Angels Passing

by Hurley, Graham

  He was a detective, for Christ’s sake. Every working day, he dealt in the currency of deceit. He’d spent half a lifetime learning to recognise the difference between right and wrong, between a lie and the truth, between fiction and reality, and he had a long tally of successful clear-ups to suggest he knew his trade. Yet a year in this glorious woman’s company and he’d never once suspected the depth of her deception.

  The signs, he now realised, had been there all the time. It had taken her several months to reveal the fact that she was married and he remembered the circumstances only too well. He’d had a breakthrough on the Gunwharf job. He was excited. He’d phoned her from the car to share the news, catching her at home. She’d sounded nervy, breathless. There were other voices in the background and she’d whispered an apology for having to call him back later. My bloody husband, she’d muttered. He’s back home early.

  My bloody husband?

  Faraday had been astonished. Husband and kids – a whole ménage – had never formed part of the Marta he knew. But the next time they’d met she’d glossed it all over, the way she always did, burying the awkwardness of real life beneath another brilliant evening. Because it was easier and because he loved her, Faraday had done his best to put it all to one side, to accept that he occupied only one compartment in her busy, busy life, and in a way he’d made a kind of peace with his guilt. Making love to Marta had seemed less and less like theft. Until now, when – with a single phrase – she turned this strange, dizzying relationship on its head. Not the robber any more. But the robbed.

  Maybe he’d deserved it. Maybe the fact that he’d happily gone on screwing her, believing that she really was married, had piled up this savage retribution. Maybe he’d been set a test and failed it. Maybe there really was a God, a keeper of accounts, and it was Faraday’s turn for a slapping. But this, he knew, was nonsense.

  Why had she taken over his life and filled it with such sweet laughter? What had she really been thinking, the nights they’d lain next door in his bedroom? What kind of woman, what kind of human being, played games this elaborate, this cruel? Was it a control thing? A need to keep him a door or two away from the very middle of her? Or was it something infinitely simpler, a device to enable her to terminate the relationship at a time and place of her own choosing?

  He suddenly thought of the message she’d shown him, the one her husband had allegedly left. No wonder it had been typed. By using a laptop, she’d sidestepped the problem of having to fake his handwriting. Clever.

  The image of her in the dressing gown returned yet again. It was far too big. It belonged to a man. Had he been upstairs, waiting for her to step out of the bath? Was it his turn next for the beautifully lit showroom that was Marta’s love life? Had he, in short, been swopped for a newer model?

  As the study began to fill with light, Faraday rubbed his face and peered down at his watch. The more the questions piled up, the less real the whole experience seemed, and in some dimly understood way he realised that this very process, this relentless picking at the scab, might offer a kind of deliverance. The best year of his life had turned out to be a fantasy. From now on, like the half-arsed detective he saw in the shaving mirror every morning, it might be wise to take a harder look at the rules of evidence.

  You’ll have to start all over again, he thought. Assuming nothing.

  Willard convened a squad meeting for nine o’clock. He’d known from the off that circumstances had forced his hand with Foster and the Harris twins but he hadn’t expected the cupboard to be quite so bare when it came to arrest and interview.

  Kenny Foster had been released at seven the previous evening, blowing the Custody Sergeant a farewell kiss, and the Harris twins – in all probability – would be out by lunch time. Possession of the video camera had been enough to have Terry Harris formally charged with handling, while Mick faced a separate Customs and Excise action over the illegal importation of tobacco and alcohol, but on neither count were there grounds for refusing police bail. For the time being, as far as Operation Bisley was concerned, they were free men.

  Willard surveyed the faces around the incident room. He wanted to make it plain that this wasn’t about blame, because blame would indicate some kind of failure. No, this was about consolidation, about analysis, about pausing to review and regroup. Resources, sadly, weren’t unlimited. Some of the squad would be returning to division. But Willard wanted to say here and now that they’d found the bit of the jungle that mattered and they’d given the right trees a good shake. Speaking personally, he had absolutely no doubt that the Harris twins and Kenny Foster were implicated one way or another in Finch’s death. Their alibis, in his view, were plainly rehearsed, and over the coming weeks he and the rest of the reduced squad would be making it their business to screw down every particle of evidence.

  Forensically, it was still early days. They were still awaiting full analysis on the burned-out Fiat. He had every faith that items from Foster’s garage – stuff off the floor – would prove a match for the wound in Finch’s foot. Likewise, there were indications of bloodstained fibres in the filter from Mrs Harris’s washing machine. Brian Imber and the Intelligence Cell were beginning to build an interesting story from the first tranche of telephone billings, and cell-site analysis might well drive a horse and cart through the Friday night alibis.

  Without any question, all was far from lost – unless, unthinkably, the men and women in this room had lost their appetite for putting away the kind of animals responsible for a crime like this. The full post-mortem report had made it clear that Bradley Finch had taken a savage beating before being dragged up Hilsea Lines. When the noose was slipped around his neck, he was very probably still conscious and it was only too likely that they’d taunted him further before kicking away the plastic crate. No one was trying to pretend that the boy had been an angel but as far as Willard was concerned, episodes like this were unacceptable. Bisley, in short, had only just begun.

  Winter nodded in approval. Willard, he’d concluded, talked a good war, and if you found yourself working for the robber barons on Major Crime then it was comforting to have someone that stubborn and that single-minded in charge. The stuff about cell-site analysis was especially interesting. These days, given enough time to access the records, technology allowed you to identify precise locations for individual calls. Had the Harris twins been using their mobiles on Friday night, Imber’s boys could plot their movements with amazing accuracy.

  The squad meeting over, Dave Michaels beckoned Winter and Sullivan into his office. Willard, he said, was going back to first base. That meant developing the Thursday night phone call on Winter’s mobile, the one from Bradley Finch that had warned of a break-in at Brennan’s. Ray Brennan had now supplied a list of current staff. None of them had previous but a CIMU clerk with a memory for names had checked the database and discovered that one lad – Lee Marchant – had been stop-checked a couple of weeks before by a traffic crew on the M27. There’d been another bloke in the passenger seat, who’d given his name as Claridge, but the patrol officer had been contacted and after a good look at the mugshot, thought it possible that he might have been Bradley Finch. He was certainly wearing black. And he was certainly extremely extremely pissed.

  Winter wrote down the name.

  ‘He’s still at Brennan’s?’

  ‘Yeah, and expecting a call.’

  Winter handed the name to Sullivan.

  ‘Does this mean we’re still on the squad?’

  ‘Depends whether you fucking behave yourself.’ Michaels reached for the phone, waving them out of the office.

  Out in the corridor Winter ran into Phil Paget, a DC from Cosham who’d been part of the team tasked with interviewing Mick Harris. Unlike Winter, Paget was en route back to division.

  ‘What’s with this Mick Harris then?’ Winter was steering him down the corridor towards the kitchenette.

  ‘Guilty as fuck.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Me,
mate. The bloke’s as thick as bricks. Take the brief away and we’d have been through by lunch time.’

  The kitchenette, for once, was empty. Sullivan seemed to have disappeared. Winter began to sort out two Gold Blends. He’d known Phil Paget since his days as a probationer. They’d hunted together on a number of famous occasions and had the scalps to prove it. Lately, Phil had remarried and his new wife seemed to have squeezed the juice out of him.

  ‘Are they close? Mick and his brother?’

  ‘Listen to Mick and you’d say yes. I don’t know about the other one, Terry. The blokes interviewing him up at Waterlooville said he was a horrible bastard, but clever. Mick’s not like that at all. Big bloke, fat, couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, know what I mean? Loyal as you like though. Do anything for Mr Nasty.’

  ‘Mr Nasty?’

  ‘Terry. Tosh. Whatever the fuck his name is.’

  Sullivan had appeared at the door. Watching Winter spoon sugar into his coffee, he tapped his watch. Michaels had set the Brennan’s meet up for 9.45. It was already half past.

  Phil Paget was looking amused. He nodded towards Sullivan.

  ‘Got you on a lead, has he? About time some fucker did.’

  Faraday had been in his office since eight. Ravenously hungry, he’d made himself a double bacon sandwich in the staff restroom and stirred two spoons of instant into a mug of boiling water. J-J had been asleep when he’d slipped out of the house, and he’d left a note telling him they needed to talk more about Doodie. The five-pound note beside his alarm clock would buy him a cab to Southsea police station.

  Back in his office, amongst the usual overnight screenful of emails, Faraday had found a note from the pathologist who’d done the post-mortem on Helen Bassam. He’d had a conversation with the toxicologist over at Southampton and had some interesting news about the blood sample.

  Faraday lifted the phone and dialled the pathologist’s home number. When he finally answered, it was obvious he had his mouth full. The fact that these guys could sink a cooked breakfast before carving up the morning’s quota of corpses had always amazed Faraday.

  ‘Helen Bassam,’ he said. ‘You’ve obviously got the results.’

  ‘I have. It seems we’re talking morphine. Does that sound right to you?’

  ‘Morphine?’ Faraday was no chemist but he’d investigated enough junkie deaths to know that heroin, after four days in the bloodstream, showed up as morphine on tox analysis. Normally, though, street heroin was cut with other substances. Glucose and baking powder were favourites.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, alcohol.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘About three hundred mgs.’

  That was a lot. Faraday tried doing the sums.

  ‘Three Bacardi Breezers?’

  ‘More. Say four. Or the thick end of a bottle of wine. Or half a dozen Martinis.’

  ‘Martini? What fourteen-year-old drinks Martini?’

  ‘You’d be amazed.’ The pathologist laughed before ringing off. ‘Try doing my job for a week.’

  Now, Faraday looked up to find Cathy Lamb at his door. She had a wish-list of problems that needed sorting and number one was Hartigan.

  ‘He’s demanding an update on the ABC,’ she said. ‘He’s shitting himself in case we still go in there.’

  ‘Fat chance.’ He reached for the phone and punched in the Superintendent’s number. ‘The kid’s long gone.’

  Hartigan sounded unconvinced about Doodie. Once again, he wanted to make it absolutely clear that he wasn’t in the business of hazarding any of his officers in a condemned building. As it happened, he’d won himself a bit of time this morning – a cancelled meeting with the Chairman of the Police Authority – and Faraday was only too welcome to pop over to Fratton and read the relevant guidance himself. Like every other Superintendent on the force, he’d recently had to attend a Health and Safety seminar and he’d come away with a big fat action pack. If Faraday wanted to borrow it, he only had to ask.

  Faraday declined the invitation.

  ‘I’ve had the pathologist on,’ he said. ‘About Helen Bassam.’ He began to describe the findings. At the first mention of morphine, Hartigan leapt in.

  ‘He means heroin,’ he said at once.

  ‘He said morphine, sir.’

  ‘Of course he did, but what he means is heroin. Heroin shows as morphine. It’s exactly what we feared.’

  Faraday was groping his way back through the fog of the last twenty-four hours, trying to remember the previous conversation. They’d had a ruck about the drugs issue, certainly, but he didn’t recall nailing Helen Bassam to an armful of smack.

  ‘There were no reported track marks,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Immaterial, Joe. They smoke it these days.’

  ‘Her mother says she hated cigarettes. Wouldn’t touch them.’

  ‘Makes no difference. Mums are the last people to know what their kids get up to. What about that allowance of hers? Forty pounds a week, wasn’t it? No, we’re talking heroin, Joe, and I must say that puts a totally different slant on the affair.’ He paused. ‘What about the ten-year-old?’

  ‘We lost him,’ Faraday said stonily. ‘Last night.’

  ‘I know that. I’m asking you what’s happened since. You told me he was up there on the roof with her. Now you’re telling me she was out of her head on booze and heroin.’

  ‘With respect, sir, the pathologist said—’

  ‘No, Joe, just listen to me for a change. I’m sick of playing catch-up in this job. There’s an agenda out there and it’s about time we seized it. Two Ss, is it?’

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘In Bassam?’

  Without waiting for an answer, Hartigan hung up. Cathy was at the door again, a scrap of paper in her hand.

  ‘Our nice Mr Phillimore,’ she said. ‘The one I mentioned the other night. He’s just phoned up again. Wonders whether you might spare the time to call him.’

  Lee Marchant turned out to be an affable twenty-one-year-old with a silver nose ring and a big Pompey grin. Ray Brennan had told him to take an early tea break and he was reading a copy of yesterday’s Sun when Winter and Sullivan pushed in through the door. The staff restroom was one half of a big, windowless container behind Fitted Bathrooms with a Coke machine, an electric kettle and a cardboard box full of tea bags. The calender on the wall was still showing December 2000 and someone had drawn a moustache on a curling photo of Jennifer Lopez Sellotaped to the wall.

  Marchant wanted to know what all this was about. Sullivan briefly explained.

  ‘Yeah.’ Marchant nodded. I knows Brad.’

  ‘Knew. I just told you. He’s dead.’

  ‘That’s what I meant. Me and him knocked around a bit, more in the early days like, when we was still at school.’

  ‘School’ was the big comprehensive in West Leigh. They’d regularly bunked off together, hiding in nearby woods for a decent smoke.

  ‘What about lately?’ Winter hadn’t come here for a chat about Bradley Finch’s schooldays.

  ‘Like I said, just now and again.’

  ‘But the other week you were with him? No?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, yeah.’ Marchant grinned again. ‘You mean me and the Old Bill? Out of order, that was. Just cos the motor’s a wreck, ain’t no reason to pull me. I wasn’t pissed or nothing.’

  ‘No, but Finch was.’

  ‘Brad’s always pissed. Brad’s been pissed since he left school.’

  ‘Why’s that then?’

  Marchant hesitated for a moment, looking from one face to the other. Only now did it seem to occur to him that trouble might lie at the end of this conversation.

  ‘What’s this about then? It ain’t just Brad, is it?’

  ‘Not entirely, no.’ Winter paused. ‘I asked you a question, son. Why was he always pissed?’

  Marchant shrugged, reluctant to carry on. Winter glanced sideways at Sullivan. Sullivan shut his pocketbook.

  ‘Off
the record?’ Winter nodded. ‘Well, Brad … see … he always gets himself in trouble. Always. Never fails. He just winds people up. Don’t ask me how he does it. I don’t know whether he even tries. Maybe he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Maybe it just happens. He’s got that kind of way with him … Know what I mean, like?’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘Everyone. Even the people here.’

  ‘He worked here? Finch?’

  ‘Yeah. Only three days, mind, but that’s the point, see? People weren’t nasty to him, nor nothing. No one shouted at him, not to begin with. It’s just the way he is – gets on yer nerves, gets on everyone’s nerves.’

  ‘When was this?’ Sullivan’s pocketbook was open again.

  ‘A month ago? I dunno, can’t remember. But like I said, he just came and went. I hadn’t seen him for a while, that’s why we had them couple of beers a couple of weeks back, the night the Old Bill stopped me.’

  Winter was juggling dates. The early spring sale had started on Saturday. When was the stuff ordered?

  ‘A month back.’

  ‘Was Finch involved?’

  ‘Yeah, me and him was working in the warehouse, we both were. We had to draw up the stock lists, like, but Brad couldn’t handle it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He can’t write. Not proper. Never learned how. No problem blagging his way into the job cos he’s got a real mouth on him but he was out of the door by Wednesday.’

  Sullivan wanted to know more about Brad’s mates.

  ‘He never had no mates, that was half his problem. Plenty of cunts ready to take a drink off of him, nights when he was carrying, but no one you’d call a mate.’

  ‘No names? No blokes he mentioned at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you get the impression he was keeping heavy company?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue, mate.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Definitely.’ Winter paused. Sullivan took up the running.