Cut To Black

by Hurley, Graham

  “I’ll have to think about it.” He picked up the card. “OK?”

  It took Cathy Lamb to voice what Suttle was trying to get across. The DI had convened the meeting immediately after lunch in her office at Kingston Crescent. Other members of the Crime Squad were still out, scouring the city for the Scousers.

  “We agree the girl won’t say anything about last night.” She was looking at Suttle. “What else isn’t she telling us?”

  “I don’t know, boss. But you’re right, there’s lots going on there. She’s well pissed off.”

  “So would you be,” Winter said. “The way those animals treated her.”

  “I’m not sure sure it was them, though.”

  “They phoned us,” Winter reminded him. “They gave us an address. How did they know where to find her? Coincidence? Just happened to be passing by?”

  “Of course not. But what if they’d gone looking for Pullen? What if they thought he was the guy who’d grassed them up?”

  “He lives in Ashburton Road.”

  “Yeah, but he also owns the place in Bystock Road. Maybe they confused the two. Easily done.”

  Lamb hadn’t taken her eyes off Suttle.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “OK.” Suttle leaned forward, clearing a space on the low table Lamb reserved for her dieting magazines. “We do the door in Pennington Road. They bail out of number 34. Pretty soon after that, they turn up in Bystock Road. They want a word with Pullen. They knock on the door. Somebody answers. They get inside, find the girl upstairs tied to the bed.”

  “Who’s this somebody?”

  “God knows. Pullen’s got half the world in there. Asylum seekers, blokes on the dole, all sorts. You know the way it works, benefit cheques made out to the landlord, hundreds of quid a week for doing sod all.”

  “So why was the place empty when you arrived?”

  “Because the Scouse kids put the fear of God up them. Middle of the night. Threats and menaces. Half a brain, you bail out, don’t you?”

  “And the music?”

  “Didn’t happen till later. Remember the statement we took off the bloke next door? Said it woke him up round two in the morning? The music was the Scouse kids’ contribution. They found the girl on the bed, turned on the music, then fucked off and belled us. The rest’ Suttle shrugged ‘we know about.”

  Lamb was still putting together the chain of events, testing it link by link.

  “So who tied the girl up?”

  “Pullen.” It was Winter at last. “The boy’s right. It was probably Pullen that gave her the whacking as well. I must be getting old.”

  “But why would he want to whack her?”

  “Because she’d let the Scouse lads chat her up. They’d all met earlier, some bar or other. The Scouse kids got alongside her. She liked them. You could tell that when we talked to her just now. She thought they were OK. They made her laugh. Am I right, Jimmy?” Winter’s question drew a nod from Suttle. Winter turned back to Cathy Lamb. “So from there on, it kicks off. A couple of pints does it for Pullen. He’s seen what’s going on and he takes it personally so, bosh, he has her out of there. Big row. Toys out the pram. He takes her round to Bystock Road, gives her a hiding, then ties her to the bed in case she has any other plans, and buggers off. He loves her really, of course he does, but there’s just so much a bloke can take. Who knows? Maybe he was planning to come back later. Maybe he was thinking flowers and a nice pot of tea, but we’ll never know because the Scouse kids beat him to it. Prat that he is.”

  “We can prove this?”

  “No way, unless any of them talk. Pullen won’t, for sure. The Scousers we can’t find. That leaves Trudy.”

  “No chance?”

  “None. Kids in this city, kids with her background, they’d walk on broken glass before they talked to us. Any case, what are we trying to stand up? Kidnap? Assault? Happens all the time, blokes making a point or two.”

  “You’re saying he tied her up, Paul. You’re telling me he beat her.”

  “Sure, but it’s easier than conversation, isn’t it?”

  There was a long silence. Winter was right and they all knew it. Nailing down the truth about Trudy Gallagher could swallow hundreds of hours of CID time without the faintest chance of a conviction.

  “OK.” Lamb got to her feet. “Here’s the way it goes from now on. Secretan’s a realist. He wants the Scouse kids out of here. He’s not fussed about court, he just wants them gone. Doesn’t matter where but it has to be soon.”

  “Sane man.” Winter was looking positively cheerful. “So what’s the plan?”

  “In plain English, we get up their arses. That’s Secretan’s phrase, not mine. From now on, he wants a car outside. He wants them watched, high-visibility. He wants them hassled. He wants us in their face. He wants them so pissed off they call it a day.”

  “Outside where, boss?” It was Suttle.

  “Pennington Road. They’ll come back, bound to. They know we’ve got nothing on them. You were there, both of you. Plastic wraps, pair of scales, bicarb, icing sugar, but bugger all else. They must have kept the gear with them.”

  “Scenes of Crime?” Winter this time.

  “Jacked it in an hour ago. DNA by the yard from the blood but it takes us nowhere. This is a war, Paul, and neither side has any interest in talking to us.”

  “OK.” Winter nodded. “So what do we do?”

  “You’re the guys in the car.” She smiled down at him. “Outside.”

  J-J was back in Hampshire Terrace by the time the girl from the university put her head round Ambrym Productions’ office door. He recognised her at once. Small, pretty, Prada T-shirt, big silver earrings. Sarah.

  Eadie Sykes was looking at video rushes on the PC, a pair of headphones giving her the privacy she needed. J-J touched her lightly on the shoulder. He’d found a chair for Sarah.

  “Coffee?” he signed.

  By the time he returned from the tiny kitchen along the corridor, Eadie and the student were locked in conversation. She’d just been called by her friend Dan. She’d felt slightly guilty giving J-J his name in the first place and now she wanted to be absolutely sure that this video of theirs, this project, was for real.

  “Absolutely for real.”

  Eadie went through the funding, showed her letters of support from local luminaries, outlined the plans they’d made for distribution once the video was ready. She and J-J were facilitators, she kept saying. On the one hand there was a country flooded with drugs. On the other, nationwide, millions of kids potentially at risk. All Ambrym wanted to do was level the ground in between. No ego trips. No exploitation. Just the truth.

  The girl nodded. She wanted to be convinced, J-J could tell. She was on a media course herself, she understood about documentary work, she’d be more than happy to lend a hand, but still there was something holding her back.

  Eadie was pressing her about Daniel. How come he’d got into such trouble with drugs?

  “He’s a strange man. It’s difficult…” She shook her head.

  “How do you mean, strange?”

  “It’s like…” She frowned, hunting for the right phrase. “It’s like he’s really unstable, you know what I mean? I’ve been around him now for a couple of years and I’ve watched him getting worse. It’s partly his age, partly the fact he’s got so much money. That makes him an outsider at the uni. It shouldn’t but it does.”

  Daniel, she explained, had come to higher education late. His father was a Manchester media lawyer, incredibly successful, incredibly busy. His parents had divorced when Daniel was ten, and he’d spent his adolescence with an elderly aunt and uncle in Chester. After A levels, in a doomed attempt to break free, he’d gone to Australia where his mother was contemplating the wreckage of her third marriage. The last person she’d wanted to see was her son, and after a couple of years wandering around on a generous allowance from his dad, Daniel had returned to the UK, more introverted than ever. Then came a long
period of drift, totally aimless, before he woke up one morning and decided to go to university.

  “Here?”

  “Bristol. Portsmouth was his third choice.”

  “What did he want to read?”

  “Russian literature. He wanted to be a novelist. He thought the Russian might help.”

  Sarah had bumped into him one night when she was celebrating a friend’s twenty-first. Dan had been sitting by himself in a pub called the Still and West. And he’d been crying.

  “Why?” Eadie hadn’t touched her coffee.

  “I’ve no idea, not the first. I talked to him a bit, even let him buy me a drink.”

  “You don’t think that was a ploy? Crying?”

  “Not at all. Dan doesn’t do ploys. He’s just not that…” She paused again, looking down at her hands.

  “Clever?”

  “No, he’s clever, definitely, probably too clever. No, he just doesn’t do all that manipulative stuff. Maybe that’s half the problem.”

  She’d begun to see more and more of him. Thanks to his rich dad he’d had the flat in Old Portsmouth from the start, and she used to go round for coffee and a chat. He’d made no demands on her, nothing physical, no anguished pleas to stay the night, but at the start of the next academic year she’d found herself with nowhere to live and when he’d offered her the spare bedroom she’d said yes.

  “I was grateful. I still am. He saved my life last year. Decent accommodation in this city can be a nightmare.”

  “And you were close to him?”

  “We were friends. Good friends. But that’s all.”

  “And now?”

  “We’re still good friends.”

  “You still live there?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “It became impossible after he got really heavily into the drugs. I couldn’t bear it. He’s killing himself. He just doesn’t care any more. That’s hard to take.”

  “Did you ever score for him?”

  The question took her by surprise. So direct.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “A couple of times I made a phone call, if you call that scoring. It’s like pizza really. You phone a number. Then the stuff just turns up.”

  “This was recently?”

  “No. Back last year before I moved out. Both times he was desperate, just couldn’t get anything together. It’s pathetic really. I hated it, hated doing it, but it made him better for a bit so I suppose … I dunno…” She shrugged.

  “Did you ever try and get him off it?”

  “All the time. He knows what I think about drugs.”

  “What was he using?”

  “Heroin. Sometimes cocaine, too, but mainly smack.”

  “Regularly?”

  “Every four hours. I used to count them. He said it was the best friend he’d ever had. Heroin? A friend? Can you believe that?”

  “And now? He’s still using?”

  “Definitely. I go and see him from time to time and it’s obvious. I’ve still got a key to the flat. Dan made me keep it.”

  “You’re absolutely sure he’s still using?”

  “Yeah. Like I just said, he has to it’s the only way he can keep functioning.” She paused. “He’s got money. He knows how to use a phone. What else do you need?”

  Eadie pulled an editing pad towards her and scribbled a note. Sarah looked suddenly alarmed.

  “You’re not going to…?” She nodded at the pad.

  “No, of course not. Memory like a sieve.” Eadie looked up. “What about his father?”

  “Dan never sees him. His dad pays a standing order every month but that’s it.”

  “Have you ever thought of getting in touch yourself?”

  “I did once. He drove down from Manchester, took me out for a meal, told me how worried he was. That was after I’d moved out.”

  “Did he go and see Daniel?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I checked with Dan later. His dad hadn’t even rung.”

  Eadie finally reached for her coffee. J-J stood behind her, wondering where this story might go next, beginning to understand the kind of cage Daniel Kelly had made for himself.

  Sarah was still staring at the notepad. “I’d never have mentioned Dan in the first place,” she muttered, ‘except he’s so articulate. He’d be perfect for what you need. Perfect.”

  “Is that why you got in touch with us?”

  “Partly, yes. But it’s more than that. Something has to happen in Dan’s life. Something has to give him a shake. He’d be good on your video. He’d be excellent. Maybe that’s what he needs.”

  “Bit of self-respect?”

  “Exactly.”

  The thought prompted a slow nod from Eadie. She put the pad to one side.

  “I get the impression that some of this decision’s down to you.”

  “What decision?”

  “Whether or not Daniel agrees to be interviewed. Would that be right?”

  “Yes, I suppose it would. He has to be the one to say it. It has to come from him in the end. But yes, he’s definitely asked my advice.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “Me?” Sarah’s eyes strayed to the light stands propped in the corner, to the neat little Sony digital nestling in the open camera box. “I think J-J should go back to the flat again. After I’ve made a call.”

  J-J returned to Old Portsmouth within the hour. He didn’t have to bother with the entry phone because Daniel was up in the window of his flat, watching the street below. J-J felt the lock give under his fingers and pushed in through the big front door. Daniel was waiting for him upstairs, pale and fretful. His palm was moist when he shook J-J’s outstretched hand.

  “Sarah phoned,” he said at once. “And the answer’s yes.” J-J reached out to pat him on the shoulder, a congratulatory gesture that made Daniel retreat at once into the safety of the flat. J-J watched his hands, the way they crabbed up and down his bare arms. The insides of both elbows were livid with bruises.

  Daniel had something else to say, something important. He fixed J-J

  with his big yellow eyes. He spoke very slowly, exaggerated lip movements, spelling it out.

  “I need a favour.”

  J-J cocked an eyebrow. What?

  “I have to make a phone call but the number won’t answer.” He stumbled through a clumsy mime. “You understand me?”

  Another nod from J-J, more guarded this time.

  “I’ve got an address. I’ll call a cab. All you have to do is knock on the door and ask for Terry. Give Terry my name. Tell him Daniel from Old Portsmouth. That’s all you have to say. Terry. Daniel from Old Portsmouth. Then we can do the interview. OK?”

  J-J glanced down and found himself looking at a fifty-pound note.

  “Difficult,” he signed.

  “What?”

  “Hard.”

  “I don’t understand.” Daniel plunged his hand into his pocket. Two more notes, twenties this time.

  “Please…” J-J tried to fend him off.

  “Just take the money. Go on, take it. Terry. Daniel from Old Portsmouth. Then we can do the interview. Is that too much to ask?”

  He produced a mobile. J-J guessed he was phoning for the taxi.

  Daniel folded the phone into his pocket. Patches of sweat darkened his shirt.

  “Why don’t you wait in the street?” He tapped his watch and held up five fingers. “The cab’ll be here in no time.”

  Chapter 5

  WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2003, 13.00

  Faraday’s third meeting with Willard took place in mid afternoon. One of the management assistants from the Major Crimes Team had raised Faraday on his mobile, telling him that the Det Supt would be parked in Grand Parade for a brief get-together at 3.15. There didn’t seem much room for negotiation.

  Grand Parade was a recently refurbished square in Old Portsmouth and once the bustling centre of garrison life. Lottery money had paid for stylish seating an
d a brand new ramp, quickly adopted by local skateboarders. The ramp led up to the Saluting Base, an area on top of the fortification walls that overlooked the harbour narrows.

  Faraday arrived early, his anorak zipped up against a bitter wind, and spent a minute or two gazing down at the churning tide. A lone cormorant sped past, barely feet above the water, and he watched it until the tiny black speck was swallowed up by the enveloping greyness.

  Cormorants had always been one of J-J’s favourite birds. He’d drawn them since he was a kid, page after page of weird, prehistoric shapes, and he’d often pestered his dad for expeditions to watch the real thing. The way the birds bobbed around on the ocean, abruptly submerging in search of food, had always fascinated the boy, and one of the first times Faraday had recognised J-J’s strange cackle as a laugh was when the hungry cormorant resurfaced, seventy metres down-current, with an impatient little shake of its head. He doesn’t understand, J-J would sign. He’s down there in the dark and he can’t see a thing. Too right, thought Faraday, pulling up the hood of his anorak against the first chill drops of rain.

  Willard took him by surprise, arriving in a brand new Jaguar S-type. Faraday got in beside him, curious to know why they were meeting here. There was a perfectly good suite of offices at Kingston Crescent. What was so wrong with central heating and a constant supply of coffee?

  Willard ignored the question. He’d spent most of lunchtime with Dave Michaels out at Fort Cumberland. The DS had got his house-to-house team working through the neighbouring estate and the preliminary reports were beginning to inch the Nick Hayder inquiry forward. Several households especially young mums with kids had talked of after-dark comings and goings on the single road that led towards the Hayling ferry. Some of the cars that pulled off the tarmac and onto the scrubland that stretched out towards the beach were there for sex. You knew they were at it because afterwards they chucked their debris out of the car window, littering the place with used condoms, but recently there’d been other visitors, even less welcome.

  According to the mums, some of the older kids on the estate were talking openly about scoring cheap drugs off dealers who’d driven in from elsewhere in the city. For less than a tenner, you could evidently take your pick anything from ecstasy to smack and the trade had become so brazen that the kids had taken to calling one of the dealers Mr. Whippy. All he needed, said one harassed single mother, was one of those recorded chimes and a nice little fridge for the younger kids who might fancy a choc ice with their 10 wrap.