Happy Days
Authors: Graham Hurley
| Happy Days |
| Faraday & Winter [12] |
| Hurley, Graham |
parliament, ex-cop Paul Winter knows that his time with Bazza must, at
whatever cost, come to an end, in the 12th in this highly acclaimed
series of police procedurals
is gone and the police are left reeling. As his boss attempts to limit
any possible PR damage, his one time shadow on the force, ex-DC Winter,
is ever more concerned that he may have made the biggest mistake of his
life throwing in his lot with the city's drug baron, Bazza
McKenzie—especially as Bazza becomes increasingly desperate and violent
as his empire begins to crumble under the weight of austere times. And,
in the person of DS Jummy Suttle there's a new will at the heart of the
embattled police force to nail Bazza once and for all, the one man
Faraday was always desperate to bring to justice. Graham Hurley's
trademark authenticity has been allied to an ever increasing sense of
drama as he charts the lives of his vivid characters and paints a
stunning portrait of a city and a country at war with itself, a war
which throws the police into the front line.
For Lin,
again and always
Graham Hurley
I
Chapter one
PORTSMOUTH: THURSDAY, 13 AUGUST 2009
D/S Jimmy Suttle had never had much time for Gill Reynolds. Not then. And certainly not now. The fact that she was a mate of Lizzie’s made him answer the call but he tried to keep the conversation as short as possible.
She said she was worried about Faraday.
‘Why?’
‘He’s not picking up.’
‘Maybe he’s busy.’
‘No way.’
‘How do you know?’
‘How do you
think
I know?’
Suttle had pulled in beside a bus stop on the Eastern Road. Rush-hour traffic was flooding out of the city. His ex-boss’s love life was no concern of his but he understood from Lizzie that Faraday’s brief fling with Gill was well and truly over.
‘You’re together again?’
‘Not exactly, but you don’t stop caring, do you?’
The question was blunt, with a hint of accusation. Like Lizzie, Gill was a journalist on the
News
. And like Lizzie, she had a habit of trying to back the rest of the world into a corner. Suttle’s wife managed it with a smile on her face. Gill didn’t. No wonder Faraday had binned the relationship.
Suttle knew what was coming next. Gill was doubtless at
work. Gill was probably mega-stressed. And Suttle, in truth, was one of the few men Joe Faraday might count as a mate.
‘You want me to go round? See how he’s coping?’ Suttle checked his watch. Nearly half six. Faraday’s place was barely five minutes away. ‘Gill? You still there?’
He waited a couple of seconds for an answer then realised she’d hung up. Faraday, mercifully, had seen the light. The woman, once you got beyond first impressions, was a total nightmare: needy, impatient, determined to shape life the way she wanted it. He glanced up at the rear-view mirror and eased back into the traffic. Maybe Faraday would have a Stella or two in the fridge. Maybe he’d be in the mood for a chat. Maybe Suttle could mark the old boy’s card about manic divorcee
News
journos who refused to take no for an answer.
Faraday’s place was called the Bargemaster’s House. It lay at the end of a cul-de-sac that fringed Langstone Harbour, the stretch of water to the east of the city that helped give Pompey its island status. Suttle was vague about the origins of the property but assumed the house was connected to the nearby lock and the canal that had once ferried barges to Portsmouth Harbour. What he knew for certain was how much Faraday loved the place. He’d lived in it for years. He’d brought up his only child there, a deaf-mute called J-J or Joe Junior. And even now, maybe especially now, it meant the world to him.
The house was neat, square, brick built, with white-painted timber cladding on the first floor. Faraday’s ancient Mondeo was on the hardstanding. Suttle parked and walked to the front door. His first ring produced no response. He rang again, then hammered at the peeling woodwork. Still no answer. He pushed the letter box open and stooped to peer inside. The house smelled damp, unloved, and there was a hint of a sweetness, a pungency, he couldn’t quite place. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom of the hall, he saw the pile of uncollected post on the mat inside the door. He called Faraday’s
name, listening for an answer. Nothing. He tried the door. Locked.
Stepping away from the door and into the sunshine, he phoned Faraday’s mobile number, returning to the letter box to push it open. Faintly, from the depths of the house, he could hear Faraday’s distinctive ringtone, a soft peal of bells. The second he ended the call, it stopped.
He began to circle the house, sensing that something was wrong, knowing that he’d have to get inside. As Detective Inspector on the Major Crime Team, Faraday had been his immediate boss on countless investigations. Back in February he’d suffered a nervous breakdown and had been on sick leave ever since. His collapse had taken everyone by surprise. Colleagues who didn’t know the man well, and that meant most of them, had blamed his condition on a road accident he’d suffered during a Christmas break in Egypt. Faraday, it was said, had gone through the windscreen and come back to work far too early.
A serious road traffic accident was plausible enough, but Suttle, who’d worked alongside Faraday on the inquiry that followed, had seen something else. His boss, in his opinion, had simply had enough. Twenty years of coppering had ganged up on him. His French partner, Gabrielle, had left in pursuit of a Palestinian child she wanted to adopt. These episodes had taken Faraday to a very bad place. Suttle had never seen someone so alone, so bewildered, so
lost
.
A gravel path led around the side of the house. Suttle paused beside a couple of dustbins. The space between was piled with Waitrose bags filled with wine bottles and empty beer cans. Suttle gazed at them a moment, then lifted the nearest dustbin lid. Two more bottles, malt whisky this time.
The rear of the house fronted onto the harbour. This, Suttle knew, was Faraday’s pride and joy, the view that seemed to offer him endless solace. The last time Suttle had been here, a month or so ago, his ex-boss had handed him a pair of binos and
talked him through the mid-summer birdlife on the harbour. Under Faraday’s patient guidance, he’d settled on a gaggle of mallard, then a darting cloud of oyster catchers, ending with a single cormorant perched on a mooring post, the blackness of its wings spread wide in the last of the day’s warmth. ‘He’s hanging himself out to dry,’ Faraday had murmured, and the phrase had lodged in Suttle’s memory. Was this the way his ex-boss imagined himself? Skewered by circumstance? Waiting for the dying sun to work some kind of miracle?
Suttle tried the windows and the French door on the ground floor. Everything was locked. Peering in, he could make out a glass beside the sofa in the big living room. The glass appeared to be empty but he couldn’t be sure. He stepped back. For the first time, looking up, he realised that a sash window on the floor above was open. He stared at it a moment, wondering about a ladder.
He found one behind a shed at the far end of the garden. The garden itself, wildly overgrown after the recent rain, badly needed attention. He could see marrows and courgettes, unharvested, among the weeds. Some of the nearby tomatoes, hanging fatly in tresses, were beginning to split. Faraday had always been meticulous about his veggie patch. Now this.
Suttle carried the ladder to the house and propped it against the timber cladding. He’d never been upstairs in Faraday’s place but guessed the half-open window belonged to a bedroom. He began to climb, aware of a quickening in his pulse. In his uniformed days he’d been obliged to force an entry on a number of occasions and rarely had what awaited him been good news. Faraday’s gone off on a jolly for a couple of days, he told himself. Or maybe he’s had one call too many from the ever-eager Gill and decided to emigrate.
The top of the ladder rested against the window sill. Suttle steadied himself and peered in. The smell here was stronger but it still took him a second or two to recognise the figure sprawled on the bed. Faraday was wearing jeans and a checked
shirt. He lay face down on the duvet, one knee drawn up, one arm thrown across the pillow. The giveaway was his watch strap, a Russian swirl of embroidered flowers, a much-loved gift from his son J-J.
Suttle hesitated a second, then pushed the window open until he could squeeze in. Stepping towards the bed, he knew at once that Faraday had gone. His face had the mottled blues and greens of death. Vomit had filled his mouth and crusted in his beard and there was more of it across the pillow. Suttle flapped a hand, stirring the flies, shocked by what he’d found. He’d liked this man a great deal. He’d respected him, learned from him, and tried to return the favour by offering some small comfort when the going got tough. No one, he thought, deserved an end like this. Least of all Faraday.
Beside the bed, an upturned bottle had bled a dribble of red wine onto the whiteness of the rug. Suttle knelt beside the bottle, taking care not to touch it. According to the label, it was a Grand Cru Côtes-du-Rhône. He gazed at it a moment, wondering how special a bottle like this might be, then got to his feet again. On the desk beside the PC were two blister packs of codeine and a pint glass with half an inch of water in the bottom. The blister packs were empty. Suttle knew already that this sad little tableau probably told its own story but he knew as well that he was standing in the middle of a crime scene. In his shoes Faraday would already be reaching for his phone.
Suttle was downstairs by the time he got through to the office. Detective Superintendent Gail Parsons was a month into her new post, leading the S/E Hants Major Crime Team, and this was the last news she needed.
‘Have you called anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Stay there, then,’ she said at once. ‘We’ll need to handle this.’
Suttle noticed the envelope moments later. It was lying on
the hall table. He recognised Faraday’s careful script. Marked
Private and Personal
, the envelope had J-J’s name on it. Among the clutter in the kitchen, tucked away in the cupboard beneath the sink, he found a new pair of Marigold gloves. He put them on and returned to the hall.
The envelope, when he turned it over, was unsealed. Inside was a single sheet of paper. The note – typed – was brief, the tone almost matter-of-fact. Faraday told his son he’d had enough of pretty much everything. The time had come to draw things to a close. He said he cherished the times they’d spent together and thought they’d made a great team. He wished him good luck for the coming years and told him that the Bargemaster’s House, plus everything else in his modest estate, was J-J’s for the keeping. If he wanted to sell the house, so be it. Otherwise, enjoy. The latter ended with a handwritten flourish.
Take care, my son
, Faraday had scrawled.
Your dad loves you
. Beneath, barely legible, was a brief postscript:
And remember the eagle
.