Graham Hurley: Western Approaches

‘Houghton about?’

The CSI was making notes on a clipboard. Suttle was trying to remember his name.

‘It’s Mark, if you were wondering.’ The CSI didn’t look up. ‘And she’s talking to Mr Nandy.’

Suttle was still studying the body sprawled among the puddles on the wet paving stones.

‘So what happened?’

‘He has to have fallen.’ The CSI glanced up at last. ‘We’re thinking the top apartment. Big fuck-off place. Number 37.’

‘The guy’s got a name?’

‘Kinsey. According to a neighbour.’

‘Anything else you want to share?’

The CSI gave him a look. Wet weather made his stump ache.

‘Some arsehole’s been spewing round the corner if you want to take a look.’ He nodded at the sea wall at the end of the walkway. ‘Apart from that? No.’

Suttle was circling the body, examining it from every angle. The guy was on the small side. He was wearing a pair of Nike track pants and a red singlet. A crest on the singlet featured a pair of crossed oars. His feet were bare and there was something awkward in the way the body seemed to change angle around the neck. Blood from both ears had pooled on the paving stones and more blood had matted in his thinning hair. Guessing his age wasn’t easy but Suttle thought around forty. His eyes were open, the lightest blue, and the last seconds of his life had left him with an expression of faint surprise.

Suttle knelt to examine the big Rotary on Kinsey’s left wrist. The impact had smashed the face of the watch. Four minutes past three. Suttle’s eyes strayed to the name beneath the crest on the singlet: Jake K .

‘Has Mr Nandy asked for the pathologist?’

‘Here, you mean?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘He thinks there’s no point. And he’s probably right. A fall from that kind of height you’re talking head first. If there’s anything else, it’ll show up at the PM.’

‘You think he jumped?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Suttle nodded. His early years as a uniformed probationer in Pompey had taught him everything he ever wanted to know about the way the weight of the human head can turn a jumper upside down. Twice he’d had to deal with deranged adolescents who’d turned their backs on the world, or on a fucked-up relationship, and stepped off the top level of the city’s Tricorn car park. Fall dynamics was a phrase he’d never grown to like.

He turned to the CSI again.

‘CCTV?’

‘There isn’t any. The nearest cameras are in the town centre. We’re talking nearly a mile away.’

‘None at all?’ Suttle was amazed.

‘Zero. Nada .’

‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘So how’s Mr Nandy?’

‘Manic. Argyle lost again yesterday and he thinks they’re stuffed.’

Suttle turned to go. CID-wide, Det-Supt Malcolm Nandy was recognised as the king of lost causes. Trying to defend his empire against the marauding cost-cutters at force HQ was one of them. Plymouth Argyle was another. His beloved Pilgrims were on the edge of bankruptcy, and among the Major Crime Team Nandy was rumoured to be bunging them the odd fiver, doing his bit to help them stave off oblivion.

Fat chance on both counts, Suttle thought, ducking under the tape again.

Lizzie knelt beside the fireplace in a third attempt to coax a flame from the pile of damp kindling. Grace stood in her playpen by the sofa, shaking the wooden bars in a bid to attract the cat’s attention. Her morning bottle and a modest bowl of porridge had at last put a smile on her tiny face.

‘Daddy?’ she gurgled.

‘He’s at work, my love.’

‘Daddy gone?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Lizzie abandoned the fire. Even the balls of newsprint beneath the kindling, the leftovers from last week’s local paper, seemed reluctant to light. She pulled one out and flattened it against the cracked slates on the hearth, wondering if she’d missed anything. PENSIONER’S HANDBAG LEFT ON BUS went the headline. Breaking news in Colaton Raleigh, she thought. What the fuck have I done?

She was still taunted by dreams of her last day at work and the get-together in the pub afterwards. Starting her maternity leave in Portsmouth, she’d had every intention of one day resuming her job at the Pompey News . As the favoured feature writer, she’d cornered the market for the plum interviews and the occasional foray into serious investigative journalism, and she’d loved every minute of it. She’d scooped one of the big provincial awards for a feature on racial tensions among the city’s Kosovan community and there’d been a couple of flattering calls from one of the national tabloids, inviting her to send a CV and a representative sample of her recent work. But then came Grace, and nine months later Jimmy had managed to score a promotion of his own. By this time she’d begun to know a different Pompey composed of fat mums at the health centre, ever-partying student drunks down the road and a manic neighbour — heavily tattoed — who claimed to have once met the Pope.

She remembered the morning the letter from Exeter had arrived only too well. That night she and Jimmy had celebrated with champagne and blueberries with lashings of double cream. It had never been part of her career plan to move to Devon, and she’d never realised that her husband had fallen out of love with Portsmouth, but seeing the grin on his face as they emptied the second bottle she realised that she and Grace had no choice. Jimmy had grown up in the country, a straggly little village on the edge of the New Forest, and now he couldn’t wait to introduce her to what he called the sanity of rural life.

Chantry Cottage had been his idea. His new employers — Devon and Cornwall Constabulary — had wanted him to start rather earlier than he’d expected, and he’d headed west without taking the extended leave he’d promised her. The Major Crime Investigation Team he was joining put him through a two-week force induction programme which gave him a little spare time at the end of each working afternoon. Within days, a trawl of the Exeter estate agencies had produced half a dozen potential buys. All of them, in Lizzie’s view, were way too expensive. Property prices in Pompey were beginning to sink and mortgage companies were starting to demand ever bigger deposits country-wide. Jimmy was disappointed — she could hear it in his voice — but a week later she was looking at yet another set of estate agent’s particulars. Chantry Cottage, according to Jimmy, nestled in a fold of the Otter Valley. It had half an acre of garden, mature fruit trees and space for a garage. The estate agent was the first to admit the property needed a little work. Hence the giveaway price of £179,000.

Needed a little work . Lizzie understood language, made a living from it, knew the multitude of blemishes a well turned phrase could hide. Needed a little work?

She lifted Grace from the playpen and wandered through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. She’d first seen the property back in high summer last year. It was a beautiful August day with real heat in the sun, and driving down the Otter Valley from the quaintly named Newton Poppleford even she had to admit that this little corner of England was hard to resist. The way the greenness of the valley cupped the water meadows beside the river. The silhouette of a lone buzzard circling high over a waving field of corn. The lumbering herd of cattle that brought them to a halt a couple of minutes later. Grace had kicked her little feet with excitement. She’d never seen cows before.

The cottage lay about a mile outside the village. According to the estate agent, it had once been a chapel, but on first glance Lizzie thought this highly unlikely. Grey slate roof. Red brick construction. Ugly metal-framed windows. The broken gutters were brimming with moss and there were water stains down the exterior walls. The estate agent’s photo had been taken from the back of the house, the view artfully framed by shrubs and a fruit tree. On this evidence, and her husband’s obvious enthusiasm, Lizzie had been expecting something that would grace a calendar. Instead, she found herself looking at a run-down property that might have belonged on one of the more distressed Pompey estates.