Authors: Graham Hurley
Even Winter was surprised by the vehemence of this little outburst. He sat back in the chair, eyeing Cathy Lamb, annoyed with himself for letting Maddox get to him like this. For her part, Cathy let the moment pass. With all her reservations about Winter, she recognised when something really mattered to him. Just now, for whatever reason, that something was Maddox, and if
he was right, if a homicide charge lay at the end of whatever happened next, then she was prepared – as ever – to take him on trust.
She looked at him a moment longer, then nodded at the door.
‘Go for it,’ she said. ‘But no surprises, eh?’
Faraday was at Newport police station by early afternoon. He found DI Colin Irving in his office, bent over the quarterly overtime budget. Faraday settled himself in the chair across the desk, aware that he still carried the smell of the mortuary.
‘Has Willard been on?’
‘Yes.’
‘About Darren Webster?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course I bloody do.’ Irving still didn’t look up. ‘He’s in the CID office. Awaiting your instructions.’
‘Thanks.’ Faraday got to his feet, then paused by the open door. ‘It’s Operation
Congress
, by the way. For when you put the invoice in.’
Webster was ready to leave at once. He followed Faraday down the rear stairs and out to the car park at the back. A ledge of thick cloud to the west carried the promise of yet more rain.
‘Where to, sir?’ Webster was trying to sort out the seat belt in Faraday’s Mondeo.
‘Ventnor. That mate of yours at Cheetah Marine.’
‘Dave Parncutt? No problem.’ He finally managed to strap himself in. ‘By the way, sir. I owe you an apology.’
‘You’re right.’ Faraday nodded. ‘You do … Detective Constable.’
Ventnor lies at the bottom of the Isle of Wight, a once-genteel Victorian spa resort curtained from the rest of the island by the dramatic fold of St Boniface Down. In the tourist brochures the town laid regular claim to being one of the UK’s sunniest spots. It boasted some fine Victorian terraces, a brace of folksy museums, atmospheric beachside pubs and a botanical garden that turned all that sunshine into a display of blooms unrivalled on the south coast. Webster, who’d been born in neighbouring Bonchurch, had a different story to tell.
‘Cowboy town.’ He was grinning. ‘You want anything from serious gear to ripped-off antiques, this is the place to come. The rest of it is packaging.’
‘You like it?’
‘Love it. Always have.’
They were coasting down the zigzag that plunged towards the sea. Beneath them the crescent of pebble beach was dulled by the blanket of cloud that now shrouded the entire island. On a sunny day, thought Faraday, this view would be sensational.
‘The main factory’s back on the industrial estate.’ Webster nodded over his shoulder. ‘But we need to go to the farm. That’s along at Bonchurch.’
Faraday was still looking at the beach. A tiny curl of breakwater, a carefully dumped jumble of huge rocks, reached south into the sea. A second arm completed the harbour. The work looked new, construction still under way.
‘Ventnor Haven.’ Webster glanced at a text on his mobile. ‘We used to have a pier down there, sweet little thing, but you can’t move for developers these days. If there’s money in it, it’ll happen.’
Faraday was thinking about Pelly’s boat. Apart from the yachtie madness of Cowes and the picturesque
little harbour at Yarmouth way over to the west, Bembridge was the island’s only anchorage.
‘There’ll be moorings here?’
‘Pontoons, more like. Cost you an arm and a leg when they get round to sorting out a tariff.’
‘And Bembridge?’
‘There’s a marina there as well. In fact there are two. But it’s way cheaper to buy a mooring on the harbour itself.’
‘How much?’
‘Depends.’ He glanced at Faraday. ‘You mean Pelly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hundred and fifty a year. He’d never come here. Not with half the town watching his every move.’
Faraday saw the point. Ventnor was built like a Victorian music hall, tier after tier of terraced houses rising from the promenade, every window offering a perfect view of the beach and the new anchorage. If you were after sharing your secrets, you couldn’t do better than this claustrophobic little spa. If you wanted something more anonymous, you’d undoubtedly settle for the wider spaces of Bembridge Harbour.
They were in the town centre now, Faraday following Webster’s instructions as they picked their way through a maze of narrow streets towards neighbouring Bonchurch. En route from Newport the young DC had been enthusing about Pelly’s new boat. Dave Parncutt was a laminator with Cheetah Marine as well as a hang-gliding fanatic, and Webster had accompanied him on a couple of proving trials back last summer when the first of the 7.9-metre boats had put to sea. Faraday was soon lost in the blizzard of technical detail but it seemed that Pelly had made a perfect choice. Symmetrical planing hulls. Low wash
characteristics. Steep dead rise. Plus the use of ultralight building materials that coaxed a great deal of power from the twin 225 hp outboards. With a dozen or so asylum seekers aboard, said Webster, Pelly’s pride and joy could do in excess of forty-five knots, comfortably outrunning anything else in the Channel. Not only that, but the twin-hull design enabled him to run the boat directly onto a beach, giving him a huge choice of landing sites. For a people smuggler who also ran fishing charters, it was near-on ideal.
‘How much?’ Faraday had asked.
‘Dunno.’ Webster had grinned again. ‘But if I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t be doing this job.’
The smaller of Cheetah Marine’s factories lay beside a smallholding at the end of a narrow track on the outskirts of Bonchurch. Faraday parked and left Webster to sort out the interviews while he contacted Tracy Barber. For the time being, until one of the Major Crimes DSs shipped across from Pompey, she was holding the fort at the incident room they’d taken over at Ryde police station. Her extension was engaged and Faraday tried another line, getting through to DC Bev Yates. He’d just returned from a visit to the Bembridge harbour master but his news could wait until the evening debrief.
‘Get Tracy to ring me on the mobile when she’s got a moment.’ Faraday was watching Webster as he re-emerged from reception. ‘Nothing urgent.’
Webster accompanied him back to reception. A small, cluttered office beside it had been hurriedly cleared to make space for an extra chair. A poster on the wall featured a blonde in a blue bikini draped over the latest Cheetah offering, and there was a pinboard beside it covered with press cuttings from the last
Southampton Boat Show. Looking at the poster, Faraday recognised the distinctive yellow hulls. Bembridge Harbour, he thought. Barely twenty-four hours ago.
‘This is Sean. Dave’s down in Ventnor sorting something out.’
Sean Strevons co-owned the firm. He was a cheerful-looking thirty-something with a paint-stained fleece and an impressive dangle of blond dreadlocks. He apologised for the state of the place and hoped Dave wasn’t in too much trouble. Through the thin partition wall Faraday could hear the
thump-thump
of a hammer drill.
‘It’s not about Dave,’ Faraday said at once. ‘It’s in relation to a customer of yours. Rob Pelly?’
Mention of the name drew a sigh from Strevons. Faraday asked why.
‘It’s difficult.’ He looked from one face to the other. ‘Is this off the record? Only the island’s a tiny bloody place.’
Faraday told him to go ahead. He wasn’t after a formal statement, not yet anyway.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that you can tell us what you like. We may come back to you for a statement. It’s your right to refuse to make that statement. Though naturally we’d be curious to know why.’
‘What is this?’ Strevons was seriously concerned now.
‘DI Faraday’s from Major Crimes,’ Webster reminded him. ‘I told you just now.’
‘Yeah, but what kind of major crimes?’
Faraday just looked at him, made no attempt to explain.
‘Tell me about Rob Pelly,’ he said at length. ‘I understand he’s bought a boat.’
‘He has, that’s right.’ Strevons swivelled the chair and nodded at the poster. ‘He’s had one of those off us. Brand new 7.9. Nightmare, to tell you the truth.’
‘Nightmare how?’
‘Bloke didn’t have the money.’
Pelly, he explained, had given them a ring back in the spring of last year. He’d heard rumours of the new design and wanted more details. Sean had invited him down from Shanklin and shown him the plans.
‘We were laying down the moulds by then. We gave him the full tour.’
The new 7.9 series had a basic hull shape with a variety of add-ons. Customers could stipulate exactly what they wanted, from the size of the wheelhouse to the power of the engines aft.
‘What did Pelly want?’
‘He wanted the biggest engines, the basics down below, stainless steel rails all round …’ He frowned, trying to remember, then rummaged in a filing cabinet beside the window. At length, one finger anchored in the file, he sat down again. ‘Full lighting fit – internal, after deck, the lot – plus hydraulic steering and a gantry for the roof mast. When I asked what he wanted the gantry for he said he might be after a radar. We don’t get that very often, believe me.’
Webster had produced his pocketbook and was scribbling notes.
‘Cost?’ asked Faraday.
Strevons consulted the file again.
‘I quoted him £36,000 plus VAT for the hull. Add another £24,500 for the engines, fitted. That’s without VAT. All in, you’re looking at just over seventy grand.’
‘You ask for a deposit?’
‘Five hundred pounds.’
‘What about the rest?’
‘Three stage payments. A third when the building starts. A third when the engines go in. The rest before we deliver.’
‘And Pelly?’
‘He came up with the deposit OK. That was back in June. Then we sent him an invoice for £23K in August because we wanted to start the build. That’s when the problems kicked off. He kept coming up with excuses. Told us to start regardless; he’d sort out something for next week. Basically, he hadn’t got the money.’
‘And had you started?’
‘Yes. He said he was negotiating a remortgage, even showed me some of the correspondence. I believed him.’
‘Was the correspondence forged?’
‘I dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘But we never got the money, not then anyway, and he got quite nasty.’
‘Threats?’
‘Implied threats. Told us the country was full of greedy thieving bastards who needed sorting out. Not us, of course, but we all knew what he meant.’
‘You stopped the build?’
‘Of course. It wasn’t a catastrophe. We simply used the mould on another order. Told him we’d start again the moment we saw the money.’
‘And when was that?’
His eyes flicked back to the file. The cheque for £23,333 had cleared on 11 October. By that time there was a waiting list for 7.9s, but Pelly wasn’t having it. He needed the boat asap and wasn’t in the mood to wait.
Faraday was watching Webster’s racing pen.
‘How did you get round that?’ he asked.
‘We didn’t, not to begin with. He even offered us an extra five grand to queue-jump but we weren’t really sure about his money by then so we were a bit wary. Oddly enough we had a couple of cancellations so he was lucky. The build started the third week in October. He paid the second instalment after Christmas. Then the rest when we delivered towards the end of January.’
‘No problems?’
‘None. He even sent us a thank-you card.’
‘Have you seen him since at all?’
‘No. But then I’m not sure we’d want to.’ He shut the file and tossed it on the desk. ‘Most of the people we deal with are fine. Pelly, excuse my French, was an arsehole.’
‘Did he ever say why he wanted the boat? What he might be using it for?’
‘Fishing. He said he wanted to take charters out. That would make sense, a fit like that, except for the radar.’
‘Did you install a radar?’
‘No, but then we don’t. You haven’t got the height really, not for decent coverage, not unless you’re only interested in ten or fifteen miles out.’
‘And you think he was?’
‘Must have been. Otherwise he wouldn’t have asked for it.’
Faraday was trying to remember whether Pelly’s new boat carried a radar sweep. He thought not.
‘So what else do you know about Mr Pelly?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You never asked around? When things were getting sticky?’
‘There’s gossip, obviously, but –’ he shrugged ‘– there’s gossip everywhere, place like this.’
‘What does the gossip say?’
‘I’m not sure I can tell you that.’
‘Why don’t you try?’ Faraday offered him a chilly smile. ‘I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.’
‘No …’ Strevons swivelled the chair again, avoiding Faraday’s gaze. ‘I don’t suppose you would.’
At length he said he’d heard rumours of people smuggling. The property Pelly was trying to remortgage was in Ventnor. Strevons knew it well.
‘And?’
‘It’s full of foreigners. It’s the talk of the local pubs. I’m talking proper foreigners. Not blokes from the mainland.’
‘You think Pelly brought them in?’
‘I don’t know. It’s gossip. Like I say.’
‘Of course. But let’s assume the rumours are true. Let’s assume he has a boat already. A …’ Faraday shot a look at Webster.
‘Tidemaster.’
‘Tidemaster. Let’s pretend he wants something better. What would he buy?’
Strevons looked at him for a moment, recognising the corner into which he’d just been backed. Then he had the grace to smile.
‘You’re right,’ he said softly. ‘One of ours would be perfect.’
Thursday, 26 February 2004
The Coroner’s office was on the third floor of Portsmouth’s Guildhall, a monumental piece of Victorian architecture that dominated the busy square at the city’s heart. One of the three Coroner’s Officers was a bulky curmudgeon called Bill Prosper. Prosper was an ex-policeman, and an old enemy of Winter’s. They’d been on the same relief together way back and as a direct consequence Prosper viewed Winter as a permanent stain on the force’s reputation. If he’d found Winter in the laundry basket, he’d once told a colleague, he’d have taken him to the dry cleaners for a thorough going-over.