No Lovelier Death

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘What kept her then?’

  ‘I dunno. People say she’s flakey, a real headcase. She’d do a total stranger, really hurt them, for no good reason. Then you come up with someone who’s really asking for it, someone like Danny Cooper, and she holds off. Or maybe bides her time.’

  ‘And Rachel?’

  ‘Rachel never asked for it. Rachel was different.’

  ‘But you think Bonner did her?’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘You saw it happen? You saw her do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know then?’

  Berriman got up on one elbow and scratched himself. Then he lay back, his eyes closed.

  ‘Because it couldn’t have been anyone else. There were lots of ways of getting at Ault but Rachel was by far the best. This woman’s off her head, remember. Plus she’d been sticking shitloads of cocaine up her nose.’

  ‘That would be Danny Cooper’s cocaine.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Berriman nodded. ‘Weird, isn’t it? He was knocking out gram bags at twenty-five quid that night. Twenty-five quid. Bonner bought a couple. I watched her do it.’

  ‘Where did she get the money from?’

  ‘Bonner?’ he opened one eye. ‘Apparently she’s minted. Not minted exactly but definitely OK for dosh. Now her brother’s inside, she gets all the rents from the lock-ups. You’re talking hundreds of quid a week, easy.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘So how does she collect it? With half the world chasing after her?’

  ‘Good question. If I knew, I’d have been the first to find her.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Danny Cooper would still be alive.’

  The Scenes of Crime team finally released 11 Sandown Road at four o’clock in the afternoon. Five days’ intensive work had yielded tray after tray of DNA swabs, umpteen seized items for detailed investigation, plus enough sets of finger and palm prints to keep the Netley specialists busy for months to come. In time, as Proctor pointed out in a testy exchange with DCI Parsons, there’d be enough cross-checked forensic evidence to compile a reasonably lawyer-proof account of exactly who had been where. Add the hundreds of images captured on seized mobiles and you might even end up with a detailed timeline. Quite how this would help progress the search for the killer or killers of Rachel and Gareth remained to be seen but the house itself could now be returned to its rightful owners.

  It was Jessie Williams who phoned the Aults’ Denmead friends to pass on the message. She spoke to Belle. Her husband, she said, had taken two strong sleeping tablets and gone straight to bed. In the morning she’d be phoning the family doctor to book an appointment for more medical tests. Peter had insisted there was no need but she was going to do it anyway. The next couple of weeks wouldn’t be easy. The last thing Peter needed at this point in time was a heart attack.

  Jessie Williams reported the conversation to Faraday. In her opinion the Aults might be wanting access to the house as early as tomorrow morning. The locks had been changed on the front door and someone needed to be on hand with a key. In the meantime, as requested, she’d made arrangements for a D/C to drive across from Netley to bag and tag Rachel’s laptop. The contents of the hard disk would be cloned and analysed. Given the time scales involved, she added, it might be a gesture to offer to buy Ault a replacement machine.

  Faraday turned the suggestion down.

  ‘He doesn’t want a replacement,’ he pointed out. ‘He wants the one we’ve seized. Just now it’s probably the closest he can get to her.’

  ‘He’ll have to wait then?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘He won’t like that at all.’

  She was right. Something about this morning’s journey down from Heathrow had begun to trouble Faraday. Peter Ault, he realised, could be a truly forbidding figure. Not just to a jury in court, or to a possibly innocent man in the dock, but maybe to Rachel as well.

  Until this morning he hadn’t realised that Rachel wasn’t his natural daughter but a two-year-old he’d inherited when he’d met and married Belle. In one sense, Faraday told himself, it didn’t matter. He’d brought the child up. He’d doubtless lavished upon her every kind of attention. Yet there’d been no kids to follow, no kids he and his wife could truly call their own, and now Faraday was beginning to wonder whether the judge hadn’t invested too much of himself in Belle’s daughter. He’d been rightly proud of her - of her achievements, of her prowess in the swimming pool, of her success in the Oxbridge exam - yet there was something else in his face that was altogether darker.

  Even when the party was totally out of control Rachel had never lifted the phone to the police. Close friends of hers, in interview, had put this down to fear of how her dad would react if drugs were found and proceedings followed. Fear was a strong word but Mr Ault, they said, could be truly scary. At the time Faraday had been disinclined to place much weight on these comments but now, having met Ault in the flesh, he was starting to have second thoughts. There was something in his manner, in the way he’d chosen to cope with her death, that sounded an alarm bell deep in Faraday’s head.

  He mused a little longer, staring out of the window. Then his hand found the phone. He checked his mobile for Jessie Williams’s number. She confirmed she had the new key to 11 Sandown Road.

  ‘Is there a problem, boss?’

  ‘Not at all. My guess is they’ll want to see the house at some point tomorrow. Give me a bell before you take them round.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I’m coming too.’

  Chapter nineteen

  THURSDAY, 16 AUGUST 2007. 18.56

  Winter finally found Mackenzie at a café-bar in the middle of Southsea. He’d been phoning him all day, without success. Marie thought he might have gone to London. Staff at the Royal Trafalgar said they hadn’t seen him since early, when he’d helped himself to a plate of food from the breakfast buffet and retired to his office to make some calls. Now, he was sitting by himself at a corner table reading a copy of the Daily Express.

  ‘She never did it, mush. Bloody police out there don’t know their arse from their elbow.’ He tapped a photo of Kate McCann beside a local detective in Praia de Luz. ‘What’s the Portuguese for Filth?’

  Winter stood at the table. The café-bar was filling up.

  ‘You want to go somewhere quieter?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’ve got a couple of things we ought to talk about, Baz.’ Winter offered him a thin smile. ‘Comprende?’

  They walked the length of Palmerston Road. Mackenzie’s Range Rover was parked beside the Common. The AA, he told Winter, had diagnosed piston failure. He’d need a new engine. Another five grand down the khazi.

  Mackenzie turned left, towards Craneswater. Winter said he’d prefer a longer walk.

  ‘Where to, mush?’

  ‘The seafront.’ Winter nodded towards the low grassy battlements of Southsea Castle. ‘Do you good.’

  Mackenzie was defensive by now. He wanted to know what was so fucking important it wouldn’t wait until tomorrow. Marie was doing a barbie tonight. She’d got loads of tiger prawns from the fish market. He was already on a yellow card for turning up pissed last night. If he was late, she’d be vile to him.

  ‘So where did you go last night, Baz?’

  ‘What’s that to you?’

  ‘I need to know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ Winter seldom lost his temper. ‘I came on board to look after your interests, Baz. That’s why you took the risk on me. That’s why it’s turned out OK. That’s why you pay me shitloads of money. So I’ll ask you the question again. Where did you get to last night?’

  Mackenzie shot him a look. No one talked to him like this.

  ‘I was out.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Gunwharf. What is this?’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘What do you mean, then where? If you must fucking know,
I was out with Mist. We had a meal. We had a few laughs. I probably drank too much. Then I came home and got an earful from Marie. No big deal. Just another Wednesday night. OK?’

  ‘Sure.’ Winter sidestepped a curl of dogshit. ‘Someone did Danny Cooper last night. I expect you’ve heard.’

  ‘Yeah. Little cunt.’

  ‘That someone went to town on him. Blood fucking everywhere.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do, Baz. It’s what you pay me for.’

  ‘OK.’ Mackenzie nodded, coming to a halt. ‘So the boy got himself killed. And from where I’m looking, I know who that someone was.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You don’t see it?’

  ‘See what, Baz?’

  ‘See who must have done it? Must have taken a knife to him? All that shit about the court case? Scott Giles going down for a long one? Because of Danny stitching him up? This is seriously worrying, mush. Do I have to spell it out?’

  ‘You think the girl killed him, Jax Bonner.’ Winter said. A statement not a question.

  ‘Of course she fucking did.’

  ‘Broke into his house and cut his throat.’

  ‘Yeah, stands to reason.’

  ‘And you think she put that message on Facebook as well? Just to get the ball rolling?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue.’

  Winter nodded, staring down at him. Then he began to walk again, towards the seafront. Mackenzie watched him for a moment or two then followed. By the time he caught up, he was out of breath.

  Neither man spoke. They climbed the slope beside the castle and found a bench. Winter told Mackenzie to sit down. For once in his life he seemed to be listening.

  ‘Did Ault come back to the house today?’ Winter asked.

  ‘No. Tomorrow. Belle phoned Marie.’

  ‘And what are you going to tell him?’

  ‘I’m going to tell him I’m fucking sorry.’

  ‘About Rachel?’

  ‘Yeah. And the house. And everything.’

  ‘You think it’s your fault she died?’

  ‘Of course not, mush. But I should have been smarter, shouldn’t I? I should have kept a better eye on things. Marked the girl’s card.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About all the shitbag scum in this khazi of a town. Hold open house like that and you’re asking for trouble. I should have seen that coming.’

  ‘You couldn’t. Not without checking out the invite on Facebook.’

  ‘Fair play, mush. But Aulty’s not going to see it that way, is he? Aulty’s going come back to a fucking horror show. Plus his precious daughter’s lying in a fridge somewhere waiting for someone to ID her. I need a name, mush. I need something that’s going to make him feel better. I need to make him understand I’ve taken this thing seriously. He’s going to expect it. I know he is.’

  ‘And then you can be friends again? Mates?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded, biting his lip. ‘No reason why not, is there?’

  Winter turned his head away. Miles away a huge tanker was nosing up the Solent towards Southampton. He watched it for a moment, wondering how far to take this conversation. Closer, in the shallows beneath the castle, two kids were battling over a lilo.

  ‘I tried to find Westie today,’ he said at last. ‘Any idea where he might be?’

  ‘None, mush. Why should I?’

  ‘Because you’d know.’

  ‘Would I?’

  ‘Yeah. I also phoned Barbara. She sent a cab to Westie’s place last night, at three in the morning. The cab took him to Gatwick. And you know who ordered the cab in the first place?’

  Mackenzie said nothing. Barbara was the supervisor at the cab company he’d recently bought. ‘You had no fucking right,’ he said at last.

  ‘To make the call? You’re wrong, Baz. I had every fucking right.’

  ‘You’re behaving like a nonce. You’re not a cop any more, mush.’

  ‘Yes, I am. And I’ll say it again, that’s why you pay me.’

  ‘To put me on the spot? To make me look a twat?’

  ‘To protect you from yourself, Baz. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Yeah? So how does that work?’

  Winter put his head back, turned it towards the sun.

  ‘You went off to find Westie last night,’ he said softly ‘You told him to sort Danny Cooper out. Why? Because you’re shit scared young Danny’s going to end up answering a lot of hard questions about all that charlie at Rachel’s party. That’s going to get back to your mate Aulty. And your mate Aulty’s not going to be best pleased. Am I getting warm, Baz? Or is this just a bent old copper barking up the wrong fucking alley?’

  Mackenzie was staring at the kids on the lilo. Winter hadn’t finished.

  ‘And maybe there’s more,’ he said. ‘Maybe you had some kind of hand in Danny fitting up the girl’s brother because you thought Danny deserved encouragement. Good young prospect. Chip off the old block. Don’t ask me what kind of hand because I don’t know. All I can remember is Westie pouring boiling water all over the boy, and he doesn’t do that unless there’s a fucking big problem. But jugging the kid didn’t sort it. Not in your head. Not with Aulty expected any minute. So you pop along to let Westie off his lead and next thing you’ve got him on the phone in the middle of the night with another big fucking problem.’

  ‘Yeah? You really think so? Well, mush, let me tell you something about Westie. The bloke’s lost it. The man’s a liability. He’s got a whack of money. He won’t be back.’

  ‘So you did see him?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Told him to go round to Danny’s place?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Told him to kill the boy?’

  ‘I told him to finish it.’

  ‘Same thing isn’t it? In Westie’s book?’

  ‘Dunno, mush.’ Mackenzie shrugged, turning his head away.

  ‘Westie’s gone. He’s off the plot. Good fucking riddance.’

  ‘Sure. But you think it ends there?’

  ‘Of course it does. He’s careful, Westie. Wears gloves. Takes his time. I told him about the house. Go through those allotments; no one would ever see you.’

  ‘Soil? Trainers? Sole patterns?’

  ‘He wears Guccis.’

  ‘What about his car? Afterwards? You’re telling me he’s not got a drop of blood on him? After what he’d done to the boy?’

  ‘Fuck knows. If you’re worried about Barbara, I’ll square her. She’s good as gold, that woman. The cab driver too. All it takes is money, mush. You should know that.’

  There was a long silence. Mackenzie wanted this over. Winter could tell.

  ‘It’s still outside Westie’s flat,’ Winter said at last. ‘I checked this afternoon.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The car. The Alfa.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s a crime scene, Baz. It’ll have Danny Cooper’s blood inside it, maybe on the seat off Westie’s kaks, maybe on the floor off those nice Guccis. And you know what else they’ll find if they have a proper look?’

  Mackenzie was still watching the kids. He shook his head.

  ‘Prints, Baz. Yours and mine. From Westie’s first little house call the other day. Remember?’

  Faraday, over supper, broached the subject of the kids again. After last night he sensed it would be safe to stray onto Gabrielle’s turf. She’d been frightened by the mugging, not simply in the obvious way but because it had been an abrupt reminder that no one was immune from these sudden spasms of violence, least of all a nosy French anthropologist with too many questions to ask.

  ‘You told me last night you’ve got a name for the kid who jumped you.’

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘You want to tell me?’

  ‘Pourquoi?’

  ‘Because I might be able to do something about it.’

  She shook her head, speared an asparagus stalk.

  ‘Non,’ she said. ‘It’s
nothing. Maybe the boy needs the money.

  Maybe he’s starving. Ça ne fait rien. Me? I have everything.’ Her hand closed over Faraday’s and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘But you’ll be careful from now on?’

  ‘Oui, absolument.’ She smiled at him. She appreciated his concern.

  ‘Tell me something. The party on Saturday. The one where the girl died. There’s a photo in the paper. I saw it yesterday. Jax Bonner?’

  Faraday smiled. She pronounced it bonheur. Bonheur meant happiness.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You really think she did it? Killed the other girl?’

  ‘I think we need to ask her some questions.’

  ‘But you think she might have done it?’

  ‘I think she could be dangerous.’

  ‘Chéri …’ She put her fork down. ‘You won’t answer my questions. ’

  ‘That’s because I can’t.’

  ‘So careful. So prudent.’

  ‘Of course. You’d expect nothing else.’

  ‘But you know where this girl lives?’

  ‘We have an idea, yes.’

  ‘So you’ve seen her? You’re watching her?’

  ‘No. We’ve searched her house. She’s gone.’

  ‘Alors …’ She was frowning, weighing her next question, and looking at her face Faraday was suddenly aware that she knew. She knew about this girl. She might even have met her. Talked to her. She knew everything.

  Faraday reached for her hand again, felt it curl round his.

  ‘When I say dangerous, I mean she hurts people. I expect she hurts people for lots of reasons, but I’m a copper, not a psychiatrist, and it’s my job to find her before she does it again. Because she will. Unless we stop her.’

  ‘So you think she did kill the girl?’

  Faraday made a habit of weighing questions like these extremely carefully. In his heart he knew he couldn’t be sure but now wasn’t the time to say so.

  ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I think she did.’