Beyond Reach (16 page)

Faraday’s last glimpse of Jeanette, less than an hour ago, had stayed with him. Formally charged with murder, she’d been fingerprinted and subjected to a DNA mouth swab. Afterwards, her solicitor had fetched her a coffee from the machine. Ahead, over the months to come, lay the prospect of remand, trial and conviction. Doubtless there’d be many who would sympathise deeply with what she’d done. Her case might even spark an editorial or two in the national press. But her days of freedom were very definitely over. So how come, nursing her coffee, she seemed so suddenly relaxed?

Faraday had paused beside her. He’d wanted to wish her good luck but somehow the phrase had stuck in his throat. She’d looked up at him, ignoring the briefly comforting hand on her shoulder.

‘Got what you wanted?’ she’d asked.

The question, Faraday knew, would haunt him. Now Parsons was offering her congratulations. The pair of them, she said, had worked as a team, bringing complementary investigative skills to an inquiry that might easily have dragged on. As a template for future collabo-rations, Operation
Highfield
might offer some useful lessons. She’d certainly be saying something of the kind to Mr Willard and she was certain that he’d share her own satisfaction that Munday’s death had been so speedily resolved. Well done to both of you.

Neither Callan nor Faraday said a word. Both knew that Jeanette Morrissey’s story could never have survived an in-depth investigation. The neighbour’s lift on Sunday morning had been a windfall, but one way or another she’d have ended up in the Bridewell, DNA swabbed and fingerprinted, just another crime statistic.

Minutes later, pausing outside Faraday’s office, Callan had said her goodbyes. Both of them knew that the relationship had been far from ideal but neither was in the mood to talk about it. Dutifully Faraday suggested a drink, but his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe some other time. Maybe when they met again to finalise the file. Callan nodded, then laid her hand on Faraday’s arm.

‘You want a tip, boss?’ The smile seemed genuine. ‘Don’t let it get to you.’

 

Back home, late, Faraday knew that wasn’t an option. He went upstairs and settled at the desk in the window of his bedroom. For several minutes he did nothing except stare into the darkness beyond. The moon was full and torn shreds of cloud threw ragged shadows across the silvered brilliance of the harbour. The top sash of the window was open, and beyond the chatter of ducks along the foreshore Faraday could hear the haunting call of a distant curlew. The curlew, especially at night, had always spoken to the very depths of his soul. It summed up a hollowness, even a vacuum, that he suspected lay at the heart of modern life. In this mood he knew he was treading the very edges of the abyss.

At length he began to scroll through his emails. A message from a birder caught his eye and he followed the prompts to an article from an environmental agency in Scotland. The article was brief, but by the time he got to the end the accompanying photo was a blur. A box of tissues lay on the floor beside his chair. He blew his nose, still gazing at the screen, wondering who to talk to. No Gabrielle. No soulmate.
Personne
. Not for the first time in his life, he was totally alone.

He opened the Create Mail box and typed in the first three letters of Gabrielle’s name. Then he began to write.
In the Firth of Forth there’s a colony of guillemots. They’re tough birds. They nest on cliffs and get together in vast huddles to protect themselves from gulls which prey on their eggs and chicks. Mating pairs rear one chick a year and take it in turns to stand guard on the nest while the other hunts at sea. Lately, food has become so scarce that both parents have to go hunting otherwise the whole family will starve, but that leaves the chick on its own. It would be nice to think that neighbouring guillemots take care of these temporary orphans but that’s far from the case. In reality, if the undefended chicks come looking for food, they find themselves under attack. These attacks can be savage. Sometimes they’re even pushed off the cliff ledge to certain death on the rocks below.

Faraday sat back a moment, wondering how far to take the parallels. Tim Morrissey, in some respects, had been an undefended chick, but the likes of Munday and his little gang had sensed weakness and had come looking for him. That wouldn’t have happened on the cliffs beside the Firth of Forth - and there lay the essential difference. The attacking guillemots were simply defending their territory. Munday was a predator.

He bent to the keyboard again.
You know Paulsgrove. As estates go, it’s better than most. Decent people struggling through. Plus a hard core of delinquents, sadists and assorted psychos who do nothing to make life easy. Just now, society being the way it is, these guys (and women) have the whip hand. Violence speaks louder than small (or large) acts of kindness. People frighten easily. And when that happens on a large enough scale, people like me have a problem.

Faraday gazed at the final sentence. He’d spent the last hour or so mentally reviewing his role in Operation
Melody
. Given the lack of clinching forensic evidence - no murder weapon, no clothing, nothing of any value recovered from the scene or the body - he and the rest of the squad had relied on witness statements, hearsay and phone billings. In every respect, Munday had the estate bound and gagged. As far as Tim Morrissey was concerned, people were simply too scared to talk.

Last year, for months on end, Gabrielle had researched gang culture on the city’s estates. She’d done countless interviews with kids of all ages, trying to map the web of loyalties which so often replaced family structures that - for one reason or another - had simply disintegrated. Some of her findings had taken her by surprise. She was an anthropologist by training and she recognised that membership of a gang was a godsend for kids who had simply run out of people who might love them. In the absence of functioning mums or dads, belonging to a gang offered very welcome shelter from what Gabrielle had come to refer to as
la tempête qui vient.

Quite what this gathering storm might bring she’d never made clear but day by day, week by week, Faraday was beginning to recognise the symptoms. The nineteen-year-old smackhead who’d had her third miscarriage on the steps of the magistrates’ court. The estate mums with no previous record who regularly shoplifted from the corner store to feed their kids. The boyfriend with an anger management problem who punched his girlfriend’s granny in the face over a ten-pound debt and then set her on fire. And now the dead Kyle Munday, whose party piece was training his pit bull to kill swans on Great Salterns lake. Some of these horror stories were down to simple inadequacy. Others were the product of hard times. But some, including Munday, spoke of a deep well of something else. Evil was a word that Faraday had always tried to avoid but some days, like now, it was staring him in the face.

Faraday wondered what Gabrielle would make of a message like this then decided that it didn’t matter. Better, like Jeanette Morrissey, to get it off his chest. Better to ping it into that other vacuum, the emptiness that had once been a relationship he’d cherished. As ever, he thought, he was talking to himself. The mouse arrow lingered briefly over the Send command. His forefinger left-clicked.

Gone.

FRIDAY, 23 MAY 2008. 12.33

Winter had been in the pub less than ten minutes when Mo Sturrock walked in through the door. The photo in the
Guardian
hadn’t done him justice. He was tall and carried himself with an air of easy command. The tangle of greying hair was secured at the back by a twist of green ribbon and there was a whiff of roll-ups as he folded himself onto the stool at the bar. Scuffed cowboy boots. Frayed 501s. Faded Levi jacket. At first glance, Winter knew he’d be perfect. Looked right. Dressed right. Even smelled right.

‘Paul Winter?’ The voice came as a surprise, lighter than Winter had expected, no trace of the gruffness on the phone. The handshake too was soft. ‘I used this place when I was a student. Practically lived here when I could afford it.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Yeah. It was busier then, mind you. Hard times, love?’

The question was addressed to a thin woman in her late forties who’d just appeared behind the bar. Sturrock’s wink softened the abruptness of the enquiry.

‘Terrible,’ she said. ‘What can I get you?’

He settled for Guinness. Winter swallowed a mouthful of Stella and pushed his glass forward for a top-up. Sturrock was studying the menu.

‘Hungry?’ Winter had seen it already.

‘Starving.’ He was still looking at the barmaid. ‘I’m a veggie, love. What can you sort me out?’

‘Cheese roll. It’s on the next page.’

‘You’ve got onion? Pickle? Mustard?’

‘Just cheese. Who’s paying?’

Winter gave her a ten-pound note. Sturrock settled for a bowl of chips. He wanted to know more about Tide Turn Trust.

‘I googled you lot,’ he said. ‘Very impressive.’

The website had been Marie’s idea. Winter hadn’t been sure about some of the copy. Promises to glue fractured lives back together sounded wonderful in theory, and so did the line about turning long-term liabilities into society’s assets, but Bazza loved bullshit phrases like these so Winter’s scope for protest had been strictly limited.

‘So what do you think?’

‘About Tide Turn? Honestly?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think it’s fucking hard. In fact I
know
it’s fucking hard. But if you’re telling me you’ve found a way then fair play to you. These little commando raids are often better value than the big set-piece battles.’

‘Commando raids?’ Winter was lost.

‘Take a few hostages. Work hard on them. Turn the little bastards round. The problem guys like me had was volume. Join a local authority and the client base just gets bigger and bigger. Why? Because we
have
to sort these buggers out. It’s statutory. It says so in black and white. And the longer you do it, the more of them appear. Now that may be a sign of the times, God knows, but they were fucking all over us come the finish.’

‘Were?’

‘Yeah.’ He frowned. ‘How much do you know about me?’

Winter shrugged, said he knew very little. In these situations it was always better to feign ignorance.

‘That’s kosher? You don’t know about the conference? Everything that’s gone down since?’

Winter hesitated. Carol Legge may have primed him. Better to cover his arse.

‘I know you had some kind of run-in up in London. In fact I read the speech.’

‘And?’

‘Brilliant. I used to be a cop until I knew better. If I had a quid for every day I had to wade through all that managerial bollocks I’d be a rich man.’

‘Is that why you quit the job?’

‘No.’

‘But you saw what I was driving at?’

‘Completely. Brave boy. They must have loved you.’

‘They did, most of them. Not the bosses of course. The bloke who’d given me the speech to read went ape.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He didn’t. Next day, back at the office, I got suspended by email. Fifteen minutes to clear my desk. I even had to lean on the security guard for a couple of cardboard boxes.’

‘And now?’

‘Nothing’s changed. I’m in limbo. I’m a non-person. I’ve been banished. They call it gardening leave but maybe the joke’s on them. We’re out in the country, me and the good lady, and we’ve got a fair spread. Last time I looked, we had enough veg to feed half the village. I go door to door, flogging the stuff. The local kids can’t work out why my van hasn’t got Tesco on the side. Big learning curve.’

‘You?’

‘Them. Life should be more than fucking supermarkets. The more I do it, the more I love it.’

‘So why would you need Tide Turn?’

‘Because it’s not enough, my friend. You have to get real here. I’ve spent most of my working life with problem kids and the truth is I miss them. Just how challenging is a row of parsnips? Even ones as knobbly as mine?’

For the first time Winter caught a whiff of bitterness. What little he knew about life on the Isle of Wight told him it was claustrophobic. Everyone knew your business. And if word spread about your so-called disgrace then you were probably doomed.

‘Does your wife work?’

‘Partner. And the answer’s yes.’

‘Same line of business?’

‘She’s a psychotherapist. She deals with kids occasionally but mostly it’s adults.’

‘Grown-ups?’

‘Adults.’

Winter liked the distinction. His laughter brought a grin to Sturrock’s face. Winter was starting to wonder how often that happened.

‘It must have been tough,’ he said. A statement, not a question.

Sturrock studied him a moment. He hadn’t touched his Guinness.

‘You’re right.’ He nodded. ‘It is.’

‘Still?’

‘More and more in some ways, less so in others. I don’t miss the meetings. I don’t really miss the culture if I’m honest. But the blokes down at the coalface, the social workers, the teams we were putting out there, all that was great. You’re in the business of constant challenge. You’ve got to know how to press people’s buttons, how to get the very best out of them. It’s the same with the clients, the kids you have to deal with. None of them are monsters, they’ve just come unstuck, and once you realise that then everything else follows. We live all the time with the instant fix. It’s everywhere. Dream up some new fucking initiative, wave a magic wand, and everything’s sorted. Problem is, that never works. You have to get to know these kids. That takes time. And time takes money. To put someone from my team alongside an individual kid for - say - nine months costs the earth, and scoring that kind of funding isn’t easy. But I’ve managed it a couple of times and, believe me, it works. These kids trust nobody. Building that trust, keeping it, is what really matters.’