Cut To Black

by Hurley, Graham

  “Best to Bazza, eh?” He gave Pullen a little punch on the shoulder, picked up the pillowslip, and followed Suttle down towards the street.

  Mid morning, the conference with Willard over, Faraday followed Brian Imber’s Volvo estate out of the parking lot at the back of the Kingston Crescent police station. At the start of the motorway, Imber indicated left, leaving the roundabout for the Continental Ferry Port. North of the port complex lay a cluster of naval establishments known locally as Whale Island. At the far end of the causeway connecting the island to the mainland, Imber coasted to a halt at the red and white barrier. A squaddie approached both cars, an assault rifle slung from his neck.

  Faraday wound down his window. Imber had already given him a pass but Faraday had yet to open the envelope. When he did so, he found himself looking at a recent head and shoulders shot taken for an out-of-county inquiry. It showed a grizzled white male in his mid forties with a mop of greying curly hair. The expression on his face, at first glance, gave nothing away but the few people who knew him well would have wondered about the little creases around the eyes. This was a man trying to gauge exactly what awaited him next. Small wonder.

  The squaddie glanced at the pass, checked the image, and then waved Faraday through.

  Imber was in the nearby car park. Faraday brought the Mondeo to a halt beside him, pocketing the pass. Imber nodded towards a low, brick-built structure a couple of hundred metres away. Beyond lay the harbour and the naval dockyard.

  “Welcome to Tumbril.” Imber was enjoying this. “It’s a bit cramped, I’m afraid, but we’ve done our best.”

  The building belonged to the Regulating School, the establishment charged with training the navy’s police force. A temporary arrangement with the Admiralty, financed from the Tumbril budget, paid for an open-plan office on the south side of the building which was normally used as a lecture theatre. Attached to this was a smaller interview room, which now housed the inquiry’s ever-growing archive. Carefully labelled files crowded a wall full of shelves. There were also three battered filing cabinets, all fitted with heavy-duty locks.

  Imber was explaining about the rest of the security arrangements. There were double locks on the main door, accessible by code and swipe card, plus the eight-foot barbed-wire fence that surrounded the entire site. At Nick Hayder’s insistence, the office was regularly swept for bugs, the cleaner had been security-checked, and every member of the five-strong team had signed a binding undertaking never to discuss the operation with anyone else. In terms of paranoia, thought Faraday, this operation was in a class of its own.

  “You think we’ve gone over the top?” Imber was watching him carefully.

  “Just a bit.”

  “You saw Nick this morning? Unconscious? Legs a mess? Crushed pelvis?”

  “You’re telling me that was related?”

  “I’m telling you we took every conceivable precaution and someone still managed to switch his lights out. Whether that’s just coincidence, who can say? All we’ve tried to do is give ourselves a bit of privacy.”

  From the adjoining office came the sound of a door opening, and then the bustle of heavy footsteps. Moments later, Faraday found himself looking at a familiar figure: low-cut dress, huge bosoms, thick gloss lipstick, long purple nails flecked with glitter, and beneath the mountainous body a pair of shapely legs that had never failed to take him by surprise.

  “Joyce.”

  “Sheriff.”

  “You’re part of this?” Faraday gestured round.

  “Too right I am. Archivist, doughnut supplier, hangover cures and light maintenance. Plus I deal with the ruder phone calls. Unless you’re nice to me, you get a spanking.” She grinned at him. “Did I hear yes to coffee?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she stepped back into the office. Imber rolled his eyes.

  “You two know each other?”

  “Very well. Joyce took over at Highland Road a couple of years back when Vanessa got killed.”

  “And you survived?”

  “More than. Joyce was priceless. Has she still got the agency for Beanie Babes?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And German porn?”

  “In spades. Big Jiffy bag from Hamburg every fortnight. We get the trainee reggies queueing at the door. They think she’s something else.”

  “They’re right. She is.”

  Through the open door, Faraday could hear her singing as she sorted out mugs for the coffee. Peggy Lee had always been a favourite; regret stitched through with a silky courage.

  While Imber fielded a phone call, Faraday perched himself on the edge of a nearby desk. Joyce had disappeared from Highland Road after a cancer scare. Faraday had phoned her a couple of times, checking on the progress of the radiotherapy, but she’d always trivialised the whole thing the way you might dismiss a headache. Sure there was a little lump. Everyone got them. No big deal.

  Faraday had never been quite sure whether this optimism of hers was uniquely American or whether she was simply being brave, but either way to his eternal shame Joyce had dropped out of his life, forgotten beneath the daily torrent of volume crime that surged through Highland Road.

  “You made it then?”

  “Sure. Zapped the little bastards.”

  “Bastards? Plural?”

  “Breast, lymph nodes, couple in the neck.” The purple nails traced the progress of the tumours. “Got real interesting when they started talking mastectomy.”

  Faraday stared at her. Her breasts looked real enough to him.

  “So what happened?”

  “I told them no way. They could try anything else, didn’t matter what, but we’d all go down together. Worked real good. Chemotherapy you wouldn’t believe. Couple of weeks of that shit and the little bastards came out with their hands up. Bang, bang, bang. Full military funeral but theirs not mine.” She glanced up. “Still take sugar?”

  Faraday nodded. For the first time, he noticed the display of photos on the far wall. Imber was still deep in conversation.

  “Here.” Joyce handed him a mug of coffee. “Let me give you the tour.”

  Faraday followed her across the office. The biggest of the photos was an aerial shot of a sizeable property, red-tiled roof, big double bays, tall sash windows. There was a Mercedes convertible and an SUV on the patterned brick drive in front of the double garage, and a ne wish-looking swimming pool occupied part of the garden at the front. Certain features security cameras, intruder-resistant thorn bushes, remotely operated double gates had been identified and labelled, and there was a circle around a small wooden hut tucked beside a child’s swing.

  “That’s a kennel. The guy just loves his dogs.” Joyce was demolishing her second chocolate biscuit. “Two ridge backs Clancy and Spud.”

  “This is Mackenzie’s?”

  “Sure. 13 Sandown Road. Now isn’t that cute? And don’t you just want to ask how they ever gave him planning permission? Nice area like that?”

  Faraday followed her pointing finger. Above the first-floor bedrooms, a huge balconette had been built into the roof. A skirt of chromium and smoked glass hid the balconette from view but the angle of the photograph revealed four sun loungers with a couple of tables in between. Faraday nodded. Sandown Road lay in the heart of Craneswater Park. Craneswater was as select as Southsea got, street after street of generously proportioned Edwardian villas with plenty of garden and views across the Solent. People who’d made it to this middle class enclave guarded their heritage with a fierce passion. Joyce was right, Faraday thought. How come Bazza Mackenzie had been allowed this sudden splash of Florida?

  “And here, look, the ASU boys have done us proud.” Joyce was indicating an object in the garden. “You know what that is?”

  Faraday stepped closer.

  “Some kind of floodlight?”

  “Gold star for the sheriff!” Joyce was beaming. “He’s got five of them.

  Evenings you get the full works, and believe me we’re t
alking serious gels. Mondays it’s mauve, Tuesdays puke green, and Wednesdays… my favourite…”

  “Purple?”

  “Cerise. We’ll end up with a charge sheet long as your arm but good taste won’t figure.”

  Imber, his phone call over, had joined them. Faraday nodded at the house.

  “You’ve paid him a visit?”

  “Not yet.” Imber shook his head. “That photo’s in case we have to at short notice, but the ASU have promised an update if we give them enough warning.”

  “Where does the documentation come from?” Faraday glanced back towards the smaller room that housed the files.

  “Production Orders. We’re using the DTA. So far we’ve concentrated on property deals and transactions in and out of Gibraltar. Going back ten years, that’s a lot of paper.”

  The Drug Trafficking Act offered an investigation like this the power to raise Production Orders from a judge sitting in chambers. These, in turn, would have enabled Hayder to seize a huge range of documentation, from bank records to mortgage deeds. In theory, the target should remain ignorant of this ever-widening trawl. Fat chance.

  “He’ll know… won’t he?”

  “Of course he will. His accountant will have told him. His bank. His brief. Being Bazza, he’s probably flattered. There’s not much we can do to shake him. Not yet.”

  “Why didn’t Nick go for supply?”

  “Because Mackenzie’s arm’s length now, doesn’t let the stuff anywhere near him. If we wanted to make a supply charge stick, we should have been doing this years ago.”

  “But he still controls it all?”

  “Of course he does. That’s the way business works. He bankrolls supply and helps himself to a fat percentage. The richer you get, the more the other blokes do all the running around. Arm’s length, he’s laughing.”

  Faraday was looking at the other photos. One showed Mackenzie getting out of the sleek convertible, a small, stocky, eager-looking figure with a broad grin on his face. Another showed a good-sized motor cruiser nosing into a marina berth. Both bore the imprint of a surveillance operation, the photographer working from a distance at the end of a powerful telephoto lens.

  “These are his?”

  “In reality, yes. He hides everything behind nominee names because he’s not stupid, but yes. These are what keep us going. We’ve got loads more in the drawer. Properties abroad, local businesses, you name it. Joyce rings the changes every Monday. Just in case we lose motivation.”

  “That’s envy, isn’t it?”

  “Of course. And frustration, too. If you’d been banged up here all year you’d pretty much feel the same way.”

  “So who does the legwork, figures-wise?”

  “Bloke called Martin Prebble. He’s a forensic accountant. Costs us a fortune but he’s shit-hot. Give him three million documents and he’ll know the ones to sling out. Without him around, we’d still be at base camp.”

  “So where is he?”

  “London. He works for one of the big City firms. We get him two days a week.” He glanced round. Joyce had returned to her desk. Imber bent towards Faraday. “I know what you’re thinking, Joe, but believe me this is the only way. We’ve tried everything else the covert, surveillance, informants, plotting the supply chain but like I say, Mackenzie’s beyond all that. He’s clever, brighter than you might think. He’s well advised and he’s listened to that advice. The guy’s walled himself off from the sharp end. All we’re left with is the money. But that’s where we can hurt him. By following the money.”

  Faraday was trying to reconcile this little outburst with something that had stuck in his mind from Willard. Mackenzie’s programmed to break the law, he’d said. That’s what he does. And that’s why we’ll have him.

  “You really think it’s all down to the paperwork?”

  “I do.”

  “No point trying to set him up?”

  “None. Like I said, he’s too well protected. This way we at least have a fighting chance. As long as we all keep the faith.”

  “Who’s “we”?”

  “Who do you think? It’s means and ends, Joe. And, to be fair, we’ve had our share of resources.”

  “You’re telling me there’s pressure for a result?”

  “Of course there is. There’s always pressure for a result. That’s why Nick was close to blowing up. A job like this takes time, years and years. We’ve never thought like that before but then we’ve never had to. What it boils down to is blokes like Bazza. The man’s a billboard. He’s up there in lights. He’s telling every kid in this city there’s no point going to school, no point keeping this side of the law, no point getting your head down and trying to lead a half-decent life. Leave Bazza alone, put him in the Too Difficult basket, chuck in the towel, and we might as well call it a day.”

  Faraday nodded. He’d heard this from Imber before, almost word for word. For reasons the DS had never revealed, he’d won himself a reputation as a crusader when it came to the drugs issue. Since the mid-eighties, he’d been warning about the impending apocalypse, not simply because of his worries about his own kids, but because his intelligence work had taught him very early on that Class A narcotics would one day fuel an entire economy. Ignore the drugs issue, he’d said, and the consequences would be catastrophic.

  Imber’s bosses at every level, besieged by the pressures of volume crime, had paid lip service to this relentless lobbying. They read the reports he put together. They even circulated his more measured assessments of developments to come. But it had taken a figure like Bazza Mackenzie to persuade them to give Imber his head. Why? Because Mackenzie’s wealth was beginning to taint every corner of the city. And that, in Willard’s phrase, was a cop-out too far.

  Faraday watched Imber pour himself a glass of juice from the fridge. Marathon training evidently forbade him any form of caffeine. Finally, he looked up.

  “Willard’s stuck his neck out,” Imber said. “And I admire him for that.”

  “Easy sell?”

  “You’re joking. It’s not just the resources, it’s other coppers. Every one thinks you’re trespassing in this game.”

  “You’re supposed to be invisible.”

  “I know. And thanks to Nick we largely are. But blokes know something’s up and they get extremely pissed off.”

  “Like who?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’d give you a list of names but there’s no point. I’m just telling you this thing isn’t easy. We’re out here on our own and we’ve got a bloody great mountain to climb. Take on someone like Bazza and you’d be amazed the people you upset.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Not in the least. As long as we get a result.”

  Faraday studied him a moment, aware that Joyce had stopped typing.

  “And you think we will get a result?” he said at last.

  “I think we have to.”

  “Despite all the…” Faraday frowned “…aggravation?”

  “Of course.” Imber gave him a long, searching look. “You are up for this, aren’t you?”

  Chapter 4

  WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2003, 11.20

  Winter left his Subaru in the underground car park at Gunwharf Quays and led Suttle up the escalator towards the shopping plaza. It had taken two conversations on the mobile to coax a meet from Trudy Gallagher and, hearing the squawk of seagulls in the background, it gave Winter no comfort at all to realise the obvious. Misty Gallagher lived in one of the Gunwharf apartments overlooking the waterfront. Trudy had gone back to mum.

  The Gumbo Parlour had only just opened. A harassed-looking waitress was at the back of the restaurant, polishing glasses. Winter selected a table by the window and took the seat with the best view.

  Beyond the walkway, on the very edge of the harbour, contractors were working on the first stages of the Spinnaker Tower, a 500-foot extravaganza that would, hoped the council, put Pompey on the national map. Winter watched as another bucket of concrete was winc
hed slowly into place, wondering what kind of difference a structure like this would really make. Fans of the tower banged on about the boldness of the gesture, how it spoke of confidence and a new start for the city, but Winter was rather fond of the other Portsmouth, scruffy, blunt, and perfectly happy to muddle through.

  Suttle was already browsing the lunchtime choices. Moules a I’Americaine, he thought, sounded nice.

  “We’re having coffee,” Winter told him, ‘unless you’re paying.”

  He settled back in his chair, watching a sailing dinghy on the harbour fighting to get out of the way of a huge inbound ferry. Trudy had promised to meet them at noon, and she still had ten minutes in hand.

  “You should meet her mum,” he told Suttle. “In fact you probably will.”

  “That’s a promise?”

  “Health warning. Anything in trousers under thirty, you’re talking serious risk assessment.”

  Misty Gallagher, over the years, had become a legend. Winter had been to parties where she’d taken three men to bed, two of them CID, one a convicted bank robber, and left all of them the best of friends. Bazza Mackenzie, impressed by her contacts as well as her looks, had been shagging her since the mid nineties, setting her up in a series of properties he’d bought for development. More recently, he’d installed her in a third-floor apartment in one of the Gunwharf blocks beyond the shopping complex, a 600,000 gesture to say she still mattered. Lately, though, explained Winter, the relationship appeared to have come under some strain.

  “How?” Suttle was still eyeing the menu.

  “Italian bird, much younger than Mist. Bit of style, bit of class, doesn’t need a bag over her head.”

  “Misty’s a dog?”

  “Far from it, body to die for even now, but the woman’s got a real mouth on her, never knows when to shut up. Pompey girl…” Winter beckoned the waitress. “Comes with the territory.”

  The waitress took the order. Two cappuccinos. Suttle watched her making her way back towards the coffee machine.