Authors: Graham Hurley
Faraday enquired about a car to meet them in Ryde. Then he was struck by another thought.
‘How about someone to bring Pelly over from Shanklin? He needs to be there when your lads do the business. He’ll also have a key to the boat. I’ll meet Pelly on site with the warrant. He’s bound to kick up.’
‘No problem. Do you want to fire up the MIR? Only they might be redecorating at the moment.’
The Major Incident Room on the Isle of Wight was at Ryde police station. It had a bank of computers with the latest HOLMES software and room for a dozen or so DCs.
Faraday had become aware of Tracy Barber standing at the open door. He gestured her inside. Irving was asking about the MIR again. Faraday bent to the phone.
‘It’s still early days, Colin. If we get a result on the boat, we’ll probably bring Pelly back here while we put the SOC boys into the Shanklin place To be frank, we’re a bit stretched at the moment. One thing and another.’
He could hear Irving laughing. The New Forest killings were all over the morning papers and the island DI had just had his wife on the line, demanding the inside story.
‘That’s your lot, right?’
‘Yeah. Nick Hayder’s deputy SIO.’
‘To?’
‘Who do you think?’
Faraday brought the conversation to an end, then glanced at his watch again. This time of year the hovercraft left every half-hour. He looked up at Barber and asked her to organise a warrant at the Magistrates’ Court. After that he wanted her back at Kingston Crescent, working the phones to try and lay hands on Unwin. He’d call her from the island if he needed her to come across.
‘You’ll pick the warrant up from the magistrates?’
‘Yeah. En route to the hovercraft. I’m going to try for the 12.45.’
Faraday got to his feet. He had a long list of other chores that awaited his attention but most of them could wait. Barber was still standing at the door. He shot her a smile. Days like this, on his own, working against the clock, made him feel like a detective again.
He was in Ryde by one o’clock. First in the queue off
the hovercraft. Faraday had been half expecting to be greeted by Darren Webster but the DC waiting at the hovercraft arrivals door was a large man in his late forties, Frank Newbery. He accompanied Faraday across the bridge to the car park by the bus station. Courtesy of DI Irving, he’d be available for as long as required.
Newbery produced the keys to an unmarked Fiesta. They drove up the hill out of Ryde, the rows of terraced houses washed in thin sunshine. A quarter of an hour later they were descending towards the gleaming blue spaces of Bembridge Harbour. The agreed rendezvous was the marina tucked into the north-west corner of the harbour, a couple of acres of pontoons and waterside properties with a curiously unfinished air. Pelly had already arrived. He was sitting in the back of an area car and appeared to be asleep. Faraday stood beside the Escort, gazing down at him. The PC in the front wound down the window.
‘You want him out? Only we’ve got his inflatable in the boot.’
Pelly opened one eye. He was wearing a thick ribbed sweater under a blue fleece and the jeans looked new. Recognising Faraday, he held his gaze for a long moment before clambering out of the car.
‘I knew it would be you. Can’t leave it alone, can you?’
Without another word Pelly joined the PC at the open boot and hauled out a tightly wrapped bundle of rubberised grey fabric. A foot pump came with it. Faraday looked at the bulky parcel that lay on the ground between them.
‘How long have you had that?’
‘Couple of months. Little Christmas present to
myself. On offer at the chandlery over the other side of the harbour. Still got the receipt if you’re bothered.’
The sheen on the pebbles told Faraday that the tide was falling and he stood for a moment beside the bleached ribs of a long-abandoned rowing boat, watching Pelly as he began to stamp air into the inflatable. A picturesque flotilla of houseboats nosed against the causeway that carried the main road across the harbour, while out on the water dozens of craft lay at their moorings, swinging gently as the tide sucked out towards the long sandy bar that marked the harbour entrance.
Faraday took stock. In addition to the houseboats, the foreshore was overlooked by a block of flats beside the main road. Hardly the spot you’d choose to manhandle a body out of a car and row it across to a waiting fishing boat.
‘What did you use before you got this?’ Faraday nodded down at the little dinghy, fast taking shape.
‘I had another one. Totally knackered. So many holes I had to bin it. Look at this lot.’ Pelly dug a toe into the pebbles. ‘Kids are out of control. Fucking glass everywhere.’
Faraday had turned his attention to a sturdy, twin-hulled boat riding at a buoy out in the harbour. Bright yellow, he recognised it from the photo he’d seen in Pelly’s office.
‘You want to check the warrant?’
‘Not fussed.’ Pelly was kneeling beside the inflatable, adjusting the air valve.
Faraday took a tiny step back. After yesterday’s interview, compliance was the last thing he expected. The PC beside the Escort was shouting his name. The SOC lads were on their way. They’d be here in ten.
The message drew a snort of laughter from Pelly.
‘Hope they’re not mob-handed,’ he said. ‘This thing only takes two.’
The Scenes of Crime team arrived minutes later, a white van that turned off the main road and came bumping across the marina car park. The DS acting as Crime Scene Manager was a ruddy-faced Yorkshire-man with a gouty limp and laugh lines round his eyes. He sat in the van with the door open, breaking the seal on a pack that contained a new one-piece forensic suit. Newbery introduced Faraday, who nodded down at the beach where Pelly had nearly finished inflating the dinghy.
‘He’s the guy with the boat. He’ll take you out there.’
The DS was scanning the harbour. Faraday pointed out the distinctive twin yellow hulls a hundred metres or so from the shoreline. Earlier, on the phone, he hadn’t gone into any detail, simply asking for tests to establish the presence of blood, tissue or other body fluids.
‘What’s the story?’ The DS was on his feet now, struggling into the suit.
Faraday patched in some of the background. They were dealing with a Misper. One candidate had disappeared around October and there was a possibility that Pelly might have been involved. He used the boat for fishing trips; took blokes way out and charged them for a day at sea. If the Misper was down to him, he might have used the boat to dispose of the body.
The DS nodded and walked round to the back of the van. A DC acting as Crime Scene Investigator was already checking a couple of grab bags of equipment.
‘October, you say?’
‘There or thereabouts.’
‘That’s a while. And the boat’s been in use since?’
‘We assume so.’
‘Blokes tramping on and off?’
‘Bound to have been. The boat’s used for charter parties, like I said.’
‘What about the dinghy?’ The DS nodded towards the waterline.
‘Pelly says it’s new. Christmas. I’ll check it out before you’re through.’
‘So just the boat, then?’
‘Yes. Probably.’
The two men exchanged glances. Faraday had been in this situation a thousand times before, relying on forensic science to reconstruct a crime scene, but he knew there were limits to the magic these blokes could conjure from their chemicals and paper filters. The winter would have given Pelly every chance to tidy up the evidence and his purchase of a new dinghy was, on the face of it, suspicious. As far as the fishing boat was concerned, a couple of gallons of bleach might work wonders for a man’s sense of guilt, and the weather on an exposed mooring like this – months of rain and seawater – might well have done the rest.
‘We’ll do our best, eh?’ The DS picked up one of the bags. They’d take a preliminary look first, assess the scale of the job, then call for reinforcements if needed. With a full four-man team, they might be here three days. Depended.
Faraday took him down the beach to introduce Pelly. The two men shook hands. They obviously knew each other.
‘All right?’ The DS was gazing down at the inflatable with its pair of tiny oars. ‘Can’t you do any better than this?’
Pelly laughed and gave the dinghy a kick.
‘I’d have brought the outboard if I’d known it was you,’ he said. ‘Except the bloody thing’s bust.’
They manhandled the inflatable into the water and Pelly held the painter while the DS clambered in, pulling up the hood on his suit against the chill of the wind that cut across the harbour. Watching them as the little inflatable nosed out towards the fishing boat, Faraday asked the DC about Pelly’s reputation.
‘Everyone knows about him.’ The DC was decanting clear fluid into a plastic bottle. ‘But that’s the thing about this place. Even a bad bastard like Pelly can’t hide.’ He grinned, looking up at Faraday. ‘One happy family, that’s us caulkheads.’
Caulkhead was island-speak for a native.
‘Bad bastard how?’
‘Throws his weight around. Doesn’t care who he upsets. Me and Dave –’ he nodded at the DS crouched in the stern of the inflatable ‘– we quite like him but he’s certainly got himself a reputation, especially with the women. Serial shagger. Puts it around a bit.’
‘What else?’
‘Word is, he’s into people smuggling.’
‘True?’
‘Aye. Says me.’
‘So why hasn’t anyone boxed him off?’
‘Fuck knows. Leads a charmed life, our Rob. Always has done.’
Minutes later Pelly returned in the inflatable for the DC. Faraday had walked back to the van. He’d spotted a pair of binoculars tucked into the glove compartment and found himself a perch amongst a stand of marram grass across the road from the harbour, protected from the icy wind. All he could do now was wait for word on how the search was progressing.
Inland from the harbour lay Brading Marsh, an area of wetland recently declared an official RSPB site. Faraday and J-J had scouted the marsh years ago, spending the best part of a freezing December day taking their first look at water rail, a small, shy, stalk-legged bird that haunted the edges of the reed beds and squealed like a piglet at the least sign of danger. Deaf to the bird’s cry, J-J had nonetheless loved the way it emerged to poke around in search of food, stabbing at the rich mud then beating a rapid retreat in a flurry of wing beats.
Now, hoping for another glimpse of the little bird, Faraday worked the focus ring on the binoculars until the blur of greens resolved itself into a distant reed bed. At this range he knew he’d be lucky to spot anything at all but there was an excellent website that tallied monthly sightings for Brading Marsh and the last time he’d looked, back before Christmas, the longish list had included a merlin.
The merlin was the smallest of the falcons, and another of J-J’s favourites. They’d first set eyes on one during an expedition to Dungeness, and J-J – barely nine – had clapped his hands in delight, watching the little hawk putting a flock of sparrows to flight. Faraday could remember the moment now, the merlin bouncing along, a flurry of quick wing beats then a fleeting glide, twisting and turning in pursuit of its prey. This little drama, all too predictably, had ended in a distant explosion of feathers, and J-J had returned to the Bargemaster’s House that night to rummage through Faraday’s growing library of bird books. For weeks afterwards, drawings of the merlin appeared in odd corners of J-J’s bedroom, carefully executed studies in brown and yellow crayon, and a couple of years later, when J-J’s interest had begun to extend to
the Battle of Britain, his depiction of 1940 dogfights had always included a lone merlin entangled with the Spitfires and Messerschmitts, the plucky little hawk often badged with the RAF roundel and a helpful squadron number.
Faraday smiled at the memory, turning his attention back to the harbour itself. Fifty metres away, drifting peaceably amongst a cluster of moored boats, he spotted a small flock of teal. Some of them were asleep, their heads tucked beneath their wings, and Faraday watched them for a moment before easing the binos to the left until they settled on Pelly’s boat. Pelly himself was back on dry land now and Faraday could see the bulky shapes of the DS and DC working inch by inch over the exposed decking around the wheelhouse. Already the sun was beginning to dip towards the rising ground beyond St Helen’s and Faraday wondered whether they’d have enough time to complete the preliminary search in daylight. Whatever happened, Faraday suspected he’d be leaning on Colin Irving for an overnight watch on the boat.
Was Pelly himself the least bit concerned? Faraday thought not. The area car that had brought him down from Shanklin had long since disappeared, but with Newbery’s blessing Pelly had made himself comfortable in the back of the unmarked Fiesta. The car was barely thirty metres away and through the binoculars Faraday had a perfect close-up view of Pelly sprawled across the rear seat.
He was absorbed in a book, a paperback. He read quickly, nodding from time to time when a particular passage caught his eye, not remotely concerned by the small drama playing itself out on the nearby harbour. Once, as Faraday watched, he laughed out loud, throwing back his head with an abruptness that
Faraday remembered from yesterday’s interview, and Faraday began to wonder again about the reputation that this man had acquired for himself amongst the locals.
On paper, Willard was undoubtedly right. It was easy to plot a sequence of events that would make Pelly responsible for Unwin’s disappearance. He was impatient. He was outspoken. And he almost gloried in settling quarrels with the brisk application of violence. That much, with Morgan’s help, they could evidence.
On the other hand, though, Pelly seemed a more complex proposition. His affection for his elderly charges, most of them adrift in a foggy old age, was – in Faraday’s judgement – unfeigned. He appeared to be fond of these women and he might well do a good job of looking after them. Likewise, his anger at the irritations of daily life – the incessant inspections, the size of his tax bill, plus all the other hoops that the bureaucrats obliged him to jump through – was probably shared by every other self-employed adult in the UK. In a larger sense, Pelly clearly viewed the country as a lost cause. Family life had become a footnote in the history books, and in the shape of eighteen elderly cast-offs Pelly had living proof that society’s glue was becoming unstuck. Quite where this kind of rage might lead was anyone’s guess but Faraday couldn’t help recognising in himself a flicker of solidarity. The investigation of major crime took working detectives into ugly territory. What people did to each other these days, especially in a city as claustrophobic as Portsmouth, sometimes defied description.