Angels Passing

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Registration?’

  ‘Birmingham address. We’re still trying to get someone round there.’

  Louise had now been missing for nearly a day. She hadn’t turned up at Margate Road and there were no other obvious places to start looking within the city. The students she shared with were clueless about her movements and, after them, the leads ran out.

  ‘Does she have relatives here?’

  ‘In London. Her uncle’s a diplomat at the Nigerian Embassy. Says he hasn’t heard a peep for weeks.’

  ‘So what’s happened to her?’

  ‘Fuck knows. My money’s on a mate giving her a lift in the Metro. After that, it’s anyone’s guess. She sat an exam yesterday; we checked with the university. If she’s got any sense, she’ll have left town by now.’

  Dave Michaels sounded genuinely concerned. He’d been through her statement a number of times and he agreed with Winter that the girl was completely out of her depth. Something had happened, something she didn’t want to talk about, and Portsmouth was now the last place she wanted to be.

  Winter nodded.

  ‘What about Willard?’ he asked. ‘What’s his take on her?’

  ‘He’s still kicking the furniture about the surveillance. Thank God he’s out for the morning.’

  He began to explain about the vehicle fire in the chalk pit. Sullivan stirred again. He’d lived up in Petersfield all his life. As a kid, he used to ride his bike in the woods round Butser Hill.

  ‘Where did you say it was, this chalk pit?’

  ‘Up past Rowland’s Castle. Way out in the country.’

  ‘Off Huckswood Lane?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue, son. Help yourself. Here.’

  Michaels turned to his computer and called up a map of the area from the central database. The map was Ordnance Survey standard and Sullivan peered at it over Michaels’s shoulder. At length he reached forward, tracing the line of a track running east from a small country road.

  ‘Here? This one?’

  Michaels nodded. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ Sullivan’s finger crept along the track beyond the chalk pit. Within a couple of miles it came to a cluster of houses built around a junction. ‘That’s Compton,’ he announced. ‘Where the house got screwed.’

  Seventeen

  TUESDAY, 13 FEBRUARY, 14.00

  Faraday sat at the long polished table, waiting for Hartigan to return from the loo. The uniformed Superintendent had chosen this afternoon to insist on a meeting on Faraday’s turf and – as ever – he’d expressed a preference to confer in the panelled grandeur of the first-floor boardroom.

  Highland Road police station had once been the headquarters of the local bus company, and the architects doing the conversion had suggested keeping as many of the building’s original features as possible. The work had cost a fortune, emptying the force’s refurb budget for the best part of an entire year, but Highland Road nick had become the gem in Hampshire Constabulary’s crown, conclusive proof that policemen could be trusted with the best in urban heritage. Faraday had always loathed the room. It spoke of self-importance and hot air. But Hartigan, to no one’s surprise, thought it was wonderful.

  On this occasion, as on many others, he’d brought his management assistant along. Annabelle was a pleasant, good-looking divorcee in her early forties. You had to be bright to keep on top of a job like that but the rumour that she was screwing Hartigan after hours put a big fat question mark against her judgement, if not her taste. Given Hartigan’s mania for paperwork and audit trails, she was probably required to keep minutes on their little trysts.

  Annabelle wanted to know about Joyce, Faraday’s own management assistant. She’d been off for nearly a week now, undergoing a series of medical tests. There were suspicions of a bowel tumour but she’d sworn Faraday to silence, telling him to blame it on something else.

  ‘She’s down with flu,’ he said. ‘Lots of it around.’

  ‘You’ve got a temp in?’

  ‘Yeah. Clueless.’

  Hartigan appeared at the door, as neatly brisk as ever. He treated these excursions like a state visit, adopting a slightly imperial air, and Faraday often wondered when he’d start asking about the welfare of the natives. The troops on duty, though, largely ignored him. People like Hartigan were ships in the night, sweeping through to grander jobs.

  ‘Now then.’ Hartigan settled himself at the head of the table. ‘“Investigating Burglary”. How’s the PID coming along?’

  Faraday looked down at the notes he’d scribbled half an hour earlier. None of it made very much sense and he’d got as far as a particularly persistent break-in artist honing his skills on student bedsits in Southsea when Hartigan interrupted. He didn’t, after all, want to talk about MO patterns or the constant possibility of insurance fraud. Instead, he had another agenda.

  ‘Listen.’ He slid his leather-bound folder to one side. ‘I suspect I may have some good news for you.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The Crime and Disorder Partnership have just got themselves a hefty whack of Treasury money. The scheme’s rolling out nationwide but you know how much we’re talking about in this city? £130,000.’ He nodded. ‘Big bucks.’

  Faraday glanced at Annabelle. She’d made a point of abandoning her shorthand.

  Hartigan beckoned Faraday closer. Elsewhere in the county, he said, divisions were bidding for thirty per cent of cash from their own partnerships but Hartigan had more ambitious plans. In his view, the lion’s share of the £130,000 should properly be at his disposal, ninety-five per cent at least. It would buy a couple of cars for the pro-active drugs unit and pay the kind of overtime necessary to get a handle on the bigger dealers. With careful budgeting, the small change might even cover a decent buy-and-bust operation from the Covert Ops unit. In principle, the chair of the local partnership was in total agreement with his plans. All Hartigan needed now was support from the Co-ordinator of the Drugs Action Team. In other divisions, the Treasury money was going to half-arsed warden schemes, fannying around with confirmed junkies. Only in Portsmouth were the likes of Hartigan prepared to tackle the drugs menace head-on.

  ‘So … what do you think?’

  Faraday smiled. The money would buy a great deal more than a couple of Astras and some serious undercover work. Grab the thick end of £130,000 and, in the cash-strapped world of policing, Hartigan would earn himself serious brownie points.

  ‘I think it’s very interesting,’ Faraday said. ‘And I wish you luck.’

  ‘Luck doesn’t come into it, Joe. Talk to the funding people the way I have to and you realise that luck is the last thing you should rely on. No.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s all about changing perceptions, about appealing to hearts and minds. There’s an important case to be put in front of the public and I’m determined that we shall be the ones to make it.’

  The ‘we’ sounded ominous.

  ‘What exactly do you mean, sir?’

  ‘I’m talking about the kind of anarchy that comes with drugs, Joe. Everyone knows the city is awash with narcotics. It’s been happening for years. In fact it’s been happening for so long that it takes something pretty special to make people stop and think. We have to find that special story, that focus. And then we have to beat the drum.’

  ‘Beat the drum how?’

  ‘By compelling attention. By making friends that matter. By throwing down the gauntlet to one or two of our political colleagues.’

  ‘Political colleagues’ was code for the small army of local councillors that Hartigan liked to marshal behind his constant stream of policing initiatives. Of all the senior officers Faraday had ever met, this one had the keenest nose for political advantage.

  ‘You agree, Joe?’

  Faraday was beginning to lose the plot. Of course he acknowledged the social consequences of drug abuse but he was a policeman, a detective. Didn’t evidence play a role here?

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  Hartigan dis
missed his hesitations.

  ‘I’ve been talking to the CIMU,’ he said.

  ‘About what, sir?’

  ‘That young lass, Helen Bassam. The girl who went off the flats last week.’

  Faraday stiffened. This, at last, was what Hartigan really wanted to discuss. Merry Devlin had been right. In the shape of Helen Bassam’s young body, Hartigan had found the headline of his dreams.

  ‘She was probably using. Isn’t that what we hear?’

  ‘It’s possible. The tox should be back by the end of the week.’

  ‘But you’re making enquiries? Regardless?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘And?’

  It was a direct challenge. Faraday was thinking about Misty Gallagher and her daughter Trudy. In these situations, the last thing you did was part with hard information.

  ‘It’s ongoing, sir. We’re developing leads, some of them quite promising.’

  ‘And what do these leads tell you, Joe?’

  ‘They suggest the girl might well have had contact with drugs.’

  ‘You mean using?’

  ‘I mean contact.’

  ‘What kind of drugs?’

  ‘That’s yet to be determined, sir.’

  He paused, alarmed by the short cuts Hartigan seemed determined to take. If his uniformed boss was prepared to risk his reputation, so be it, but Faraday wanted nothing to do with this dangerous blurring of fact and supposition.

  He looked Hartigan in the eye.

  ‘I understand you had a conversation with the girl’s father, Derek Bassam.’

  Hartigan stared at him for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And he talked about drugs? In connection with Helen?’

  ‘He did. Hence my interest.’

  ‘But you didn’t think to let me know? Pass the intelligence on down the line?’

  ‘The conversation was in confidence, Joe. I had to respect that. What I also said, of course, was that Bassam should talk to you, as SIO. I take it he did.’

  Faraday nodded, struck by another thought.

  ‘You didn’t give him my phone number by any chance? And my address?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. Why on earth would I do that?’

  The denial wasn’t altogether convincing, and Hartigan knew it too. He leaned forward across the table, keen to return to this new crusade of his.

  ‘It’s a question of linkage, Joe. If the girl was up to mischief on Friday night, if we can put her on the top of those flats with a head full of God knows what, then so much the better. It’s a wretched, wretched thing to happen. Frankly, it’s a tragedy. But out of disaster, Joe, steps triumph. We have to turn a death like that to some kind of account. You agree?’

  Faraday shook his head.

  ‘No, sir. I’m not sure I do.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘Because it’s not evidenced. Not as far as the girl’s concerned.’

  ‘Of course it’s not. But supposing it was evidenced? What then?’

  I still think it stinks.’

  ‘Stinks?’ He rocked back into his chair, affronted.

  ‘Yes, sir. You’re suggesting we publicise it? Issue some kind of public statement?’

  ‘I’m suggesting we give the girl’s story the currency it deserves; assuming she was on drugs.’

  ‘And Mrs Bassam? The girl’s mother?’

  ‘She’d have a point of view, naturally. In fact I imagine she might well be onside. Remember Leah Betts? How positive her parents have been ever since?’

  Faraday remembered only too well. Whether or not Jane Bassam was prepared to spend the next decade reliving her own failure as a mother was, at the very least, debatable.

  ‘We have a duty of care here, sir.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And I’m not sure we discharge it by putting Jane Bassam through the mill.’

  ‘Mill? What mill?’

  ‘Publicity? Press? Television? Isn’t that the way you spread bad news?’

  For the first time, Hartigan hesitated. In situations like these, sniffing the wind, he had an almost animal instinct for trouble.

  ‘You’re suggesting I might have been in touch with our media friends?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that’s the shortest cut to the kind of audience you want.’

  ‘Without proper evidence?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, sir.’

  ‘Of course you don’t.’ He glared at Faraday and then leaned across and tapped Annabelle’s notebook. ‘DI Faraday and Superintendent Hartigan discussed strategies for developing the new city-wide drugs initiative. They agreed to suspend discussion pending fresh information.’ He watched Annabelle minuting the point, then reopened his folder and shook out the headquarters correspondence on ‘Investigating Burglary’. ‘Now then, Joe,’ he muttered, ‘where were we?’

  Sullivan knew the way to the garage by heart. Winter sat beside him, relishing the prospect of the next half-hour. Purged by his penance with the CCTV tapes, Winter was back at the inquiry’s leading edge, actioned to further develop Sullivan’s initial encounter with Kenny Foster. Not only was Winter beginning to enjoy Operation Bisley but he’d twice made the point of telling Sullivan so. ‘Classic’ was the word he’d used, a gem of a job that the boy should take care to treasure. Just imagining himself missing even a day of this kind of fun caused Winter real grief. Never had a fortnight in Albufeira seemed a worse idea.

  Frogmore Motors lay on waste ground in the shadow of the new stand at Fratton Park, home to the city’s football team. Three lock-ups had been knocked into a unit big enough to work on a couple of cars. According to Sullivan, it was rare to find any vehicle later than an M-reg in there, and rarer still to catch Kenny Foster with a smile on his face.

  Today was no exception As they bumped to a halt outside the garage, Foster was standing in the thin sunshine kneading Swarfega between his calloused fingers. Under the circumstances, Winter didn’t bother with a handshake.

  ‘Mr Foster?’

  Foster was looking at Sullivan. His least favourite occupation was meeting detectives for the second time.

  ‘Not in the gym then, pal?’

  ‘Too busy.’

  ‘You want to be careful.’ Foster nodded at the unmarked Escort. ‘Riding around in a motor all day, you’ll be fat as a house.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Know so. That ab machine sorts you out just fine.’

  ‘So we noticed.’

  ‘Yeah?’ His face at last creased into a grin. ‘All right, wasn’t it?’

  The Scots accent took Winter by surprise. He’d had Foster down as a local. He stepped into the garage, leaving Sullivan to it. Chains hung from a steel beam set beneath the corrugated metal roof and the concrete floor felt uneven and greasy underfoot. Buttoning his coat against the sudden chill, he took a closer look.

  Two cars sat side by side, same-model Datsuns. One was missing a back door and the other had been in a sizeable shunt. Cut both in half, stick the good halves together with a welding torch, sort yourself out a bent MOT, and you were looking at a respectable profit.

  Winter squeezed between the two cars, kicking aside debris on the floor. In the semi-darkness at the very back of the unit, squeezed into a corner, was an ancient wooden table piled high with bits and pieces from an engine. One of the legs was chocked with an oil-stained copy of Yellow Pages, and a small, squat pit bull was roped to another. It sat on its haunches, staring up at Winter, straining against the spiked leather collar.

  ‘Name’s Eddi. With an “i”.’

  Winter spun round. Foster moved like a panther, balls of his feet. He hadn’t heard a thing.

  ‘Yours, is he?’

  ‘She. Treat them right, they’re more vicious than the males. Careful, or she’ll have you.’

  ‘Why Eddi?’

  ‘Eddi Reader, pal. Voice of an angel. Tell me something, will you? How would a voice like that come out of a dump like Glasg
ow?’

  Winter shrugged. He hadn’t a clue. He was here on a murder inquiry. As Foster might have gathered.

  ‘My pleasure, pal. Your friend out there, he told me the very same thing. So how can I help you?’

  Foster’s smile revealed three missing teeth. Maybe the bare-knuckle game wasn’t as risk-free as it seemed, Winter thought. Maybe there were moments when the other guy landed a punch or two of his own before Foster beat him senseless.

  ‘We’ve seized a camera …’ Winter began.

  He described the video sequences on the Sony’s mini-tape. Maybe Foster could help them with a bit of post-fight analysis.

  ‘Not my style, pal.’ He bunched an enormous fist and shook it at the dog. ‘These do the talking.’

  ‘Do you perform for money, as a matter of interest?’

  ‘Pleasure.’ The dog was cowering under the table. ‘How was I? On a scale of ten?’

  ‘Eight. The second bloke caught you a couple of times.’

  ‘Paid though, didn’t he? Taking the piss like that?’ He glanced up at Winter, checking he had the right opponent. ‘Big guy? Bit of a gut. Scummer tat up here?’ He touched the outside of his upper arm.

  Winter nodded. ‘Scummer’ was Pompey-speak for anyone unlucky enough to come from neighbouring Southampton. Twenty miles, in Portsmouth terms, was all that separated decent people from the Antichrist.

  ‘I battered him good, din I?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Din come round for quite a while.’

  ‘If at all.’

  ‘Och, you’re joking. He was out of there and in the pub within the hour. I should know. I was fucking buying.’

  ‘These are friends of yours?’

  ‘Fuck, no. But you beat the shit out of a man, the least you owe him is a wee drink.’

  Winter turned away. It was hard not to think of the lolling head in the first of the Scenes of Crime photographs, Bradley Finch’s skinny body dangling on the end of a rope. Had the beating started here? In this garage? Or had Kenny Foster taken his time and his pleasure elsewhere? Back at the MIR, he’d recommend full forensic on the garage – maybe a strand or two of matching nylon rope, maybe a hit on the dirt under Finch’s fingernails – but for now he was still interested in the contents of the mini-tape.