Willard produced a toothpick and began to stab at something lodged between one of his back molars. Nearly a decade of policing the city had left him with a limited faith in secondary education.
'Highland Road ran a check on the plate number. We've got twenty-six possibilities, including four from Liverpool, two from Birkenhead, and one from Runcorn. Dave's organising a trawl through last night's tapes.'
'All of them?'
'Every single one.'
There were more than a hundred CCTV cameras in Portsmouth, each one of them generating hours of videotape. If anyone needed a clue to just how seriously Willard was taking last night's assault, then here it was.
'So you're thinking out of town?'
'I'm thinking we have to find the car. If it ties up with the Scousers, then we pull Cathy Lamb into the loop. Give her a chance to put the record straight.'
Briefly, he told Faraday about last night's abortive bust in Penning-ton Road. As the senior CID officer for the city, he'd received a full report, agreeing with Secretan that the new Crime Squad needed to shake down in a very big hurry. Any more disasters like that, and the city would become open house for any passing scumbag.
'So what did you make of Tumbril} Imber give you the tour?'
The abrupt change of subject took Faraday by surprise. He began to frame a reply but thought better of it. In a situation like this, it was wiser to check your bearings.
'Brian Imber seems to think you've rattled a few cages,' he said carefully.
'He's right. We have.' Willard was close to smiling.
'Like who?'
'Like Harry Wayte, for starters. Seems to think he owns the bloody drugs issue in this force.'
'I thought that was down to Brian?'
'It is. It always has been. Harry was late to the party. In fact I can remember a time he was telling everyone Imber was off his head.
It's only now the penny's dropped that he's started to see the full potential.'
Until a recent reorganisation, Harry Wayte had been Imber's boss, the DI in charge of the Tactical Crime Unit, a dozen or so detectives working out of secured premises in Fareham, an old market town engulfed by the mainland conurbation that sprawls towards Southampton. The TCU had won its battle honours in the early nineties, tackling an explosion in drug-related crime, and had since become the fiefdom for a succession of hard-driving DIs who made the most of its reach and independence. Harry Wayte was the longest-serving of these DIs, an abrasive, plain-spoken ex-Chief Petty Officer, barely a year off retirement.
'You don't think he'd be in with a shout?' Faraday enquired.
'Never. And what's more, he knows it. The only way he's going to get promotion at his age is by lifting something really tasty off Imber and then claiming it for himself. He's doing his best, I'll give him that.'
'But Imber's out of the TCU now.'
'Sure, but that never stopped Harry.'
'You're telling me he knows about Tumbril}'
'I'm telling you he's been busting a gut to find out. And I'm telling you something else, too. It's guys like Harry who put the word round.
This job's hard enough as it is. What we don't need is half the force behaving like bloody kids, thinking we've stolen some kind of march on them.'
'We?'
'Nick Hayder, Imber, now you.'
He broke off, and Faraday found himself nodding. Most policemen were cursed with an acute sense of territory and Harry Wayte was clearly no exception. In his rare moments of leisure, the DI indulged his passion for naval history by building exquisitely crafted model warships.
Faraday had come across him several times, crouched on the edge of Craneswater boating lake, launching his latest radio-controlled frigate into the thick of battle. Faraday had envied his peace of mind, alone in his private bubble.
'What are you up to this evening?' Willard was checking his watch.
'Any plans?'
'None that I can think of.'
'Good. There's someone I want you meet. You know the jetty alongside Warrior}'
HMS Warrior had been the navy's first steam-driven ironclad. Fully restored, she dominated the view from the harbour station. The neighbouring jetty lay within the historic dockyard. Faraday was to be there for six o'clock. With luck, they'd be back by nine.
'Back from where?'
'Tell you later. Bring something warm.' Willard nodded across the row of parked cars towards the High Street. 'For now I want you round to the Sally Port Hotel. Room six. There's a guy waiting for you,
name of Graham Wallace. He's u/c. I've authorised him to brief you. OK?'
Faraday turned to stare at Willard. Operations like this were trademarked by what the Force Media Unit termed 'a variety of specialist investigative techniques'. Imber had already tallied covert surveillance, phone intercepts, and forensic accounting. So why hadn't anyone mentioned undercover officers?
'Is that a direct question?' Willard was fingering the leather steering wheel.
'Yes, sir. It is.'
'Then here's the answer. Imber doesn't know.'
'Doesn't know} Why on earth not?'
'Because Hayder wanted to keep it tight.' The smile was back on Willard's face. 'A decision with which I totally agreed.'
The taxi dropped J-J off in the heart of Fratton. He stooped to the window, waiting for his change. When the driver glanced again at the address on his dashboard computer and told him to watch his back, J-J pretended not to understand. All he was doing, he told himself, was running an errand for a friend.
He set off down Pennington Road, his heart lumping away beneath the thin cotton of his Madness T-shirt. Like it or not, he'd suddenly found himself skewered on what Eadie Sykes liked to call the sharp end.
The statistics he'd memorised from a thousand magazine articles, the transcripts he'd read from other peoples' research projects, the confessional truths he'd tried to wring from interviewee after potential interviewee, all this carefully filed information had finally boiled down to a single address, 30 Pennington Road. If you wanted to mess with your life, if you wanted to end up in Daniel's state, then this was where you started.
Parked cars lined both sides of the road. Walking beside them, J-J counted the houses until he got to number 30. Someone, he thought, must have given the front door a good kicking. The splintered panels had been crudely battened and there was a sheet of old plywood nailed over what must have been a square of glass. There was no number on the door and he had to pause a moment, rechecking the houses on either side, before he ventured a knock.
Being deaf, he never knew how loud a knock he was making. Normally, this wouldn't matter. When it came to handicap people were amazingly forgiving but on this occasion his nerve ends told him he needed to get it right. Too soft, and no one would hear. Too loud, too aggressive, and God knows what might happen.
J-J closed his eyes a moment, swallowing hard, wondering whether it wasn't too late to beat a retreat. Daniel, back in Old Portsmouth, had warned him about the guys in number 30. The word he'd used was rough.
Rough, he'd said, but OK. OK meant they delivered. Rough, as the taxi driver had pointed out, meant watch your step.
Nothing happened after the first knock. Shivering now, J-J reached out again then froze as someone pulled the door open. A face appeared.
Unshaven. Pierced eyebrows. Nose stud. And young, younger even than J-J himself.
'Yeah?'
J-J stood rooted to the pavement, suddenly oblivious to the rain. For the first time in his life he didn't know what to do, what signal to send, what expression to adopt. Then he saw the dog. It was a black pit bull, lunging out of the gloom inside. A length of rope tied it to one of the bannisters at the foot of the stairs and every time it threw itself towards the open door the bannister bowed.
