Angels Passing

by Hurley, Graham

  Faraday closed his eyes, trying to still his racing pulse, telling himself that he was OK, that he’d got away with it, then he began to step sideways, easing back from the void. He tracked the torch to the left, looking for the door that would take him back to the vestibule, and as he did so, he spotted a shape in the darkness. The torch was shaking in his hand. He couldn’t hold it steady. He was looking at a tent. It was a ridge tent, green, sagging, not big, and it was about a dozen paces away. He swallowed hard. Who, in his right mind, would camp out in a place like this?

  He crept towards it, pinning the tent with his torch, oblivious of the obstacles in between. More glass. More crunching. At last, clammy with sweat, he was there. The entrance lay at the upper end of the ramp, the two triangles of nylon loosely laced together. He squatted in front of it, pulling the flaps apart, shining the torch inside. There were two sleeping bags, both unrolled. An open biscuit tin contained three candles, a bag of sugar, two Snickers bars, three packets of cheese and onion crisps, and a two-litre bottle of something that looked like water. For a moment, taking in this strange tableau, he was reminded of scenes from the Antarctic. He’d happened across a tent in the middle of nowhere, a perfect time capsule, long abandoned, and it struck him that the questions it raised were just the same. What had happened to the people who’d lived here? Perched on the edge of the world? What had driven them to this appalling place?

  Clothes were bundled at the farther end and Faraday caught sight of an envelope propped against the tent pole. On his hands and knees, he crawled into the tent. The envelope was pink with a big ‘N’ scrawled across the front. Someone had already opened it and he could feel the card inside. Holding the torch under his chin, he slipped it out.

  It was a greeting card, embossed with a huge heart. ‘My darling,’ it read, ‘by the time you read this I’ll be waiting for you in that special place. Yours always. Helen.’

  Helen?

  Faraday read the message again and then checked the envelope. Helen Bassam. Niamat Tabibi. Couldn’t be. Had to be.

  His mind began to race, checking back, day by day, to that grey, chill, rain-lashed morning when he’d stood on top of Chuzzlewit House, peering down at the splay-limbed shape of Helen Bassam. Was this really her writing? Her card? Was this why she’d tipped herself into oblivion? Was there some pact here? Some bizarre agreement to step into another world, a better world, with a man she couldn’t have? Had the Afghan mused aloud about Islam, given her a taste for the afterlife?

  Another footfall, up towards the top of the ramp, unmistakable this time. Faraday froze, flicking off the torch. The sudden darkness crowded in on him, thick, oppressive, laden with menace. The footsteps were getting closer. They were deliberate. They knew exactly where they were heading. Someone heavy. Someone big. Faraday began to inch himself round in the tent, holding the torch ready, and as shapes slowly materialised from the blackness around him he saw a movement beyond the open flap. Someone was crouching down. A disc of white appeared.

  Faraday snapped on the torch, staring at the revealed face. For a second or two he refused to believe it. Then, as the long slender hands began to reach out for him, he knew it was true.

  He brought the torch up to his own face. The hands stopped. Then, in the spill of light from the torch, they signalled the old greeting.

  ‘Dad?’

  Faraday said nothing, and as the beam settled once again on J-J’s face at the open flap he heard another set of footsteps, much lighter, scuttling away.

  Twenty-one

  WEDNESDAY, 14 FEBRUARY, 15.00

  ‘It’s Valentine’s Day, boss. It means someone loves you.’

  Willard took the unsigned card and propped it on the window sill above his desk. The envelope had come in with a tray of coffees and the ripple of applause around the big conference table was a rare glimmer of light on an otherwise gloomy day.

  The arrest and interview stage of Bisley wasn’t going well. At Waterlooville and Fareham all three suspects had been invited to describe their movements on the Friday night of Bradley Finch’s death. This first stage of the interview process, dubbed ‘open account’, was designed to pin a suspect down to a sequence of events which could later be probed and challenged. Interviewed under caution, with everything tape-recorded, this initial version of events often flagged the path to a later confession, chiefly because it gave the two-man interview teams something to go on. If chummy was lying through his teeth, then a small army of DCs were out there waiting to tear his story to pieces.

  Yet it wasn’t happening. Both the Harris twins and Kenny Foster had stuck to their previous alibis. Terry had driven Mick up to the Plough around half seven in the evening. They’d played cards all night and got pissed. Next morning, they’d come home again. End of story. As for Foster, he’d been working out at Captain Beefy, and had a helpful little video to prove it. Afterwards, he’d gone back to Simone’s place and picked up where they’d left off.

  Open account had occupied the first session. After the comfort break, the interview teams had moved into the probe stage, looking for loopholes in the open account, but in all three cases they were hitting the same brick wall.

  ‘They’ve gone no comment?’ Willard was looking at Dave Michaels.

  ‘All three, boss. I’m not saying it’s a surprise but it’s certainly a problem. We’ve got nothing to hit them with. The blokes are running out of questions.’

  Willard turned to Brian Imber.

  ‘What about the phone billings?’

  Imber glanced down at his pad. The bids on the Harris brothers’ mobiles had only just gone in but the TIU in Winchester had faxed through the last two weeks on Kenny Foster’s mobe, and while the results were amusing, they didn’t shed much light on Bradley Finch.

  ‘Amusing?’

  ‘There’s one number crops up all the time, boss. The girl, Louise Abeka. He’s been phoning her virtually every hour. When she bothers to answer, the calls never last more than ten seconds so she’s obviously blowing him out. Wise move, too. Have you seen the video?’

  ‘But why is that amusing? If we can evidence some kind of obsession, we’re starting to talk motive.’ He glared down the table at Imber. ‘No?’

  ‘Maybe you’re right, sir.’ Imber shrugged, acutely uncomfortable. ‘My reading says he was trying to get into her knickers.’

  ‘Which ended up on Finch’s dead body.’

  ‘Of course, but …’ He shrugged. ‘OK, let’s say I’m right. Let’s say he really fancied her. What’s that got to do with Finch?’

  ‘Finch was shagging her. According to Paul Winter.’

  ‘Can he evidence that?’

  ‘No, of course he can’t. But that’s not the point, is it? If Foster thought the same, then Finch’s in the shit. Especially if he’s already pissed Foster off on a number of other issues.’ Willard paused, then softened slightly. ‘What about calls to Finch? On Foster’s phone?’

  ‘There aren’t any.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘None at all, sir. He talks to Terry Harris from time to time.’

  ‘Friday night?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Imber checked his pad again. ‘Two calls late afternoon.’

  ‘Duration?’

  ‘One long, eleven minutes. At 19.04. One short.’

  ‘Was the last one the short one?’

  ‘Yes, sir. 22.21. They talked for less than a minute.’

  ‘So where would that put Finch?’

  ‘Margate Road, with the girl. Pissed out of his head.’

  ‘With no one else in the house?’

  ‘Exactly. All three students were out.’

  ‘OK.’ Willard was warming up now. ‘Derek. Give me that forensic brief again.’

  The DI in charge of the SOCO teams went through the analysis on the first batch of forensic submissions. The news that the blood in Louise Abeka’s bathroom had tested positive for Bradley Finch raised a murmur around the table. Willard held his hands up, stilling the conversa
tion.

  ‘Early days,’ he said at once. ‘But it’s worth running this thing through. Kenny Foster wants to shag the girl Louise. He thinks Finch’s screwing it up for him and he’s pissed off with the boy anyway. Terry Harris feels the same. They decide to sort Finch out, give him a slapping. Something happens Friday afternoon to trigger all this. Maybe it’s Finch flogging the video camera. Fuck knows. They talk on the phone at … Brian?’

  Imber studied his pad again.

  ‘19.04, sir.’

  ‘Fine. They make some plans. Agree to meet.’ He paused, struck by a sudden thought.

  ‘What about Finch’s phone? We’ve got billings for that?’

  ‘Until the beginning of the previous week, sir. After that, the phone’s dead.’

  ‘You mean he’s not using it?’

  ‘Not that phone. They cut him off because he never paid the account. There were others before but they got cut off, too. He could have bought a pay-as-you-go and binned it but I think that’s unlikely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He had fuck all money. Until he sold the camera and bought the champagne.’

  ‘So there’s ten days when he had no phone at all?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘So assuming I’m there or thereabouts with Friday night, how did they know where to find Finch?’

  This time, Imber was smiling. He’d anticipated the question and had one finger anchored on the billing from the TIU.

  ‘Foster phoned the girl at 21.20. And again at 22.18.’

  ‘Did she answer?’

  ‘Both times.’ He ducked his head. ‘Just under a minute on the first call. Fifteen seconds on the second.’

  ‘Which was just before he phoned Harris for the second time?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No calls at all?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Not Saturday or Sunday?’

  ‘No, boss. Nor Monday, nor yesterday.’

  ‘Shit.’ Willard was baffled. ‘If Finch’s off the plot, he’d be all over her.’ He frowned. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

  Faraday stood in the pouring rain beside the cinema. It had taken ten minutes or so to pick his way out of the inky darkness, chiefly because he’d tripped over a length of cable and twisted his ankle. Only J-J’s supporting arm had brought him out intact.

  Now he leaned against the railings beside the yawning window, guarding the cinema’s only exit. What he needed, fast, was information. He gestured J-J closer.

  ‘Who else is in there?’ he signed.

  J-J was looking at the pub across the road. He’d quite like a coffee. Faraday asked the question again.

  ‘Kids,’ J-J signed back at last.

  ‘Which kids?’

  ‘The ones on the project. Anghared’s kids. Gordon’s kids.’

  ‘But which ones in particular?’

  J-J threw both hands up, an all-encompassing gesture. Could be any of them. Depends.

  Faraday shifted his weight against the railings and came at the conversation a different way.

  ‘That tent.’ He shaped it in the air. ‘Who lives there?’ J-J smiled at him. A different shape this time, tiny.

  ‘Little kid?’ Faraday queried. J-J nodded.

  ‘Name?’

  The smile faded, replaced by something closer to suspicion. Maybe there were confidentiality issues here. Should he really be having this kind of conversation with a policeman?

  Faraday was still waiting. He wanted a name. He put the question a second time and leaned very slowly forward when J-J shook his head.

  ‘Listen to me, son.’ Faraday tugged his own ear. ‘I don’t put you through this without a very good reason. A girl is dead. I need to know why.’ He reached inside his jacket and produced the pink envelope. ‘This card may have come from her. Again, I need to know why. The little fella in the tent may know. That’s why I need his name. You follow me?’

  J-J was thinking fast. Faraday recognised the symptoms – the refusal to make eye contact, the faintest hint of a frown. Finally, Faraday’s patience gave out.

  He reached across and gripped the top of J-J’s denim jacket. Then he shook the boy hard, before releasing him and signing the name, letter by letter.

  ‘D-o-o-d-i-e?’

  J-J was staring at his father. In twenty-three years, there’d never been anything like this, not once.

  ‘Well?’

  J-J blinked, then nodded, watching in bewilderment as Faraday turned away, fumbling inside his jacket for his mobile.

  ‘Cath?’ He wiped the rain from his face. ‘I need five bodies. Now.’

  It was nearly dark when Dawn Ellis gave Bev Yates a nudge. They were sitting in an unmarked Astra in a car park on the seafront with line of sight to the Travel Inn’s front entrance, waiting for Steve Pallister. So far, they’d phoned half a dozen registration plates back to Dave Michaels at the MIR but none had belonged to the landlord of the Plough. Until now.

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Blue Shogun. W 365 DKG.’

  There was a brief pause. The Shogun had parked on a double yellow outside the hotel.

  ‘Who’s driving?’ Dave again.

  Bev squinted through the gloom.

  ‘Big bloke. Leather jacket. He’s just gone into the hotel.’

  ‘OK. His name’s Steve Pallister. Take him on the way out and bring him down to Central. Arrest him if you have to.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Interfering with a potential witness.’

  Dave Michaels rang off and Yates turned to Ellis. Headroom on the Astra didn’t allow him to punch the air.

  ‘Result.’ He beamed. ‘Get your kickers on.’

  Outside the cinema, after fifteen minutes in the pouring rain, reinforcements finally arrived: two DCs toting heavy Dragonlite torches, quickly followed by Cathy Lamb. She appeared round the corner of the building, still zipping up her anorak. She must have been running because she was out of breath.

  Faraday, anchored with J-J beside the gaping window, wanted to know where the rest were. The cinema was a warren. Even five bodies probably wouldn’t be enough.

  ‘There’s a problem.’ Cathy fumbled with her hood. ‘The other two guys were with Hartigan. I phoned them on the mobe. He wanted to know what was going on and they told him.’

  ‘What were they doing with Hartigan?’

  ‘The run-in last week. Remember?’

  Faraday nodded. Two DCs on their way home had been stopped by a traffic car. They’d taken exception to hassle from the uniforms and had been hauled out and breathylised. They were both under the limit but the embarrassment of a public row on the kerbside had been quite enough for Hartigan.

  ‘So what’s he saying?’

  ‘Dunno, boss. But he wants a word before we get stuck in.’

  ‘At Fratton?’ Faraday couldn’t believe it.

  ‘No, boss. Here.’

  They waited in the rain. Faraday muttered his way through a rudimentary brief. There was a kid in there, Doodie, the ten-year-old. He was a registered Misper and intelligence put him on the roof of Chuzzlewit House the night the girl died. The two DCs, as wet as everyone else, registered polite interest, cupping their cigarettes against the swirling rain. Cathy made a series of calls on her mobile to sort out other crises. Finally, a small neat figure emerged from the gathering darkness. Under the striped golfing umbrella, Hartigan seemed to be unusually cheerful.

  ‘Joe,’ he said, ‘what on earth’s all this about?’

  Wearily, Faraday went through it all again. Hartigan’s eyes kept straying to the spintered boards in the gully beneath the window.

  ‘You went in there?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Without a hard hat? Or protective gear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you know the state of this place? It’s a condemned building, Joe. It’s structurally unsound.’

&nb
sp; ‘There are kids in there, sir. And they don’t have hard hats, either.’

  ‘So you tell me.’

  ‘It’s true. This is J-J, my son. He works with them.’

  Hartigan eyed J-J for a second or two, then turned back to Faraday.

  ‘There are Health and Safety implications here, Joe. I don’t have to spell it out, do I? Duty of care? Say our guys go in. Say one of them, two of them, get hurt. Where does that leave us when the shit hits the fan? We have a responsibility here, Joe, and it’s my job to exercise it.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Have you done a risk assessment, by any chance?’

  Risk assessment? Faraday closed his eyes a moment, fighting to control his temper. After six days, he’d finally cornered Doodie. After six days, he was finally minutes away from laying hands on a ten-year-old that no one else in the city could find. Not his mother. Not the welfare agencies. Not a couple of hundred policemen. The kid had vital information. Plus the kid needed a bit of care and attention. And here was Hartigan, neatly uniformed, warm and dry, talking about risk assessments.

  Faraday glanced at Cathy. She was staring straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes. The two DCs were transfixed. This conversation would be all over the city within hours.

  ‘So what do you suggest we do, sir?’ Faraday said at last.

  ‘Do, Joe? I suggest we take a deep breath and consider our options. Maybe the Fire Brigade. Maybe that’s the answer.’

  ‘They’ve just condemned the building. They’re hardly going to go back in.’

  ‘But we could ask them.’

  ‘Sure. Or maybe we could start a fire. Smoke the kid out.’

  One of the DCs tried to suppress a snort of laughter. Cathy silenced him with a look.

  ‘I’ll ignore that, Joe,’ Hartigan said. ‘Unless you’d like to apologise.’

  Faraday could feel the rain inside his collar. He shook his head, said nothing. Finally, Hartigan stepped forward and peered into the black hole beyond the gaping window frame.

  ‘There’s no way, Joe, absolutely no way. If this child is that important, I suggest we wait.’

  ‘Wait?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He was upright again under the umbrella. ‘Is this the only exit?’