Western Approaches

by Graham Hurley

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just answer the question.’

  ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘OK . . .’

  Suttle consulted the Steam profile and read out the list of games. Golding wanted to know what this had to do with Kinsey.

  ‘They were on his computer.’

  ‘Really? He was a gamer?’

  ‘Yeah. Surprised?’

  ‘Very.’

  Suttle wanted to know what you could read into a guy by his choice of favourite games.

  ‘Lots. Show me.’

  Suttle gave him the Steam profile. Golding studied Kinsey’s list of games, which included the hours Kinsey had logged on each. His head came up.

  ‘Well, he certainly liked his shooters.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Kinsey was big on two games, right? Counterstrike and Team Fortress 2. Look, he played 400 hours on Counterstrike. That’s serious addiction. Plus nearly 200 on TF2. OK. They’re both shooter games but the likeness ends there. TF2 is basically one big party. The action could come straight out of Looney Tunes. It’s also way more player-friendly than CS, especially when it comes to respawning.’

  ‘Respawning?’

  ‘That’s when you’re returned to the game after you die. On most games you wait a couple of seconds and then bang, you’re back in the game. Not with Counterstrike. When you get killed playing CS, that’s it for the rest of the round. You’re dead. End of.’

  CS, he said, was pure. It had no fancy bells and whistles, no back story, no million-dollar cut scenes, just a very simple premise: beat the other team. To do that, in Golding’s view, you had to be fucking ace.

  ‘Plus it’s multiplayer only, Sarge. Which means you’re always playing against real humans so practising against the computer is out of the question.’

  ‘So you have to play with other people? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And the other game? Team Fortress 2?’

  ‘Completely different. TF2 is way too anarchic for someone as hard core as Kinsey. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek.’

  ‘So why would he play it so often?’

  ‘Good question.’ Golding’s gaze had returned to the Steam page. ‘This must have to do with the company he’s been keeping.’

  The notion of company was intriguing. So far, according to dozens of accounts, Kinsey was the near-perfect definition of a loner. On the face of it, all the guys in Saturday’s winning quad had been his buddies, but the closer you questioned them the more obvious it became that Kinsey had bought their friendship, or perhaps just their company. So how come he’d spent most nights banged up in cyberspace with a bunch of gamers? Were relationships simpler this way? No messy stuff like having to talk face to face, or having to cope with the million tiny aggravations that came with having real mates?

  Golding was still engrossed in the printouts from Kinsey’s Steam page.

  ‘I need to have a proper look at this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re going to ask me whether he had a special friend. And the way Steam works, the answer is yes.’

  ‘So who is he?’

  ‘This guy.’

  Suttle followed his pointing finger. Somehow he’d missed the name on the bottom left of the page. He reached for a pen and ringed it carefully. ShattAr. Then he looked up.

  ‘So this guy has to be a mate of Kinsey’s? Is that what we’re saying?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So how do we find out his real name?’

  Suttle’s question hung in the air. What he dreaded was having to go to one of the companies that controlled the servers. Most of them were in the States and in his experience even a routine enquiry could take months to process.

  Golding, it turned out, had another idea.

  ‘We join the games, Sarge. We play Counterstrike and TF2. And we pretend to be Jalf Rezi.’

  ‘We? I think not. You mean you.’

  ‘Sure.’ He was grinning. ‘My pleasure.’

  Suttle phoned Nandy from his own office. He caught the Det-Supt emerging from a meeting. A million detectives, he said, had been looking for a head to fit the body at the Bodmin scene of crime and so far they’d got nowhere. He’d like to chalk this up to a superior breed of criminal but his instincts told him it was pure luck. Nandy hated factors like luck. Luck, in his view, had no role to play in a properly run investigation.

  ‘You’re going to give me a name?’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘For Kinsey?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Not yet.’

  Suttle briefly explained about Kinsey’s passion for video games. He needed D/C Golding’s help just a little while longer. He’d have asked D/I Houghton for the go-ahead but she wasn’t picking up.

  ‘She’s gone to Brittany,’ Nandy said. ‘She’s looking for the head.’

  ‘Did she mention Kinsey’s bank statements and those phone billings before she went?’

  ‘Yes. It’ll be a couple of days yet. Are you sure you need them? The banks are charging us the earth.’

  Suttle confirmed he’d need the records for the Coroner’s file. Nandy wanted to know how long he’d be hanging on to Golding.

  ‘Couple of days, sir. Max.’

  There was a long silence. Suttle was wondering about the ethics of a police officer impersonating someone else online. Then Nandy was back on the phone.

  ‘Two days it is, son. Consider yourself lucky.’

  Lizzie picked up a copy of the Exmouth Journal at lunchtime. She’d wheeled Grace down to the village store and only caught the headline on her way out. She stopped beside the rack of newspapers. The story occupied the entire front page. Beneath the headline – MURDER SQUAD PROBE MARINA DEATH – was a colour photo of a bunch of guys in a pub. She recognised the biggest at once, Tom Pendrick. Kinsey, according to the paper, was the little guy centre stage.

  Lizzie bought the paper and took it home. The handyman she’d found had finished with the window, hammering the metal frame back into line and reseating the hinges. It was a snug fit now and Lizzie told herself it would resist all intruders. The residue of last night had stayed with her, but she saw no point in letting it spoil the sunshine. The last forty-eight hours had taught her a great deal about her marriage, but the lessons she knew she must draw were still unclear. For the time being, boxed in, she’d simply have to bide her time.

  Kinsey’s death had spilled onto page 2 of the paper. A reporter looking for another angle had put a call through to the secretary of the rowing club. She’d confirmed that everyone was deeply shocked by what had happened and were discussing what the club might organise in the way of a tribute. Jake Kinsey, she said, had been more than generous in his support for local rowing.

  Lizzie went back to the front page, wondering how she’d be dealing with a story like this if she was back in the newsroom. She knew for a fact that the police were treating Kinsey’s death as suspicious and all the chatter she’d overheard in the boat and on the beach suggested that the club’s benefactor had been far from popular. One of the girls had called him The Passenger. Another had said he was creepy. Tonight, maybe, she’d find out more.

  Suttle was contemplating a sandwich when he took the call from Exmouth Quays. As the last man standing in Constantine’s abandoned stockade, all inquiries to the central control room were being routed to him.

  Suttle bent to the phone and introduced himself. It was a woman’s voice. He didn’t understand why she was shouting.

  ‘That Kinsey man,’ she bellowed. ‘He’d no right. Absolutely no right.’

  ‘No right to do what?’

  ‘To act the way he did. This is enslavement pure and simple. He simply didn’t care. No man should be allowed to do that.’ She paused. ‘Did you get my letter about Prince William?’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t.’

  ‘His life is under threat. I have the documents, the proof. You should come and see them.’ Another pau
se. ‘Are you a monarchist, by any chance?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither am I. Do come round. Number 31.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Regatta Court. The name’s Peggy Brims. My mother was half-French.’

  The phone went dead. Suttle did a reverse number search to check the address. Peggy Brims, 31 Regatta Court. He turned to his PC. A couple of keystrokes took him into the Operational Information System. He needed a couple of checks before he could decide whether to turn this woman’s call into an action.

  He waited for a moment or two then keyed in her name and postcode. It turned out she had an entire file of her own. It stretched back more than eighteen months, call after call alerting the forces of law and order to a long list of imminent threats. She’d been worried sick about gunrunning in Cuba, about the activities of a gangster called Marc Puyrol in Marseilles, about a bunch of goths in Whitby who were trying to set fire to a hotel on the harbourside.

  In every case these pleas for action had been dismissed as crank calls. This woman had form as well as money. She spent most of her waking life dreaming up fictions to keep the police on their toes. But then Suttle’s eye was caught by another entry. Back last summer she’d reported a local woman speeding out to sea on a borrowed jet ski. It was Peggy Brims’ settled view that this woman had been rendezvousing with one of the huge oil tankers anchored out in Lyme Bay. She’d doubtless returned with thousands of pounds’ worth of cocaine or heroin or something equally noxious, determined to corrupt and subvert the nation’s youth.

  In her choice of language and the sheer force of her indignation, there was absolutely nothing to distinguish this call from any of the others. Except that she’d been right. HMCR had been running an intel operation in the bay for months. And a couple of weeks later, partly thanks to her contribution, arrests had been made. There were difficulties producing her as a witness in court because of her looniness, but the fact remained that she kept her eyes open and had – for once – lifted the phone in genuine anger.

  Suttle binned the idea of a sandwich and drove down to Exmouth Quays. Number 31 was on the third floor, served by the same lift as Kinsey’s flat. Peggy Brims came to the door the moment Suttle knocked. She was a big woman, nudging sixty, beautifully dressed. She walked with the aid of a stick and was followed everywhere by a small brown dog. The dog’s name was Pétain.

  ‘As in Maréchal, young man. How much do you know about French history?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘Petain? The hero of Verdun? The saviour of la belle France? Went to seed later but a great, great man. Do you drink vermouth by any chance?’

  She led him through to the sitting room at the front of the apartment. This was a miniature version of Kinsey’s view, smaller but no less impressive. Suttle was watching a yellow kayak crabbing across the tide when he felt a glass in his hand. Dry Martini with a single green olive.

  ‘Salut. What shall I call you?’

  Suttle had already shown her his warrant card. She wasn’t interested in surnames.

  ‘I shall call you André,’ she announced. ‘We must raise a glass to those imps in the City. Did I mention the Libor rate? I’m deeply, deeply concerned.’

  Suttle hadn’t the faintest what she was talking about. The Martini must have been 90 per cent gin. He wanted to know about Kinsey.

  Peggy had settled on a long crescent of sofa. Suttle had last seen furniture like this in a National Trust property he’d visited with Lizzie before the baby arrived. There were pictures on the wall, the frames equally ornate, that oozed money and taste. Dark landscapes in oil. Maritime etchings with a naval flavour that took him back to Pompey. He was beginning to wonder whether she entertained coach parties at the weekend when she reached across and tapped him lightly on the arm. She couldn’t get this horrible man out of her mind.

  ‘Kinsey?’

  ‘Of course. He was thoroughly unpleasant, I’m afraid. No class. Absolutely no breeding. Which, of course, is why he did it.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Had those little girls round.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘The girls. The oriental girls. The girls in the lift. They belonged on my mantlepiece, some of them. Truly exquisite. A couple, one in particular, I even talked to.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the lift. A pretty, pretty little thing. I was worried about cholera then. They used to call it the flux. I expect you know that.’

  The word flux brought Suttle’s head up. Milo Symons had used exactly the same term when he was talking about his film. Flux, he’d said. Tasha’s idea.

  ‘You discussed cholera with the girl in the lift?’

  ‘I did. I think she was alarmed. I hope she was alarmed. She didn’t say much. One has a duty in this life. Bad news should be shared. Don’t you agree, André?’

  She emptied her glass and held it out. Suttle refilled it from the cocktail shaker on the sideboard. A line of nicely mounted black and white photos featured a couple in their early twenties. Peggy was watching him in the huge mirror that dominated the wall opposite.

  ‘My ma and pa, André. Pa served in the Diplomatic Corps before the war. A handsome man, my father. Knew nothing of the flux.’

  Suttle wanted to be sure about Kinsey. ‘These girls were definitely going up to his flat?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I accompanied them. Just to make sure they came to no harm.’

  ‘No harm how?’

  ‘En route, André.’ Her face darkened. ‘Highwaymen.’

  ‘In the lift?’

  ‘Everywhere. Partout. Of course they never tell you in the brochure, and there’s another thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That man Kinsey. He had twelve fingers, you know. Ten for himself, and two for special pies.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t you understand? The fingers?’

  ‘The pies.’

  ‘Ah, my poor André, mon pauvre. Viens. Come . . .’ She struggled off the sofa, gathered up the dog in her spare arm and led Suttle through to a bedroom. The window was framed with heavily ruched curtains and offered a view of the dockside and the waterfront beyond. Immediately below was the stretch of promenade where Kinsey had met his death.

  ‘There . . .’ A quivering finger indicated something in the distance.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There. Beyond those hideous flats. That’s where they’re going to build the next one. They call it Pier Head. And you know who wanted to put his snout in that ghastly trough?’

  ‘Kinsey?’

  ‘Of course. My André . . . so quick off the mark.’ She patted his arm, delighted at this meeting of minds, then led him back to the sitting room.

  ‘I need to be sure about these girls,’ Suttle said. ‘Would you recognise them again?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If I brought photographs?’

  ‘A great pleasure, André. You’ll take care on the way out? After dark is worse, of course, but daylight can be equally unnerving. You understand my drift?’

  Suttle was still on his feet. The interview was evidently over.

  ‘Of course,’ he said ‘because of the highwaymen.’

  ‘Wrong, my dear André,’ she was beaming now. ‘Because of the flux.’

  Mark was still at Totnes when Suttle phoned him. Suttle wanted to know about Kinsey’s seized iPhone.

  ‘Did you go through all the pictures?’

  ‘No. There were hundreds,’ said the CSI.

  ‘Where’s the phone now?’

  ‘Back in the office. I’ve bagged it for analysis. Mr Nandy’s definitely got the inside track with the techies. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of days.’

  ‘I need it faster than that.’

  ‘Do it yourself, then. Ask for Lola. She’s got the magic key.’

  Suttle drove across to Scenes of Crime at Heavitree Road to take a l
ook at the iPhone. Lola wasn’t prepared to release it. If Suttle was going to go through Kinsey’s pictures there had to be someone else on hand to testify he hadn’t inserted any new material. Otherwise there might be evidential problems down the line in court.

  Suttle shrugged. More and more these days detectives had to put up with this kind of procedural nonsense but he understood the logic and knew he had no choice.

  ‘Splash of milk, please,’ he said. ‘No sugar.’

  He settled down to await her return before boredom drove him to scroll through Kinsey’s address book. He had a printout of this already but needed to remind himself about Molly Doyle, the rowing club secretary. A single blonde hair had the makings of a serious interview. He scribbled down her number as his coffee arrived. Lola, it turned out, was a busy girl. Time to browse Kinsey’s gallery.

  The first sequence of shots were trophy views from Kinsey’s penthouse. April had sparked a series of sensational sunsets and Kinsey had taken full advantage. Next came photos snapped from an accompanying launch on what Suttle assumed was a training row. He recognised the elfin figure of Lenahan in the cox’s seat and the towering bulk of Pendrick rowing behind the stroke. Milo Symons was in the number two seat with Kinsey himself in bow. These were very telling. Only Kinsey ever stole a glance towards the camera. And only Kinsey’s blades were ever out of sync with the rest of the crew. Stick insect, Suttle thought. Another of Tasha Donovan’s little phrases.

  ‘What exactly are we looking for?’ Lola was on the meter. She had another ten minutes, absolute max.

  ‘We’ll know it when we see it.’ Suttle was looking at a matchless crescent of sand softened on the landward side by a line of dunes. An offshore wind had sculpted the incoming tide into surf to die for, and the blueness of the water was dotted with tiny black figures waiting for the perfect wave.

  Suttle scrolled on. There were more shots, the same cove photographed from every conceivable angle.

  ‘Where’s that?’ He offered Lola the phone.

  ‘Haven’t a clue. Are those the ones you’re after?’

  Suttle shook his head. This must be Trezillion, he thought, the jewel in Kittiwake Oceanside’s crown. He scrolled on, finding more shots, a different location this time. Finally, at the back end of last year, came the proof that his afternoon visit to Exmouth Quays had scored a modest result. The date – 24.12.2010 – was the only clue Suttle needed. Jake Kinsey, in his big fuck-off apartment, had bought himself an early Christmas prezzie.