Western Approaches (Jimmy Suttle) Read online

  ‘No problem. We’ve all done it. Just take it really easy, yeah?’

  He reached forward, took another long slow stroke. Lizzie did the same. This time it worked. They were out now in the current, clear water between the boat and the beach, landmarks up on the promenade slipping by. She couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Even pressure.’ Pendrick’s head was half turned.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Both oars.’

  Lizzie did what she was told. Another stroke. Another little triumph.

  ‘Easy up. Sort yourselves out.’ Tessa this time.

  Everyone stopped rowing. The boat drifted on. Tessa wanted to know whether Lizzie was OK, whether Tom was taking care of her. One of the other girls laughed. Lizzie said she was fine. The crew numbered off from the bow, Lizzie first.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she repeated.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Stroke.’

  ‘Come forward to row.’ Tessa again. ‘Ready to row. Row.’

  At the other end of the boat Lizzie had no idea what was happening. All she could do was follow the big man in front of her, do her best to mirror his every move and try not to screw things up. Most of the time it worked, stroke after stroke, fierce concentration, trying to store Pendrick’s muttered asides in her teeming brain, reaching forward to take the catch, keeping her arms straight as she pushed back against the footplate, remembering not to bury the whole blade in the water as she pulled hard before the extraction. By the time they’d made it down to the dock, she was wiped out. Not physically but mentally.

  Tessa had called for another stop. Pendrick turned in his seat. Lizzie was staring up at the biggest of the apartment blocks on the waterfront. It had to be at least six storeys.

  ‘What’s that place?’ she asked.

  ‘Regatta Court.’

  ‘It’s gross.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I do. And the colour. Who ever let that happen?’

  ‘Fuck knows.’

  The big man was shaking his head. And when he turned to her again, he at last had a smile on his face.

  An hour or so later, back on dry land, he walked her to the Impreza.

  ‘You were good,’ he said. ‘I mean it.’

  Lizzie was touched. She wanted to thank him. She wanted to thank them all. She’d arrived with zero expectations, preoccupied with not making a fool of herself. She sensed it might be tricky and she hadn’t been wrong, but there was something about these people that gave her immense confidence. They’d made room for her. They’d expected her to measure up. And that’s exactly what she’d done. No drama. No girly hysterics. Just the calm sweep of water at the end of each new stroke and the comforting tug as the boat surged forward.

  Pendrick wanted to know whether she’d enjoyed it.

  ‘It was brilliant,’ she said.

  ‘You mean that?’

  ‘Yeah, I do.’

  ‘You’ll come again?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Thursday?’

  ‘For sure.’

  They were at the car by now and she was looking for her keys. Pendrick was gazing out at the water. Another crew was pushing hard against the tide.

  ‘Got far to go?’

  ‘Colaton Raleigh.’

  ‘Country girl?’ He seemed surprised.

  ‘Far from it.’

  She’d found the keys at last. She thanked him again, then paused.

  ‘You mind me asking a question?’ she said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘This guy who was found dead the other day. The one on the TV news. The guy the girls were talking about in the boat.’

  ‘Kinsey?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Lizzie bent to re-tie her shoe lace. ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘So . . .’ Lizzie glanced up. ‘What do you think happened?’

  Suttle was at the stove when Lizzie got back. There was a pile of sliced potatoes ready for the frying pan and he’d opened a tin of baked beans to go with the sausages. Grace had been bathed and might fancy a story. So far, Lizzie hadn’t said a word.

  ‘So how was it?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Fantastic. They’re all talking about Kinsey. Fascinating.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t worry. No one knows I’m married to a cop.’

  ‘Thank fuck for that.’

  ‘So how’s it going? This Kinsey thing?’

  Suttle studied her a moment, then turned back to the stove.

  ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you sort Grace out first?’

  She was back downstairs within minutes. Grace was already asleep. She’d showered and changed and now she had something else on her mind.

  ‘That message on the answering machine,’ she said. ‘What was that about?’

  Suttle explained. Lizzie had always had a soft spot for Winter. ‘You’re telling me they want his address?’

  ‘I’m telling you they want to hurt the man. Maybe worse than that.’

  ‘You mean kill him?’

  ‘These things can get out of control. It’s best if they never catch up with him.’

  ‘Shit.’ Lizzie told him about finding the Pompey programme on the kitchen table.

  Suttle stared at her.

  ‘On the where?’

  ‘There.’ Lizzie pointed at the table. ‘I was out for maybe an hour. Maybe less. When I came back, there it was. They must have got in through the window next door.’

  Suttle gave up on the potatoes. His briefcase was still in the car. When he returned he had the photographs. Lizzie was horrified.

  ‘Where did you get these?’

  ‘Gill brought them down.’ He explained about the envelope that had landed on her desk at work. It would have come from mates of Mackenzie, he said. And Gill had been chosen to play postman.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they know you two are mates.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because Gill had been shagging Mackenzie and probably told him.’

  ‘Christ.’

  Lizzie sat down. She understood now why Gill was less than keen to have her and Grace around the new flat. The last thing she needed in her life was a bunch of middle-aged heavies from the 6.57.

  ‘So what do we do?’ She was looking at the photos again. ‘These people frighten me. They shouldn’t but they do.’

  Suttle had already decided to spare her the details of this afternoon’s meet in the Angel. Now he told her that he had the thing under control.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ She looked up. ‘Have you told someone? Reported it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Who? Who have you told?’

  ‘Someone in Pompey.’

  ‘Police? Someone in the Job?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t trust them.’

  ‘Don’t trust them? Christ, Jimmy, this is our daughter we’re talking about, our house, everything we have. The police are supposed to look after us, protect us. Isn’t that the way it works or have I got this thing wrong?’

  Suttle did his best to explain. It was about Winter, he said, not them.

  ‘You think he’s more important? More important than us? Than Grace?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘It’s not? Jesus, you’re supposed to be my husband. My daughter’s father. What is this?’

  Suttle held his ground. He’d thought the thing through. Tomorrow he’d be going to Pompey. By Thursday he’d have everything sorted.

  ‘How can I know that? How can I be sure?’

  ‘You have to trust me.’

  ‘Sure, but . . . fuck, Jimmy, these people are creepy. Worse than that they want to hurt us.’

  ‘No.’ Suttle was emphatic. ‘That won’t happen.’

  ‘You say.’

  ‘I say.’

  She looked at him for a long moment.
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  ‘I could phone the police myself,’ she said at last.

  ‘You could. Of course you could. Then it would be your fault.’

  ‘My fault what?’

  ‘Your fault when they get to Winter.’

  ‘You really think that would happen?’

  ‘I think it might. And that’s enough.’

  Lizzie had slumped in the chair. The fight had gone out of her. She felt physically smaller. Suttle went back to the stove, started cooking again.

  After a while Lizzie stirred. ‘What would the police do?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. We’re thin on the ground just now. Plotting up the house would be a no-no. What with the cuts and everything, there just aren’t the bodies any more. If we’re lucky we might get some kind of alarm.’

  ‘Like old people? Wear it round our necks?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Call for help after they’ve burned the house down?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK.’ She shrugged. ‘You win. Just make sure Grace stays in one piece, yeah?’

  Suttle served the meal. The sauté potatoes were fried to a crisp and the sausages in the oven had dried out. So much for the meal of his dreams.

  Lizzie mentioned Kinsey again. She’d been chatting to a guy at the club. He’d sorted her out in the boat, been really helpful.

  Suttle speared a sausage, dipped it in a puddle of mustard.

  ‘He’s got a name, this guy?’

  ‘Tom. Tom Pendrick.’

  Suttle nodded. The mustard had done nothing for the sausage.

  ‘So what did you make of him?’ he said after a while. ‘This Pendrick?’

  ‘I liked him. He was solid. He was kind too. Rowing isn’t as easy as it looks.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Suttle’s face was a mask. ‘So what did this guy have to say about Kinsey?’

  ‘You’re fishing.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘He said he was rich. He said he wanted to be a winner. And he said something else too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said guys like that are driven. They never lift their heads up, never look around, never see the obvious in front of their noses. In Kinsey’s case that might have been fatal.’

  ‘He said that last bit?’

  ‘No.’ She pushed her plate away. ‘I just did.’

  Four

  WEDNESDAY, 13 APRIL 2011

  Suttle drove to Portsmouth the following afternoon, telling Houghton on the phone that he had a couple of domestic difficulties to resolve. Houghton, as far as he could gauge, was unsurprised.

  ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘If you want a couple of days, book it as leave.’

  The road east was clotted with late-spring traffic and it was early evening on the M27 before Suttle was stealing a glance at the familiar sprawl of Pompey in the thickening light. He took the exit at the foot of the motorway and drove through the suburbs of Cosham before taking the road up to the top of Portsdown Hill. There was a car park here with a view over the entire city. He’d used it a thousand times, often with Winter when they were working together on divisional CID, and it was ideal if you wanted to steal a little time for a coffee or a think.

  Suttle killed the engine and settled back. Marie was Mackenzie’s widow, a classy High School girl whom Bazza had kidnapped and made rich. Opinions differed on exactly how keen Marie had been to join the world of the young Bazza Mac, but Winter, who was in a position to know, had always insisted that she’d made the running. She was wild as well as beautiful, and she’d seen something deeply promising in her new beau. Life with Bazza, as it turned out, had been everything he’d promised – unpredictable, never risk-free, always fun – and when he’d died at the hands of the Tactical Firearms Unit, she’d been beyond consolation.

  Suttle had seen photos of Marie following her husband’s coffin into the cathedral. She’d maintained a dignified silence in the face of ceaseless media attention, and at the funeral, a step or two behind the pall-bearers from the 6.57, she’d graced the occasion with poise and elegance. In a brief tribute to her dead husband she’d talked about his loyalty and warmth. He’d been the rock at the very centre of countless lives, she said, and his absence left a void that would never be filled. She’d spoken without notes, her eyes moving from face to face in the packed congregation, and she’d ended by calling for one of her grandsons to read a poem he’d penned only the previous night. The poem was moving in its simplicity and stirred a low rumble of applause that had ended by engulfing the entire cathedral. If anyone would understand the importance of family life, Suttle thought, then it had to be Marie.

  She answered his call within seconds. They’d already been in touch on the phone the previous day and she was prepared to meet. Now she named a restaurant in Southsea. She’d be there in half an hour.

  Suttle knew Sopranos well. He and Lizzie had used it regularly before they’d left the city and the food was never less than excellent. He arrived a couple of minutes early and found himself a table in the corner. He’d bought a copy of the News from the Co-op down the street and he flicked through to the back to check on the football news. The Preston game had ended in a 1–1 draw. Pompey, it seemed, had been lucky to steal a point.

  ‘Hi.’

  He looked up to find Marie standing beside the table. She was wearing a white knee-length dress that definitely hadn’t come from a chain store and the tan suggested a recent holiday.

  Suttle got to his feet. A handshake would have been too formal, a kiss way too familiar. He pulled out the other chair and gestured for her to sit down.

  She told him she hadn’t come to eat. When he suggested a drink she asked for a spritzer. Suttle went to the bar and ordered himself a San Miguel. The owner, whom he knew, raised an eyebrow at the sight of Marie.

  ‘Known her long?’ She was smiling.

  ‘Not that long.’

  ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘So how’s life in Devon?’

  ‘Fraught.’

  He returned to the table with the drinks. Marie looked up at him. The last thing Suttle wanted was silence.

  ‘Been somewhere nice?’ he enquired.

  ‘Madeira. Big mistake.’

  ‘No good?’

  ‘The weather was lovely. But you need to be over seventy to have a conversation.’

  ‘You went by yourself?’

  ‘No.’ Marie glanced at her watch. ‘So what’s this about?’

  Suttle saw no point in glossing over what had happened. A bunch of Pompey guys were giving him a hard time. They wanted to lay hands on Paul Winter and thought Suttle had the key to his door. All this he could cope with but he drew the line at pressure on his wife and daughter. They’d staked out his house. They’d photographed Lizzie and Grace. The threat was explicit. We know where you live. We know who you love. He needed this kind of stuff to stop.

  ‘What’s any of this got to do with me?’

  ‘These people were mates of your husband. They think Winter needs a seeing-to.’

  ‘Maybe they’re right.’

  ‘Maybe they are, but that’s not the point. Number one I haven’t a clue where Winter is. Number two I wouldn’t tell them if I did.’

  ‘Do they know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You told them?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They weren’t pleased.’

  For the first time Suttle detected a flicker of approval. Was she applauding the heavies who’d driven down to Devon? Or was there something in Suttle’s defiance that had won her respect? In truth he didn’t know but sensed there was no point in taking his foot off the throttle.

  ‘I could take this to the police,’ he said.

  ‘You are the police.’

  ‘I know. But I could make it official, make life hard for these guys. That’s not something I want to do.’

  ‘Why not? I thought that’s what you people were for?’

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nbsp; ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘It never is.’ She leaned forward, toying with her drink. ‘You know what I liked about Winter? Apart from the fact that he made me laugh? I liked his mind. I liked his deviousness. He did us a lot of favours, that man. I’d be the first to admit it. Which makes what he did all the more unforgivable. We took him in. We treated him as one of the family. And then he betrayed us.’

  Suttle nodded. He wasn’t here for a moral debate. If you were looking for devious, serious devious, Paul Winter was world class. All Suttle wanted to do was to get these monkeys off his back.

  Marie hadn’t finished. Winter, she said, had often talked about Suttle. This was the young kid he’d turned into a detective of real quality. More to the point, Jimmy Suttle had remained one of the few ex-colleagues prepared to give Winter the time of day.

  ‘Is that true?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah. More or less. I’d no time for what he’d done and I told him so, but yeah, we stayed friends.’

  ‘He told me you once saved his life.’

  ‘I did what I could. He was a sick man.’

  ‘He appreciated that.’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’

  ‘And he appreciated the way you stuck with him.’

  ‘That was different. I had a job to do. There was always a reason we got together.’

  ‘On his part?’

  ‘On mine.’

  ‘I see.’ She was watching him carefully. ‘So does that make my husband’s death your fault?’

  ‘Yes. We never set out to kill him . . . but yes. It’s my job to put people like your husband away and that’s exactly what we did.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘The team.’

  ‘Including Winter?’

  ‘Obviously. It wouldn’t have happened without him. I’ve no idea how much you know about all this, Mrs Mackenzie, but your husband exposed Winter to situations that seriously upset him.’

  ‘Are you telling me that came as some kind of surprise? That’s what he signed up for.’

  ‘Really? Murder? In cold blood? Not just the target but the target’s girlfriend? Someone this guy had known for a couple of days? Someone who never deserved to be killed?’

  Marie blinked. She knows nothing of this, Suttle thought. Absolutely fuck all.