Angels Passing

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘You’re telling me he hasn’t turned up? Where have you looked?’

  Faraday listed the lines of enquiry. The boy’s mother hadn’t been in touch since Faraday’s visit to her flat but that wasn’t a surprise. He had a call in to the woman who ran the Persistent Young Offenders project and if she couldn’t help then he’d organise a ring round the other agencies. One way or another, they’d lay hands on the child.

  Willard was interested now.

  ‘You don’t think something’s happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What about mates? Every kid’s got mates.’

  Faraday mentioned his exchange with Trudy Gallagher’s mother. Trudy had been big mates with Helen Bassam. Helen seemed to know Doodie. Odds-on, therefore, that the mother might have remembered the name.

  ‘But no joy,’ Faraday concluded. ‘Name didn’t ring a bell.’

  Willard was leaning forward now. ‘This is Misty Gallagher?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know who she’s screwing?’

  Faraday shook his head, alarmed at the weight of Willard’s sudden interest. Stealing bodies from Faraday’s divisional team was one thing but this was quite another. Show Willard a decent job, something really intriguing, and he’d nick it for Major Crimes.

  ‘Who’s that then?’ he said stonily.

  ‘Bazza McKenzie. She’s been sorting him out for months. He’s just bought her a place in Gunwharf, little love nest with one of those nice harbour views.’

  Willard’s phone began to ring and he pounced on it. Barry McKenzie was a major drugs dealer who was trying to stitch up the entire city. One of his many legit enterprises was the Café Blanc, which explained a great deal about Misty Gallagher sprawled across the window on Saturday night, just like she owned the place. Given the association with Bazza, she probably did.

  Willard barked down the phone and then hung up. He scribbled something on a pad and spun round again. Faraday had never seen him so cheerful.

  ‘Scenes of Crime.’ He was beaming, ‘We put a POLSA team back onto Hilsea Lines at first light. I wanted them to extend the search north. You know where I mean? Over the top and down towards the creek?’

  Faraday nodded. He could picture it now. Flocks of dunlin pecking around on the mudflats.

  ‘And?’

  ‘They just found it. Exactly where I thought.’

  Willard explained about the missing bottle of Moët from Margate Road. A PC on the POLSA team had retrieved it from the undergrowth at the foot of the ramparts. If Willard had got it right, they were looking at a forensic bonanza: DNA from Finch’s arse plus prints.

  He stood up. He had a ton of calls to make. On his way out, Faraday should put his head round Brian Imber’s door. Brian was running the Intelligence Cell. He’d been putting together all kinds of stuff on McKenzie and some of it might be useful for locating Doodie.

  ‘And hey, what did I tell you?’ Willard’s gesture took in every corner of his empire. ‘Good fun, eh?’

  Brian Imber was a DS from the Crime Squad up at Havant. Faraday had known him for years and liked him a great deal. He was a squat, combative, fit-looking fifty-three-year-old who lived on the seafront at Hayling Island and still ran three fast miles twice a week. He’d come to the job late after eight years in the merchant marine and had quickly developed an obsessive interest in the link between drug abuse and the ever-soaring crime rate.

  That was back in the late eighties. Imber had gone into print, producing paper after paper to support his conviction that everything – street offences, robbery, fraud – linked back in some way or other to drugs. It was unusual for a working detective to go to lengths like these and in a stroke of organisational genius, headquarters had given him his head. The past couple of years, Brian Imber had headed the Intelligence Cell in the Havant-based Crime Squad, a hand-picked team of detectives charged with tackling cross-divisional villainy.

  Just now, he was sharing the office next to Dave Michaels with two of his DCs from Havant. As intelligence began to flood in on the Bradley Finch inquiry, it was their job to sieve it for those little tiny nuggets that would establish time lines and a firm list of what Willard liked to term ‘persons of interest’.

  Seeing Faraday at the door, Imber got to his feet and pumped his outstretched hand. He’d heard the rumour that Faraday was joining Willard’s little army. How was he getting on?

  Faraday put him straight at once. He was still divisional DI down at Highland Road. Just like always. Willard was snatching bodies as fast as he could and it was Faraday’s job to fight him off. Just like always.

  ‘So how’s it going?’ Faraday asked.

  ‘Slow. But then these things always are, aren’t they? Once we get some serious billing, we can ping a few mobe sites and see what these buggers have been up to.’

  Faraday was looking at a stack of the forms that Imber had been passing through to Willard for submission to the TIU. No one knew better than Imber that mobile telephony had transformed crime investigation. For a hefty fee, the phone companies could trace the geographical source for specific calls from mobile phones. In cities like Portsmouth, with lots of cell sites, they could sometimes be accurate to a hundred metres. As a device for breaking alibis, the new technology was invaluable.

  Imber was talking about the first of the provisional suspect lists. Problem with a scrote like Bradley Finch was the sheer range of his social contacts. There wasn’t anyone bent in the city that he hadn’t pissed off in one way or another.

  ‘Was he dealing?’

  ‘Low level, yes, but he was pond life. He’d pick up tabs here, speed there, knock on a few doors, cash them in. Fifty years ago, he’d have been a tramp or a rag-and-bone man. Might have saved his life.’

  ‘So who wanted him dead?’

  ‘Good question, my friend. People we’re talking to at the moment don’t understand it. OK, he was a pain in the arse, but you don’t knock someone off for that, do you? Establish a motive and we’re halfway there.’

  Faraday was thinking about the champagne bottle. Pain in the arse was about right, though it was news to Imber that the bottle had been found.

  ‘That’s a bonus,’ he agreed. ‘Definite gold star. What’s with you, then?’

  Faraday explained about Helen Bassam. There was a whisper that she’d been doing drugs.

  ‘But that makes her normal, doesn’t it?’ Imber’s dry laugh signalled anything but mirth. His implacable determination to get the upper hand in the drugs war was rooted in an incident that had affected one of his own kids, though no one was quite sure about the details.

  Faraday mentioned Doodie. His real name was Gavin Prentice. He’d been on to the Child Protection Unit, read the file, but all that intelligence hadn’t taken him an inch closer to finding the kid. Even the local beat officers, who’d only known him by his real name, hadn’t a clue where he’d gone.

  ‘So how can he just disappear?’

  ‘Easily, Joe. OK, ten’s young, but kids these days are on a different planet. And that’s because they want to be. They’ve lost interest in the real world. We’ve explained the rules and they’ve had a bit of a think and then buggered off.’

  ‘And drugs?’

  ‘Definitely. Uppers. Downers. Anything they can get down their tiny throats. Heavy gear, too, if they’ve got the money. There are kids of twelve doing smack and cocaine. And men twice their age, blokes who should know better, selling it. Sort that lot out and we’d all be sitting on some big fucking beach, getting pissed all day.’

  Faraday smiled. Imber, who had a legendary thirst, was one of the few serving policemen who’d dared to call for the legalisation of drugs. Not just cannabis, but all drugs. It wasn’t the chemicals that upset him; it was the low life who made a fortune flogging the stuff.

  ‘Tell me about Misty Gallagher,’ Faraday said slowly. ‘The girl who died was best mates with her daughter.’

  ‘Trudy?’

  ‘Yes.’ />
  This was news to Imber – Faraday could see it in his eyes – and he wondered which piece of the jigsaw he’d handed him now.

  ‘She fucks Bazza McKenzie,’ Imber said carefully. ‘I don’t know what she does for him but it’s bought her a big fat part of what he’s putting together and, believe me, they don’t come more ambitious than Bazza.’

  Faraday could see one of the DCs nodding in the background. Bazza McKenzie had taken over where another major dealer called Marty Harrison had left off. Shot in the chest during an early morning arrest by Cathy’s husband, Pete Lamb, Marty had beaten a sensible retreat with most of his extended family to Marbella, leaving the local drugs market wide open. Faraday was a bit woolly about the fine print but he was certainly aware that McKenzie had cranked the notion of indiscriminate violence up a notch or two, leaving a trail of appalling beatings behind him.

  ‘Would Misty be in a position to keep Trudy supplied with drugs?’

  ‘Certainly. Anything she fancied.’

  ‘So the girl Helen Bassam …’

  ‘Of course.’ Imber was smiling. ‘You’ve met Misty? Ever had the pleasure?’

  ‘Saturday night.’

  ‘And you know how she got the name?’

  Faraday shook his head, aware of the same detective at the desk behind rolling his eyes in anticipation of a story he’d obviously heard a million times before.

  Imber didn’t care.

  ‘She’s a looker, isn’t she, Misty? She’s getting on now but younger, you can just imagine, and the thing is she had the best knockers you’ve ever seen. Just amazing they were, just…’ he cupped both hands ‘… amazing. Well, here’s the scam. She had a little game she used to play at parties. Everyone would have a few drinks and after a while she’d start looking round. It was always blokes with glasses she was after. Otherwise, she wasn’t interested. OK, so she’d find some bloke she fancied and then she’d sit on his lap and after a bit she’d just lean forward and blow on his glasses …’ he mimed it ‘… like that. Well, the glasses go all misty and by the time he’s wiped them clean she’s stripped off her top and he’s looking at these incredible knockers. Never failed.’

  The detective at the desk was nodding at Imber’s back. Faraday took the hint.

  ‘You saw this for yourself?’

  ‘Better than that, my friend.’

  ‘She did it to you?’

  ‘Dead right, she did.’

  ‘But you don’t wear glasses.’

  ‘No, I don’t, but in my game you ask around a bit first.’ He grinned at Faraday and then nodded. ‘Borrowed some off a mate of mine. Worked a treat.’

  Paul Winter, three minutes late to the management meeting down the corridor, incurred Willard’s wrath.

  ‘We’re running a murder investigation here. It’s my time you just wasted.’

  ‘Sorry, boss.’

  Winter settled into the spare chair at the corner of the long conference table. He wasn’t part of the management group, far from it, but Willard wanted his input on the girl, Louise Abeka, and he was only too happy to oblige.

  Willard called for a summary of the latest developments from Sammy Rollins. The Deputy SIO had been up half the night with the latest addition to his family and looked knackered. Best news had come from the parking office at the civic centre. The staff who looked after the database had come up with a registration on the white Fiat. The plate had been flashed to all traffic cars in the county and circulated on an all-forces bulletin beyond. At Willard’s insistence, every street in Portsmouth was to be revisited in case the car had crept back into the city, and he’d made arrangements with Media Services at headquarters to have the details highlighted on TV and radio news bulletins. From the Force Identification Bureau at HQ, meanwhile, had come news that the car had been stop-checked only ten days ago in Cosham. The driver had given his name as Kenny Foster, with a Southsea address, and had failed to produce his licence and insurance details afterwards. FIB were currently tracing the traffic crew who’d filed the report and would be back in touch later in the day.

  Willard was scribbling on his pad.

  ‘Kenny Foster, anyone?’

  Heads shook around the table. Willard called for Brian Imber, filling in more details while they waited. The Prison Department at the Home Office were sending down a wad of stuff on Finch’s two spells inside. He might have made enemies and, if so, Willard wanted these people traced and eliminated. On Willard’s prompting, Media Services had already been talking to the Crime Watch producers, and if the inquiry had made no headway by next month there was a definite prospect of a slot in the March edition. The first submission of forensic items had been despatched and he was expecting the results back by Wednesday latest.

  Imber appeared at the door. Willard told him to pull up a chair.

  ‘Kenny Foster ring any bells?’

  Imber nodded.

  ‘Hardest man in Portsmouth,’ he said at once. ‘Undisputed champion.’

  ‘Mate of Finch’s?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Foster, he said, repaired cars in a couple of lock-ups on a patch of wasteland behind the football stadium at Fratton Park. He’d only been at it a couple of years but he had plenty of customers from the rougher end of the motor trade. Word on the street suggested he wasn’t fussy about ringing stolen cars and performing other bits of cosmetic surgery but no one had ever pinned him down, not least because of his reputation in another field.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like bare-knuckle fighting. The man’s an animal. Just lives for it. There’s a kind of knockout competition on at the moment. Literally. Two blokes square up and knock the shit out of each other.’

  ‘Wagers?’

  ‘Nothing massive. It’s about respect, not money.’ This was plainly news to Willard.

  ‘Where’s all this happen then?’

  ‘Private houses mostly. It’s not a spectator thing, not like the old days. It all works on word of mouth. And Foster’s never been beaten.’

  ‘So what does winning mean?’

  ‘The other guy either jacks it in or he’s unconscious. Normally the latter. Last one I heard about, the other bloke was on soup for a month while they mended his jaw.’

  Willard nodded, looking at Sammy Rollins.

  ‘So why was Foster driving Finch’s car?’

  Rollins shrugged and it was Winter who offered a possible answer.

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t,’ he said. ‘Blokes like Foster, Finch’s just not in his league. There’s no way.’

  ‘You mean someone else gave his name?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded. ‘And you’d need to be seriously stupid to do that.’

  Dave Michaels was sitting two down from Willard. Willard caught his eye.

  ‘We need to TIE this Foster, Dave. ASAP.’ He went back to Rollins. ‘Anyone pay him a visit after the no-show with the licence?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘OK.’ Willard nodded. ‘Then let’s get it done.’

  He turned back to Winter. He wanted to talk about Louise Abeka. So far, she was their most promising line of enquiry. They’d banked her statement, most of which was nonsense, and in the end they’d have to pull her in for a formal interview under caution, but his inclination right now was to let her run. Purchase of the three champagne bottles put Finch at her place in Margate Road on the night he was killed. One of those champagne bottles might have been used to assault him. The blood in the bathroom might throw up a DNA match with Finch. According to the café owner, she’d already seen him earlier in the day. And her story about spending Friday night at the North End Odeon now looked highly unlikely. Given this tissue of lies, what, in Winter’s view, was the likely nature of the girl’s involvement in Finch’s death?

  Winter, who was no stranger to the art of speculation, chose his words with some care.

  ‘Number one, I think she was in much deeper with Finch than she’s admitted. Why, I dunno. She’s real class. The last thing sh
e’d need was a loser like him.’

  ‘You think she’d feel sorry for him?’

  ‘More than possible. She’s a Christian. She might not have gone to church every Sunday but the fact that she toddled along yesterday tells me she knew she was in the shit. That’s what you do, isn’t it? When the chips are down, the big man takes care of it.’

  There was an exchange of glances around the table. Everyone in this room knew about Winter losing his wife to cancer and one or two were wondering whether he too had called on the Lord.

  Willard had another possibility. Might the girl have done it herself?

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No way. She says she doesn’t drive, for a start. Plus it’s all business, isn’t it? Serious smacking, broken ribs, bottle of bubbly up your arse, rope round your neck. That says Pompey to me.’

  ‘Then maybe she was part of it. Not all of it.’

  ‘But why? And who with? The guy she works for, he’d tell me if she was in deep with the wrong guys. I might not get a name but he’d mark my card, I know he would. And those students she lived with, the one we talked to, the only bloke he’d ever seen come round for her was Finch. I just don’t think it stands up.’

  Willard was making more notes. When the billings came in on her mobile phone, he’d be better placed to make a judgement on her social life.

  ‘So what are you telling me?’ He was looking at Winter again.

  ‘I’m telling you she knows a lot more than she’s saying, and I’m telling you she’s shit-scared. You had surveillance on her place last night?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Just as well, because there has to be a reason she’s so frightened.’

  ‘Yeah, except no one turned up.’

  ‘Sure. Maybe they phoned. Maybe they sent a pigeon. I dunno. All I’m saying is she’s number one witness. So far.’

  Willard sat back, throwing the meeting open with a flip of his hand. He wanted people to debate this, to put Winter’s assumptions to the test. That’s the way you did it on Major Crime. That’s what teased sense out of chaos.

  There was a brief silence. Then Imber cleared his throat.

  I think Paul’s in the ballpark,’ he said. ‘We’ve been asking ourselves who’s showing for it and we’ve obviously got a list. Problem is, it’s a long list. But my money’s on a biggish name, someone with a reputation, and that’s where the problems start because none of those guys would bother with the likes of Finch.’