Cut To Black

by Hurley, Graham

  “Again?” Suttle nodded at the door and mimed a kick.

  “No.” Winter shook his head, then patted the young DC on his arm.

  The heavy torch at the ready, Winter turned the handle and felt the door give. The music came at him like a wave, a wall of noise. He stepped inside the room, aware at once of a panel of lights in the darkness. Snapping on the torch, he found himself looking at the hi-fi stack in the corner, an amplifier flanked by enormous speakers. He swung the beam towards the window, almost expecting someone to lunge out of the darkness, but saw nothing but an iron bedstead standing on the bare floorboards a couple of feet in from the open window. Lying on the springs of the bedstead was a woman, naked except for a pillowcase draped loosely over her head.

  Winter stepped towards the bedstead, then changed his mind and sorted out the hi-fi. A cable ran to a point on the skirting board. When he tore out the plug, the silence flooded in, an almost physical presence. From the street, the voice of the neighbour.

  “What’s happening?”

  Winter ignored him. The woman was alive, shivering in the draught from the open window. Winter could see the rise and fall of her chest, hear the faintest sound from inside the pillowcase. Both ankles were tied to the bed frame with cable ties, and more ties had chafed her wrists where she’d tried to struggle free. Winter stared down at her for a moment, trying to guess at an age. She was young, certainly, with the kind of body that deserved a better setting than this. Goose-pimpled white skin, big breasts, flat belly, and the faintest bikini marks from her last encounter with serious sunshine. Recent bruising had purpled her ribcage on the left-hand side but there was no sign of other injuries.

  Winter reached down, telling her that everything was going to be OK, that everything was going to be fine, and eased the pillowcase off her head. A pale, almond-shaped face. A slash of scarlet gag across her mouth. Eyes that began to swim with tears.

  Winter felt a jolt of recognition. For a second, the beam of the torch wavered. Impossible, he thought. Not here. Not like this.

  “Lost a bit of weight, love.” He smiled in the darkness. “Suits you.”

  Chapter 2

  WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2003, 04.00

  Faraday’s second sweep with the Leica Red Spots revealed a flash of white amongst the scrub and gorse around the freshwater ponds a stone’s throw from the Bargemaster’s House. Racking the focus on the binoculars, he eased slowly left, convinced already that he’d spotted the season’s first wheatear. Seconds later, the little bird broke cover again, staying low, scurrying a few feet at a time, finally hopping up onto the back of one of the old wooden benches that ringed the pond.

  A couple of months back, this tiny creature would have been wintering south of the Sahara. Late January would have found it in Morocco. Days it devoted to finding food. Nights, often alone, it sped north again. Only now, in mid March, had it finally returned to its nesting ground, bringing with it the promise the guarantee of spring. Faraday made a second tiny adjustment to the focus. Carved into the bench below the spread of claw was another message that had survived the winter. Deano’s a wanker, it read. Welcome to Pompey.

  Faraday settled himself beside the pond, hoping for a glimpse of the bearded reed lings that were rumoured to be making their way south from the low smudge of Farlington Marshes. It was still barely seven o’clock, the air still, the sky cloudless, barely a ripple on the blue mirror of the nearby harbour. In a couple of hours, after a leisurely breakfast, he’d drive into work where the clear-up on a recent high-profile murder awaited his attention.

  A psychopath in his mid forties had taken out a lifetime’s frustration on a foreign language student, a Finnish blonde unlucky enough to cross his path. Stranger murders were never supposed to be easy, but the Major Crimes Team had blitzed the back streets of Fareham where the girl’s severed head had been found in a Londis bag, and scored a result within seventy-two hours.

  Caged by the evidence, mainly DNA, the suspect had thrown in the towel after barely an hour’s interview. The transcript of what followed, while dark in the extreme, had put a smile of satisfaction on the face of

  Willard. This, he’d grunted, was a classic MCT investigation, conclusive proof of the linkage between resource, effort, dedication, and justice. A couple of years back, they’d have been months trying to get a result. Now, thanks to a major reorganisation, they’d redrawn the time lines. Faraday, who had profound doubts about trophy-talk and management-speak, was just glad the bastard was locked up.

  The wheatear had gone. Faraday had begun to search the nearby scrub, wondering whether it was too early for a sedge warbler, when the peace of the morning was disturbed by the roar of an approaching aircraft. Faraday swung the binos in time to catch a blur of shadow as the military jet crested the distant swell of Portsdown Hill. Seconds later, it was almost on top of him, blasting south over the harbour, the noise so physically shattering he could feel it in his bones. Then the plane had gone, leaving clouds of black-headed gulls squawking madly, and several rafts of brent geese doing their best to get airborne. Any more stunts like that, thought Faraday, and the wheatear would be back in North Africa.

  Faraday’s mobile began to chirp. It was Eadie Sykes. The plane had got her up and she wanted to know what on earth was going on.

  “You think it’s started? You think the Iraqis are getting theirs in early?”

  Faraday found himself laughing. Eadie feigned outrage.

  “What’s so funny? You think we ought to get married? Before it’s too late?”

  “I think you ought to go back to bed.”

  “After that? Listen, you remember the Sixties, Cuba? What do you do with those last four minutes?”

  “I still think you ought to go back to bed.”

  “Yeah… but it’s more fun with two, eh? Ring me later.”

  The line went dead. Faraday slipped the mobile back in the pocket of his anorak, then began to search half-heartedly for the wheatear again. He’d been with Eadie last night, tucked up on the sofa with Newsnight and a bottle of Rioja. The past couple of months, they’d watched the government Blair in particular shepherding the nation to war. Bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age made absolutely no sense whatsoever, yet here they were, in lockstep with the Americans, hours away from releasing the first fusillade of cruise missiles.

  Eadie, behind the wry one-liners, was incandescent with rage. Bush was a retard. Blair was an arse-licking con man. The Brits should be ashamed of themselves. Only the fact that her own prime minister seemed as hell-bent on Armageddon as the rest of them had kept her from packing her bags and phoning Qantas for a ticket home.

  Rack in February, at Eadie’s insistence, they’d taken the early train to

  Waterloo and joined a million and a half other people who felt less than convinced about killing Iraqi women and kids. The river of protesters stretched for miles, stopping traffic, filling bridges, swamping the Embankment, and Faraday, who’d never been this side of the barricades in his life, found it an oddly comforting experience. Students, mums, kids, pensioners, asylum seekers, nurses, civil servants, a huge slice of Middle England shuffling slowly towards Hyde Park under the watchful gaze of a couple of thousand policemen.

  To Faraday, that was the oddest experience of all. Not that he was himself under surveillance, a copper coppered, but that he found this single act of protest so natural, so long overdue. Ex-Labour Voters Against The War, read one placard. Too bloody right.

  He stirred at the sound of the mobile. Expecting Eadie again, instead he found himself listening to an all-too-familiar voice. Willard.

  “Joe? Something’s come up. Where are you?”

  Faraday glanced at his watch. 07.22.

  “Still at home, sir. I can be in by eight, maybe earlier.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m still waiting to talk to the medics at the QA. Ask for Critical Care.”

  The Queen Alexandra Hospital was on the lower
slopes of Portsdown Hill, a 1300-bed goliath with views across the city towards the Isle of Wight. The Department for Critical Care was on the third floor, two open wards with side rooms for solo occupancy. In the corridor outside, Faraday spotted the tall, bulky figure of Willard deep in conversation with a young nurse.

  Faraday paused to peer into the nearest of the open wards. Most of the beds were occupied propped-up, comatose shapes moored to life-support machines, monitoring equipment, and an assortment of drips. At this range, it looked like an audition for the city’s undertakers. No one seemed familiar.

  “Nick Hayder.” Faraday found Willard at his elbow. “Third bed on the left.”

  Faraday, astonished, took another look. Last time he’d seen Nick was a couple of days back. As fellow DIs on the Major Crimes Team they’d been obliged to attend a headquarters briefing on a recent change to CPS protocols. Afterwards, they’d gone down the road for a snatched pint at a Winchester pub. Now this.

  “What happened?”

  “Good question. You know that patch of scrub round Fort Cumberland? He was found there last night. Unconscious.”

  Faraday was still gazing at the bandaged figure Willard had pointed out. Fort Cumberland was an MOD site on the south-western tip of the island, acres of brambles and couch grass, as remote a spot as you could find in a city as densely-packed as Portsmouth.

  “So what happened?” Faraday repeated.

  “No one knows, not for sure. He was in running gear. It was dark.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “One old boy, late sixties, walking his dog. Says he saw some kind of fracas but he was a fair distance away. He thinks there was a car involved but that’s about as far as we’ve got.”

  “Make? Colour?”

  “He can’t say. We’ll start on the CCTV this morning but don’t hold your breath. Nearest camera’s the far end of Henderson Road.” Willard was watching a doctor in green scrubs who’d paused at Hayder’s bedside. “There must have been a car because they’re saying he’s been run over. He’s got compound fractures, both legs, a broken pelvis, ruptured spleen, and query brain damage. They took the spleen out in theatre but it’s the head injury that’s bothering them.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “They won’t say, but they’re talking a three on the coma scale.”

  “What’s normal?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “He’s unconscious?”

  “Very. He was brought in around nine thirty last night. Still hasn’t surfaced. He ‘

  Willard broke off. The nurse had returned and was indicating an open door down the corridor. The consultant, she said, would be in touch with him as soon as he was free. Willard looked pointedly at his watch, then led Faraday to a small, bare office. There was a poster advertising yachting holidays in the Peloponnese on the wall, and a list of names and bleep numbers on the wipe board. A plant on the window sill was fighting a losing battle against the central heating.

  Willard shut the door, eyeing Faraday for a moment before settling into the chair behind the desk. Three kids beamed out of a stand-up frame beside the PC.

  “Mates, weren’t you? You and Hayder?”

  Faraday nodded. “Mates’ wasn’t a term he’d applied to many men in his life but in Nick Hayder’s case he liked to think it was close to the truth.

  “Pretty much,” he agreed.

  “Did he have any personal problems that you’d know of?”

  Faraday hesitated. Willard’s use of the past tense was beginning to irrit-atp him. Critical Care was hiah tech. Critical Care was where they hauled you back from the brink. So why the rush to consign Hayder to the Recycle Bin?

  “Nick has a partner,” he said carefully.

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “I know, but that’s the situation. I can give you her number. Why don’t you ‘

  “Don’t fuck around, Joe. I’m asking you about his love life. Someone tried to kill him. It may be they’ve done just that. Does the word “motive” ring any bells? Or do you think you’re doing him some kind of favour? All this buddy-buddy shit?”

  Faraday held Willard’s furious gaze. The Det-Supt was as armour-clad as any detective when it came to the flesh and blood consequences of serious violence, but this was family and family was different.

  “Nick’s been living alone for a bit,” Faraday said at last. “Gutty little bed sit off Albert Road.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Problems between him and Maggie. They were trying to work it out… Are trying to work it out.”

  “Was he over the side?”

  “No.”

  “Was she?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  It was a fair question and Faraday wondered how much further he should go. Monday’s lunchtime drink in Winchester had stretched to two pints and a coffee, chiefly because life in a Southsea bed sit was driving Nick Hayder nuts. Faraday had never met a fellow detective so self-contained, so centred, so sure of his own judgement. Yet here he was, totally lost.

  “There’s a problem with Maggie’s boy,” he said. “Nick would be the first to tell you he hasn’t been handling it brilliantly.”

  “Let’s hope he gets the fucking chance.” Willard was still angry. “What was the problem?”

  “Nick thought thinks the kid’s doing drugs. Nothing heavy but enough to get Nick going.”

  “Like what drugs?”

  “Cannabis mainly. Speed and ecstasy at the weekends.”

  “How old’s the boy?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “And his mum? What does she think?”

  “Maggie prefers to deal with it in her own way. She’s a teacher, one of the local comprehensives. This kind of stuff’s meat and drink in schools like hers. She thinks wading in’s the last thing you do.”

  “Which Hayder couldn’t handle?”

  “Exactly.”

  Willard nodded, saying nothing. He had no kids of his own, though his long-term partner, a Bristol psychologist, was rumoured to be contemplating IVF.

  “So no one else?” Willard mused at last.

  “Not to my knowledge. I’ve been round to see her a couple of times. She’s a strong woman.”

  “Attractive?”

  “Nick thinks so.”

  “And he dwells on it? All those nights banged up by himself? No wonder he went running.”

  “He’s been doing it for years. He got the bug from Brian Imber and thank God he did. If you want my opinion, running was the best ‘

  Faraday broke off, hearing a soft knock at the door. Brian Imber was the DS with the Force Intelligence Unit.

  The nurse at the door was full of apologies. The unit manager needed her office back. The nurse was about to suggest an alternative when Willard shook his head and got to his feet.

  “We’re through, love.” He turned to Faraday and then glanced at his watch. “Back to base? Ten o’clock at Major Crimes?”

  The operational heart of the Portsmouth Basic Command Unit lay in a suite of offices on the first floor of Kingston Crescent police station, a stone’s throw from the Continental Ferry Port. These offices, stretching the length of the corridor, housed the Senior Management Team, including the uniformed Chief Superintendent who headed the BCU. To these men and women fell the everyday challenges of policing Portsmouth.

  For several years, Pompey’s top cop had been Chief Supt Dennis Hartigan, a diminutive martinet who’d made no secret of his determination to end his career in an ACPO job. In this respect, an Assistant Chief Constable’s vacancy with the Cleveland Constabulary had been the answer to his prayers, and he’d stepped briskly out of Portsmouth after a burst of valedictory e-mails and the most cheerless leaving party in living memory. Few regretted his promotion, and a couple of dozen survivors from Hartigan’s routine bollockings held an impromptu celebration in the top-floor bar the day after he’d gone. Lucky Middlesbrough, went the first toast.<
br />
  Hartigan’s successor was a quietly spoken West Country copper in his mid forties called Andy Secretan.Taller than Hartigan, with a bluff outdoors face and an obvious impatience with the dressier rituals of command. Secretan had quickly won respect across the BCU for his preparedness to put common sense ahead of New Labour performance-speak. Unlike his predecessor, there were no genuflections before the latest blizzard of Home Office diktats. Neither did he have the slightest interest in self-promotion or belittling his staff. As a result, morale on the first floor had been transformed. The Corridor of Death was no more than a memory.

  DI Cathy Lamb, summoned this morning from her desk in the same building, rather liked the new boss. After Hartigan’s mania for meticulously prepared risk assessments and the correct use of the apostrophe, it was refreshing to work under someone who treated all paperwork with profound mistrust and was prepared to throw the wider issues open to something approaching real debate. Not that Secretan didn’t have views of his own.

  “Barmy, wasn’t it? Not knowing about the house up the road?”

  Cathy had spent most of the night asking herself the same question. The newly established Portsmouth Crime Squad had been one of the first BCU initiatives to win Secretan’s backing. She had fought hard for the post of DIon the squad and last night’s operation should have been the first of her battle honours. Yet here she was, well and truly on the back foot.

  “My responsibility,” she said at once. “And my fault.”

  “Very noble. Where did it go wrong?”

  “I haven’t a clue, sir. As soon as I find out, I’ll let you know.”

  “You were happy with the intelligence material? And the surveillance package?”

  “There wasn’t a problem.”

  “And the guys were all briefed properly?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then’ Secretan held his hands wide ‘what bloody happened?”

  Cathy glanced down at the single sheet of precautionary notes she’d brought with her. A bunch of young Scouse drug dealers had turned up after Christmas, bored with life in Bournemouth. Within weeks, they’d dropped a very large boulder into the peace and quiet of the Portsmouth drug scene. There were reports of rival street-level dealers -Pompey kids being kidnapped and tortured. There was talk of Stanley knives and electric drills. The word on the estates, with just a hint of admiration, was ‘ultra-violence’.