Authors: Graham Hurley
‘And at the school?’
‘They’d cleared a classroom at the back. There were
stained old fucking mattresses on the floor – no sheets, no blankets, just the mattresses. The Serb boys spent fifteen days in the mountains, then they came back, six or seven of them at a time, one after another, cheering and clapping, making good little Serb soldiers. Can you believe that? In the classroom where this poor bloody girl had learned to
read
? Jesus.’
‘And she got pregnant?’
‘Yeah, just a bit. But you know the worst of it? She knew these animals. Christ, she’d even been to school with some of them. And there they were, just helping themselves.’
Faraday tried to imagine what it must have been like. For the second time in twenty-four hours he knew it was beyond him. More blood than honey, he thought.
Pelly was gazing out of the window. The anger had drained away. He looked almost sober.
‘One thing I don’t understand.’ Faraday frowned. ‘How come she wants to go back to this place? To this village? After all she’s been through?’
‘She doesn’t. Not to her home village. We’ve got somewhere else in mind. The Jablanica Valley. Village called Celebici. Nice little smallholding near the lake – bit of ground, couple of goats, chickens, spare room for German tourists. Maybe a spot of freelance mine clearance if things get tight. Yeah …’ He nodded. ‘I can cope with that.’
Pelly lapsed into silence. Faraday was clearer now about what drove Pelly, about those months in the mountains that had changed his life. Any man who’d been through an experience like that would carry the images in his head forever. But what about Lajla? Gang-raped week after week? A woman who’d never
know who’d fathered her child? How would you ever lay so many ghosts?
He put the question to Pelly. It drew an immediate shake of the head.
‘She won’t talk about it.’
‘Not to anyone?’
‘No. Not to me. Not to you. Not to fucking anyone.’ He touched his head, then his heart. ‘It’s locked away. You’d be a brave man to even try and get at stuff like that.’
‘Why?’
‘
Why?
’ Pelly threw back his head and laughed. ‘Because she’d fucking kill you.’
Jimmy Suttle had never met the Bone. Winter, in odd conversations, had talked about the man’s amazing prowess with the ladies, someone – he’d said admiringly – who could work his way down any street in Pompey and leave not a single taker with any complaints. His speciality was housewives and he went from door to door with a carpet-cleaning offer which was, to be frank, a steal. Once inside the house, he rarely left without a cup of tea and a biscuit or two and a sympathetic ear full of the local gossip. The Bone’s ability to listen – to nod, to empathise, to agree – was the key, Winter had concluded, to his amazing tally of conquests. Women went to bed with him because he was a nice bloke. Not only that, but he shagged them witless.
Winter had described him as a Frank Skinner lookalike, and Suttle could see why. The same shock of blondish hair. The same open face. The same ready smile. He was sitting in a pub in the depths of Buckland, absorbed by the Pompey match report in
yesterday’s
Sports Mail
. This was a man you’d be happy to have clean your carpet.
Suttle muttered a greeting and asked whether he wanted to talk elsewhere. The Bone looked surprised.
‘Here no good, mate?’
‘Here’s fine.’
Suttle bought drinks and found a table in the corner. The air was blue with roll-ups and a vocal semicircle of drinkers was glued to a telly in the corner. Everton 3 Tottenham 1.
‘You follow the football?’ Suttle had half an eye on Duncan Ferguson.
‘Yeah. What’s it with Mr W?’
‘He’s not well.’ Suttle dragged himself away from the game. ‘Hasn’t been for several weeks.’
‘Like bad, is it?’
‘Dunno, mate. He’s waiting for tests.’
‘
Tests?
That’s heavy shit, must be bad.’
Suttle studied him for a moment. He couldn’t explain why but he was surprised at this man’s concern. Either the Bone was a born actor or he really cared.
‘You’ve known Winter long?’
‘Yeah. Ever since he stitched me up on a handling charge. Well kippered or what? An hour in the cells and I would have sold him my mother. Hand it to the bloke. He’s an artist.’ He laughed at the memory, then raised his glass. ‘To Mr W. Hope he gets better.’
Suttle explained briefly about Lakemfa. Black guy. Knocked off his bike the arse end of last year. Country lane, back of the hill.
‘Mr W thinks you might be the man to know.’
‘Know what, mate?’
‘Who did him.’
‘You’re telling me he died?’
‘Yeah. There’s a bit of history here but I won’t bore you. The point is someone did a wonderful job. No car ever discovered. No forensic. No witnesses. Just chummy in the road. Dead.’
‘You’re talking a hit, yeah? The kind of blokes I know, they normally take a couple of hundred to give a bloke a hiding, drink most of it, go over the top, kick the bloke to death and then get nicked at the end of it. Your guy’s not like that at all, is he? Sounds a bit subtle for this city.’
‘We’re talking early October. Target was a Nigerian, naval guy. The way we see it, there was serious money involved.’
‘How serious?’
‘We think thousands.’
‘Plural?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That
is
serious.’ The Bone was looking thoughtful. ‘Anything else to go on?’
‘He was living in Port Solent. Had a rented apartment there.’
‘Ah … housewives’ delight.’ The Bone was beaming. ‘Leave it to me.’
It was dark by the time Faraday took Pelly back to the front office. He opened the door to the street and accompanied him onto the pavement. The rain had stopped by now and a creamy full moon was rising behind the shreds of racing cloud.
Faraday had spent the best part of an hour pressing Pelly on every aspect of his story. Under formal caution, with absolutely no doubt that anything he might say could be used in evidence against him, he’d freely admitted spending a financial windfall on buying the new boat. The money, he said, had come from
foreign sources. It would all be declared in his tax return and he was under no legal obligation to explain further. As far as Sean Castle was concerned, he’d certainly chartered his boat but that, too, wasn’t illegal. A mate he trusted had skippered the Tidemaster on its last outing and the boat had gone to a French buyer the following day. No, he hadn’t got the French bloke’s details. Neither did he know the whereabouts of the mate who’d taken the Tidemaster to sea. And yes, the same lack of interest applied to the northerner who’d given him a couple of hundred for his clapped-out old Volvo estate. Faraday, he said, was welcome to chase both buyers, and if he ever found the guy with the Volvo maybe he could return the set of titanium fish hooks Pelly had left under the front passenger seat. On Chris Unwin’s mysterious disappearance he could shed no light. Bloke had done a runner. Happens all the time. End of story.
Watching Pelly cross the road to reclaim his new car, Faraday knew he’d been listening to a tissue of lies. More important still, he’d realised that Pelly himself understood this and wasn’t much bothered. As long as the story held together, both men knew that Pelly would be home safe. His breakfast companion in the Farringford Hotel had funds available to buy the nursing home. Such was the depth of Pelly’s disgust at the state of the nation, he’d agreed a silly price. By Easter, if the lawyers got off their arses, Pelly and his strange little family would be milking their goats on the shores of Lake Jablanica.
At the end of the interview Faraday had switched off the tape machine and sat back in his chair.
‘Clever,’ he’d said. And meant it.
Pelly drove into the night, giving Faraday a derisive farewell wave as he passed the police station. Faraday
found Tracy Barber and Dave Michaels at the top of the stairs.
‘Well, boss?’ It was Tracy Barber.
Faraday looked at her a moment, then smiled.
‘I think we’re getting somewhere,’ he said.
Monday, 1 March 2004
Winter drove himself to Portsmouth’s Queen Alexandra Hospital. Maddox sat beside him as they turned off the motorway and climbed towards the distant sprawl of buildings that dominated the lower slopes of the hill.
Back at the cottage, Winter had woken early. He hadn’t felt so cheerful for weeks and had toyed with cancelling the appointment at the hospital. Maybe good sex and a 4 a.m. discussion about Arthur Rimbaud had chased the demons away. Only Maddox’s insistence that he give the medics a look inside his throbbing head had persuaded him to take the road back to Pompey.
The car park full, Winter left Maddox to find somewhere for the Subaru. His appointment card instructed him to report to the X-ray department on C level.
He made his way down the long corridors and followed the overhead signs until he found himself in a big reception area dominated by a framed photograph of a lighthouse under attack by the elements. The photo was a wild swirl of towering breakers and drifting spume, the sturdy granite thumb of the lighthouse dwarfed by the fury of the storm. Beneath the photo a line of text read
Avis de coup de vent
.
Winter studied the photo for a moment or two. Me, he thought.
The woman behind the desk consulted the morning appointment list and told him to take a seat. Winter wanted to know what
Avis de coup de vent
meant. She glanced up at him.
‘Someone else asked that.’
‘And?’
‘Something about a gale warning. Heavy weather. It’s French.’
‘Yeah?’ Winter looked back at the photo, then asked how long the scan would take.
‘An hour or so. Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘How it goes.’
‘Really?’
Winter gave her a look and then went through to the waiting area and found himself a seat before ringing Maddox. She’d found a parking spot round the back of the hospital and was watching a steady stream of patients labouring up the hill towards the A & E department. Why was everyone so fat in this city?
Winter smiled. She’d raised the same question last night, blaming his headaches on too much beer and too many burgers. He needed to lose a couple of stone at least and just then she’d been in an excellent position to judge.
‘This lot’s going to take a while,’ he told her. ‘I’ll get a cab home.’
‘OK.’
‘You’ll be there?’
‘Probably not. I’ve got some stuff to do back at the flat. Hey …’ her voice softened ‘… take care.’
‘You too.’ Winter ducked his head, overwhelmed yet again. How come this woman could breach his
defences with such ease? How on earth would you put a life back together after something like this? Gale warning, he thought.
Avis de
whatever.
‘Your name, sir?’
Winter glanced up. The nurse’s face was a blur.
‘Winter,’ he said numbly.
She took him into the imaging area. The room with the CT machine was bigger than he’d thought, with radiation warnings on the door and a long glass panel offering a view from the control suite next door. Through the glass he could see two figures bent over monitor screens. Curiosity made him ask who they were.
‘Radiographers, Mr Winter.’ The nurse had a nice smile. ‘Would you mind lying down here, please?’
She indicated a long couch at knee level. At the head of the couch was a big doughnut-shaped machine that dominated the room. Everything looked new.
Winter slipped off his jacket and lay full length on the couch. The nurse propped his head on some kind of support. He felt the clammy crinkle of polythene cupping the base of his skull. The nurse explained the procedure – a quick scouting shot, then another series of pictures, each requiring a tiny adjustment in the couch. At the most it would take a couple of minutes. She smiled again, and then disappeared.
Winter gazed up at the ceiling. He hated this. He hated the feeling that he was in some kind of queue. He hated the waiting, the anticipation, the lack of control, the knowledge that there were people next door, barely metres away, who were about to peer into the very middle of his brain. Life, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, had turned the tables on him. Getting inside other people’s heads was his job, his privilege. How come he was so suddenly on the receiving end?
His headache had got worse, throbbing and throbbing, and he began to wonder whether it might be connected with stress, and whether it would affect the images these quiet, efficient medics were bent on capturing. There was a smoke detector on the ceiling, directly in his eyeline, and he tried to concentrate on the tiny red light that winked and winked, on/off, on/off. Drive you mad, he thought. Looking at that.
Without warning the couch began to rise. Instinctively, like a kid on the Cresta Run, his hands tightened on the folds of blanket beneath him. Moments later he was going backwards, into the heart of the doughnut, a movie without a soundtrack, total silence.
Then came a voice – disembodied, firm.
‘Nice and still in there, Mr Winter.’
He wondered whether to shut his eyes, decided against it. The couch had stopped. Immediately above him, inset into the inner surface of the doughnut, was a clear glass panel. There were red lights inside the panel and there came a soft whirring noise as the lights spun round and the couch eased his body out again. Then the couch stopped before sliding him into the doughnut again. More shots. Then it was over.
The waiting seemed to go on forever. Up on one elbow, Winter gazed at the figures on the other side of the glass panel. Two radiographers were studying an image on a monitor screen. One of them frowned, pointed at something, then nodded. Moments later the door opened and the nurse appeared. She had a syringe in one hand and a tissue in the other. She perched herself on the side of the couch. Another smile.
‘Just a tiny injection, Mr Winter. Do you mind?’
Winter gazed up at her. He knew he’d had it. He knew with a terrible certainty that this was the figure
of death. Not the Grim Reaper. Not the skull-faced guarantee that you were inches away from the grave. But a pretty girl with bobbed hair who was having trouble finding a vein in his forearm.