One Under

by Hurley, Graham

  There was another question, this time about the issue of ID, and Faraday dealt with it deftly enough, but his voice had hardened, a definite edge of impatience this time, and Winter found himself trying to keep his thoughts about the DI in perspective.

  He’d learned early on that you’d be wrong to underestimate Faraday. With all the man’s oddness - the birdwatching, the solitary weekends, the deaf-mute son who’d fled the nest - he was still a very effective detective, shrewd in his hunches, stubborn as hell in fighting his corner, ruthless when it mattered. Winter knew that Willard rated him highly, and no one in his right mind would ignore Willard. In his new job as Head of CID, Major Crimes’ ex-boss had already put the squeeze on some of the time-servers, and productive, reliable DIs like Faraday could only - in the end - cash in.

  Nonetheless, at this moment in time there was definitely something not quite right about the man in charge of Operation Coppice, and when Winter tried to find the exact word to describe it, he knew he ought to keep it simple. Maybe, after all, it wasn’t some midlife career crisis. Faraday, he finally decided, was simply pissed off.

  The meeting went on. Faraday called for a summary from Winter on the strength of the Misper list, and Winter obliged. His thoughts on the marital welcome awaiting the missing Arab engineer raised a ripple of laughter but he left no one in any doubt that the list, as currently drawn up, was an investigative dead end. One bloke had looked promising - same colour hair - but he’d disappeared nearly two months back and Winter could see no obvious explanation that could put him in the tunnel.

  Faraday, with a cursory nod of thanks, took the meeting onto other areas, chiefly housekeeping items like Incident Room staffing levels and the management of overtime claims, and as Winter’s attention began to wander, he found himself gazing at the faces around him.

  He knew most of these men intimately, especially the older ones. He knew who was sharp, who delivered, who you could trust if the wheels came off. He also knew who were the bullshitters, who had a bottle problem in dodgy situations and who was over the side with the prettiest of the five indexers who were sitting in a huddle by the window. He knew that Dawn Ellis, a recent recruit to the squad, was contemplating a new career in alternative therapy, and he knew that Bev Yates was still trying to figure out the exact chain of events that had got his wife pregnant for the third time.

  Names, Winter thought. Lives. Reputations. But where had the real legends gone? The hard core of old thief-takers, hard-drinking, occasionally corrupt but immensely successful? The answer, he knew, was simple. Thanks to age, or alcohol, or simple despair at the prospect of retirement, they’d simply faded away, leaving behind them the blackest of holes that no amount of performance figures, or career development, or fancy policy statements could possibly fill.

  Because the truth was that no one wanted to be a detective anymore. Today’s policemen had lives and families to go home to. They wanted the reassurance of regular shift work. They hated the very idea of overtime. In fact, with the exception of gutsy kids like Jimmy Suttle, CID had become the posting from hell, and the situation had now got so dire that they had to draft in veterans, retired blokes for God’s sake, just to keep the numbers up.

  The squad meeting was coming to an end. Faraday was issuing the standard warnings about screwing down evidence, about grafting hard, about avoiding short cuts. Winter caught Dave Michaels’ eye. Michaels was the DS who’d be acting as Statement Reader once the machine cranked into action.

  ‘A fucking name,’ he muttered, ‘might be useful.’

  Back in his office, Winter at last turned his attention to the padlock. Faraday had mentioned it twice in the squad meeting, telling the listening DCs that a great deal of legwork and a big slice of luck might be necessary to pin down its likely point of sale, but nothing at all could happen until the Intelligence Cell came up with a list of local outlets. Winter glanced at his watch, then slipped the photos back into his office drawer. Tomorrow, he thought. This time of night you’d be mad to start calling.

  He sat back a moment, then reached in his pocket and fetched out the bank statement he’d lifted from Givens’ flat. Givens had his money with HSBC. The statement was dated 5 July 2005. On 1 June Givens had £7,455.29 to his name. By four weeks later, after a £400 direct debit - presumably his rent - his balance had shrunk to a mere £214.70. Winter fetched a calendar from a neighbouring desk and set about doing the maths.

  According to his employers, Givens had failed to turn up for work on Tuesday 24 May. This statement didn’t cover the rest of May, but there was a clear pattern of debit card withdrawals in early June. On the first, second and third of the month, £700 had disappeared from the account each day, and in every case the name against the transaction appeared to be identical. Winter checked, then double-checked. No question about it. Portsmouth FC.

  Winter lifted the phone. Dave Michaels was a mad Pompey fan. He answered on the first ring.

  ‘Dave? Paul Winter. How much is a Pompey season ticket?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nephew’s birthday. Thought I’d buy him a little present.’

  ‘You’d better start saving then.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘For the best seats? Seven hundred quid.’

  Winter, gleeful, told him it was cheap at the price, then hung up. Returning to Givens’ bank statement, he traced the next week’s withdrawals. This time, there were only two. On 6 June, £2100. A day later, £2800. Seven more season tickets. Simple. By now, 7 June, the account was nearly empty. No further transactions. Then, on 24 June, Givens’ NHS salary cheque had been paid in, putting him £1857.29 in the black. Three days later, on Monday 27 June, another £1400 had gone up the road to the football club. After that, no one had touched Givens’ money.

  Winter went back over the sums, totalling the figures on his fingers. Nothing he’d seen in Givens’ flat had even hinted at a passion for football. So what on earth would he want with a dozen season tickets?

  Even now, he knew the answer. Somehow or other, someone had got hold of Givens’ debit card. Maybe they’d rolled him. Maybe the violence had got out of hand. Maybe there was some other explanation. But whatever had happened, they were left with the key to Givens’ bank account but no PIN number. Without the PIN they couldn’t access ATMs or go for a shopping spree. And so they’d be looking for some other way of turning that little plastic wafer into hard cash.

  A bunch of season tickets, early July, was the perfect answer. You wouldn’t get seven hundred quid a pop for them but in a city as soccer-mad as Pompey, you could come close. Word would go round the estates. Maybe there’d be bidding. £500? £600? £650? Who cares? Either way, the little scrote who’d dreamed up the scam would be laughing all the way to the offie. Six grand, minimum. How many Stellas was that?

  Winter got to his feet and gazed out of the window. In a tiny back garden beyond the car park an elderly man in a pair of baggy shorts was enjoying the last of a decent day. His feet propped on an upturned crate, he was lying back in a deckchair, face to the sun. Winter watched him for a moment or two, still thinking about the Pompey scam. The figures, he knew, argued for themselves. But what was infinitely more promising was the fact that nothing had been heard from Givens himself. No block on his account. No sign that he’d ever tried to staunch the outflow of precious cash.

  In theory, of course, he might not have noticed but you still needed a card to order tickets over the phone, and Winter had never heard of anyone whose card had gone missing for a month and hadn’t made a fuss about it. No, every next piece of evidence - his non-appearance at work, the neglected garden, the state of the fridge and now the bank account - argued that Mr Givens was off the plot. Did that make him a likely candidate for the body in the tunnel? Winter still thought not. Back in May, in whatever circumstances, Givens had met his death. Soon afterwards someone had dreamed up a way of emptying his bank account. End of story.

  Winter sat down again behind the desk. He had a picture
of that bare, neat sitting room, so suddenly abandoned, in his head. Not one decent murder, he thought, but two. He contemplated the possibility, then retrieved his address book from his jacket pocket and lifted the phone again. What he needed now, what he always needed in this situation, was a great deal more information about the man himself. Givens had been at St Mary’s Hospital for a while. A job like his, carting medical specimens around, it was odds on he’d be in and out of the mortuary.

  Winter dialled a mobile number. It took a while to answer. At last, a voice he recognised, gruff Pompey accent. Winter was on his feet again, peering out of the window. The smile was back on his face.

  ‘Jake? It’s Paul Winter. Fancy a pint?’

  Faraday was back at his office, gazing at the Operation Coppice policy book. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been through this little ritual, contemplating the bareness of that first page, wondering quite where all those entries he’d be making over the days to come would lead.

  The policy book was his anchor, a detailed aidememoire that would steady the investigation as the seas got rougher. Every decision he made, every tiny step he took along the path towards some kind of result, would go down on these pages. In months, maybe years, to come, a glance at a single entry would remind him why he’d authorised a particular action or convened yet another meeting.

  At first, in his early days of heading complex enquiries, this fanatical exercise in record-keeping had seemed completely over the top, but experience had taught him that the policy book could prove invaluable. Defence solicitors could be ruthless picking holes in the conduct of a particular operation, and he’d seen fellow officers crucified in court for decisions that had long ago slipped their memories. The policy book, he’d learned, could be a shield as well as an anchor.

  Reviewing the day’s progress, he began to scribble a log of events. He’d got as far as removal of the body parts from the tunnel when he heard a knock at the door. It was Tracy Barber. She wanted a word.

  ‘What time’s the post-mortem, boss?’

  ‘Half eight.’

  ‘You want a lift?’

  The offer surprised Faraday. Pending the construction of a new mortuary at the city’s Queen Alexandra Hospital, Home Office post-mortems were being conducted at Winchester, half an hour away. On the motorway it was an easy drive. Why the concern?

  Tracy muttered something about owing a girlfriend a drink. She could drop Faraday off and pick him up when the pathologist was through. Faraday knew it was bullshit.

  ‘You want to chat?’ He gestured at the empty chair. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Barber studied him a moment. She’d worked with Faraday for more than a year now and thought she knew him. Holidays, she told herself, were supposed to make you relax.

  ‘You just seem … ’ She shrugged. ‘ … Uptight, that’s all.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s not a crime, boss, no one’s going to report you. But … you know -’ She nodded down at the policy book. ‘- It’s still early days.’

  Faraday nodded. Early days. She was right. He glanced at his watch, toyed with accepting her offer, then told himself it was unnecessary. The post-mortem could drag on for hours. A body this mangled would stretch the pathologist and the mortuary attendants to the limit.

  Barber, uncomfortable now, was waiting for a decision. Faraday smiled up at her, then got to his feet.

  ‘Kind of you.’ He slipped on his jacket. ‘But no, thanks.’

  The motorway out of the city began at the end of Kingston Crescent. Faraday eased the Mondeo onto the slip road and joined the thin stream of northbound traffic. One or two French lorries were still rumbling out of the commercial docks, last arrivals off the Le Havre ferry, and beyond them Faraday could see the darkening spaces of the upper harbour. The sun had gone now, buried behind threatening towers of cloud to the west.

  Faraday reached for the radio, searching for a concert. He tuned to Radio Three and the haunting brass of Mahler’s Fifth brought a smile to his face as he slipped the seat back a notch or two, making himself comfortable. Was he really as stressed as Barber seemed to think? And, if so, was it anyone’s business but his own?

  He thought about the proposition, knowing only too well where it led. For well over a year now Eadie Sykes had been living and working in Australia, and the relationship had survived on a drip feed of e-mails increasingly empty of anything but the bare facts of their working lives. He’d been lashed to the wheel of Major Crimes. She’d been making documentary films. The prospect of meeting her again after all this time had slightly alarmed Faraday, and on the long flight from Heathrow he’d begun to wonder whether this protracted, arm’s-length affair of theirs could really survive the next three weeks.

  The answer, of course, was no, and from the moment she’d met him at Bangkok airport, tanned and brimming with news, he’d known they were more than half a world apart. He represented a closed chapter in her busy, busy life. She’d done provincial England. She’d moved on. For someone with her talents - courage, looks, energy, plus an implacable determination to succeed - Australia was irresistible. She had an apartment on Manly Beach. She had the ear of a wealthy businessman happy to fund any film she wanted to make. The crews she used were the sassiest guys in the world. And, as the reviews she’d collated for Faraday’s benefit so amply showed, she was making it. Big time. So why on earth would she ever want to come back to Portsmouth?

  They’d taken a ferry to a diving island called Koh Tao. A contact of Eadie’s in Sydney had pre-booked a sumptuous bungalow overlooking a secluded cove, and they’d settled in. The first couple of days, jet-lagged, Faraday had slept a lot. Whenever he’d woken, chilled by the powerful air conditioning, Eadie had been out somewhere, swimming or walking, or making new friends at the beachside bar on the other side of the bay. The second night, refreshed now, Faraday had proposed a meal at a recommended seafood place in the next bay. They’d ridden to the restaurant on a couple of rented Honda motorbikes. Even now, Faraday could still feel the sweet kiss of the night air on his burning face.

  The meal had been a disaster. While Faraday sank a series of Chang beers, Eadie toyed with a glass of Perrier. She’d given up alcohol, she explained, because she’d found sobriety more of a turn-on. Glummer by the minute, Faraday had then listened to her brisk dissection of his life. He was in the wrong job. He had the wrong priorities. He’d settled, all the time she’d known him, for second best. He was a great copper, no question about it, but where on earth was the satisfaction in chasing a bunch of arsehole kids round a dump like Portsmouth? And as for birdwatching, how much fun was that?

  Listening to her skating over the surface of his last three years, Faraday had managed to keep his temper. She’d always had a gift for the right phrase, a certain glibness that served her well professionally, but she didn’t come close to the things that made him tick. She didn’t understand how birdwatching was so much more than birdwatching, how the dawn chorus in the New Forest could open the door to the secret rustling world of water voles and stoats, of daubeton and pipistrelle bats. She had no inkling of the satisfactions of pausing in some forest glade, cupping an ear, filtering out the busy clamour of the wrens and the robins until there was nothing left but the trill of a wood warbler, high on a beech limb, singing its tiny heart out. To Eadie these kinds of pleasures were evidence of abnormality, of incipient depression, of a stubborn refusal to get stuck into real life.

  With the latter phrase, Faraday could only agree. That’s why he did it, he explained. Real life knocked on his office door every day of his working week, and without the birds, without the solitude, he really would be a headcase. At this point Eadie had leaned across the table and taken his hand. It was the first time since they met that she’d shown the faintest interest in physical affection. Yet her touch felt like the reassuring pat of a nurse or a doctor. He’d be fine, she seemed to be saying. Just f
ine.

  Faraday remembered looking at her, surprised by the smallness of the truth on which he’d stumbled.

  ‘You haven’t a clue who I really am,’ he said quietly. ‘Have you?’

  Next morning, alone, he’d gone snorkelling in the bay. By the time he got back to the bungalow, she’d packed and left. No note. No adieu. Just a sea urchin planted in the very middle of his pillow, still wet from the tiny cove beneath the terrace. The message it sent was all too obvious. Picturing it now, as the Mondeo sped north towards Winchester, Faraday wondered yet again if he was really that hard to get at.

  By the time Faraday had found a parking spot, Ewers was ready for the post-mortem. Gowned and booted, he was on the phone to his wife in Bristol. Outside the office, Jerry Proctor was in conversation with the Scenes of Crime photographer.

  Through the open doors beyond the line of stainless steel fridges Faraday could see the room where the post-mortem would take place. The head and two sections of torso occupied one of the tables and there were body parts heaped on a nearby trolley. Ignore the harsh glint of neon on the tiled walls, thought Faraday, and this could be a scene from a butcher’s shop.

  Ewers was off the phone now. He appeared at Faraday’s elbow, snapping on a pair of surgical gloves. Given the circumstances, he looked remarkably cheerful.