Angels Passing

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘I really don’t want to talk about this any more,’ she said finally. ‘Don’t get me wrong but it’s just not …’ She frowned, lost for the right word.

  ‘Fair?’ Winter suggested.

  She began to colour, shaking her head, and then came the clatter of a diesel engine in the road outside and Maisie was on her feet and across to the window, peeping round the curtain.

  ‘Dad,’ she announced.

  Tosh Harris was still in his working gear. He stood in the open doorway in stained jeans and an old sweatshirt, a bulging tool bag in his right hand. His wife was on her feet as well, explaining about their surprise visitors. Detectives, she said quickly, wanting to ask about Friday night. I explained you were out early, round seven, back late. You remember?

  ‘Yeah …’ Harris nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  He was medium height, mid-thirties. The cropped hair was rapidly receding and he hadn’t shaved for at least a day. A small silver cross dangled from one ear and there were serpent’s head tattoos on the backs of both hands. His nails, Winter noted, were bitten to the quick. Wherever else this man belonged, it wasn’t here.

  ‘Do you mind, Mr Harris?’ Winter nodded at the chair his wife had vacated. ‘This needn’t take long.’

  Harris didn’t sit down. His daughter had vanished. He looked from one face to the other, totally unflustered, and Winter realised he’d been expecting this for days.

  ‘It’s about Bradley Finch,’ Winter began. ‘You’ll know he’s been murdered?’

  ‘I read about it, yeah.’

  ‘And he was a friend of yours? Is that right?’

  ‘We knocked about a bit, yeah.’

  ‘Work, was it? Or more a social thing?’

  ‘Both. He helped me with jobs sometimes, not that he was very clever with his hands. Then we’d have the odd drink, you know, like you do.’

  ‘And he’d come to the house?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So your wife knew him?’

  ‘Yeah, she met him a couple of times, yeah.’

  ‘So why didn’t she know he was dead?’

  ‘Dunno, mate. Ask her.’

  ‘That’s not my question, Mr Harris. I’m asking you why you never told her. The boy was a mate of yours. He’d been round here a bit. Then suddenly he’s dead. Not just dead but murdered. At twenty-one. That’s the kind of thing you’d mention to your wife, isn’t it?’

  ‘Slipped my mind, mate. Been busy.’ Winter gazed at him.

  ‘So what was he like? This Bradley?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Yes, as a person.’

  ‘He was …’ Harris frowned ‘… Bradley. That’s all you could say, really.’

  ‘You don’t sound very upset.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The boy getting killed like that.’

  For the first time, the question struck a spark. Harris took a step towards Winter.

  ‘Listen, you blokes barge into my house, and here I am, eight hours straight and not even time for a wash. It’s me should be asking the questions, not you. It’s my bloody house, in case you’d forgotten.’

  ‘Of course it is. And your wife was kind enough to invite us in. So here’s the deal. Either we talk here or we go down to Central. Up to you, Mr Harris. Your call.’

  Harris shrugged, back in control of himself, feigning indifference.

  ‘Why don’t you just get on with it?’ He yawned. ‘Then I can have my tea.’

  Winter returned to Friday night. His wife had already established that Harris had gone out. Now Winter wanted to know exactly where he’d been. Harris screwed his face into a frown. More play-acting. Finally he nodded.

  ‘Up Petersfield way. We went to a pub called the Plough.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Me and Mick. My brother.’

  ‘What time did you get there?’

  ‘Half seven? Eight? I wasn’t counting.’

  ‘Busy was it? The pub?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He nodded. ‘We were upstairs, though, me and Mick, up in Steve’s flat there. Steve’s the landlord. You know Steve Pallister? Used to have a pub in Portsea?’

  Winter ignored the question.

  ‘Why the flat?’ he enquired. ‘Why not the pub itself?’

  ‘Gets very crowded, Friday nights. We play cards – cribbage mostly – me, Mick and a couple of local lads. Steve comes up after closing time.’

  ‘These lads. You’ve got names?’

  ‘Course.’

  He offered two names. Sullivan wrote them both down. When Winter asked for phone numbers, Harris told him to give Steve Pallister a bell. He’d know for sure.

  ‘And your brother? Mick?’

  Harris said the number was in the book but Mick hadn’t paid his last two bills so the phone was still probably cut off.

  ‘Does he have a mobile?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’ve got the number?’

  Harris produced his own mobile and keyed his brother’s number. Sullivan wrote it down.

  ‘Address?’ he queried.

  ‘Windrush Road. Can’t remember the number. He’s away today.’

  ‘Anywhere nice?’

  ‘France. He goes over to Cherbourg with a few mates on them cheap trips. Always the same bars. Off their faces by five o’clock.’

  Mrs Harris appeared with a mug of tea. Harris reached for it, avoiding her gaze. She didn’t ask whether Winter and Sullivan fancied a drink, returning at once to the kitchen.

  ‘So what time did you get back here? Friday night?’

  ‘We didn’t. Amount we’d put away, you wouldn’t. Couldn’t, more like.’ He frowned, then called through to his wife. ‘Eight o’clock, was it, love? Saturday morning?’ He looked at Winter again, giving him a conspiratorial wink. They’d stayed over at Steve’s place, kipping on the floor, and set off early Saturday morning because Mick had to be back.

  ‘And Steve was there?’

  ‘Course he was.’

  ‘And the other two lads?’

  ‘Went home. Both local.’

  Winter nodded, checked with Sullivan that he had it all, then stood up. Harris, holding his tea, looked astonished.

  ‘That it then?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. We’ll give you a ring if anything comes up on Bradley. What’s your number?’

  Harris hesitated a moment before giving him a mobile number, and then watched them leave. Winter called goodbye to his wife along the little hall but she didn’t reply. Back in the car he looked up at the house, catching the child’s face at an upstairs window. He gave her a little wave, then told Sullivan to get going.

  ‘Guilty as fuck,’ he said.

  ‘What about the alibi?’

  ‘Phoney.’ He glanced across at Sullivan. ‘You’re a Petersfield lad. Know this pub, do you? The Plough?’

  ‘Not personally, but I can make some enquiries.’

  ‘Do that. I’ll get Brian Imber to sort out the mobes. It’s always the billing that shafts scum like Harris.’ Winter grinned in the darkness of the car. ‘What a twat.’

  Willard called a squad meeting for eight o’clock. He’d listened to Winter’s account of the interview with Harris and he agreed that the alibi sounded dodgy. The video camera put Harris alongside Bradley Finch, and the sequences on the tape argued that the double glazer was into violence as well as burglary. Willard would have preferred more time to prepare for the custody interviews but events had forced his hand. Unless he moved fast, precious forensic evidence might be lost.

  He’d already told Sammy Rollins to sort out overnight surveillance on Harris’s Stamshaw house. Now they had to plan the next stage.

  ‘Early doors,’ he grunted. ‘Harris, his brother and Kenny Foster.’

  Heads nodded round the incident room. ‘Early doors’ was CID-speak for dawn arrests. Under the PACE rules, Willard could hold a suspect for twenty-four hours. Application to a uniformed Superintendent would extend the custody period
to thirty-six hours. An arrest at, say, seven o’clock in the morning would therefore give him two full days in the interview rooms. If push came to shove, he could go to the magistrates and ask for yet another extension, and experience told him that might well be necessary. So far, they had precious little to throw at any of the three men. Only by getting bodies out on the ground and giving the alibis a good shake while the suspects were still in custody would they start to make progress.

  Dave Michaels would be organising the arrests. Willard wanted each of the three men taken to different police stations elsewhere in the county. At least a couple of hours would be occupied by the police surgeon taking DNA samples and the lawyers getting their acts together, and Willard didn’t anticipate the interview teams sitting down to business until late morning. That gave him a fighting chance to get the TIAs up to speed. He’d already asked Sammy Rollins to appoint three Tactical Interview Advisers, all DCs, and these would be charged with sorting out intelligence briefs from Brian Imber’s cell. They’d monitor the interviews from adjoining rooms, offering a touch on the tiller during the compulsory comfort breaks.

  ‘Forensic, sir?’

  It was the DI responsible for the SOCO teams. Willard nodded. He wanted full forensic on all three addresses, special attention to Harris’s address and Kenny Foster’s garage. They were looking for signs of a struggle, mopped-up bloodstains, hidden weapons, discarded clothing – anything that could connect the properties with events on Friday night. Washing machines were to be seized, drain traps taken apart, surfaces dusted for prints, carpets and furniture taped, floorboards lifted, gardens turned over and motor vehicles given a thorough seeing-to. People like the Harris brothers often had lockup garages. These, if they existed, were to be located and searched.

  ‘What about Mrs Harris and the kid?’

  Willard acknowledged Winter’s query. In situations like this, you had to find somewhere for Harris’s wife and daughter to go. No way would they be permitted to stay, not with the property sanitised for the SOCO team.

  ‘Travel Inn, Sammy?’

  Rollins nodded. The Travel Inn was a new hotel on the seafront and the MIR had opened an account to lodge potential witnesses. With Harris under arrest, mother and child would be swifted off for an early breakfast.

  ‘But I want her interviewed,’ Willard added. ‘Not the child, just the mum.’

  Rollins made a note while Willard returned to Dave Michaels. The next two days might well be make or break for Bisley. There were never enough bodies on the ground to satisfy Willard but it was up to himself and the management team to squeeze the available resource as hard as they could.

  Willard had propped himself against a desk. Now he eyeballed the faces around the room, and Winter prepared himself for the pre-match team talk. This was the moment when guvnors like Willard let themselves go, and if they were any good, then the message was always broadly the same. Get out there amongst the bad guys. Work your fucking socks off. But whatever you do, whoever you’re talking to, make sure you can prove it, and make sure it stays proved. Every inquiry’s a chess game. Every move you have to anticipate and counter. So think elegant. Think alternatives. And above all think court. We’re not here to fanny around with hunches; we’re here to lock the bad guys up. And the way we do that is by being miles ahead, light years ahead, of any smart fucker who wants to stand in our way.

  The latter phrase brought a smile to Winter’s face. Willard had a knack for sending messages in the plainest possible terms. His massive body was hunched, classic prop forward, and his voice was low but you had to be deaf as well as blind not to get the gist. If justice was a game of rugby then Willard was only interested in a thrashing. He wanted big points on the board. He’d enjoy the major piss-up afterwards. But at this point in time, if anyone dropped the ball, they were history.

  ‘OK?’ He dared anyone to say a word. No one did. ‘Go to it then. And good luck tomorrow.’

  Two hours later, Faraday managed to drag Brian Imber out for a curry. The Intelligence Cell were still hard at work preparing briefs for the interview teams but Imber himself was exhausted. Just now a change of subject would be more than welcome, and if Faraday wanted to talk about an infant tearaway called Doodie, then so be it.

  As it happened, Imber had actually met Doodie only six months before. He’d gone looking for his mother’s current partner on a smack inquiry and ended up in the flat at Raglan House. Doodie, for once, had been at home.

  ‘So what was he like?’

  They were sitting in a Bengali restaurant barely five minutes’ walk from Kingston Crescent. They’d known each other for years, ever since J-J had made an unsuccessful bid to turn out for the colts rugby team Imber used to run, and the friendship had survived.

  ‘Small, thin, shaven-headed, pale, stud in one ear.’ Imber picked at the remains of his chicken bhuna. ‘He’s one of those kids who comes at you at a thousand miles an hour. You ever meet his mother?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then you’ve got the whole story. Kid never stood a chance. Not that he isn’t bright.’

  ‘So where do I find him?’

  ‘Find him?’ Imber smiled wearily, pushing the plate away. He hadn’t gone into details about his day at the Yard but Faraday could tell that he wasn’t the only one battling against the current. ‘The problem with these kids is they have a city of their own. You and me think we know Pompey. We think we’ve got the place sussed. But we’re wrong. You want to find someone like this Doodie and you’ve got to get inside his little head. He knows all the short cuts, all the safe places, all the properties empty and up for sale, all the offices with dodgy windows and knackered locks, all the buildings with scaffolding round them, all those little corners where he can get his head down without being rolled. They’re cluey, these kids, they really are, and they have to be, otherwise they wouldn’t make it.’

  ‘How do they eat?’ It seemed, to Faraday, a reasonable enough question.

  ‘Some of it’s nicked. Some of it they buy. You see them in pub gardens in the summer. They go round asking for sweet money. It’s begging really but if you’ve had a few pints you don’t begrudge the odd fifty pence. Then there’s the nastier side of it. You and me know life’s a market, and so do the kids. You’ve got a nice arse, you don’t mind helping out with a bit of wrist shandy, you’re on an earner. There are blokes in this city will pay good money for personal services.’

  ‘You’re telling me Doodie’s on the game?’

  ‘I’m telling you it happens.’

  ‘Of course it does, but at ten?’

  ‘Ten would make him unusual, sure, but …’ Imber shrugged ‘… fuck knows.’

  For the first time it occurred to Faraday that he owed Doodie a duty of arrest. Not for society’s sake, but for his own.

  Imber wasn’t having it.

  ‘So what? Say you’re right? Say you catch a kid like Doodie? Say you nick him for shoplifting, or vandalism, or whatever else he’s up to? What happens then? If these kids are old enough they’re marched off to court but in the end they’re going to be in the hands of the social workers. They’re going to be listened to, and interviewed, and assessed to death. Don’t get me wrong, Joe. Frankly, I don’t know what the fuck else you do. But the fact is most of these social workers are clueless. They’re straight out of university. They’ve talked the talk, they’ve read the books, and they’re falling over backwards to be these kids’ friends. That’s great but you’ve got to know who you’re dealing with. These are kids from the tower blocks, fifth-generation unemployed, multiple stepfathers, mothers on the piss, the full Monty. They take one look at these new buddies of theirs and they know they’re on Easy Street. These kids are practically feral, Joe. They’re animals, tough as fuck, and what’s more they don’t care any more. This Doodie’s not alone. There are dozens of them out there. We give them all the guff about society and citizenship and taking responsibility for yourself but they’re just not interested. They’ve sussed u
s. They know society’s all bollocks. They’re out there on their own and that’s the way they want to stay. Can you blame them?’

  Faraday, for a moment or two, was robbed of an answer. Over the years he’d never heard anything like this from Brian Imber. He could be passionate, like a number of other CID specialists charged with keeping their ears to the ground, but there was something extra here, something that must have happened over the last couple of years since their last conversation. The man wasn’t just angry. He was swamped.

  Faraday watched him swallow the remains of his lager.

  ‘You think we’ve lost the plot?’

  ‘I fucking know it. And so do you. And so does anyone with half a brain in this city. Blaming the kids is the easy bit. Try working out where it all went wrong. And then try sleeping at night.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, Joe. I love my kids. But I tell you something else. If I was starting all over again, I’d have the chop.’

  Imber nodded, then made a graphic downward gesture with his open hand towards his lap, scissoring two fingers. He gestured Faraday closer. A decade of Margaret Thatcher might have seemed a good idea at the time but read the kind of street intelligence that went over his desk daily, and you’d start wondering what the Brits had signed up to. Thatcherism had long survived the Iron Lady. Indeed, in many respects life had become even more brutal.

  Faraday gazed at him. Exhaustion could do this to you, he thought, and so could clinical depression. Yet he’d never had Imber down as a depressive. On the contrary, he’d rarely come across anyone with such a ready appetite for life. Maybe that was it. Maybe, if you pushed your body hard, if you ran all those miles, you knew what was possible for anyone willing to make the effort.

  ‘So what’s made the difference? Are we talking drugs?’

  ‘That’s part of it, certainly.’

  Imber signalled the waiter for more lager and then bent towards the table again. The mention of drugs had lit another fuse. The narco biz, in Imber’s view, was capitalism in the raw. The mark-ups were huge, the client base was ever expanding, and you didn’t have to invest one penny in advertising because word of mouth and the chemicals themselves would do the selling for you.