One Under

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Was Jenny greedy?’

  ‘That’s a moral judgement.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s a question.’

  ‘But you’re inviting a moral judgement.’

  ‘OK.’ Faraday smiled at him. ‘Then take a deep breath and give me an answer. You’ve seen lots of her. You sense what makes her tick. You care about her. You’d know.’

  Barnaby acknowledged the logic of Faraday’s argument with the slightest tilt of his head. He gazed out of the window for a moment or two, thinking. At length, he turned back to Faraday.

  ‘Yes, of course she was greedy,’ he said. ‘And stupid. And headstrong. And deeply, deeply selfish. All that. But what’s done is done. Did she anticipate any of this? I doubt it very much. She needed to find someone. She’d had problems of her own. She wanted someone to talk to. I suspect she told you about all that.’

  Faraday nodded. ‘So it was just bad luck? That this someone happened to be Duley?’

  ‘Yes, in a way it was. They’re rare, these people.’

  ‘Was it some kind of judgement then? On her own … ’ Faraday frowned ‘ … recklessness?’

  ‘Recklessness? I think I prefer naivety. Jenny’s someone who always thinks the best of people.’

  ‘That’s naive?’

  ‘Very.’ He smiled. ‘Detective Inspector.’

  Willard was late for the meeting. In his office Faraday had been bringing Winter up to date with developments on Coppice. Tracy Barber had phoned from the Bridewell with news of the interview with Andy Mitchell. As expected, he was denying everything.

  ‘She’s fucked then.’ Winter was gazing out at the rain. ‘So much for happy families.’

  ‘We’ll have another go. It’s not over yet.’

  ‘Sure, but what else have you got to put to him? It’s his word against hers.’

  ‘A jury might not see it that way.’

  ‘That’s pissing in the wind, boss. You know it is. That’s a stand-up confession she’s given you. A decent brief should be able to do something in the way of mitigation but if she’s looking to hubby to share the blame, it ain’t going to happen. Given what you’ve told me, you’ve got nothing on him. I doubt he’ll even go to court. This is a domestic with bells on. Take Duley out of the equation, it wouldn’t have got past the front desk. Families fall apart every day of the week. Give it a couple of years and there won’t be any marriages left in this country.’

  The door opened. Willard said he had fifteen minutes. Winter was about to surrender his chair but Willard waved away the offer. He closed the door, turned his attention to Faraday.

  ‘You’ve done well, Joe.’ He grunted. ‘I don’t want you getting the wrong idea.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Coppice. It was a nice piece of work. I meant to tell you in there -’ He jabbed a thumb in the direction of Barrie’s office. ‘- But to be honest you were pissing me off.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because sometimes you let it get to you, don’t you? That’s not our job, Joe. We collect the evidence. We sort it. We put it in neat piles. We try and make sure it’s lawyer-proof. And then we hand it over to the CPS. There’s no bonus in second-guessing any of that. There are no fucking medals for compassion. Society’s a shit heap, at least the bit we tend to see. Always was, always will be. And if it ever cleans itself up, then we’re all out of a job. Fair enough?’

  Faraday looked him in the eye, said nothing. Winter was next in the firing line.

  ‘Mackenzie, DC Winter.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘The next time he lifts you off the street, bloody well do something about it, right? Give me a ring. Tell me. It doesn’t matter what he’s done to you. I don’t care a toss whether every fucker in this city knows what you look like with your clothes off. That’s not the point. You think he humiliated you, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, you’re wrong. He didn’t humiliate you. He humiliated every single one of us. Why? Because you let him get away with it. Because you didn’t lift the phone. Because you never told anyone.’

  ‘I told Mr Faraday here.’

  ‘Sure. You did. But that’s because he was clever enough to chisel it out of you. You’re a decent copper, Winter. We might even owe you from time to time. But never, ever, think you’re fireproof. Why? Because you’re not.’ He paused, towering over them both. ‘As it happens though, you might have given us an opportunity. ’

  ‘Really?’

  The speed of Winter’s response put the beginnings of a smile on Willard’s face.

  ‘Has Mackenzie been back to you again? The last day or so?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is that the truth? Because if it isn’t, I’ll fucking have you.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Do you expect him to come back?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded. ‘In the end, he’s bound to.’

  ‘Good.’ Willard paused. ‘That new apartment of yours. The one in Gunwharf. DI Faraday tells me you paid five hundred and fifty grand for it.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘While you only got two hundred and seventy-five for your previous place.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And you had other expenses, medical expenses, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sixty grand.’

  ‘Plus a mortgage to pay off?’

  ‘A small one, twenty grand.’

  ‘So … ’ Willard frowned, doing the arithmetic. ‘I make that about three hundred and fifty grand short. Where did you get that kind of money?’

  Winter exchanged looks with Faraday. Willard had never seen any point in not meeting life head on but this was bluntness on an industrial scale. Winter had rights here. And he wasn’t about to be turned over.

  ‘What’s any of this got to do with you, sir?’

  ‘Because I’m your boss. And because I have something in mind that needs me to be very, very sure about you.’

  ‘You think I’m bent?’

  ‘I think you’ve got certain talents. I think you play games with the truth. I hope to God - for all our sakes - that you do it for the right reasons. But I’m not sure.’

  ‘And all this financial stuff will make a difference?’

  ‘It’ll help, certainly. Any detective of mine owing three hundred and fifty grand could be a problem. Does that sound reasonable?’

  Winter nodded, thoughtful. Then he started talking about last year. He’d developed a tumour. It had become, in the most literal sense of the word, a pain. They’d done tests. Taken scans. Identified the problem. He’d been up and down to QA like a yo-yo, and every time he’d made that journey, another little bit of him had died.

  ‘I’m talking belief.’ He looked Willard in the eye. ‘You believe you’re going to make it through. You believe the karma fairy’s on your side. But then you start to wonder.’

  Those were black days, he said. He wasn’t a pessimistic bloke, never had been, but he was starting to get into trouble. Not with the job. He was way past that. But with himself.

  ‘Belief, again,’ he said. ‘Belief in me.’

  Faraday was spellbound. He’d heard this story before but he’d never seen Winter so passionate, and so angry. Even Willard resisted the temptation to look at his watch.

  ‘So?’ He queried.

  ‘There was a woman I’d met. Her name was Maddox.’

  Willard nodded. He’d heard about her. A looker.

  ‘Right. And a friend. A mate. She stuck with me. She looked after me. She got me through.’

  He told Willard about the search for a neurosurgeon, for someone prepared to take a risk or two, and he explained where Maddox’s ceaseless enquiries had led.

  ‘Phoenix, Arizona,’ he said softly. ‘She was there for the duration. Never left me. Not once.’

  Afterwards, he’d come home to convalesce. Maddox had gone down to South America. But they were still in touch.

  ‘I had to move. I had to get out o
f the bungalow. There was nothing left for me there. It was driving me bonkers. Gunwharf was favourite. The buzz. The views. The people. It was perfect, just perfect, and the longer I looked the more I knew I had to have the best seat in the house. There was a top-floor apartment in Blake House just come on the market. Problem was, I hadn’t got the money.’

  Willard nodded. ‘And?’

  ‘I talked to Maddox. Phoned her.’

  ‘She had that kind of money?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded. ‘She’s a rich kid. Plus she had a flat in Rose Tower, Southsea seafront. I sold the flat on her behalf, cut her in fifty-fifty on the Gunwharf place.’

  ‘So she co-owns it?’ Willard was frowning now.

  ‘Yeah. It’s all in the paperwork. She’s got half. With the mortgage I raised, I’ve got the other half.’

  ‘And you’re still … ’ Willard hunted for the word. ‘ … Together?’

  ‘Christ no. I’ve no idea who’s she shagging now but it certainly isn’t me.’

  ‘So … I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t understand what, sir?’

  ‘You’re telling me she has half your property, half your life? That means she can come back any time, pull the rug from under, send you back to bungalow land, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And that doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Putting yourself at the mercy of someone else? Making yourself a hostage to fortune?’

  ‘Christ no. We’re all hostages to fortune. Every minute of the fucking day.’

  ‘We are?’

  Winter contemplated the question for a long moment. Then he smiled at Willard.

  ‘When you’ve been where I’ve been,’ he said softly, ‘that’s a really silly question.’

  It was a rebuke. All three men knew it. Willard looked at his watch for a moment. Winter hadn’t taken his eyes off him.

  ‘You mentioned something about an opportunity … sir.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes. What did that mean, exactly?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m in a position to tell you. Not yet, anyway.’

  Willard glanced at Faraday. Faraday was looking out of the window. Winter hadn’t finished.

  ‘Is it about Mackenzie? All the nonsense in the van? All those pictures he’s got? Only I’m thinking you might need to mark my card about where we go from here … ’ He smiled. ‘ … Sir.’

  Afterwards

  September 2005

  Faraday left for France in early September. He’d taken his remaining two week’s annual leave, extended by a further three days in lieu of overtime, leaving Martin Barrie to wrap up Operation Coppice. Jenny Mitchell had been granted bail pending her appearance at the Crown Court, indicted with assisting another to commit suicide. Her husband, finally released without charge, had moved out of the marital home and was rumoured to be living with a social worker in Southsea. The kids, according to Peter Barnaby, were showing signs of serious disturbance.

  As for Tartan, Karl Ewart was on remand awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder and fraud. Jake Tarrant had been pulled in for a lengthy formal interview but had denied any knowledge of Givens after his disappearance and as a result Willard had accepted Barrie’s recommendation that little was to be gained by throwing more resources at the enquiry. The files, marked NFA, had been dispatched for storage. NFA meant No Further Action.

  Now, standing on the upper deck of the P&O ferry as it slipped past the Spinnaker Tower, Faraday couldn’t remember a time when he had been more relieved to be leaving the city. Even the shiny new glass elevator, the tower’s crowning glory, was reporting malfunction after malfunction. Nothing, Faraday thought, seemed to work anymore.

  From Le Havre, in mid-afternoon, he drove south, across the green billow of the Pays d’Auge. By early evening he could see the twin towers of Chartres Cathedral, burnished by the soft golden light of the approaching sunset. Gabrielle had given him directions to a street in one of the newer parts of the city. Her apartment was on the top floor of a three-storey block with views of a volleyball pitch in a tree-shaded park. She had a scruffy dog called Meo and a modest living space devoted almost exclusively to the storage of books. She’d prepared a bouillabaisse and insisted on opening a bottle of Montrachet that her mother had given her years ago. Faraday, surprised and flattered by the warmth of her welcome, found himself talking about the events of the last three months. It was nearly dawn before he collapsed into the bed she’d prepared for him on the floor in the main room.

  Faraday awoke to find the dog licking his bare feet. That afternoon, Gabrielle took him to the cathedral. He stood in the vaulted emptiness of the nave, dwarfed by the immensity of the building, and sensed at once what she’d meant in her e-mails about the explosions of medieval light trapped in the stained-glass windows. These figures glowed. They were luminous. They were a fire at which he could warm the aching chill in his soul. An organist was playing a Bach cantata. Faraday sat in a pew beside one of the enormous stone pillars and thought about the darkness that was Duley.

  That night he took Gabrielle to a restaurant in the old quarter of the city. Afterwards, they walked back through a maze of steep cobbled streets, still talking. The days to come, Faraday was beginning to suspect, would be a conversation without end, ungovernable, intense, spiked with sudden moments of surprise and delight.

  They shared a passion for Leffe Blonde, for lengthy tramps through the rain and for Hector Berlioz. They both read the left-wing press, and found themselves talking incessantly about the West, about the traps that affluence left in its wake, about the simmering discontent in the rougher parts of cities on both sides of the Channel.

  Faraday explained about Somerstown and Portsea, and kids who preferred to take their chances living rough rather than submit to another night at home. Gabrielle recounted a week in the banlieux to the north-east of Paris, a brutal reminder, she said, of the gulfs that were opening up in French society. Parched after months of nothing but Coppice and Tartan, Faraday lapped greedily at each new conversation. This wasn’t Thailand; this was something far richer, and far more complex.

  The next day, in Gabrielle’s ancient camper, they headed south. The country roads were empty. Staying on a campsite near Montbard, they hired bikes and cycled miles along the Canal de Bourgogne. The weather was glorious, the afternoon heat softened by a breeze that stirred the waterside trees. Further south, they camped by a lake in the Auxois, and Faraday spent the afternoon on the deserted gravel beach, watching Gabrielle swimming from buoy to buoy, an effortless crawl that she sustained for the best part of an hour. Afterwards, lying beside him on the towel, she fingered a pattern across his chest and kissed him softly when he pointed out a flight of ducks disappearing towards the far end of the lake.

  ‘Je t’aime depuis le début,’ she murmured. ‘Ça te va?’

  A week later, after a wet interlude trekking across the limestone battlements of the Cevennes, they plunged into the Languedoc. Faraday had an address for Ginnie Bullen from her twin sister. Find a town called Lamalou-les-Bains, she’d said. Drive further west along the valley of the Orb. Look for a suspension bridge across the river to the left. Another couple of miles and you’ll find a village called Vieussan. The woman at the post office knows Ginnie well. She’ll take you the rest of the way.

  Ginnie Bullen, it turned out, lived at the far end of the village, in a plain, two-storey stone-built house perched on the edge of the cliff that hung over the river. At the back of the house, sheltered from the wind that howled down the valley, was a small walled garden.

  The villager summoned by the postmistress did the introductions. Ginnie Bullen looked more weathered than the face Faraday remembered from the photo. Her greying hair was savagely cut. She had dark eyes, almost black, deeply set in a bony face. She was wearing a filthy T-shirt and a torn pair of jeans, and there was fresh soil on her hands.

  ‘You know Ollie? Poor you.’
She barked with laughter, wiping her hands on a tea towel, inviting them in.

  The house felt cool after the heat and dust of the street. The flagstoned room where she lived was at the back. Through the open doors Faraday could see rows of carefully tended vegetables. Huge heads of lettuce. Plump courgettes. Tomatoes at bursting point.

  Already, Ginnie was gossiping to Gabrielle about the area, about the years she’d spent here, about her neighbours in the village, and as the conversation quickened Faraday caught the flattened accents of the Midi. Her French, delivered at machine-gun speed, was fluent. She talked with her hands, too, matching Gabrielle gesture for gesture, pulling a face at some memory or other, abrupt, sardonic, slightly baleful. This woman has rooted here, he thought, like a vine. She’s tough. She draws whatever sustenance she requires from the sunshine and the stony soil. She needs nobody.

  She produced a plastic cask of red wine, and found some bread and cheese in the big antique wardrobe she seemed to use as a larder. Then she shooed them out into the garden, rustled up a couple of battered ornamental chairs, spread a rug at their feet. The sun was beginning to dip now, towards a ridge of mountains in the west, and Faraday could hear the distant growl of a tractor.

  ‘They’re bringing in the vendange.’ Ginnie was hacking at the loaf. ‘Everyone’s pissed by eight.’

  Faraday at last got round to explaining the reason for his visit. He’d been working on a major investigation. There were one or two loose ends he still needed to tie up.

  ‘You really are a cop? How wonderful.’ Ginnie was pouring herself another glass of wine. ‘Should I get myself a lawyer? Only there’s a divine young avocat with a weekend place near here.’

  Faraday thought that wouldn’t be necessary. He began to talk about the body in the tunnel. Ginnie interrupted.

  ‘You mean Duley,’ she said stonily.