Graham Hurley - Cut to Black

With the meeting over, Faraday was last to leave the table. At the door, Willard called him back. He was standing at his desk, firing up his laptop. At length, he keyed a file.

"Prebble e-mailed me this late last night. There's something you ought to look at."

Faraday recognised the asset analysis Prebble had been compiling on Friday afternoon. But for the accountant's abrupt departure for the train, he'd have read it earlier.

"Here." Willard had scrolled through to the final page. Under "Miscellaneous Assets' Prebble had listed a 7000 payment from Bellux Ltd to a local company called Ambrym. Faraday felt the blood begin to ice in his veins. Bellux Ltd was the most active of Mackenzie's many companies, the engine he used to power his commercial empire. An explanatory note explained that the money was a one-off contribution to a health education video.

"Ambrym?" Willard looked up at Faraday.

"Eadie's company."

"And the video?"

"That's the one J-J's been working on."

"About what, exactly?"

"Heroin."

"Co-funded by the guy who's been running drugs most of his life? If this wasn't Monday, I'd say we were looking at a piss-take here. What the fuck's going on?"

"I've no idea, sir." Faraday couldn't take his eyes off the screen.

Ambrym Productions. November 5, Z002. 7000. Grip, he thought.

Willard stepped away from the desk. Yesterday had left its mark on him: eyes shadowed by fatigue, a fold of skin bloodied under his chin where he'd been careless with the razor.

"We shouldn't be having this conversation, Joe, but let me remind you of the obvious. Investigating officers look for motive. You live with this woman. You want the best for her. You want her to succeed. 7000 isn't a lot of motive but it's a start. You get my drift?"

Faraday nodded. There was nothing to say. Dimly, he heard Willard telling him to sort out a list of Whale Island staff who might have had access to the Tumbril offices: cleaners, caterers, photocopier engineers. He wanted full details on his desk by tomorrow morning.

"OK?"

"Yes, sir." Faraday was back beside the door. "Cathy Lamb's little job…" he began.

"Tonight, you mean? Mike Valentine? The P amp;O ferry?" Willard looked at Faraday for a long moment, then shook his head. "The last thing she needs is help from us, Joe. I've told her to sort it from her end."

It was mid morning before Cathy Lamb was summoned to Secretan's office.

The Chief Supt had received a full brief on the forthcoming operation aboard The Pride of Portsmouth, and had indicated his approval. While he understood that the operation was purely speculative, based on thinnish evidence, he badly needed a headline or two of his own in the rapidly developing media war. Twice last week, the News had led its main evening edition with drug-related stories involving generous helpings of extreme violence. The city might have survived the Blitz, he told Cathy, but at this rate half the population would be thinking hard about evacuation.

At lunchtime he was hosting a state visit from the Chief Constable and two carloads of assorted worthies. Portsmouth had been chosen as a prime example of a well-run BCU making serious inroads into the Home Office crime target figures. Before the Chief's party arrived, it might be nice to get the latest body count.

Cathy liked Secretan. He radiated exactly the kind of quiet exasperation she herself had turned into a way of life. There was no point, she decided, giving him anything but the truth.

"Good news first, sir. You remember the Scouse lad we picked up at the station? The one we tied to Nick Hayder with the DNA hit? The accident analysis guys think Hayder must have been dragged along for a bit before being thrown off. Then the lad at the wheel went back and ran him over."

"Nice." Secretan was staring out of the window. "You've charged him?"

"Last night, sir. He's still in hospital under guard. He's got no alibi for the Tuesday night. Says he was out of the city but can't remember where."

"Motive?"

"Hard to say. My guess is that Nick came across him by chance when he was out running, put two and two together, and challenged him. The rest we know."

"I thought there were two of them?"

"There probably were. We've been trying to nail down the other one for days now, spot of modest entrapment, but it came to nothing. If you're asking me, I'd say the Scousers have buggered off."

"Why?"

"Pastures new, sir. Plus the Yardies have arrived. As you know."

Secretan was looking glum. After months of harassment by a specialist Met unit, Jamaican dealers were spilling out of London and looking for profits elsewhere. Operation Trident might have been a high-profile success, tackling black-on-black gun crime, but in Secre-tan's view the problem had been displaced rather than cured. Every Chief Supt's waking nightmare featured Yardie gangs, and in Pompey's case the nightmare was in danger of coming true.

Secretan pushed his chair back from the desk and got to his feet. On a clear day, his office window offered a distant glimpse of the line of forts on top of Portsdown Hill. He stood there for a moment, deep in thought, then turned back to Cathy Lamb.

"Crack houses?" he suggested bleakly. "Machetes? Glocks? Where does all this bloody end?"

Faraday got to Hampshire Terrace in mid afternoon. He found J-J at the PC, sorting through video rushes from Al Jazeera. On screen, some wary-looking US troops, taken prisoner by the Iraqis, were being paraded for the benefit of the world's press. Watching their faces, Faraday realised just how helpless both armies had become in the face of political decisions taken half a world away. These men were barely out of their teens. For all their hi-tech body armour and helmet-mounted gizmos, they understood nothing of the people they'd been dispatched to liberate. Now, as prisoners of war, they were clearly expecting the worst.

Faraday laid his hand on his son's shoulder, making J-J jump.

"We need a world without politicians," he signed. "Can you get that in your video?"

J-J thought about the challenge for a moment or two. Then, to Faraday's immense relief, he grinned.

"Eadie's been looking for you," he signed back. "I think she's gone home."

"Home?"

"The flat."

Faraday spotted Eadie's battered Suzuki parked on the se afront opposite the converted hotel that housed her apartment. He slipped the Mondeo into an adjoining space and sat behind the wheel for a moment or two, wondering quite how to handle what would inevitably follow.

Willard had made it absolutely plain that Faraday himself was implicated by Ambrym's acceptance of Mackenzie's money. Any investigating senior officer any court would view the tie-up with profound suspicion. On the other hand, the last few days had shaken Faraday to the core, and in ways that surprised him he realised how much he missed this woman's company. Eadie being Eadie, she was probably unaware of any sense of crisis between them but that, in a way, was the point. Eadie was one of the world's great optimists. She had boundless faith in her own abilities and the guts to see a challenge through. The rest, as she so often pointed out, was conversation.

He found her upstairs, perched on a stool by the phone. The moment Faraday appeared, she blew him a kiss and pointed at the kettle. She wanted needed tea. Faraday busied himself with the Earl Grey and managed to find a packet of ginger snaps in the tin she used for biscuits.

The conversation on the phone was becoming heated. No, she had absolutely no intention of making money on this deal. The movie was going into schools at cost price. Given any kind of demand, she could dupe VHS cassettes at fifty pence. Even with postage and packing there couldn't be a school in the country that couldn't afford a couple of quid for a glimpse of the truth. When the voice at the other end started to argue again, she cut him off.