a surgeon, by the way. Did he tell you that?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘He did.’

Parrish interrupted. He was looking at the video still again.

‘Why all this?’ he said. ‘What’s happened to the guy?’

Winter stared him out, curious to know why the question had been so long coming.

‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Shame you can’t help, really.’

‘Yeah.’ Parrish suddenly checked his watch. ‘Sorry about that.’

He glanced across at Tara and muttered something about catching up with a mate. She shrugged, long past caring, and Parrish disappeared again. Winter reached for the video still.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Tara blurted out.

‘Tell you what?’

‘That you were police.’

‘You never asked.’ Winter folded the still into his pocket. ‘And anyway, it’s Sunday.’

‘Does that make a difference?’

‘Not really, but I’d hate you to carry a grudge.’

She looked at him for a moment or two, her face stony, then she began to rearrange the beer mats on the bar top.

‘Actually, I thought he was lonely,’ she said quietly. ‘Lonely and a bit pathetic.’

‘Hennessey?’

‘Yes. And I’ll tell you something else.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Rob’s lying. He used to talk to the guy a lot.’

‘What about?’

‘I haven’t a clue. They were really thick, head to head. You know, boy’s talk.’

‘Friends?’