The Price Of Darkness (33 page)

‘How much?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

Suttle gave the woman behind the counter a wave. All-day breakfast. Pot of tea. Then he turned back to Hodson. They’d gone out a couple of times when he was still convalescing after getting himself stabbed and he’d shared his hopes of a big whack of money from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. At the time he’d enjoyed her company and been slightly disappointed at her reluctance to take the relationship any further. She was sharp and funny. More to the point, she cared a great deal about the job she did.

‘You want to tell me about Gullifant’s?’ he queried. ‘I know you’re pushed for time.’

She nodded. Most days she had to be in the newsroom by half eight for the prospects meet but this morning she could stretch that by a quarter of an hour, max.

‘This was a Pompey firm,’ she said. ‘Born and bred. The founder was a guy called Ernest Gullifant, sweet old thing by all accounts. I managed to lay hands on an old sepia shot of him outside the shop. Fratton Road. Number forty-three. It’s a nail bar now.’

Gullifant’s, she said, had been a hardware store. The business had stayed in the family for generation after generation. By the early eighties there were two other branches, one in Copnor, another in Southsea. They sold everything from paint and hanks of rope to electrical fittings and gardening equipment. Then, in 1983, control had passed to Simon Gullifant.

‘He was young, barely out of his twenties. He was also the first of them to go to university. He was ambitious. He wanted to
grow
the business. He had big ideas. If you want to put your finger on where it all went wrong, it was probably then.’

Simon, she said, had raised capital by selling forty-five per cent of the shares in the company. This funded an expansion across the south. He opened a further ten hardware stores in towns like Farnham, Midhurst and Petworth, each of them badged with the Gullifant’s guarantee of personal service.

‘Bottom line, he was selling tradition. These were shops where someone looked after you. You could be as ditzy as you liked. You could be a clueless housewife or some brain-dead student but there’d be a bloke with lots of patience and a nice smile behind the counter who’d explain exactly what you needed. And location-wise they were accessible, right in the middle of town.’

‘Sounds great. Where’s the catch?’

‘Timing. Retail was changing. Everyone was moving out to the trading estates.’

‘But surely that’s what this Gullifant guy had anticipated? ’

‘You’re right, but pretty quickly he found out why. The big players were building these huge out-of-town retail sheds. They offered parking, convenience, coffee - all that stuff - plus they had huge buying power so they could afford to knock the merchandise out at killer prices. Simon Gullifant stuck at it for the best part of twenty years but, looking back, he never had a prayer.’

Year on year the losses mounted. An expensive advertising campaign failed to attract more punters. A couple of the worst-performing stores were closed. Thirty or so workers were made redundant. A vast hole appeared in the pension fund. And by 2002 an increasingly harassed Simon Gullifant - by now in his early fifties - was only too eager to listen to overtures from a Croydon-based development company.

‘Benskin, Mallinder?’

‘Exactly. These guys were sharp. They were tuned in. They recognised a car wreck when they saw one, but they’d done their homework and knew that some of the Gullifant’s freeholds were potentially worth a fortune. Largely because they’d hold the key to town-centre redevelopments.’

Farnham, she said, was one example. Dorking was another. Suttle, eyeing his breakfast, wanted to know why Gullifant hadn’t spotted this.

‘He was tired, Jimmy. He’d had enough. He had a price in mind for the whole business, the whole chain, and if this Croydon bunch could meet it he’d be more than happy. He wanted to buy himself a yacht. He wanted to set his family up and sail away.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Benskin, Mallinder gave him more or less what he was after. Gullifant was happy as Larry, though in terms of what happened later it turned out to be a steal.’

‘And the shops?’

‘Here’s the killer. Benskin, Mallinder had bought Gullifant’s through a stand-alone company they’d created specially. They called it Redmayne. It was a condition of sale that they continue trading but they just ran it into the ground. Stock levels were all over the place. Service was crap. There was no budget for advertising or price reductions. Gullifant’s just curled up and died.’

In 2005, she said, Redmayne went into receivership. Over the last two trading years, she said, they’d booked cumulative losses of nearly four million pounds. Survivors from the old Gullifant’s workforce collected their P45s. Even worse, they learned that the company pension fund would be able to pay out barely fifteen per cent of their expected benefits.

‘Some of these people had been with the firm all their working lives. A handful of them came from Pompey. The more I found out, the more I knew I was looking at a really substantial piece. Nothing sells like bad news, and if you’d been behind the counter at Gullifant’s all your life, the news couldn’t get much worse. Here …’ She extracted an envelope from her rucksack and handed it across. Suttle found himself looking at a photocopy of the piece she’d written. The headline read
Thanks for Nothing
.

‘So what about Benskin, Mallinder?’

‘They cleaned up. They bought the freeholds from Redmayne and popped them in the bank. The sale of just three of them, when the moment was right, has covered their entire investment in Gullifant’s. The rest will be bunce.’ She laid a cold hand on Suttle’s wrist. ‘Capitalism in action, Jimmy. Never fails.’

‘And the pension fund? That’s not their responsibility? ’

‘It turns out not. This is a bit technical but their sense of timing was perfect. The rules changed on the first of April 2005. After that, Redmayne would have had a problem.’

‘So when did they go bust?’

‘March the 27th.’ She smiled again. ‘Neat, isn’t it?’

 

Winter was treating himself to a mid-morning coffee. He’d been living in Gunwharf now for the best part of two years and from the huge choice of waterfront café-bars and restaurants, this was his favourite. The table in the sunshine beside the window. The waitress who took the trouble to give him a smile. The French pastries that came with his cappuccino. And above all the view.

He was gazing at it now, soaking it in. It was like a lotion, he’d decided. It made him tingle inside. It brought a smile to his face. It made him feel like the person he really wanted to be. Bottle a view like this, he told himself, and you’d make a fortune.

He was watching a pair of novice sailors in a dinghy, no more than kids really, trying to cheat the tide and make it through the Harbour mouth. They were on the far side of the channel, zigzagging out, heads up, desperate to keep the sail filled, oblivious of the churning wake of a passing ferry. The V of the wake spread and spread and the dinghy was broadside on when the kids found themselves suddenly enveloped.

The dinghy rolled, righted itself briefly, then a gust of wind caught the back of the sail and the boom swung savagely over. Winter found himself on his feet as the kids threw themselves across the tiny boat in an effort to avoid the capsize. It didn’t work, and seconds later two tiny heads bobbed up alongside the upturned hull. The tide was stronger here, a river of water surging out towards the distant triangle of sea forts, and the dinghy was no more than a dot with a sail by the time they’d got the thing upright again.

Winter sank back into his seat, glad they were safe, acutely aware of the temptation to read too much into an incident like this. The irresistible drag of the tide. A sudden wave. A blast of wind when you least expected it. Then disaster, everything upside down, everything green and wet and cold. Shielding his eyes against the brightness of the morning sun, he tried to imagine how the lads were coping. Were they having a laugh? Were they frightened? Or, like him, were they readying themselves for the next blow?

He’d been awake for most of the night, trying to still his racing brain, trying to tease some kind of order into the chaos of the recent weeks, trying - above all - to get this bloody woman into perspective.

The lads on Covert Ops, he now realised, had got Gale Parsons completely wrong. This wasn’t some novice D/I on the make. This wasn’t some over-promoted graduate entrant with some vague idea of where she might be heading next. On the contrary, she had real grip. She’d sussed what modern policing was about and she’d made herself word-perfect on every line of the management manual. She’d even had the bottle to front up to Willard and tell him exactly where his wider responsibilities lay.

Winter could picture the confrontation only too well. The risks they were running on D/C Winter’s behalf. The chances of something going wrong and the likelihood of a post-mortem afterwards. Winter shook his head, reaching for the last of the
pain au raisin
. Post-mortem was a phrase he was beginning to treat with a great deal of respect.

He looked out at the view again, hoping for a glimpse of the dinghy. In his heart he knew he couldn’t do without this place, the busyness, the faces, the memories, the scams, the times he’d stood every fucking rule on its head and still emerged with a result. There was simply too much history here, his own and other people’s, to even contemplate stuffing his life into a pile of cardboard boxes and legging it. Manchester or Leeds would be bad enough. Auckland or Winnipeg unthinkable. That’s what you’d do if you lost your nerve. Or someone else did on your behalf.

His mobile began to chirp. He looked at it. He wasn’t sure he liked the budgie ringtone.

‘It’s me. I just talked to our pianist friend. Mush, we’ve got a fucking problem.’

A smile warmed Winter’s face. In real life, he thought, there was nothing that couldn’t be sorted.

‘What is it, Baz?’

‘This jet ski business. The Trophy. All that. Turns out someone’s got there first.’

‘Like who?’

‘Fucking
Scummers
. Can you believe that?’

‘Horrible.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Gunwharf.’ Winter named the café-bar.

‘I’ll be there in five. Double espresso. No sugar.’

He arrived minutes later, out of breath. He’d cut himself shaving and there was still a wisp of cotton wool scabbed on his chin. Winter had yet to order the coffee.

‘Forget it. I’m pushed as it is. Listen …’

He outlined what little Lander had been able to tell him. The producer had talked to the people at Sky. The good news was that jet skis definitely did it for them. There was a big audience out there, no question about it, and Sky Sports would be happy to oblige. The bad news - and it couldn’t be worse - was that a bunch of numpties from Southampton had already pitched something similar.

‘Like what?’

‘That’s what we don’t know. Lander thinks it’s some kind of endurance race but he hasn’t got any details. Either way, we’re in the shit.’

‘Why?’ It seemed a sensible question. Bazza didn’t agree.

‘Because, fuckwit, there’s only room for one player at this table. In case you hadn’t realised, Southampton is only twenty miles down the fucking coast. That makes us next-door neighbours. There’s never going to be room for
two
trophies.’

‘Maybe they’re taking a different angle.’

‘Yeah, and maybe I’m the man in the fucking moon. Listen, mush, a jet ski’s a jet ski whichever way you cut it. This thing’s about pictures. That’s what gets people creaming themselves. That’s why the Trophy’s going to be such a huge draw. And that’s why I’m not having a bunch of Scummers nicking off with it. This is family, right? And that was my brother we just buried. So …’ he leaned low over the table, nodding at Winter’s mobile ‘… you get on the blower and sort it out. If you need wheels, ask Brodie. She’s over at the hotel, settling in. OK?’

 

Faraday was in conference with Jimmy Suttle when D/S Glen Thatcher appeared at the door of the tiny office.

‘A word, boss?’

Faraday broke off. It was with regard to the Thornhill Park house-to-house over in Southampton. A D/C had just rung in. He and his oppo seemed to have scored a result at an address down near the edges of the estate. A woman recognised the Mercedes from the photo she’d been shown. It had been stored in a lock-up at the bottom of the road. She’d seen it a couple of times when the doors had been open, though yesterday she’d taken a peek through a crack between the doors and thought the lock-up was empty. She was positive it had been the same vehicle.

‘How can she be?’

‘Apparently she took the reg number.’

‘Why?’

‘You need to talk to the D/C yourself, sir.’ He gave Faraday a number. ‘It’s Bev Yates.’

Faraday shot Suttle a glance and reached for the phone. Yates was one of the older D/Cs on the
Billhook
squad. Faraday had worked with him for years, both on division and Major Crimes. With his sullen good looks and chaotic love life he could occasionally be a handful but Faraday had never questioned his worth at the sharp end.

‘Bev? It’s Joe Faraday. Tell me about the Mercedes.’

‘It’s gone, boss. As of a couple of days ago.’

‘I know that. Tell me the rest.’

‘I’m not sure I can. We’re still checking it out. I think it boils down to some kind of neighbourhood feud. It’s been going on a while.’

The lock-up, he said, belonged to a family round the corner from the witness. According to her, they’d been a problem on the estate for years. There was a husband who was out of it most of the time, a fat mum who swore blind all her kids were angels, and then the kids themselves. Tearaways. All of them.

‘How many?’

‘She says eight.’