‘No, mush. But recently I started getting these calls.’
‘What calls?’
‘From Jules. She was worried about him. She said he was up to all sorts. What she really meant was he’d gone off his head.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Nothing, mush. Fuck all. I buried it, blanked it, told myself the daft old sod would realise how lucky he was and sort himself out. Turns out I was wrong.’ He paused to swallow a mouthful of Stella. ‘Tell you the truth, I still can’t believe it.’
Winter shrugged. His years on CID had taught him a great deal about human nature, about the journeys so-called friends can make, about the strokes they can pull, and not much surprised him any more.
‘You sure you’ve got this right?’ Bazza had abandoned the steak pie. ‘He killed them all? Burned the place down?’
‘That’s the way it looks.’
‘No one else involved? Just him? Little Johnny?’
‘We can’t be sure, Baz. If I was sitting in Major Crime just now I’d be looking very hard at Lou Sadler and I’d be moving heaven and earth to find the girl.’
‘That tom of Johnny’s?’
‘Yeah. Men follow their dicks. You might have noticed. Find the girl and you might find Johnny too. Find Johnny and …’ He shrugged, leaving the thought unfinished.
‘The toot, you mean? We’d find the toot? I know the market’s flat just now but even two and a bit mill is a lot of money.’
‘It is, Baz. Which is one of the reasons why looking for Johnny might be harder than we think.’ He pushed his plate away.
There was a long silence while Mackenzie brooded further on what might have happened. Finally he voiced the obvious conclusion.
‘You think he’s dead, mush? You think someone’s had him?’
‘Maybe.’ Winter reached for his glass. ‘Cheers, Baz. Here’s to crime.’
Faraday had Meg Stanley on the phone. He’d belled her earlier and she’d taken her time calling back, blaming yet another series of meetings.
Faraday gave her a heads-up on the developing scene at Upcourt Farm. The SOC team were driving over from Shanklin, and he’d no idea whether Stanley would be joining them.
‘Of course I am.’ She sounded cheerful. ‘What’s the strength?’
Faraday described Max Oobik and the relationship with Lou Sadler. In his view they had to be linked to the missing girl, Kaija Luik. Which in turn put them alongside Johnny Holman.
‘You think?’
‘I think.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes.’
Faraday told her about the pile of horse manure. How could they establish a match with the stuff her SOC team had forked off the hole at Monkswell Farm? Stanley gave the proposition some thought. Finally she confirmed it was doable.
‘How?’
‘We take a blood sample from each of these animals. That’ll give us a DNA profile. Then we wait.’
‘For what?’
‘We wait for them to poo. We swab the surface of the dung, recover a sample from the stuff at Monkswell. If you want to be technical, we’re interested in the fibrous structure. Then we submit the lot to FSS. Job done.’
‘As it were.’
‘Quite.’ Faraday could hear her laughing.
‘So we seize the horses? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Absolutely. And good luck, eh?’
Faraday put the phone down to find himself looking at Gail Parsons. She’d just arrived on the early-afternoon hovercraft, her face pinked from the climb up the hill from the seafront. She must have run, Faraday thought. Couldn’t wait to join the party.
‘Well?’
Faraday gave her the headlines. The warrant was en route to Upcourt Farm. The Scenes of Crime team had just left Shanklin. Meg Stanley was driving to Southampton to take the hydrofoil across to Cowes. And Jimmy Suttle was still keeping an eye on Max Oobik, awaiting further orders.
‘Where is he? This man Oobik?’
‘In his caravan. Suttle thinks he’s a flight risk.’
‘And you, Joe?’
‘I’d arrest him.’
‘For?’
‘Sus homicide. Keep it simple. Give nothing away.’
He went through the grounds for arrest. There was nothing conclusive but the circumstantial evidence was beginning to heap up.
‘Motive? Apart from the cocaine?’
‘Hard to say. We need to know more about him. Anything from forensics would be a huge bonus, though Jimmy thinks he’s done a good job cleaning up.’
‘Cleaning up?’ This seemed to swing it for Parsons. ‘Tell Jimmy to nick him.’
Mackenzie was at the Royal Trafalgar when he took the phone call from Lou Sadler. He closed his office door, then returned to the desk.
‘Lou. Long time, eh?’
Sadler clearly wasn’t in the mood for conversation.
‘There’s a guy working for you,’ she said at once. ‘An older guy, fat, ex-cop.’
‘Might be, love. What’s the problem?’
‘He’s been over here. I met him myself the other night, had one of those cutesy-cutesy conversations. I got the impression he was trying to deliver some kind of warning.’
‘About what, Lou?’
‘About Johnny Holman.’
‘But what did he say?’
‘He said he’d met Johnny over in Pompey.’
‘When?’
‘Earlier this week. Monday, maybe? Tuesday? Fuck knows.’
Mackenzie began to tread carefully. Winter rarely did anything without a purpose.
‘So maybe he did meet Johnny. Is that any kind of big deal?’
‘It is when half the world’s looking for him.’
‘Including you, love?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Is that a yes?’
There was a silence. Then came an abrupt change of subject. Lou had been employing a girl called Kaija Luik. Before she decided to jack it in she’d been living in a flat in Cowes.
‘And?’
‘She left some stuff. I went round just now to pick it up and guess who beat me to it. Same age. Same fucking waistline.’
‘You mean my guy?’
‘Has to be, Baz. So here’s my question: when do we get it back?’
‘We?’
‘Me. When do I get it back?’
Mackenzie looked at the phone a moment, then he hung up. Winter, he thought. Total fucking genius.
Chapter Twenty-Five
MONDAY, 16 FEBRUARY 2009. 16.34
Max Oobik was arrested just after half past three and taken to the custody centre at Newport police station. He asked for a lawyer and was put in touch with the duty brief. In an office upstairs, Parsons and Faraday had summoned a Tactical Interview Adviser from the mainland, a veteran called Ian Whatmore. Parsons was beginning to fret that Gosling might outgrow the facilities at the satellite MIR, but a transfer to Fratton at this stage in the proceedings was deemed impossible. For one thing, the Fratton Major Incident Room was already busy with a Buckland lad who’d been kicked to death the previous evening. For another, events were moving too fast. So Ryde it had to be.
For the last hour Faraday had been in constant touch with Jimmy Suttle, who was still at the scene at the back of Upcourt Farm. Suttle, watching the SOC team robing up beside the caravan, was waiting for Meg Stanley to arrive from the mainland. Until Faraday made time to come over from Ryde, Suttle would be responsible for drawing up the outlines of a forensic strategy for the coming day or so: how to divide their resources, how to structure the search, how to arrive at agreed priorities.
In the meantime, as Suttle was only too aware, there were a million other boxes to tick. Oobik’s four-by-four needed to be seized, pending a full SOC examination. Someone had to come up with a decent local map. Someone else had to establish ownership of the surrounding fields, liaise with the duty POLSA officer, agree parameters for the first sweep, scope out local house-to-house opportunities
, organise parking on site, food, shelter, plus the thousand and one other items to keep the Gosling Outside Enquiry teams plunging on.
Thanks to Faraday’s trust in him, this was the closest Suttle had ever been to the driving seat of a Major Crime inquiry at full throttle, and already he was finding the experience totally engrossing. As the daylight began to fade it was his job to cast the investigative net as wide as possible, then haul it in, hand over hand, constantly aware that a poor decision or a single missed opportunity could jeopardise everything. In these situations the overwhelming priority was to crack on. But cracking on blindly was to invite disaster.
Meg Stanley arrived by cab from the hydrofoil at Cowes. She wanted to know about the PACE clock. Suttle said he’d arrested Oobik just over an hour ago and had him shipped over to Newport nick. By this time tomorrow, unless granted a twelve-hour extension by a uniformed Superintendent, they had to charge him or let him go.
Suttle was leading her across to the stables. She told him already that she’d alerted a local vet to come and take blood samples. A fresh dung swab would obviously depend on the horses. Either way, according to the FSS laboratories at Chepstow, they’d still be looking at a sizeable time gap before they could establish a DNA match.
‘How long?’
‘Weeks.’ Suttle wasn’t surprised. Nor would Faraday be. Suttle wanted to know whether anyone had been up to Monkswell to take a sample of the dung at the back of the Holman property.
‘Not yet.’ She nodded at the caravan. ‘First things first, eh?’
The CSI was approaching, a grey ghost in the gathering dusk. Suttle had already asked him for a hot intel search, looking for anything obvious in the caravan before the full forensic examination began. The only item he’d come up with was a B&Q receipt.
‘Mobile?’
‘Afraid not.’
‘Where’s he put it then?’
‘Haven’t a clue.’
On arrest, Suttle had asked for Oobik’s Nokia. There’d followed a pantomime search and the news that it seemed to have gone missing. The guy was taking the piss. No doubt about it.
‘My guess is he threw it into the next field.’
‘And the SIM card?’
‘Tear the place apart. Chemical toilet, isn’t it?’
‘He might have swallowed it.’ This from Stanley.
‘Great.’ Suttle was thinking about the horses. ‘That’s another arse-hole we’ve got to watch.’
Stanley laughed. She liked Suttle. The CSI had something else on his mind.
‘This guy’s been cleaning up,’ he said. ‘Big time. You can see it, smell it. He’s been using bleach and doing a spot of painting as well. The carpet’s gone too, and we’ve found a couple of cans of metallic gloss at the bottom of the wardrobe, both half empty.’
In the fading light Suttle did his best to read the B&Q receipt. One-litre tin of acrylic latex metal paint, a pack of cheap paintbrushes, a litre of white spirit, two litres of bleach, two rolls of dustbin liners, one roll of gaffer tape. He peered at the date.
‘When was the eighth?’
‘Sunday.’
‘Shit. That’s a week ago. The day after the fire.’
‘Exactly.’
Winter met Mackenzie at his daughter’s house in Craneswater. Neither Ezzie nor her dad had a clue what was going on. Winter led Mackenzie into the big living room at the front of the house, switched on the lights and pulled the curtains shut. Then he turned round.
‘Door, Baz.’
‘What the fuck are you up to?’ Mackenzie shut the door.
‘Tell me again.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘About Sadler. What exactly did she say?’
Mackenzie went through the conversation word for word. It didn’t take long.
‘So she’d been round to the girl’s place? The flat where she’d been staying?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Looking for the bin liner?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Great. That means something’s kicked off. I don’t know what but I can guess.’
‘And?’
‘They’ve nicked someone. When I picked up Holman’s gear, the old girl said a couple of the girl’s friends had come round and taken her stuff away. The mobile was under her pillow so they missed that, and my guess is Johnny had dumped the bin liner in the garden. One of these mates was Sadler. Perfect description. The other guy was younger, foreign, heavy-looking. Maybe they’ve nicked him, taken a hostage, given the tree a shake, and now’s the time it dawns on Sadler that they forgot to look for the bin liner. Either way, Baz, the Major Crime lot are going to be onto that property pretty fucking quickly. Which is when it gets tricky.’
‘Who for?’
‘Us, mush.’ Winter had been waiting years to turn the tables. Now was a perfect time.
Mackenzie still didn’t see it.
‘OK. You’re Faraday. Or Jimmy Suttle, Or any detective with half a brain. One way or another the next couple of hours are going to open a lot of doors. One of them will be that property, take my word for it. They’re going to talk to the old dear I met. She’s going to tell them all about that nice young tom she had downstairs and that rat-arsed bloke she sometimes brought home. They’ll probably have mugshots. She’s a tom, for fuck’s sake. She made her living from the Internet.’
‘And?’
‘And they’ll ask her more questions, make her go through the whole thing. They’re thorough that way. They don’t miss a trick. And at some point in that conversation they’re going to want to know about her gear, her possessions – what happened to them.’
Mackenzie was frowning. ‘You’re telling me Sadler went round there? Collected most of her gear?’
‘Yeah. For sure.’
‘And forgot the bin liner?’
‘Obviously.’
‘No wonder she’s bricking herself.’
‘Quite, Baz, and so am I. Why? Because the old dear will describe me. Nice man. Charming. Going bald. Nice leather coat. These guys aren’t stupid. They know me. They know who I work for. They’ll have us down for the cocaine. And you know what? They’ll come calling …’
Mackenzie, to Winter’s astonishment, was grinning. He reached out and gave Winter’s arm a little squeeze.
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I like us.’
The photo of Kaija Luik dropped into Faraday’s in-box at 17.34. By now the Gosling Outside Enquiry team had dispersed on action after action. A handful of D/Cs were conducting house-to-house, tasked to log Oobik’s movements over the last week. Another two-man team was interviewing Ximena and her elderly friend upstairs, trying to nail down the same information. What Oobik had been up to over the weekend of the fire. Whether or not they’d noticed a red Vauxhall Corsa. And what might have happened the night the little car had been torched. As each of these lines of enquiry snaked out, the suspicion was beginning to harden that Gosling might be dealing not with four deaths in a house fire, nor even a fifth in the shape of Johnny Holman, but perhaps one other.
Faraday was looking at her now, trying to imagine what lay behind the knowing smile and the lazy eyes. Kaija Luik was blonde. She had lovely bone structure, a face perfectly sculpted by genes and exercise, and there was no doubt that she’d be a dream date for a visiting businessman with time and money on his hands. But what on earth had persuaded her to turn paid encounters with Johnny Holman into something more personal? And just how much had this bizarre choice of partner cost her?
Faraday forwarded the photo to the intel cell with instructions to print and circulate it to the Outside Enquiry teams. Any time now Parsons would be demanding another conference, and aside from agreeing a strategy for Oobik’s first interview, there’d be the issue of the media. In return for help on getting Luik’s photo out there, Faraday was inclined to offer a moderately helpful briefing, but he knew that Parsons regarded reporters with the deepest suspicion.
He scribbled himself a note, looking up at the screen again.
Luik’s face hung there, curiously disembodied, as if she was already dead, and as he gazed at her he realised that its final arrival raised another question – not about Luik but about Lou Sadler.
Parsons had precisely the same thought. She’d stepped into the office and joined Faraday in front of the screen.
‘Why now?’ She was frowning. ‘Why does she send it now?’
‘Because she’d promised.’
‘Of course, Joe. But now’s different, isn’t it? She knows the shit’s hit the fan. Oobik would have phoned her. He had at least an hour before Suttle arrested him.’
‘Then she’s playing Mrs Helpful. Getting in the credits before we knock on her door.’
Arresting Sadler had been a possibility for the last two hours. On Faraday’s advice, Parsons had agreed to hold off, not least because Sadler was still under surveillance. Whatever she was up to now might offer all kinds of ammunition for the forthcoming series of interviews.
‘Have the obs guys called in yet?’
‘Yeah.’ Faraday consulted the Policy Book. ‘I got a call about an hour ago. She paid a visit to an address on the edge of Cowes. Stayed about ten minutes. Drove away again.’
‘So who’s going to action that?’
‘Jimmy Suttle.’
Thanks to his satnav, Suttle had no problem finding the address. According to checks through the Gosling intelligence cell, the property belonged to a Mrs Nancy Percival. Suttle was still admiring her dolphin water feature when she answered the door. He introduced himself and showed her his warrant card. She peered at it in the light from the hall and then asked him to come in.
‘My goodness –’ the gnarled old hands kept knotting and unknotting ‘– you must have come about that sweet young girl. I am popular.’
*
Winter got Mackenzie to make the call. They were still in the big front lounge at Ezzie’s. She’d just come in to put a match to the fire and offer them a drink. For once in his life Winter said no.
Bazza was bent over his mobile. Finally, a voice answered. Lou Sadler.
‘I’ve got your favourite man with me, Lou. I think he wants a chat.’
Baz handed over the mobile without a word. Winter found himself listening to Sadler. She sounded icy.
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