Graham Hurley - Western Approaches

But what could she say? And wasn’t company — of any description — a brighter prospect than yet another wet afternoon banged up in Chantry Cottage?

The endless rain had made the front door stick again. She turned the key and gave it a kick at the bottom before stamping the mud from her wellies and wrestling the buggy indoors. For some reason she’d left her mobile in the kitchen. Half-expecting a text from Jimmy, she took it out onto the back patio and fired it up. She wasn’t wrong about a text, but oddly enough it came from Gill. She’d had to change her plans. Instead of descending on Tuesday she’d arrive tomorrow in time for lunch. ‘Lucky us,’ she’d texted at the end, ‘Can’t wait.’

It was mid-afternoon before Suttle got to Tusker Farm. Constantine had yet to be upgraded to a full HOLMES 2 enquiry and in the absence of a statement reader, Houghton wanted Suttle to sort out the scraps of feedback from the marina, which were beginning to fatten into something more substantial. The house-to-house teams, while failing to unearth the bankable evidence that would turn Constantine into a fully fledged murder enquiry, were reporting widespread resentment of Kinsey and his behaviour.

According to one resident, a mainstay of the Exmouth Quays development, this was a guy who’d never had any time for his neighbours. He openly flouted some of the by-laws by having midsummer barbecues on his balcony and riding his mountain bike around the marina basin. He never turned up at the community fund-raising events — Canapes on the Quay, Carols on the Quay — that had become such a feature of waterside life. He never put his hand in his pocket when appeals were launched for a commemorative bench or a fighting fund to battle a nearby development, and when she’d confronted him, knocking on his door and trying to shame him into writing a cheque, he’d told her to go away and get a life.

None of this, of course, suggested grounds for dumping the guy off his own balcony and leaving his body to cool in the rain, but it confirmed a wider irritation. The landlord of the Beach pub, re-interviewed at his own request after the Sunday lunchtime drinkers had drifted away, confirmed that Kinsey had also upset a fair number of locals in the town, firstly by writing to the local paper and complaining about early-morning noise from fishermen putting to sea from the dock beneath his apartment, and later by mounting a vigorous defence of a bunch of developers planning yet another multi-storey block of flats within shouting distance of the marina. To upset these two very different groups of locals — working trawler men and middle-class worthies — took some talent, and in the view of the landlord Kinsey definitely had some kind of death wish. The interviewing D/C had underlined the phrase, bringing it to the attention of Houghton when he got back to Constantine ’s temporary home.

Suttle was thinking about it now, as he bumped the Impreza into the farmyard. Houghton wanted him to develop the intel picture on Kinsey — the kind of guy he’d been, the risks he’d run, the people he’d upset — and barely hours into the enquiry he was already tallying an ever-longer list of potential enemies. Paul Winter, a Pompey D/C who’d taught him everything he needed to know about the darker arts of CID work, had once told him that money, serious money, carried a smell of its own. At the time Suttle hadn’t really understood what Winter had been getting at, but his years on the tastier Major Crime jobs had wised him up. Money puts you in the bubble, he thought. And that’s when you’re truly vulnerable.

The farmer’s wife answered Suttle’s knock. Molly Doyle had been wrong about a caravan. Half a field away, tucked beside the shelter of a hedge, he could see what looked like a mobile home.

Suttle introduced himself. He said he was looking for a Mr Milo Symons. The farmer’s wife was still studying Suttle’s warrant card.

‘In trouble is he?’ She didn’t seem surprised.

‘Not at all.’

Suttle asked whether she’d been at home last night.

‘Of course I was. We both were.’

‘And does Mr Symons come in this way? Through the farmyard?’

‘No. They’ve got a separate entrance up beyond their place. It’s a gate we use to get the tractor into the field.’

‘So would you hear anything when they come and go?’

‘Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On the wind. And Bess.’

Bess, it turned out, was their sheepdog. Ears like a bat.

‘So last night?’

‘She heard nothing. Nothing that I can remember.’

‘Around midnight? Maybe later?’

‘Nothing. But the wind had died so she probably wouldn’t.’ Suttle brought the conversation to an end. Symons and his fancy woman had evidently been renting the mobile home for a couple of years. So far the farmer’s wife had no complaints. The woman dressed like a tart, but these days that was so common you barely noticed.

Suttle thanked her and set off up the field. The grass was still damp underfoot but the sky was cloudless and there was a definite hint of the coming summer in the golden drifts of buttercups. Several fields away, Suttle could see lambs worrying their mums to death and he found himself thinking of Grace. There were lambs on a hobby farm up the lane from Chantry Cottage. Maybe Lizzie had wheeled their daughter up there for a look. Maybe.

The mobile home was bigger than he’d expected. A line of washing was flapping in the breeze and a sodden cardboard box beside the door was brimming with crushed tinnies. Behind the mobile home, invisible from the farmhouse, Suttle found a white Transit van. The van was pocked with rust around the sills. There was paperwork all over the passenger seat, and half a cup of something that looked like tea was balanced on the dashboard. In the well beneath the glovebox, a litter of empty crisp packets.

Suttle had phoned ahead, making sure Symons was available for interview. He’d wanted to talk to his partner too, but it seemed Tash was elsewhere.

Symons came to the door. He was tall and thin, dark complexion, single ear stud, a mane of jet-black hair tied at the back with a twist of yellow ribbon. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt under an embroidered waistcoat. With the gypsy look went the hands of an artist: long fine-boned fingers, delicate wrists.

‘Come in. Yeah. Good.’ Symons dismissed the proffered warrant card with a wave of his hand. Already, he seemed to be saying, Suttle was some kind of mate.

On the phone Suttle had been vague about the reason for his visit. Now he told Symons about Kinsey.

‘ Dead? Shit. How did that happen?’ His amazement seemed genuine.

Suttle said he didn’t know. In the circumstances it was his job to put together Kinsey’s last movements and try and understand what might have led to his death.

‘But the guy was cool with everything. Why. .?’

Suttle was looking around the space that obviously served as a living room. There was a built-in sofa that probably doubled as a spare bed and an Ikea rocking chair that had seen better days. The far end opened into a galley kitchen and Suttle could smell fresh coffee. But what took Suttle’s eye was the PC on the desk in the corner. An image hung on the screen, two bodies on a bed. One of them was Symons. Straddling him was a woman. The long fall of hair down her naked back was a violent shade of mauve.

‘That’s Tash.’ Symons laughed. ‘You want to see the rest?’

Without waiting for an answer he stepped across to the desk. A single keystroke brought the sequence to life. Tash was moving very slowly, barely lifting her arse, her hands cupping her breasts. Symons’ eyes were closed. These people have been at it a while, Suttle thought. Years and years. Perfect control. Lots of practice.