Authors: Graham Hurley
‘How’s it going?’ Jessop was catching up with Winter’s notes. ‘Still getting the headaches?’
‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded.
‘Any better?’
‘Worse.’ Winter’s fingers tracked a path across the tops of his eyebrows. ‘Here to here. A couple of times last week I thought I was going blind.’
‘
Blind?
’ Jessop at last looked up. ‘What do we mean by blind?’
His use of the word ‘we’ irritated Winter intensely. It was bad enough explaining his troubles to someone half his age, worse when this eager young puppy
treated him like a retard. He began to describe the last episode. He’d surfaced at seven with a pounding head, thrown up most of his breakfast within minutes, and spent most of a difficult morning trying to keep the rest down. Chasing teenage hooligans round the wastelands of Somerstown was challenging on a normal day. Trying to nail them through a rising curtain of brightly coloured bubbles was close to hallucinogenic.
He did his best to describe the sensation. Jessop looked blank.
‘Bubbles? I’m not with you.’
‘Round jobs. You look hard at something – the pavement, the road, whatever – and all you get are these bubbles. They’re everywhere. They float up. Ever watched a goldfish in a tank? That’s me.’
‘And pain, you say?’
‘Yeah. Above the eyes, behind the eyes, all over.’
‘Can we be more specific?’
‘I just was. I take the tablets. I don’t cane the Scotch any more. I’ve even eased up on the telly. But it just gets worse.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘There’s another thing, too. I’ve got a memory problem. I keep forgetting things, the simplest things. In my game that can be tricky, believe me. You think it might be early Alzheimer’s?’
‘How old are you?’ Jessop’s eyes returned to the notes.
‘Forty-five.’
‘Then I very much doubt it.’ Jessop uncapped a fountain pen and scribbled himself a note. Then he reached for the PC keyboard and began to scroll through a list of names. Just the effort of concentration was enough to trigger the familiar drumbeat behind Winter’s eyes but he did his best to keep track. Jessop
double-clicked on a Mr Frazer. A new window appeared. Frazer was a neurological consultant.
‘You’ll have to join a queue, I’m afraid. How much notice do you need for an appointment?’
Winter thought of the logjam of jobs awaiting him back at the squad office. Lately, one or two of Cathy Lamb’s more ambitious operations had flushed out some of the city’s hard-core lunatics, especially in the drugs biz. Each of these stake-outs generated hours and hours of paperwork, and getting time off under this kind of pressure wouldn’t be easy, but the thought of what might lie beyond the bubbles was beginning to frighten him. Better to risk the wrath of his DI, he thought, than end up on the wrong end of a Labrador and a stick.
‘Couple of days,’ Winter grunted. ‘Just give me a bell.’
Back outside the surgery, armed with a new prescription, Winter popped the last of his painkillers and crossed the road to his Subaru. At half eleven he’d agreed to meet Suttle at the Bridewell. They needed an hour or so with each of the young slappers from last night’s bust, formal interviews that could normally wait until Monday, but one of them was off skiing on Sunday night and had volunteered to come in early. He’d told Suttle on the phone that there was no need for him to attend – neither girl would be facing charges – but Suttle wasn’t having it. After the bust at Camber Court he’d suddenly developed a powerful interest in Operation
Plover
. Copping out of the interviews, he’d insisted, just wasn’t an option.
Driving back into the city, Winter felt the tablets beginning to ease the pressure behind his eyes. The girl they’d be meeting this morning was the girl in the
photos. Just the mention of her name – Maddox – had been enough to get the young detective out of bed, and Winter began to guess what colour shirt he’d be wearing by the time he made it down to the Bridewell. Suttle by name, he thought. Suttle by nature.
At the Bridewell Winter checked in with the Duty Sergeant and retired to one of the empty interview rooms with a cup of coffee. By the time Jimmy Suttle appeared, he was deep in the first of the statements they’d taken last night.
Singer, one of the city’s higher-profile solicitors, had been winding up the likes of Willard and Cathy Lamb for years. He specialised in representing the city’s more successful criminals and had made a small fortune from a series of cleverly argued acquittals. It was common knowledge that he cut every judicial corner in the book to return his clients to a life of crime and with his success had come a belief that he was somehow immune from the attentions of the detectives he openly mocked in – and out of – court. Last night, to Winter’s deep satisfaction, that immunity had come to an end – and what made Singer’s arrest even sweeter was the prospect of celebrating this trophy pull with Cathy Lamb.
Like most DIs she’d seen absolutely no sense in wasting precious time and effort in pursuit of the errant middle classes. These were people who had plenty of money and would never dream of house-breaking or thieving from vehicles to fund their recreational foibles. In that sense their drug use – though obviously illegal – was close to a victimless crime and at first she’d flatly refused to sanction Winter’s plans for the Old Portsmouth stake-out. Winter, though, had already acquired a client list from the Portsea girl who did Richardson’s cleaning, and
mention of Singer’s name had won Cathy’s grudging approval of last night’s bust. News of the solicitor’s appearance before the Bridewell Custody Sergeant, to Winter’s certain knowledge, would be round the force in hours.
Not that Singer was going down without a fight. In last night’s interview he’d admitted the possession of a couple of wraps of cocaine but denied using sexual services offered by Richardson at Flat 10, Camber Court. The latter, he’d pointed out, was not indictable under the Sexual Offences Act and in any case the visit he’d paid to Old Portsmouth had been purely social. Steve Richardson was an old friend and – as it happened – a bloody good cook. They’d enjoyed a meal together, had a drink or two, then he’d pushed off home.
Asked to explain the cocaine, he said he’d bought it from a dealer whom he wasn’t prepared to name, but denied it was Richardson. Challenged with the credit card slip for eight hundred pounds retrieved from the stash Richardson kept on a hook in the kitchen, Singer said it was a personal debt. Richardson had bought a painting on his behalf and he was simply paying him back. As Suttle had pointed out last night, this fiction was strictly for the sake of his missus. A coke head in the marital bed she could probably deal with. Her husband blowing the housekeeping on some bint half her age, she probably couldn’t.
Suttle had settled himself across the table in the interview room. The shirt, to Winter’s amusement, was salmon pink.
‘What about the other guy. The one in bed with Maddox. Monster, wasn’t he?’
Winter could only agree. The punter’s name was
Maurice Wishart. Last night he’d given a Port Solent address, a third-floor apartment with marina views, and said he headed up a rapidly expanding company in the defence business. Visibly irritated by what had happened to his evening, he’d consented to a personal search. When nothing had surfaced in the way of narcotics, he’d laughed in Winter’s face and then tossed him his car keys and told him to help himself.
His blue Jaguar had been parked in the courtyard below. Again, nothing. Back upstairs, Winter had found him on the sofa in the huge expanse of living room, locked into a lengthy call on his mobile. Winter had tried to bring the conversation to an end but Wishart had simply waved him away. He was talking to a client in San Diego. The rest of this pantomime could wait.
In the end it was Suttle who had presented Wishart with his bill for the evening, another credit card slip, again for eight hundred. Wishart had looked at it and shrugged.
‘So?’
‘We’re suggesting some of that money paid for cocaine.’
‘On the contrary. All of it goes to Maddox.’
‘So why pay Richardson, Mr Wishart?’
‘Because that’s the way I choose to do it. It’s very collegiate here. I pay Stephen. Stephen pays Maddox. We meet regularly. We enjoy ourselves. Stephen takes a modest sum for food and drink and Maddox gets the rest.’
‘Richardson is running a brothel, Mr Wishart. He’s living off immoral earnings. That’s an offence.’
‘Wrong. Stephen is an extraordinarily generous host. He introduced me to Maddox and for that I’m deeply grateful. If I choose to give Maddox money, that is
entirely my prerogative. Unless, that is, there’s a law against screwing. Have we finished? Or must I phone my solicitor?’
Winter had dearly wanted to arrest Wishart, drive him down to the Bridewell and bang him up for the night, but both men knew he had no grounds. Wishart was right. Screwing Maddox and paying the going rate wasn’t an offence. Only a drugs charge, properly evidenced, could possibly stick.
Now Winter looked glumly at his watch. The girl Maddox was late. Across the table Suttle was toying with his coffee.
‘How many other blokes do we think she’s shagging?’
‘Half a dozen, at least.’
Winter had retrieved an appointments book from the Camber Court flat, the passing weeks littered with Richardson’s neat entries. The code had been elementary. M stood for Maddox, C for the other girl, Cécile. Punters had likewise been reduced to a single capital letter, but by matching the entries to the credit card slips Winter had quickly been able to confirm the information he’d acquired from the Portsea cleaner. These were well-known names from the Portsmouth social register: a Persian restaurateur, a successful young accountant, a local property developer, two Premiership footballers and a Southampton-based sports agent had fallen for Maddox’s charms, and none of them had paid less than eight hundred pounds. Working an average of three nights a week, Winter estimated she was turning over nearly ten grand a month.
Suttle was doing the sums.
‘That’s three hundred quid an hour. Give or take.’
‘Yeah? But can you imagine screwing a tosser like Wishart? There wouldn’t be a cheque big enough.’
Winter got to his feet. He needed to touch base with Cathy Lamb again and he wanted to do it in the privacy of the corridor. She’d been on first thing, before he’d set off for the surgery, and while she was delighted at Singer’s arrest she was demanding yet more scalps from
Plover
. In the year since Bazza Mackenzie’s effective retirement the local market for good-quality charlie had been wide open to every passing scrot and Cathy was determined to keep the supply chain well and truly disrupted. So where did Richardson source his goodies? And which doors should the squad be kicking in next?
In the corridor, on the point of phoning Cathy Lamb on his mobile, Winter spotted Maddox. She was standing beside the water cooler, chatting to one of the uniformed PCs. Catching sight of Winter, she gave him a smile. She was wearing a long suede coat, beautifully cut, and a pair of black leather ankle boots. Folds of blue and white were tucked around her neck and it took a moment or two for Winter to realise he was looking at a Pompey scarf.
She stepped towards him, extending a hand. Black gloves, the softest touch of leather.
‘Newcastle at home.’ She was unpeeling the scarf. ‘Three o’clock kick-off.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘Of course I am. I have a season ticket. I even go to the away games when it’s somewhere interesting.’
Winter caught the PC’s eye. Like Suttle, his brain seemed to have disengaged.
‘This way, love.’ Winter shepherded her towards the corridor that led to the interview suite. The scent of her perfume took him back to last night. He fought
briefly against the tide of images, and lost. Wishart, he thought grimly. Lucky bastard.
Suttle was already on his feet when Maddox stepped into the bareness of the interview room. He’d obviously decided to play the tough cop.
‘Take a seat.’ He nodded briskly at the empty chair across the table from his own. ‘This shouldn’t take long.’
Maddox hung the Pompey scarf on the back of the chair and unbelted the coat. The white T-shirt beneath was tucked loosely into a pair of deep burgundy corduroy trousers, and Winter was impressed by the fact that she hadn’t dressed to accentuate her figure. Given what he’d seen last night, every other slapper in this city would have gone for the tightest of tops. A truly class act, he thought.
Maddox settled herself in the chair while Suttle clarified the legal situation. She wasn’t under caution and she was free to leave whenever she chose. At the same time, with her permission, he’d like to record the interview in case there was any need to refer to it later.
‘Of course.’ She shrugged. ‘Why not?’
Winter was still looking at the T-shirt. It carried the image of a young man’s face, a mop of dark hair over the vaguest of gazes.
‘Who’s that then?’ Winter nodded at her chest.
Maddox had peeled off her gloves. A black-lacquered nail touched the front of her T-shirt.
‘You mean this guy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Arthur Rimbaud.’
‘Who?’
‘He’s a poet. Or was.’
‘You buy it off the shelf?’
‘Yes.’
‘Pompey?’
‘Paris.’ She settled herself back in the chair. ‘Do you know anything about French literature? Only Rimbaud was a bit of a legend. Wild child, really. Decamped to Africa and swapped poetry for gun-running.’
Winter nodded, out of his depth. Suttle pressed the
RECORD
button on the audio stack and Maddox’s eyes flicked to the four cassettes as he invited her to account for what they’d found at Camber Court. It was a leading question, and she knew it.
‘Found, how exactly?’
‘You in bed with Mr Wishart. The state of the other bedroom. Cocaine everywhere. Visa slips. Sex toys. Pornography. It’s a knocking shop, isn’t it?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re not denying it?’
‘No. Why should I?’
‘Because it’s illegal.’
‘Not from my point of view it isn’t.’
‘That’s as may be but we’re talking offences here.’