‘To Ximena?’
‘You know Ximena?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘To someone else. Ximena is like me, like Lou – we rent.’
At Suttle’s prompting he managed to remember the name of the owner. He was English. He had lots of businesses. His name was
Martin Skelley.
‘You have an address? A phone number?’
‘No.’
‘And yet you pay him rent?’
‘I pay rent to Lou. Lou passes on the money.’
‘So whereabouts do you think he lives? Is he on the island?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘London?’
‘Maybe … yes … I don’t know.’
Suttle bent to his pad. This was shaping nicely. For the first time in a week
Gosling
was threatening to take off. He looked up again.
‘I want you to remember what you did on Saturday night,’ he said carefully. ‘Think about it, Mr Oobik.’
‘I was …’ he paused ‘… in Cowes.’
‘Whereabouts?’
He named a couple of pubs. He’d been drinking with friends. Afterwards they’d gone for a Chinese. He gave Suttle their names.
Suttle wanted contact details from his mobile. With some reluctance, he complied, chasing down the numbers on his directory.
The mobile was a Nokia. Suttle made yet another note.
‘And afterwards?’
‘I went to Lou’s place.’
‘Was she there?’
‘No. I have a key. She’d gone to Southampton. She got back after me.’
Suttle nodded. Sadler had attended a fund-raiser for Down’s syndrome. Back on the last hydrofoil.
‘And you stayed there that night?’
‘Yes.’
‘With Mrs Sadler?’
‘With Lou, yes.’
‘And Sunday morning?’
‘I can’t remember.’ He shrugged. ‘We got up.’
‘At what time?’
‘I don’t know. Ten? Eleven? Not early. Then I came back here.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes. Maybe, no.’ He was thinking hard. ‘Ask her. Ask Lou.’
‘I will.’ Suttle pocketed his notebook. ‘Do you mind if I have a look round?’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
‘No, sure.’ The shrug again. ‘Of course.’
Suttle stepped out into the chilly sunshine. The caravan was parked a metre or two from the paddock fence, and when he went
round the back he found himself looking at a motorcycle. It was big, low-slung, a Chinese rip-off of a Harley. Beside it,
half-tucked beneath the caravan, was a petrol can.
Suttle found a wad of tissue in his pocket. He flattened it out, then knelt to the can and lifted it up, not letting his fingers
touch the bare metal of the handle. The can was empty.
Hearing a movement in the wet grass, Suttle looked up. Oobik was standing by the corner of the van, watching his every move.
In the low slant of winter sunlight he threw a long shadow.
‘When did you last fill this up?’ Suttle nodded at the can.
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Was it recently?’
‘No.’
‘Do you use it for the bike?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What else then? The four-by-four?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why isn’t it inside? Inside the four-by-four?’
‘I don’t know. It just isn’t.’
Suttle nodded, wiping his fingers on the tissue. Still on his hands and knees, he peered under the caravan. All he could see
were a couple of empty wine bottles and the frame for what must have been a sunlounger, the fabric gone.
He got to his feet again. The burned-out Corsa had been reported in the early hours of Thursday morning.
‘Where were you on Wednesday night?’
‘When?’
‘Last week.’
‘I was with Lou.’
‘Here?’
‘Her place. Always her place.’
‘No point asking whether anyone else was there, I suppose?’
Suttle let the question hang between them. The irony was lost on Max. Suttle shrugged, then did a careful circuit of the outhouses.
At the far end he found a pile of horse manure. He gazed at it for a long moment, wondering why he hadn’t spotted it before,
then checked out the trailer he’d seen earlier. Oobik was still watching him, still tracking his every movement.
‘What’s this for?’ Suttle nodded at the trailer.
‘It belongs to Lou.’
‘That wasn’t my question. What’s it for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘A boat, maybe? Does she go sailing?’
‘I don’t know.’
Suttle shot him a look, then shook his head before stepping across to the four-by-four. He made a careful note of the registration,
before turning to Oobik again.
‘Yours?’
‘Lou’s.’
‘Has she had it long? To your knowledge?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But since you’ve known her, maybe?’
‘Maybe.’
‘So how long’s that?’ He smiled. ‘Or can’t you remember?’
Oobik wasn’t going to tell him. He’d had enough of this game, of these baited questions, of this remorseless dissection of
his private life.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Maybe some other time, eh?’
‘No problem.’ Suttle shot him a grin this time. ‘I look forward to it.’
Early afternoon, Winter took a cab to Sandown Road to pick up the holdall. Marie was sitting in the kitchen with Bazza. This
was the first time Winter had laid eyes on Mackenzie since the accident and he realised he hadn’t the least idea what to say.
To his relief, Bazza seemed pleased to see him. ‘Sorry would be in order, you old cunt.’ He stood up and gave Winter a hug.
‘You know what you’ve just done to my insurance premiums?’
Winter apologised. Under the circumstances it was the least he could do.
Marie asked him about the interview with the traffic guys at Central. Winter shrugged it off. He’d had a quiet word with the
duty solicitor afterwards. A thousand-pound fine and six points sounded about right. Maybe less if the brief could put a decent
buff on his reputation.
The thought of a plea in mitigation made Bazza laugh.
‘A bent ex-cop? Working for the likes of me? They’ll change the law, mush. Put you away for ever.’
Winter was wondering what could possibly account for Mackenzie’s high spirits. He hadn’t seen him so cheerful for weeks.
‘So how’s it going, Baz? Been made Mayor yet?’
‘One day, mush. One fucking day. Shame you missed the Solent piece.’
Radio Solent was the local BBC station. It seemed they’d visited Sandown Road and invited Mackenzie to air his views on local
democracy. Leo Kinder, said Baz, had had a shrewd idea about the line of questioning they would pursue and had thoroughly
prepped his would-be candidate. For once in his life, buoyed by Kinder’s suspicion that some of this stuff might find its
way onto network radio, Baz had listened, and the results, as even Marie agreed, had been impressive.
Local democracy, according to Bazza Mackenzie, belonged in the same knacker’s yard as local accountability, grass-roots participation,
community involvement and all the other New Labour bollocks. He
wasn’t blaming them exclusively because you could be sure the other lot would do exactly the same thing when their turn came
round, but until the locals – you and me – were trusted to raise and spend their own fucking money then nothing would ever
happen. All this local democracy tosh was nothing more than a sound bite, a smokescreen to hide what was really going on.
And what was really going on was a royal shafting for one and all. As if people didn’t know already. As if we were all that
stupid.
‘But he didn’t say fucking.’ It was Marie. ‘And he didn’t say bollocks.’
‘No, I fucking didn’t, mush.’ Mackenzie was still eyeballing Winter, still making his point. ‘But you know something? That
Leo was right. Sunday evening. Last night. Radio Four.
Pick of the Week
. Yeah … right. Little
me
.’
Winter saw the pride in his eyes, the bantam cock strutting his stuff. Not just king of the Pompey hen coop but, maybe somewhere
down the line, of a bigger playground still.
Marie got to her feet. She had to get round to Ezzie’s to look after the kids. She gave Winter a kiss and told Bazza she’d
be back later. Bazza waited for her to leave. He wanted to know about the holdall Marie had brought back from Fratton nick.
‘It’s black, yeah? Tatty old thing?’
‘That’s right. Tell me you haven’t looked inside.’
‘Of course I fucking have.’
‘Touched it?’
‘
Touched
it? I had the lot all over the kitchen floor.’
‘Great.’
‘Is that a problem, mush?’
‘Yeah.’
Winter explained about the old lady’s house in Cowes, Kaija’s place, the way the girl had suddenly disappeared and what she’d
left behind her.
‘Who’s this Kaija?’ He pronounced it ‘Kaiser’.
‘She’s Johnny Holman’s special girl. One of Sadler’s toms.’
‘He was knobbing her?’
‘Big time. Paying her sometimes. Sometimes not.’
‘The old dog. And you say she’s disappeared?’
‘Yeah, along with Johnny.’
‘Shit.’ Bazza was staring at the holdall. It was tucked behind the vegetable rack, clearly visible. ‘You’re telling me that
could be Johnny’s gear? All smoky?’
‘Exactly. And you know what’s all over it? Apart from your DNA?’
‘Tell me, mush. I never looked that hard.’
‘Blood, Baz. That’s the gear he must have been wearing when the kids were killed, and Julie, and the other lad. And after
that, from where I’m sitting, a tenner says he torched the place. You don’t have to be a cop to suss any of this.’ Winter
nodded at the holdall. ‘All you need is a sense of fucking smell.’
‘Johnny did all that?’ Bazza couldn’t believe it. ‘Little Johnny Holman?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But why would he?’
‘Fuck knows. The guy was a fanny rat. He was off his head. Stella does weird things to a man.’
‘Not Tommy Peters then?’
‘No, Baz. Johnny H.’
‘Johnny … Johnny …’ Mackenzie rolled the name round his mouth, trying to get some kind of purchase on this alarming
new development. Then he looked up, the last piece of the jigsaw falling softly into place. ‘So Johnny did Julie, the kids
– right?’
‘Right.’
‘Dumped his gear. Did a runner. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘With the girl?’
‘We assume so.’
‘Right.’ He shook his head. ‘So where’s my fucking toot?’
Faraday was still talking to Gabrielle when one of the intel D/Cs working with Jimmy Suttle appeared at his office door. He
mimed a waiting phone call, indicated it was urgent. Faraday tapped his watch, held up two fingers. Give me a couple of minutes,
eh?
Gabrielle sounded excited. She was still in Salisbury. She’d been talking to a woman in Social Services. The lady ran the
Adoption Team. She understood now what they had to do. It wouldn’t be simple, but the lady in Portsmouth thought it might
be possible. It would take a long time. Best to start now.
‘Start what?’
‘We have to be assessed. They have to send someone round, a social worker. They need to know everything about us. We have
to do it,
chéri
. It’s for the little one.’
The thought of unzipping his private life for the benefit of some social worker filled Faraday with dread. What kind of questions
did these people ask? Were they as intrusive and remorseless as the
Gosling
team? Given the fact that a life was at stake he presumed the answer could only be yes.
‘So when is this supposed to happen?’
‘As soon as we like. I told her this week.’
‘This
week
?’
‘How about Thursday,
chéri
? Would that be OK?’
The D/C was still at the door, still waiting. Faraday bent to the phone again, grunted something noncommittal and hung up.
The D/C disappeared to have the call transferred. It was Jimmy Suttle.
‘Boss?’
Suttle sounded excited. He described his visit to the farm. The key, he said, was a guy called Oobik, Max Oobik.
‘Spell it.’ Faraday pulled a pad towards him, wrote the name down. ‘So why is he so special?’
‘Number one, he’s shacked up with Lou Sadler, kips with her,
minds bits and pieces of the business. Number two, he’s Estonian, so there’s no way he doesn’t know this Kaija Luik.’
‘Is he denying it?’
‘No, boss. But he makes it sound like they rarely met.’
Faraday asked whether Oobik was still in touch with her. An address? A mobile number?
‘Nothing, boss.’
‘And Holman?’
‘He says he’s never heard of the guy.’
‘But Sadler admits Holman was a regular punter of hers.’
‘Exactly. And it gets better. The guy looks after a couple of horses for Sadler. So guess what I found beside the stables?’
Faraday gave the question some thought.
‘Horse manure,’ he said at last.
‘Yeah. And where did we last see any of that?’
Faraday smiled. Suttle was right.
Gosling
was at last revving up.
‘You’re thinking Monkswell Farm?’
‘Of course I am, boss. The hole at the back of the place was covered in horse shit. Holman’s all over the Estonian girl. The
Estonian girl’s working for Sadler. Sadler owns a couple of horses. And – hey presto – she’s at it with this guy Oobik. Who
just happens to be Estonian. Call me slow, boss, but do we smell a pattern here?’
Faraday was trying to work out the science of
Gosling
’s next move. How would you match one set of horse shit with another and make the results lawyer-proof in court? Meg Stanley,
he thought.
Suttle hadn’t finished.
‘Three more little items …’ he said.
He described the empty petrol can he’d found half-hidden behind the caravan. Robbie Difford’s Corsa had been torched a couple
of days back. Why not blitz garages across the island, spread the guy’s mugshot around, seize CCTV footage?
‘To establish what?’
‘That the guy’s filled the can up recently.’
‘What would that prove?’
‘That he’s lying. He told me he’d last filled it ages ago.’
‘Ah …’ Faraday bent to his pad. ‘And what else?’
‘There’s a trailer up there, quite a hefty thing. He says it’s Sadler’s. We need to find out what belongs on that trailer.
And where she keeps it.’
‘You’re thinking transportation?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Some kind of boat?’
‘Yeah.’
‘To get rid of whatever?’
‘Of course. And here’s the clincher, boss. A guy called Martin Skelley. According to Oobik, he’s a businessman. He owns the
farm where the horses are and seems to know Sadler. Ask one of my guys to run him through PNC. Along with Oobik.’
Faraday had already written the name down. He glanced at his watch. Suttle’s news had turned the caravan and the stables into
a potential crime scene. He needed to get a SOC team out there as soon as possible, and for that he needed a search warrant.
He bent to the phone again, thinking about Max Oobik. The name rang a bell and he couldn’t work out why.
‘Has this Oobik come up before, Jimmy?’
‘No, boss.’
‘So where are you?’
‘Still at the farm. Sitting right on top of him.’
It was Bazza’s idea to go to SAS. Safe And Sure was a storage company on an industrial estate at the top of Portsea Island.
Mackenzie had had a couple of run-ins with the guy who owned it, chiefly because he wanted to buy the business, and knew he
ran a tight operation. For a very reasonable fee, Winter could put Misty’s holdall beyond the reach of any interested party.
Winter booked the bag in and bought a padlock with two keys. Any time during business hours he could nip up and retrieve it.
He strolled back to the Lexus and rejoined Mackenzie in the car.
‘I’m buying you lunch, mush. The Churchillian OK?’
The Churchillian was a pub on the crest of Portsdown Hill. To Winter’s knowledge it had never been a favourite of Bazza’s,
but it had panoramic views over the city below and served decent food. On a fine day like today you could practically touch
the Isle of Wight.
Their route up the hill took them past the QA hospital. Winter was driving, Mackenzie sitting beside him. He turned in his
seat to watch a pretty nurse emerging from the main entrance.
‘You must be sick of the place, mush. Maybe we should have gone somewhere in town.’
Mackenzie rarely bothered himself with this kind of chit-chat. Winter wondered whether he was trying to apologise again.
‘What do you mean, Baz?’
‘The accident. All the grief you must have gone through afterwards. I hate hospitals. Can’t bear them.’
‘I thought you meant Leyman.’
‘Col?’ He seemed genuinely surprised. ‘He’s out, mush. Safe back
home. I popped round yesterday. Made it right with him. Mates again. Like always.’
‘Made it right how?’
‘Gave him some money.’
‘How much?’
‘A grand.’
‘A
grand
?’ This was unprecedented. ‘Why?’
‘I knew you were upset, mush.’ He patted Winter’s thigh and shot him the old grin. ‘No hard feelings, eh?’
The Churchillian was packed. Winter managed to find a table at the back, away from the pensioners beside the window enjoying
the view. Mackenzie took the food order to the bar and returned with a couple of pints of Stella. He had something on his
mind.
‘It’s Johnny Holman, mush. We need to get one or two things straight.’
He beckoned Winter closer. Holman, he admitted, had become a bit of a liability after his motorbike accident. Bazza had naturally
felt sorry for him and had done what he could to help, not least because he’d always had a soft spot for Julie Crocker.
‘I always thought Jules was made for Johnny,’ he said. ‘She was the only one of all that lot who made the time to go up and
see him.’
Holman had been in hospital on the Isle of Man. Julie, he said, had nearly lost her bar job on account of the time off she
took for the journeys north. Baz had bunged her a few quid to help out with the fares, and when Johnny came home and started
looking for somewhere half-decent to live, it had been Bazza’s idea to try the Isle of Wight.
‘I knew Jules would love it there. She’d had enough of Pompey by then. She couldn’t wait to get her and the kids out of the
place. Then Johnny found the farm and they were sorted.’
By now, said Bazza, his own business interests were mostly legit. Various enterprises were turning over a tidy profit and
he’d put his hands-on cocaine dealings behind him. But then he’d got a phone call from Rikki in Cambados. The guy was offering
sixty-four kilos of Colombian White at a guaranteed 83 per cent purity for a silly price.
‘How much?’
‘Three K a kilo, 175K the lot.’
‘So when was this?’
‘Three years ago.’
Winter nodded. In 2006 he’d still been in the Job. If he remembered right, cocaine was then selling at around eight quid a
wrap. A wrap was a fifth of a gram. Forty quid a gram meant £40,000 a kilo. And this after you’d stamped hard on the original
consignment, adding all
kinds of shit to make a kilo go a lot, lot further. No wonder Bazza had been interested.
‘So what happened?’
‘I said yes. Rikki did the business at his end and we got the lot trucked through Pompey with a load of fruit and wine. The
driver was delivering somewhere upcountry. We did the offload in the back of beyond and stored the toot in a lock-up in Gosport.
There was no way I was keeping it there because even then I fancied something long term, just in case. Turns out I was right
too, mush. No other fucker saw this lot coming. Not then.’
Winter assumed he meant the credit crunch. Mackenzie had been right: it had been a smart move.
The meals arrived. Bazza tucked into steak and ale pie and a mountain of chips. Winter had ordered fish and chips but had
doubts about his appetite. Since the accident he’d barely eaten anything.
He glanced across at Mackenzie, wondering where all this was going.
‘So you shipped the toot across to Johnny? Right?’
‘Right. Once he and Jules had moved into that farm of theirs, I knew they had the space. I thought Johnny was sound, solid,
even then. And I knew he could use the rent.’
‘Rent?’
‘On the bugle. I paid him by the month. A straight grand. Like you would. Turns out most of it went down his throat.’
Winter picked at a chip. Twelve K a year sounded a lot for babysitting sixty-four kilos of Colombian White, but given the
current market price of – say – four million quid, a consignment like that would put you away for a very long time if the
men in blue arrived.
‘Did you check on him at all?’
‘No, mush. But recently I started getting these calls.’
‘What calls?’
‘From Jules. She was worried about him. She said he was up to all sorts. What she really meant was he’d gone off his head.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Nothing, mush. Fuck all. I buried it, blanked it, told myself the daft old sod would realise how lucky he was and sort himself
out. Turns out I was wrong.’ He paused to swallow a mouthful of Stella. ‘Tell you the truth, I still can’t believe it.’
Winter shrugged. His years on CID had taught him a great deal about human nature, about the journeys so-called friends can
make, about the strokes they can pull, and not much surprised him any more.
‘You sure you’ve got this right?’ Bazza had abandoned the steak pie. ‘He killed them all? Burned the place down?’
‘That’s the way it looks.’
‘No one else involved? Just him? Little Johnny?’
‘We can’t be sure, Baz. If I was sitting in Major Crime just now I’d be looking very hard at Lou Sadler and I’d be moving
heaven and earth to find the girl.’
‘That tom of Johnny’s?’
‘Yeah. Men follow their dicks. You might have noticed. Find the girl and you might find Johnny too. Find Johnny and …’
He shrugged, leaving the thought unfinished.
‘The toot, you mean? We’d find the toot? I know the market’s flat just now but even two and a bit mill is a lot of money.’
‘It is, Baz. Which is one of the reasons why looking for Johnny might be harder than we think.’ He pushed his plate away.
There was a long silence while Mackenzie brooded further on what might have happened. Finally he voiced the obvious conclusion.
‘You think he’s dead, mush? You think someone’s had him?’
‘Maybe.’ Winter reached for his glass. ‘Cheers, Baz. Here’s to crime.’
Faraday had Meg Stanley on the phone. He’d belled her earlier and she’d taken her time calling back, blaming yet another series
of meetings.
Faraday gave her a heads-up on the developing scene at Upcourt Farm. The SOC team were driving over from Shanklin, and he’d
no idea whether Stanley would be joining them.
‘Of course I am.’ She sounded cheerful. ‘What’s the strength?’
Faraday described Max Oobik and the relationship with Lou Sadler. In his view they had to be linked to the missing girl, Kaija
Luik. Which in turn put them alongside Johnny Holman.
‘You think?’
‘I think.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes.’
Faraday told her about the pile of horse manure. How could they establish a match with the stuff her SOC team had forked off
the hole at Monkswell Farm? Stanley gave the proposition some thought. Finally she confirmed it was doable.
‘How?’
‘We take a blood sample from each of these animals. That’ll give us a DNA profile. Then we wait.’
‘For what?’
‘We wait for them to poo. We swab the surface of the dung, recover a sample from the stuff at Monkswell. If you want to be
technical,
we’re interested in the fibrous structure. Then we submit the lot to FSS. Job done.’
‘As it were.’
‘Quite.’ Faraday could hear her laughing.
‘So we seize the horses? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Absolutely. And good luck, eh?’
Faraday put the phone down to find himself looking at Gail Parsons. She’d just arrived on the early-afternoon hovercraft,
her face pinked from the climb up the hill from the seafront. She must have run, Faraday thought. Couldn’t wait to join the
party.
‘Well?’
Faraday gave her the headlines. The warrant was en route to Upcourt Farm. The Scenes of Crime team had just left Shanklin.
Meg Stanley was driving to Southampton to take the hydrofoil across to Cowes. And Jimmy Suttle was still keeping an eye on
Max Oobik, awaiting further orders.