Backstory

by Hurley, Graham

  “Julie? I need to talk to Conrad.”

  Winter knew at once what this was about. Conrad Whittiker was Mackenzie’s point man at the bank, the guy who oversaw his various accounts, the senior manager who made all the key credit and loan decisions. Whittiker was a very bad man to cross. Especially now.

  Mackenzie was at full throttle. The moment Whittiker came on the phone he let fly. Some muppet had been on about a couple of mortgage payments. She seemed to think there were insufficient funds available. The payment had therefore been blanked. What the fuck was going on?

  Whittiker spoke at some length. Winter watched Mackenzie’s face darken.

  “That’s bollocks, Conrad, and you fucking know it. I’ve put hundreds of thousands your way, squillions of fucking quid, and now you tell there’s a problem? What fucking planet are you people on? First you trash the economy, get it so totally fucking wrong we’re all back in the Stone Age, monkeys up fucking trees, then you take it out on people like me. Some of us have a living to make, believe it or not, and you tossers don’t make it fucking easy. So do us a favour, eh? Sort this nonsense out.”

  He put the phone down and stared at it, daring it to ring again. It was Winter who broke the silence.

  “Well…?”

  “You don’t want to know, mush.”

  “I do, Baz. I do.”

  “They’re threatening to withdraw the overdraft.”

  “Threatening?”

  “They’ve done it. Bang…” His fist hit the desk and made the phone jump. “…just like fucking that. No consultation. No warning. These guys think they own us all.”

  “They do, Baz.”

  “Bollocks. You believe that? You really belive all that bullshit? Jesus…” He stepped away from the desk and stormed towards the window. Out on Southsea Common, Winter could see a couple of girls flying a kite. One was very pretty. He thought of saying something but knew there was no point. Bazza, in a mood like this, was beyond reach.

  “Great fucking timing.” He muttered. “This has to be a spoiler, doesn’t it? There has to be some evil fucker behind all this, some Tory cunt. The Labour lot haven’t got the brains and the Lib Dems are away with the fairies. So who wants to hurt us, mush? Who is it?”

  He was talking to himself, a man cornered by months of spending money he didn’t have, a man desperate to put a name and a face to this monstrous twist of fate. In Bazza’s world, as Winter knew only too well, the blame never settled at his own door.

  “Which account is it, Baz?”

  “All of them, the lot. He’s telling me there’s nothing left in the pot.”

  “We knew that.”

  “He means his pot. We’re half way up the fucking mountain, mush, and he’s just cut the rope. Mortgage payments, direct debits, cheques, credit card payments, the lot, finito. Not another fucking penny, he says. Not one.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We look elsewhere. We work the phones. We call in favours. Stu’s got a quid or two if it really comes to it. Marie, too.”

  Winter said nothing. If Bazza was relying on his wife and son-in-law, things had to be really bad.

  At length, there came a knock at the door. It was Leo Kinder. For days, in anticipation of this morning’s news, he’d been planning a big press conference to launch the Pompey First campaign. The London papers would be sending stringers. TV and radio were standing by. The News were talking about a big splash on the front page plus a feature inside. This was the raw meat of politics. Even Kinder, Mr Cool, couldn’t mask his excitement.

  “You want me to make the calls, Baz?”

  Mackenzie was still at the window. He didn’t turn round.

  “Of course I fucking do.” He said.

  Ahead of the moment when I had to start the first draft in earnest, Lin and I took a month off in late September to scout a couple of locations. We took a series of trains down to Trieste at the top of Adriatic, spent a couple of days in nearby Venice, and then boarded a bus out of Italy, heading for the Istrian peninsula. This is Croatia. Because the Croatians had yet to join the EU, the reach of the European Arrest Warrant didn’t extend this far. Winter would therefore be safe here living under an assumed identity and our job was to find him somewhere agreeable to settle down.

  Our search came to an end at the seaside resort of Porec. In late September, the place was virtually empty. Rocky promentaries on both sides of the huge bay were green with pine trees. During the summer, the town would be awash with tourists – most of them German and Dutch – and a browse through properties for sale at a local agency confirmed that Winter would have no problem picking up a decent house for the kind of money he’d realise on the sale of his Gunwharf apartment. The estate agent confirmed that a number of visitors had chosen this area for their retirement and we came away with an armful of likely prospects.

  That night, in a deserted local bar, Lin and I were having a pint or two and watching the football when she caught my eye.

  “Paul Winter survives Book Twelve, then?” she said. “Is that what all this is about?”

  I glanced across at her, reaching for my glass.

  “No idea.” I said. And I meant it.

  From Porec we took a bus to the port of Rjieka and hopped onto the season’s last ferry south, towards Dubrovnik. The ship was virtually empty, a handful of vehicles down below on the car deck and maybe thirty or so passengers. We rumbled through the scatter of islands that dot the Dalmatian Coast, and changed boats at Split. Ten hours later we were late getting into Dubrovnik, leaving us four minutes to make the neighbouring bus station for the day’s last coach down to Montenegro. We sprinted along the quayside. I knew from the internet that the coach company was called Blu Lines. A blue coach was approaching. We stood in the middle of the road, waving it down. Stopping was less hassle than running us over. Very Montenegran.

  Montenegro itself was startlingly beautiful, a rugged coastline falling sheer into the blueness of the Adriatic. The road wound inland, following a fjord as far as the ancient town of Kotor, where we got off. I had room in the book for a Russian oligarch, a rich businessman who dresses like a student, lives on a palatial yacht, and spends his life funnelling development money into places like Montenegro. The guy’s name is Nickolai Koch. From my reading, I’d figured that Koch would favour making base camp at a place like this and one glance at the waterfront beneath the ancient town walls told me I was right: a neat line of fuck-off motor yachts, rich men’s toys, tied stern-first to the quayside.

  We stayed out of town, in a primitive room let by the family next door. The sons had some kind of motor business and beaten-up old rental cars came and went through the night. Lin thought they were smugglers or drug dealers, and she was probably right.

  Next day we went back to the coast. The biggest developments are around the city of Budva and there was Russian money wherever you looked. Gym-fit bodyguards in wrap-around shades waiting at the kerbside in black 4x4s. Sleek businessmen with drop-dead girlfriends dallying over a coffee and a slivovitz on the terrace of the nearby café-bar. And acres of quick-set concrete beneath a forest of cranes disfiguring every headland in sight. The smell of serious money, I decided, was the smoke drifting inland from the bonfires of rubbish burning on the construction sites. No one seemed to care. They were too busy turning wonderful views into yet another private fortune. Winter would have to come here, I decided, and get himself into serious trouble.

  Not that life was easy for him back home. I started writing the week we got back to Devon. A month later, I was storming towards the end of the book. By now, Winter had moved in with Misty Gallagher and the pair of them were making active preparations to decamp to Croatia.

  The thought of Misty took Winter out of the city. By now, she would have acquired a mountain of cardboard boxes from the Londis down the road. For an hour or so, he’d be only too happy to lend her a ha
nd, a downpayment on this new life of theirs. By the time he was back at the hotel, with luck, he’d have worked out a line for Mackenzie.

  It was a glorious day and traffic was heavy onto Hayling Island. Winter drove past thicket after thicket of blue Tory posters, musing about where the election had taken them all. The masterplan for Gehenna had been his and in theory it was a beautiful piece of entrapment.

  Bazza, to no one’s surprise, had generated the perfect storm for himself. That trademark mix of recklessness, mischief, ambition and raw nerve had led him to take a tilt at Pompey North. At the start of the campaign, to everyone’s surprise, he’d done extremely well. There’d even been rumours that the mainstream candidates were beginning to worry. But then, as Winter had predicted, it was all starting to unravel until Pompey’s favourite drug baron found himself in a trap of his own making. At this point, according to Gehenna’s script, it would only take a tiny push to topple Bazza over the edge. That push, fingers crossed, would come any day now. After which Bazza would lose it completely.

  Did Winter still believe it? Was he still signed up to Gehenna? He knew the answer was yes. Because, God help him, there was no alternative.

  He was already turning in through Misty’s gate when he saw the Bentley, It was parked beneath the tree at the edge of the drive. The kitchen was at the back of the house and Winter could see Mackenzie swivelling at the breakfast bar, alerted by the crunch of gravel outside.

  Shit.

  Bazza, he knew, was at his most dangerous when nothing in the world seemed capable of upsetting him. He met Winter at the door, big smile, pumping handshake, the smell of fresh coffee on the go, even the tang of grilling bacon.

  Misty was in the kitchen, reaching for an extra plate. As Winter had predicted, the kitchen was littered with cardboard boxes. Whatever else awaited them in Porec, they wouldn’t be short of glasses.

  “Mist tells me you’re off?” Bazza couldn’t have been more affable.

  “Yeah.” Winter shed his jacket. “That’s the plan.”

  “Bit of a surprise, though, eh? Mist assumed you’d told me.”

  “Didn’t want to get in the way, Baz. No distractions. Not this week.”

  “Well done, son. Good darts. Everything for the cause, eh?”

  Winter nodded. He was wondering about the surveillance guys. Were they parked up outside? Somewhere down the road? Had Bazza clocked them? He felt physically ill. Mackenzie was playing with him, goading him, setting him up. This was beyond dangerous. He had to do something. He had to somehow sieze the initiative, restore – at the very least – a little self-respect.

  “If you want the truth, Baz, I’ve had enough. I said I’d see you through and that’s what I’ve done.”

  “See me through to what, mush?”

  “Thursday. Election day. Whatever happens after that, you’re on your own.”

  “Is that right?”

  Misty, still attending to the bacon, caught the change in tone. She glanced over her shoulder towards the breakfast bar. Winter could see the anxiety in her eyes. He turned back to Mackenzie.

  “Look on the bright side, Baz. You can flog this place now. Fuck knows, you need the money.”

  Mackenzie ignored him. He was standing by the window now, gazing out.

  “We’ve been a good team.” He said softly. “What do you think, Mist?”

  “Me and you, Baz?”

  “Me and Paulie here.”

  “The best, Baz. Totally the best.”

  “That’s what I think.” He stepped back from the window. “So what do you think…” There was no warmth in the smile. “…Paulie?”

  “I think it’s been fun. And like I say, I think the time’s come to call it a day.”

  “Shame.”

  “Definitely.”

  “No regrets?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like….” Winter frowned, then shook his head. “No way, I’m not going there.”

  “Where, Paulie?” He’d come close now. The smell of mint of his breath was something new. All that campaigning, Winter thought vaguely. All those strangers you suddenly had to talk to.

  “Ketchup or brown sauce?” Misty was trying to head Bazza off. It didn’t work.

  “It’s Westie, isn’t it? It’s fucking Westie that’s done it for you? Him and that little German girl of his? Couldn’t hack it, could you? Couldn’t just accept it was something that happened by? People get hurt, mush. That’s life. People fuck up. They get in my face. And then they get hurt.”

  “You had them killed, Baz. You had them blown away. That’s not hurt.”

  “Whatever. It doesn’t matter, mush. It’s gone, it’s over, unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless I think different.”

  “I’m not with you.”

  “No you’re not, mush, are you? And I tell you something else. You’re fucking bricking yourself. I can smell it, mush. Any minute now you’re going to do what old men do. You’re going to dump in your kaks. And you know why? Because I frighten you shitless. Good. I’m glad. Because you fucking deserve it.”

  He stared up at Winter for a long moment, then headed for the door. En route was an empty cardboard box. He gave it a kick, then turned round and strode back. His finger was in Winter’s face.

  “I don’t know what’s going on in that evil little brain of yours, mush, but you listen to me. I’m saying this once and once only. If you even think of dobbing me in with the Filth, you’ll end up like Westie. Except worse. Much worse. Westie was lucky. Bam. End of. For you, mush, I can dream up something really tasty. We understand each other? No? Then talk to Misty here. She knows exactly what I’m about.”

  He turned on his heel again and left. Moments later came the slam of the front door. Winter watched the Bentley execute a savage turn, gravel kicking from the rear tyres. Then Mackenzie was gone.

  Winter turned round to find Misty behind him. She was offering him a sandwich.

  “Can you manage a couple, pet?” She did her best to smile. “Be a shame to waste them.”

  I loved this scene. It smacked of exactly the kind of despair that would settle on a man like Winter once the chemistry between him and his employer had evaporated. He’d had three good years with Mackenzie. He’d pulled a number of strokes, all of them badged with his trademark cunning, and he’d been well paid for his efforts. He’d established a really close relationship with a woman who still turned heads all over the city, a woman who’d until recently been Mackenzie’s long-term mistress, and it hadn’t bothered Bazza in the slightest. But now, barely a couple of chapters away from the end of the series, he was staring disaster in the face. How was he going to finesse this latest catastrophe? What artful ploy could he dream up to simply stay alive?

  At this point, absolute truth, I hadn’t got a clue. The denouement to the entire series lay around the corner and I found myself, not for the first time, in the hands of my surviving lead character. Winter will find a way, I told Lin. Or not.

  December 2010 was a bit of a landmark for a couple of other reasons. Anticipating that I’d shortly be out of contract, I’d been trying to get Orion to sign up to a spin-off series set in the West Country. My plan called for young D/S Jimmy Suttle to get himself a job with the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. Specifically, I wanted him to move west with his young family and join one of Devon and Cornwall’s Major Crime Investigation Teams. This would unlock a series of stories right across the force area, which is huge.

  I tried to bait the hook with the sheer range of settings on offer – anything from the drug-infested badlands of Torbay to generations of family vendettas across the high pastureland on the edges of Dartmoor – but Orion’s interest was barely luke-warm. In mainstream publishing, cutting edge crime fiction tends to flourish in the black hearts of our majo
r cities. Why would Orion waste their time with thatched cottages and cream teas?

  I did a detailed synopsis set around the rowing club in Exmouth, where we lived. Both Lin and I had become passionate about offshore rowing, joining a crew of like-minded guys who were happy to notch up more than 25 kilometres a week and celebrate in the pub afterwards. I was new to club culture and this collection of Alpha males (and Alpha women) was a bit of a relevation. After a while I began to dream up a plot. It revolved around a successful self-made businessman found dead on the walkway beneath his £1m penthouse apartment. This is a guy who’s joined the club, learned to row, bought a brand new boat, plus the crew to go with it. One of these guys probably killed him.

  In essence this was a riff on the classic English country house murder, with a series of sub-plots that were altogether more contemporary. It was also to be an in-depth study of a young marriage in crisis, a development thickened by Suttle’s realisation that his wife – Lizzie – appears to be having an affair with the prime suspect. I had every confidence in my pitch, and Simon liked it too, but there was still an in-house resistence to baling out of Pompey. The books were selling well. Why not stick with a formula we know works?

  We’d arrived at a kind of impasse when I took a call from Conrad Williams, my TV and film agent. He’s part of the Blake, Friedmann agency. My first two contracts – for stand-alone thrillers – had been negotiated back in the Eighties by Carole Blake and she’d done a fine job, but things had got tricky after Book Four (not Carole’s fault) and I’d finally baled out to conduct my own negotiations with Macmillan. For the move to Orion, in the mid Nineties, I’d acquired another agent but this relationship had only lasted four books before I once again declared UDI. Throughout this period, though, Conrad had continued to look after the film and TV side, negotiating a series of option deals on a number of books. They never came to anything but that was by no means his fault.