Backstory Page 21

  It was full daylight by now, the rich yellow spill of sunrise throwing long shadows across the road. With Sandown Road in sight, Winter suddenly came to a halt. The greying, bearded figure walking towards him was unmistakeable: Faraday.

  Winter ducked into a front garden, watching the D/ I fumbling in his jacket for his car keys. Same old clapped-out Mondeo, he thought. Same RSPB sticker on the top corner of the windscreen. With the door open, Faraday took off his jacket and then had a stretch, his face to the sun, his chin tilted up, and watching him Winter realised how much he seemed to have aged. There were lines in his face that he’d never seen before, and when his head came down, his whole body seemed to slump.

  Over the last years of his service, Winter had developed a soft spot for Faraday. They’d never been mates, and never would be, but he recognised a loner when he saw one, and he knew, too, that in a job that was rapidly becoming impossible, Faraday would never make it easy for himself.

  Younger D/Is, with an eye on the next promotion, would be cluey enough to buy the right drinks for the right bosses. Older detectives might succumb to the odd short cut. But Faraday did neither, maintaining a prickly independence that won him more respect than friendships. With his passion for birdlife and his deaf-mute son, he’d won himself a reputation for something of an oddball. Before Winter left the force, he’d also added a new girlfriend to this strange life of his. Not some retread divorcee from over the hill, standard MO for detectives of Faraday’s age, but a youngish anthropologist. And French, to boot.

  Winter watched Faraday check the road behind him, then execute a messy U-turn before accelerating away. He’s knackered, Winter thought. And it’s starting to show.

  This kind of fictional opportunity, one lead character taking the other by surprise, had existed in the previous books but Winter’s new role alongside Bazza Mackenzie seemed to have sharpened both the contrasts and the similarities between them. They both needed to coax a result from the deepening chaos around them. And in both cases they could rely on support from unexpected quarters.

  In Faraday’s case, this turned out to be a winsome French anthropologist called Gabrielle, whom he’d met while bird watching in a remote corner of Thailand. Her chosen field, exploring the pack instincts of near-delinquent inner-city kids in a developed western society, offered an obvious sounding board for Faraday in his more reflective moments. These conversations over a bottle or two of Cotes-du-Rhone in the peace of the Bargemaster’s House became an important in the book’s development, and Gabrielle herself was to be a key trigger when the plot gathered speed towards the denouement.

  But it was Winter who found himself in the scariest company. Joining Mackenzie had never been less than a gamble. On a good day, and there were many good days, Pompey’s budding entrepreneur could be the best company imaginable. Plus he had the money, the reach, the ambition, and the raw nerve which Winter had so missed in the Job. But that same combination of qualities could put Winter in situations which he found, at best, ugly and, at worst, beyond imagination.

  Towards the end of the book, he finds himself in a half finished hotel above one of the seaside towns that litter the coast north of Malaga. Mackenzie has tasked him to deliver £20,000 in notes to his one-time enforcer, Brett West, as a farewell present after years of loyal service. Winter doesn’t know it yet, but this single incident will be the major turning point in his journey through the rest of the series.

  Winter was wondering about a plate of something to eat when he heard the clatter of a diesel outside in the sunshine. Moments later, there was the sound of a door slamming, then came the clump of footsteps on the wooden stairs outside. He looked round as the door swung open. Not one figure silhouetted against the evening sunshine, but two.

  Westie’s tall frame advanced towards the bar. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Beside him, smaller but just as lean, was a woman. In the dusty half-light of the restaurant it was hard to be certain but at first glance Winter thought early twenties. Her bare legs were long and tanned. Her hair fell in blond ringlets around a wide, pretty face and the smile was unforced.

  “Renate.” Westie announced.

  Winter stood up and gestured the woman into one of the seats. Westie, uninvited, took the other. Hernandez ghosted in with a third chair which he placed at the head of the table.

  “So how come…?” Westie gestured round at the deadness of the place.

  “I like it. It’s cool.” Renate leaned across the table and put a hand on Westie’s arm. She wore a silver bangle on her slim brown wrist. Her accent, thought Winter, might have been German.

  “Known Westie long?” he inquired.

  “Since yesterday. He comes to my gallery. He likes my pictures. He has taste, your friend. He knows what to say, how to say it. We can get a drink here?” She cocked her head towards the bar, then began to wind a strand of hair around a single finger.

  Winter signalled to Hernandez. Two more beers appeared.

  “Sorted, then?” Winter was back with Westie. “No more Pompey slappers?”

  “Never, mate. No fucking way.”

  “And what about the flat?”

  “It’s up for sale. Say the word, and the mortgage is yours. Good bloody riddance.”

  “No regrets? None at all?”

  “Are you blind, mate?” He nodded towards Renate. “Or just fucking old?”

  He wanted to know about the money. Winter, increasingly uncomfortable, noticed that Hernandez had disappeared.

  “It’s down there, Westie. In my bag.”

  “You’ve counted it?”

  “No, but Baz has. First thing this morning. Before I got the plane down.”

  “What time was that, then?”

  “Early.”

  “How early?”

  “Bloody early.”

  “Which airport?”

  Winter sat back. Even the girl could sense the hesitation in his voice.

  “Pub quiz is it, Westie? Think of a question? Any question?”

  “Not at all, mate. Down here we call it conversation. I’m just asking which poxy airport you flew out of this morning. Gatwick? Big place off the M23? Bournemouth? Heathrow? Only you’re starting to make me nervous, mush.” His eyes flicked down to the bag. As they did so, Winter heard the lightest footfall in the shadowed space behind the bar.

  It was Tommy Peters. He had an automatic in his right hand. The silencer made it look enormous. The girl had seen it too. Her hand went to her mouth. Westie had his back to the bar. His big mistake was to look round.

  He tried to get to his feet but it was too late. The first bullet took him in the chest, the softest phutt from the silencer, the second hit him in the lower jaw, sending a fine spray of blood over Winter. He looked up to see the gun traversing towards the girl. The impact of Westie against the table had sent her sprawling. Now she was crouching on the wooden floor, one arm shielding her upturned face, pleading for her life.

  “Easy, Tommy.” Winter tried to get his body between the two of them.

  Tommy Peters glanced across, the merest flicker of irritation, before stooping to the girl and putting three more bullets into her head. Two figures materialised from behind the curtain at the back. Winter recognised neither of them. Tommy grunted something about a van, then helped them manhandle West’s body through the back of the bar. Winter sank back into his seat, hearing their grunts recede into the depths of the building. Then came the sound of a sliding door, metal on metal, from somewhere outside.

  Hernandez had appeared with a mop and a bucket. Winter was staring down at the girl. One of the bullets had smashed her cheekbone. An eyeball hung, glistening, in the slant of evening sunlight through the nearby window. Winter had never seen anything as terrible as this. It had happened so quickly, he told himself. There was nothing he could have done to stop it.

 
Tommy was back with the other two men. They were amused by something Tommy must have said about Westie. They had London accents.

  The girl was much lighter. The pair of them carried her out of the restaurant, Hernandez behind them, mopping up the trail of blood she left behind.

  Tommy Peters picked up the bag and began to count the money. He stopped at twenty thousand, put the blocks of notes carefully to one side, then extracted another seven hundred and fifty.

  “Expenses.” He said. “Tell Mackenzie I’ll be in touch.”

  Winter nodded, too shocked to pursue any kind of conversation. The bangle on her wrist, he kept thinking. Her smile. The way she wound that strand of hair around her finger. Gone. Bam. Wasted.

  Tommy produced a plastic bag and departed with the money. Shortly afterwards, Winter heard a cough out the back somewhere as the van fired up. Then he felt someone nudging the table and he sat back, still numbed, to find Bazza Mackenzie counting the rest of the ten pound notes. The lads were outside in the Mercedes, he said. And they were all going into town for a drink or two.

  He turned round to find Winter getting slowly to his feet.

  “You’re in a bit of a state, mush.” He nodded at the bloodstains across his shirt. “We’ll have to have that off you.”

  From this point on, Winter is a changed man. I didn’t realise it at the time, but the impact of this single scene was to dictate the shape of the rest of the series.

  Eleven

  The phone call came from Conrad Williams, my indefatigable TV agent. Conrad is a one-off, a clubbable slightly louche fixer of genius who trained as a lawyer, plays Schumann on the piano to near professional standard, and manages to salt demon negotiating skills with a sharp sense of humour. He was the guy who negotiated my first TV contract for Rules of Engagement more than two decades ago and thus set me on the road to full-time authordom. If this book is anyone’s fault, it’s Conrad’s.

  “Had a nibble, old bean. Richard Fell at Tiger Aspect wants to take you to lunch. I said I thought that wouldn’t be a problem.”

  It wasn’t. Tiger Aspect were major players in the world of independent TV production, responsible for shows like The Vicar of Dibley and Murphy’s Law. I knew they’d been having a look at a couple of books in the series but had no idea their interest extended to breaking bread.

  I took the train to London. We met at Soho House, the rendezvous that has nurtured so many TV deals. Richard was a development executive and he’d brought a woman called Melissa Gallant, who’d be babysitting the project if and when it went into development.

  Melissa was young. More importantly, she’d recently graduated from Portsmouth University and knew the city really well. This was a huge windfall because it saved me having to make the point that Pompey was a major character in the series and demanded – on screen – the right kind of attention. Melissa nodded. This, she said, was exactly Tiger Aspect’s view. The place was deeply special, a secret that deserved to be shared with a far wider audience. At last, there might be an opportunity to move TV crime fiction out of the usual metropolitan locations and root a series somewhere slightly more real.

  The lunch went well. I talked about the trouble I’d taken to get the procedural stuff exactly right and we discussed the importance of the minor key. The world I’d created was mercifully thin on serial killers and wide-screen chase sequences but came with huge helpings of petty crime, random violence, feral kids, booze, drugs, and all the other urban goodies that badged modern life. The cops in my books do their best to cope with this flood of social inadequates but are shackled by a system that has become risk-averse and paper-heavy. It was important to me, as it would be important to any author, that any screen treatments should reflect the spirit of the books. Of course everything would have to be compressed and tailored for a different medium and - hopefully - a far wider audience. But whatever had drawn them to Faraday in the first place deserved a little respect.

  This little speechette drew nods around the table. Richard would be talking to Conrad about an option agreement while Melissa promised to keep me in touch with developments on the script front. Tiger already had a writer in mind and he was currently tucked up with a number of my books. This guy was evidently hot just now, which would help in the commissioning process. Naturally, Melissa would be taking him down to Pompey for the guided tour and being the kind of guy he was she had no doubts that he’d recognise the city’s distinctive buzz. For my part, I offered to talk to one or two guys at Hantspol headquarters and arrange for detailed confidential briefings to keep the screen versions as authentic as possible. Melissa thought that was an excellent idea.

  I returned to Devon that afternoon. When Conrad asked me next day how the lunch had gone, I said it had been great. A definite meeting of minds. Lots of agreement on preserving the basic thrust of the series. And a feeling, rare in my experience, that this thing might just happen.

  The following week, in search of clues for the next book, I drove over to Pompey. Rich John had left Colin Smith’s office and was now a uniformed Chief Inspector at Kingston Crescent, a position of some influence that ranked him second only to the uniformed Superintendent, a guy called David Peacock. In policing terms, Rich now had the keys to the city and when I asked him for a detailed brief on the latest developments, he was happy to oblige. If I’d put a couple of days aside, he’d tuck me up with the right people. And so he did.

  Living more than a hundred miles away, these little excursions back to Pompey were becoming more and more important. Not only was current practice within the police force changing – with all the attendant procedural nausea - but the city itself was undergoing a real transformation. It felt wealthier, more pleased with itself. It was no longer just a place for a pint or ten of Wife-beater, a curry, and a fight.

  How wrong I was. My first appointment was at Fratton nick to sit in on the daily Management Meeting, an excellent opportunity for yours truly to take a 24 hour snapshot of exactly what was happening in the darker reaches of the city. To be honest, I’d chosen one of the quieter days. Rich kicked off with news about a toe-rag from Somerstown who was pissing off drug dealers in the city. A D/S sitting on the Intel brief had described him as “pre-killed”.

  “He’s a walking G28,” she said. “Someone needs to have a word.”

  A G28, in case you’re wondering, is the reporting form used for dead bodies. Having this guy killed would generate a great deal of paperwork. Better, in the view of the D/S, to have him move elsewhere.

  The meeting went on, with Rich tallying the overnight score. Alleged firearms at an address in Buckland. A reported rape in a multi-occupied house in Southsea. A multi-source fire in flat in a huge block in Somerstown. The flat had been full of Kosovans. The alarms had been ripped out and there was blood on the telly. My neighbour at the table scribbled BW on her notepad. BW, it turned out, meant “bit weird”.

  Elsewhere in Pompey, there was an on-going problem with a two-man gang doing distraction robberies, targetting old people living alone. Two outstanding mispers, both young girls, had been located safe and sound. A guy collecting signatures for a non-existent petition in Commercial Road had been arrested on suspicion of selling the signatures on the internet, while another IC1 had also been arrested for wanking in the bushes at Great Salterns. IC1 means white. Rich confirmed that the lad been weighed off.

  “All in hand, then?” This from the intel queen.

  A ripple of laughter went round the table. My neighbour reached for her pen again. LPS, she wrote. Local Pompey Shit.

  An hour later, I was down at Pompey’s Central police station. Known as the Bridewell, this houses the Custody Centre, one of the busiest in the force area. The guy in charge was a uniformed Inspector called Tony Tipping, a burly ex-submariner with a Scouse accent and a long memory. Presiding over the custody centre gives you a seat in the front stalls as far as Pompey’s concerned, especially at weeke
nds, and he painted a picture of a proudly violent city, always in your face, full of lippy kids and older piss-heads desperate for a fight.

  “It reminds me of Liverpool some days,” he said. “It’s full of swagger. Full of vendettas. People here have a long memory. If the guy’s fighting you at four, he’ll still be fighting you at forty.” Ugly, he said, was a word made for Pompey. Not the city’s spirit, which was in great nick, but the look of the place, and the look of the people who lived there. “You can even see it in the pit bulls,” he laughed. “There’s nothing pretty about a Pompey dog.”

  The conversation drifted to specific policing challenges. Lately, his beat officers had been noticing how the no-smoking laws had upped the figures for assault. On a Friday night, huge groups of smokers would be hanging around outside pubs, physically narrowing the pavement. Stepping into the road was a big Friday night issue for certain kinds of men and stuff tended to kick off. On- street violence, as ever, was Pompey’s default setting.