Blood And Honey

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Blood And Honey Page 15

by Hurley, Graham


  Winter was taking a proper look at the photo. Maddox was sitting at a restaurant table, surveying the remains of an elaborate dessert. An empty bottle of wine was upended in the cooler beside her tidied plate, and the photographer had perfectly caught the warmth of her smile as she raised her glass in a celebratory toast. Her other hand was draped around the figure beside her. Wishart had left his jacket on the back of the chair. The pale dead eyes were narrowed in anticipation of the flash and the expression on his face spoke of the deep pleasures of ownership. For the first time, to his intense disappointment, Winter began to question Maddox’s account of the limits she set to her working life. She saw this man socially. She’d lied.

  Winter turned the frame over and began to prise off the back. Suttle’s grin grew broader.

  ‘You really think he’s hidden it in there?’

  ‘Hidden what?’

  Suttle stared at him, then began to laugh.

  ‘What are you really after? What’s all this about?’

  Winter was looking at the photo again. Suttle circled round behind him.

  ‘That’s taken in the flat.’ He pointed at the photo. ‘Richardson’s place.’

  Winter felt the relief flooding through him. Then his eye was caught by a detail in the background. He was trying to visualise the layout at Camber Court. He remembered the dining table in the middle of the the huge living room, one end of the table close to the window, the other opposite the door.

  ‘There’s panelling on the wall here.’ He touched the glass frame with his finger. ‘I don’t remember panelling at Richardson’s.’

  Suttle peered at the photo.

  ‘You’re right. So it’s not the flat at all. It has to be some restaurant, right?’

  ‘Right.’ Winter’s heart sank again.

  ‘Is that a problem?’ Suttle was watching him closely. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Yes, it is. I can see it in your face. She’s a tom, mate. It’s what she does for a living. For fuck knows how much, she lets him take her out before they get it on. How’s that for a night’s work? Decent meal? Quick fuck afterwards? And all on the meter?’

  Winter had pulled himself together. He told Suttle to sort through the rest of the living room. After that, he wanted a proper search of the adjacent kitchen.

  ‘And you’ll take the bedrooms, eh?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Winter left the room before Suttle had time to protest. He still had the photo. The master bedroom lay at the end of the hall. Next door was a second bedroom that Wishart had converted into a study. Already Winter was dreading what he might find.

  He started with the study, lowering the venetian blinds for a little privacy. A desk occupied most of one wall, flanked by a filing cabinet. Above the desk hung a calendar featuring a group of black women posing in some kind of zoo.

  Winter fired up the PC and began to sort through the contents of an in-tray which lay beside it. Most of the stuff was domestic bills. Wishart was prolific with the heating, spent a fortune on his telephone, and used the Tesco Shop ’n’ Drop service to keep his fridge stocked.

  Towards the bottom of the pile Winter found last month’s Amex account. The billing ran to three pages. Most of it was routine – rail fares, petrol, three-figure payments to a vintner – but a handful of entries caught his eye. Three were to Steve Richardson: £ 800 a pop for Maddox’s services. Another was a £ 980 payment to the Chichester branch of Monsoon. The third showed the name of a restaurant in Petersfield, Mon Plaisir. The bill came to £ 113.56, exactly the kind of sum you’d end up spending for two people in an upmarket restaurant, and when he checked through the billing again he found three more entries for what sounded like a pub restaurant, with smaller sums that were still substantial enough to warrant a meal for two. The Humble Duck. Sidlesham.

  Winter scribbled a note of the restaurant billings together with the dates. There were a million people in the world that Wishart might have invited for a leisurely pub supper. God, even Mrs Wishart might have driven down for an evening with her workaholic husband. But Winter was already haunted by the image of Maddox at the restaurant table and something told him that cosy get-togethers had been a regular feature of their life together.

  The PC was live now. Slightly surprised to be spared the need for a password, Winter double-clicked on Outlook Express and waited for the rest of his delusions to crumble. Seconds later he was looking at a long list of messages. To his relief, scrolling backwards through the months, nothing had Maddox’s name on it. On the contrary, most of the traffic seemed to be commercial, messages to clients or would-be clients, many of them abroad.

  Dozens of the emails had pinged to and from West Africa – confirmations of flight bookings to Lagos, various addresses in Nigeria – and Winter found his gaze returning time and again to the calendar hung on the wall over the desk: the month of February overprinted on a huge colour photograph. He studied it for a moment or two, wondering exactly why Wishart should have given pride of place to a bunch of exuberant African women posed in front of a cage of lions. Then, struck by a sudden thought, he abandoned the emails and began to go through the first of the desk drawers. He found Wishart’s address book under a brochure for Greek holidays. He went straight to M but drew a blank. Under R Wishart had scribbled Steve Richardson’s details – the Camber Court address, a phone number and an email listing. Beneath, in the same scribble, was a circled M.

  Winter peered at the details that followed, making notes of a landline number plus a mobile. The email address was [email protected]. Returning to the PC, he looked at the emails again. Messages from Hararian appeared with depressing regularity. Winter stationed the mouse over one of them, wondering whether to pursue this search any further. What was he trying to prove here? Except that whores lied for a living?

  He closed his eyes, knowing that he had to do it and knowing too that the next couple of seconds would lead to nothing but grief. For once in his life, much against his better judgement, he’d trusted somebody. And, to no one’s surprise, he’d been royally screwed.

  The message was brutally short. ‘Fantastique, eh, mon ours?’ Winter hadn’t a clue what ours meant but the rest was only too obvious. Did Wishart have to buy compliments like these? Were these extras on his account for which Maddox charged premium rates? He suspected not. Scrolling onwards, he steadied the pointer over the most recent email. Maddox had written to him ten days ago, a message that simply confirmed some arrangement they’d made. ‘As usual I’ll be late. As usual you’ll be pissed off. And as usual we’ll be wonderful,’ she’d written, sealing the missive with a line of crosses.

  Winter stepped away from the computer, wondering quite what to do next. A phone console lay next to the PC. Winter picked up the receiver and pressed the PLAY button for messages. There were five. None, to his relief, were from Maddox but the last voice confirmed a booking for Friday night, earlier than usual, seven o’clock, table by the window. The accent might have been French. Winter keyed 1471 for the last incoming number and listened to a line of digits. 01730. Petersfield. He jotted down the rest of the number. The phone directory was on the floor beside the desk. 762398 was Mon Plaisir.

  Winter went to the window, opening a gap between the blinds, glad of the thin sunshine on his face. Any minute now he’d develop another headache. He knew it. Should he bother with tearing the bedroom apart? Should he challenge his own frail chemistry with a sackful of porno shots, Maddox giving Wishart his money’s worth, teasing the slack-faced bastard with yet another variation on a weekly theme? Might there be love letters in there? Clinching proof, if he needed it, that Maddox’s warped take on relationships somehow extended to bizarre games like these?

  He lingered by the view, unusually oblivious to a well-built blonde woman scrubbing the foredeck of one of the yachts below, then returned to the Amex statement to make sure he hadn’t got it wrong, but the payments to Steve Richardson were there in black and white
, £ 2400 in the last month. So why was Wishart still spending that kind of money if Maddox was so keen? And, more to the point, why should any of this bullshit matter to Winter?

  He closed his eyes a moment, remembering the scalp massage she’d given him last night, the scent of the oils she’d used, the way the pressure of her fingertips seemed to build a dyke against the recurrent pain that had begun to alarm him so much. He’d pay good money for treatment like that, be glad to, and the very thought brought a wry smile to his face. Maybe, after all, he was no different to Wishart and the rest of the clientele at Camber Court. Maddox didn’t deal with real people at all, only punters.

  ‘Well?’

  It was Suttle. He’d found nothing next door, either in the living room or the kitchen, and he wanted a steer on just how serious this search was supposed to be. Should he start giving the cupboards a proper seeing-to? Should he be lifting the fitted carpet and digging around behind the skirting board? Only he had a bit of a lower back problem, recent squash injury, and if they were up for the full nine yards then someone should be making a call for reinforcements.

  Winter barely heard him. Another entry on the Amex billing had caught his eye. £ 4299 to a travel agent in Southsea. Was this business? Some kind of family holiday? Or was Maddox extending her favours to some exotic location, courtesy of the man who paid her bills? The fact that he didn’t know, and shouldn’t be bothered, simply compounded his frustration. Something was happening to him, deep inside his head, only this time it had nothing to do with the pains that had been plaguing him for weeks. What was at stake this time was his judgement. Suttle was right. He’d completely lost it.

  ‘Well, boss?’

  The young DC sounded almost sympathetic. Winter looked at him, despairing.

  ‘Fuck knows,’ he said.

  Eight

  Tuesday, 24 February 2004

  ‘Why don’t we get her down to take a look at the body?’

  Faraday had been exploring exactly the same proposition a couple of hours earlier. A positive ID from Unwin’s mother might save a great deal of time. Now, easing the Mondeo down Bath Road, he glanced at Barber and shook his head.

  ‘I need to talk to the pathologist first. The body’s in a real state. An ID could be tricky.’

  ‘Birthmarks? Something personal only a mum would recognise?’

  ‘I doubt it. Four months in the oggin and there’s bugger all left.’

  ‘Yuk.’ Barber was scanning the numbers on her side of the road. ‘There, look. The one with the fridge in the front garden.’

  Faraday braked. Number 267 was a narrow, bay-fronted house with a loop of TV aerial hanging from the roof. A poster in the front window advertised a pre-Xmas anti-war rally in the Guildhall Square.

  Faraday found a parking spot at the end of the street and they walked back to 267. Barber’s knock brought a woman to the door. She was in her early twenties, slightly built, bare feet, jeans, hooded top with ‘Penn State’ across the front.

  She peered at Barber’s warrant card.

  ‘Police?’ she said blankly.

  She invited them in. The narrow hall was in semidarkness. Faraday squeezed past a mountain bike and followed her into the kitchen at the back. Potato peelings lay heaped on the kitchen table and a copy of Socialist Worker was open at an article on the landed gentry. A big pot of lentils bubbling on the stove did nothing to disguise the heavy scent of marijuana.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Marie.’

  ‘Marie who?’

  ‘Marie Grossman.’ She folded her arms and perched herself on a battered stool. ‘What’s this about?’

  Barber explained about Chris Unwin. She had grounds to believe he might be living here.

  ‘Chris?’ Marie shook her head. ‘Haven’t seen him since …’ she frowned ‘… back end of last year.’

  ‘You know him, though?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He lived here with you?’

  ‘He lived here, yeah. Not with me, though. I had another place. Kind of squat, really.’

  ‘So how well do you know him?’

  ‘Chris? I suppose I know him like everyone else knows him. Same pubs, same gigs, know what I mean?’ She studied her bitten fingernails a moment. ‘Actually, he’s a bit of a dickhead. I know I shouldn’t be saying it, especially not to you lot, but he is.’

  ‘Dickhead how?’ Faraday asked.

  ‘He can be a bit mad. And silly too. Pulls daft stunts; thinks he’s the business. One time he tried to get me over to France with him. Terrific, I said, so where are we kipping? He hadn’t got an answer to that so it had to be the back of his bloody van.’

  Faraday wanted to know more about the van. Did it belong to Unwin?

  ‘Haven’t a clue. He always makes like it is but that doesn’t count for anything, not with Chris.’

  ‘What kind of van are we talking about?’ Barber had produced her pocketbook.

  ‘A white one.’

  ‘Make?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Marie shrugged, reaching for a packet of Rizlas. ‘Is he in trouble or something? Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘Why do you ask that, Marie?’ It was Faraday this time.

  ‘Dunno. But it’s not a social call, is it?’

  Faraday conceded the point with a nod, then pressed her further, trying to build a fuller picture of Unwin: the names of people he mixed with, where he might be living, the pubs he used, whether he ever talked about trips to the Isle of Wight, how many times he went over to France, what he might be doing there. Only the last question sparked any kind of response.

  ‘He’s after furniture,’ Marie said. ‘He goes to auctions in these little villages, gets the stuff for a song, then brings it back and flogs it to antique dealers. I nearly had a big old bed off him once, lovely thing, but he wanted silly money.’

  ‘Where are these antique dealers? Here? Pompey?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He won’t touch the local dealers. He always says the real money’s out in the country. Don’t ask me where though. I never asked.’

  Faraday changed tack.

  ‘Does he have a girlfriend that you know of?’

  ‘No idea. Probably not.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because he’s so –’ she frowned ‘– immature. He might find himself some fifteen-year-old, some kid he could impress with his crap French and his Led Zeppelin CDs, but anyone with half a brain wouldn’t give him the time of day.’

  ‘You think he might be gay?’

  ‘I doubt it. He wouldn’t have the imagination.’

  The comment brought a grunt of laughter from Tracy Barber, then she exchanged looks with Faraday. For the second time today they seemed to be getting nowhere.

  ‘So there’s nothing left of him here?’ Faraday gestured back towards the door. ‘He didn’t leave anything behind? Clothes? Knick-knacks? Nothing with his photo in?’

  ‘Definitely not. There’s five of us living here at the moment and believe me we don’t have that kind of space.’ She concentrated on the roll-up for a moment or two, and reached for a box of matches. Then she looked up again. ‘Is that it?’ She nodded at the lentils on the stove. ‘Only I’m the one who’s cooking tea today.’

  It took Paul Winter most of the evening to decide what to do about Maddox. Finally, from a bar in Gunwharf, he dialled her number. As the number rang he picked his way between the tables and pushed out through the big glass doors. Across the harbour, the lights of Gosport.

  ‘Maddox? It’s Paul Winter.’

  ‘Hi. I’ve been worried about you.’

  ‘Yeah? Why’s that, then?’

  ‘Your head. It needs fixing.’

  Winter could only agree. He hadn’t been in a state like this since a long-ago fling with a woman called Misty Gallagher. Like Maddox, she had a body to die for. And like Maddox, she didn’t seem to care who she shared it with.

  ‘What do you want to do then?’

  ‘
Come round.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve got something to show you.’

  Winter could think of a thousand reasons why this was a thoroughly bad idea but knew he was lost. This was a game they were playing and the best he could do right now was try and understand the rules.

  ‘Give me ten minutes.’ He began to button his car coat. ‘Some more of that brandy might be nice.’

  She was waiting for him when he tucked the Subaru into a space across the road outside the flats, a tall angular silhouette in the tenth-floor window. She gave him a wave as he looked up, then pulled the curtains with a flourish. Lost, thought Winter again.

  The flat felt warm after the chill of the wind off the sea. Maddox was wearing a long silky kaftan in a rich dark blue. She took his coat and led him by the hand towards the sofa. The swelling on her face had begun to subside and Winter could smell mint on her breath.

  ‘Whatever you like.’ She was looking down at him. ‘On the house.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘I’m offering you sex. All you have to say is yes.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  Winter could only stare at her. He’d thought of nothing else all day. Yet here it was, the bluntest of proposals, and he knew he couldn’t do it. Not like this.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ Maddox had settled herself beside him.

  ‘Yeah. There is.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You.’ He frowned. ‘Me. Everything.’

  ‘You prefer we talk first?’

  ‘I prefer you stop treating me like a punter.’

  ‘You’re not a punter.’

  ‘What am I, then?’

  The question surprised even Winter. It cut through all the clutter in his head. It was perfectly phrased.

  Maddox knew it, too. She withdrew slightly, appeared to have trouble framing an answer.

  ‘Listen.’ Winter looked at her. ‘We don’t need any of this stuff, we really don’t.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘You coming across like that. I haven’t a clue what made you do it but to tell you the truth you shouldn’t have bothered. I’ve been around a bit, my love. And I know when people are faking.’

 

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