The man, it turned out, was in deep shit. A couple of weeks back, Bazza had taken a call from a Spanish-domiciled Colombian dealer called Riquelme. He lived near Cambados, north of Baiona, and Baz had never had any reason to doubt his word. Riquelme told him that Mackenzie’s new partner, who was in and out of Spain every week on narco-business, was being shadowed by English cops. He knew this because one of them had totalled his hire car in a collision with a lorry. The hire car had ended up in a Cambados garage, where a mechanic had discovered a New Scotland Yard expenses form in the glove box. Word had reached Riquelme. With interests of his own to protect, he’d instructed a couple of local guys to sit on the cops and within days he knew the garage mechanic had been right. Bazza’s new partner was under investigation. Big time.
This morning, at the café-bar, Winter had done his best to squeeze out more information. Was this bloke home-grown? Was he English? Did he operate out of London? Had Bazza been asking around, making guarded enquiries, trying to suss whether he was as reckless and brain-dead as Riquelme seemed to suggest? To all these questions, Bazza had no answer. Like the rabbit in the onrushing headlights, he seemed paralysed. Bad stuff was happening. And he didn’t know what to do.
To Winter the latter realisation was deeply troubling. It meant that Bazza had surrendered more of this project to his daughter than might have been wise. With a thousand other deals on his mind he’d given Ezzie free rein. He had trusted her completely. He knew she was bloody good. But then she’d met Madison and slipped the leash. It was, as Bazza freely admitted, a fucking disaster.
Not necessarily. Back in his apartment Winter stood on the balcony, mobe to his ear, waiting for Ezzie to answer. A couple of dickhead canoeists were out on the harbour, riding the wake from the Gosport ferry, and Winter watched as one of them dug deep with his paddle, executing a neat U-turn. There was still time, he thought, for a word or two with Bazza’s daughter. He knew she respected him. He’d suggest a spot of lunch. She might even listen.
Finally her number answered. It was the au pair. Mrs Norcliffe had packed her bags that very morning. A taxi had arrived a couple of hours ago. She’d gone.
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know. I have an envelope here. For Mr Norcliffe.’
‘Open it.’
‘I can’t.’
There was a thump in the background then the wail of a child in floods of tears. Winter tried again, telling her to open the envelope, telling her he’d square it with Stu, telling her it was really really important, but all he could hear was the child. After a while, knowing it was hopeless, he gave up. Out on the harbour, one of the canoeists had capsized.
Faraday spent the rest of the day on Farlington marshes. There’d been reports of a pectoral sandpiper on a local birding site and a glance at the tide tables told Faraday that late afternoon, with a big spring tide, would give him a decent chance of enjoying this shy little bird.
The marshes lay at the northern end of Langstone Harbour, an hour’s walk from the Bargemaster’s House. A tongue of land reached deep into the mudflats, accessible from a scruffy car park beside the motorway. The best pickings at this state of the tide were to be found on a small lake at the western side of the bird reserve. Here there was every chance of settling down with black-tailed godwits and with luck the pectoral sandpiper. Further out on the harbour hundreds of waders would be gathered on their island roosts, waiting for the water to fall, but with the exception of the big oystercatchers sheer distance turned solid identification into guesswork.
Faraday found a perch beside the lake and made himself comfortable. He’d brought a Thermos of coffee and sat back, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine. An initial sweep with his binos had already confirmed the godwits in decent numbers, many of them dousing themselves in the lake’s fresh water to rid themselves of salt.
He steadied the binos for a more methodical search. The pectoral sandpiper was a vagrant from North America. It normally appeared in late summer and Faraday loved its cape of mottled brown and the way it stalked amongst the tangles of seaweed, alert, erect, like a patrolling dowager cursed to be in less elevated company. Quite what it might be doing here in May was anybody’s guess but global warming was starting to play havoc with migration patterns and the big frontal troughs across the Atlantic were depositing all kind of surprises on European shores.
After a while, disappointed by the absence of the sandpiper, he put the binos to one side, lay back and closed his eyes. This expedition had offered the possibility of an escape from all the nonsense up in Paulsgrove but the memory of the brief kerbside head-to-head with Gail Parsons was still with him. He’d long begun to suspect that the battle to preserve law and order was - to use Winter’s mocking word - doomed. Society had changed. The glue that stuck everything together was disintegrating. It was commonplace now to keep your head down, your fingers crossed, and ignore the mounting evidence that life was getting nastier. All that was true, and Munday’s tyro psychopaths were the living evidence, but Parsons was right to demand that Faraday kept his pessimism to himself. It was one thing to find your FLO entombed in a Paulsgrove lavatory by a bunch of predatory kids, quite another to assure her that things could only get worse.
He stifled a yawn, his eyes still closed, letting his mind drift back to last night. Winter, in some strange instinctive way, must have seen this coming. With his matey smile and his devious little ways he’d spent twenty years carving a path of his own through all the procedural bullshit. The sheer number of scalps hanging from his belt, some of them much-prized, had kept the Professional Standards Department at arm’s length for most of the time, but in the end even Winter had been forced to raise his hands and call it a day. Why? Because the Job had changed as much as the society it served.
Gone were the evenings when the Fratton bar would fill with a CID squad celebrating a trophy result. Gone were the wild nights on the piss. Faraday himself had no time for the cruder excesses of the canteen culture but even he missed the camaraderie that went with it. These days you watched your back, had salad for lunch, drank sensibly and got home in time to put the kids to bed. Not Winter’s style at all.
He struggled upright and reached for the binos again, wondering where Perry Madison fitted into the squeaky-clean world of modern policing. Faraday had never liked him, never got on. He was brisk to the point of abruptness and took a savage pleasure in belittling subordinates. He’d never bothered to hide his burning ambition and had stepped over a number of bodies on his way up the promotional ladder. Madison wasn’t bright enough to get any further than DCI but what had always struck Faraday was his recklessness. At life’s table, the man had always been a gambler. He played for high stakes and took it hard when he lost. Was Mackenzie’s daughter his latest throw of the dice? Or might Winter have a point in suspecting a darker agenda?
Faraday took a last sweep across the lake, searching in vain for the sandpiper, knowing that the answer was probably beyond him. Then he got to his feet, bending to retrieve a half-crushed can of Stella before turning for a last long look at the harbour. A low mist had hung over the water all day, impervious to the sun, and in the far distance, for a split second, he thought he made out the shape of a sailing barge. Bringing the binos to his eyes, he racked the focus in a bid to resolve the image but it disappeared into the greyness like a phantom. Something snagged in his mind, something recent, and he was still trying to resolve the thought when his mobile rang.
It was Jimmy Suttle. More drama. Faraday checked his watch. Gone six.
‘What’s happened?’
‘There’s a Chinese restaurant in Paulsgrove. Something horrible kicked off about half an hour ago. Uniforms have got the place secured. I think it’s Munday’s lot again. I’m on my way up there now, boss.’
Faraday told him to detour via Farlington marshes. He’d be waiting in the car park. Suttle gone, Faraday looked seawards again. He’d got it now. The sailing barge was a throwback, a ghost. It had slipped in from the n
ineteenth century, en route to Pompey dockyard, and now - after a taste of the shiny new millennium - it had simply vanished. He paused, treasuring this private moment. Gabrielle, he thought. Her kind of fantasy.
In Paulsgrove, the entire parade of shops had been sealed off. Mums with buggies and clusters of kids stood behind the flapping lines of blue and white tape while paramedics hurried between the restaurant and the line of waiting ambulances at the kerbside. Faraday, stepping out of Suttle’s Impreza, counted three uniform cars. The white Transit from the Force Support Unit was parked round the corner.
DCI Parsons was locked in conversation with a uniformed inspector. Faraday was beginning to wonder whether she ever left the estate. Maybe she lived here now, kept her ear to the ground, patrolled the streets at night.
Suttle intercepted a uniformed sergeant whom he evidently knew. His name was Dave Kenyon. He threw Faraday a nod.
‘A bunch of kids turned up around five,’ he told Suttle. ‘It seems they were after money for some funeral or other. They went to every shop along here but it was the Chinese who really stuck it to them.’
The boss, he said, had been behind the till sorting out a cash float for the night. When the kids walked in and demanded fifty quid he told them to get lost. One of the kids set a dog on him. A guy from the kitchen waded in with a meat cleaver and took the dog’s head off. At that point, it started getting serious.
‘How serious?’ It was Faraday.
‘There were two more guys in the kitchen. They both had knives. The kids waded in, the way you do, and three of them got stabbed. One of them’s dead, another’s looking extremely dodgy.’
‘And the Chinese?’
‘The kids had knives of their own. One of the Chinese got stabbed in the throat but they seem to think he’ll live. Another one took a blade in the arse but he’s still standing.’
‘Any customers?’
‘Half a dozen, max. They do a half-price offer before seven. The ones who couldn’t get out ended up standing on the tables.’
The sergeant broke off, beckoned by his inspector. Parsons joined Faraday.
‘We should have got a grip of this,’ she said at once.
‘I’m not with you.’
‘I understand the FLO warned you about the funeral arrangements, what they were planning, the sheer bloody scale of the thing. We should have anticipated something like this, we should have thought it through.’
‘You mean I should have thought it through.’
‘Yes.’
It was a direct challenge. Later, they’d doubtless have a longer conversation. In the meantime, Faraday was to organise retrieval of the CCTV footage.
‘It exists?’
‘It does, Joe. Thank Christ one of us still has some kind of interest.’ Access to the restaurant was limited to the paramedics. A couple of the kids and one of the Chinese were still receiving attention inside. Parsons handed Faraday a number.
‘What’s this?’
‘That’s the guy who runs the place. Don’t ask me his name. He’s probably up at the hospital by now but he’ll know how to access the CCTV.’
She was right. Mr Hua was in a cubicle at A & E having wounds in his thigh stitched up. The dog had taken a chunk out of his lower leg as well. Faraday asked him about the CCTV.
‘In my office,’ he said. ‘You want the recording?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Machine behind the door. Take it, my friend.’
Suttle was at the kerbside, talking to an investigator from Scenes of Crime. Another CSI was en route, plus a Crime Scene Co-ordinator. According to one of the attending uniforms, the interior of the restaurant was a mess.
‘Real DNA-fest.’ He was struggling into a one-piece forensic suit. ‘Blood everywhere.’
Faraday explained about the CCTV footage. It was by no means certain that all the kids were in custody. A couple may have legged it.
‘Not the dog, though, eh?’ Mr Cheerful zipped up the suit and left to sort out the CCTV.
Faraday rejoined Suttle. Parsons was back in her Audi, shouting at her mobile. Willard, Faraday thought. Poor bastard.
Suttle wanted to know how Faraday was going to play this.
‘Are we still talking Melody, boss? Or Highfield? Or what?’
It was a good question. Did a couple of homicides and a riot qualify for a new operational code name? Or was this an extension of Tim Morrissey’s death? And of Munday’s?
‘Ask Parsons,’ Faraday told him. ‘I’ll organise the troops.’
Faraday got a lift with a uniform back to Fratton. A procedure existed for moments like these. He rang the on-call D/I, briefly described what had happened, and then found himself a DVD player. The first trawl through the CCTV footage was normally an intel responsibility but Suttle was still in Paulsgrove and Faraday needed a fix on exactly what had happened.
According to the time printout, the kids entered the restaurant at 17.13. The resolution on the pictures was excellent and Faraday recognised the faces from the Melody file. Casey Milligan. Jason Dominey. Ross McMurdo. A girl was with them too, and the moment she turned round he knew it was Roxanne Claridge. The same determination to share her chest with anyone who might be looking. The same instinct to find the only mirror in the room. Dominey had Munday’s pit bull.
The camera was positioned high up behind the serving counter. In the foreground the restaurant’s owner was shaking bags of change into the till. He looked up as the kids came in. The thin scatter of diners did likewise. Dominey approached the counter. At sixteen he’d perfected the rolling Pompey swagger, hands dug into the pockets of his shell suit. He had a hoodie pulled forward over his baseball cap and his face was in shadow. There was no soundtrack with the pictures but it didn’t take much to imagine the dialogue.
Awright, mush? We needs some money off yer.
The Chinese shook his head. He must have said something forceful because another of the kids pushed forward, alongside Dominey, and reached for the man’s throat. The Chinese stepped back and Faraday saw his right hand find the panic button. Dominey had rounded the counter by now and Faraday got his first proper look at the dog. All those nights caged up in Munday’s garden had worked a treat. He couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
Dominey must have demanded money again. The cash register was still open. Faraday watched the Chinese shake his head and push the drawer shut. Dominey bent to the dog and let it off the chain. The dog hurled itself at the Chinese, who did his best to fight it off. Faraday slowed the action. Had the dog jumped any higher the Chinese would have been in real trouble but as it was the damage was bad enough. Clamped to the man’s thigh, its legs flailing, the pit bull shook its massive head left and right, tearing at the flesh. Blood began to pump through tears in the cloth of the trousers while the kids looked on, laughing.
Then, from nowhere, a thin figure in a pair of blue track bottoms appeared. He was a Chinese from the kitchen. Naked above the waist, he was holding a meat cleaver. He pulled hard on the dog’s back legs before bringing the cleaver down across the back of the animal’s neck. It was a beautiful blow, perfectly judged, and the sharpness of the glittering blade neatly severed the pit bull’s head from its body. Nobody moved. Not even the owner. Then one of the other kids, Casey Milligan, pulled a knife and lunged at the half-naked Chinese across the counter.
By now, a couple of the diners were making for the door to the street but they were too late. Another Chinese had decided to surprise the kids. He must have raced round from the rear entrance. He pushed in through the front door, locked it, and plunged into the melee around the counter. Faraday saw his arm rising and falling. He had a long kitchen knife and knew exactly how to use it. A couple of the diners, unaware that the dog was no longer a threat, had climbed onto their tables.
Faraday paused the action. He’d lost track of the developing pattern of the fight. Yet another Chinese had emerged from the kitchen. He too was armed with a knife, holding the kids at bay while he helped
his limping boss to safety. His face, frozen on the screen, told its own story. Hatred, Faraday thought. Salted with an implacable desire for revenge.
His finger found the Play button and the carnage resumed. Dominey was lying behind the counter, blood pouring from a wound in his chest. McMurdo was on his knees, begging for mercy. Only Casey Milligan and the girl Roxanne were left standing. Milligan, braver than the rest, tried to go to McMurdo’s aid, slashing at thin air with what looked like a sheath knife, big showy widescreen moves. The bare-chested Chinese let him come, chose his moment, then drove the cleaver deep into his face. Milligan’s mouth dropped open. He doubtless screamed. Then he fell, clutching the gaping wound in his cheek, his hand scarlet with his own blood. The Chinese struck again, taking him in the throat this time before stepping back and eyeballing the girl.
The fight was over. Faraday, in a moment that would stay with him forever, stopped the action a second time, knowing he was glad. Not that the violence was over. But because people, at last, were taking a stand. A week ago Jeanette Morrissey had killed Kyle Munday. Now this.
Chapter fourteen
SATURDAY, 24 MAY 2008. 19.34
It was early evening before Winter got through to Mackenzie. His mobile had been on divert for hours. Now Bazza picked up on his landline.
‘Been out with Marie, mush. Spot of shopping.’
‘Somewhere nice, I hope.’
‘Salisbury. She loves it there. Can’t get enough of the place. You know what? Give her half a chance and we’d start looking for a house.’
He sounded relaxed and cheerful, the spat in the gym forgotten. They’d probably toured the shops together, had a cosy lunch, buried their differences with a decent bottle of wine. Winter was about to change all that.
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