Turnstone Page 4

  At last, she listened to the message tape. It was Alan, the skipper of the little twenty-nine-foot yacht the lads had entered for the Fastnet. The race began in exactly a week’s time, a round trip of more than seven hundred miles to Southern Ireland and back, and Cathy knew how much Pete was looking forward to it. It would be a chance to get away, to leave his demons behind and concentrate on what he did best. Winning.

  The message was timed at ten-fifteen. Alan asked Pete to give him a ring. Something about a new set of bottle screws for the standing rigging. Something they needed to sort out before Monday. Cathy scribbled a note on the pad beside the phone and went through to the kitchen to fill the kettle. She was still washing up the breakfast cups when she heard tyres on the drive.

  Pete came in through the back door, shutting it with his heel. She could tell he’d been drinking because he had a big grin on his face. He gave her the briefest peck on the cheek and then headed at once for the fridge. The fridge was where they kept the vodka.

  Cathy turned the kettle off. It was pointless offering him coffee.

  ‘Good evening?’ she inquired.

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Pete was pouring himself a hefty slug of Smirnoff, not bothering about ice. She noticed a tiny tremor in his hand. Raising the glass, he faced her from the other end of the kitchen.

  ‘Alan’s,’ he said. ‘Cheers.’

  Four

  Next morning, Sunday, Faraday got up late. He showered, dressed, swallowed two paracetamol, binned the empty Scotch bottle and went out to the garage. On the point of starting the engine, he remembered the brakes.

  The cab took him up through the city, over the creek at Hilsea, and on to the mainland. By the time he got to Anson Avenue, it was nearly eleven o’clock.

  Downstairs, Jerry Proctor was preparing to call it a day. He’d been back at the Spellars’ house since seven. All that remained now was to arrange for specialist cleaners to call early next week, and to find a time for a uniformed inspector to give the place a once-over in case of any damage claims. With luck, he could be back home in time to watch last night’s recorded football highlights before his wife dished up lunch.

  Mention of the football prompted Faraday to ask about Scott Spellar.

  ‘I need to see his room.’ He nodded towards the stairs. ‘OK by you?’

  Jerry had been right about the state of the lad’s bedroom. Compared to the rest of the house, it looked pristine: neatly fitted wardrobe, fold-down desk, and a huge Pompey poster Sellotaped to the wall over the single bed.

  Faraday edged around a pile of football shirts by the door and examined the mosaic of cuttings and photos that decorated the wall above the desk. One shot in particular caught his eye. It showed a pub side from one of the Sunday leagues. According to the carefully scissored News cutting beside it, they’d just won a Fair Play award. Scott Spellar was sitting in the middle of the front row, the ball clamped between his knees, grinning fit to bust. The cutting was only months old, but he looked about fourteen. Fair play? Faraday turned away, shaking his head.

  The bedroom window faced south. The sun was strong through the glass and from here, on the slopes of Portsdown Hill, he could see the hazy sprawl of the city stretching away towards the gleam of the Solent, and the low swell of the Isle of Wight. There were a hundred and fifty thousand people down there, jigsawed together in street after street of terraced housing. The parking was non-existent. The traffic was impossible. The schools were falling apart. The kids were out of control. And if you found yourself a job, the pay rates were often pitiful. Yet still folk hung on, glued to the island city by something deeper than habit.

  More and more Faraday found himself asking what it was about the place that made it so particular, so infuriatingly special, but none of the sensible answers did it proper justice. He’d lived here for over twenty years and he’d grown to love the seafront, with its busy views, and the quiet, shadowed cobblestones of Old Portsmouth, still haunted by the tramp of the press gang, but this was the tourist’s Pompey, Flagship Portsmouth, the image that the council loved to peddle on posters nationwide. What it didn’t capture, or explain, were the subtler glimpses of a very different city. Even at the distance of two generations, poverty and war still seemed to shape the people he dealt with. They expected, and got, very little. A certain stoic resignation seemed to go with the turf. Yet still they managed a smile and a joke with people they trusted. Islanders were like that. Given any kind of choice, they always looked inward.

  Was Scott Spellar as hemmed in as the rest of them? Or would he have the sense to pack his bags and get on a train and put several hundred miles between himself and Marty Harrison? Faraday didn’t know, but that was hardly the point. What the lad needed now was the means to make a decision. Under the circumstances, he might not come back to the empty house for days – and in an area like this, break-ins were practically guaranteed.

  A quick search through the chest of drawers drew a blank. The wardrobe was full of clothes but the pockets were largely empty. Faraday had begun to strip the bed when Jerry Proctor appeared at the door. He was finally through. He wanted to lock up and go home.

  Faraday was still gazing at the bed.

  ‘That eight hundred quid,’ he began. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Second drawer down.’ Proctor nodded at the chest beneath the window. ‘Brown doeskin wallet.’

  ‘And you put it back?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Faraday went through the drawer again. Football socks, underpants, a couple of towels, a packet of Rizla cigarette papers, petrol coupons, a DJ Shadow cassette, an old Lottery ticket. But no wallet.

  Proctor was frowning.

  ‘It was definitely there’, he said. ‘Yesterday afternoon it was in there with the rest of the stuff. I took it out, counted it, and then put it back again.’

  ‘Anyone else been up here?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘What about the PC outside? Was he on all night?’

  ‘Yes. It was still a scene of crime.’

  ‘Where’s his log?’

  ‘At the station.’

  Proctor clattered downstairs for his mobile. He was still deep in conversation, minutes later, when he returned. Finally he grunted a thank you and slipped the mobile into his pocket.

  ‘DC Winter.’ He was staring down at the open drawer. ‘Logged in at 23.14. Stayed ten minutes and left.’

  Faraday was back home by the time he made the call to Winter. He’d sat in his study for the best part of an hour, wondering whether this wasn’t the opportunity he’d been waiting for, wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to let Winter dig himself in even deeper before springing the trap.

  Removing private property without going through the formal procedures was a primary breach of regulations. Winter knew that, and every next day that passed would compound the transgression. Money – cash – was especially sensitive. The Met were forever being accused of helping themselves to suspects’ property and Hampshire’s new Chief Constable had recently organised a task force to ensure that allegations like these didn’t spread south. In the current climate, Winter might even lose his job.

  The prospect of life without Paul Winter was deeply tempting, but the longer Faraday thought about the implications the more he knew he had to make the call at once. The priority, as far as he was concerned, was Scott Spellar. The lad was no angel but losing his grandfather in circumstances like yesterday’s was quite enough grief for one day. The money, tainted though it might be, still belonged to him. Strictly speaking, Faraday should have notified Harry Wayte, who would doubtless regard it as evidence, but the stroke the Drugs Squad DI had pulled through Pollock still rankled, and eight hundred pounds – sensibly spent – might just put Scott Spellar beyond the reach of Marty Harrison. The last thing the boy needed was more trips to London.

  Winter answered his mobile on the second ring.

  ‘I’m at the
garden centre,’ he said cheerfully, ‘with Joan.’

  Joan was Winter’s wife, a plump ex-teacher who dressed almost entirely in beige. The marriage had survived Winter’s many affairs and appeared to be in ruder health than ever.

  ‘Where did you get to last night,’ Faraday began, ‘after you left the Bridewell?’

  Winter didn’t answer for a moment. Faraday could hear his wife in the background asking about bedding plants.

  ‘I went up to Paulsgrove,’ Winter said at last. ‘Spellar’s place.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think? The kid’s running serious dope. I needed a look through his stuff. It’s what detectives do, boss.’

  ‘And did you find anything?’

  ‘Yeah, matter of fact I did. Eight hundred quid in notes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I seized it.’

  ‘Did you register that with the PC outside?’

  ‘Of course not. What’s the doorman got to do with it?’

  Faraday was watching a pair of mallards at the water’s edge. Conversations with Paul Winter never went the way he intended and this one was no exception.

  ‘So what happens to the money?’ he said at last. ‘Given that it belongs to Scott?’

  ‘He gets it back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When he gets his shit together and gives me a ring and agrees to see me.’

  ‘Ah …’ Faraday began to pick at a loose thread on the arm of the chair. ‘So his own money buys him a meet? Is that the way it goes?’

  ‘No, boss, me. It buys me a meet. That’s why I took it. You think he’d see me otherwise?’

  ‘That’s hardly the point. There are rules here. Regulations – ‘

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘So why didn’t you follow them?’

  ‘Follow what?’

  ‘The rules.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  The tone of Winter’s voice, weary, incredulous, brought a sudden blush of colour to Faraday’s face. The man was treating him like a child. Real life was out there on the streets. Real life had fuck all to do with rules and regulations. Faraday had heard the phrases over and over and this time he’d had enough.

  ‘Maybe we should continue this conversation in my office,’ he said thickly. ‘Just as soon as you can get there.’

  There was another silence, briefer this time, before Winter began to chuckle.

  ‘A pleasure, sir,’ he said, ‘then you can check the dosh yourself.’

  ‘You’ll be bringing it with you?’

  ‘No need. I booked it in last night. Brown doeskin wallet. The night-shift skipper put it in the safe. Should be in the crime property store by now, if you’d like to check.’

  Faraday ignored the sarcasm.

  ‘I want the money back to the lad,’ he said carefully. ‘And I want proof that you’ve done it.’

  Pete Lamb was out in the garden when Cathy went through to the lounge to take the call. Two mugs of coffee and a thick bacon sandwich had mopped up the worst of his hangover, and any minute now he’d be suggesting a stroll to the pub. What on earth had happened to day-long hikes across the Isle of Wight? To windsurfing at Hayling Island and a barbecue afterwards on the beach?

  Cathy picked up the phone. It was the duty sergeant at the firearms range over at Netley. The leader on the duty Tactical Firearms Unit had gone down with a virus. Could Pete stand in while they sorted out a replacement?

  ‘He’s booked leave from the end of next week,’ she said quickly. ‘He’s doing the Fastnet.’

  ‘I know, love. It’s just for a day or two.’

  Cathy glanced out of the back window. Pete’s long frame was sprawled in a deckchair, his face invisible behind the Mail on Sunday. She was about to go out there and ask him for a yes or no, but then she had second thoughts. Members of the duty TFU weren’t allowed to touch alcohol. That would put the mockers on another gloomy lunchtime in the pub.

  ‘He says it’s fine,’ she said brightly, ‘as long as he can still do the race.’

  Faraday spent the afternoon on Farlington Marshes, an RSPB nature reserve at the top of Langstone Harbour. He went there for the walk as much as anything else, a three-mile trek along the harbour edge that emptied his mind of the conversation with Winter. Years ago, he’d tried to ring-fence at least one day a week from the pressures of the job. Sundays had always been the obvious firebreak and if he’d wasted half of this one, then that was his own fault. The fact that Winter had promised to hand over Scott’s money without insisting on a long meet with the boy was some small satisfaction.

  The afternoon was hot and windless, and there was little activity amongst the birds. Wedged in his favourite spot against the seawall, Faraday watched a pair of newly arrived redshanks for a while, dancing in the shallows, but then he adjusted the focus on his Leica Red-Spots and swept the binoculars back along the harbourside path until his house swam into view, shimmering in the heat.

  It was a two-storey construction, dating way back to the early nineteenth century, red brick at the bottom, white clapboard and glass at the top. It had been built for one of the barge-masters who’d used the ill-fated Portsmouth Canal and Faraday had often wondered whether this man, too, had been fascinated by the pageant of wildlife – birds especially – constantly unfolding on the wide, bright spaces of the harbour. The upper floor of the house was where Faraday had installed his study, tearing down a couple of inner divides to make a big, oblong space, with rugs on the polished floorboards and views out through the windows on three sides. From his first glimpse of the water, he’d known that there was nowhere else he ever wanted to live. The house was, at once, a delight, a shield, and a solace.

  The freehold on the house had been a gift from Janna’s American parents after she’d died. They’d both come over for the funeral, staying with Faraday and the baby in the damp little bungalow on the Isle of Wight that he and Janna had turned into their first real home. It had been obvious to both Julie and Frank that Faraday was going to have trouble coping with a four-month-old baby, and after their return to Seattle they’d sent him a long letter and a cheque for two hundred thousand dollars. Within a year, Faraday had become a police probationer, posted to Portsmouth, and the prospect of a career had encouraged him to put down roots. The bulk of the money had paid for the barge-master’s house and with the rest he’d hired a nanny to look after Joe-Junior when he was on shift.

  Several months after they’d moved in, Faraday had taken photographs of the house, trying to frame it the way that Janna would have done. Janna had made a name for herself as a professional photographer with a very distinctive take on her subjects, and one of her many bequests to her husband was the equipment she’d collected over the years. Faraday had used the simplest of the cameras, rising early to capture the spill of the yellow sunrise over the front of the house, and he’d sent half a dozen of the resulting photos across to his in-laws in Seattle. This is your investment in our future, he’d written. Too damn right.

  He gazed at it now through the binoculars, his elbows braced against his knees, half-imagining the shelves of books against the back wall, and the big roll-top desk where he and J-J had first tiptoed into the world of birds.

  Confirmation that the child was deaf had come days before his first birthday, and for years after that Faraday had knocked on endless doors, hunting for advice. He’d wanted a way of talking to the child, a way of getting through. Signing was fine, and – once J-J was established at the special school – the daily diary they’d shared had been a godsend, but Faraday had never been as close to any other human being, not even Janna, and he sensed instinctively that there had to be a better way.

  In the end it had been a friend’s suggestion that had taken him to the city’s Central Library. She’d faced a similar challenge and she recommended a particular bay on the second floor, three along from the photocopier. Faraday had found it in minutes. The middle shelf was full of picture books. About birds.


  He’d brought them home by the armful – and early evenings and weekends had found Faraday and Joe-Junior sprawled in various corners of the study or the downstairs lounge, poring over shots of waders and warblers, of harriers and kites. The beauty of the house was its harbourside location. The view from the window was the pictures brought to life. Shelduck, mergansers, godwits, curlews, all real, all moving, and – as far as J-J was concerned, – all totally mute.

  For the boy, though, that hadn’t mattered in the slightest. What he woke up to, what he pressed his nose against on cold winter mornings, was a world that belonged exclusively to himself and his dad. Faraday understood this, not because some expert had told him, but because he’d seen it in the child’s eyes, heard it in the strange, tuneless cackle that served for him as laughter. J-J loved his dad very much, and the birds – with their thousand different shapes, plumages, habitats, breeding patterns – were the messages they passed back and forth.

  By the time J-J was ready to leave the special school and ride his luck with ordinary kids, those messages had become a language, expressive, flexible, capable of infinite nuance. When J-J made gannet wings, his arms arrowed back from his thin little shoulders, it meant that he was hungry. When Faraday posed as a heroin, one leg tucked up as he fought for balance in the middle of the kitchen, it signalled another trip to Titchfield Haven, a bird reserve along the coast where J-J had made special friends with the man who sold the ice creams.

  By the boy’s eleventh birthday, Faraday knew he’d turned the numbing double-trauma of those early years – his wife’s death, his son’s deafness – into something infinitely precious, and to mark the occasion he’d bought J-J the first volume of the birder’s bible. The books were called Birds of the Western Palearctic. At £85 each they weren’t cheap, but nine birthdays later J-J had the full set on a shelf of his own beside the ancient roll-top desk. Even now, the sight of those books still gladdened Faraday’s heart.