Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) (2 page)

‘Zero.
Nada
.’

‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘So how’s Mr Nandy?’

‘Manic. Argyle lost again yesterday and he thinks they’re stuffed.’

Suttle turned to go. CID-wide, Det-Supt Malcolm Nandy was recognised as the king of lost causes. Trying to defend his empire against the marauding cost-cutters at force HQ was one of them. Plymouth Argyle was another. His beloved Pilgrims were on the edge of bankruptcy, and among the Major Crime Team Nandy was rumoured to be bunging them the odd fiver, doing his bit to help them stave off oblivion.

Fat chance on both counts, Suttle thought, ducking under the tape again.

Lizzie knelt beside the fireplace in a third attempt to coax a flame from the pile of damp kindling. Grace stood in her playpen by the sofa, shaking the wooden bars in a bid to attract the cat’s attention. Her morning bottle and a modest bowl of porridge had at last put a smile on her tiny face.

‘Daddy?’ she gurgled.

‘He’s at work, my love.’

‘Daddy gone?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Lizzie abandoned the fire. Even the balls of newsprint beneath the kindling, the leftovers from last week’s local paper, seemed reluctant to light. She pulled one out and flattened it against the cracked slates on the hearth, wondering if she’d missed anything.
PENSIONER’S HANDBAG LEFT ON BUS
went the headline. Breaking news in Colaton Raleigh, she thought.
What the fuck have I done?

She was still taunted by dreams of her last day at work and the get-together in the pub afterwards. Starting her maternity leave in Portsmouth, she’d had every intention of one day resuming her job at the Pompey
News
. As the favoured feature writer, she’d cornered the market for the plum interviews and the occasional foray into serious investigative journalism, and she’d loved every minute of it. She’d scooped one of the big provincial awards for a feature on racial tensions among the city’s Kosovan community and there’d been a couple of flattering calls from one of the national tabloids, inviting her to send a CV and a representative sample of her recent work. But then came Grace, and nine months later Jimmy had managed to score a promotion of his own. By this time she’d begun to know a different Pompey composed of fat mums at the health centre, ever-partying student drunks down the road and a manic neighbour – heavily tattoed – who claimed to have once met the Pope.

She remembered the morning the letter from Exeter had arrived only too well. That night she and Jimmy had celebrated with champagne and blueberries with lashings of double cream. It had never been part of her career plan to move to Devon, and she’d never realised that her husband had fallen out of love with Portsmouth, but seeing the grin on his face as they emptied the second bottle she realised that she and Grace had no choice. Jimmy had grown up in the country, a straggly little village on the edge of the New Forest, and now he couldn’t wait to introduce her to what he called the sanity of rural life.

Chantry Cottage had been his idea. His new employers – Devon and Cornwall Constabulary – had wanted him to start rather earlier than he’d expected, and he’d headed west without taking the extended leave he’d promised her. The Major Crime Investigation Team he was joining put him through a two-week force induction programme which gave him a little spare time at the end of each working afternoon. Within days, a trawl of the Exeter estate agencies had produced half a dozen potential buys. All of them, in Lizzie’s view, were way too expensive. Property prices in Pompey were beginning to sink and mortgage companies were starting to demand ever bigger deposits country-wide. Jimmy was disappointed – she could hear it in his voice – but a week later she was looking at yet another set of estate agent’s particulars. Chantry Cottage, according to Jimmy, nestled in a fold of the Otter Valley. It had half an acre of garden, mature fruit trees and space for a garage. The estate agent was the first to admit the property needed a little work. Hence the giveaway price of £179,000.

Needed a little work
. Lizzie understood language, made a living from it, knew the multitude of blemishes a well turned phrase could hide.
Needed a little work?

She lifted Grace from the playpen and wandered through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. She’d first seen the property back in high summer last year. It was a beautiful August day with real heat in the sun, and driving down the Otter Valley from the quaintly named Newton Poppleford even she had to admit that this little corner of England was hard to resist. The way the greenness of the valley cupped the water meadows beside the river. The silhouette of a lone buzzard circling high over a waving field of corn. The lumbering herd of cattle that brought them to a halt a couple of minutes later. Grace had kicked her little feet with excitement. She’d never seen cows before.

The cottage lay about a mile outside the village. According to the estate agent, it had once been a chapel, but on first glance Lizzie thought this highly unlikely. Grey slate roof. Red brick construction. Ugly metal-framed windows. The broken gutters were brimming with moss and there were water stains down the exterior walls. The estate agent’s photo had been taken from the back of the house, the view artfully framed by shrubs and a fruit tree. On this evidence, and her husband’s obvious enthusiasm, Lizzie had been expecting something that would grace a calendar. Instead, she found herself looking at a run-down property that might have belonged on one of the more distressed Pompey estates.

Inside, it got worse. The moment you stepped inside, the sunshine vanished. The place smelled of damp and something slightly acrid that she couldn’t place, and there was a chill thickness to the gloom that made her physically shiver. You went in through the kitchen. The units, obviously home-made, were chocked up on wooden blocks. One door had lost a hinge and a couple of drawers were missing. Ancient loops of electrical wiring hung from the walls and the walls themselves were wet to the touch.

Next door, in the tiny living room, the floorboards moved underfoot beneath the scuzzy carpet. One of the windows didn’t close properly and there were gouge marks in the metal frame where someone had tried to get in. The open fireplace looked promising but on closer examination Lizzie found neat piles of mouse droppings on the cracked stone hearth. When Jimmy – still wrestling with the window – finally managed to get the thing open, the draught down the chimney carried a thin drizzle of oily soot.

Under-impressed, Lizzie had tried to get her thoughts in order, tried to puncture the bubble her husband had made for himself, but he was already leading her through the chaos of the garden towards the tiny stream at the bottom, his daughter in his arms, fantasising about the life that awaited them in this new home of theirs. Walks on the common up the road. A cat or two for company. And evenings around the barbecue he’d install on the refurbed patio, toasting their good fortune in cheap red from the village store.

In the end, that evening, she’d said yes, not really understanding his passion for this horrible house but knowing how much it mattered to him. He’d already negotiated a £15K discount on the asking price, which brought the place within their budget, but the work she insisted had to be done right now would be down to Jimmy. No problem, he said. His dad was handy. He’d get him across from Hampshire the moment they exchanged contracts. Between them, they’d sort the electrics, install a new kitchen, do something about the bathroom, give everything a lick of paint and generally clean the place up. He might even be able to tap his dad up for a loan to cover new windows. By the time Lizzie and Grace were ready to move out of Pompey, the place would be unrecognisable.

None of it had happened. Jimmy’s dad fell off his moped and ended up in hospital the day contracts were exchanged. Jimmy himself had made a start on a couple of the jobs, but the pace of life on Major Crimes was unforgiving, and by the time Lizzie had sold their little terraced house it was nearly November. Stepping into Chantry Cottage, she recognised the smell and the damp only too well, realising why Jimmy had been so keen to keep her away. His apology had taken the form of a huge bunch of lilies, beautifully wrapped, which he’d propped up in the cracked sink in the kitchen. It was a sweet gesture, and she’d done her best to smile, but she’d hated lilies ever since.

Now, with Grace still in her arms, her mobile began to ring. She went back into the living room and deposited Grace in her playpen before stepping outside to take the call. Mobile reception in the valley was patchy at best. Another nightmare.

‘Lou? It’s me. How are you?’

Lizzie closed her eyes, glad – at least – that the rain had finally stopped. The only person who called her Lou was Gill Reynolds. The last thing she needed just now was an hour on the phone with an ex-newsroom colleague eager to tell her what she was missing.

‘I’m fine. Busy. You know . . .’ Lizzie tailed off. As ever, Gill had no interest in listening.

‘Great news, Lou. The buggers have given me a couple of days off. You remember that promise I made to pop down?’

Lizzie tried to fend her off, tried somehow to wedge herself into the conversation, tried to explain that this wasn’t the best time to make a flying visit, but in her heart she knew it was hopeless. Gill would be down on Tuesday, around teatime. Directions weren’t a problem because she’d just blagged a new TomTom off the paper. They had loads to catch up on and room in her bag for something nice to kick the evening off. Stolly or something else? Lizzie’s call.

Lizzie opted for Stolly. Under the circumstances, she thought, vodka and oblivion might be an attractive option. Gill was still giggling at a joke she’d just made about some guy she was shagging when she rang off.

Lizzie watched the rain returning down the valley. Over the winter life seemed to have physically penned her into this godforsaken place. She’d become someone else. She knew she had. Through the open door she could hear Grace beginning to wail. For a moment she didn’t move. A fine drizzle had curtained the view. She lifted her face to the greyness of the sky and closed her eyes again, knowing she should have thought harder about trusting her husband’s judgement. Underfoot, she could feel the paving stones shifting with her weight. That was another thing he’d never done. The bloody patio.

Jimmy Suttle found Nandy and Houghton in the apartment that served as the Regatta Court sales office. Houghton stood by the window, staring out, her phone pressed to her ear. Nandy occupied a seat at the desk, eyeballing an attractive middle-aged woman who evidently looked after the development. Her name was Ellie. She’d just put a call through to a local firm she used for work around the apartment block. They’d have someone down in ten.

Nandy glanced up, seeing Suttle at the door. He did the introductions.

‘Ellie’s whistled up a locksmith,’ he said. ‘We’re talking number 37. Fifth floor. You OK with a flash intel search? Mark needs to meet this locksmith guy before he sorts the door for us.’

Suttle nodded. As ever, Nandy was moving at the speed of light. Thirty years in the Major Crimes game had taught him the investigative importance of the first twenty-four hours of any enquiry. Pile all your pieces on the board, give the shaker a good rattle and pray for a double six.

‘So what have we got, sir?’ Suttle asked. ‘What do we know about this guy?’

Nandy threw the question to Ellie. Suttle sensed she was enjoying the attention.

‘You mean Jake Kinsey?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘He’s been with us . . .’ she frowned ‘. . . a couple of years now? Nice enough man. Lived alone. Kept himself to himself.’

‘What did he do for a living?’

‘I’m not quite sure. I think he may have been an engineer at some point. He was never one for conversation but we once had a fascinating little chat about alternative energy sources. Some of the residents were wanting to install solar panels and he told me why they’d never work on our kind of scale. Then we got on to wind turbines. He knew a lot about them too.’

Nandy glanced at his watch. He was sharp as a tack but famously impatient.

‘Is there anything special about number 37?’ Suttle again.

‘Yes. It’s the biggest apartment in the block. It’s huge. I like to think of it as the jewel in our little crown.’

‘How much?’ Nandy this time.

‘Space?’

‘Money. How much did he pay for it?’

Ellie paused. The bluntness of the question seemed to trouble her. She looked briefly at Suttle, one eyebrow raised, then returned to Nandy.

‘One point four five million.’ She smiled. ‘As I recall.’

‘A rich man, then?’

‘Not hard up, obviously.’

‘You checked him out at the time? When you agreed terms?’

‘Of course we did. Not personally. But yes.’

‘Did he raise a mortgage? Some kind of loan?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Can you check? I’d be grateful.’

Ellie nodded and reached for a pad to scribble herself a note. Nandy had got to his feet and was feeling for his watch again. A lean man in his early fifties, he wore the same grey suit regardless of the season and in situations like these reminded Suttle of Samuel Beckett. Recently Lizzie had taken to reading
Krapp’s Last Tape
in bed, and Suttle had clocked the author photo on the back. Nandy had the same hollowed-out face, the same shock of iron-grey hair, the same unforgiving eyes. This was a guy who brought an unyielding sense of mission to every enquiry, every exchange. Suttle rather liked him. There was madness in those eyes. Stuff had to happen quick-time and Nandy was there to make sure it bloody well did.