mouthful or two on the way home. Coming in through the back, he’d heard voices. Round here you were barmy to investigate without taking precautions. Hence the knife.
Faraday told him to turn his pockets out. From his denim jacket, with some reluctance, he produced a debit card. Faraday took it outside to the daylight to be sure of the name on the bottom. It read ‘S. Spellar’. Spotting Cathy, he threaded his way through the crowd and told her to call off the search for Mick.
‘Why?’
‘He’s turned up. Pissed as a rat.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he’s a dickhead.’ She stared at Faraday. ‘Isn’t he?’
Back inside, he showed the dead man’s debit card to Proctor. By now, Mick Spellar had surrendered his jeans and runners to the SOCO, who was sealing them carefully inside heavy-duty plastic evidence bags. Even in the gloom of the hall, Faraday could see where dark gouts of blood had splashed over the frayed denim.
At length, Jerry Proctor glanced up. He saw the debit card in Faraday’s hand and nodded. Motivation. Opportunity. And now arrest.
‘Subtle, this isn’t,’ he muttered.
Two
Paul Winter loved informants. He loved their vulnerability and their bent little ways. He loved the smell of greed and needfulness they brought with them for their periodic meets. He loved the way they stitched each other up, all the time, for nothing more than a drink, a couple of quid and the chance to settle a score or two. And most of all, he loved being the conductor of this extraordinary orchestra of fuck-wits, and whingers, and no-brain low-life. He called them his Chorus of Dwarfs. And he taught them to sing better than any other detective in the city.
On this particular Saturday, he was due to meet a new prospect. On the phone she’d called herself Juanita and for a change she even sounded foreign. Lately, local girls had taken to using exotic names in a bid to rid themselves of being Tracy or Sharon. Informants were like that. Losers since birth.
Now, sitting in an Old Portsmouth pub around the corner from the cathedral, Winter watched the tourists flocking in for lunch. The venue for the meet had been her idea. Normally informants liked to choose somewhere closer to their own territory, not
too
close in case they got clocked by someone they knew, but close enough to avoid the traumas of crossing the class divide. The American Bar was as close as Pompey got to posh, the haunt of lawyers and architects and sharp-suited young entrepreneurs from the glitzy Gunwharf Quays development across the road. Most of the informants Winter ran would die of social exposure the moment they stepped in through the door.
On the phone this woman Juanita had offered a handful of names for collateral. They were good names, names that Winter recognised from the eighties, young thugs who’d run with the 6.57 crew, packing the first-class carriages of Saturday’s early train out of the city, terrorising rival fans in football grounds all over the country. A decade later, in a development that would have won plaudits from the Harvard Business School, these psychopaths had transferred their considerable talents to the supply of Class A narcotics, calling on that same nationwide network of hardcore football hooligans to underwrite the deal. In the process the best of them had become very rich indeed, but what made this success story so very Portsmouth was the fact that they refused to change their ways. They still wore knock-off Armani suits. They still preferred the Stanley knife to the corporate lawyer. And however gaudily they flaunted their new wealth, they still lived in the backstreets of Buckland and Paulsgrove, a constant taunt for a police force increasingly bound hand and foot by paperwork, legislation and the nervous hand of the headquarters performance management team.
Take informants. Winter was forty-seven. In the early days, he and his colleagues had enjoyed a virtually free hand with the men and
Faraday told him to turn his pockets out. From his denim jacket, with some reluctance, he produced a debit card. Faraday took it outside to the daylight to be sure of the name on the bottom. It read ‘S. Spellar’. Spotting Cathy, he threaded his way through the crowd and told her to call off the search for Mick.
‘Why?’
‘He’s turned up. Pissed as a rat.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then he’s a dickhead.’ She stared at Faraday. ‘Isn’t he?’
Back inside, he showed the dead man’s debit card to Proctor. By now, Mick Spellar had surrendered his jeans and runners to the SOCO, who was sealing them carefully inside heavy-duty plastic evidence bags. Even in the gloom of the hall, Faraday could see where dark gouts of blood had splashed over the frayed denim.
At length, Jerry Proctor glanced up. He saw the debit card in Faraday’s hand and nodded. Motivation. Opportunity. And now arrest.
‘Subtle, this isn’t,’ he muttered.
Two
Paul Winter loved informants. He loved their vulnerability and their bent little ways. He loved the smell of greed and needfulness they brought with them for their periodic meets. He loved the way they stitched each other up, all the time, for nothing more than a drink, a couple of quid and the chance to settle a score or two. And most of all, he loved being the conductor of this extraordinary orchestra of fuck-wits, and whingers, and no-brain low-life. He called them his Chorus of Dwarfs. And he taught them to sing better than any other detective in the city.
On this particular Saturday, he was due to meet a new prospect. On the phone she’d called herself Juanita and for a change she even sounded foreign. Lately, local girls had taken to using exotic names in a bid to rid themselves of being Tracy or Sharon. Informants were like that. Losers since birth.
Now, sitting in an Old Portsmouth pub around the corner from the cathedral, Winter watched the tourists flocking in for lunch. The venue for the meet had been her idea. Normally informants liked to choose somewhere closer to their own territory, not
too
close in case they got clocked by someone they knew, but close enough to avoid the traumas of crossing the class divide. The American Bar was as close as Pompey got to posh, the haunt of lawyers and architects and sharp-suited young entrepreneurs from the glitzy Gunwharf Quays development across the road. Most of the informants Winter ran would die of social exposure the moment they stepped in through the door.
On the phone this woman Juanita had offered a handful of names for collateral. They were good names, names that Winter recognised from the eighties, young thugs who’d run with the 6.57 crew, packing the first-class carriages of Saturday’s early train out of the city, terrorising rival fans in football grounds all over the country. A decade later, in a development that would have won plaudits from the Harvard Business School, these psychopaths had transferred their considerable talents to the supply of Class A narcotics, calling on that same nationwide network of hardcore football hooligans to underwrite the deal. In the process the best of them had become very rich indeed, but what made this success story so very Portsmouth was the fact that they refused to change their ways. They still wore knock-off Armani suits. They still preferred the Stanley knife to the corporate lawyer. And however gaudily they flaunted their new wealth, they still lived in the backstreets of Buckland and Paulsgrove, a constant taunt for a police force increasingly bound hand and foot by paperwork, legislation and the nervous hand of the headquarters performance management team.
Take informants. Winter was forty-seven. In the early days, he and his colleagues had enjoyed a virtually free hand with the men and
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