Moments later Winter disappeared to the loo. Suttle rang Faraday on his mobile and asked about progress in Merrivale Road. Faraday told him there’d been no response from the ground-floor flat. The people upstairs had confirmed that a girl with a shaven head was living down there but they hadn’t seen her since Saturday. Faraday himself was now in the process of getting a search warrant sworn. Parsons thought there was no percentage in staking the place out in case Bonner returned. In her view the girl had probably fled the city.
Seeing Winter returning from the loo, Suttle brought the conversation to an end. A curry, he’d decided, would be good. Preferably a takeout.
‘My place then.’ Winter was finishing his drink.
They walked the half-mile back to Gunwharf. Stepping into Winter’s apartment, Suttle felt a strange sense of déjà vu, of time telescoping backwards. Back in the pub he’d never seen Winter so emotional, so raw. Something had hurt him badly, Suttle realised, and that something had to do with the times they’d spent together.
While Winter busied himself in the kitchen Suttle stood at the big picture window staring out at the gathering dusk on the harbour. He’d always had respect for Winter. More than that, especially after the onset of the brain tumour, he’d felt affection for the man. He’d never met anyone so alone, anyone with less need for other people. He wasn’t solitary in the sense that Faraday was solitary. On the contrary, Winter had an immense gift for mateyness, for making people trust him. But a year working together had revealed another side to the man, an empty space inside that was very close to loneliness, and it had been Suttle’s pleasure to become a kind of son. He’d kept an eye on the old boy. They’d had a lot of laughs. And in return Winter had taught him a very great deal.
He was on the phone now, shouting orders to some takeaway or other. Joannie, Winter’s wife, had been dead for years. He’d sold up the bungalow in Bedhampton and had no kids. Maybe Mackenzie’s filled that gap, Suttle thought. Maybe that’s why he’s ended up on the Dark Side.
Winter stepped back into the lounge.
‘Chicken jalfrezi? ‘ he said. ‘Pilau rice with a side order of sag? Have I got that right?’
‘Perfect, boss.’ He accepted a can of Stella. ‘Tell me about Matt Berriman.’
Winter settled himself on the sofa, slipped off his shoes.
‘He’d been with the girl forever. You’d know that.’
‘You mean Rachel?’
‘Yeah. Baz was close to Berriman’s mum once. Nothing intimate, just friends. He did her a favour, way back. He knows the boy but not well.’
‘And you think … ?’
‘I think the boy was pissed off with losing the Ault girl. I think he wanted her back. Turning up at the party had a lot to do with that.
But did he kill her? Did he find himself a knife and do the business? Make sure no one else ever had a dip? No way.’
‘Why not?’
‘He was still at the Aults’ place, for a start. Baz turns up, gets himself into all kinds of shit … Who digs him out? Our man Matt. By that time Rachel and the boy Gareth are probably next door, time-expired. ’
‘How do you know that?’ Suttle raised an eyebrow.
‘I don’t. I’m guessing. But the way I see it, Berriman wasn’t there.
Berriman was next door partying. Until Baz arrived.’
Suttle conceded the point. The image of Berriman in the interview suite had stayed with him. He’d dominated the tiny space. He’d been sure of himself.
Winter had another question: ‘What’s the forensic on Berriman? You seized his gear?’
‘Of course.’
‘And?’
‘It’s too early to say. He’s priority but we’re still talking five-day turnaround. Nothing changes.’ Suttle paused. ‘So we rule out Berriman? As far as Rachel Ault’s concerned? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Because?’
‘Because he wasn’t next door. And because there’s no way a guy like him would have done that. Not to her. Not the way he felt.’
‘You’ve talked to him?’
Winter studied him a moment, then raised his glass. It looked like Scotch.
‘What do you think, son?’
‘I think yes.’
‘You’re right. And so am I. He’s off the plot.’
Suttle took a sip of lager. The temptation was to share the pictures from the upstairs bathroom, to tap Winter on the shoulder and ask him why - barely an hour before - Rachel would have been on her knees saying a private thank you to her former boyfriend, and why that same Matt Berriman would have promptly sent the evidence to Gareth Hughes’s mobile. That was the kind of situation that might easily have led to a confrontation. And the consequences would have been incalculable.
Winter sensed his reservations. When Suttle said nothing, he raised another name.
‘There’s a girl called Jax Bonner.’ he said. ‘You’ll know the name.’
‘Would I?’
‘Don’t piss around, son. You know who she is.’
‘I do?’
‘Of course you do. If you don’t, you should try looking at that Facebook page of theirs. She shaves her head. She’s got a knife. She slashes pictures to bits. Nothing too subtle.’
Suttle didn’t react. In the end he knew they’d have to trade information but he wanted to stay in the driving seat.
‘There’s another name we’ve come across,’ Suttle said at length.
‘Scott Giles?’
‘Go on.’
‘You know him?’ Winter shook his head. Suttle knew that meant nothing. ‘He’s Jax Bonner’s brother. He went down for five years a couple of months ago. Possession with intent.’
‘Five years?’
‘Half a kilo of the laughing powder in a lock-up. He’s always claimed someone fitted him up. I was just wondering … given the company you keep …’ Suttle was happy to leave the rest of the thought unvoiced. There was a subtext here. He was commissioning Winter to make a few enquiries, to have a poke around. There’d doubtless be another meet and another after that. It wouldn’t be easy, and it certainly broke every rule in Mandolin’s book, but it might offer another route to Jax Bonner.
There was a buzz from the video entryphone in the hall. Winter got to his feet. Chicken jalfrezi, Suttle thought.
Winter waited in the hall to sort out the guy from the delivery service. Suttle heard a murmur of voices then Winter was back with the curries.
‘Your blokes boshed Bazza’s kitchen, didn’t they? Scenes of Crime? Full service?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Got anything back yet?’
‘No. Netley’s swamped. The fingerprint guys are talking gridlock.’
‘Shame.’ Winter grinned down at him. ‘Extra chutney?’
Faraday found the note propped against a bag of vegetables in the kitchen. When Gabrielle was in a hurry, she didn’t bother with English. ‘Cheri. Il me faut sortir. Rentre plus tard. Sais pas quand. Les pommes de terre et les tomates sont parfaits. Sers-toi. Vas-y. XXX’
Faraday looked in the bag. The new potatoes were fresh from the garden, still dusted with soil. The tomatoes as well were home-grown. He popped one in his mouth, realising how hungry he was. She was right. Parfait.
He checked his watch. It was late, nearly ten, and he wondered whether to knock up some kind of salad and wait for her return. She rarely went out by herself in the evening, and when it came to time she was punctilious, which made the note all the more surprising. Back later? Don’t know exactly when?
He frowned, spotting her laptop, bagged on the kitchen table. Normally he’d never dream of snooping, of opening up her emails, of prowling through her interview files, but something in last night’s exchange had planted a small seed of doubt. She was meeting kids on the inner estates. Some of those same kids clearly knew a thing or two about Saturday night in Sandown Road. It would have been in Gabrielle’s nature to have pressed them for details, to
have cocked her head and smile her French smile, and laugh at the funny bits. She was brilliant with other people, just the way she’d been brilliant with him.
He remembered the first time they’d met. She’d stepped onto a country bus in northern Thailand, up in the mountains near the Burmese border. The bus had been packed but she’d found a space on the seat in front of him. She’d perched on the seat, sideways on, one brown arm looped over the seat back as they lurched from corner to corner, and within an hour Faraday seemed to have told her his life story. She had a voracious appetite for other people, for the journeys they’d made, for the conclusions they’d reached, and she made the act of sharing deeply pleasurable. At the time Faraday had sensed that he could talk to her forever, and the way it had turned out, he was right.
He found a half-empty bottle of wine in the fridge. He poured himself a glass, trying hard not to visualise what she might be up to. He got the impression that some of these kids were young, barely adolescents. Where would you meet them at this time of night? How would you win their confidence? And what kind of sense would all this material make by the time you’d finished?
He knew she was looking for patterns, for the kind of templates she might apply to other social groups on the very edges of the planet. She’d worked with the Inuit in the high Arctic, with Berber tribes-men in the Mahgreb, with Pathans in the wilder parts of Afghanistan, returning from these expeditions with hundreds of pages of notes and a wealth of photos. To date she’d authored half a dozen academic papers and a slim volume that had been published only last year. This extended essay had sought to apply the lessons of her travels to urban societies in the West, winning applause from the review columns of Liberation and Le Nouvel Observateur. One of the few copies she possessed had found its way onto the shelf that Faraday reserved for especially treasured books and the sight of it nestling beside Birds of the Western Palearctic still gave him a little jolt of pleasure.
From a world that increasingly defied analysis she’d somehow fashioned order. In a society that had become atomised she’d knitted together a powerful case for the warm, complex comforts of kinship. To even attempt a challenge like that demanded not just intelligence but an optimism all the rarer for being so natural, so unforced. All you had to do, she’d once confided to Faraday, was to hide the candle from the draught. He nodded to himself, knowing how much she’d changed this life of his. She was the flame, he decided. And he was the candle.
Faraday’s gaze returned to the laptop. To even turn it on would be an act of trespass. To settle down and go further, an act of betrayal. And yet. And yet.
He shook his head, emptied the bottle, made a start on the potatoes, forcing himself back to Mandolin. The duty magistrate had sworn a search warrant on the address in Merrivale Road. Inside, he and a couple of D/Cs had taken a cursory look at the flat. To his surprise, it had been clean and reasonably tidy. One of the bedrooms had obviously belonged to the brother, while the girl Jax seemed to have occupied the other. She’d stuck a photocopied picture of herself on the wall above the bed and left a couple of unopened letters with her name on the front on the tiny table beneath the window. There was a pile of her clothes at the foot of the double bed and a stack of CDs beside the player in the corner. The younger of the detectives, eyeing a poster for a band called Achtung Everybody, pitied whoever lived upstairs. His own kid sister had similar tastes in Pop-Punk and it was driving his mum bonkers.
Before they’d left the bedroom the same D/C had spotted the end of a Pompey scarf hanging from a drawer. Inside the drawer he’d found an assortment of socks and underwear, none of it female, and checks in the nearby bathroom had revealed a can of shaving cream and a couple of knackered razors in the bin beneath the sink. Faraday had made a mental note to revisit some of the interviewees who’d noticed Jax Bonner at the party house. Maybe she’d come with company, he’d thought. And maybe that someone had taken the footage on the stairs. He remembered the paleness of the girl’s face turning to the camera, and the smear of spittle from her flickering tongue. Maybe she’d known this person. Maybe she even lived with him. Maybe they’d planned the evening together - a raid on enemy territory, a chance to settle her brother’s debts. And maybe that payback had extended to Rachel Ault.
Now, ducking into the garden in search of mint for the potatoes, Faraday wondered where a full SOC search might take them. He’d left a uniform outside the property overnight and Jerry Proctor’s boys would be making a start first thing. They might find ID for Bonner’s flatmate. If not, then DNA from the razors or maybe a toothbrush might give them a hit a week or so down the line. Either way, two names would double their chances of pushing Mandolin towards an early result.
He smiled, reminded suddenly of the impending weekend. J-J, he thought, and the chance for a day or so of decent birding. There were reports on one of the RSPB sites of a marsh harrier on the Isle of Wight. All three of them could take the ferry across to Ryde and explore the wetlands south of Bembridge Harbour. They could have dinner afterwards at a favourite pub in Seaview. Maybe even stay over, take a couple of rooms for the night, make a proper break of it. Warmed by the thought, he plucked another sprig of mint and headed back towards the kitchen. As he did so, he became aware of approaching headlights in the cul-de-sac that led to the Bargemaster’s House. A taxi stopped, and two figures got out. One of them was the driver. The other, slighter, seemed to be limping.
Faraday watched for a second or two then stepped round the side of the house to meet them before they got to the front door. In the spill of the streetlights Gabrielle’s upturned face was caked with blood.
‘Been in the wars, mate.’ The driver had his arm locked beneath hers. ‘I offered to take her to A & E but she wouldn’t hear of it.’
Faraday thanked him. He’d take over. He’d sort it. Gabrielle was whispering something. Faraday bent down to her.
‘Money, chéri. He needs money.’
‘You mean the fare?’
She nodded, closed her eyes.
‘Please …’ she said. ‘Just pay him.’
The driver said he’d picked her up in Cosham, on the mainland. He’d spotted her slumped in a bus shelter and had stopped to help. Faraday asked for a name and a phone number and waited while the driver fumbled for a card.
‘Thanks, mate.’ He was pocketing Faraday’s twenty-pound note.
‘I’d go to the police if I were you.’
The driver gone, Faraday walked Gabrielle slowly into the house and settled her on the sofa. One eye was swollen and a cut high on her cheek was still oozing blood, but the wounds looked superficial. When he asked whether she hurt anywhere else, she shook her head. He went to the bathroom and laced a bowl of hot water with antiseptic. Then he returned to the sofa and knelt on the carpet, gently swabbing her battered face with a flannel. Only when she asked for something to drink did he put the obvious question.
‘What happened?’
She shook her head. Her eyes were still closed.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Rien du tout.’
‘Please … just tell me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Can’t?’
‘It’s impossible, Joe. Sometimes it’s like this. Not so easy.’ She winced at the sting of the antiseptic. ‘Maybe I asked for it. Maybe it was my fault. Tant pis.’
‘Asked for what?’
‘Please, no.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe later, maybe tomorrow, not now.’
He made a pot of tea, checking on her through the open kitchen door. When he asked whether she’d eaten, whether she was hungry, she shook her head. She was exploring her mouth with her fingers. At length she asked for a mirror.
‘Merde.’ She scowled at her image, running her tongue over her teeth.
‘Some kind of mugging?’
‘Non.’
‘But you were robbed? And that’s why you had no money?’
‘I lost my purse.’
‘Lost it?’
She sipped
at the tea, not answering. When Faraday tried again, more questions, she shook her head. She’d had enough. Her face hurt. Her head hurt. She wanted to go to bed. Tant pis.
Too bad? Faraday helped her upstairs. When he tried to undress her, she said she’d do it herself. She was shivering now, her skin cold to the touch. Faraday found a dressing gown and put his arms round her. She nestled her head against his chest then pushed him gently away. Leaving the room, he heard the sigh of the mattress as she got into bed.
Downstairs, back in the kitchen, he closed the door. He found the mains lead to her laptop in a pocket of the bag. He opened the laptop and then plugged it in.
Chapter fifteen
WEDNESDAY, 15 AUGUST 2007. 10.13
Winter found Mackenzie in his private quarters at the Royal Trafalgar Hotel. Until recently he’d occupied a single ground-floor office on a sunny corner of the building, but his growing empire had demanded more space and so he’d moved upstairs to a suite of rooms with a near-perfect view of the Isle of Wight. With a nod to his days in the 6.57, Mackenzie had dubbed the previous office the Fratton End. His new corporate headquarters, infinitely smarter, had become the Steve Claridge Suite.
Winter sat in front of the desk, waiting for Mackenzie to come off the phone. A huge blow-up of the veteran Pompey striker dominated the office. The photographer had caught him in a crowded penalty area, about to pivot on one leg and lash the ball into the net. Winter knew very little about football but recognised at once why Steve Claridge belonged here. The socks hanging down round his ankles. The muddy knees. The wreck of a haircut. Like Bazza himself, Claridge depended on other people not taking him seriously. Underestimate this man, Winter thought vaguely, and like so many Premiership defenders you’d be sitting on your arse listening to the roar of the Pompey crowd.
‘Well, mush? Did you find her?’ Bazza appeared to have forgotten about Marie’s knife.
No Lovelier Death Page 19