‘Nothing,’ he’d muttered. ‘Just be here.’
Now she walked beside him, aware of his darkening mood, her gloved hand tucked beneath his arm. They’d woken late. She’d made a huge pot of tea, laid a new fire in the hearth, fetched in a pile of extra logs for the afternoon. Down by the water, an hour’s walk away, there was a pub that sold mulled wine and a thousand real ales. They did big Sunday roasts for lunch and with luck the weather would keep the yachties away.
Winter had sat in the kitchen, buoyed by a good night’s sleep, marvelling at how pleasant a Sunday could be and trying to work out the catch. Now, with the pub finally in view, he realised what it was. He’d come across this place before. Just days ago.
‘The Humble Duck,’ he grunted. ‘Come here often, do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alone?’
She glanced across at him.
‘What kind of question is that?’
Winter didn’t answer. The pub, at midday, was already comfortably full. Winter ordered drinks at the bar while Maddox found a table in the corner. There was a mirror behind the bar, and Winter watched the heads turn as she unbuttoned her long leather coat and draped it over the back of the chair. She was wearing jeans and a man’s sweater she’d found in a drawer in the bedroom. She rarely bothered with make-up or jewellery, and she’d barely put a comb through her hair, but every man in the room was aware of her presence.
‘You used to come here with Wishart.’ Winter put the drinks on the table.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I’m a detective.’
‘Very funny.’
‘True, though, isn’t it?’ Winter could still picture the entries on Wishart’s Visa statements. ‘Couple of drinks. Bottle of wine. Big steak. Then back for an afternoon’s screwing. Am I getting warm?’
‘Yeah.’ Maddox grinned. ‘And was it like this?’
‘This?’
‘You and me? Last night? This morning?’ She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. ‘The answer’s no.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we need each other.’
The simplicity of the answer caught Winter off balance. He looked at her for a long moment, then reached for her hand.
‘Do me a favour?’
‘Anything.’
‘Then tell me how you really feel.’
‘About?’
‘Me. This. Us. The truth is I’ve got a problem with Wishart. You know why? Because I still can’t work out where he fits. You fucked him for money? For love? For—’
‘I don’t fuck anyone for love.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You love someone, it’s different. It’s not fucking any more. Fucking is theatre. Fucking is dressing-up. Fucking is performance. Fucking you pay for. Fucking buys me a place of my own and a nice view and space in my head where I can be me.’
‘Lakemfa?’
‘Was a sweet fuck.’
‘Wishart?’
‘Un trou de cul. An arsehole.’
‘And this?’
‘This, my love, is something else. And you know the irony?’
‘Tell me.’
‘That you should have walked into my life through a bedroom door. That I should owe this …’ she grinned at him, then gestured at the space between them ‘… to fucking.’
Winter held her gaze for a long moment, gleefully aware of the listening ears around him. Then he fumbled for his mobile. Jimmy Suttle answered on the third ring.
‘How are you?’ Suttle asked at once.
‘Never better.’ Winter was still looking at Maddox. ‘How are you getting on with those calls I asked you to make?’
‘Good.’ Suttle appeared to be driving. ‘I’ve fixed to meet the Bone at two. Pub down in Copnor. Sends his best, by the way. You want me to bell you afterwards?’
Winter glanced at his watch. Lunch would take an hour or so. They should be back at the cottage by three.
‘Forget it.’ He reached for the menu and winked at Maddox. ‘Best if I ring you this evening.’
By the time Faraday finally got through to Willard, it was mid-afternoon. The Detective Superintendent was in Bristol with his partner, Sheila. They’d spent a pleasant lunchtime with friends and now he was contemplating the journey home.
Faraday told him about Mary Unwin. He and DC Barber had definitely been close to a breakthrough. Trying to restore some kind of order to the wreckage of the old lady’s memory was never going to be easy but in Faraday’s view she definitely had something to say. He described her sign language, the finger across the throat, and her preoccupation with the world beyond the door. Maybe she’d stumbled across something. And maybe she’d paid for that knowledge with her life.
Willard didn’t buy it. For one thing, she sounded like the perfect definition of the vulnerable witness. The interview Faraday had described was way over the top. If she’d ever made it into the witness box – itself highly unlikely – the defence would have crucified police conduct of the case. And besides that, most of what Faraday was saying was speculation. What Congress badly needed was fact, a body of evidence that would be one hundred per cent lawyer-proof in court. To date, most of what Faraday had put together totally failed that test.
Listening to Willard in this mood did nothing for Faraday’s blood pressure. Just occasionally, after a good lunch and a glass or two, his boss confused leadership with statements of the blindingly obvious. Of course Congress was difficult. The Major Crimes team still lacked a name for the body and in the shape of Rob Pelly Faraday had taken on a formidable challenge. The man was forensically aware. He knew how to cover his tracks. He was obstructive in interview, had no time for the normal courtesies, and appeared to have spent most of his life making enemies. Nonetheless, the sheer weight of circumstantial evidence had now convinced Faraday that there was a link between the body at the foot of the cliffs and a set of events that had taken place back in early October. Piecing together that set of events, he told Willard, was the absolute priority.
‘Fine, Joe.’ Willard still sounded unconvinced. ‘But just ask yourself how you’re going to do it. You can’t pull the guy in, at least not yet you can’t. The PM on the old lady may throw something up but I doubt it. SOC are pissing in the wind. Where’s the breakthrough?’
Faraday, more irritated by the minute, was about to tell Willard about the revelation from Sean Castle. Then came a knock at the door. It was Tracy Barber. She had a guest downstairs, someone who’d asked for Faraday by name.
‘Who is it?’ Faraday mouthed.
Barber grinned at him, then stepped across to the desk and wrote a name on the pad beside the phone. Faraday gazed down at it. Pelly.
Willard was talking money again. The budget was becoming a nightmare. He had to have solid progress to fend off the assassins in Resource Management. Faraday cut him short.
‘Something’s come up, sir.’ He was already on his feet. ‘Ring you later.’
Faraday knew at once that Pelly had been drinking. He sat on the bench by the front desk, his arms folded, his wet anorak unzipped and thrown open. The rain had flattened his hair against his skull, and the strip of scarlet ribbon that secured his pony tail hung limply down his back. He was wearing a scuffed pair of combat boots beneath faded jeans, and when Faraday stepped through the door his eyes glittered in the unshaven gauntness of his face. He looked like someone from a peace demo or a refugee from an all-night rock concert, and for a moment Faraday wondered what the staff at the Farringford had made of their unexpected breakfast guest.
Pelly got to his feet.
‘Mr Faraday.’ He swayed a little, corrected himself. ‘Thought we’d have a little chat.’
Faraday took him upstairs to his office, told Barber to divert all phone calls, shook his head when she asked whether he needed a second pair of ears and shut the door.
Pelly was gazing at J-J’s shot of the diving gannets on the wall board. Faraday settled h
imself behind the desk.
‘I could take this personally.’ Pelly was still looking at the gannets. ‘In fact I have taken it personally. Blokes all over my house. Blokes all over my business. Blokes in my garage. Blokes up my arse. Where does it stop? Doesn’t a man have rights here? Shouldn’t you be giving me a clue?’
Faraday said nothing. Pelly, he’d decided, always opened a conversation at gale force. Best, under the circumstances, to bend with the wind.
‘Anything else?’ he said mildly.
‘Fucking right. I go down to Bembridge, I pick up the phone to my nice friends at Cheetah Marine, I even waste a minute of my precious time trying to get some sense out of that arsehole Morgan, and what do I find? What I find, Mr Faraday, is that your blokes have been there before me. They’re everywhere, all over the fucking island. Some of them have funny suits and all those fancy chemicals. The rest keep knocking on other people’s doors. A man has a reputation here. Just what am I supposed to have done?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to establish.’
‘So why don’t you fucking ask me? Save yourself a lot of time? Eh?’
His face was pale with anger. Faraday wondered about offering coffee, decided against it. Anger was good. Angry people made mistakes.
‘You drove over here?’
‘Sure. You going to do me for that? Breathalyse me? Only I’m telling you now, you’d get a result.’ He paused, nodding to himself, then looked up again, struck by another thought. ‘And you know why I’ve had a drink or two? Because I’ve got a deal, because I’ve finally managed to shift the fucking place. But then I expect you’d know that, wouldn’t you? Your blokes round the estate agents day and night. Eh?’
‘You’re selling up?’
‘Of course I am. Who’d want to stay here? The best thing about the English are the old dears in my home. After that, you can bin it.’
‘Sorry to hear about Mrs Unwin.’
‘Yeah. Shame.’
‘What happened?’
‘Haven’t a clue. She had a couple of Martinis last night. Happy as Larry. Next thing we know –’ he clicked his fingers ‘– out like a light. Blown away. Gone. Happens all the time. Our business, we call it dying.’
Faraday ignored the sarcasm. He wanted to know where Pelly was going once he’d sold the nursing home.
‘Bosnia,’ he said at once. ‘Land of the free.’
‘Why?’
The question hung in the air. A smile spread across Pelly’s face. Partly disbelief, partly something close to contempt.
‘Why? Have you looked around lately? Have you blokes got eyes in your heads? The state of the place? Kids bossing the streets? Crap schools? Foul-mouthed women? Tosspot politicians? Half the population pissed? The rest locked in at home watching crap TV? Is that where you want to live? Seriously?’
‘But why Bosnia?’
‘Because it’s not here. And because my wife wants to go home. She misses it, Mr Faraday. Bosnia was a bad place once. Really evil. I brought her over here to get her away from all that. And you know what? Ten years of England and she can’t wait to get back. You’re talking about a woman who was gang-raped for three solid months. Who watched the Serbs beating her father up. Who lost her mother and a brother and the house she’d been born in and every other fucking thing to those goons. That leaves a scar or two, believe me, yet she can’t wait to get back. So what does that tell you about England, eh?’
‘You met her in Bosnia?’
‘Yeah.’ Pelly nodded.
‘Travnik?’
Mention of Travnik put a new expression on Pelly’s face and for a tiny moment Faraday saw the steel in the man. No matter how much he’d had to drink, there was still a sentry at his gate.
‘You know about Travnik?’
‘I know there was a refugee camp there. And I know you were at Vitez. Engineers build things, mend things.’ Faraday shrugged. ‘You wouldn’t have been short of work.’
‘And I wasn’t, my friend. Believe me. Anyone half decent …’ He shook his head, his eyes brimming. ‘Fucking unbelievable. The Serbs just dumped them. I saw it happen. Two feet of snow. Night coming on. These poor bloody women with nothing left in the world except their kids. And you know what those Serb bastards were saying? “So long! So long! Next time you die” I can hear them now. Cunts.’
‘Was Lajla one of those women?’
‘Yeah. And seven months pregnant. Came from a village up near Banja Luka. Lived there all her life. Fucking Serbs rolled them over. Took forty minutes. You ever hear of the camp at Omarska? No? Count yourself fucking lucky.’ He eyed Faraday a moment, a man with a great deal of news to impart, then he made a visible effort, controlled himself, sat upright in the chair. ‘What is this?’ he said softly. ‘What are you trying to get out of me?’
‘I’m trying to understand the way it was.’
‘For me? You’re wasting your time. You should be asking about her. About Lajla. And about all the other Lajlas. You know the one thing you should never be in the Balkans? A woman. Not then. Not the way it was with the Serbs.’
When the Serbs cleared a village, he said, they started with the men and the boys – they went to the camps. Then they came back for the women. Lajla and her mother ended up in the same truck. The truck dropped Lajla at the school. She never saw her mother again.
‘And at the school?’
‘They’d cleared a classroom at the back. There were stained old fucking mattresses on the floor – no sheets, no blankets, just the mattresses. The Serb boys spent fifteen days in the mountains, then they came back, six or seven of them at a time, one after another, cheering and clapping, making good little Serb soldiers. Can you believe that? In the classroom where this poor bloody girl had learned to read? Jesus.’
‘And she got pregnant?’
‘Yeah, just a bit. But you know the worst of it? She knew these animals. Christ, she’d even been to school with some of them. And there they were, just helping themselves.’
Faraday tried to imagine what it must have been like. For the second time in twenty-four hours he knew it was beyond him. More blood than honey, he thought.
Pelly was gazing out of the window. The anger had drained away. He looked almost sober.
‘One thing I don’t understand.’ Faraday frowned. ‘How come she wants to go back to this place? To this village? After all she’s been through?’
‘She doesn’t. Not to her home village. We’ve got somewhere else in mind. The Jablanica Valley. Village called Celebici. Nice little smallholding near the lake – bit of ground, couple of goats, chickens, spare room for German tourists. Maybe a spot of freelance mine clearance if things get tight. Yeah …’ He nodded. ‘I can cope with that.’
Pelly lapsed into silence. Faraday was clearer now about what drove Pelly, about those months in the mountains that had changed his life. Any man who’d been through an experience like that would carry the images in his head forever. But what about Lajla? Gang-raped week after week? A woman who’d never know who’d fathered her child? How would you ever lay so many ghosts?
He put the question to Pelly. It drew an immediate shake of the head.
‘She won’t talk about it.’
‘Not to anyone?’
‘No. Not to me. Not to you. Not to fucking anyone.’ He touched his head, then his heart. ‘It’s locked away. You’d be a brave man to even try and get at stuff like that.’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Pelly threw back his head and laughed. ‘Because she’d fucking kill you.’
Jimmy Suttle had never met the Bone. Winter, in odd conversations, had talked about the man’s amazing prowess with the ladies, someone – he’d said admiringly – who could work his way down any street in Pompey and leave not a single taker with any complaints. His speciality was housewives and he went from door to door with a carpet-cleaning offer which was, to be frank, a steal. Once inside the house, he rarely left without a cup of tea and a biscuit or two and a sympathet
ic ear full of the local gossip. The Bone’s ability to listen – to nod, to empathise, to agree – was the key, Winter had concluded, to his amazing tally of conquests. Women went to bed with him because he was a nice bloke. Not only that, but he shagged them witless.
Winter had described him as a Frank Skinner lookalike, and Suttle could see why. The same shock of blondish hair. The same open face. The same ready smile. He was sitting in a pub in the depths of Buckland, absorbed by the Pompey match report in yesterday’s Sports Mail. This was a man you’d be happy to have clean your carpet.
Suttle muttered a greeting and asked whether he wanted to talk elsewhere. The Bone looked surprised.
‘Here no good, mate?’
‘Here’s fine.’
Suttle bought drinks and found a table in the corner. The air was blue with roll-ups and a vocal semicircle of drinkers was glued to a telly in the corner. Everton 3 Tottenham 1.
‘You follow the football?’ Suttle had half an eye on Duncan Ferguson.
‘Yeah. What’s it with Mr W?’
‘He’s not well.’ Suttle dragged himself away from the game. ‘Hasn’t been for several weeks.’
‘Like bad, is it?’
‘Dunno, mate. He’s waiting for tests.’
‘Tests? That’s heavy shit, must be bad.’
Suttle studied him for a moment. He couldn’t explain why but he was surprised at this man’s concern. Either the Bone was a born actor or he really cared.
‘You’ve known Winter long?’
‘Yeah. Ever since he stitched me up on a handling charge. Well kippered or what? An hour in the cells and I would have sold him my mother. Hand it to the bloke. He’s an artist.’ He laughed at the memory, then raised his glass. ‘To Mr W. Hope he gets better.’
Suttle explained briefly about Lakemfa. Black guy. Knocked off his bike the arse end of last year. Country lane, back of the hill.
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