Graham Hurley - Cut to Black

Imber was explaining about the rest of the security arrangements. There were double locks on the main door, accessible by code and swipe card, plus the eight-foot barbed-wire fence that surrounded the entire site.

At Nick Hayder's insistence, the office was regularly swept for bugs, the cleaner had been security-checked, and every member of the five-strong team had signed a binding undertaking never to discuss the operation with anyone else. In terms of paranoia, thought Faraday, this operation was in a class of its own.

"You think we've gone over the top?" Imber was watching him carefully.

"Just a bit."

"You saw Nick this morning? Unconscious? Legs a mess? Crushed pelvis?"

"You're telling me that was related?"

"I'm telling you we took every conceivable precaution and someone still managed to switch his lights out. Whether that's just coincidence, who can say? All we've tried to do is give ourselves a bit of privacy."

From the adjoining office came the sound of a door opening, and then the bustle of heavy footsteps. Moments later, Faraday found himself looking at a familiar figure: low-cut dress, huge bosoms, thick gloss lipstick, long purple nails flecked with glitter, and beneath the mountainous body a pair of shapely legs that had never failed to take him by surprise.

"Joyce."

"Sheriff."

"You're part of this?" Faraday gestured round.

"Too right I am. Archivist, doughnut supplier, hangover cures and light maintenance. Plus I deal with the ruder phone calls. Unless you're nice to me, you get a spanking." She grinned at him. "Did I hear yes to coffee?"

Without waiting for an answer, she stepped back into the office. Imber rolled his eyes.

"You two know each other?"

"Very well. Joyce took over at Highland Road a couple of years back when Vanessa got killed."

"And you survived?"

"More than. Joyce was priceless. Has she still got the agency for Beanie Babes?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And German porn?"

"In spades, big Jiffy bag from Hamburg every fortnight. We get the trainee reggies queueing at the door. They think she's something else."

"They're right. She is."

Through the open door, Faraday could hear her singing as she sorted out mugs for the coffee. Peggy Lee had always been a favourite; regret stitched through with a silky courage.

While Imber fielded a phone call, Faraday perched himself on the edge of a nearby desk. Joyce had disappeared from Highland Road after a cancer scare. Faraday had phoned her a couple of times, checking on the progress of the radiotherapy, but she'd always trivialised the whole thing the way you might dismiss a headache. Sure there was a little lump. Everyone got them. No big deal.

Faraday had never been quite sure whether this optimism of hers was uniquely American or whether she was simply being brave, but either way to his eternal shame Joyce had dropped out of his life, forgotten beneath the daily torrent of volume crime that surged through Highland Road.

"You made it then?"

"Sure. Zapped the little bastards."

"Bastards? Plural?"

"Breast, lymph nodes, couple in the neck." The purple nails traced the progress of the tumours. "Got real interesting when they started talking mastectomy."

Faraday stared at her. Her breasts looked real enough to him.

"So what happened?"

"I told them no way. They could try anything else, didn't matter what, but we'd all go down together. Worked real good. Chemotherapy you wouldn't believe. Couple of weeks of that shit and the little bastards came out with their hands up. Bang, bang, bang. Full military funeral but theirs not mine." She glanced up. "Still take sugar?"

Faraday nodded. For the first time, he noticed the display of photos on the far wall. Imber was still deep in conversation.

"Here." Joyce handed him a mug of coffee. "Let me give you the tour."

Faraday followed her across the office. The biggest of the photos was an aerial shot of a sizeable property, red-tiled roof, big double bays, tall sash windows. There was a Mercedes convertible and an SUV on the patterned brick drive in front of the double garage, and a ne wish-looking swimming pool occupied part of the garden at the front.

Certain features security cameras, intruder-resistant thorn bushes, remotely operated double gates had been identified and labelled, and there was a circle around a small wooden hut tucked beside a child's swing.

"That's a kennel. The guy just loves his dogs." Joyce was demolishing her second chocolate biscuit. "Two ridge backs Clancy and Spud."

"This is Mackenzie's?"

"Sure. 13 Sandown Road. Now isn't that cute? And don't you just want to ask how they ever gave him planning permission? Nice area like that?"

Faraday followed her pointing finger. Above the first-floor bedrooms, a huge balconette had been built into the roof. A skirt of chromium and smoked glass hid the balconette from view but the angle of the photograph revealed four sun loungers with a couple of tables in between. Faraday nodded. Sandown Road lay in the heart of Craneswater Park. Craneswater was as select as Southsea got, street after street of generously proportioned Edwardian villas with plenty of garden and views across the Solent. People who'd made it to this middle class enclave guarded their heritage with a fierce passion. Joyce was right, Faraday thought. How come Bazza Mackenzie had been allowed this sudden splash of Florida?

"And here, look, the ASU boys have done us proud." Joyce was indicating an object in the garden. "You know what that is?"

Faraday stepped closer.

"Some kind of floodlight?"

"Gold star for the sheriff!" Joyce was beaming. "He's got five of them.

Evenings you get the full works, and believe me we're talking serious gels. Mondays it's mauve, Tuesdays puke green, and Wednesdays… my favourite…"

"Purple?"

"Cerise. We'll end up with a charge sheet long as your arm but good taste won't figure."

Imber, his phone call over, had joined them. Faraday nodded at the house.

"You've paid him a visit?"

"Not yet." Imber shook his head. "That photo's in case we have to at short notice, but the ASU have promised an update if we give them enough warning."

"Where does the documentation come from?" Faraday glanced back towards the smaller room that housed the files.

"Production Orders. We're using the DTA. So far we've concentrated on property deals and transactions in and out of Gibraltar. Going back ten years, that's a lot of paper."

The Drug Trafficking Act offered an investigation like this the power to raise Production Orders from a judge sitting in chambers. These, in turn, would have enabled Hayder to seize a huge range of documentation, from bank records to mortgage deeds. In theory, the target should remain ignorant of this ever-widening trawl. Fat chance.

"He'll know… won't he?"

"Of course he will. His accountant will have told him. His bank. His brief. Being Bazza, he's probably flattered. There's not much we can do to shake him. Not yet."

"Why didn't Nick go for supply?"

"Because Mackenzie's arm's length now, doesn't let the stuff anywhere near him. If we wanted to make a supply charge stick, we should have been doing this years ago."

"But he still controls it all?"

"Of course he does. That's the way business works. He bankrolls supply and helps himself to a fat percentage. The richer you get, the more the other blokes do all the running around. Arm's length, he's laughing."

Faraday was looking at the other photos. One showed Mackenzie getting out of the sleek convertible, a small, stocky, eager-looking figure with a broad grin on his face. Another showed a good-sized motor cruiser nosing into a marina berth. Both bore the imprint of a surveillance operation, the photographer working from a distance at the end of a powerful telephoto lens.