‘So that’s Winter fucked?’
‘Highly likely.’
Suttle nodded, reaching for the remains of the vodka, and minutes later Faraday had left him stretched on the sofa, bottle in hand, eyeing the phone.
Now Faraday swung the Mondeo onto the hard standing at the front of the Bargemaster’s House. Already he thought he could hear his son’s wild cackle. Earlier he’d talked to Gabrielle on the phone. J-J was upstairs, she said, trying to find some game he used to play as a kid. Bad sign.
The pair of them were sprawled across the carpet in the living room. Between them lay the Monopoly board and J-J was clearly banker. He’d built estates of houses on Leicester Square, Bond Street, and the Old Kent Road, boasted two hotels on Mayfair and Islington, and amassed a tidy fortune in the process. Banknotes fluttered across the carpet as Faraday stepped through the door. Feeling the draught, J-J looked up and Faraday could read the surprise in his face. He thinks I’ve changed, he thought. He’s wondering why I look so much bloody older.
J-J struggled to his feet. The bottle of wine beside the sofa was nearly empty. He must have brought it himself. Faraday never drank Bulgarian red.
Father and son embraced. Faraday caught the familiar scent of roll-ups in the tangle of J-J’s hair. He wore it long, much longer than before, and it suited him. Faraday pulled away for a moment or two, taking a proper look, conscious of Gabrielle stepping lightly past towards the kitchen. J-J would be thirty soon, and if you looked hard you could see the onset of early middle age, but in Faraday’s eyes he’d always remain the gawky bubbling adolescent who had brightened the years they’d shared at the Bargemaster’s House. Deaf since birth, he communicated in a flurry of sign, his hands a blur, and to each of the important relationships in his life he brought a special variation on this intensely personal language. With Faraday he’d always bent into a conversation, closing the physical gap between them, the way you’d share a confidence or a joke, and he was doing it now.
‘You look terrible,’ he signed. ‘What’s been going on?’
‘The usual,’ Faraday signed back. ‘Sorry I’m so late.’
‘You want to finish the game with me?’
‘Why not?’
Faraday got to his knees beside the board. Gabrielle’s modest property empire was on the point of disintegration and within three throws of the dice Faraday was virtually bankrupt. Whitehall gone. Two precious railway stations sold for a song. Nothing in the bank but a handful of notes.
‘Ask him about his exhibition.’ Faraday felt the warmth of Gabrielle’s breath in his ear. She’d brought another bottle of wine from the kitchen, something decent this time.
Faraday put the question. J-J was counting his money.
‘I got a grant,’ he signed. ‘From a foundation in London.’
At first the purpose of the grant wasn’t clear. There are limits to the amount of nuance that sign can carry, and Faraday had difficulty in pinning J-J down. He been taking photographs of kids in a special school. The kids were handicapped in some way.
‘Deaf?’ Faraday touched his ear.
J-J shook his head. In his view deaf kids weren’t handicapped. He began to sway backwards and forwards, a strange rocking motion. Gabrielle was still beside Faraday. Even she seemed bemused.
J-J tried another gesture, flapping his hands, then a third, hugging himself, determined not to stoop to spelling out a particular word. It was like a game of charades. Finally, his repertoire exhausted, he shot Gabrielle a look and nodded towards the kitchen. She returned with a brochure and gave it to Faraday. Joe Faraday Jr would be hosting a private view of his photographs in a Chiswick gallery in a couple of months’ time. The work had already won plaudits in a number of specialist magazines. It recorded a week spent in the company of kids at a residential home in Hammersmith.
Faraday looked up, at last understanding. How would you express autism in sign?
‘They were great, these kids.’ J-J was back in the world of sign, unpicking the week in Hammersmith with his long bony fingers. ‘If you get close to them,
really
close to them, they respond.’ He held his finger and thumb a millimetre apart, his eyes ablaze. ‘People say you can’t reach them.’ A violent shake of the head. ‘Wrong.’
He plucked the brochure from Faraday’s hands and leafed through until he found the shot he was after. A child with an upturned face as bland as the moon was looking into J-J’s lens. The fall of light from a nearby window threw deep shadows across the child’s features. It wasn’t clear whether this was a boy or a girl but there was something profoundly haunting about the eyes. They were the eyes of a cat, mysterious, beautiful, empty, and J-J had somehow judged the shot to perfection.
Janna had had the same talent, the same knack of tuning into a message scrambled by all the other noises off. Faraday had loved her for it, and tried - often unsuccessfully - to express his admiration.
‘Your mother could have taken that shot.’ He gave his boy a hug, then nodded at the brochure. ‘Are we invited?’
Much later, after J-J had finished the second bottle and stumbled off to bed, Faraday led Gabrielle to the sofa. The last couple of days, in a wild burst of optimism, they’d planned their weekend on the Isle of Wight. Now came the moment when he had to tell her he couldn’t come.
Mandolin
, like a thousand other operations, had thrown a grenade into the very middle of his private life.
To his surprise, Gabrielle said it didn’t matter. The forecast was awful, she said. Rain and wind, and then more rain. More to the point, she’d had a phone call.
‘Who from?’
‘Connor.’
‘The boy I met yesterday? That Connor?’
‘
Oui.’
‘And?’
‘He’s found your girl. He wants money,
chéri.
’
‘How much?’
‘Fifty pounds. There’s something else too. He thinks you’re a cop.’
‘How come?’
‘I don’t know. He said it was obvious. But he won’t give the address. Not to you.’
‘What happens then? For his fifty pounds?’
‘He gives the address to me.’ She smiled. ‘And I go and see her.’
Chapter twenty-six
SATURDAY, 18 AUGUST 2007.
06.49
After a lousy night’s sleep Winter was up early. He prowled around the big living room in his silk dressing gown, pausing now and again to peer out at the rain, wondering when to make the call. Eight would probably be too late. Seven, on the other hand, was a big ask, especially at the weekend. Too bad.
The number was slow to answer. She’d definitely been asleep.
‘Lizzie? Paul. Listen, I need a favour …’
He asked her for Jimmy Suttle’s new address and only when the silence stretched and stretched did it occur to him that she might be there now, tucked up with the lad, cursing Winter for spoiling the start of a promising lie-in.
‘119a Eastfield Road.’
‘Milton? I know it. Cheers.’
He put the phone down and headed for the bathroom. Minutes later, showered and shaved, he was riding the lift to the undercroft.
Eastfield Road was one of the streets that latticed the south-east corner of the island. Way back, the endless lines of terraced houses had been built for workers from the naval dockyard. Generation after generation of families had grown up in streets like these but lately they’d been surrendered to a small army of jobbing builders who smelled a profit in subdivision.
A house became a couple of pokey flats. Solitary men of uncertain age shut their front doors on the world while bunches of students upstairs made their lives a misery. When Winter was serving on division the likes of Eastfield Road had featured prominently on the social nuisance index and nowadays he suspected it was probably worse.
Jimmy Suttle had the downstairs slice of the property. A rusting mountain bike was padlocked to a spindly tree in the scrap of garden at the front. Winter buttoned his raincoat and made for the front door. The bottom bell carried no name.
‘Jimmy?’
Suttle had taken an age to answer. Naked except for a pair of boxers, he stood in the open doorway, blinking in the thin grey light. His eyes were bloodshot and he turned away wincing when a youth on a big retro Suzuki roared past.
Winter stepped into the house. The door to the ground-floor flat was open. Winter followed Suttle down a narrow hall. The kitchen was at the end. Suttle told him to sort out a pot of tea.
By the time he re-emerged, fully clothed, Winter had found half a loaf of bread and eggs a week past their sell-by date.
‘Boiled or fried, son?’
Suttle shook his head. He felt dreadful. He’d necked half a bottle of vodka last night and hadn’t touched the pint of water beside his bed. Big mistake.
Winter was inspecting the foil containers heaped on the work surface. Someone had made a half-hearted attempt to seal them up but they were still leaking curry. Winter counted them. There were eleven.
‘Good party?’
‘Crap. You remember I mentioned passing my sergeant’s exams? I shouldn’t have fucking bothered.’
‘Who’ve you upset?’
‘Don’t ask.’
He watched Winter spoon sugar into a mug of strong-looking tea. There were tiny droplets of rain on his coat.
‘Drink this, son. Do you the world of good.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You want me to ask Baz whether he’s got anything going at the moment?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a job.’
‘Great idea.’
‘You serious?’
‘Of course I’m not.’ He blinked again, ran a hand over his face, tried to clear his head. ‘So why the social call? This time in the fucking morning?’
‘We’re in the shit, son. As you lot obviously know …’ Winter nodded at the wreckage of last night’s curry. ‘I need a steer, that’s all.’
‘About what?’
‘About Westie. You’re going to pull us in, I know you are. Probably today. At the latest tomorrow. A quiet word or two about that flat of his would be more than welcome.’
‘You want to know what Scenes of Crime found?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I haven’t a clue. The blokes start on the forensic this morning.’
‘I didn’t mean forensic. I meant that first intel scoop, once they’d done the door.’
‘You mean last night?’
‘Yeah. You’re not telling me they found fuck all because I don’t believe you.’
Suttle nodded, took another mouthful of tea, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Winter watched his brain beginning to engage.
‘We need the Alfa,’ he said at last. ‘If you’re offering.’
‘Alfa?’ Winter did his best to look puzzled.
‘The one you swifted away on Thursday night. You tell me where you’ve put it, and I’ll give you chapter and verse on Westie’s flat. I might even get the judge to run to some kind of plea bargain.’ Suttle managed the beginnings of a grin. ‘We gotta deal here?’
‘You’re joking.’
‘But you know where it is?’
‘No way. Last time I saw Westie’s Alfa was last week. He got pissed at a party at Bazza’s and nearly ran a bloke over in the street afterwards. I had to drive him home, put him to bed.’
‘Neat.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re marking my card, aren’t you? For when we find your prints?’
‘Prints where?’
‘In the Alfa … and maybe in Westie’s flat as well. We’ve got your prints on file, mate. That DUI last year.’
‘You think I’m bluffing?’
‘Of course you’re bluffing. I worked with you, Paul. Remember?’ Winter nodded, helped himself to more tea.
‘There
was
something, then …’ he said at last.
‘Where?’
‘At Westie’s.’
‘Of course there fucking was. And now it’s sitting in the exhibits cupboard, as I’m sure you can well imagine.’
Winter stooped to the fridge, hunting for more milk. The sight of a cube of black resin wrapped in cling film put a smile on his face.
‘That could almost pass for Oxo,’ he said.
‘It is Oxo.’
‘Yeah, and I bet it smokes up a treat, doesn’t it?’ He splashed milk into his cup, reached for the teapot. ‘Young Rachel and the boy Hughes—’
‘What about them?’
‘Something tells me it’s not going well. You found Jax Bonner yet? After all that publicity?’
‘No. But we will. It’s just a question of time.’
‘And then what?’
‘We’ll talk to her.’
‘But you really think she did it?’
‘It’s a possibility, sure.’
‘Top lead? Prime suspect?’
‘Yeah …’ Suttle was frowning. ‘I’d say so.’
‘Shame.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because you’d be wrong, son. And just now after all this media, all the grief you’re gonna get from the Craneswater lot, all those lippy residents, that’s going to be a major embarrassment. Not to you, son. Not to you personally. But maybe to others.’
Suttle was staring at him, trying to disentangle the bullshit from something else he sensed might be important.
Winter took a step closer, lowered his voice. He was looking at the remains of the curry again.
‘Keep up with me, son. This might be important.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You want me to pass a message?’
‘Yeah.’ Winter nodded. ‘I do.’
‘About what? About Rachel? About Hughes?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you’re telling me you know who did it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Evidence? Proof?’
‘Both.’
Winter put the mug on the draining board, looked Suttle in the eye, then extended a hand and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder. Seconds later he’d gone.
Faraday had been at his desk in Major Crime since half past eight. He’d rung Gabrielle twice, talked at length to the CSI starting work on Brett West’s flat and tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with Jimmy Suttle. Now Suttle had stepped into his office, soaked by the pouring rain, with news Faraday found hard to believe.