Western Approaches

Four

WEDNESDAY, 13 APRIL 2011

Suttle drove to Portsmouth the following afternoon, telling Houghton on the phone that he had a couple of domestic difficulties to resolve. Houghton, as far as he could gauge, was unsurprised.

‘Take care,’ she said. ‘If you want a couple of days, book it as leave.’

The road east was clotted with late-spring traffic and it was early evening on the M27 before Suttle was stealing a glance at the familiar sprawl of Pompey in the thickening light. He took the exit at the foot of the motorway and drove through the suburbs of Cosham before taking the road up to the top of Portsdown Hill. There was a car park here with a view over the entire city. He’d used it a thousand times, often with Winter when they were working together on divisional CID, and it was ideal if you wanted to steal a little time for a coffee or a think.

Suttle killed the engine and settled back. Marie was Mackenzie’s widow, a classy High School girl whom Bazza had kidnapped and made rich. Opinions differed on exactly how keen Marie had been to join the world of the young Bazza Mac, but Winter, who was in a position to know, had always insisted that she’d made the running. She was wild as well as beautiful, and she’d seen something deeply promising in her new beau. Life with Bazza, as it turned out, had been everything he’d promised — unpredictable, never risk-free, always fun — and when he’d died at the hands of the Tactical Firearms Unit, she’d been beyond consolation.

Suttle had seen photos of Marie following her husband’s coffin into the cathedral. She’d maintained a dignified silence in the face of ceaseless media attention, and at the funeral, a step or two behind the pall-bearers from the 6.57, she’d graced the occasion with poise and elegance. In a brief tribute to her dead husband she’d talked about his loyalty and warmth. He’d been the rock at the very centre of countless lives, she said, and his absence left a void that would never be filled. She’d spoken without notes, her eyes moving from face to face in the packed congregation, and she’d ended by calling for one of her grandsons to read a poem he’d penned only the previous night. The poem was moving in its simplicity and stirred a low rumble of applause that had ended by engulfing the entire cathedral. If anyone would understand the importance of family life, Suttle thought, then it had to be Marie.

She answered his call within seconds. They’d already been in touch on the phone the previous day and she was prepared to meet. Now she named a restaurant in Southsea. She’d be there in half an hour.

Suttle knew Sopranos well. He and Lizzie had used it regularly before they’d left the city and the food was never less than excellent. He arrived a couple of minutes early and found himself a table in the corner. He’d bought a copy of the News from the Co-op down the street and he flicked through to the back to check on the football news. The Preston game had ended in a 1–1 draw. Pompey, it seemed, had been lucky to steal a point.

‘Hi.’

He looked up to find Marie standing beside the table. She was wearing a white knee-length dress that definitely hadn’t come from a chain store and the tan suggested a recent holiday.

Suttle got to his feet. A handshake would have been too formal, a kiss way too familiar. He pulled out the other chair and gestured for her to sit down.

She told him she hadn’t come to eat. When he suggested a drink she asked for a spritzer. Suttle went to the bar and ordered himself a San Miguel. The owner, whom he knew, raised an eyebrow at the sight of Marie.

‘Known her long?’ She was smiling.

‘Not that long.’

‘Business or pleasure?’

‘Both.’

‘So how’s life in Devon?’

‘Fraught.’

He returned to the table with the drinks. Marie looked up at him. The last thing Suttle wanted was silence.

‘Been somewhere nice?’ he enquired.

‘Madeira. Big mistake.’

‘No good?’

‘The weather was lovely. But you need to be over seventy to have a conversation.’

‘You went by yourself?’

‘No.’ Marie glanced at her watch. ‘So what’s this about?’

Suttle saw no point in glossing over what had happened. A bunch of Pompey guys were giving him a hard time. They wanted to lay hands on Paul Winter and thought Suttle had the key to his door. All this he could cope with but he drew the line at pressure on his wife and daughter. They’d staked out his house. They’d photographed Lizzie and Grace. The threat was explicit. We know where you live. We know who you love. He needed this kind of stuff to stop.

‘What’s any of this got to do with me?’

‘These people were mates of your husband. They think Winter needs a seeing-to.’

‘Maybe they’re right.’

‘Maybe they are, but that’s not the point. Number one I haven’t a clue where Winter is. Number two I wouldn’t tell them if I did.’

‘Do they know that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You told them?’

‘I did.’

‘And?’

‘They weren’t pleased.’

For the first time Suttle detected a flicker of approval. Was she applauding the heavies who’d driven down to Devon? Or was there something in Suttle’s defiance that had won her respect? In truth he didn’t know but sensed there was no point in taking his foot off the throttle.

‘I could take this to the police,’ he said.

‘You are the police.’

‘I know. But I could make it official, make life hard for these guys. That’s not something I want to do.’

‘Why not? I thought that’s what you people were for?’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘It never is.’ She leaned forward, toying with her drink. ‘You know what I liked about Winter? Apart from the fact that he made me laugh? I liked his mind. I liked his deviousness. He did us a lot of favours, that man. I’d be the first to admit it. Which makes what he did all the more unforgivable. We took him in. We treated him as one of the family. And then he betrayed us.’

Suttle nodded. He wasn’t here for a moral debate. If you were looking for devious, serious devious, Paul Winter was world class. All Suttle wanted to do was to get these monkeys off his back.

Marie hadn’t finished. Winter, she said, had often talked about Suttle. This was the young kid he’d turned into a detective of real quality. More to the point, Jimmy Suttle had remained one of the few ex-colleagues prepared to give Winter the time of day.

‘Is that true?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. More or less. I’d no time for what he’d done and I told him so, but yeah, we stayed friends.’

‘He told me you once saved his life.’

‘I did what I could. He was a sick man.’

‘He appreciated that.’

‘I’m sure he did.’

‘And he appreciated the way you stuck with him.’

‘That was different. I had a job to do. There was always a reason we got together.’

‘On his part?’

‘On mine.’

‘I see.’ She was watching him carefully. ‘So does that make my husband’s death your fault?’

‘Yes. We never set out to kill him. . but yes. It’s my job to put people like your husband away and that’s exactly what we did.’

‘We?’

‘The team.’

‘Including Winter?’

‘Obviously. It wouldn’t have happened without him. I’ve no idea how much you know about all this, Mrs Mackenzie, but your husband exposed Winter to situations that seriously upset him.’

‘Are you telling me that came as some kind of surprise? That’s what he signed up for.’

‘Really? Murder? In cold blood? Not just the target but the target’s girlfriend? Someone this guy had known for a couple of days? Someone who never deserved to be killed?’

Marie blinked. She knows nothing of this, Suttle thought. Absolutely fuck all.

‘This is nonsense,’ she said. She didn’t sound convinced.

Suttle shook his head. The day before he’d ghosted himself into another life, Winter had shared a story or two that explained his decision to grass Mackenzie up. One of them had to do with a contract killing in the shell of a hotel near Malaga. Winter had been the sole witness when the gunman stepped into a half-built bar and blew two people away. Minutes later he was still picking tiny gobbets of brain off his best suit. The memory had haunted him ever since and the nightmare had worsened as the prospect of a European Arrest Warrant drew steadily closer. The last thing Winter wanted was the rest of his life in a Spanish prison cell.

‘Are you going to tell me more?’ Marie was reaching for her drink.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I promised him I wouldn’t.’

‘Do you always keep your word?’

‘I try.’

‘That’s admirable.’ She offered Suttle a cold smile. ‘Tell me something else then.’

‘What?’

‘This friendship with Winter. Do you think he deserved you?’

‘That’s a silly fucking question.’

‘Is it? Is it really? I trusted that man. I trusted him with our lives. And you know what? He screwed us.’

Suttle fought the waves of scalding anger that threatened to engulf him. For reasons he’d never understood, he also regarded Winter as family.

‘I’m sorry.’ He ducked his head. ‘I’m not here to lose my rag.’

‘Whatever. I just want you to know how I might feel about it.’

‘It?’

‘Winter. He killed my husband.’

‘Got him killed.’

‘Sure. And from where I’m sitting that’s hard to forgive.’

A silence settled on the conversation. Then Marie pushed her glass away and stood up.

‘It’s been a revelation,’ she said. ‘And I mean that.’

Suttle didn’t know what to do with himself afterwards. It was still early, barely half past seven. He’d set up this conversation in the hope that he might be able to sweet-talk Marie into calling off Bazza’s attack dogs, but blood and battle ties were thick in this city and he was beginning to suspect that the guys he’d met down in Exeter were way beyond listening to the likes of Bazza’s widow. Even if she put the word out, tried to call them to heel, Suttle doubted they’d listen. Winter was a grass. Winter had fucked Bazza over. Winter deserved everything that was coming to him.

Suttle left the restaurant and walked the half-mile to the Royal Trafalgar Hotel. Barely a year ago this had been the jewel in Bazza’s crown. A fourth AA rosette was living proof that he could cut it as a legitimate businessman, and he’d relished the evenings when he hosted discreet dinners for the city’s movers and shakers, paving the way for his bid to become one of the city’s two MPs. It was Winter who’d sussed that the general election would trigger Mackenzie’s downfall, and so it had proved. With his commercial empire in free fall, Bazza had staked everything on a final throw of the dice. His campaign for Portsmouth North had burned money he didn’t have, and by the time he died, taken out by the Tactical Firearms Unit in a shop called Pompey Reptiles, he was effectively bankrupt.

The Royal Trafalgar had gone to a rival businessman, a heavyset Pole from nearby Southampton, which made him a Scummer. Suttle paused at the door and then stepped inside. The bar lay beyond reception. This was where the 6.57 would gather for a drink on football nights, reliving old campaigns over a couple of Stellas, and Suttle half-hoped that a face or two would still be around. Maybe he should talk to these people in person, get them to recognise that Winter was history. Maybe Marie had been the wrong place to start.

The bar was empty. Suttle ordered a Guinness, sensing at once that the hotel was on the skids. One look at the clientele in the adjacent restaurant told him that Dobreslaw, the Pole, had taken the whole operation downmarket. Coach-loads of pensioners from up north were tucking into mountains of chicken nuggets. There wasn’t a soul under sixty-five, and when a guy in a shiny tux arrived to announce a bingo session afterwards, Suttle knew that this was the last place that any 6.57 would show up. The Pole had bought the hotel for a song and carefully destroyed Bazza’s hard-won reputation as a hotelier of serious quality. Revenge, in the ongoing war between the two cities, couldn’t have been sweeter.

Depressed, Suttle swallowed the Guinness and crossed the road to the seafront. No closer to fending off his new friends, he knew there was no way he was going to tackle the long drive home until he’d settled down. Maybe a walk by the sea. Maybe another pint or two. Anything to shake himself free of the troubling suspicion that life was beginning to gang up on him.

Lizzie spent the evening alone with Grace. After putting her daughter to bed, she drifted around the kitchen wondering what to make for supper. She’d no idea when Jimmy might be back and had half-expected a call by now. In the end she settled for making a salad with boiled eggs and new potatoes. By gone nine, when he still hadn’t appeared, she loaded a plate on a tray and ate a glum supper in front of a repeat of Shameless. At ten came the news. By now she was seriously worried. What if he’d had some kind of accident on the way home? Far more likely, what if his attempts to head off the threat to their little family had gone horribly wrong? She was on the point of putting a call through to A amp; E in Pompey when the phone rang. It was Jimmy. She knew at once he’d been drinking.

‘Where are you?’

‘Southsea.’

‘Still?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s complicated. I just wanted. .’ He tailed off.

‘Wanted what? What did you want?’

‘It’s hard, my love. It’s just hard.’

‘What’s just hard? For fuck’s sake, Jimmy. I’m sitting here waiting for you. We both are. So when are you back?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

Lizzie was staring at the dodgy window. It was open again. Her clever wedge must have dropped out. Great.

Suttle was trying to apologise. He’d talked to someone he thought might help. Afterwards he’d had a bit of a think, trying to work out exactly what to do. This thing’s really tricky, he kept saying. It’s not as simple as you might expect.

Lizzie had ceased to be interested. A cold hard anger had iced what was left of her patience. She was alone in the middle of nowhere with an infant daughter and a bunch of lunatics trying to barge into her life. The very least she wanted was her husband back home to take care of them both. Yet here he was, 130 miles away, pissed as a rat.

‘So what’s going to happen?’ she asked.

There was a long silence. In the background Lizzie thought she caught the parp of a ship’s siren. Then Suttle was back on the line.

‘Fuck knows,’ he said. And rang off.

Suttle walked and walked, wondering whether he should drive home. The third pub had been a mistake, and he’d known it, but after the fourth pint he hadn’t much cared, a feeling of release that had taken him by surprise. The temptation now was to get back on the phone, bell a couple of his ex-colleagues, seek a little advice. That way, he told himself, he’d at least have something to show for his evening in Pompey, but the moment he tried to imagine these conversations the more he realised the idea was a non-starter. These guys would suss at once that he was shit-faced. He’d left this city with a decent reputation. Why put all that at risk?

The cheapest Southsea B amp; Bs were in Granada Road. By now it was raining. The first three doors he knocked on didn’t answer. The fourth was opened by an Asian guy in a grease-stained Pompey shirt. Yes, he had a room upstairs. Forty-five quid cash. In advance.

Suttle peeled off the notes, too knackered to barter. The room was horrible: pink bedspread, cracked handbasin, no shade on the overhead bulb, mauve carpet, everything stinking of cigarettes. Suttle lay on his back, staring up. There were damp patches on the ceiling and canned laughter from the TV in the next room. Forget the TV and the fags, he told himself, and he might easily have been at home. The dripping tap. The draught through the window stirring the thin strip of curtain. The overpowering evidence that someone didn’t care, that someone should have tried harder. The thought sobered him. Lizzie deserved better than this. He reached for his mobile and keyed her number. It rang and rang before going onto divert. He stared at it, perplexed, then tried again. Still no answer. Only on his third attempt did Lizzie answer.

‘Are you coming home?’ Her voice was cold.

‘I’ve hurt you,’ he said.

‘You’re right. So when are you coming home?’

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll be up first thing. Should be back by-’

He broke off, staring at the phone. She’d hung up. He shut his eyes. For a minute or two he tried to think of nothing. When he opened them again, the damp patches, the canned laughter and the sour reek of a million cigarettes were still there. Rolling over, he hammered on the thin partition wall.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he yelled.

Nothing happened. He beat on the wall again. Nothing. Finally he rolled off the bed and went out into the corridor. The door to the adjoining room was unlocked. He pushed it open. The room was empty. He bent to the TV and ripped the plug out of the socket in the skirting board.

Back in his own room, he sat on the bed, his elbows on his knees. Ten to midnight. At length he reached for the mobile again. He’d stored Gina Hamilton’s number only yesterday. She answered on the second ring.

‘Who is this?’

‘Jimmy. Jimmy Suttle.’

‘What do you want?’

Her voice wasn’t as hostile as he might have expected. He even sensed a a hint of warmth when she asked what he was up to.

‘Fuck knows,’ he said.

‘Where are you?’

‘Pompey. This is a room you will not believe.’

‘What room?’

Suttle tried to explain but gave up. When he tried to pretend a renewed interest in Tom Pendrick she saw through it at once.

‘What are you after?’ she said.

Suttle stared at the rain dripping down the window pane. Good question.

‘A meet. A drink,’ he said at last. ‘I need someone to talk to. You call it.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Yeah.’ He’d shut his eyes again. ‘I think I am.’

Lizzie lay in bed. Grace’s cot was beside her. Lizzie had moved it in as a precaution. If anything happened, she told herself, better that they faced it together.

The last couple of hours the wind had got up. She pulled the duvet closer, buried herself in its warmth, tried not to listen to the noises outside in the garden, but every creak, every sigh, every rustle in the long grass beyond the patio sparked another image. Someone watching. Someone waiting. Someone stealing ever closer to the gaping window downstairs.

Once she switched on the light and risked a look at her watch. 03.17. In a couple of hours a pale grey light would wash through the thin curtains. After that, God willing, she might sleep. In the meantime she had to fight this sense of welling panic, this certainty that things could only get worse, and to do that she had to concentrate on something amusing, something positive, a single image that might keep the busy darkness at bay.

She tried and tried, raiding her memories from Gill’s visit. The ducklings in the stream at the bottom of the garden. The horses on the beach the afternoon they’d walked to Straight Point. The expression on Grace’s tiny face when her mum had staggered to her feet after the first session on the rowing machine. For a moment or two this worked. But then the images faded and the darkness crowded back in and she flailed around in her mind’s eye, looking for some place to hide.

Then, quite suddenly, she had it. She was afloat again, taking her first strokes towards the dock, listening to the big man with the huge hands. He’d told her she could do it. And he’d been right.