No Lovelier Death

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I’m sorry.’

  ‘Fine.’

  He looked up at her, risked a smile. ‘How about I give you a couple of phone numbers? Kids who’d be happy to talk about what happened? Kids who might have sent footage to their friends before we seized their mobes? You could access that stuff. You could use it.’

  ‘It’s sorted, Jimmy. We’ve got more pictures than we can ever use. Kids are sending stuff in by the bucketload, and what we haven’t seen is there for the taking anyway.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Facebook memorial page?’ She started to laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Of course I’ve seen it.’ He looked at his glass. So much for Willard’s clever schemes. ‘So there’s nothing we can help you with?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ She reached across the table and touched his cheek. It meant she was sorry. She asked him how the job was going. He told her about passing his sergeant’s exams. All he had to do now was wait for a vacancy.

  ‘And when will that happen?’

  ‘Christ knows. Skippers’ jobs are thin on the ground just now. It could be months. Longer even. Staying on Major Crime would be favourite but I’d have to be bloody lucky.’

  ‘Or bloody good.’

  ‘Quite.’ He nodded. He wanted to get back to the party. If he couldn’t interest her in mobile footage or witness details, how else might he help?

  She studied him a moment. The party itself, she said, was already old news. They’d caned the arse off the story in all of today’s editions and there were a couple of major feature pieces lined up for tomorrow. By Wednesday something else would have kicked off and the world would be moving on.

  Suttle wasn’t having it. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Willard thinks there’s more to it than that. He thinks we’re stretched to breaking point, and from where I’m sitting I have to tell you he’s right. You know one of the really big problems we had on Saturday night? Finding enough Crime Scene blokes to make a decent start on Sunday morning. And you know why? Because of the European Working Time Directive. They were running out of hours. It’s the same for the uniforms, the same for us lot. Two of these parties on the same night and we’d be calling the army in. Three, and you’d start thinking NATO. People don’t realise, Lizzie. They take peace and quiet for granted. They shouldn’t.’

  ‘Sure. Of course Willard’s got a point. But there’s a problem here because he’s said it already. Yesterday on telly and this morning in any paper you choose to name. They’ve all been quoting him. The end of civilisation’s a great story but not if it’s yesterday’s news.’

  ‘OK.’ Suttle shrugged. ‘So what else can I offer you?’

  ‘Is that a serious question?’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘How about Paul Winter?’

  ‘Winter?’ He was staring at her. ‘Why Winter?’

  ‘Because he works for Mackenzie. Because Mackenzie’s bloody upset by what happened on Saturday night. And because Mackenzie doesn’t let things like this go unresolved.’ She smiled. ‘Or so we hear.’

  ‘Did Winter say that?’

  ‘No, and even if he had I wouldn’t tell you. But think about it, Jimmy. An ex-cop working for a Pompey face. An ex-cop like Winter working for the Pompey face. That’s a nightmare, isn’t it? From your point of view?’

  Suttle said nothing. He gazed across the canal towards the apartment blocks that lined the waterfront. Winter lived in one of those pads. Before he’d joined Mackenzie, Suttle had been round there a great deal. Stunning views. Great crack. A limitless supply of cold Stellas from the fridge. In those days, Winter had been recovering from major brain surgery in America and it had been Suttle’s pleasure to keep an eye on him. More recently, of course, that friendship had ended but, deep down, Suttle realised he missed the man. Winter had taught him everything he knew. Winter had taught him the difference between paperwork and nailing the bad guys. As time slipped by the Job was becoming unrecognisable, and now, sad to say, there were no Winters left.

  He looked up. Lizzie Hodson was right. Our loss, he thought, Mackenzie’s gain.

  ‘You think there might be two investigations going on here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you think I’m going to be silly enough to confirm that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Suttle held her eyes for a moment, then smiled and got to his feet. His glass was still untouched.

  ‘Good luck with the yoga.’ He bent to kiss her. ‘And phone me next time he gets in touch.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Winter.’

  Carol Legge was a small cheerful Geordie in her early fifties with a passion for fairy cakes. She worked for the city’s Child Protection Team, and the last time Winter had seen her she’d marked his card about a scrote drug dealer and part-time father called Karl Ewart, triggering a chain of events that put Jimmy Suttle in hospital with a serious stab wound. Two years later Legge was still carrying a hefty caseload for Child Protection, and the news that Winter was no longer working for the Men in Black appeared not to matter.

  ‘So what is it, pet? How can I help you?’

  ‘There’s a girl called Jax Bonner. Ring any bells?’

  They were sitting in a café in the heart of Fratton. Winter had bought teas at the counter and a packet of fairy cakes from the Easy Shopper round the corner. She sent Winter back to the counter for a knife and a plate, then sliced through the wrapping.

  ‘Tallish? Keeps shaving her hair off? Lots of previous?’

  ‘That might be right.’

  ‘She’s a headcase, pet. Totally psychotic. Leave well alone.’

  The thought put a smile on Winter’s face. He helped himself to one of the cakes, brushed crumbs from his mouth.

  ‘You’ve dealt with her yourself?’

  ‘Never had reason to. She was on the radar as a nipper but that was before my time. Since then she’s become a bit of a legend. Colleagues of mine from the Youth Offending Team take bets on when she’ll do something really silly.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She frowned. ‘Burn a house down? Nick a car and drive it into a bunch of mums outside a school? Kill someone? This is a headline waiting to happen. That’s them talking, pet, not me.’

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. Like I say, we don’t hold the file.’

  ‘So who do I talk to?’

  ‘I’m not sure, pet. That might be difficult. If she’s still school age she’d be at one of the Pupil Referral Units. They call them Harbour Schools now. There’s no way she’d be in mainstream education.’

  Winter wetted a finger for the crumbs on his plate. Pupil Referral Units were last-chance dump bins for excluded kids. He’d had dealings with them before, when he was still in the Job. Staff at these schools did their best to get their charges back in line but most of the harder cases never bothered to turn up.

  ‘Has she got family?’

  ‘Everyone’s got family, pet. It’s a question of whether it works or not. In her case I’d say no but I’d be guessing. Like I say, you’d need a look at the file.’

  Winter nodded, leaving the next question unvoiced. At length, Legge wanted to know why Jax Bonner had suddenly become so important.

  ‘Saturday night? Sandown Road?’

  ‘You’re kidding. She was there? At the party?’

  ‘She may have been. Hand on heart, love, I can’t say for sure.’

  ‘Craneswater? I’d say that was way out of her comfort zone.’ She paused, frowning. ‘So how come all this matters to you?’

  ‘I have a friend. Let’s call him a client. He pays me to find out stuff. Saturday night he came home to find two bodies beside his swimming pool.’

  ‘Next door, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s Mackenzie’s place.’

  ‘Yes.’

  �
�You’re working for him? Mackenzie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goodness me.’ She looked startled. ‘Bit of a culture shock, isn’t it? Kipping with the enemy?’

  ‘Not the enemy, love. Not any more. He’s calmed down. He runs a business. He spreads money around. He employs people. He does good deeds. Ask him nicely, and I’m sure he’d sponsor any little scheme your lot might care to dream up.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Totally. And you’re looking at the man that can make that happen. ’ He found a pen, then scribbled a number on the corner of her newspaper. ‘My new mobile.’ He helped himself to the last of the fairy cakes. ‘Ask for Robin Hood.’

  There were evenings when Faraday knew with a troubling certainty that he was going to get drunk, and this was one of them. Mandolin had become a media event, making waves across the nation, sending ripples as far as the other side of the planet. Minutes before he’d left Major Crime, Jimmy Suttle had appeared with a cutting from the Sydney Morning Herald. TWO SLAIN AT WEEKEND PARTY went the headline. PM WARNS OF ANARCHY.

  There were more stories like these, he said. From papers in Europe, in North America, in the Far East. The coverage, while factual, carried an undertone of nemesis, of social debts long overdue for settlement. A commentator in Le Monde, in a wounding aside, wondered whether incidents like these wouldn’t become the norm in a society that had lost touch with itself. After two decades of Thatcherism, even under New Labour the English battery chicken was coming home to roost.

  Lost touch with itself. Faraday, driving home, knew it was true. For more years than he cared to remember family and faith had been dissolving in the teeth of a bitter wind. Lately that wind had become a howling gale. Whichever way you measured it - the divorce figures, Big Brother, domestic violence, the weekend army of teenage drunks swamping the nation’s A & E departments - society was falling apart. Respect had gone. Not just for each other but for any kind of effort to make a decent fist of life. Failure, by some savage twist of logic, had become a badge of achievement. For countless thousands of kids, cloned by shit television and trashy high-street brands, it was cool to rubbish anything that smacked of genuine effort. You made your mark by hanging out. You found comfort in numbers. You grabbed your pleasures wherever you could. And there wasn’t any argument that couldn’t be settled with a boot or a knife. Welcome to Cool Britannia.

  Back at the Bargemaster’s House he uncorked a bottle of Merlot and tried to share some of his anger with Gabrielle. She was on her laptop at the kitchen table, transcribing a pile of notes. She listened for a while, still typing, then stopped when Faraday repeated the phrase that had triggered the war drums in his aching head.

  ‘Lost touch? Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire?’

  ‘It means disrupted. It’s a question of rhythm. If we were soldiers, we’d be out of step. If we were on the dance floor, we’d be all over the place. The guy used the phrase in Le Monde this morning. La société anglaise ne se reconnait plus. And he’s right. We don’t know ourselves any more. We can’t hear the music any more. We’ve lost it. It’s gone. We’re a mess.’

  She pondered the image for a moment. This is her trade, Faraday thought. Trying to figure out ways that groups of individuals become a tribe.

  ‘Music’s good.’ She nodded in approval. ‘Ça accroche.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Definitely. It works because music ties us together, because music is glue. When the music stops …’ She shrugged.

  ‘We fall apart.’

  ‘Exactement. You see it all over the world. You have to belong. In Cambodia you see this, in Vietnam, with the mountain people. Beliefs, faith, conduct, moeurs, it’s all the same. It’s glue, it’s music. You belong. You sign up. You obey. Here too. Especially here.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here.’ She gestured at the pile of transcripts beside the laptop. ‘Somerstown. Portsea. Buckland. All these places. Maybe you’re hearing a different music but deep down it’s the same. You’re part of the tribe, of the gang. Like I say, you belong.’

  ‘Which matters.’

  ‘Oui, absolument. The kids I talk to, most of them have nothing. Family doesn’t work for them, school doesn’t work for them; they have no exams, no bits of paper, nothing. All they have is time. Time and hunger.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For belonging. The biggest club, the biggest gang, is your société anglaise. But to join that club you need the right clothes, the right trainers, n’est-ce pas? And for that you need money. But these kids have no money. All they have is each other. And so - voilà - they make a little gang, a little tribe of their own. It becomes everything to them. It’s their family, their Church, their everything. So they link their arms together. And they march in step.’

  Faraday was beginning to wonder where this conversation might lead. ‘You’re describing the symptoms,’ he said carefully. ‘I’m talking about the disease.’

  ‘But the disease is all about us. You’re right, chéri. The kids are getting difficiles because that’s the way your society has gone. You see it everywhere. There’s more space between people, more emotional space. That’s where the kids get lost. Right there in that space. You know what I never see in these flats? In these little houses? A dinner table. A place where people can eat together. Eating is living. Here, people often do neither. That’s why the kids belong to gangs. That’s why they’re outside the corner stores all night. And you know the important word? Belong. They belong there, on the street, with each other.’

  ‘And you’re telling me they have rules?’

  ‘Bien sûr. Of course they have rules. Break the rules and the gang punish you. Break the rules too often, and the gang throw you out. The worst. Absolument le pire.’

  She abandoned her chair and perched herself on the edge of the table, facing Faraday. She was on fire now - intense, hunched, a pose he recognised from a handful of previous occasions. Few things touched her as deeply as her work. Like Faraday she committed far too much of herself.

  She was talking about a particularly difficult fourteen-year-old from a family in Portsea. His mother, she said, had a new baby and a succession of dysfunctional partners. Some of them spent her child benefit on crack-cocaine. Others beat her up. She was so damaged and so preoccupied with the baby that all verbal communication with her adolescent son had ceased. If the boy wanted anything, he left her a note. On good days it worked. Most of the time he went without.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘He decided to go fishing. He’d been down to the little pier in Old Portsmouth. He’d seen the men with their rods. He made a line with some string. These men, they all know each other, a little group, a little family, a little gang, n’est-ce pas? They tell the boy they need maquereaux to cut up for bait to catch the bigger fish, the sea bass. You fish for maquereaux with a hook and a little feather. They show him how. He starts to catch les maquereaux and - voilà - they give him 50p for each fish. This boy, he saves enough money for an old rod, to catch sea bass. For sea bass the Chinese in the restaurants pay two pounds, maybe three. But he needs a bag, a waterproof bag, to keep the sea bass. In Portsea boys deliver papers from yellow bags. The bag protects the papers from the rain. And so he gets a job. As a paper boy. After two days he quits the job but he keeps the bag. And so now he has three things. He has a nice waterproof bag. He has money from the sea bass. And he has a new gang, a new family. Courage, chéri. Life could be worse.’

  Maquereaux meant mackerel. As he knew only too well, this little parable of hers was a tiny touch on Faraday’s tiller, a reminder that black was an impossible colour to live with, and after a moment’s thought he responded with a tilt of his glass.

  ‘Salut.’ He was looking at her laptop, at the lines of text carefully transcribed from her interview tapes. ‘You met more kids today?’

  ‘Oui. J’en ai rencontré cinq.’

  ‘Five? Really? And what did you ask them?’

  ‘
Today is different. Today I never asked. Today they talked.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Quoi?’ She began to laugh. ‘Quelle question. They talk about your party. And you know why? Because most of them were there. They saw everything. They’re famous now, célèbres. They had a fine time.’

  ‘Everything?’ Faraday couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Bien sûr. These kids aren’t stupid. They watch. They listen. And most of all they remember.’

  ‘Remember what?’

  ‘How easy it was.’ She grinned. ‘Quelle rigolade.’

  What a laugh? Faraday shook his head and turned away. Then he reached for the bottle and filled his empty glass.

  Chapter twelve

  TUESDAY, 14 AUGUSTt 2007. 10.47

  Esme, Bazza Mackenzie’s daughter, lived inland, on a lush green flank of the Meon Valley. On Tuesdays it had become a habit to drive the children down to Southsea to spend the day with their granny.

  Marie had come to look forward to these visits. If the weather behaved itself, the kids liked nothing better than spending the day beside the pool. Bazza, in the spirit of these excursions, had brought them a pair of inflatable armbands each, a little dinghy to splash around in, and an inflatable crocodile for when things got boring. Marie kept the fridge well stocked with chocolate ice cream and party-sized bottles of Coke, and had acquired a bottle of factor 30 for the sunnier days. When Bazza suggested she might give this particular Tuesday a miss, she wouldn’t hear of it. The quicker life in 13 Sandown Road returned to normal, she said, the better she’d feel.

  Esme arrived earlier than usual. Girlfriends were raving about some 1920s cocktail dresses in a fashion outlet in Gunwharf. A purple sequined number at a 70 per cent discount was a steal and she needed to be down there before the size 12s got snapped up.

  Guy, the oldest of the three kids, was a born explorer. At home he thought nothing of patrolling the acres of fenced-in meadow on his own, chasing one or other of Esme’s horses. In Sandown Road, once the novelty of the pool had worn off, he’d take a wander round the garden.