‘Her tits, love.’
‘Thirty-four C. She was a popular girl.’
‘Is that right?’ Winter couldn’t be sure but he thought he heard the whisper of a chuckle.
‘Anything else you want to know?’
‘Yeah. Where is she now?’
‘Fuck knows. And that’s the truth.’
‘What about Johnny Holman?’
‘Holman?’ The voice had hardened again. ‘Holman was an arse-hole.’
The line went dead. Mackenzie, greatly relieved, patted Winter on the thigh. Ezzie was still studying the list.
‘It’s all upstairs,’ she said. ‘Be my guest.’
Faraday and Parsons were at Newport police station, conferencing with the Tactical Interview Adviser. D/C Ian Whatmore had
made a name for himself force-wide in the dark arts of interview management. How to invite a suspect to divulge more than
he ever planned. How to spot the cracks in that first account interview. And how to feed in morsel after morsel of carefully
gathered information that would tighten the investigative noose until even the suspect real ised he’d been kippered. Whatmore
was good at this stuff, so good Parsons had pulled every string to get him sprung from a training course at Southwick Park
and whisked at high speed to the Southsea hovercraft terminal.
Whatmore was up for this. Faraday could see it in his face. At forty-nine, a little portlier than his former self, he was
close to calling it a day, but like every ageing cop he relished the chance to take another scalp or two.
Already Faraday had outlined what they had to throw at Oobik, but like every good cop Whatmore was more interested in gut
feeling.
‘You think he did it? Killed Holman?’
Faraday exchanged glances with Parsons.
‘Yeah. Ninety-five per cent that’s exactly what he did.’
‘And the girl? Luik?’
‘Ditto.’
Now Whatmore was interested in the disclosure they had to make ahead of the interview to Oobik’s solicitor. He was looking
at Parsons.
‘Oobik’s asked for the duty brief. To be honest, we haven’t got a great deal. The account he gave Jimmy Suttle is all over
the place. We know he’s lying, but we’ve still got to prove it.’
Whatmore nodded. He wanted to know about the duty brief.
Faraday named a Newport-based solicitor. Whatmore knew him well.
‘He’ll tell this guy to go No Comment. Bet your life.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s good, sharp, shrewd. He’ll be thinking what you’re thinking. And if we give him the impression we’ve got fuck
all, there’s no way he’s gonna let Oobik open his mouth.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘We give him short rations. Just enough for him to advise his client. That way he might think we’re playing the incremental
disclosure game, that we know more than we really do. It’s a bit of a punt but it might work.’
Faraday had spotted another problem. This first interview was open account. That meant it was largely down to Oobik. If he
chose not to say anything at all, they’d pretty soon run out of questions. And once that happened, the brief would have grounds
for drawing the whole thing to a close. ‘Diligent and expeditious’ was a phrase that had come to haunt every interview room.
If the thing wasn’t moving on, then stumps would be drawn.
‘Not a problem.’ Whatmore had a plan. ‘The guys we’re putting in with him have worked this trick before. Patsy Lowe is brilliant
at the touchy-feely. She’s the one to find the sweet spot, what turns him on, what he’s been proud of in his life. Angus can
save the charm for later. I’ll tell him to keep his mouth shut.’
‘Until the challenge phase.’
‘Of course, boss. We want the truth or provable lies, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Then we spend tonight getting the lad onside.’
Faraday had no problem with Patsy Lowe. Her long years as a Family Liaison Officer had taught her how to build a bridge to
pretty much anybody. Angus McEwan too had the knack of looking a man in the eye and winning his trust. He was a big man, physically
imposing, with five kids and a wife who was a genius in the kitchen, and his soft Scots accent masked a great deal of guile.
Whatmore looked from Faraday to Parsons.
‘Are we through here? You want to policy this thing up?’
‘Sure.’ Faraday reached for his notes. More typing. More layers of armour plate.
Whatmore got to his feet and put his jacket on. Then came a knock at the door. It was Suttle. His mop of curls was plastered
to his skull. It must have started raining again.
He looked first at Faraday.
‘You’re not going to believe this, boss.’
It wasn’t in Mackenzie’s nature to wait. He sat on the sofa, still at Ezzie’s, still in the big front lounge, aware of the
murmur of conversation upstairs. Winter was with him, buried in Stu’s copy of the
Financial Times.
The credit squeeze was tightening by the day. More bad news from Dubai.
A peal of laughter caught Winter’s attention. Marie, definitely. Summoned by phone, she’d come round to give her daughter
a hand. There was more laughter, louder as a door opened, then came the patter of footsteps on the stairs and the two women
were back in the lounge.
Ezzie was carrying a black plastic sack. She looked pleased with herself.
‘You want a peek? Make sure we’ve got it right?’
She emptied the contents of the bag on the carpet and Winter found himself looking at a jumble of clothes: a patterned blue
skirt, a couple of halter tops in pinks and yellows, a pair of denim shorts with a rose embroidered on the arse, two pairs
of rope sandals. Ezzie knelt on the carpet and dug around, extracting a thong in black mesh. She held it up, suspended on
one finger.
‘What do you think, Dad? Does this fit the bill?’
Mackenzie had the grace to muster a grin, all too aware that Winter was in charge now. He understood the rules of this strange
new game. He seemed to know the moves they had to make to head off disaster.
‘That’s great,’ Winter said. ‘Have you got a torch?’
Marie stuffed the clothes back in the bin liner while Ezzie fetched a torch. The back garden was surrounded by a high brick
wall and there was an area at the far end shielded from the neighbours. It was pouring with rain again and the square of newly
turfed lawn was soggy underfoot. Perfect, thought Winter, following the beam of the torch towards the rear wall.
Here, at the back end of last year, Stu had begun a compost heap
with piles of raked leaves. Since then he and Ezzie had added hedge cuttings, rose trimmings and sundry garden waste. Winter
stirred the edges of the compost with his foot, then stooped down for a handful of the soil underneath and smeared it all
over the bin liner. The soil was wet from the rain, and bits of fibre from the compost stuck to the black plastic. He gave
it another coating then headed back indoors.
Mackenzie was in the kitchen, helping himself to Stu’s malt. Winter left the soiled bag beside the door and went to find Ezzie.
He was back in moments, drying himself with a towel. Then Ezzie came in.
‘This OK?’
She offered Winter the hairdryer. Winter plugged it in, hauled the bin liner onto the breakfast bar and began to hose the
black plastic with hot air. Slowly, the pebbles of rain disappeared, leaving brown smears of soil.
Marie had joined them in the kitchen. She’d seen the bin liner Winter had brought back from the Isle of Wight. She understood
exactly what was going on.
‘You’re an artist, Paul.’ She reached out for the towel. ‘You think they’ll come looking?’
‘I know they will.’
‘But what about the other one? The one I picked up from the police station? I told them Baz had been giving a friend a hand
in the garden. I said they’d done a bonfire together.’
‘Perfect.’
‘We stick to that?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But what if they want to check? What if they want to see all that stuff?’
‘You threw it out. It was disgusting. You’re a woman with standards. A rare breed these days.’
‘And the friend?’ It was Mackenzie. He was getting the hang of this.
Winter gave the question some thought.
‘Misty,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me.’
Lou Sadler was arrested at 20.17 by two D/Cs from the Outside Enquiry team on suspicion of murder. Suttle was parked on the
Cowes promenade in front of the apartment block, waiting for one of the off-duty Crime Scene Investigators to arrive from
Shanklin. The decision to scoop up Sadler had been Parsons’, with heavy backing from Faraday.
Suttle’s own inclination had been to let her run and see what developed. The obs team were still sitting on her every move
and her
visit to Nancy Percival had already produced a breakthrough. She must have known exactly where Kaija Luik had been living,
and her eagerness to lay her hands on the bin liner opened a line of enquiry that was deeply promising. What had the bin liner
contained? And was it pushing supposition too far to agree that the overweight charmer at Mrs Percival’s door must have been
Paul Winter?
That, he knew, was Parsons’ assumption. It was now an article of faith that a quantity of narcotics had been removed from
Monkswell Farm. Johnny Holman was a close associate of Bazza Mackenzie. A remote property on the Isle of Wight was exactly
the place you might choose for a stash. Winter had already been sniffing around the investigation
.
With his nose in
Gosling
’s trough and his mastery of the dark arts of detection, would it be a surprise if he wasn’t, in some respects, ahead of their
game?
Suttle smiled, amazed as ever by Winter’s MO, a mix of guile, low cunning and sheer bravado. Removing vital evidence that
might turn out to be a crime scene could earn him a hefty prison sentence, but Suttle knew Winter far too well not to understand
that this decision would have been carefully weighed. In the Job, Winter had always tried to lay hands on the single clue
that would unlock an entire investigation, and in the shape of the bin liner, thought Suttle, he might have found exactly
that.
The big door in the front of the apartment block swung open and Suttle peered out through the teeming rain as the two arresting
D/Cs hurried Lou Sadler into the waiting car. He got out of the Fiesta and stepped across. One of the D/Cs handed him the
key to Sadler’s apartment.
‘Fourth floor,’ he said. ‘Number 8. Help yourself.’
Suttle nodded, said nothing. Lou Sadler was sitting in the back of the squad car, looking up at him. Her face was impassive,
not a flicker of emotion. Parsons was right, Suttle thought. She’s been sitting up there waiting for us.
It was Faraday’s idea to summon reinforcements from the mainland to give the investigation a fighting chance. Parsons was
now sharing his borrowed office at Newport police station, squeezing herself behind the spare desk and demanding flowers to
brighten the place up. One of the civvy inputters in the Ryde MIR, underimpressed by Parsons’ slightly regal air, had quietly
coined a nickname that was threatening to catch on: Her Bustiness. Or, more simply, HB.
Faraday, bent over the Policy Book, was mentally reviewing developments over the last couple of hours. The Outside Enquiry
team was fully stretched on action after action, racing against the clock to find
fresh bullets for
Gosling
’s gun. A trawl of Mrs Percival’s neighbours to establish whether anyone had information about visitors in the small hours
of Sunday morning. Flat-to-flat calls in Sadler’s apartment block. Marina enquiries to try and establish whether or not she
owned a boat of any description. A wider intel trawl to build a picture of Martin Skelley. Already the PNC had yielded a number
of convictions, two – in his youth – for GBH. Since then he appeared to have built a substantial business empire but the details
were still imprecise. More Googling. More Facebook. More calls.
With Sadler en route to Newport from Cowes, the task now was to prepare for another set of interviews. Because
Gosling
’s D/Cs were fully occupied, Faraday was suggesting a couple of names from the Major Crime team back at Fratton. Both he knew
well. D/C Bev Yates was a career detective, a veteran forty-something. His private life was never less than chaotic, but his
sleepy eyes and Italian good looks had won him a series of victories in the interview room, often against women. D/C Dawn
Ellis was younger but no less shrewd. Pale, slight, passionately vegan, she carried an air of boyishness which she used to
great advantage. Pre-Christmas there’d been rumours that she’d begun to lose the plot – talk of man trouble – but Faraday
mistrusted canteen gossip and was glad to have her on the team. Some serious criminals had made the mistake of underestimating
Ellis and had regretted the consequences.
Faraday was worrying about the PACE clock. It was already gone half eight. Sadler had yet to arrive. The booking-in process
would take at least half an hour. If she wanted the services of her own lawyer, it might be midnight before all the consultations
with the brief were complete. By that time Sadler would be due the stipulated eight-hour rest period, pushing the first interview
into the following day.
Parsons dismissed Faraday’s reservations. Making a fresh start tomorrow morning, she said, had lots of advantages. For one
thing they’d have time to agree a proper strategy with Ian Whatmore and the interview team. For another, the overnight enquiries,
plus forensic developments at the caravan and Sadler’s apartment, might well affect the whole thrust of the investigation.
At last, she said,
Gosling
appeared to be in the driving seat.
‘Yates and Ellis then?’ Faraday had them on standby.
‘Yep. Get them over now.’
‘And Winter?’
To Faraday’s surprise, Parsons hesitated. Thinking she couldn’t resist this golden chance to at last get even, he’d assumed
she’d want detectives knocking on his door as soon as possible. On the contrary, she appeared to favour caution. She was wary
of Winter. She wanted
to make sure they weren’t walking into yet another cleverly baited trap.
‘Who knows him best, Joe?’
‘Suttle, without question. Winter trained him. He knows exactly the way the guy ticks.’
‘And we trust Suttle?’
‘Completely.’
‘Then send him over.’
‘To do what?’
‘Have a chat.’
‘And if Winter admits removing the bin liner?’
‘Then we arrest him.’
‘For what?’
‘Perverting the course of justice. This is page one, Joe. The man’s trying to make things hard for us.’
Faraday nodded. She was right. Winter was definitely on a nicking.
‘So when do you suggest we action this?’
‘Tonight.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘As soon as.’
Jimmy Suttle stepped into Sadler’s apartment, leaving the door open for the Crime Scene Investigator, who’d just arrived from
Shanklin. The lights were on and he waited for the CSI to join him. He was an older man, overweight, and he came puffing up
the stairs complaining about the supper he’d had to abandon. Steak and kidney pudding. His wife’s own recipe. Criminal.
They started in the kitchen, a brief scan of the shelves, a cursory poke through the drawers, looking for anything obvious
that might help the interview teams over the next twenty-four hours. According to items pinned to the corkboard on the back
of the door, Lou Sadler owed two weeks’ worth of milk and fancied a recipe for prawns in a coconut and chilli sauce. The contents
of her fridge betrayed a weakness for crème fraiche and eclairs, and she was manic about hanging on to Sainsbury’s bags.
The bedroom looked more promising. There were two dressing gowns folded over the foot of the big double bed and a whole drawerful
of men’s clothing, chiefly jeans and T-shirts. The T-shirts were large; the jeans thirty-six in the leg. On the table beside
the bed was a framed photo. Sadler sat at the wheel of a biggish rigid inflatable, grinning at the camera. It was a glorious
day, not a cloud in the sky, and the background matched the view across the Medina from West Cowes. Riding pillion in the
RIB was a bigger figure, Max Oobik – blue anorak, knee-length olive-green shorts. He too was enjoying himself. Suttle gazed
at the photo, knowing that this was probably the
boat that belonged to the trailer at Upcourt Farm. He put the photo to one side and had started going through the twin drawers
in the dressing table when he got a call from next door.
The CSI, looking for a second bedroom, had found Sadler’s office. Venetian blinds on the single window. PC on the desk. An
Ikea filing cabinet in the corner. Very neat. Not a single concession to sentiment or unnecessary decoration.
Suttle slipped behind the desk. The PC was still live and a face hung on the screen. It was the girl, Kaija Luik, exactly
the same shot Suttle had seen earlier in Faraday’s office, and Suttle stared at it, wondering if this little gesture was deliberate,
an electronic
adieu
from someone who, after a full week, still remained a total mystery.
The CSI was going through the filing cabinet. So far he’d found detailed records from the business including bank statements,
tax computations, VAT printouts, profit and loss accounts, payment schedules, remittance slips and a couple of spreadsheets
offering a glimpse of where Two’s Company might be heading next. Suttle knew at once that he’d need financial specialists
to make proper sense of all this. There was doubtless more on the PC’s hard disk, but time was short and overnight he’d only
have time for a brief trawl for relevant material before the interview team got a proper crack at Sadler. He was asking the
CSI to bundle up all this material when his mobile began to chirp. He checked caller ID. Faraday.
‘Parsons wants you to talk to Winter.’
‘About the bin liner?’
‘Yeah. And the girl’s phone he took.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘Where?’
‘We’re assuming Pompey.’
Suttle was watching the CSI pull yet more paperwork from the filing cabinet. If the two D/Cs manning
Gosling
’s intel cell were expecting a night’s sleep, they were in for a shock. Faraday was waiting for an answer. Suttle told him
about the intel haul and asked about the hovercraft shedule. Faraday told him to seize the paperwork and the RIB photo and
send it back with the CSI. As for the hovercraft to Southsea, there was no crossing after 20.20. Best, therefore, to take
the 21.15 RedJet catamaran to Southampton and then cab it across to Pompey.
‘Done, boss,’ Suttle said, checking his watch.
Winter had settled in for a night in front of the telly. By half ten, coshed by a plate of beef in chilli noodles delivered
from the Water
Margin, he was ready for bed. For once in his life he hadn’t had a drink. The videophone buzzed at 10.47. Winter, half-asleep
in front of
Newsnight,
struggled to his feet. They’re late, he thought, checking his watch. He padded down the hall and checked the screen. To his
surprise, he found himself gazing at Jimmy Suttle. The boy looked soaked.