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  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘One of the guys here talked to Jessie’s mate. Something kicked off at the party and got Jessie upset. She phoned her mum and said she was going to call a taxi and could she borrow the fare to pay the driver once she got home. But here’s the interesting bit …’

  ‘Yeah?’ For the first time. Faraday had stopped thinking about the state of his head.

  ‘Yeah.’ Suttle nodded. ‘According to Jessie’s mate, the mother didn’t want her home. She said to stay in Newport. Kip on a floor. Do whatever.’

  ‘But don’t come home?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No one knows, and in a way it’s academic because our Jessie wasn’t listening. She’d had enough of party night. She wanted out.’

  ‘So she called the taxi?’

  ‘Yeah. The guys here traced the driver. He stood everything up. The girl was in bits in the back. The driver said he thought it was boy trouble. Floods of tears. Couldn’t wait to get home to Mum. As it turned out, thoroughly bad move.’

  ‘If she’s one of the bodies.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Faraday sat back, staring out of the window. On the face of it, the locals had done very well indeed. No wonder Darren Webster was less than pleased to see him.

  ‘So where next?’

  ‘Difficult to say. As we speak, I’m still not sure it’s our call.’

  ‘You’re kidding. Parsons? You really think she’d pass on something like this?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, boss.’ Suttle checked his watch. ‘Like I said, she’s due any minute.’

  The beginnings of a silence settled between them. Then Suttle asked about the accident.

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Of course I know about that. Everyone knows about it. Some kind of RTA? Am I wrong?’ RTA. Road traffic accident.

  Faraday didn’t say a word. Returning from his visit to the GP, he’d phoned Personnel to warn them that he wouldn’t be back at work for at least ten days. Pressed for details, he’d muttered something about a car crash in Eygpt but had left a proper conversation for the moment his boss got in touch. The fact that the phone had never rung had been a bit of a mystery at the time, but now he realised that Parsons had been away in Madeira.

  Suttle was still watching him.

  ‘So how bad was it?’

  ‘It was OK. Just a bit of a … you know …’ He shrugged.

  ‘Was Gabrielle in the car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Took a knock or two. Bit like me.’

  ‘So she’s back?’

  Faraday didn’t answer. His partner was rapidly becoming a memory.

  ‘She’s not back?’

  Faraday returned his gaze.

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘She’s not.’

  Suttle nodded. The young D/S knew a great deal about the sharper bends in Faraday’s relationship with Gabrielle, not least because he had a talent for interpreting moods and body language.

  ‘It’s none of my business, boss …’ he began.

  ‘You’re right. So leave it.’

  Suttle shrugged, his eyes still fixed on Faraday. Then came the sound of Parsons’ voice from somewhere down the corridor. When she was revved up, she had a tendency to shout. Any minute now, Faraday thought.

  Suttle was leaning forward across the desk, beckoning Faraday closer.

  ‘Just get a grip, boss,’ he muttered. ‘Whatever it is, it shows.’

  Faraday swallowed hard. He had no idea what to say. Then the door burst open and Parsons bustled in. She seemed to have got over the dog.

  ‘Joe. Jimmy. Handover meet in half an hour. The D/I’s office downstairs. Good news from the PM, eh Joe?’

  Chapter Three

  MONDAY, 9 FEBRUARY 2009. 14.34

  Bazza Mackenzie rarely came to Blake House these days. Which made his sudden appearance on Winter’s video entryphone screen all the more surprising. A couple of hours ago Baz had abruptly disappeared into his den while Winter and Marie settled into the prawn salad. Now he was eyeing the CCTV camera over the apartment block’s main door, visibly irritated.

  ‘Press the fucking button, will you? It’s pissing down out here.’

  Minutes later he was in the flat, leaving a trail of wet footprints across the living-room carpet. Winter couldn’t remember a visit from his boss that hadn’t started with a check on his favourite view.

  Winter joined him at the big French windows that opened onto a generous balcony. In the non-stop theatre of Pompey life, this was probably the best seat in the house. From here, on sunnier days, Winter could spend whole afternoons with his binos and a steady supply of coffees, keeping tabs on the busy stretch of water at his feet. Even today, the windows pebbled with rain, the racing pulse of Portsmouth Harbour seemed to reach into the room. The apartment in Gunwharf, Winter often told himself, had been the best investment he’d ever made.

  Mackenzie seized the binos, tracking a figure on the harbourside walk that skirted the front of Blake House. Then his head went up and he swept the Gosport waterfront. The Camper & Nicholsons’ marina, Winter thought. Old habits die hard.

  ‘Look at that one, mush. The big bugger, the blue one. What do you reckon? Three hundred K? Four?’

  Winter declined the binos. When it came to pricing yachts, he hadn’t a clue. This was a game Bazza liked to play, largely with himself. If you’d once had big money, he thought, it must be strange to realise that you could have laid hands on pretty much anything.

  ‘Maybe you should have bought one, Baz –’ he headed for the kitchen to put the kettle on ‘– while the going was good.’

  ‘You think I couldn’t? Even now?’

  ‘I know you couldn’t.’

  ‘Then you’re fucking wrong, mush.’ He’d appeared at the kitchen door, his face still shiny with rain. ‘There are dozens of businessmen in this town who must be crapping themselves just now. Happens I’m not one of them. You OK with that?’

  It was a direct challenge. Stay on board or fuck off. Winter asked whether he’d prefer tea or coffee.

  ‘Stolly, since you’re asking. Easy on the ice.’

  Winter kept a bottle of vodka in the fridge. Misty had finally tired of Bacardi and Coke. He splashed a generous measure into a glass, threw a look at Bazza, then doubled it.

  ‘You having one, mush?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why the fuck not?’

  For the first time Winter realised that Mackenzie was pissed. There was a madness in his eyes that Winter hadn’t seen for a while.

  ‘You want to talk about it, Baz? Or do we just stand here and shout at each other?’

  Mackenzie eyed him for a moment. In these moods, as Winter knew only too well, his boss could lose it completely. In his glory days with the 6.57 he’d been a legendary warrior on football terraces throughout the country. Even the police spotters, the plain-clothes guys with a memory for a face or two, had paid tribute to the Little Un’s appetite for raw violence. Weekend after weekend he did Pompey proud, and Winter had once seen a police video compilation of his fiercest rucks. Towards the end of the sequence, up in Leeds, he’d taken on three guys at once, huge bastards twice his size, and still come out on his toes.

  ‘Sometimes it’s good to listen, Baz.’ He was steering his boss into the living room again. ‘Stu knows how money works. Sometimes I think he invented the stuff.’

  ‘And you think I don’t? You think all this –’ he waved a vague hand around Winter’s living room ‘– happened by fucking accident?’

  ‘It’s mine, Baz. I paid for it. Or most of it.’

  ‘And the rest, mush? Where did that come from?’

  ‘Maddox.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Maddox. The tom you fancied – you know, my friend from a while back.’

  ‘The arty one?’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Not me, then?’

&nb
sp; ‘No, Baz. Not you. You pay me well. We have some nice times. No complaints. But this place, since you ask, is mine.’

  Mackenzie was looking confused now, and just a little lost. He enjoyed owning people, bunging people, sprinkling them with a quid or two when the fancy took him. The fact that his first lieutenant, his favoured ex-cop, had a life of his own had always been a niggle.

  He studied his glass for a second or two, then tipped his head back and emptied it.

  ‘Any more, mush?’

  Winter got to his feet and returned with the bottle. Something’s happened, he thought. The death spiral of the last couple of months has just got deeper.

  Mackenzie uncapped the bottle and helped himself. To Winter’s surprise, he poured no more than a dribble. Then he looked up.

  ‘Tide Turn, mush?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You think that should go too? Only it’s costing us a fortune.’

  ‘Stu, Baz. It’s costing Stu a fortune.’

  ‘Sure. But get rid of Tide Turn and we could use Stu’s dosh somewhere handier.’

  Winter gave the suggestion some thought. The Tide Turn Trust was Mackenzie’s investment in good works, a charity pledged to get alongside the harder elements among the city’s wayward youth and haul them out of the jungle of a Pompey adolescence. Lately, it had been prospering under the leadership of a genius Dutch social worker. It had cost a fortune to tempt the guy over from the slums of Rotterdam, where he’d made his considerable reputation, but Stu had been happy to foot the bills. Henrik van Oosten had made some startling moves, not least in the area of youth offending, and the media applause was getting louder and louder. Just one of the reasons why the Guardian appeared to be taking Bazza Mackenzie’s bid for the mayorship so seriously.

  ‘You think you can afford that?’

  ‘I’m not with you, mush.’

  ‘This mayor thing. If you really want it, then binning Tide Turn would be the kiss of death. Half the city still thinks you’re a gangster. The rest have got you down as some Copnor hard case who’s seen the light. From where I’m sitting, that’s probably very good news. Assuming you get the referendum through.’

  A city-wide referendum was the key to Mackenzie’s political ambitions. If it ever took place, and if enough people said yes, then the mayor would henceforth be elected by popular vote.

  ‘Gangster?’ Mackenzie looked hurt.

  ‘Sure. This is Pompey, Baz, not fucking Islington. Gangster plays well. It buys hotels. Café-bars. It creates jobs. It still goes to Fratton Park. It even sorts out dodgy kids. It’s real, Baz. People know who you are. Local boy.’

  ‘Made good?’ He was grinning now.

  ‘Definitely. Big time.’

  ‘So Tide Turn?’

  ‘Hang on to it. That’s my advice.’

  The bottle again. More vodka. Bit of a celebration.

  ‘Cheers.’ Bazza got to his feet, swayed a little, checked his watch. ‘Off, now. Need to sort one or two things out.’

  ‘No, Baz. Sit down. Tell me what’s happened.’

  Winter guided him back to the sofa. He could feel Bazza’s muscles bunching under the thin leather jacket. Mackenzie hated being touched. His eyes were glassy. He stared at Winter.

  ‘What’s this about, mush?’

  ‘My question exactly. Something’s happened. So maybe you should tell me what …’ he smiled and patted the sofa ‘… for all our sakes.’

  Suttle drove Faraday to Monkswell Farm. It was raining even harder now, the country lanes towards the south of the island sluicing water from the surrounding fields. Suttle peered ahead, the wipers on double speed, checking the route against a scribbled map on his lap. He’d borrowed the Fiesta from the local CID boys. They didn’t stretch to satnavs.

  ‘Punchy, wasn’t she? A result on this job will set her up nicely.’

  ‘What for?’ Faraday’s eyes were closed. Half an hour of Parsons at full throttle had robbed him of everything.

  ‘The Superintendent’s job. She’ll get the exams sorted, no problem. What she needs after that is the next vacancy. There’s a queue. Like always.’

  ‘You think she does queueing? You think she ever did queueing?’

  The thought of Parsons meekly waiting her turn brought a smile to Faraday’s face. At the end of the meeting, oblivious to Faraday’s lack of input, she announced that Operation Gosling would be transferring to the satellite Major Incident Room at Ryde police station. Given her ever-increasing workload on the mainland, she’d be bossing the investigation from her office in the Major Crime suite at Fratton. Which put Faraday, as Deputy SIO, in charge of a sizeable team of detectives on the spot.

  A tight corner threw him sideways against the passenger door. For a second or two he thought he was in Eygpt again, at the mercy of another set of doctors, but then the car came to a halt and Suttle was winding down the window to offer his warrant card to the uniform beside the flapping blue and white tape.

  ‘Over there, sir. Beside the white van.’

  Suttle parked the Fiesta and killed the engine. For a long moment Faraday could hear nothing but the steady drumming of rain on the car roof and the sigh of the wind in the trees overhead. A thick hedge hid the farmhouse and outbuildings and it was tempting to wind the clock back half a generation and imagine that he was Suttle’s age, out by himself at the start of a long weekend, preparing to tramp deep into the countryside in pursuit of chiffchaffs or siskins. In those days he’d have had his deaf-mute son for company – a whirl of fingers and thumbs, oblivious like his dad to the weather. By the age of eight, J-J could describe a dozen birds in fluent sign, an achievement which, even now, brought a smile to Faraday’s face.

  ‘OK, boss? You up for this?’ Suttle gave Faraday’s arm a squeeze.

  Faraday looked him in the eye. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Bring it on.’

  Suttle grinned at him, another squeeze, then he was out in the rain, wrestling with an umbrella he’d found in the back of the car, stepping round the bonnet to open the passenger door and offer shelter. Faraday, grateful, walked beside him down the track towards the farmhouse. The path had been churned up by the fire engines and all the other vehicles that had attended since, and there were deep tyre gouges on the verge, exposing slicks of glistening clay beneath the sodden grass.

  Beside the open gate they paused. The remains of Monkswell Farm lay before them. The property occupied a hollow, slightly below the level of the surrounding fields. It was a long, squat, narrow building, all four walls still standing, the white cob walls blackened with smoke. Two brick chimney stacks had also survived the fire, standing proud among the black tangle of assorted debris, somehow adding to the sense of ruin. Not just a building, Faraday thought, but a family too.

  Despite the rain, a couple of Crime Scene Investigators were sieving debris onto a layer of clear polythene beside what must have been the front door. One of them spotted Faraday and offered a nod of welcome. Inside, among the wreckage, Faraday glimpsed another figure – tall, a fireman in a helmet and a red tabard, stooping from one pile of wreckage to another. As Faraday watched, he produced a camera, took a few shots, then scribbled himself a note. This has to be the Fire Investigator, Faraday thought, the guy who’d try and tease some kind of conversation from the sour breath of the sodden embers. How the fire had started. How it had spread. And who may have helped it have its way.

  The Scenes of Crime caravan was parked next to the barn. Suttle had already briefed Faraday about the Crime Scene Coordinator in charge of the forensic team. Her name was Meg Stanley. She was new to Hantspol, not bad-looking, and had apparently scored a university degree in theology before joining the men in blue.

  She was waiting for them in the caravan, a small neat woman in her mid-thirties with a generous mouth and a flawless complexion. She was wearing a two-piece grey suit that lent her an air of slight severity, and at once Faraday could imagine her behind a lectern in a pulpit, or robed beside an open grave. This was someone, he t
hought, you’d be wise to take seriously.

  She offered tea or coffee from a nest of Thermos flasks. The fact that the pathologist had found shotgun pellets in all four bodies had given the forensic search an extra edge. Unless she could demonstrate otherwise, the fire had been deliberately set.

  Faraday was looking at the pile of paperwork beside the laptop on the tiny desk. Incidents this challenging were mercifully rare. If you wanted to muddy a multiple homicide, a thatch fire was a near-perfect way of reducing everything to sludge. From the forensic point of view, the hours and days to come would be critical. Any tiny clue spared by the fire. Any evidence that might begin to chart the final hours of the four blackened corpses in the hospital mortuary.

  ‘So what have we got?’

  Stanley talked them through her progress to date. As the on-call CSC, she’d been alerted twenty-four hours ago after the discovery of the first body. She’d taken the hovercraft to Ryde, met the Crime Scene Manager on site and framed the Forensic Strategy that would flag the various pathways forwards. Inside the house itself, once the building surveyor had declared the remaining structure safe, they’d be working inwards from the areas of least damage. A fire dog trained to hunt for accelerants had been shipped in from the mainland, and the CSM had led a flash search of the immediate area in case something obvious was staring them in the face. In the absence of a dropped wallet or a signed confession, alas, she’d briefed the Police Search Adviser to map out coordinates for a more thorough trawl of the surrounding fields and hedgerows.

  Faraday was keeping a mental log, ticking off each action. In his experience no one got to the giddy heights of Crime Scene Coordinator without seizing a situation like this by the throat. You had to get structure and process into these first busy hours. You had to fold the forensic priorities into the firefighting operation and make absolutely sure that the cracks didn’t show. Above all, once the investigative machine was cranked up, you had to make certain that nothing was lost as gaps started to widen between an army of marauding detectives, the guys in the Incident Room and the painstaking recovery of evidence out here in the field. On paper or in the classroom it always looked simple. In reality it could easily become a nightmare.