Backstory Read online

  “But it has happened, Terry.”

  I’d anticipated this. I passed him the cutting from the Guardian. He glanced at the headline and looked briefly pained. Then he shook his head.

  “Doesn’t work,” he repeated. “Wouldn’t ever happen.”

  “It’s there in front of you.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re in denial, Terry. We’re talking the event, the incident, not what happens afterwards. This is Pompey, remember. I’m amazed something like this hasn’t kicked off already.”

  “Sure. For all I know you might be right. All I’m saying is we couldn’t handle it. No way.”

  John wasn’t convinced. He wanted to talk the thing through, imagine a situation like that for real. First off, the scene beside the pool obviously needed to be secured. That meant uniforms plus Scenes of Crime plus a HOP.

  “HOP?”

  “Home Office Pathologist. The hot one just now is Debbie Cook. She’d have to drive over from North Devon. We’re talking three hours.”

  “How about Bazza?”

  “We’d scoop him up and book him in. His missus, too. Prime suspects, have to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Number one he’s known to us already. Number two the murders have taken place on his property. We haven’t got a clue why he’d want to kill either of them but at this stage we only have his word that he’s only just arrived. We need to seize his motor, bag his clothes, bosh the house, alibi him properly, check it all out. Has to be done.”

  “What about next door? The party?”

  “We’d have uniforms there by then. Probably the duty Inspector, too. He’d put the shout out for the FSU.”

  The FSU is police-speak for the Force Support Unit. I’d met these guys before. These are the scary Ninjas who turn up in full body armour. They work in shield pairs and spend the happiest of days in the force gym rehearsing every scenario you can imagine until they’ve calibrated exactly the right degree of violence to terrify everyone into submission. They also use dogs. The fact that they call them “Land Sharks” might give you pause for thought.

  The FSU would turn up within the hour, said John, and risk assess the situation.

  “What does that mean?”

  “They obviously need to close the party down. No way are these kids all going to form an orderly queue at the door, not in this scenario, so my guess is they’re going to go for controlled release. Everyone’s pissed, hostile, coked –up, whatever, so quick-time they need to start negotiating.”

  Terry was giving John the benefit of the doubt. Say 75% of the kids could be coaxed into leaving the party in batches. That would still leave a hard core of 50+ inbreds for the FSU to sort out but in the meantime the Crime Scene Coordinator would be faced with the prospect of arresting the other 167. Any of these kids could have been implicated in the double murder next door. They’d need transport from Craneswater to various custody centres – ideally in coaches that had been forensically cleaned beforehand to prevent cross contamination. The kids’ mobiles would have to be seized for analysis. In each case that raised issues about a warrant for the intercept of communications. This process alone, an application for the so-called RIPA (named after the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act), could take hours.

  At the custody centres, each of these potential suspects would need legal representation. Their kit would be seized for forensic analysis. They’d all be fingerprinted, gob-swabbed and photographed. Anyone under 16 – dozens probably – would require the presence of an appropriate adult. Two hundred and seventeen interviews would need dozens of two-person interviewing teams, each feeding intel back to the crime scene. In resource terms alone, it would be an impossible ask.

  “Sure,” I said. “But it has to happen.”

  “OK,” He nodded. The fingers again. “Number one we don’t have enough custody centres in the force. Or enough cells. So number two, we’ve got an Assistant Chief Constable on the phone ringing everyone he can think of. Thames Valley. West Sussex. East Dorset. Surrey. The Met. Wherever. And number three, it’s Saturday night, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So it’s already as busy as fuck which means the word has to go out force-wide telling everyone to lay off.”

  “Lay off what?”

  “Arresting people. All that has to stop. Why? Because we’re gonna need every cell, every custody skipper, every interviewing detective, every exhibit bag, we can lay hands on.”

  “All for one party?”

  “Exactly. And it doesn’t end there. This operation goes on through the night. Has to. There’s something called the Working Hours Directive. It’s pure Euro-bollocks but we have to stick with it. Pretty soon our guys are going to be off the clock. We have to find reinforcements. That might not be possible.” He nodded grimly. All this grief. Just for one party.

  “So what happens if two more parties like this kick off on the same night? Pure co-incidence? One in Southampton? One in Aldershot?”

  “We’d be stuffed.”

  “But you’re saying you’re stuffed already.”

  “You’re right, my friend. I kid you not. You’re looking at the thin blue line.”

  The debate went on for a couple of hours. Some kind of triage arrangement at the interview suites, deciding which kids to down-prioritise. How to get defence lawyers to represent multi-clients. How best to ping evidential scenes of crime images from the party house to the interview teams working in custody suites across the south of England. Who might boss the POLSA search of the darkened garden for dumped phones. Technical issues about the forensic treatment of the judge’s house (“you’re talking a week’s work at least”). How best to manage the ever-lengthening queue for phone analysis. And just how big a hole this single incident would leave in the force budget.

  The latter question pre-occupied Terry Lowe more than any other, not least because it was one of his real-life responsibilities. At £265 a pop for each submitted Crime Scene stain, or £2000 for a 24-hr turnaround on a full DNA profile, the forensic costs alone were terrifying. Add in all the other factors, including overtime, and you were probably looking at six figures. Easily.

  As you might imagine, all this stuff was priceless grist for my fictional mill. Over the following couple of days, I visited all the outposts of the Hantspol forensic empire, hunting for the little details that I could sprinkle over the developing narrative. Why the pathologist on-site would cover the victim’s head, hands and feet in clear polythene bags before removal of the body. How the national data base of trainer treads could offer a key line of enquiry after the retrieval of stamp marks at post-mortem.

  By the weekend, back in Devon, I was looking at nearly a hundred pages of scribbled notes, but what stuck in my mind above all was the truth I appear to have teased from Terry Lowe: that the space between society and lawlessness, between order and anarchy, was infinitely smaller than I – or maybe anyone else – had ever imagined. I knew it was important to somehow voice this, to find the right time and the right setting in the developing narrative to let people have just a glimpse of this scary secret.

  The answer lay with Det Chief Supt Geoff Willard, Hantspol’s fictional Head of CID. On the Sunday morning, in the immediate aftermath of the party, with the double murder making the national news, Willard faces a a young reporter on live TV.

  The shot widened to discover Willard by her side. His tinted lenses had darkened in the bright sunshine, emphasising the pallor of his skin. Ignoring the reporter’s question, he took issue at once with her use of the word “looting”. Looting, he said, was associated with natural disasters, with earthquakes, with floods. This was something totally different, something man-made. Many of the young people at last night’s party appeared not to have been invited. That raised issues of trespass, of house-breaking, of criminal damage, possibly of theft. Add the tragi
c deaths she’d already mentioned, and the implications were profoundly disturbing. Not just for the friends and family of the victims. But for all of us.

  Scenting a headline, the reporter asked him to explain why. Given an invitation like this, Willard couldn’t help himself. He was on live television. On a Sunday morning, half of suburban Britain would probably be tuned in. Fighting the temptation to turn directly to the camera, he tallied the real damage these young people had done. Two needless deaths was bad enough but what people might live to remember was the spectacle of an entire city left virtually unpoliced while officers did their best to deal with a bunch of partying thugs.

  These people, in his view, were the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. What we’d seen last night was near-anarchy. Only patient police work – and a huge amount of money – had restored some semblance of law and order. As it was, force resources had been stretched to breaking point. Any more parties like that, and good people, decent people, might find themselves living under a state of siege.

  The frankness of his admission surprised even Winter. He looked round the apartment. Was it time to change the locks on the front door? Buy himself a Rottweiler? Borrow some of Bazza’s more inventive heavies? He turned back to the TV but Willard had said his piece and the smile on the reporter’s face told Winter she’d got her scoop. Top Cop Warns Of Anarchy. Kids Rule, OK?

  The following month, I was back in Pompey. By now, I’d mapped out the broad sequence of events that would fuel the plot. One area where I needed additional help lay in the hordes of mid-teen tearaways that would invite themselves to Rachel’s little soiree. Putting flesh on young Doodie in Angels Passing and meeting Brett Rennolds for The Price of Darkness had given me all kinds of clues, but the real door I wanted to open belonged to the city’s Preventing Youth Offending Project, a decidedly unsnappy title for a couple of guys who knew Pompey youth culture on intimate terms.

  The manager was a social worker, Bruce Marr, who was more than generous with his time. He gave me an overview of the challenges thrown up by a mix of educational failure, family breakdown, and the uncontested chokehold that fashion, booze and violence seemed to have secured on large swathes of what copper’s call the nighttime economy.

  Growing up, in Bruce’s view, had become a complex proposition. Many kids had swopped any kind of home life for a kind of tribal loyalty to their mates. This bred a loyalty and a kinship on which they knew they could rely, and – more to the point – it was a guarantee of a good laugh. These kids thieved together, fought together, took turns to dream up ever more inventive ways of keeping boredom at bay. When it came to names, Bruce was less forthcoming. The guy I really needed to talk to, he said, was one of his team who worked at the coal face. His name was Paul O’Brien, and for the following sequence – loosely based on a rendezvous he arranged for my benefit at a deserted KFC outlet in the shadow of the Fratton Park football stadium - I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Some characters step straight onto the page. Paul Winter, nine books ago, was one of them. Young Connor was another.

  Connor said he was fourteen but Faraday didn’t believe him. He was Pompey-thin, with gelled hair, bitten nails, and a look of permanent anxiety in his wide blue eyes. A blue Henri Lloyd top hung on his bony frame. On the cusp between childhood and adolescence, he talked in a low mumble with an occasional cackle of laughter when something struck him as funny.

  He’d agreed to meet on the condition that Faraday bought him a Big Bucket at the Kentucky Fried. It had to be the KFC in the Pompey Centre, next to Fratton Park, because Connor was on multiple ASBOs, and most of the rest of the city was out of bounds to him.

  Strictly speaking, Faraday was taking a risk on a meet like this. Best practise demanded specialist officers who worked with juveniles all the time and maybe an appropriate adult to sit in. The paperwork alone would have taken hours.

  “How come the ASBOs?” Faraday helped himself to a chip.

  Connor looked round, disappointed at the lack of audience. The place was empty.

  “Assault by battery, bit of happy slapping, bit of twocking. Yeah, and I nicked a speed boat.”

  “How come?”

  “Dunno. It was just there.”

  The boat, he explained, had been tied to a mooring buoy on Langstone Harbour. Connor and a couple of mates had been eyeing it for a while. They’d waded out at high tide and helped themselves, just for the laugh, but then the tide had turned and they’d found themselves drifting out through the harbour mouth. Only an alert coastguard had saved them from a night in the English Channel.

  Faraday vaguely remembered the story from a piece in the News. Three Lads in a Boat.

  “So what happened?”

  “The Old Bill was waiting when we got towed back. Five of them. Well funny, that was.”

  As well as the ASBOs, Connor was now tagged and on curfew. He pushed the chair back from the table, rolled up one leg of the Adidas track bottoms, and insisted Faraday take a look. The curfew, he said, had originally been for ten in the evening. Now, it was seven.

  “So how come you were at that party on Saturday?”

  “Never said I was, did I?”

  “But you know about it?”

  “Course. Everyone knows about it. Fucking laugh, mush.”

  One of his brothers, he said, had gone. First thing he knew he’d been sitting at home watching the football on the telly with the old tit.

  “The old tit?”

  “Me mum. My brother, see, him and another geezer had found all this wine, bottles of the stuff. He don’t know nothing about wine, Clancy, so he phones the old tit to find out whether it’s any good.”

  “He hadn’t tried it?”

  “No, mush. It was a bottle, like I say, not opened or anything, and there’s loads more where that came from. Clancy, right, he don’t drink wine. But he wants a little earn, yeah?”

  “And your mum?”

  “She don’t know nothing about wine neither so Clancy says what he’ll do, like, is bring a load home anyway because all the good gear had gone already.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dunno.” He sat on his hands, shrugging. “I-pods? Phones? Cameras? Jewellery? Any moolah lying around? Any bugle going spare?”

  “Bugle?”

  “Toot. White. Cocaine.”

  “And was there?”

  “Dunno, mush. Like I say, I weren’t there.”

  “And the wine?”

  “Clancy had a load away.”

  “How did he carry it?”

  “Pillow cases. Off the bed. He had a bit of flange up there, anything to get his dick wet, Clancy. Nicked the pillow cases after, like.”

  “And the wine? He sold it in the end?”

  “Dunno. Might have done. The old tit tried a bottle. Said it was alright.”

  Faraday nodded, wondering what Peter Ault would make of this conversation. Precious wines laid down for years. Necked by the old tit.

  Connor had barely touched the food. Faraday told him it was getting cold. The boy looked at it a moment, then pushed it away.

  “Ain’t hungry, mush. So what’s this about?”

  Faraday explained a little more about the party, knowing full well that none of this would be news to the likes of Connor. There’d been loads of damage. Two people had died.

  “And you wanna know about a sort called Bonner, yeah?”

  The directness of the question startled Faraday.

  “Yes.” He agreed. “I do.”

  “Why’s that, then?”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  “About them bodies?”

  “Yeah. And one or two other issues.”

  “Yeah, but it’s the bodies really, innit? ‘Cos me and my mates know she’s off her head. I had a ruck with her once. She gobbed at me, just for nothing, like. And you know what? I ha
d a fag on and I put it out in her face…bang…” One thin arm shot out. “…just like that. She went mental. Silly old moose.”

  “That was recently?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’ve seen her since?”

  “Fucking joking, mush. She carries a blade.”

  “All the time?”

  “Yeah. She’s fucking psycho, too. Don’t get me wrong, mush. I’d fight her if I had to. No way no bird’s ever gonna slap me around. But you don’t go looking for it, do you? Not in this fucking city. Not the way it is. There are people want to hurt you out there, really hurt you. And she’s one of them. She’s vile. Fucking dangerous, too. Like I say, off her head.”

  “You know where to find her?”

  The question put a new light in Connor’s eyes.

  “Why’s that, then? You wanna talk to her?”

  “Yes. I just told you.”

  “But you’re serious? You really wanna do it? Arrest her? Get her sent away?”

  “We’d see.”

  “See, bollocks. She’s fucking evil. I’m telling you.”

  “So where do I find her?”

  The frown put years on Connor’s face. He reached for a plastic spoon and gave the congealing beans a poke. Watching, Faraday wondered whether he might be older, not younger, than fourteen.

  “You want an address, like. Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That might be hard.”

  Faraday nodded. He knew exactly where this conversation was going.

  “How hard?”

  “Fucking well-hard. And fucking dodgy, too, a sort like her.” He stared at Faraday.

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  “Nothing mush.” He was sitting on his hands again. “But yer gotta have a little earn, ain’t yer?”

  The writing of what was to become No Lovelier Death taught me a great deal about the way the series was evolving. For one thing, Winter’s journey to the Dark Side offered the perfect opportunity to run two separate enquiries in parallel. Released from custody, an enraged Bazza Mackenzie orders Winter to use all his investigative skills to nail those responsible for the two deaths and deliver them for punishment. This Winter will do, cutting every conceivable corner en route, while Joe Faraday – hampered by all the procedural clutter that has begun to make his job impossible – moves at a far warier speed. These two plot paths interlink at multiple points in the narrative, offering rich pickings for the grateful author, but as the story developed I began to realise that – in their separate ways – both Faraday and Winter were heading for a very bad place. Quite how bad, I wouldn’t discover for several books to come but here’s a clue. This is Winter’s voice. In the book’s opening pages, he’s on the prowl in the aftermath of the party and he’s just spotted a familiar figure.