Eadie had shaken him more than he cared to admit, not simply because he hated letting the job get between them but because in some important respects he suspected she might be right.
Her junkie interview had been a revelation. As a divisional DI, he bumped into the drug problem every day of his working life, largely because junkies needed to burgle and shoplift to feed their habit. The same names cropped up time and time again on the charge sheets, cutting an ever-deeper groove in the monthly volume crime stats, and in clear-up terms it helped a great deal to know where to look for nicked laptops and help-yourself perfume. But watching the torment of this sweating, moon-faced junkie, with his quietly desperate conviction that heroin was doing him some kind of favour, was the first time that Faraday had truly understood the power of the drug. Getting seriously fond of smack, as Eadie had pointed out, was opting for a form of life imprisonment. No charge, no trial, no jury, no chance of appeal. Just the daily four-hour trek between fixes, with the strongest possible motivation for getting hold of the next wrap.
In this sense, Eadie's video rushes had spoken for themselves, perfectly capturing the choke hold that was heroin addiction.
Strung-out and visibly distressed, Daniel had done his best to rationalise what smack had done to him, to defend the drug the way you might protect a best friend, but even at his most articulate you couldn't avoid the physical realities: the hands crabbing up and down the arms of the chair, the constant scratching, the haunted desperation in his eyes. Add to this the sequence that followed, and Eadie might have a point. Put these images in the right order, let them speak for themselves, and no one in his right mind would go anywhere near the stuff. That, at least, was the theory.
This morning, they'd argued the issue to a standstill. From Faraday's point of view, Eadie had been reckless. If it ever got to court a good lawyer might be able to limit the damage, but she'd sailed desperately close to the wind and taken J-J with her. Sooner or later he'd catch up with the boy and get another perspective on last night's little adventure but on the evidence to date he was amazed that Eadie should take a risk like that for a couple of minutes of video footage. It was, he told her, crazy.
At this, she'd simply laughed. She'd spent half her life taking risks for whatever had seemed to matter at the time, and this movie of hers, this video, was simply another example. From where she was standing it was simply means and ends. If the light at the end of the tunnel was truly important and it was then she didn't care a toss about how dark it got. Whatever it took, however big the risk, it would be worth it.
For Daniel's sake. And for all the other kids who might end up burying themselves in smack.
At this point she'd had to take a call on her mobile, retreating to the privacy of the bedroom. Faraday had caught the name Sarah, but by the time Eadie re-emerged, minutes later, Faraday was on his way out.
They'd exchanged a brief kiss at the door, Eadie plainly preoccupied, and Faraday had made a mental note to ring her later. He thought they were still friends but something new in her face had made him wonder.
Now, at last on the move again, he pondered the obvious irony. Eadie knew nothing about the Bazza Mackenzie operation. He seldom discussed work with her and would never taint pillow talk with something as sensitive as Tumbril. Yet, in her own way, simply by plunging in at the deep end, she probably knew a great deal more about the reality of the drugs scene than he did.
He smiled to himself, remembering Joyce's guided tour of the Tumbril premises. Shelf after shelf of files. Hundreds of surveillance photos. Thousands of documents. Hard disks brimming with audit trails and details of company structures. Countless evidential bricks to cement a case that might, God willing, put the city's major dealer away. All of this material was doubtless important, and over the coming days he'd have to get to grips with it, yet he was already sure that none of it was as compelling and vivid as the moment Eadie's young junkie lost his battle with the duvet and sank into unconsciousness.
Stopped yet again by traffic, Faraday eyed his mobile. The lights up ahead were still red. He owed her a call. He knew he did. He reached for the phone and punched in her number.
Engaged.
Still in the flat, perched on a kitchen stool, Eadie knew it was important to let this man talk about his grief. He'd known about the death of his son for barely three hours. Greater Manchester Police had sent round a WPC first thing, briefed by SouthseaCID. Eadie, alerted to what had happened by a long phone conversation with Daniel's friend Sarah, was frank about the reason for her call. She wanted to express her sympathy. And she wanted to know how he was feeling.
'Feeling?' He paused. 'I don't know. I can't describe it. You ask a question like that, and I simply can't give you an answer. In one way I feel nothing, absolutely nothing.'
'Numb? Would that cover it?'
'Numb would be good. Numb is right. Excuse me…' He broke off a moment and Eadie wondered whether the sudden catch in his voice was entirely authentic. There was something slightly stagey about this man, something the lingering remains of a down-home Lancashire accent couldn't quite disguise. Did he really care about the son he'd just lost? She couldn't decide.
'How well did you know Daniel?' He was back again.
'Barely at all. We only met yesterday.'
'Yesterday? How was he?'
'Terrible. I shouldn't be saying this, Mr. Kelly, but he was in an awful state. You'll know he'd been using for a while?'
'Yes.'
'Well, I think it had got on top of him. He was a very unhappy man.'
'You're a friend of a friend?'
'I'm afraid not. I was making a video.'
'A what?'
'A video.'
'With Daniel?'
'Yes.'
'About Daniel?'
'As it turns out… yes.'
She began to explain about the video, where the idea had come from, the support she'd lined up city-wide, and how that support had eventually translated itself into funding.
'That was the easy bit. The hard bit was finding Daniel.'
'What do you mean?' The question, this time, was unfeigned. She had this man's total attention.
'Most people in his situation you wouldn't want to meet. Daniel was the exception. In a strange way he knew exactly what he was doing to himself and he had the guts and intelligence to get that over.'
'Guts?'
'He was a brave man, Mr. Kelly. I couldn't have made the video without him.' Eadie paused, waiting for some kind of reaction. As the silence deepened, she realised that she might just be an answer to this man's prayers, some tiny hope of rescuing something from the wreckage.
'So what exactly were you doing with Daniel?' he asked at last. 'This video thing?'
'I did an interview with him. Then I taped him shooting up.'
'Shooting up? You mean the stuff that killed him?'
'I'm afraid so. He'd have done it anyway. We just happened to be there.'
'You didn't bring the stuff with you?'
'God, no.'
'And when you left him?'
'He was asleep.' She paused a beat. 'And smiling. If you ever want to see the footage…' She let the invitation trail away.
There was a long silence. Eadie rubbed at a grease spot on the kitchen work surface, biding her time. Finally, the voice returned, barely a whisper.
'I don't know what to say. Truly, I don't. This is bizarre. I'm a lawyer. I get to meet all kinds of people and, take my word for it, not a lot gets by me. This is just… I don't know… Jesus…
You don't pull your punches, do you?'
'I'm afraid not. This is going to sound very tactless, I know, but there's to be a post-mortem. Daniel was a known IV user so they have to take various blood tests, HIV, Hep B, Hep C. Assuming he's clear, they'll be doing the
