So where had it all gone wrong? And what the fuck was he doing in some khazi of a crime scene, mud all over his Guccis, trying to figure out what to do next? He glanced up then ducked his head, feeling a flurry of rain, knowing that there were decisions, important decisions, he couldn’t afford to postpone any longer. Staying with Bazza Mackenzie would put him away for the rest of his life. Either that or something worse.
He shook his head, trying to rid himself of a growing sense of helplessness, following the torch beam back towards the door and the darkness beyond.
So much for Winter. He’d always been a resilient character, someone I could depend on to talk himself out of life’s tighter corners, and even at this stage he showed no real signs of flagging. Unlike Faraday.
By half way through the book, I realised I was writing about a man going mad. This wasn’t something I’d pre-planned. Indeed, it wasn’t even something I wanted to happen. I liked Joe Faraday. I respected him. We’d spent a lot of time together in my head. He was excellent company: reflective, wise, humane. He liked a drink, too, and so did I. But something was happening to him, something utterly beyond my control, and there was no way I could avoid the consequences.
This moment, I now realise, was the crux of the entire series, the point – as it were – of no return. From here on, my sole responsibility was to shepherd this man to an end of his own choosing. Not mine, his. On the page, I began to take care of him the way you might take care of a cherished friend. As did D/S Jimmy Suttle when he phoned their mutual boss, DCI Gail Parsons, and told her that Joe Faraday was in a bad way.
Parsons was on the Isle of Wight by late afternoon. She stepped into the SIO’s office without knocking. Faraday looked up, surprised to see her. After the best part of an hour tidying up, his desk was bare.
“Boss…?”
“How are you, Joe?”
“Fine.” He said vaguely. “You?”
She smiled at him, uncertain, then sat down.
“Seriously…?.”
“Seriously.”
“So how’s it going?”
“How’s what going?”
“Everything…Gosling…” She frowned. She’d just noticed the Operation Gosling white board on the wall. Yesterday it had been littered with reminders, phone numbers, names, and the odd scrap of heavily underlined information that badged major enquiries force-wide. Now, like the desk, it was wiped clean.
Faraday was telling her that everything was fine, just fine. Suttle, he said, had been kindness itself.
“How?”
“Little ways, important ways. It’s not easy, sometimes, boss. You know something about that lad? He understands.”
“Understands what?”
“Me. This. The Job. Pretty much everything, really.”
Faraday leaned back and gazed up at the ceiling. He had a tiny smile on his face, as if he’d been privy to some joke or other, but then his head came down again and Parsons recognised the glint of tears in his eyes. He stared at her, forcing the smile wider. The tears were running down his cheeks now and she stood up, edging her bulk around the desk, putting her arms around him, telling him everything was going to be alright. Then the door opened, admitting Suttle.
“I’ve got a car round the back, boss.” He said quietly. “You want me to give you a hand?”
What follows doesn’t belong in this account, except that it took us to Paris. I’d asked Marie-Caroline, my editor at Masque, where I might set a key scene towards the end of the book and after she’d listened to my brief exposition of the plot she directed me to the area around the Parc Monceau, in the 8th arrondissement. Lin and took the Eurostar from St Pancras. In Paris it was October, cold, wet. The Parc Monceau lies at the heart of a prosperous area of tall, handsome houses, discreet security, and Phillipino maids sweeping leaves into neat piles for the wind to scatter again.
We found the park without difficulty, and settled on a bench. Lin had bought some nuts and within minutes we’d attracted a small circle of squirrels. The thin drizzle had stopped by now and I sat back, gazing up at the greyness of the clouds, trying to imagine Faraday sitting at this very spot. Maybe he deserved a little TLC. Maybe I’d give him better weather.
In the park Faraday settled peaceably on a bench, wishing he’d brought something for the marauding squirrels. There were joggers doing circuits, and Faraday shut his eyes, waiting for the soft steady lap-lap of their trainers on the wetness of the sandy path. There were young Asian women too, pushing prams. They looked Thai, and Faraday had a brief vision of himself and Gabrielle on the bus in the mountains, the hot afternoon they’d first met. He could remember exactly what she was wearing, every detail, and he remembered too the single ring she wore on her left hand. It was thin, silver, delicate. Once they were living together she’d taken it off, and he never saw it again.
He tipped his head back, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face. Could you ever really know another person? Could you ever be sure about them? Be certain? Could you make a little parcel of yourself and hand it across for safe keeping? Or was this single act of trust, so absolute, so reckless, bound to end in betrayal? He didn’t know, and the realisation that he didn’t much care any more brought a smile to his lips. He’d once met a Buddhist monk on a ferry on the Mekong river who’d talked of the lightness of being, of the mistake we make in looking for significance in a waste of emptiness. Maybe he was right, he thought. Maybe that’s where this journey ends. Back in the mountains. Back on the bus. Back in the steamy heat of the jungle.
Where was Faraday’s journey to end? Believe it or not I still didn’t know, but we were due back in Devon the following day and I knew I had to have the first draft finished by the end of the week. Life had finally ganged up on Joe Faraday and one way or another, he had to do something about it.
But what?
Thirteen
A couple of years back, I’d already decided to bring the series to an end with Book Twelve. For one thing, I was beginning to be aware that I felt a stranger in Portsmouth. The city was changing fast in ways I didn’t entirely understand and that easy kinship which had warmed the pages of the earlier books had gone. I was having to try harder and harder to keep my finger on the Pompey pulse, and from our new perch in the West Country – more than a hundred and thirty miles away – that was a very big ask indeed.
The other problem, probably more important, lay with my two central characters. To be blunt, they were getting way too old for active service. Back in 1999, when Malcolm Edwards led me to the gates of crime fiction, I never anticipated the series would go beyond three books. Hence I settled for two experienced cops with forty plus years service between them. More than a decade later, to my astonishment, they were on the edge of retirement. Given the importance I’d always placed on authenticity, on getting the small print right, I had to drop the curtain on their world.
Faraday, as it happens, had spared me the disappointments of retirement. The end of Borrowed Light left the faintest possibility that I might be able to bring him back from the dead but the moment I finished the book I knew in my heart that he’d gone. His passing was a profound shock. In some ways I found it difficult to understand what I’d done. Was this really the guy I’d shared eleven books with? Could he really have done something so rash, so selfish, so seemingly out of character? But then the grim logic of events pressed back in on me and I realised that his death, however much I regretted it, had been inevitable. Life had ganged up on Joe Faraday and left him with no choice but to end it.
The reactions to the final pages of Borrowed Light, once the book had been published, astonished me. I’d no idea how unusual it was to have the hero die before the series came to a formal close but I began to get e-mails from all over the world. Some read like condolences. These were people who’d liked Joe Faraday and wanted to mourn his passing. Others came from readers who appeared to have been traumat
ised. They’d raced through the latter half of the book, often in the small hours, and couldn’t believe what I’d done. There was a sense of betrayal, that I’d somehow been careless with a character that was precious to them, that I’d dropped him on a tiled floor like a piece of prized china and simply walked away, leaving them with the broken shards of someone they’d cherished. One fan, a woman from California, went further. A member of her family had recently committed suicide. I had no right to trespass into this territory. The final pages of Borrowed Light had undone the months of therapy that had offered so much comfort. She felt bereft again, completely shattered, and that was my fault.
I always answer every e-mail. In the case of this lady, as in many others, I did my best to explain that characters who work on the page have a voice, an integrity, and a direction that owes nothing to me, the writer. They make their own decisions. Some, like Paul Winter, cope. Some, like Joe Faraday, don’t. That, sadly, was a fact of life and when I wrote that no one was more shocked than me by Faraday’s suicide, I meant it. Was I surprised by what had happened? In a way, yes, though in retrospect I believe it was inevitable. Did I miss him? I did, terribly. Could I have done anything about it as the end of Borrowed Light hove into view? Sadly, no.
He did, though, deserve a decent send-off, and the first seventy pages of the final book, already titled Happy Days, belonged to my departed series lead who’d also become a good friend. Ulyana, incidentally, is a Russian actress who has become J-J’s partner, while Lizzie is Suttle’s wife.
It rained on the morning of Faraday’s funeral. Suttle had taken the day off and while Ulyana helped Lizzie get food ready for the Bargemaster’s House, he drove J-J to some of the places he knew Faraday had loved. Favourite of all was the tip of Spice Island, a spit of shingle that curled around the bottom of Old Portsmouth. Here, beside a pub called the Still and West, was a waterside area that had recently been tarted up to help put Flagship Pompey on the map. Faraday hadn’t much liked what the planners had done but nothing could spoil the real magic of the place.
Faraday had come here often, especially when an investigation was threatening to hit the rocks. Most of the time he’d be alone, nursing a pint beside the railings, staring out at the incessant comings and goings on the harbour, but sometimes he’d take Suttle along, quizzing him about this or that aspect of a case, wanting to know how much weight the intel could bear, wondering whether they were heading in the right direction, abruptly breaking off to direct Suttle’s attention to a lone cormorant, inches above the racing tide, heading out towards the Solent and the open sea.
It was that quiet, dogged, relentless professionalism, spiked by moments of childlike excitement, that hung in Suttle’s memory. He wanted, somehow, to get just a little of this magic across to J-J but in the absence of Ulyana, for all J-J’s lip-reading skills, he knew it was beyond him. Instead, they stood in the drizzle, doing what Faraday used to do, just gazing out across the water until it occurred to Suttle that there was no need for explanations. J-J, wholly his father’s child, instinctively understood. Moments later, as if to prove the point, he took Suttle’s elbow and steered him into the pub. He had a wet £10 note in his hand and brooked no arguments. Drinks were on him.
By early afternoon, the rain had cleared. Rags of cloud scudded in from the west and the sunshine glittered in the puddles of standing water on the long drive out of the city. At J-J’s insistence, Lizzie and Suttle rode in the limousine behind the hearse. Lizzie had parked Grace with her mum, who lived at the top end of the city. The cortege took the motorway north across the harbour and J-J sat bolt upright, his eyes never leaving his father’s coffin. His face was a mask. Suttle had borrowed a suit from a mate who was about J-J’s size but it was far too big across the shoulders and made him look like a refugee. In some respects, Suttle thought, the effect was fitting. Like his dad, J-J was one of life’s windfalls.
The crematorium was at Portchester, on the mainland. The previous funeral had just finished and a thin straggle of mourners were filing away towards the Garden of Rememberance to inspect the flowers. Faraday’s cortege turned into the drive. Outside the Chapel of Rest, there were faces Suttle recognised, chiefly the hardened smokers, lingering in the sunshine before going in. At the sight of the approaching hearse, they ducked into the entrance and disappeared. Suttle had toyed with trying to arrange some kind of modest guard of honour for Faraday’s last journey but Ulyana had told him that J-J was against the idea. He didn’t want any fuss, she said. He just wanted to say goodbye.
The hearse came to a halt. Suttle and Lizzie joined J-J and Ulyana as the undertakers hoisted the coffin onto their shoulders and began the slow carry into the chapel. To Suttle’s quiet satisfaction, there was a good turn-out. The chapel wasn’t big but the pews on either side of the aisle were packed. He reached for Lizzie’s hand, nodded at a face or two, suddenly overcome by what this moment really meant. Faraday was no longer amongst them. The man he’d trusted, admired, respected, liked, had gone.
Spaces had been saved for them at the front of the congregation. Suttle stood aside, letting Lizzie squeeze into the pew, then took his place beside her. Mercifully, no one could see his face. He swallowed hard and reached for the Order of Service he’d had printed specially. On the front was a photo of Faraday and a much younger J-J, lifted from J-J’s lap top.
Father and son were squatting together on the stony strip of foreshore in front of the Bargemaster’s House, Faraday’s arm around the child’s skinny shoulders. J-J, barely seven, immensely proud of himself, was holding a tiny green crab by one leg, showing it to the camera, while his dad’s attention appeared to have been caught by something else. For Suttle, it had been impossible not to wonder what that something was but he now realised why J-J had treasured the shot.
Only last night, through Ulyana, he’d told Suttle that there were two things he’d always remember about his dad. One was his bigness and his smell, both of them an enormous source of comfort, and the other was his curiosity. Dad, he said, was always on the look-out, always interested, always nosy. And for that alone, he’d loved him.
A Schubert impromptu came to an end and a moment of silence was broken by the vicar. The music for the funeral had been Ulyana’s choice. She remembered Faraday telling her about solo piano pieces that had touched him at a concert he and Gabrielle had once attended and she’d selected two impromptus plus an extract from a Beethoven sonata, telling J-J that his dad would have loved them. Reflective, beautifully paced, intensely moving, the music was perfect.
The vicar extended a welcome to the congregation. Suttle, half-listening, let his mind drift away. He’d noticed Winter at the back of the chapel and he wondered whether he shared this sudden gust of overwhelming loss. Then, his opening remarks complete, the vicar invited Detective Chief Superintendent Willard to come forward and make his tribute.
Willard was in full dress uniform. Dwarfing the vicar, he spoke without notes. Faraday’s death, he said, had come as an immense shock. Not because he was so young. Not even because those that knew him might have sensed that all was not well. But because an event like this, so sudden, so final, was a terrible reminder of how easily the best qualities in a man could be lost.
Faraday, he said, was one of the finest detectives he’d ever had the privilege of serving alongside. He was utterly honest, immensely hardworking, and never let anything stand between himself and the best possible outcome. He never hogged the limelight. He kept himself away from the usual swirl of canteen gossip. But best of all he could read other people like a book. In the service of justice, said Willard, this was a huge gift, but as a human being it made Faraday someone pretty rare. The man listened. The man understood. The man reached out. And – in all three respects – he was a lesson for us all.
Suttle felt an audible ripple of agreement behind him. This was powerful stuff. He’d no idea Willard had it in him. But Willard hadn’t finished. Turning to J-J, on behalf of
his father’s ex-colleagues, he offered the most profound sympathies. In his view, it was a mark of Faraday’s uniqueness that J-J had lost more than a father. Because, when it had mattered most, Faraday had been his nipper’s sole contact with the world. He’d brought him up single-handed. He’d built a bridge to the strange, mute happenings around him. He’d been there until the time had come for J-J to flee the nest. And only then had he let himself get on with a life of his own. That had demanded a degree of love, and commitment, and selflessness all too rare in today’s world. And for that, Joe Faraday, we salute you.
He turned to the coffin, bowed his head, and then returned to his seat. Suttle could hear someone sobbing a couple of rows back. Lizzie’s hand was knotted in his. For the second time in ten minutes he was close to losing control himself. Beautiful, he thought. Spot-on.
A couple of prayers followed. Then it was his turn to squeeze out of the pew and join J-J beside the coffin. Last night the pair of them had been rehearsing for this moment. A bottle of Cotes-du-Rhone had helped. Now, Suttle produced the carefully-folded text from his jacket pocket, nodded to J-J, and began to read.
“The Eagle…”, he announced uncertainly, “…by Alfred Lord Tennyson.”
He made the mistake of glancing up. A sea of white faces, blurring again at the edges. He fought to regain control of himself, aware of J-J beside him, his bony hands outstretched, already miming the opening line.
Suttle bent to the text again and began to read.
“He clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
Backstory Page 26