No Lovelier Death

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Known Westie long?’ Winter enquired.

  ‘Since yesterday. He comes to my gallery. He likes my pictures. He has taste, your friend. He knows what to say, how to say it. We can get a drink here?’ She nodded at the empty bottles on the table then began to wind a strand of hair around a single finger.

  Winter signalled to Hernandez. Two more San Miguels appeared. ‘Sorted then?’ Winter was back with Westie, full of admiration.

  ‘No more Pompey slappers?’

  ‘Never, mate. No fucking way.’

  ‘And what about the flat?’

  ‘It’s up for sale. Say the word and the mortgage is yours. Good bloody riddance.’

  ‘No regrets? None at all?’

  ‘Are you blind, mate?’ He nodded towards Renate. ‘Or just fucking old?’

  He wanted to know about the money. Winter, increasingly uncomfortable, noticed that Hernandez had disappeared.

  ‘It’s down there, Westie. In the bag.’

  ‘You’ve counted it?’

  ‘No, but Baz has. First thing this morning. Before I got the plane down.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Early.’

  ‘How early?’

  ‘Bloody early.’

  ‘Which airport?’

  Winter sat back. Even the girl could sense the hesitation in his voice.

  ‘Pub quiz is it, Westie? Think of a question? Any question?’

  ‘Not at all, mate. Down here we call it conversation. I’m just asking which poxy airport you flew out of this morning. Gatwick? Big place off the M23? Bournemouth? Heathrow? Only you’re starting to make me nervous, mush.’ His eyes flicked down to the bag. As they did so Winter heard the lightest footfall in the shadowed spaces behind the bar.

  It was Tommy Peters. He’d appeared from nowhere. He had an automatic in his right hand. The silencer made the gun look enormous. The girl had seen it too. Her hand went to her mouth. Westie had his back to the bar. His big mistake was to look round.

  He tried to get to his feet but it was too late. The first bullet took him in the chest, the softest phutt from the silencer; the second hit him in the lower jaw, sending a fine spray of blood over Winter. He looked up to see the gun traversing towards the girl. The impact of Westie against the table had sent her sprawling. Now she was crouching on the floor, one arm shielding her upturned face, pleading for her life.

  ‘Easy, Tommy.’ Winter tried to get his body between the two of them.

  Tommy Peters glanced across, the merest flicker of irritation, before stooping to the girl and putting three more bullets into her head. Two figures materialised from behind the curtain at the back. Winter recognised neither of them. Tommy grunted something about the van then helped them manhandle West’s body through the back of the bar. Winter sank back into his seat, hearing their grunts recede into the depths of the building. Then came the sound of a sliding door, metal on metal, from somewhere outside.

  Hernandez had appeared with a mop and a bucket. Winter was staring down at the girl. One of the bullets had smashed her cheekbone. An eyeball hung, glistening, in the slant of evening sunlight through the nearby window. Winter had never seen anything as terrible as this. It had happened so quickly, he told himself. There was nothing he could have done to stop it.

  Tommy was back with the other two men. They were amused by something Tommy must have said about Westie. They had London accents.

  The girl was much lighter. The pair of them carried her out of the bar, Hernandez behind them, mopping up the trail of blood she left behind among the curls of wood shavings in the greyness of the dust.

  Tommy Peters picked up the bag and began to count the money. He stopped at twenty thousand, put the blocks of notes carefully to one side, then extracted another seven hundred and fifty.

  ‘Expenses,’ he said. ‘Tell Mackenzie I’ll be in touch.’

  Winter nodded, sitting down again, staring at the table, too shocked to pursue any kind of conversation. The bangle on her wrist, he kept thinking. Her smile. The way she wound that strand of hair around her finger. Gone. Bam. Wasted.

  Tommy produced a plastic bag and departed with the money.

  Shortly afterwards Winter heard a cough out the back somewhere as the van fired up. Then he felt someone nudging the table and he looked up, still numbed, to find Bazza Mackenzie counting the rest of the ten-pound notes. The lads were outside in the Mercedes, he said. And they were all going back into Malaga for a drink or two.

  He turned round to find Winter getting slowly to his feet.

  ‘You’re in a bit of a state, mush.’ He nodded at the bloodstains across his shirt. ‘Tommy used to be better than this.’

  Chapter twenty-nine

  SATURDAY, 18 AUGUST 2007. 21.34

  Suttle took Lizzie Hodson along to Sandown Road as the last of a cold sunset expired over the low black swell of the Isle of Wight. After a series of hurried meetings the Chief Superintendent in charge of the Portsmouth OCU had recommended that Rachel’s wake go ahead, but in case of trouble he’d hedged his bets with an impressive show of pre-emptive muscle. Sandown Road was cordoned off at both ends and the Force Support Unit had turned up in a couple of Transits. Local Public Order units were there as well, parked discreetly around the corner, and Suttle couldn’t remember a turnout like this since Pompey and the Saints had clashed at Fratton Park. On that occasion they’d managed to contain a full-scale riot. Tonight they were witnesses to a love-in.

  There seemed to be hundreds of kids. Suttle gave up counting the candles. His warrant card and Lizzie’s press pass had taken them under the Police No Entry tape, and they stood on the pavement across from the Aults’ house while the mourners swayed and sang. From time to time voices stilled as someone volunteered a tearful anecdote or a personal memory. References to Rachel’s recent performance in a school production of Cabaret earned a round of applause. A mysterious aside about the recreational potential of barley sugar soaked in vodka sparked a whoop. Half the world seemed to have been on intimate terms with Rachel Ault, and by the time the gathering began to break up and drift away even Suttle felt he must have known her for most of her young life.

  Faraday had asked him to phone before he left. He wanted to know how the evening had gone. Suttle’s call found him at home. Evidently he was alone.

  ‘Any sign of the Aults?’

  ‘None, boss. I kept an eye on the house. Everything’s locked up, gates included. I couldn’t see any lights. I don’t think anyone’s there.’

  ‘And Mackenzie? Next door?’

  ‘I saw his missus. She came out and had a word with one or two of the kids at one point, but I never saw Bazza.’

  ‘Winter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Lizzie and I are going for a drink.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Something in Faraday’s voice, something almost plaintive, prompted Suttle to ask whether he fancied joining them. They could find a pub round his way, save him getting the motor out.

  ‘Like where?’

  Suttle conferred with Lizzie. She knew a place at the end of Locksway Road. The Oyster House. Faraday sounded undecided.

  ‘We’ll be there anyway, boss. The walk’ll do us good.’

  Suttle pocketed the phone. The last of the mourners were wandering towards the seafront. There was a hint of weed in the night air but the uniforms didn’t seem unduly bothered. Across the road Suttle recognised the tall figure of Matt Berriman. He hadn’t noticed him earlier but assumed he’d probably been there from the start. If anyone held a candle for Rachel Ault, it was surely him.

  He pointed him out to Lizzie. She wanted to know who he was with.

  ‘There.’ She was pointing at a figure in step beside him, half-hidden by his body, cropped black hair, rangy, older. She had her arm tucked inside Berriman’s, and when their steps interlocked, stride for stride, she laid her head on his shoulder.

  Suttle admitted he didn’t know.

  ‘But
you’re a detective, Mr Suttle. You know everything.’

  ‘If only.’

  ‘Who do you think she might be?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘His mum?’

  ‘That’s unkind. She looks quite tasty.’

  ‘Older, though. Much older.’

  The couple paused at the end of the road. A uniformed sergeant had stopped the traffic to let the kids cross. Berriman and his friend turned left. Suttle and Lizzie were going that way too.

  Lizzie quickened her step. With some reluctance Suttle let her close the distance between them. He’d only seen Berriman once, a couple of days ago on the beach. Beyond that, his knowledge was limited to the custody file and the statements he’d signed after both interviews.

  He and his companion were talking, naturally enough, about Rachel. Much of the conversation was to do with swimming. At one point the woman wanted to know whether Matt would honestly have gone back to serious training had Rachel still been alive.

  ‘And we were together again, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think we’d have got it on again?’

  ‘I know you would. You’re telling me different?’

  ‘Maybe. Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On what you—’

  The rest was lost in the roar of a passing motorbike. The woman began to laugh. Then they ducked suddenly left, towards the warren of streets that led into Eastney. Something in her body language, in the sheer length of her stride, triggered a recent memory. Then Suttle had it. He pulled Lizzie to a halt at the corner of the street. He was still watching her, certain now.

  ‘I last saw her a couple of days ago,’ he said. ‘On Eastney beach.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. She was with Berriman again. And you know what? She hadn’t got a stitch on.’

  Faraday was already in the pub, nursing the remains of a pint of Guinness, when they stepped in from the street. The landlord was half an hour from last orders and Suttle went straight to the bar, returning with a tray of drinks. Faraday had met Lizzie Hodson on a number of occasions but never in this kind of setting.

  Lizzie, with a directness that rather appealed to Faraday, asked him what he normally did on a Saturday night.

  ‘Depends,’ he said. ‘Normally I’ve got company. Tonight, as it happens, I’m on my own.’

  Suttle remembered the small figure in Bransbury Park. Had she found out about the photos? Had there been some kind of row?

  ‘What about that boy of yours?’ he asked instead. ‘I thought he was coming down for the weekend?’

  ‘He has. He’s here.’

  ‘But not at home?’

  ‘Not this evening.’

  ‘And Gabrielle?’

  ‘She neither. They’re out together. Back whenever.’

  He reached for his drink and a change of subject. Suttle mentioned seeing Berriman.

  ‘He had company, boss. An older woman. I’ve seen them together before.’

  ‘Some kind of relationship?’

  ‘For sure.’

  Faraday nodded. The last week, thought Suttle, seems to have drained him of everything. ‘There’s been a development,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe you can give me a bell later.’

  Lizzie took the hint. She was bursting for a pee. Back in a trice. Suttle watched her pick her way across the crowded pub. Suttle knew that time was short. He leaned forward over the table.

  ‘Jax Bonner?’ he queried.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Ault. I got a call from Netley this evening. They’ve got a couple of guys in the computer department on overtime. One’s looking at Rachel’s laptop. The other’s analysing Ault’s hard disk.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Ault had loads of porn downloaded. It’s hidden but it’s there.

  Young girls mainly. Rachel’s age.’

  When the evening in Malaga started getting out of hand Winter made his excuses and left. They’d started at a bar round the corner from the hotel, Bazza’s shout. He’d bought bottle after bottle of chilled cava and enough tapas to cover the tables they’d commandeered. His two mates, Tosh Chatterly and Rob Simpkins, had troughed their way through the marinated squid and cumin-spiked potato balls, determined to add a coat of cheerful gloss to an otherwise shit day. Neither had been present at the killings in Las Puertas del Paraiso but they’d seen enough of Winter afterwards to know that something truly vile had happened. Their role now was obvious. They were the court jesters.

  Of Tommy Peters, twenty grand the richer, nothing had been seen since. According to Bazza he’d been offered a lift back on tomorrow’s charter flight but preferred to make his own way home. Pressed by Winter to justify the risks they were taking, a double killing with a witness, Bazza had insisted everything was cushty. If you pay top dollar, he’d said by way of explanation, you get the best. Tommy was a vicious cunt but had the sweetest connections. By now the bodies would be buried in the foundations of some building site or other down the coast. If he didn’t have total trust in the man, he’d have been back on the plane within seconds.

  Winter, talking to Bazza in the privacy of his hotel suite, had been obliged to accept it. Westie had made a career out of violence, out of hurting people, and now he’d paid the price. That was the way these deals worked. No one was pretending it was pretty but then Westie himself had been equally brutal, if not worse. Given the prospect of endless demands on Bazza’s purse, demands Westie could underline by threatening to turn grass, it made perfect commercial sense to terminate the relationship. The twenty grand to Tommy Peters, he pointed out, was nothing compared to the size of the bill that Westie might one day have decided to present.

  Winter had simply nodded. Westie he understood. Westie had it coming. But the girl? After a relationship just one day old? Was that something Bazza could feel proud about? The questions made Bazza uneasy, Winter could sense it, but in the end he’d just shrugged. He’d paid Tommy a great deal of money to sort out a problem. The man had made a split-second judgement about a witness and if you looked at it sensibly he’d probably been right. In any case it was far too late to second-guess the man. Shit happens. Qué será.

  ‘And the old guy in the café? Hernandez?’

  ‘Tommy’s mates own him. He does what they tell him. No fucking problema.’

  Now, in the bar, there was talk of going on to a casino that Bazza happened to know. There were quality toms there, Russian girls with a sense of humour and huge tits, and there was no way that life didn’t owe them a punt or two followed by some serious frolicking. After the day from hell, a night in heaven. Qué será.

  Winter, aware that a bottle of cava had made absolutely no difference to the bleakness of his mood, slipped out of the bar and made his way through crowds of people until he found a zigzag path that led up towards the looming battlements of the castle above. He knew he hadn’t signed up for this. He knew that his job description had never extended to a triple murder, first Danny Cooper, now Westie and his luckless companion. In one sense it had all been a terrible mistake, a set of events that had simply galloped out of control; but in another he knew that he was kidding himself.

  In the Job he’d potted endless blokes who’d run broadly the same defence. It was never meant to happen, Mr W. I never meant to get involved. But look hard at exactly what they’d done and - more importantly - what they hadn’t done, and you pretty quickly came to a conclusion seldom lost on any half-decent jury. Shit happens because you let it happen. The guilty never bother to say no.

  Winter paused for breath, gazing down at the spread of the city beneath him. Beyond the docks lay the blackness of the Mediterranean. Off to the left, behind the hotel where they were staying, the bullring. From here, near the top of the path, you could see down into the ring itself, and he realised with a jolt of surprise that this was where the crowds had been heading. There were tiers of seats bursting with spectators and a flurry of mov
ement on the yellow sand of the arena.

  He’d been to a bullfight with Joannie, years ago, and had taken no pleasure from the experience. The ritual killings seemed to him to be savage and unnecessary. These people gloried in blood, in slaughter, in winding up the bulls and then dispatching them for the sake of some macho thrill. There was lots of talk about how dangerous the fighting bulls could be, lots of headlines when one of the top guys got himself gored, but the bottom line was simple. You loaded the odds. You released the poor fucking animal into the ring. And then you killed it.

  A blast from a trumpet and a roar from the spectators signalled the parade that started every bullfight. Winter’s eyesight wasn’t brilliant, and he had trouble making out the details as splashes of colour stalked around the ring, but he sensed the rising excitement from the crowd below. Awaiting the entry of the first bull, it was impossible not to think again about Tommy Peters. He knew the tricks. He commanded a hefty fee. He loaded the odds. And he seldom failed to deliver.

  Winter blinked, still trying to focus on the bullring, but it was hopeless. The girl again. Her innocence. The totally crap card that life had so suddenly dealt her. Her voice, pleading and pleading. Her eyes, staring death in the face. Her beautiful fingers, suddenly lifeless. The wreckage of her lovely face. Could he have done more? Should he have done more?

  Winter didn’t know. And that made a surreal evening a whole lot worse.

  The lights were on in the Bargemaster’s House by the time Faraday got home. He let himself in, recognising the familiar lilt, the voice, the unaccompanied guitar. When she was feeling especially content, Gabrielle would slip her favourite George Brassens CDs into the player and dance. She was doing it now, plaited against J-J, swaying slowly around the living room, her feet bare, her eyes closed, her lips in soundless pursuit of the lyric, and watching them Faraday wondered what his deaf son made of La Parapluie.

  Very slowly, one shuffling step at a time, J-J revolved. He had Faraday’s clumsiness, but as well he had the priceless gift of surrender. He could let go, cast himself off, let the moment take him where it would. Faraday had seen it when he was a child adrift in a world of silence, and he’d always marvelled at the faith the boy must have, and at his courage. The latter, on occasions, had bled into recklessness. J-J sometimes took risks that iced Faraday’s blood. But the compensations, the rewards, were obvious. My extraordinary son, Faraday thought, dancing to a music he couldn’t hear.