‘Good boy.’ He opened his eyes. Her face was inches from his. ‘Better now?’
She fetched a tray of coffee and croissants from the kitchen. This could be Paris, Winter thought, except better. They were
sitting side
by side under the duvet, like an old couple on a bench enjoying the view. Winter wondered whether he should feed the seagulls.
‘You need to know about that bonfire you had,’ he said instead. ‘Baz gave you a hand. We’re talking about the week before
last. Lots of smoke. Baz got changed afterwards and left his gear here. You stuffed it in a bag and gave it to me on Saturday.
You got all that?’
‘No problem, Mr Lumberjack.’ Misty’s fingers were at work again under the duvet. ‘You want to do it again? Properly this time?’
It was nearly half past seven before the Outside Enquiries D/S stepped into Faraday’s office. Expecting Parsons to turn up
any minute, Faraday fetched a spare chair from the incident room. The D/S, a veteran, had been a probationer on the Isle of
Wight and knew it well.
Faraday was looking at the check list on his clipboard. It wasn’t very long.
‘So what have we got?’
The D/S gave him the headlines. Enquiries along Mrs Percival’s street had drawn a blank on movements in and out of her house
in the small hours of Sunday morning. No one had been awake after midnight and no one could remember any disturbance. Further
along the Newport Road, the same house-to-house team had visited every property within sight of Upcourt Farm. Oobik and Sadler
were familiar figures to various neighbours. Oobik was a permanent fixture on the farm and Sadler arrived often, always in
the red convertible, mainly at weekends. As far as last week was concerned, no one reported anything out of the ordinary.
The weather had been dreadful, too wet and windy to venture out, and most afternoons it had been dark by five.
‘Little red Corsa? First thing Sunday morning?’
‘No chance, boss. One thing though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s an elderly woman who lives on the farm. Her name’s …’ his eyes went down to the clipboard ‘… Eva Gonzalez.’
‘And?’
‘It seems she’s got a dog, big old thing. She takes it out for walkies every morning, goes up the field where the sheep are,
has to keep it on a lead. Our guys pinned her down to last week. She says from Monday through to Wednesday there was a biggish
boat trailer out on the grass in front of one of the outhouses by the caravan. She’d never seen it there before, which is
why she remembered.’
‘And the outhouse itself?’
‘The door was closed. She couldn’t see inside.’
‘And Thursday?’
‘The trailer was back inside. With the door half open.’
Faraday was drawing the timeline. The burned-out remains of the Corsa had been reported pre-dawn on Thursday morning. Perfect.
He looked up, nodded at the clipboard.
‘What else have you got?’
‘All negatives, I’m afraid, boss. We’ve knocked on doors in that apartment block of Sadler’s. Half of them are empty – second
homes or holiday lets. A couple on the floor below pass the time of day with her. Think she’s fine, no problem. We’ve also
been looking for that inflatable of hers. We’re assuming it’s registered in her name. Since start of play we’ve done just
over half of the Cowes marinas. So far, nothing.’
Faraday scribbled himself a note. This would need to be an early question for Sadler in interview. He looked up again.
‘Done?’
‘Yep.’
‘Good.’ He sorted through his paperwork until he found the intel summary on Martin Skelley. He slid it across to the D/S.
‘There’s a delivery firm called Freezee. It’s all in the report. We need to know if and when they had any vans over here last
week. If so, we need full details: driver, drop-offs, ferry bookings, the lot. OK?’
‘Priority?’
‘Urgent.’
‘I’ll get it actioned, boss.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Right away.’
Faraday reached for the phone. Both of the D/Cs in the intel cell were already at their desks.
‘Is D/S Suttle with you?’
‘No, boss.’
‘Who’s going through those accounts we seized from Sadler?’
‘Me, boss.’
‘Got a moment?’
The D/C was young, scarcely three years in the Job. Prior to joining up she’d worked in a building society and knew her way
around financial paperwork. Her name was Coleen. She needed to lose a lot of weight.
‘How are you doing?’
‘Fine. Assuming the data’s OK, this woman kept excellent records. Very neat. Very thorough.’
‘And what does it tell us?’
‘She’s got a good business here. The spreadsheets map it all out. Lots of growth over the past couple of years and pretty
ambitious forecasts after that.’
‘How many girls?’
‘So far I’ve identified thirteen. The standard rate is £200 an hour. Twenty quid of that goes to the hotel for the room hire
and Sadler seems to take 40 per cent off what’s left. The girls get to keep the rest.’
‘Is that standard? Generous? Mean?’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’ A hint of colour in her cheeks. ‘I’ve no idea.’
Faraday was doing the maths: £110 an hour felt like a decent rate.
‘We’re in the wrong job, Coleen. Ever think that?’
‘No, boss.’
‘So how many tricks are these girls turning?’
‘On average you’re looking at a couple a day, sometimes more. So most of the girls would be on around £220-plus a day. Some
choose to take a couple of days a week off.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ He was looking at the buff folder on her lap. ‘What about Luik?’
‘That’s the problem, boss. She doesn’t appear to exist.’
‘There’s no mention of her at all?’
‘None.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
‘I’ve no idea. Maybe Sadler sanitised the files before we got to them.’
‘Would that be easy?’
‘The way the software’s set up, yes, it would. But why bother when we know she exists?’
‘Quite.’ She hesitated, a tiny frown of concentration on her face. ‘Go on.’
‘There’s another name I recognise.’
‘Which is?’
‘Oobik.’
‘Really?’ Faraday blinked. ‘And he’s on the payroll?’
‘Yeah. Exactly the same pattern as the girls. Couple of clients a day. Good steady earner.’
‘You think he’s turning tricks too?’
‘Must be. Why not? Women pay for sex, especially older women. And he might tom for men too.’
It was true. In theory there was absolutely nothing to stop Two’s Company
marketing male escorts alongside the girls. Suttle had described Oobik as a fit young guy with a bit of an attitude problem,
but that was probably a turn-on to a certain kind of client. On the other hand, why would Lou Sadler be selling the sexual
services of the bloke she was kipping with? Unless this too carried a certain kind of frisson?
‘Have you checked the website? Two’s Company?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘He’s not featured. No mugshot, no details, no come-on – nothing.’
The photo of Kaija Luik lay under the pile of paperwork. Faraday fetched it out and gazed at it for a long moment. There was
still something snagging in the deep recesses of his brain, something about the name Oobik, but for the life of him he couldn’t
tease it to the surface.
Coleen wanted to know whether they were through. D/S Suttle had just arrived back from the mainland, and she had a mountain
of stuff to sort out.
‘Fine, Coleen.’ Faraday nodded at the file. ‘Thanks for that. Tell Jimmy he’s on parade at nine with the interview teams,
yeah?’
Misty was proposing a day’s shopping in Guildford. Winter wasn’t keen.
‘What would I buy, Mist? I hate all that stuff. For one thing it costs an arm and a leg. For another I don’t need it.’
‘That’s because you live in Gunwharf. You’re spoiled, Paul. Factory outlets, silly prices. Guildford’s a cut above. You can
escort me. You can carry my bags, buy me lunch, make me laugh.’
She was already playing with her car keys. Winter, with absolutely nothing to do, knew he was doomed. He’d tried to make contact
with Lou Sadler but without any success. Odds on she’d been arrested, along with anyone else Parsons and Faraday deemed relevant
to the inquiry. All he could do now was wait.
They rode north, Winter folded into Misty’s Mercedes coupé. Guildford was an hour away. After a while Misty asked him about
Bazza. He’d known the question was coming but was still uncertain how to play it.
‘What about him, Mist?’
‘Have you kissed and made up?’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘I mean it.’
‘Why? Why is it so important?’
‘Because it is. Because you’re important, and Baz too in his funny little way.’
‘All friends? All mates together?’
‘Yeah. Exactly. Is that so terrible?’
Winter didn’t answer. For one thing he was uncertain how much of these conversations found their way back to Mackenzie. For
another, he was genuinely perplexed by where events were taking him. Suttle, he thought, had put it rather well last night.
You can’t rely on luck for ever, he’d said. And Winter, with some regret, was beginning to suspect he was right.
‘I’ve been trying to calm him down, Mist,’ he said at last.
‘Impossible. The man doesn’t do calm. Never did. Never will.’
‘Exactly, so where does that leave me?’
‘Sure … and me, and Marie, and Ezzie, and Stu, and all the rest of them. We’re a family, Paul. Hasn’t anyone ever told
you that?’
Winter shook his head, retuned the radio. Another mile sped by. At last he saw no point in not voicing what was on his mind.
‘Does the name Colin Leyman mean anything to you, Mist?’
‘No. Never heard of him.’
‘He’d like to think he’s a face from the old days, the 6.57 days. If you want the truth, they took the piss out of him most
of the time, but I don’t think he ever understood that. He’s a sweet guy, a simple guy, takes stuff on trust. He’s putty,
Mist, you can bend him any way you want.’
‘And?’
‘I bent him. Big time.’
‘Surprise me.’
‘Sure, but it didn’t stop there. Bazza got the hump. Had him taken out.’ Winter described the injuries, the careful application
of extreme violence.
‘Horrible,’ she agreed. ‘Vile. Completely over the top.’
‘Exactly. And my fault.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I should have seen it coming. Not to me. To him.’
‘And you didn’t?’
‘No, Mist. That either makes me slow or stupid or as psycho as Mackenzie. As it happens, I’m none of those things.’
‘So what are you?’
‘I’m wrong.’
‘
Wrong?
’
‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded, glad to have settled on the truth. ‘It’s a moral thing, Mist. I just shouldn’t be doing this kind of
stuff.’
She said nothing. Ahead were a couple of big artics. She passed them both, settled down to seventy again. Then she spared
him a glance.
‘You never told me that,’ she murmured. ‘Right?’
Faraday convened the pre-interview meet for nine o’clock at Newport police station. The D/I in charge of the island’s CID
had found them a room downstairs big enough to accommodate the key players. Ian Whatmore, the Tactical Interview Adviser,
had been talking to the two interview teams for the past hour. Ellis and Yates had yet to start with Lou Sadler but last night’s
session with Max Oobik had
been deeply disappointing. As expected, he’d gone pretty much No Comment on everything. Apart from acknowledging that he
lived in the caravan at Upcourt Farm and had a relationship with Sadler, even Patsy Lowe had failed to break his silence.
‘He’s got a lot of anger, boss.’ It was the big Scot, Angus McEwan. ‘You can see it in his face. There’s heaps he’s not telling
us, but it doesn’t stop there. Could he have done them both? Holman and Luik? Physically, the answer has to be yes. He’s a
powerful guy. But
would
he have done them? I’m not persuaded. Even for a squillion quid’s worth of toot it’s a big ask.’
Patsy Lowe agreed.
‘He’s a child, boss. A boy. He thinks we’re all ganging up on him, and he’s dead right, but so is Angus. There’s a button
we need to press, but I’m buggered if I know where to find it.’
Faraday said he understood. He’d spent the last hour or so reviewing
Gosling
’s progress and he wanted to offer a sequence of events that might underpin the conduct of both sets of interviews. Oobik’s,
in particular, had now moved into the challenge phase, and he wanted to be clear what was available to throw at the man.
‘First off,’ he said, ‘we think from seized business records that he’s being paid as a tom. That’s what the documentation’s
telling us. Two tricks a day, presumably with the ladies, though maybe not. A grand and a half a week. Decent money. Next,
I think Patsy’s right. I think we need a timeline to throw at him. A lot of this will be supposition, but that doesn’t matter.
We’ve got to shake his tree, big time, so here goes …’
On the Saturday night, said Faraday, Johnny Holman flees the fire at Monkswell Farm. He’s nicked Robbie Difford’s Corsa to
muddy the waters, and he’s carrying a hefty stash of cocaine in the back. Difford’s phone is in the Corsa, and the last call
on Difford’s mobile billing is to Kaija Luik, the Estonian girl. Why? Because Holman’s nuts about her. And because he has
nowhere else to go.
‘OK so far?’
Suttle had just joined them. He too was nodding.
‘So Luik gets the call from Holman. He’s driving. He’s probably pissed. Plus he’s in a right state because he’s just shot
four people to death and burned his own house down. When he arrives at Luik’s flat, at God knows what hour in the morning,
he’s all over the place. So what does the girl do? She phones Lou Sadler. And what does Sadler do? She wakes Max. They both
turn up at Luik’s place. They see the state Holman’s in. This is a guy who must be reeking of smoke. He may have blood all
over him. We don’t know. But outside in Difford’s car is a whack of toot. It may be that Sadler already knows about it.
It may be that Max helped Holman dig the hole at Monkswell. All that makes sense. Why? Because Holman’s already known to
Sadler. And because we can probably tie the shit from her horses to the stuff at Monkswell Farm. So, gentlemen…’ Faraday
glanced round ‘… we probably agree that Sadler has the lead here. She’s the boss. So what does she do next?’
‘She gets Holman out of there.’
‘Right. And where do they take him?’
‘The caravan. Along with the Corsa.’
‘Right again. That takes care of the toot. Makes perfect sense. And then what?’
‘Max kills him.’ This from Suttle. ‘Probably strangles him. He’s a huge guy. Holman’s a runt. Plus he’s given up. The caravan
was never a bloodfest. A ligature or a manual strangling would account for it.’
‘Fine.’ Faraday nodded. ‘And the body?’
‘He wrapped it up in bin liners. You just leave them on the roll. The guy ends up like a mummy, rolled and taped.’
‘Exactly.’ Faraday named a serial killer caught and convicted by Major Crime back in the 1990s. He’d pulled exactly the same
trick before dumping the corpses in the country. ‘So now you have a body. It’s Sunday. It’s probably in the caravan. How do
you get rid of it?’
Bev Yates raised a hand. The RIB inflatable, he said. It belongs to Sadler. She can ship the body out to wherever and chuck
it overboard.
Faraday smiled. This was working beautifully.
‘But you’d need some kind of weight,’ he said. ‘Which is where this comes in.’
He’d had Meg Stanley’s shots photocopied. Now they passed from hand to hand. More nods. More smiles.
Faraday, conscious of time passing, pressed on. At some point after the Sunday, Holman’s body is disposed of. Early on Thursday
morning the Corsa is found burned out in the woods. By now the crime scene in the caravan has been cleaned up and the boat
trailer is back in the outhouse beside the caravan.
Minutes before this meeting Faraday had tasked the Outside Enquiries D/S to start a house-to-house sweep of properties adjoining
Newtown Creek. On the assumption that Sadler and Oobik wouldn’t take the risk of dragging the body through a marina, the nearby
creek, with its relative remoteness, would have been near-perfect.
Patsy Lowe had a question. She wanted to know about Kaija Luik. Had she been murdered too? Had there been a couple of carefully
wrapped corpses in Oobik’s caravan?
Faraday said he didn’t know. The girl definitely represented a risk as far as Sadler and Oobik were concerned. She probably
knew about
the cocaine because Holman would have told her, and she probably knew that something terrible had happened back at the farm.
‘But is that enough, boss?’ Ellis wasn’t convinced.
Again, Faraday hedged his bets.
Gosling
had made extensive booking checks on routes to Estonia without any success. The Estonian police appeared to be in the dark
about her. Nor had the Borders Agency logged her out of the country.
‘But she could be anywhere,’ insisted Lowe.
‘You’re right. You’re absolutely right. But as far as Oobik’s concerned, it may be to our advantage to suggest he killed her
too. Let’s just try it and see what happens.’
Lowe nodded, still unconvinced, and Ian Whatmore, the TIA, took over. On the basis of Faraday’s exposition, Lowe and McEwan
would move through the timeline, pressing him on point after point. Interviews like these, regardless of the steady drumbeat
of ‘No comment,’ often proved far more volatile than you’d ever expect. With luck Oobik might crack. At which point
Gosling
would take a giant step forward.
McEwan stirred. ‘And if he doesn’t, boss?’
‘We’re off the clock at three. If necessary, I’ll go for an extension, but there’s no guarantee we’ll get one.’
McEwan nodded. These days uniformed Superintendents were extremely wary about granting PACE extensions that simply turned
into fishing expeditions. A properly organised inquiry moved steadily forward. Hence the need for meticulous preparation.
There remained the opening interview with Lou Sadler. Last night she’d asked to be represented by a south London lawyer she
used regularly. Faraday, conscious of the precious time he might lose, had insisted she phone him at once and get him down
early the following day. This she’d done, telling Faraday that Benny Stanton would be on the 8.15 RedJet catamaran from Southampton.
The crossing took twenty-three minutes. So far, at nearly half past nine, there was no sign of the man. Sadler herself, according
to the turnkey, had spent a peaceful night in her cell and had tucked into beans on toast for breakfast. Not a good sign.
Yates wanted to know whether Oobik and Sadler were each aware of the presence of the other in the custody unit. Faraday nodded.
He’d made sure to have Sadler escorted slowly past Oobik’s cell. There was no way they wouldn’t know that one story would
be carefully matched against the other.
‘That’s why he’s gone No Comment,’ Suttle said.
Faraday nodded. Dead right. He turned to Yates and Ellis. It would be their job to let Sadler run, mindful all the time of
the evidence that
Gosling
had managed to establish. When it came to the challenge phase, they’d do their best to stress-test her account to breaking
point, but this first interview would be largely devoted to establishing her own version of exactly what had happened.
‘You OK with this?’ Faraday nodded at the notes he’d made.
‘No problem, boss.’ Ellis shot him a smile. ‘And thanks for the invite.’
The interviews were due to start at ten. Suttle accompanied Faraday back to the SIO’s office. Parsons had at last turned up,
accompanied, to Faraday’s surprise, by Detective Chief Superintendent Geoff Willard. Willard had been Head of CID for some
time now, a lengthening pit stop on his passage to ACPO rank. A big man with an air of slightly forbidding command, he’d won
the respect of detectives force-wide. Parsons adored him.
Faraday gave Parsons a swift heads-up on the morning’s developments. Much would now depend on the coming interviews. Parsons
began to fret about the PACE clock. Willard interrupted.
‘How are you, Joe?’
‘I’m fine, sir, thank you.’
‘Head OK?’ Willard tapped his own skull. ‘I heard about the accident.’
‘Ah …’ Faraday smiled.
There was a brief silence. Then Willard turned to Suttle.
‘DCI Parsons tells me you interviewed Winter last night.’
‘I talked to him, sir.’ Suttle nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘He admitted removing a bin liner from Mrs Percival’s property. There was some of the girl’s stuff inside.’
‘And why did he do that?’
‘He claimed he was helping out, sir. He meant to hand it over to Sadler in case the girl ever came back. He had the girl’s
mobile as well.’
‘He’s aware this constitutes interference in a crime scene?’
‘He says he wasn’t.’
‘I bet he does. Where are these items?’
‘I seized them. The clothes are downstairs. The phone’s gone to the CIU for billing.’ He paused, looking from one face to
the other. ‘There’s something else …’
‘Regarding?’
‘Winter.’
‘And?’
‘I think he’s had enough.’
‘Of what?’
‘Mackenzie, sir. And everything that goes with him.’