Graham Hurley - Western Approaches

Lenahan’s cottage lay in a tiny cobbled street with a glimpse of the river at the far end. Clouds of gulls swooped over the rooftops and Suttle could hear the soft lap of water on the pebbles that fringed the tiny harbour. He knocked again, wondering if Kinsey’s cox was still sleeping off last night’s piss-up, and then stepped back from the door and offered his face to a sudden burst of sunshine. The weather had brightened from the west, and standing in the quiet of this little village, listening to the gulls, Suttle realised that he was beginning to enjoy Constantine .

Most of the jobs that came to Major Crime were, to be frank, tacky. In Portsmouth he’d lost touch of the number of pissed retards who’d ended up battering a friend or a stranger to death. There was no mystery, no challenge, to enquiries like these, and even the drug scene — a dependable source of more interesting work — was riddled with lowlife. Heading west, he’d somehow assumed that he’d be stepping into a different world, classier, more sophisticated, but crime hot spots like Torbay and Plymouth were as squalid and mindlessly violent as anywhere in Pompey. To date, he’d worked on two murders and an alleged stranger rape. In all three cases the real culprit had been cheap vodka and the girl reporting the rape had turned out to have been as pissed as the rest of them. These were lives in free fall, tiny domestic tragedies played out against a landscape of crappy bedsits, cheap drugs and increasingly elaborate benefit scams.

Constantine , on the other hand, already looked a great deal more promising. An alleged millionaire with no apparent reason to end his days plus five partygoing crew mates who may or may not have wished him well. Molly Doyle had painted a picture of each of these people. These very definitely weren’t lowlife. Eamonn Lenahan was a medic. Andy Poole worked in hedge funds. Pendrick was an electrician. These people had jobs, education, prospects. Booze had undoubtedly played a part last night, but it was a relief not to be looking at SOC shots of fat battered women lying dead on yet another stretch of fag-cratered orange nylon-pile carpet.

Suttle was about to knock for the last time when the cottage door opened. A small figure in a pair of black boxers was rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He’d found a pair of pink slippers from somewhere and hadn’t shaved for a while.

‘Mr Lenahan?’

‘The same. Who the fuck are you?’ Irish accent. Inquisitive smile.

Suttle offered his warrant card. He’d appreciate a word or two.

‘No problem, my friend. Always a pleasure.’ He stooped to retrieve a pint of milk and stood aside to let Suttle in. The house smelled of burned toast. Lenahan blamed his fellow tenant.

‘Sweet wee girl. Off out early, she and her lovely friend. How can I help you?’

The sitting room was tiny and dark — a single tatty armchair, a battered sofa and a trestle table in the corner loaded with books and a copy of yesterday’s Guardian .

Suttle took a seat. There was a row of framed photos on the opposite wall, randomly hung. Somewhere hot. A village setting. Some kind of open-air market in the background. A crowd of black faces mugging for the camera, many of them kids.

‘Sudan.’ Lenahan had found a T-shirt from somewhere and a pair of trackie bottoms. ‘Know it at all?’

‘No.’

‘Shame. We all need a bit of Sudan. Keeps you fucking sane.’ He perched on the sofa, his legs tucked beneath him. ‘So what have you got for me?’

Suttle explained about Kinsey. The news that he’d been found dead sparked no reaction whatsoever. Lenahan just looked at him.

‘You’re not surprised?’ Suttle asked.

‘Nothing surprises me.’

‘You’re not. .’ Suttle frowned, hunting for the right phrase ‘. . upset?’

‘Never. You go, you’re gone. That’s pretty fucking final. Dying would have upset yer man, for sure. Kinsey was one for the options, you know what I mean? That’s how he operated. Always. Options. Possibilities. That sweet little opportunity no other fucker ever spotted. Dying’s a terrible option. And you’re talking to an expert.’

Suttle blinked. He’d been right. This definitely wasn’t Torbay. Lenahan hadn’t finished.

‘Under that apartment of his, you say?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you’re going to want to know about yesterday, about last night. Am I getting warm?’

‘You are.’

‘OK, so here’s the way it was. We need to start with the race. The race is everything. And why’s that? Because the race, my friend, is where it begins and ends.’

Yesterday’s outing, he explained, was a head race, nine and a bit miles down the River Dart from Totnes to Dartmouth, pretty as you like, acre after rolling acre of God’s fucking England. The boats start every thirty seconds and the trick is to knock them off, one by one.

‘Knock them off?’

‘Pass them. That’s the trick, that’s what we’re there for, that’s what Kinsey wants us to do. Fastest boat wins. And if you pass every other bugger, you’re home safe.’

Off the start line, he said, they were towards the back of the fleet. Lenahan is in the cox’s seat face to face with Andy Poole. Andy is stroke. He sets the rate. Lenahan’s known Andy for ever, rowed with him for years on the Thames, won oodles of fucking cups. Between them, they’ll boss the race.

‘So we’re half a mile down the course, a long straight bit before the first bend, and already we’ve reeled in the boat ahead. The guys doing the work have no idea what’s going on because they’re all looking backwards, but I haven’t said a thing so far because it’s good to toss the guys the odd sweetie, and so I’m nudging towards the right bank for the overtake and you know what? It’s Kinsey, the man himself, who’s up there in the bow, he’s the one who susses what’s happening and steals a little glance over his shoulder, just a little look now, one of his trademark looks, and here’s the point, here’s what I’m trying to tell you. As we step on these guys, as Andy pumps up the rate and we go surging past, racing past, I get to see the expression on Kinsey’s face. He’s creamed them, he’s fucking buried them, and the sweetness of that knowledge, that big fucking jolt of adrenalin, puts this nasty little smile on his face. He’s top dog. He’s up there with the angels. The heavenly fucking chorus is giving it full throttle and every last cell in his body tells him he can do this for ever. He doesn’t feel a whisper of knackeredness. That man’s got the world by the throat. All the nausea we’ve gone through in training, all the money he’s spent, all that has paid off, big time, in spades, and all he needs now is more of the same. One bunch of muppets crushed. Eleven to go. And you know what? Yer man’s right to think that. Because that’s called winning.’

Lenahan shifted his weight on the sofa and offered an emphatic nod, driving the point home. There was a moment of silence and Suttle wondered whether to applaud or not. Was Kinsey’s prize cox like this all the time? Or was the performance strictly for Suttle’s benefit? Either way, he needed to find out more.

Lenahan was cranking up again. By the time they got to Dartmouth, he said, Milo and Kinsey had hit the wall and even the last couple of overtakes couldn’t mask their pain. But they still crossed the line in 58 minutes 27 seconds, an easy win, and an hour or so later they’re in the Dartmouth clubhouse on the right side of a couple of pints and they’re scooping up the trophy and milking the applause and feeling thoroughly pleased with themselves when Kinsey starts again.

‘Starts what?’

‘Post-race analysis. That’s his fucking phrase, not mine. My friend, you need to make an effort, you need to imagine it. We’ve won. We’ve done the business. We’re all getting happily bladdered and Kinsey starts banging on about post-race analysis . Where we got things wrong. What we could do better next time. How we need to sharpen up on the catch or the extraction or changes of rate or any fucking thing. Can you believe that? We’ve pissed all over the opposition. We’ve come close to setting some kind of course record. And he’s talking about rate changes ? The man’s an eejit. Was an eejit. And that’s being kind.’