The Aults stripped their house of its remaining possessions. The property - cleaned, repaired and redecorated - went on the market at a price of £899,000, but after nearly a month there’d been little interest. During a phone call to Belle Ault Faraday had enquired about her husband’s health. Peter, she said, was undergoing treatment for clinical depression. She understood the outlook was promising but it was still early days. When he was a little better they’d start the process of looking for somewhere else to live. Her own preference, just now, was New Zealand. The peace, for one thing. And the quiet.
Five weeks after the discovery of the clothes on Eastney Beach, a man’s body was recovered by fishermen off Selsey Bill. DNA analysis confirmed it to be that of Matt Berriman. At the inquest the Coroner delivered a verdict of death by suicide. The funeral, the following week, attracted an even larger congregation of mourners than the earlier service for Rachel Ault. The press turned up en masse, and among the photos published in the following day’s edition of the News was a shot taken as kids streamed away from St Stephen’s Church.
Faraday brought the paper home that night and Gabrielle’s attention was caught by a face at the back of the shot. She was looking directly at the camera. She was wearing a black cloak, buttoned at the neck, and the light fell pale on her shaven skull.
‘C’est Jax,’ Gabrielle murmured. ‘That’s her.’
As late summer gave way to the first chills of autumn, Paul Winter was still expecting a visit from his ex-colleagues. When nothing happened he gave Jimmy Suttle a ring. Suttle confirmed that the investigation into Danny Cooper’s death was ongoing. Intelligence from Spain indicated the disappearance of a young German artist from Malaga in mid-August. She’d last been seen in the company of a tall male of Afro-Caribbean extraction whose description matched that of Brett West. While the couple may simply have moved on together, Spanish police were treating her disappearance as suspicious. Should developments warrant further investigation at the UK end, it might pay Winter to have his ear to the ground.
Winter, still digesting the news, asked about Suttle’s promotion. ‘It came through last week,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Suttle to you, my friend.’
Two days later Bazza Mackenzie took a call from Alice Berriman, Matt’s mother. She wanted a private chat. Mackenzie invited her to the Royal Trafalgar for lunch. They talked about the old days, and about Matt, and about what had happened at the party.
Alice had produced a letter. She’d found it in her kitchen the morning Matt disappeared. It described exactly what had happened the night Hughes and Rachel had died. Winter had been right. There’d been a confrontation. Hughes had emerged from the kitchen with a knife. There’d been lots of shouting, and then Matt had hit him just the once, enough to knock him off his feet. Rachel had emerged from the kitchen, gone to her boyfriend’s aid, tried to revive him.
The fact that he wasn’t breathing had freaked her out. The next thing Matt knew, he was looking at the knife. Killing Gareth, she’d said, was the end of everything. In the letter the phrase was underlined. The end of everything. Matt knew she was right. If there was no way forward, no way they’d ever be together, then that was the way it had to be.
When she tried to attack him, Matt had grabbed the knife, stabbing her a number of times. He wanted to put her beyond reach. He’d driven the knife in deep and he’d known exactly what he was doing. Sometimes, he’d written at the end, life is black and white, all or nothing. Now, with Rachel’s death on his hands, it boiled down to precisely nothing. Very soon the torment would be over. For both of them.
As a postscript to the letter Matt had scribbled an extra line that had, Alice said, offered a tiny crumb of comfort. Not because it softened the overwhelming sense of waste, but because it was, in its own way, so beautiful. She didn’t know whether he’d copied it from somewhere else or dreamed it up himself but either way it didn’t matter. You die for what you cherish, her son had written. There is no lovelier death in all the world.
At the lunch table, embarrassed by the tears rolling down her cheeks, Alice wanted to know what to do with the letter. Mackenzie reached across for it, tore it into tiny pieces, and signalled for a waiter to put it in the bin. That evening Alice phoned and said thank you. It wasn’t what she’d expected, she said, but then life had never done her bidding.
In mid-October, with the Mandolin file submitted to the CPS, Faraday seized advantage of a lull in the ongoing war that was Major Crime and booked a weekend in a hotel in London. On the Saturday afternoon he and Gabrielle attended the launch of J-J’s exhibition in Chiswick. The photos had won a review in the Guardian and J-J had a modest pile of photocopies for visitors who might be interested. Faraday folded one into his pocket. A couple of sentences from the review had caught his attention. J-J’s work opened a door into the mystery that was autism. This was someone, the critic had written, who understood handicap from the inside.
That night the three of them celebrated J-J’s success in a Szechuan restaurant in Parson’s Green. Conversation turned to Gabrielle’s project on the Pompey estates. Her work, she said, was nearly done. Now came the challenge of building all those interviews into a coherent account. J-J, fascinated, wanted to know what the months of research had taught her. She gave the question some thought then signed her answer. After all the questions, all the listening, all the evenings of transcribing her notes, the one word she was left with was folie. Madness.
On Monday, back at work, Faraday glanced up from the weekly overtime sheets to find himself looking at D/S Jimmy Suttle. Suttle was newly returned from a break of his own. A week in Crete with Lizzie Hodson had given him a decent tan.
From a Manila envelope he produced two colour prints. Faraday cleared a space on the desk.
‘I got to thinking about Mandolin again …’ Suttle began.
‘On holiday?’
‘Yeah. And I realised what we missed.’
He laid the two photos side by side on the desk. One was a shot of Matt Berriman from the Newbury custody suite. The other came from the best of the mobe footage at the party. Faraday gave it the briefest glance.
‘That’s Berriman too,’ he said.
‘Exactly, boss. Spot the difference?’
Faraday’s gaze returned to the two shots, then he nodded, shook his head, closed his eyes, sat back in the chair. At the party Berriman had been wearing a pink surfie T-shirt. Hours later, at Newbury nick, the T-shirt was white.
‘Shit,’ he said softly,
‘Exactly. So what does that make us?’
Faraday eased his chair away from the desk, clasped his hands behind his neck, gazed up at the ceiling. In truth, with an investigation as complex as Mandolin, he could think of endless excuses, but in his heart he knew that none of them was sufficient.
‘It makes us stupid,’ he said at last. ‘And lazy. And somewhat overwhelmed. You agree?’
‘Sure.’ Suttle nodded. ‘And what does it make Winter?’
Another good question. Faraday took his time. From a number of adjectives he finally chose the least despairing. ‘Lucky.’
‘You believe that?’
‘No …’ he shook his head ‘… sadly I don’t.’
No Lovelier Death Page 42