Cut to Black

Chapter twenty

SUNDAY, 23 MARCH 2003, 08.14

Broad stripes of sunshine on the wall beside the bedroom window. A curtain stirred by a feather of wind from the harbour. Scents of bladder wrack and crusting mud, of tarry rope and very faintly — rotting fish. Underscoring it all, the squawk of black-headed gulls busy contesting booty from the morning's high tide.

Faraday turned over, reaching for the radio. Another noise, much closer. Footsteps within the house. He lay back a moment, then swung his legs out of bed. Naked except for the dressing gown he kept behind the door, he stepped onto the upstairs landing in time to see a tall, gawky figure disappearing into the bathroom. Then came the slide of the bolt as the mystery intruder locked himself in, and a sudden gush of water. J-J.

Downstairs, Faraday found a pile of dirty clothes heaped around the washing machine on the kitchen floor and a mug of cooling tea on the low cupboard in the lounge where he kept his CDs. The TV was on, with the sound wound down, and he spotted the red record light winking on the VHS player beneath.

He paused a moment, then found the zapper and turned up the sound. Half a dozen British servicemen had been killed in some kind of mid-air collision. Baghdad had suffered its fourth consecutive night of heavy air raids. Coalition forces were facing stiffening resistance.

Faraday sipped at the tea while a studio pundit explored the implications of these latest developments, then the coverage switched to the home front. Yesterday's demonstration in London, said the newscaster, had failed to measure up to last month's protests. British public opinion was hardening in support of the war while the rest of Europe waved a collective fist at Washington and Westminster. Shots of Blair followed, getting out of a low-slung Jaguar in Downing Street. He looked tired but purposeful, ignoring the press pack across the road.

The black front door opened as he strode across the pavement. Then he was gone.

Faraday finished the rest of the tea, then turned the TV off. This was an arm's-length war, he'd decided, an increasingly surreal adventure delivered to every household in the country by the channel of our choice. That pictures like these should sully an otherwise pleasant spring weekend was beyond his comprehension. A month ago, a million and a half people had cared enough to fill thousands of coaches and bring London to a halt. Millions more had begged the government not to go to war. Yet here we all were, tucked up with BBC News 24 or Skynews or CNN, watching a sovereign nation doing its best to defend itself.

This was breaking and entering on an international scale. In a court of law, Bush and Blair would be looking at a five-year stretch.

Minimum.

Faraday retreated to the kitchen, hearing the gurgle of water overhead as J-J emptied the bath. Moments later, came the clatter of footsteps on the stairs and a moment's pause. Then J-J was at the kitchen door.

When he got really angry, his mouth tightened to a thin line. Just now, it was practically invisible.

He wanted know why Faraday had turned the TV off.

"Tea?" Faraday signed peaceably.

"I put it on specially. We need the pictures."

"I'm sure you do. Would you like more tea?"

"You turned it off. Deliberately."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because you don't care."

"Really?" Faraday's amused smile drove J-J back into the lounge. He turned the television back on, this time with the sound up. When he swung round to retrieve the towel he'd thrown onto the sofa, he found his father propped against the open kitchen door, watching him.

"The VHS was still recording," Faraday pointed out. "I left that on."

J-J faltered for a second, too angry to make room in his head for the obvious conclusion. Only the TV had been switched off. As far as his precious pictures had been concerned, he'd lost nothing. At length, dismissing the offer of tea, he told his father he might have to go to London for a while. Eadie had found a place where he could carry on cutting the war footage. Better Soho, he signed, than Hampshire Terrace.

Faraday shrugged. So be it. J-J was eyeing the laundry on the kitchen floor. His father blocked the path to the washing machine.

"How long do you think this thing'll last?" Faraday nodded towards the television.

"Months. The Iraqis are fighting back."

"And you?"

"I'll be doing what I can." He made a scissors motion with his fingers.

"Editing pictures?"

"Of course."

"Fine." Faraday patted him on the shoulder. "Just remember you're on police bail. OK? I know it's boring but you'd be amazed how angry we can get if you don't turn up."

Paul Winter treated himself to another splash of aftershave before he got out of the Subaru. He'd checked by phone with the Custody Sergeant before driving down to Central police station. Leggat would be honking.

Winter was sharing the interview with Danny French, the DC who'd accompanied him on the search of Leggat's house. Winter found him in the tiny kitchen, wrestling the lid from a catering-sized tin of Nescafe. His missus was giving him serious grief about Sunday lunch at his mother-in-law's place in Gosport. The old bat had bought a shoulder of pork specially. With luck, the interviews might stretch the whole day.

"Coffee?"

"Black." Winter checked his watch. "Two sugars."

"How's that boy Suttle?"

"Dunno, mate. I'll be finding out later."

"Beaten up, wasn't he? Gunwharf?"

"Yeah. You know the thing about kids these days?" Winter reached for the coffee. "Never bloody listen."

The duty solicitor turned out to be a paralegal from one of the city's biggest partnerships. She was a local girl, no university degree but an implacable determination to battle her way through to full qualification. Winter had come across her a number of times before and had been impressed.

She was waiting in the corridor beside the new AFIS fingerprint terminal: neat charcoal-grey suit, nice legs, hint of a tan from somewhere exotic. Leggat was already in one of the interview rooms, waiting for them all to appear.

"You know he's in the shit, don't you? Seven ounces is practically full flag. We're not talking personal here."

"My client '

"Yeah, but seriously."

"I know, Mr. Winter, and so does he." She smiled. "Seriously."

"OK." Winter shrugged, then shot French a look. "You might be in luck, Danny."

"Come again?"

"That lunch."

They all went into the interview room. Leggat was sitting at the table, facing the door. Already he'd adopted the resigned defensiveness body slouched, eyes blank that badges a man for prison.

"Morning." Winter pulled back a chair and sat down. "Lovely day out there."

Leggat didn't move, didn't answer. French loaded the video and audio recorders before Winter helped himself to the PACE cue card and went through the preliminaries. Then, with a glance at French, he leaned forward. On the training courses, this phase of the interview was termed 'open account', offering the interviewee the chance to establish exactly what had happened. Fat chance.

"Tell us about those lovely little engines, Barry. Pretend we know nothing."

Leggat was still gazing into the middle distance. His eyes were bloodshot and he needed a shave.

"Car boot," he mumbled at last. "Couple of Sundays ago."

"Which car boot?" Winter didn't bother to hide his disbelief.

"Don't really remember. Could have been Havant. Wecock Farm. Pompey.

Clarence Field. I goes to 'em all."

"I bet. So how much did you pay for them?"

"Fiver each. He wanted a tenner but I wasn't having it."

"Who's "he"?"

"Bloke I got 'em off."

"Does he have a name?"

"Expect so. Everyone's got a name, ain't they?"

"But you can't remember?"

"Never asked."

"What did he look like?"

"Nothing at all, really. Ordinary-looking, know what I mean?"

"Age?"

"Hard to tell. Getting on? Forty? Dunno."

"What else was he selling?"

"Stuff. Rubbish, most of it."

"You'd know him again?"

"Course."

"But you haven't seen him since, this bloke? Whoever he might be?

Whatever else he might have been selling? Wherever the car boot was?

Is that fair? Am I on the right lines?"

"Yeah." Leggat yawned. "Spot on."

Winter leaned back while French came at Leggat from a different angle.

A seizure of this size, he warned, they'd check every car boot in the area, take photos of the engines with them, throw serious resources at checking out Leggat's alibi. If it turned out he was lying, he might be giving himself some serious problems a month or two down the road.

"Is that right?" Leggat didn't appear to be bothered.

"Yeah." French nodded. "Like a couple of years over the tariff. Not that you're going to be short of bird."

"Listen, Barry." It was Winter again. "Let's just pretend for a moment that we buy the car boot. It went the way you said it went. You spotted the engines, bought them, took them home. Then what?"

"I puts them in the wardrobe."

"And you left them there?"

"Yeah. I looks at them from time to time, you know, like you do."

"You didn't tamper with them? Take them apart?"

"Never. Why should I?"

"Why the little tools, then? The jeweller's kit?"

"My watch broke."

"And you mended it?"

"Yeah."

"So where is it?"

"The watch? I threw it away."

"Why's that, Barry?"

"It bust again."

"What a surprise."

"Not really. I'm crap at repairs."

"But you're a mechanic. You repair stuff all the time. It's your living, Barry. It's the label on your box. Mechanic. Repairman."

"That's big stuff. Watches ain't Beemers."

"OK." Winter was the soul of patience. "So let's get this straight.

You go to the car boot. You spend twenty quid on four model engines.

We come along a couple of weeks later and, guess what? We're looking at twenty grand's worth of cocaine. Is that it?"

"Yeah, more or less."

"What's more or less about it?"

"You missed out the bit about me lending them to a friend."

"When was that?"

"Last week."

"And who is this friend?"

"Calls himself John. Don't know his surname."

"Where does he live, this John?"

"Dunno. He's gone abroad somewhere. Met him down the pub."

"And talked about model engines? Like you do?"

"Yeah, he's a model nut himself. I let him have them for a couple of days. Favour really."

"What did he do? Stroke them? Talk to them? Take them apart and stuff them full of cocaine? You're talking nonsense, Barry. You're taking the piss. If I had a pen, I wouldn't even write this down. How thick do you think we are?"

The paralegal intervened. In her view, it was no part of Winter's job to put oppressive questions like this.

French ignored her. Leggat's wind-up had found its mark.

"We just sent those little tools away," French said. "The whole lot, wallet, screwdrivers, everything. Forensics these days, they can find flakes of paint you can't even see. So why don't you help yourself, Barry? Before the lab boys do it for you?"

"Help myself how?"

"By telling us where the cocaine came from."

Leggat shrugged. This kind of pressure didn't alarm him in the slightest. Winter took up the running again. One of the surprises at Leggat's house had been the complete absence of any sign of dealing: no readied paper wraps, no scales, no deal list, no money stash. Even the directory on his mobile phone had been limited to a handful of friends and family. Now, Winter wanted to know how long Valentine had employed him.

"Six weeks, give or take." Leggat shrugged.

"You know him well?"

"Known him years, Mike."

"And he trusts you?"

"Trusts me how?"

"Trusts you to unload all that charlie he's been shipping down. I'm just curious, that's all. Does he know you've been skimming it? Or is it some kind of deal you've got with the guy? Charlie in lieu of overtime? Only from where we're sitting, Barry, you've done rather nicely. Bit of a pension, in fact. Seven ounces."

The word 'pension' at last stirred a response from Leggat. For the first time, he looked almost animated. When the paralegal voiced her objections to this new line of questioning, Leggat put a restraining hand on her arm.

"Pension?" he repeated. "You're talking to the wrong bloke."

"Care to give us a name?"

"Fuck, no." He sat back, amused. "You think I'm that stupid?"

Eadie Sykes had been at Ambrym for a couple of hours, working on the drugs video, before she keyed the final edit in the rough cut.

Last night, working late, she'd pushed herself to within sight of the end. Just occasionally, she thought, there comes a moment in the editing process when the story acquires a life of its own, when decisions about the next talking head or the next action sequence take themselves, when your own role becomes somehow secondary to the onward thrust of the story. At that point, strangely, you find yourself surfing on a wave of the video's own making, your sole responsibility limited to pressing the right keys in the right order. This experience, a gleeful creative surrender, had only happened to her once before. On that occasion, a video about the Allied evacuation from Crete in 1941, she'd come close to winning an award. This time, she sensed there'd be no such disappointment.

She went across to the window, opened it wide, and took a deep lungful of air. Fifty metres down the road, a man in his back garden was piling winter debris onto a bonfire. Excitement, she thought, tastes faintly of woodsmoke.

She returned to the laptop and sat motionless for the best part of thirty minutes, trying to pretend she'd never seen these images, heard these voices, before. Deliberately, she'd opted for letting Daniel's story unfold against the events that had surrounded his death. By the time he was describing his first encounter with heroin, therefore, we already knew that the little wraps of brown powder would finally kill him. As his love affair with smack deepened, sudden cuts to the post-mortem offered a very different perspective, a brutal bass note that underlined the depth of his self-deception.

In a particularly striking passage, he talked with real passion about an early fix. He'd gone short for days. He'd kept himself going on toast and shots of neat vodka. Then, thanks to a new friend, he'd managed to fill his works with a particularly pure teen th and talked of that sudden rush of unconditional sweetness that had stripped the world of its pain and its menace. It had, he testified, been a glimpse of eternity, an experience that he'd cherish for the rest of his life.

The first time Eadie had heard this story, she'd almost been tempted to try smack for herself. Now, as she watched the glint of the pathologist's scalpel as she readied Daniel's stomach for the dissecting bowl, Eadie felt only revulsion.

Towards the end of the video she'd left space for Daniel Kelly's funeral, but the closing sequence a carefully assembled reprise of his final steps from the kitchen of the Old Portsmouth flat to the bed where he'd die was unbearably poignant. By now, his story should have held few surprises. We knew Daniel was bright. We'd grasped his despair, his sense of lost ness We understood how money and heroin had offered him the promise of salvation. And we knew just how false that dawn turned out to be. Yet watching him lurch down the darkened hall, Eadie at last understood how big a lie this tormented young man had sold himself. He'd surrendered his life to the guys in Pennington Road. And that same life had bubbled away through the mouthful of vomit that had finally choked him.

Eadie was still debating where to run the end credits when her mobile began to trill. She recognised the number.

"Doug." She was grinning. "Come over any time. Have you eaten?"

"No."

"Just as well."

Willard, for once in his life, had skipped breakfast. Now, a couple of minutes before noon, he sat behind the wheel of his Jaguar watching Faraday demolish an egg and cress baguette.

They were parked on Clarence Parade seventy metres from the Solent Palace Hotel. Behind them, the big green expanse of Southsea Common was hosting a spring fly-me festival, dozens of kites bobbing and soaring against the blue of the sky. Screw up your eyes, thought Faraday, and those shapes dancing in the wind could be exotic species of bird life, intruders from some far-flung continent briefly tethered to the grass below. One in particular had caught his eye. The way it danced up and down, trailing a long, black tail, reminded him of choughs he'd seen in Spain, rising on the hot columns of air bubbling out of the narrow mountain gorges.

"He's late." Willard was looking at his watch. "Wallace should be here by now."

McNaughton, Wallace's Special Ops handler, was sitting in his Golf three bays further along Clarence Parade, buried in a copy of the Mail on Sunday. Minutes earlier, he'd slipped into the Jaguar's back seat, briefing them on the little Nagra receiver recorder pre-tuned to Wallace's wavelength. No need to hit record until Wallace and Mackenzie met inside the hotel.

Faraday was back with the kites again, wondering whether Willard welcomed this brief return to front-line service. It was rare for a Det-Supt to involve himself quite so intimately with a covert operation, though under the circumstances Faraday agreed he had little choice. One clue to the difficulties of an investigation like Tumbril was the degree of paranoia it brought with it. The day when you couldn't trust word leaking beyond an inner circle of just four people Faraday, McNaughton, Wallace and Willard himself was the day when policing was in trouble.

Faraday put his baguette to one side and wiped his fingers on a tissue from Willard's glove box Gisela Mendel's situation still bothered him.

A suspicion that she might lose the buyer she'd secured for Spit Bank, he suggested, might breach the walls they'd built round Tumbril.

Willard disagreed. "I talked to her last night. Sorted a couple of things out."

"Like what?"

"Like where today might lead."

"You told her?"

"Not at all. I just said our friend might be off the plot for a while."

"So you did tell her."

"No, I simply said there was every chance he'd be looking for pastures new. As far as she's concerned, we're chasing him out of town."

"So no sale on the fort."

"Exactly, not to Mackenzie, anyway. I said, you know, we'd give her every practical assistance finding a replacement buyer but it wouldn't be him."

"How did she react?"

"No problem. She's a good girl, totally on side very sensible, very sound…" He let the sentence trail away, nodding to himself.

Faraday was wondering which direction Wallace might appear from.

According to McNaughton, he'd be driving the trademark Porsche Carrera.

Lucky bastard.

"How come the divorce?" Faraday mused.

"Haven't a clue, Joe. What makes you think I'd know?"

"No idea, sir. Just thought you might have talked, that's all."

Faraday caught a glimpse of something low and silver peeling off a distant roundabout. Half a minute later, a Toyota MR.2 roared past, a middle-aged woman at the wheel.

Faraday glanced across at Willard. For once, he was looking glum.

"Do you mind me asking you something personal, sir?"

"About Gisela?"

"About the job. About Tumbril."

"Not at all." Willard permitted himself a small, mirthless smile. "Do I think it's been a bastard? Yes. Do I think it's been worth it? Ask me again in half an hour and I'll tell you." He shot Faraday a look.

"Does that cover it?"

"Pretty much. Except I still can't get a handle on locking ourselves away like this." He gazed out at the Edwardian bulk of the hotel across the road. "Rock and a hard place? Would that be fair?"

"Rocks, plural." Willard's bark of laughter took Faraday by surprise.

"And places so bloody hard you'd never go that way again. Not if you had a brain in your head. Have you been up to see Nick Hayder recently?"

"No."

"He's starting to sort out the last couple of months. He's still clueless about Tuesday and probably always will be but Tumbril's come back with a vengeance and you know what he said to me? "Thank Christ for hospitals." Do you believe that? From Nick? That man's not a quitter, never has been. Neither, thank God, are you. But stuff like this…" He shook his head. "You don't know who to trust."

"Does that make Mackenzie clever?"

"Not at all. But the guy's got reach, pull. We've known that for years. That's what drugs buys you. Set up an operation on his scale and you can put anyone in your pocket. But that's the irony, isn't it?

If he wasn't that powerful, we wouldn't be here. But because he is that powerful, the job's close to impossible. If this falls through..

" He left the thought unvoiced.

There was a long silence. From the kite flyers on the Common, a whoop of delight.

"What about headquarters?" Faraday queried at last.

"Always dubious. I don't blame them in a way. The Home Office don't want policing, not the way we used to understand it, they want miracles. Here's half a pound of marge. Here's a couple of thousand loaves of sliced white. See what you can do." He fingered the leather steering wheel. "Tumbril's living on borrowed time. Has been for a while."

"But you think…?"

"I think nothing, Joe. I'm a copper, a detective. Show me Mackenzie, tell me to take him down, and that's what I'll do."

"But I thought it was your idea? Your initiative?"

"Wrong. It was Nick's. And look what happened to him."

Abruptly, there came a crackle from the Nagra and then the sound of Wallace's voice. He was half a mile down the road, putting in a test call to McNaughton. McNaughton confirmed reception and wished him good luck. When Faraday checked along the line of parked cars, McNaughton was still buried in his paper, acknowledging Faraday's glance with a barely perceptible nod.

Willard's finger had found the window controls.

"Hot in here," he muttered.

Winter sat in Cathy Lamb's office at Kingston Crescent, trying to work out how much a man like Mike Valentine would need to start a new life.

"Say he clears two hundred grand on his house after the mortgage. And say he cashes in the business for another 200,000. Make it half a million including all the other bits and pieces. It's still not enough, is it? Not if you like a bit of style in your life."

"Where's he going?"

"No idea. Except Le Havre's first stop."

"Positive. I got it from the travel agent he's using. How did you make out with P amp;O?"

"I'm waiting on a call back. They've promised me something by this afternoon." She paused. "You're really telling me he's taking the cocaine with him? Why would he take the risk?"

"What risk? He's going against the flow, Cath. He's swimming upstream. How many people re-export the stuff? The last thing French customs expect is a load of charlie off the Pompey boat. And once he's through Le Havre, he's home free. The kind of weight he's probably carrying, he could set himself up anywhere. It's what they always say, Cath. The best scams are the simplest."

Cathy smiled. She'd come straight from her allotment in Alverstoke: patched jeans, sweat-stained T-shirt, and dirt under her nails from a morning's weeding. She'd also brought a bag of assorted veg in case Winter fancied real food but so far he didn't seem interested.

"So what are we saying here?" She reached for a pad. "The guy's off tomorrow night? We let him get on the ferry? Impound the Beemer aboard? Turn him round the other end and bring him back? Only I don't understand why we don't spare ourselves the grief and do it here and now."

"He may not have stashed the cocaine yet."

"Sure. Tomorrow then, en route to the Ferry Port. At the Ferry Port.

Whatever."

"No, Cath." Winter was emphatic. "Just say I've got it right. The guy's carrying hundreds of grand's worth of gear. He's tied in with Mackenzie. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. That makes it dodgy, Cath, from his point of view."

"You're telling me he's nicking it? From Mackenzie?"

"Yeah."

"You think he's got some kind of death wish?"

"No idea. But if we let him get on the boat, a tenner says we'll find out."

Cathy nodded, beginning to sense the direction Winter was headed.

"You mean we do the cabin?"

"Exactly. We talk to P amp;O, get the cabin number, put a couple of techies on the crossing tonight. Get them to wire it up, video as well. We block off the cabins either side, make ourselves at home tomorrow night and see what happens. The guy might just have bailed out with hundreds of grands' worth of someone else's charlie. It'll be party time."

"What if Mackenzie knows about it? What happens if it's part of some bigger scam?"

"Same difference. Either way, he's going to be mouthing off. I'm talking evidence, Cath. This way, we might get to hurt Mackenzie as well."

Cathy said nothing, thinking it through.

"What makes you so sure Valentine's got company?"

"It's a four-berth cabin. On his tod, he'd have gone for a two-berth."

"So who is he travelling with?"

"Haven't a clue, Cath."

"And you really think this is for keeps? Valentine's not coming back?"

"Yeah." Winter nodded. "That's exactly what I think."

Cathy was still wondering whether to give Winter the benefit of the doubt. She'd been in this situation with him dozens of times on division and she knew it paid to listen. It also paid not to ask too many questions. Winter's MO was unlike any other and he shared his secrets with nobody.

"We'll need a RIPA." She was thinking aloud now. "And someone needs to talk to Special Ops. Then there's P8to. Those are conversations for Willard, not me."

"Willard will take it over. Be nice to keep it to ourselves. Put the squad on the map."

"There's no way, Paul. Willard has to know. I can't authorise this.

It's way beyond my pay grade."

"OK." Winter accepted the logic. "You've told Willard about Leggat yet?"

"No." Cathy nodded at her phone. "I tried just now but he's not answering. I need to brief him about Jimmy Suttle, too. You heard about last night? Gunwharf?"

Winter held her gaze for a moment, then nodded.

"They told me at Central this morning." He looked pained. "Bit of a scuffle, wasn't it?"