Cut to Black

Chapter two

WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2OO3, 01.00

Faraday's second sweep with the Leica Red Spots revealed a flash of white amongst the scrub and gorse around the freshwater ponds a stone's throw from the Bargemaster's House. Racking the focus on the binoculars, he eased slowly left, convinced already that he'd spotted the season's first wheatear. Seconds later, the little bird broke cover again, staying low, scurrying a few feet at a time, finally hopping up onto the back of one of the old wooden benches that ringed the pond.

A couple of months back, this tiny creature would have been wintering south of the Sahara. Late January would have found it in Morocco. Days it devoted to finding food. Nights, often alone, it sped north again.

Only now, in mid March, had it finally returned to its nesting ground, bringing with it the promise the guarantee of spring. Faraday made a second tiny adjustment to the focus. Carved into the bench below the spread of claw was another message that had survived the winter.

Deano's a wanker, it read. Welcome to Pompey.

Faraday settled himself beside the pond, hoping for a glimpse of the bearded reed lings that were rumoured to be making their way south from the low smudge of Farlington Marshes. It was still barely seven o'clock, the air still, the sky cloudless, barely a ripple on the blue mirror of the nearby harbour. In a couple of hours, after a leisurely breakfast, he'd drive into work where the clear-up on a recent high-profile murder awaited his attention.

A psychopath in his mid forties had taken out a lifetime's frustration on a foreign language student, a Finnish blonde unlucky enough to cross his path. Stranger murders were never supposed to be easy, but the Major Crimes Team had blitzed the backstreets of Fareham where the girl's severed head had been found in a Londis bag, and scored a result within seventy-two hours.

Caged by the evidence, mainly DNA, the suspect had thrown in the towel after barely an hour's interview. The transcript of what followed, while dark in the extreme, had put a smile of satisfaction on the face of Willard. This, he'd grunted, was a classic MCT investigation, conclusive proof of the linkage between resource, effort, dedication, and justice. A couple of years back, they'd have been months trying to get a result. Now, thanks to a major reorganisation, they'd redrawn the time lines. Faraday, who had profound doubts about trophy-talk and management-speak, was just glad the bastard was locked up.

The wheatear had gone. Faraday had begun to search the nearby scrub, wondering whether it was too early for a sedge warbler, when the peace of the morning was disturbed by the roar of an approaching aircraft.

Faraday swung the binos in time to catch a blur of shadow as the military jet crested the distant swell of Portsdown Hill. Seconds later, it was almost on top of him, blasting south over the harbour, the noise so physically shattering he could feel it in his bones. Then the plane had gone, leaving clouds of black-headed gulls squawking madly, and several rafts of brent geese doing their best to get airborne. Any more stunts like that, thought Faraday, and the wheatear would be back in North Africa.

Faraday's mobile began to chirp. It was Eadie Sykes. The plane had got her up and she wanted to know what on earth was going on.

"You think it's started? You think the Iraqis are getting theirs in early?"

Faraday found himself laughing. Eadie feigned outrage.

"What's so funny? You think we ought to get married? Before it's too late?"

"I think you ought to go back to bed."

"After that? Listen, you remember the Sixties, Cuba? What do you do with those last four minutes?"

"I still think you ought to go back to bed."

"Yeah… but it's more fun with two, eh? Ring me later."

The line went dead. Faraday slipped the mobile back in the pocket of his anorak, then began to search half-heartedly for the wheatear again.

He'd been with Eadie last night, tucked up on the sofa with Newsnight and a bottle of Rioja. The past couple of months, they'd watched the government Blair in particular shepherding the nation to war. Bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age made absolutely no sense whatsoever, yet here they were, in lockstep with the Americans, hours away from releasing the first fusillade of cruise missiles.

Eadie, behind the wry one-liners, was incandescent with rage. Bush was a retard. Blair was an arse-licking con man. The Brits should be ashamed of themselves. Only the fact that her own prime minister seemed as hell-bent on Armageddon as the rest of them had kept her from packing her bags and phoning Qantas for a ticket home.

Rack in February, at Eadie's insistence, they'd taken the early train to Waterloo and joined a million and a half other people who felt less than convinced about killing Iraqi women and kids. The river of protesters stretched for miles, stopping traffic, filling bridges, swamping the Embankment, and Faraday, who'd never been this side of the bararicades in his life, found it an oddly comforting experience.

Students, mums, kids, pensioners, asylum seekers, nurses, civil servants, a huge slice of Middle England shuffling slowly towards Hyde Park under the watchful gaze of a couple of thousand policemen.

To Faraday, that was the oddest experience of all. Not that he was himself under surveillance, a copper coppered, but that he found this single act of protest so natural, so long overdue. Ex-Labour Voters Against The War, read one placard. Too bloody right.

He stirred at the sound of the mobile. Expecting Eadie again, instead he found himself listening to an all-too-familiar voice. Willard.

"Joe? Something's come up. Where are you?"

Faraday glanced at his watch. 07.22.

"Still at home, sir. I can be in by eight, maybe earlier."

"Don't bother."

"Why not?"

"I'm still waiting to talk to the medics at the QA. Ask for Critical Care."

The Queen Alexandra Hospital was on the lower slopes of Portsdown Hill, a 1300-bed goliath with views across the city towards the Isle of Wight. The Department for Critical Care was on the third floor, two open wards with side rooms for solo occupancy. In the corridor outside, Faraday spotted the tall, bulky figure of Willard deep in conversation with a young nurse.

Faraday paused to peer into the nearest of the open wards. Most of the beds were occupied propped-up, comatose shapes moored to life-support machines, monitoring equipment, and an assortment of drips. At this range, it looked like an audition for the city's undertakers. No one seemed familiar.

"Nick Hayder." Faraday found Willard at his elbow. "Third bed on the left."

Faraday, astonished, took another look. Last time he'd seen Nick was a couple of days back. As fellow DIs on the Major Crimes Team they'd been obliged to attend a headquarters briefing on a recent change to CPS protocols. Afterwards, they'd gone down the road for a snatched pint at a Winchester pub. Now this.

"What happened?"

"Good question. You know that patch of scrub round Fort Cumberland? He was found there last night. Unconscious."

Faraday was still gazing at the bandaged figure Willard had pointed out. Fort Cumberland was an MOD site on the south-western tip of the island, acres of brambles and couch grass, as remote a spot as you could find in a city as densely-packed as Portsmouth.

"So what happened?" Faraday repeated.

"No one knows, not for sure. He was in running gear. It was dark."

"Any witnesses?"

"One old boy, late sixties, walking his dog. Says he saw some kind of fracas but he was a fair distance away. He thinks there was a car involved but that's about as far as we've got."

"Make? Colour?"

"He can't say. We'll start on the CCTV this morning but don't hold your breath. Nearest camera's the far end of Henderson Road." Willard was watching a doctor in green scrubs who'd paused at Hayder's bedside.

"There must have been a car because they're saying he's been run over.

He's got compound fractures, both legs, a broken pelvis, ruptured spleen, and query brain damage. They took the spleen out in theatre but it's the head injury that's bothering them."

"How bad is it?"

"They won't say, but they're talking a three on the coma scale."

"What's normal?"

"Fifteen."

"He's unconscious?"

"Very. He was brought in around nine thirty last night. Still hasn't surfaced. He '

Willard broke off. The nurse had returned and was indicating an open door down the corridor. The consultant, she said, would be in touch with him as soon as he was free. Willard looked pointedly at his watch, then led Faraday to a small, bare office. There was a poster advertising yachting holidays in the Peloponnese on the wall, and a list of names and bleep numbers on the wipe board. A plant on the window sill was fighting a losing battle against the central heating.

Willard shut the door, eyeing Faraday for a moment before settling into the chair behind the desk. Three kids beamed out of a stand-up frame beside the PC.

"Mates, weren't you? You and Hayder?"

Faraday nodded. "Mates' wasn't a term he'd applied to many men in his life but in Nick Hayder's case he liked to think it was close to the truth.

"Pretty much," he agreed.

"Did he have any personal problems that you'd know of?"

Faraday hesitated. Willard's use of the past tense was beginning to irrit-atp him. Critical Care was hiah tech. Critical Care was where they hauled you back from the brink. So why the rush to consign Hayder to the Recycle Bin?

"Nick has a partner," he said carefully.

"That wasn't my question."

"I know, but that's the situation. I can give you her number. Why don't you ' "Don't fuck around, Joe. I'm asking you about his love life. Someone tried to kill him. It may be they've done just that. Does the word "motive" ring any bells? Or do you think you're doing him some kind of favour? All this buddy-buddy shit?"

Faraday held Willard's furious gaze. The Det-Supt was as armour-clad as any detective when it came to the flesh and blood consequences of serious violence, but this was family and family was different.

"Nick's been living alone for a bit," Faraday said at last. "Gutty little bed sit off Albert Road."

"Why was that?"

"Problems between him and Maggie. They were trying to work it out…

Are trying to work it out."

"Was he over the side?"

"No."

"Was she?"

"Not that I know of."

"You're sure about that?"

It was a fair question and Faraday wondered how much further he should go. Monday's lunchtime drink in Winchester had stretched to two pints and a coffee, chiefly because life in a Southsea bed sit was driving Nick Hayder nuts. Faraday had never met a fellow detective so self-contained, so centred, so sure of his own judgement. Yet here he was, totally lost.

"There's a problem with Maggie's boy," he said. "Nick would be the first to tell you he hasn't been handling it brilliantly."

"Let's hope he gets the fucking chance." Willard was still angry.

"What was the problem?"

"Nick thought thinks the kid's doing drugs. Nothing heavy but enough to get Nick going."

"Like what drugs?"

"Cannabis mainly. Speed and ecstasy at the weekends."

"How old's the boy?"

"Fourteen."

"And his mum? What does she think?"

"Maggie prefers to deal with it in her own way. She's a teacher, one of the local comprehensives. This kind of stuff's meat and drink in schools like hers. She thinks wading in's the last thing you do."

"Which Hayder couldn't handle?"

"Exactly."

Willard nodded, saying nothing. He had no kids of his own, though his long-term partner, a Bristol psychologist, was rumoured to be contemplating IVF.

"So no one else?" Willard mused at last.

"Not to my knowledge. I've been round to see her a couple of times.

She's a strong woman."

"Attractive?"

"Nick thinks so."

"And he dwells on it? All those nights banged up by himself? No wonder he went running."

"He's been doing it for years. He got the bug from Brian Imber and thank God he did. If you want my opinion, running was the best '

Faraday broke off, hearing a soft knock at the door. Brian Imber was the DS with the Force Intelligence Unit.

The nurse at the door was full of apologies. The unit manager needed her office back. The nurse was about to suggest an alternative when Willard shook his head and got to his feet.

"We're through, love." He turned to Faraday and then glanced at his watch. "Back to base? Ten o'clock at Major Crimes?"

The operational heart of the Portsmouth Basic Command Unit lay in a suite of offices on the first floor of Kingston Crescent police station, a stone's throw from the Continental Ferry Port. These offices, stretching the length of the corridor, housed the Senior Management Team, including the uniformed Chief Superintendent who headed the BCU. To these men and women fell the everyday challenges of policing Portsmouth.

For several years, Pompey's top cop had been Chief Supt Dennis Hartigan, a diminutive martinet who'd made no secret of his determination to end his career in an ACPO job. In this respect, an Assistant Chief Constable's vacancy with the Cleveland Constabulary had been the answer to his prayers, and he'd stepped briskly out of Portsmouth after a burst of valedictory e-mails and the most cheerless leaving party in living memory. Few regretted his promotion, and a couple of dozen survivors from Hartigan's routine bollockings held an impromptu celebration in the top-floor bar the day after he'd gone.

Lucky Middlesbrough, went the first toast.

Hartigan's successor was a quietly spoken West Country copper in his mid forties called Andy Secretan.Taller than Hartigan, with a bluff outdoors face and an obvious impatience with the dressier rituals of command. Secretan had quickly won respect across the BCU for his preparedness to put common sense ahead of New Labour performance-speak.

Unlike his predecessor, there were no genuflections before the latest blizzard of Home Office diktats. Neither did he have the slightest interest in self-promotion or belittling his staff. As a result, morale on the first floor had been transformed. The Corridor of Death was no more than a memory.

DI Cathy Lamb, summoned this morning from her desk in the same building, rather liked the new boss. After Hartigan's mania for meticulously prepared risk assessments and the correct use of the apostrophe, it was refreshing to work under someone who treated all paperwork with profound mistrust and was prepared to throw the wider issues open to something approaching real debate. Not that Secretan didn't have views of his own.

"Barmy, wasn't it? Not knowing about the house up the road?"

Cathy had spent most of the night asking herself the same question. The newly established Portsmouth Crime Squad had been one of the first BCU initiatives to win Secretan's backing. She had fought hard for the post of DIon the squad and last night's operation should have been the first of her battle honours. Yet here she was, well and truly on the back foot.

"My responsibility," she said at once. "And my fault."

"Very noble. Where did it go wrong?"

"I haven't a clue, sir. As soon as I find out, I'll let you know."

"You were happy with the intelligence material? And the surveillance package?"

"There wasn't a problem."

"And the guys were all briefed properly?"

"Of course."

"Then' Secretan held his hands wide 'what bloody happened?"

Cathy glanced down at the single sheet of precautionary notes she'd brought with her. A bunch of young Scouse drug dealers had turned up after Christmas, bored with life in Bournemouth. Within weeks, they'd dropped a very large boulder into the peace and quiet of the Portsmouth drug scene. There were reports of rival street-level dealers — Pompey kids being kidnapped and tortured. There was talk of Stanley knives and electric drills. The word on the estates, with just a hint of admiration, was 'ultra-violence'.

Secretan, alerted by one of his Drugs Intelligence Officers, had sensed this sudden rise in temperature and knew at once the probable consequences. The last thing he wanted was a full-scale turf war, a major nightmare in a city already plagued by drug-related crime. Hence the clarity of the task he'd handed to Cathy Lamb. Get these guys sorted, he'd told her. I want them locked up before it all gets out of hand.

Cathy, well versed in the difficulties of getting any kind of result in court, had been painstaking in her preparation. The DIO had devoted countless man-hours to establishing supply patterns. The surveillance team had installed a camera in a property across the road and organised a round-the-clock watch. Yet not once had they sussed the house that the Scousers were using as an annexe. Hence last night's disaster.

In theory, by now DI Lamb should have had bodies in the Bridewell and a sizeable stash of Merseyside Class A narcotics mainly heroin and cocaine in the property lock-up. In practice, the moment the House Entry boys had done the business, the Scousers had abandoned the late movie two doors along and fled.

Secretan wanted to know about the later incident at Bystock Road. Who owned the premises?

"DC Winter was onto the housing benefit people first thing," Cathy said at once.

"And?"

"It belongs to a Dave Pullen."

"We know him?"

"Very well. He's just done two years for supply. Came out the back end of last year."

"He's had the property a while?"

"No, sir. Winter says he only signed the contract a couple of months ago. The place was a repo."

"So where did he get the money? You're trying to tell me he stashed it away? Little nest egg for later?"

"No, sir. Pullen's big mates with Mackenzie."

"Meaning?"

"Mackenzie staked him when they auctioned the place. Or at least persuaded him to act as nominee. Either way, it puts Pullen alongside Bazza."

"And our northern friends would have known that?"

"Must have done."

"Because they wanted to get in Mackenzie's face?"

"Yes."

"Ah…" Secretan reached for a sheet of paper and wrote himself a note. "Just what we didn't need."

He paused a moment, staring down at the scribbled names. Then Cathy offered an apologetic cough.

"I'm afraid it gets worse, sir."

"Really?" Spcretan elanced up. "How?"

"The girl we found on the bed, the one that went to hospital. Her name's Trudy Gallagher. According to Winter, she's the daughter of a woman called Misty Gallagher."

"And Misty?"

"Is Mackenzie's shag. Or certainly used to be."

There was a long silence. Then Secretan, in a tiny spasm of anger that took Cathy by surprise, screwed up the sheet of paper and tossed it into the bin.

"I warned you the Scouse kids were trouble," he said quietly.

"Didn't I?"

Det-Supt Willard's Major Crimes Team also operated from Kingston Crescent, a neighbourly arrangement that put the Basic Command Unit and the MCT closer than in practice they really were. While Secretan's brief was getting on top of so-called 'volume crime', the small print of policing a challenging and frequently violent city, it fell to Willard's squad to take on crimes that attracted a more generous helping of CID resources, unavailable to the likes of Secretan. The bulk of murders, stranger rapes, and complex conspiracies were thus referred to the MCT's secured suite of offices, which occupied an entire floor in a ne wish block to the rear of the Kingston Crescent site. The largest of these offices, a south-facing room dominated by a long conference table, naturally belonged to Willard.

Faraday found him in his shirtsleeves, his massive body bent over the phone. Mention of house-to-house parameters and a POLSA search suggested a sizeable operation already underway out at Fort Cumberland.

Willard nodded towards the conference table and Faraday took a seat.

Driving back from the hospital, he'd managed to raise Hayder's partner on his mobile. Maggie had spent most of the night at the hospital, waiting in Critical Care for some returning flicker of consciousness, and now she was at home, excused classes until she felt able to face the real world again. The conversation had been brief, Faraday offering whatever help he could, but before Maggie had rung off she'd told him that what had happened had come as no surprise. "He'd been working up to it," she'd said. "Something had really got to him."

Quite how this squared with the facts of the case some kind of confrontation, injuries consistent with being run over wasn't remotely clear, but Faraday understood at once what she'd meant. The times the two men had met over the last couple of weeks, Hayder had struck him as reticent to the point of preoccupation. He felt, he admitted at one point, 'under siege', a state of mind that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with his domestic situation.

Willard had finished on the phone. He left the office without a word and returned minutes later with three mugs of coffee.

Faraday nodded towards the phone.

"How's it going?"

"It isn't. Not yet. Scenes of Crime are talking multiple tyre tracks and we don't even have a proper fix on where it might have happened.

It's a famous shagging spot. Half the city uses it."

Faraday was curious to know who was coordinating the inquiry.

"Dave Michaels is sorting it out."

"SIO?"

"Me."

Faraday nodded, not beginning to understand. Dave Michaels was a Detective Sergeant. Senior Investigating Officer on a case like this was a role for a DI. There were three DIs on the Major Crimes Team.

With Hayder off the plot and the other DI flat out on a domestic in Waterlooville, that left Faraday. He had nothing pressing on his desk.

He knew Nick Hayder well. So why wasn't he out at Fort Cumberland, marshalling the troops?

There was a tap at the door and Faraday glanced round to find Brian Imber stepping into the office. He must have driven over from the Intelligence Unit, Faraday thought. And he must have been expected.

"Black? Half a sugar?" Willard nodded at the third mug.

Imber sat down, parking his briefcase beside the chair. A lean, combative fifty-four-year-old with a passion for long-distance running, he'd spent a couple of controversial years banging the drum for an aggressive new approach to the drugs issue, and for the first time Faraday had the smallest inkling of what might lie behind Willard's early-morning call. There was a sub-plot here, something more complex than sorting out a serious assault.

Willard had opened his file. He quickly scanned a page or two of notes, then told Imber to get on with it.

Imber glanced across at Faraday.

"You've seen Nick." It was a statement, not a question.

"Yes."

"Not good, eh?"

"No."

"OK, so here's the problem we have." He reached down for his briefcase and produced a thick file of his own. "Nick has been putting a case together. I'm sure the boss will be going into the whys and wherefores in a minute but the point is this: Nick won't be around for a whilp Not the way we'll need him."

"So?"

"So the boss is after a replacement."

Willard's finger was anchored on a page halfway through his file. He glanced up at Faraday.

"We're talking serious covert. You won't have come across it and neither will anyone else, not if Hayder's done his work properly."

Willard paused. "We're calling it Operation Tumbril."

Faraday could only nod. He'd never heard of Tumbril in his life.

"What is it?"

"Number one, it's long-term. A year now?" Willard was looking at Imber.

"Fourteen months, sir."

"Fourteen months. That's a lot of resource, believe me, and there's days I regret even dreaming we could run with something like this.

Tumbril's been like the bastard kid no one really wants. I can name you a dozen people in this organisation who wanted it strangled at birth and most of them are still putting the boot in. If you're looking for serious grief-' he tapped the file 'be my guest."

"So what is it?" Faraday asked again. "This Tumbril?"

Willard abandoned the file and sat back in his chair, briefly savouring this small moment of drama. Normally the most undemonstrative of men, he even allowed himself the beginnings of a smile.

"It's Bazza Mackenzie," he said softly.

"He's the target?"

"Yes. The way we've played it, there are other names in the frame, names that'll make your eyes water, but, fundamentally, yes, we're talking Bazza."

"You finally decided to take him on?"

"Had to. NCIS were talking full flag level three if we got the spadework under way. Even our lot couldn't turn that down."

The National Criminal Intelligence Service was the body charged with ranking the UK's major criminals. To Faraday's knowledge there were only 147 full flag level threes in the country. With the extra funding that came with trying to tackle that kind of notoriety, Willard was right: a major investigation was irresistible.

Faraday glanced at Imber, beginning to wonder how many other Tumbril files were in his briefcase.

"But we're a bit late, aren't we? Mackenzie's made his money, gone legit. These days he's just another businessman… No?"

"No way." Willard was emphatic. "That's what we thought to begin with, but it's not true. What no one ever takes into account is the nature of these blokes, the way they're made. You're right about the money. Mackenzie's millions in, squill ions in, but the truth is he can't leave it alone. The guy's programmed to break the law. That's what he does. That's what he's best at. He's a local boy, Pompey through and through. He's done it his way, right from the off, and the bottom line is, he doesn't care a toss. If it isn't hard drugs, it'll be something else. And that's why we're going to fucking have him."

This, from Willard, was a major speech. In terms of investigative style, the Det-Supt had the lowest blood pressure Faraday had ever come across yet the mere mention of Bazza Mackenzie seemed to put a blush of colour in his face.

Faraday was about to ask a question about last night, about some kind of linkage to Tumbril, but Willard had already handed the baton back to Imber. According to the DS, there was money-laundering legislation they could use. They'd employed a forensic accountant. They'd acquired truckloads of paperwork from various sources and spent months and months crawling over hundreds of transactions, trying to unpick the web of deals behind which Mackenzie had hidden his profits. None of this stuff was easy, and lots of it to be frank was a pain in the arse, but piece by piece the jigsaw was coming together, and that was what mattered.

As Imber warmed to his theme, pausing over a page in his file to make a particular set of points, Faraday let the details wash over him. Soon enough there'd be time for a proper briefing. Just now, here in Willard's office, he wanted to dwell a little on Mackenzie.

Everyone in Pompey knew the name. Bazza was the man who'd first brought serious quantities of cocaine into the city. Bazza was the onetime football hooligan who'd turned kilos of 9 5 per cent Peruvian into cafe-bars and tanning salons, and countless other legitimate enterprises. Bazza was the guy at the wheel of the latest SUV, at the launch of the latest theme restaurant, in the best seats in the South Stand at Fratton Park. Bazza, in short, was living proof that crime serious crime paid.

Faraday, unlike many other local detectives, had never had any firsthand dealings with the man, but his control of the city's cocaine and ecstasy market had been so total, so carefully secured, that it sometimes seemed impossible to come across a drugs-related crime that didn't, in the end, link back to Mackenzie. Over the years the man had become a legend. He gloried in his notoriety, in his reputation, and the more visibly successful he became, the more it seemed to some that the forces of law and order had simply given up. Bazza, as one DC had once remarked, was a bit like the weather. Always there.

Watching Imber, Faraday was more heartened by this sudden development that he could possibly express. Like others in the force, he'd been bewildered by Mackenzie's seeming immunity, failing to understand why he'd never been taken on. Slowly, this bewilderment had turned to frustration, then anger, then to his own quiet shame — resignation. In contemporary policing, he'd finally concluded, certain battles simply weren't worth fighting. Maybe it was a question of resources. Maybe it was the pressure of a million other things to do. Either way, Bazza seemed to have slipped effortlessly into a prosperous middle age, well connected, beyond reach, a role model for every little scroat in the city.

Until, it seemed, now.

Imber was talking about a recent trip to Gibraltar. Faraday touched him lightly on the arm, struck by a sudden thought.

"How come Nick managed to keep the lid on this?"

"I'm not with you."

"His office is next to mine. I know he's always shutting the door but there are limits. Surely…?"

Imber glanced at Willard. Willard hadn't taken his eyes off Faraday.

There was a long silence.

"You're telling me Tumbril's run from somewhere else?"

"That's right."

"Another nick?"

"No."

"Why not?" Faraday looked from one to the other. "You're serious?"