‘Kitchener,’ Winter said drily.
‘That’s it, that’s him, Kitchener. Paulie here thinks it’s a blinding idea, don’t you, mush? Me on the poster. Me pointing.
Are you up for the Cup?
We print hundreds of the fuckers, thousands of them, stick ’em up all over town.
Clean up Pompey.
Has to work, doesn’t it? A line like that?’
‘Brilliant, Baz. I’ll get back to you.’ If Kinder was underwhelmed it didn’t show.
‘When, mush?’
‘Soon as. I’m in a meeting.’
‘Yeah? Fuck off then.’ He barked with laughter and ended the call, returning to the rest of his emails. Winter noticed one
from
billy. angel
marked
High Priority
. Mackenzie skipped over it. Finally, after another chortle over a cleverly Photoshopped image that showed
Ronaldo as a transvestite, he settled back in his chair.
‘Rotary fucking Club, mush?’ He reached for a pad and a pen. ‘Any ideas?’
‘I went to see Leyman this morning.’
‘Yeah? And what did he have to say for himself?’
Bazza’s grin widened. Winter had been waiting for this moment for most of the day.
‘He said you stashed two million quid’s worth of toot over on the island just in case. He said you’d parked it for a rainy
day. He also told me who was looking after it. Johnny Holman.’
Mackenzie’s grin had frozen. If there was one thing he hated in life, it was being taken by surprise. He’d put a call through
to Leyman last night, warned him off, shut the fat fucker up. Now this.
‘He’s lying.’
‘No, he’s not. Leyman doesn’t do lying. That’s his charm.’
‘You believe him?’
‘Every word. And you know why? Because it’s not just him.’
‘So who else is peddling this shit?’
Winter shook his head. No more clues. No more names. Just a word or two about what might happen next.
‘I’ve worked my bollocks off for you, Baz. I’ve got no complaints. You pay me OK, it’s been a lot of fun.’
‘Been?’
‘Been.’ Winter nodded. ‘I’m looking at this from your point of view, Baz. Why waste your money on someone like me when you
could get some other monkey for half the price? There are blokes in this town that would do anything to get on your payroll.
They wouldn’t mind in the least if you dicked them around, pulled their strings, kept them out of the loop half the time.
In fact they’d probably think it went with the territory. Work for Bazza Mackenzie. Sit in the fucking dark and get yourself
shat on. It’s not clever, Baz. It’s not even funny. To tell you the truth, I’m disappointed. I thought you were better than
this.’
He got up. He’d said it. He was off. The last time he’d felt this good was the day he’d said something very similar to Detective
Chief Superintendent Willard. Stuff your job.
Mackenzie stared at him.
‘You’re joking.’ He leaned forward and patted the empty chair. ‘Sit down, mush. You’re upset. I’ve been working you too hard.
You’ve got this stuff all out of proportion.’
‘No, Baz. That’s what you said before. And the time before that. It happens I believed you. But hey –’ he shot Mackenzie a
smile ‘– sometimes in life you get these things wrong.’
Mackenzie wasn’t having it. He was at the door before Winter, his back pressed against it, no way out. Winter looked down
at him.
‘Are you going to open that door?’
‘No, mush, I’m not. Not before you let me have my little say.’
‘But why should I do that? Given what you never tell me?’
‘Because you should. Because you must. Because this stuff’s about you too.’
‘What stuff?’
‘The toot. Johnny. Everything. If you don’t give me a hearing, you’ll regret it, mush. I’m telling you now.’
Mackenzie took a tiny step forward, testing Winter. Then another. Then a third before he moved sideways, gesturing at the
door. His confidence had returned. Help yourself. Be my guest.
Winter studied him for a while, then shook his head.
‘I’ve had enough, Baz.’ He reached for the door handle. ‘Say goodbye to Marie for me, eh?’
Faraday was doing his best to concentrate on Lou Sadler. Patsy Lowe sat in his office beside Suttle. The door was closed.
‘Tell me again, Jimmy.’
Suttle described their encounter with Sadler. Faraday wasn’t impressed.
‘So she’s on the game, you catch her at it – or nearly at it – and in a polite kind of way she tells you to fuck off. That’s
standard MO, isn’t it? Someone like her? You don’t have to be a criminal to hate the likes of us.’
‘That’s not the point, boss. She lied. I’ve checked again with the D/S I mentioned.’
‘The one on the Vice Squad?’
‘Yeah. He’s certain Holman used to blag shags off her. Not her personally but one of the girls she runs. He says Holman used
to boast about it.’
‘Maybe Holman lives in a dreamworld. A fantasist.’
‘Fine. That’s possible. I admit it. But Sadler’s telling us that Holman was a regular punter. He saw lots of the girl. Sadler
says he paid his way, but maybe there’s more to it. Maybe he copped freebies as well, like the Vice D/S says. So maybe there’s
some kind of relationship.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
Faraday was trying to keep up. Suttle’s impatience, he thought, was beginning to show.
‘You’re suggesting Holman’s with this tom of his? What’s her name again?’
‘Kaija Luik.’
‘So where is she?’
‘Sadler says she’s gone home. She’s Estonian.’
‘We’ve got an address?’
‘No. Only a name.’ Suttle had typed it out. He slid it across the desk. Faraday glanced at it.
‘Luik? You think it’s a common name?’
‘Dunno, boss.’
‘Have you got a photo?’
‘Not yet. Sadler says she’ll ping one over.’
‘You need to action this. Talk to Interplod.’
‘Done, boss.’ Giving Interpol nothing more than a name, with the promise of a photo to follow, was a big ask. They’d take
at least a week to come up with any kind of result. Assuming, of course, that Luik had really gone home.
‘What about here? Where was she living?’
Suttle gave him the address in Cowes. He and Lowe had called in on the way back to Ryde. The address was the lower half of
an end-of-terrace property near the chain ferry across to East Cowes. There’d been no response to their knocks at the front
door and a glance through the front window suggested the place was empty.
‘Upstairs?’
‘No one in. I’ll check the Land Registry next. See who owns it.’
‘Neighbours?’
‘One old couple next door. Pretty clueless, to be frank. Keep themselves to themselves. We need to check at some more addresses
once we’ve got a photo.’
Faraday nodded, then his eyes returned to the slip of paper Suttle had given him. Kaija Luik. Someone else no one could find.
‘Chase the photo,’ he said.
Suttle took this as a gesture of dismissal. He and Lowe left the office. Faraday reached for the Policy Book and glanced up
at the clock on the wall. In a quarter of an hour he was due to conference with Meg Stanley. She’d sent her apologies earlier,
pleading to be excused from the 6 p.m. squad meeting on the grounds that the SOC operation was nearly at an end. With luck
she would present their preliminary findings before close of play.
Faraday had emailed her back, saying no problem. In the event, he thought, she’d missed nothing. With the possible exception
of Kaija Luik,
Gosling
appeared to have hit a brick wall. No Johnny Holman. No shotguns. No sign of Robbie Gifford’s car. Nothing definite from
the Pompey underworld beyond vague rumours of a buried stash of cocaine. These mutterings, almost inevitably, had been linked
to Mackenzie, partly because he had the means to bankroll a consignment of that size and partly because it was a handy fit
for the colourful urban legend that was Pompey’s favourite gangster.
From Faraday’s point of view the latter was especially troubling,
not least because Parsons and Willard seemed all too eager to hitch their horses to the get-Mackenzie bandwagon. In the end
of course they might well be proved right, but in the meantime it was Faraday’s job to keep an open mind on every line of
enquiry until the evidence told him otherwise.
He opened the Policy Book and began to transcribe the scribbled notes he’d made during the day. In this way he could keep
a real-time check on the investigation as it developed, noting the decisions he’d made and the reasoning that lay behind them.
Months or even years down the line, if
Gosling
ever made it to court, the Policy Book would protect him against marauding defence barristers in court, eager to exploit
the tiniest chink in
Gosling
’s armour. A tiny procedural slip here, a wrongly attested statement there, and the entire case could fall apart. Years ago,
as a D/C and then a D/S, he’d seen it happen on countless occasions. You spent months closing the investigative net around
the prime suspects. You spent week after week trying to make the file lawyer-proof. And then, for the silliest reason, you
fucked up.
He bent to the Policy Book. At Suttle’s instigation detectives were rechecking ANPR cameras in the hunt for sightings of Difford’s
Corsa early on the Sunday morning. House-to-house enquiries had widened around Monkswell Farm, yielding little more than confirmation
that the Holman ménage had been a bit of a pain. There’d been more interviews with school and college friends of the two dead
girls, again with little result. The only absolute certainty was the abrupt return from holiday of Robbie Difford’s mother.
A Family Liaison officer had been dispatched to Gatwick to meet her and drive her back to the island. It was conceivable,
just, that she might throw fresh light on her son’s relationship with the volatile Johnny Holman.
There was a knock on the door. It was Meg Stanley. She apologised for being early, hoped it wasn’t a problem. Faraday, to
his slight surprise, was pleased to see her. It seemed an age since they’d shared a curry.
She unpacked her briefcase and slipped a typed report across the desk. It looked predictably neat.
Faraday picked it up, flicked quickly through the dozen or so pages, put it carefully to one side.
‘Give me the headlines,’ he said. ‘Start with the fire itself.’
Stanley nodded. She’d shared the draft preliminary report with the Fire Investigator and he’d agreed that at this stage their
conclusions were largely speculative. The fire appeared to have been started in the roof space beneath the thatch. Apart from
an empty bottle of vodka beside Difford’s body, there was no evidence of accelerants. A multi-seat fire – setting the thatch
alight at several separate locations –
would have been all too possible. Bundles of newsprint would have done it, or anything else that could have served as kindling.
Once the thatch was burning, she said, all you had to do was leave the trapdoor into the roof space – plus a couple of windows
down below – open. The updraught would fuel the blaze, and each of the tiny reeds that composed the thatch itself would suck
the superheated air still further inwards until the whole of the roof was acting like one huge bellows. This process, said
Stanley, had put her off thatched roofs for ever. Thank God her rabbit hutch in Lock’s Heath was tiled.
‘Would the fire be visible by now?’
‘Not for an hour or so. The old people in the bungalow across the fields reported it at 03.25. By that time, if you’d started
the fire, you could be long gone.’
‘And once it had taken hold?’
‘The place has pretty much had it. The fire brigade ended up with every appliance they could lay their hands on. Even with
all that resource, all they could do was wait until it burned itself out. You’re looking at one huge bonfire. Whoever did
this got it spot on.’
Faraday scribbled himself a note. This was no more than he’d expected.
‘So what did you recover?’
‘The four bodies, obviously, plus everyday stuff that would survive any fire. Basically we’re talking metal: bed frames, the
springs from armchairs, cutlery, bits and pieces of circuitry from the electronic stuff.’
‘P/Cs?’
‘Yep. Two of those plus a laptop. Nothing useful, though. We shipped the hard drives to Scientific Services but they were
fried.’
‘Mobiles?’
‘Same situation. We recovered three mobiles in all. Given where we found them we think we’ve linked them to three of the bodies.
That’s Julie and the two girls. Kim’s SIM card was intact. The other two were useless.’
‘And Difford? Any sign of a mobile?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive.’
Faraday scribbled another note. Difford’s car, he thought. Maybe he’d left his mobile in the Corsa. Tomorrow he’d ask Suttle
to sort out billing. Difford’s mother would have her son’s number, and if Holman had used the Corsa to get away from the farm,
and if Difford’s mobile was on the dashboard, then there might just be a chance he’d been making a call or two since.
He looked up. Stanley had her hands held wide. That, she said, was pretty much it. From the start she’d assessed the job as
a nightmare, and nothing that had happened since had changed her mind.
‘I feel like I owe you an apology’, she said. ‘I’m used to being more productive than this.’
‘When do you release the scene?’
‘We’re thinking tomorrow. Around noon. You’ll obviously get the full report as soon as I can manage it.’
‘Sure.’ Faraday didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. Monkswell Farm had just swallowed a sizeable chunk of the SOC budget.
With very little to show for it. ‘So what’s your take on what might have happened?’
The word ‘might’ was key. Like Faraday himself, Meg Stanley had little time for conjecture, though in this case there was
hardly an alternative.
‘I would have thought that Holman has to be the prime suspect. Through the taxi driver we can put him at the farm in the early
hours. Holman’s a big drinker. His relationship with Julie is rocky. He’s coming on to her eldest daughter. He’s fallen out
with the daughter’s boyfriend. Plus he has access to two shotguns.’
‘You found shells from the gun?’
‘Yeah, the metal bits on the end. I should have mentioned them.’
‘How many?’
‘Four. The PM found lead shot in each of the bodies. Again, location is important. We’re pretty sure now that they were all
killed downstairs, two in the lounge and two in the kitchen. Robbie and Kim were in the kitchen. Mum and Jessie were in the
lounge. It’s all in the report,
page 9
.’
Faraday nodded, trying to picture the scene. Killing four people wasn’t a simple proposition.
‘So how did he do it?’
‘Good question. The way we see it, he must have used both shotguns. My guess is that they were pre-loaded and ready to hand.’
‘So he’d figured it all out? Planned it?’
‘Definitely. Waiting until Robbie and Kim were in the kitchen would have made it possible. Two guns to hand. First one couple,
then the other.’
‘An execution.’
‘Exactly.’
‘An angry man.’
‘Off the planet. Totally insane. Just like everyone says.’
‘And the guns themselves? No trace?’
‘None. You’d have been the first to know.’
‘But he did
have
the guns?’
‘Must have done. As well as the shells, we ended up finding the metal box he used for storage.’
‘Empty?’
‘Yes.’
Faraday nodded. Through the fog that had once been his brain another thought had emerged.
‘What about the alarm system?’
‘The guy from the installing company came out to have a look. There’s a chip you can interrogate. It tells you when or whether
the alarms have been turned off.’
‘And?’
‘It wasn’t there. Someone had removed it.’
‘Holman?’
‘I would have thought it’s more than possible.’
‘But why would he do that?’
‘It gives him breathing space. Or maybe it tells us this is an intruder, someone professional, someone who knows how to cover
their tracks.’
‘Or muddy the trail.’
‘Exactly. Which would take us back to Holman.’
Faraday nodded. He reminded Stanley about Holman’s visit to the London clinic, the suspicion – not evidenced – that he’d reported
some form of sexual dysfunction.
‘That would make sense. We found a pile of pornography in that office of his, video and print, plus a load of condoms.’
‘Still no sign of an address book?’
‘No. He must have taken it with him.’
‘Phone numbers he might have scribbled down? Little notes he might have written himself?’
‘A couple of bits and pieces. I sent them all over to D/S Suttle.’
Faraday sat back, trying to clear his mind, trying to assign each of these tiny fragments some kind of priority. Maybe Parsons
was right, he thought. Maybe, in the end, it’s all about the hole they’d found at the back of Monkswell House.
He asked whether there’d been any kind of re-investigation around the digging.
‘We had another go, yes. We sieved every particle of the excavated soil, plus the manure that must have been on top.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect. I did some sums though, if you’re interested.’
‘Always.’
‘I gather we might be talking cocaine, yes?’
‘It’s more than possible.’
‘Right. Cocaine comes in one-kilo blocks. Normally, they’re double-wrapped in industrial clear polythene and secured with
brown tape. Each block is roughly the size of a flattish house brick. I did some measurements in the hole, tried to calculate
what kind of consignment there’d have been space for.’
‘And?’
‘We could be talking fifty blocks. Easily. That’s a rough calculation, a finger in the wind. But fifty is a conservative figure.
I’d be amazed if it was anything less.’
Faraday was looking for a calculator in the desk drawer. Stanley beat him to it.
‘Use mine.’
Faraday did the sums. The street price of cocaine, as far as he knew, had been sinking recently. At £5 for a wrap, you were
looking at £25 per gram, or £25,000 per kilo. On the basis of Stanley’s guesstimate, therefore, Holman could have been sitting
on one and a quarter million quid’s worth of toot.