‘Yeah. I did a bit of extra business with Garfield I probably never mentioned.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like buying a stake in a couple of deals he’d set up.’
‘Deals, Baz?’ Winter was staring up at a line of signal indicators. Mercifully they were still red.
‘Yeah. Instead of money he took a couple of properties off me. Timeshares down near Marbella.’
‘You gave him the deeds?’
‘I did, Paulie. I did.’ Winter felt a squeeze on his arm. This was getting worse. Much worse.
‘Not toot though, Baz. Tell me you didn’t go shares on some fucking narco-deal.’
‘Afraid so, mush.’ Mackenzie shot him a look. He was grinning fit to bust. ‘A hundred and fifty per cent over less than a year? Who’d say no to a deal like that?’
Winter sat back and closed his eyes. Was it too late to get out? Should he scream, just like everyone else was screaming? Should he wave his arms to attract attention, just like the rest of these monkeys? Or should he find some way to dematerialise? To simply vanish off the face of the earth? Before gravity or the Serious and Organised Crime boys brought his long and distinguished career to an end?
The pressure on his arm had gone. Instead, Mackenzie was patting his thigh, giving him encouragement, telling him to be brave. An experience like this, he was saying, was the ride of a lifetime. Everything thereafter would be just a little bit different.
Winter didn’t doubt it. He shut his eyes, trying hard not to contemplate the consequences of Bazza’s latest investment. If he survived this, he told himself, then things would indeed be a little bit different.
The screams suddenly got louder. Then he felt a punch in his back, and the rumble of wheels beneath his arse, and a second later he seemed to be lying flat on his back with a hole where his stomach had once been. He couldn’t breathe properly. He was too confused, too bewildered, to be frightened. He was going up and up. The screaming hadn’t stopped. At speed, the drizzle had become cold needles driving into his face. As the train lurched to the right he opened his eyes. Big mistake. Bits of Surrey yawned beneath him. The speed was falling off. Then the train righted itself and for a single terrifying moment, as they plunged vertically down, he had the jumper’s view of the onrushing earth. This is what suicide must feel like, he told himself. This is what happens when you listen too hard to the likes of Bazza Mackenzie. The track began to flatten. The train slowed again. Another couple of twirls, and it was all over. The train juddered to a halt and Winter opened his eyes to find Mackenzie already on the platform, his hand outstretched.
‘Fancy another go, mush? Or shall we fuck off home?’
Winter rode south in the Bentley. Stu would be bringing his Lexus back once the kids had had enough of Thorpe Park. Of Esme there was no sign.
‘So Garfield’s done a runner. Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Yeah. New passport. Nice place to go to out in Morocco. No extradition treaty. Marie says he looked happy as Larry. He had a French motor waiting for him in Dieppe and a couple of days would put him in southern Spain. From there he takes the ferry to Tangiers. A million quid off me and fuck knows how much of his own and the last thing he’s worrying about is moolah. He buys himself a decent tan and a bit of peace and quiet. Bingo. Sorted.’
‘And you?’
‘You mean us, mush?’
‘Yeah. What do we get?’
‘For a million quid? You want the list? Number one, I’ve got the Spanish deeds back. He never got round to engrossing them so that means him and me never did business. Number two, he’s given me an affidavit resigning any interest in the hotel.’
‘Whose idea was that?’
‘Ez’s. She drew it up. She’s a pain most of the time but there’s still a brain in there somewhere, thank fuck.’
‘She talked to Garfield?’
‘His solicitor. I wanted to bung him too, just to say sorry, no hard feelings, but she thought it was a bad idea.’
‘He’s not going to Morocco?’
‘No.’
‘Then she’s right. The guy’s a loose cannon.’
‘I don’t think so, mush.’
‘Why not?’
‘Turns out he’s got a stack of properties in Montenegro. It also turns out he’s been knobbing Garfield’s missus. So there’s another guy who fancies a new life in the sunshine. Esme doesn’t think he’ll last the course, though. Blokes his age always come back.’
Winter nodded. Surviving three minutes of Stealth had revived his interest in life. Bazza was right. Everything felt just a little bit different.
‘So you think you’ve got it weighed off?’
‘
We
, mush.
We
’ve got it weighed off. I know it’s late in the day but Marie’s right, all the best movies keep you guessing to the very end.’
‘And you think this is over?’
‘I think we’re into something different.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Tide Turn for starters. Have you talked to Mo at all? That boy’s a fucking revelation. How the fuck did you score someone like him?’
Winter could only smile. ‘Boy’ was an interesting description. Mo Sturrock had to be mid-forties.
‘So what’s happened?’
Mackenzie put his foot down, leaving a BMW 5-series for dead. For a second or two Winter was back on the Stealth ride. Then the Bentley slowed to eighty.
‘He’s come up with this idea, mush, and from where I’m sitting it’s a cracker. He’s calling it the Offshore Challenge. It’s all about rowing, offshore rowing, proper rowing, not the fancy stuff they do on the Thames for the Boat Race. These are real boats. He’s showed me pictures, photos. Turns out he does a bit of it himself, over on the island.’
Sturrock, he said, had been a member of the Ryde Rowing Club for more years than he could remember. These were guys who rowed two, three times a week, fit as fuck, trained like bastards, went in for regattas, won every cup ever invented. Mo had got himself a little bit of that, knew what it could do for you.
‘We’re talking serious fitness, mush. Self-respect is the word he uses. He says it turns your life around, and he should know.’
‘How come?’
‘He told Marie he had a few problems. When he was much younger.’
‘Like what kind of problems?’
‘He’s not saying or at least she’s not telling me. Either way it was a long time ago. Whatever happened, it was the rowing that got him out of it. First in Pompey, then over there on the island. Loads of kids do it in Ryde and it suits them a treat, but these tend to be nice kids, motivated kids, middle-class kids. What Mo wants to do, what he’s
always
wanted to do, is set something up for other kinds of kids, scrotey kids, the sort who end up in Tide Trust.’
Winter was trying to imagine the likes of Billy Lenahan in a rowing boat on the Solent. Oddly enough, he could dimly sense the logic. Better to send the boy to sea than have him hot-wiring yet more Escorts.
‘So what kind of boats are these?’
‘Four blokes rowing, one little guy at the back doing the steering. Mo’s got some contacts in the Navy. If we bung some money in for - say - three of these boats he thinks he can talk the Navy guys into giving us some kind of boathouse and maybe a PTI to do the start-off drills, just to get the little tossers fit. Then it’s down to regular sessions. He’s talking a nine-month programme. We take fifteen of them. That’s three crews. He’s worked it all out. Talk to him. Like I say, it’s brilliant.’
Winter was trying to remember a phrase Sturrock had used when they’d first met in the pub in Albert Road. He’d been going on about just how big a challenge these kids could be. Nine months, he’d said. That was how long it took to win their confidence, to build a little trust, to start to turn their lives around. And nine months on any kind of programme could cost the earth.
‘We’ve got the money, Baz?’
‘Of course we’ve got the money. Three boats? Second hand? How much is that going to cost?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘He’s saying ten grand a boat. The Navy kicks everything else in. We raise a bit of extra sponsorship, blag some more dosh off Social Services, raid the Lord Mayor’s fund, talk to the Lottery, probably end up making a profit. But that’s not the point, mush.’
‘It’s not?’
‘No way. This is a beautiful idea. Tide Turn Trust, right? The Offshore Challenge, right? Flagship City, right? Turning scrote Pompey nippers into world-beaters, right? Can’t go wrong, mush. I’ve told Mo I want a big summer launch. I want it somewhere special, maybe aboard
Victory
, somewhere like that. I want the press there, celebs, telly, the works. I want us knocking on everyone’s door with the Offshore Challenge. And you know who’s going to make that happen? You and Mo. Mo sorts the kids out. Mo sources the boats. Mo talks to the Navy. You do the rest. Like I say, mush. Can’t go wrong.’ He glanced across. ‘Deal?’
Winter didn’t say a word. A couple of years ago, when he’d first joined up, Mackenzie had thrown him a similar challenge. Then it had been jet skis. Now it was offshore rowing. On both occasions the emphasis was on innovation and scale. Thinking outside the box. Thinking big. Showing what a bunch of scrotey adolescents could really do with their sad little lives. Mackenzie loved taking the world by surprise. As Winter, to his cost, knew only too well.
‘Great, Baz.’ He tried not to sound glum. ‘So when do you want to launch?’
‘As soon as, mush. July at the latest.’
Chapter twenty-eight
FRIDAY, 30 MAY 2008. 14.32
Faraday officially severed his connection with Operation
Causeway
in a meeting with DCI Parsons. She offered a muted round of applause for the way he’d coped with the ongoing frustrations and hinted that he had her admiration for anticipating the shambles of the stake-out in the Poole pub. However, she said that Willard was less than pleased with the squad’s performance on both
Causeway
and
Melody
and without actually saying so she left him in no doubt that the key investigative link between them was Faraday himself. He seemed to have lost his appetite for driving complex investigations forward. There was also, more troublingly, evidence of a crisis of
belief.
Parsons seldom strayed into territory like this. Her job, and Faraday’s, was to gather lawyer-proof evidence as effectively as they possibly could. They measured their success in the number of convictions they secured. Any issues that might lurk on the other side of that mission statement, issues about the real nature or meaning of justice, were of no professional relevance whatsoever. If people did wrong, if they broke the law, they got detected, tried, found guilty and punished. End of story.
Faraday, to his slight surprise, had no quarrel with any of this. Parsons, for once, had tabled her criticisms in a regretful tone of voice that could only anticipate a more permanent farewell, and there was a part of him that welcomed the prospect of a quieter life and an easier conscience. Putting Jeanette Morrissey away had been the hollowest of victories, and getting dicked around by the likes of Mackenzie had soured him still further. If you had the money and the nerve, you’d probably make it. If you’d lost your son to a psychopath and took your chance to get even, you were likely to end up inside.
All the same, he was curious as to where
Causeway
might be heading next. Would Parsons, as SIO, be pursuing enquiries into who, exactly, the kidnapper might have been? Would the young lad be subjected to a rigorous interview? Would the banks be on alert for the moment the marked fifty-pound notes floated to the surface? Might those sightings flag a path back to Mackenzie’s door?
‘That’s speculation, Joe, as you well know. Of course we don’t give up. We never give up. Which is why I want you to focus now on
Sangster.
’
Sangster
was the cold case file Faraday had been reading before the phone rang with the news of the kidnap. A stranger rape dating back to 1984 plainly offered him a safe berth. Putting a name to Tessa Fogle’s mystery assailant might offer him something more clear-cut in the way of crime and punishment.
Parsons, it seems, was reading his mind.
‘Don’t be too hasty, Joe. The file tells me this man could have killed her. Even you will admit that’s not polite.’
At 13 Sandown Road, in the aftermath of Guy’s return, it was Marie who took control of events. When Esme finally turned up, stepping out of a taxi from the station, mother and daughter had a heart-to-heart. Stu and the kids were banished upstairs while Marie and Esme sat at the kitchen table and reviewed the shape of the coming months.
To Marie’s relief, Esme appeared to have turned an important corner. The midlife storm that had erupted in the shape of Perry Madison had blown itself out. In her phrase, she’d enjoyed the best of him and moved on. She had no regrets about what she’d done and no plans to ever get in touch again. Marie, who found this dismissal of the last six months rather chilling, wisely declined to comment. The only thing that interested her was the resumption of family life.
Esme agreed. She’d talked to Stu and they’d decided on a new start. They’d be moving back to the Meon Valley that same afternoon. Stu had already told the kids, who to Marie’s quiet delight had been less than enthusiastic. They rather liked life in Craneswater with Grandma and Grandad, and Guy in particular was in no hurry to return to memories of the man in the black balaclava.
With this in mind Esme was already hatching plans for the future. In conversation with Stu they’d agreed that Madison had been the symptom rather than the cause of the recent upsets. Their life as a family was out of balance. They needed to see more of each other. Stu spending five nights a week in London might fill the Norcliffe coffers but what use was that if they ended up spending the money as virtual strangers?
Marie, with a sinking heart, anticipated exactly where this conversation was leading. Esme, like her father, never gave up. Her passion for Perry Madison might have cooled but she was still in love with the Baiona hotel.