Authors: Graham Hurley
‘Like what?’
‘Like living off immoral earnings. You’re telling me Mr Richardson isn’t pimping?’
‘
Pimping?
Stephen?’ She laughed. ‘Sweet thought.’
‘He doesn’t take a cut? Make a living?’
‘He takes enough to keep us in champagne and something half decent to eat. He pays the rates and the electric and puts a bit aside for the odd night out. Just like every working girl.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘I’m sure you do but that’s the way it is. He’s a fun guy. He’s like the rest of us. He’s out for a good time and more to the point he’s got a bit of taste. The way
Stephen sees it, it’s a vocation, not a scam. He wants to please people. And believe me, he does.’
‘For a price.’
‘Of course. We’re dealing with wealthy people here. It’s a market. We strike a deal. No one loses.’
‘How much do you take? For each trick?’
‘Eighty per cent.’
‘That’s high.’
‘It’s what we agreed. We’ve never quarrelled over money. That would be sordid.’
‘
Sordid?
’ It was Suttle’s turn to laugh. ‘You don’t think …?’ He began to shake his head.
‘What? What don’t I think?’ Maddox was leaning forward now, interested, engaged.
‘You don’t think … fat middle-aged guys … people with money to burn … You don’t think any of that’s pretty gross … selling yourself … doing their bidding?’
‘Not in the least. And even if it was, so what? Gross is everywhere. Since when has it been an offence?’
The question stopped Suttle in his tracks. Winter was beginning to enjoy this. Not just a class act, he thought, but bright as well. No wonder she was coining it.
‘Tell me about the drugs,’ he said.
Maddox was still looking at Suttle. At Winter’s question she began to withdraw.
‘I know nothing about the drugs.’
‘You knew Richardson keeps cocaine on the premises?’
‘Of course. We all have our weaknesses.’
‘You don’t use the stuff yourself?’
‘Never.’
‘Have you ever offered it to punters?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Not even if they’ve asked for it?’
‘No. I’ll do anything I can for them physically, anything they want within reason, but the rest of it …’ She shook her head, emphatic. ‘No.’
‘You’re telling me Richardson supplies other substances?’
‘I’m telling you I don’t get involved in that side of it.’
‘
Does
he offer other gear?’
‘I’ve no idea. He has exquisite taste in wine. His cooking is inspired. Our clients get plenty of attention afterwards. I can’t believe they’d ever need anything else.’
Winter sat back a moment, mentally tallying the fruits of last night’s search.
‘All that stuff in the wardrobe in the big bedroom. Is it yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘You dress up for the punters?’
‘When they make a request, yes.’ She looked at him a moment, then warmed the space between them with a sudden grin. ‘Forties French gear is the biggest turn-on. You’ve no idea how many men like to fuck Resistance heroines.’
‘You play the role?’
‘Of course. The gear. The walk. The come-ons. The make-up.
Tout ça
.’
‘You speak French?’
‘Yes.’
‘You fuck the punters in French?’
‘
Bien sûr
.’ She began to laugh again. ‘
Si tu veux
.’
Winter exchanged glances with Suttle, knowing she’d got the best of both of them. Nothing usable was going to come of this interview and if Cathy Lamb ever got hold of the tapes she’d have a fit. This wasn’t evidence gathering. This was a floor show.
Winter reached out, pressed the
STOP
button. Then he sat back, looking Maddox in the eye.
‘You know what really interests me?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘What is it?’
‘You want to know why I do it.’ She smiled at him. ‘Is it the money? Is that why I do it?’
She let the question hang between them. Very slowly Winter shook his head. For the first time in weeks he’d stopped worrying about the pain behind his eyes.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not the money.’
‘So what is it then?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You’re lying. You’re like every other man. You just don’t want to admit it.’
‘Admit what?’
‘That I might enjoy it.’ She reached for her gloves. ‘Does that help your enquiries?’
Faraday was in Eadie’s apartment on the seafront when he got the call. J-J was busy in the kitchen preparing a late lunch, a mountain of chopped onions browning in the pan. Faraday fumbled for his mobile and walked across to the big picture window at the other end of the room. Fitful sunshine puddled the Solent.
‘Mr Faraday?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Darren Webster, sir, from Newport. We met yesterday. Hope you don’t mind me calling.’
‘Of course not. What’s the problem?’
‘It’s not something I can discuss on the phone, sir. I’m in Pompey this afternoon, over for the football. I was just wondering …’
‘You want a meet?’
‘Yes, sir. If it’s not too much trouble.’
Faraday was watching a pilot launch ploughing out through the churning tide, trying to weigh the implications of this sudden development. He’d spent most of the morning reviewing what little anyone seemed to know about Webster’s headless body, and the more he thought about the implications, the more interested he became.
‘Is this to do with Tennyson Down?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Does your DI know you’re making this call?’
There was a pause. The pilot launch had changed course, heading for the distant bulk of an incoming container ship. Finally Webster was back on the line.
‘No, sir.’
‘Then tell him. As long as you do that, no problem. You know Fratton nick? Half five. Ask for Major Crimes.’
Faraday pocketed the mobile and lingered at the window a moment longer before turning back into the room. J-J was watching him from the other side of the breakfast bar. Deaf since birth, he communicated with the outside world in a flurry of hand signs, a private vocabulary that had always amazed onlookers by its sheer range of expression. One of the lessons J-J had learned about his father’s life was its unpredictability. Mobile calls were often a cue for an abrupt departure.
‘You still want to eat?’ he signed.
‘Of course.’
‘You want a lager first?’
‘Silly question.’
Faraday watched his son as he opened the fridge and produced a couple of cans. San Miguel had been Faraday’s favourite for years, ever since he’d started going to Spain on birding expeditions, and it warmed
him to think that this boy of his had taken the trouble to lay in supplies.
J-J poured the lager, then returned to the pan. Faraday had caught the scent of garlic and cumin seed, another reminder of the long years they’d spent together in the Bargemaster’s House.
‘Heard from Eadie?’ Faraday signed.
J-J nodded, and gave the onions a final stir before wiping his hands on a dishcloth. Eadie, he signed, had emailed him twice in the last twenty-four hours. He thought she’d had enough of tropical islands.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘She’s been in touch with those people in the council. They’ve said yes to the project.’
‘What project’s that?’
‘The video for next year. I told you last week.’
‘You did?’
J-J shot his father a despairing look and turned to rummage in a cupboard beside the fridge. Eadie Sykes ran a video production company from a modest suite of offices in Hampshire Terrace. She specialised in documentary work – ruthlessly edited studies with a radical bite – and a recent production had sparked a great deal of controversy. J-J’s reward for helping her on this project had been a full-time job, an offer that had finally won him the independence he’d craved. Just now he was flat-sitting for his boss but when she returned he’d find himself a place of his own.
‘Remind me.’ Faraday swallowed a mouthful of San Miguel. ‘This new video.’
‘Next year’s the biggie.’ J-J’s bony hands shaped an ever-expanding space. ‘The city wants something special to pull people in.’
‘That’s not documentary. That’s marketing.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘And Eadie?’
‘She thinks she can do it her way.’
‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘Yeah, but she’s got loads of ideas.’ J-J nodded at the laptop on the low table in front of the sofa.
Faraday abandoned the stool at the breakfast bar. Next year, 2005, marked the two-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, a peg on which the city fathers were going to hang Pompey’s battered hat. Even a year away there were detailed plans for a Royal Fleet Review, an International Festival of the Sea, plus countless other crowd-pulling events which might finally make Portsmouth the must-visit heritage destination.
Eadie’s latest email showed on the laptop’s screen, and a quick scan brought a smile to Faraday’s face. In certain moods this woman with whom he’d shared the last couple of years was irresistible. She wrote like she talked, and each new paragraph was a fresh insight into the fertile anarchy of her imagination. She had total faith in herself, a self-confidence unchallenged by a moment’s self-doubt, and Faraday loved that.
Her video was to begin with a montage of comments from the Pompey diaspora, a message or two from those thousands of folk who’d bailed out of the city and sought a better life overseas. On the face of it this was a bizarre proposition – why waste precious screen time on turncoats who’d opted to leave? – but the more Faraday read, the more he found himself nodding in agreement. Portsmouth, after all, had always been in the export business, if not violence then people, and what trademarked the quotes that Eadie produced in evidence was a collective agreement that Pompey wasn’t simply special but unique.
A Tipner-born boatbuilder she must have met in the
New Hebrides talked wistfully of his apprenticeship in the naval dockyard. A retired nurse, on vacation from Adelaide, remembered playing amongst the buddleia on the post-war Southsea bomb sites. A young globetrotting music promoter she’d sat next to on the flight from Singapore, ex-Portsmouth University, had ring-fenced his first million to build himself a mansion on Portsdown Hill. These were people, Faraday thought, that Eadie had either bumped into or invented, but real or unreal their message was the same, a distant echo of the roar that rose from the terraces at Fratton Park. We are all the prisoners of our birthright. Pompey Till I Die.
Faraday caught J-J’s eye.
‘And the council’s said yes to all this?’
J-J nodded, then peered briefly at the pan.
‘You think four chillies will be enough?’ he signed.
Winter’s phone was ringing when he finally made it back home. He and Jimmy Suttle had found time for a drink after Maddox’s departure from the Bridewell, sharing a city centre pub with a trainload of Newcastle supporters busy fortifying themselves for the ten-minute sprint to Fratton Park. The ones who were drinking fastest had resigned themselves to the rumoured ambush. The ones who weren’t couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
Now, Winter lifted the phone wondering why the caller hadn’t tried his mobile. Seconds later he found himself listening to Willard’s gruff tones. The Detective Superintendent had been talking to Terry Alcott at headquarters. Alcott was the Assistant Chief Constable in charge of CID and Special Operations and had taken an early morning call from a Maurice Wishart. He’d bumped into Wishart at some pre-Xmas drinks
party, and now Wishart was using this brief social encounter to register his outrage over an incident that was alleged to have taken place last night in Old Portsmouth. Alcott hadn’t got a clue about the details but Wishart was claiming harassment and threatening to go to the press.
‘Sir—?’ Winter tried to interrupt. Willard told him to listen.
‘Alcott doesn’t care a stuff about Wishart. He says the guy can talk to whoever he likes. But I’m telling you to ignore any calls from the
News
. If those bastards phone you, refer them to me. Understood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. And well done for Singer.’
The line went dead. Winter held on to the phone for a moment, feeling the warmth flood through his body. He was still looking for the bottle of Scotch he kept on the go when he remembered Suttle. A call to his mobile found him in the crowd at Fratton Park.
‘About last night. Has anyone rung you from the
News
?’
‘The what?’
‘The
News
.’
‘Yeah.’ Suttle was shouting. ‘Woman called Kerry. She wanted to know what we were up to. Address. Names. Details. The lot. Wouldn’t say where she got the whisper but my money’s on someone from the Bridewell.’
Winter tried to focus on the familiar view from his sitting room. Instead of the sodden midwinter greens and browns of the long back garden, all he could see were bubbles.
‘So what did you say?’ he managed.
‘Fuck all. When she started to try it on I told her to get a life, phoning a bloke on his day off. Shit—’
‘What’s the matter?’
The crowd in the background had gone very quiet. Finally, Suttle was back on the line.
‘Unbelievable.’ He sounded choked. ‘Newcastle just bloody scored.’
Darren Webster was already at Kingston Crescent police station by the time Faraday had fought his way through the traffic and climbed the stairs to the Major Crimes suite on the second floor. A young DC tackling a backlog of paperwork had rescued Webster from the front desk and made him a coffee. Now, seated in the big office that served as the major incident room, he seemed perfectly at home.
Faraday gestured him down the long central corridor.
‘How was the match?’
‘I didn’t go in the end, sir. A mate of mine called up to check out a new launch site on Boniface Down. Crap unless you’ve got a death wish.’
‘So you’ve come over specially?’
‘Yes.’
‘And told DI Irving?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘OK.’ Faraday paused outside his office, unlocked the door, and then waved Webster into an empty chair. ‘So what have you got for me?’
The young detective’s eyes had gone immediately to the display of bird shots pinned to Faraday’s wall board.