At the main door to the block, he stopped to examine Trudy's keys. The third one he tried released the lock. On the other side of the lobby, the lift was waiting, the door already open. Better and better, Winter thought.
On the top floor, the lift whispered to a halt and Winter found himself stepping into Misty's apartment. This time, he recognised the lingering scent of cigars. Valentine had been here.
Winter crossed the darkened lounge, body-checking around the piles of cardboard boxes, and pulled the curtains across the window. With a knife from a kitchen drawer, he returned to the lift and wedged the door open. Anyone coming up would have to use the stairs.
Back in the apartment, he put the lights on, adjusted the dimmer switch, then hesitated a moment, uncertain where to start. He knew what he wanted but he couldn't see himself finding it in any of these cardboard boxes. Where, he wondered, would Misty keep her documentation, the paper trail that would flag her path out of Pompey?
He went through to the bedroom, dropped the ruched curtains, and turned on another set of lights. The huge bed was unmade: dark blue sheets, an abandoned silk nightgown, a packet of Marlboro Lites, and a Barbara Taylor Bradford paperback open on the pillow.
Winter began to search, starting with the dressing table beneath the window. The first drawer he opened was full of cosmetics and a playful selection of sex toys. The next one down was brimming with tights and thongs. No sign of anything on paper.
Winter turned away and started on the wardrobe, a huge French-looking antique with a full-length mirror facing the bed. He opened the door and began to rummage amongst the jumble of shoes at the bottom, inserting his hand into a pair of thigh-length boots, getting down on his hands to inspect the void beneath. Again, nothing.
Dozens of dresses hung from the rail at the top of the wardrobe. A leather jacket at the back looked briefly promising but all Winter could find in the pockets was a twenty-pence piece, a ticket stub for a Pompey game, and a wafer of spearmint chewing gum. Finally, he circled the bed, feeling under the mattress, just in case.
On the point of abandoning the bedroom and starting on the lounge, he paused. The stool in front of the dressing table looked sturdy enough and he carried it across to the wardrobe before steadying it with one hand and clambering up. The wardrobe was topped with a scroll-like flourish of decorative oak, a wooden pediment that took the wardrobe within inches of the ceiling. Behind the pediment, invisible from below, might be some kind of hidey- hole.
Winter reached up, feeling around, fighting to keep his balance. His fingers snagged a shape. It felt like leather. He tried to get a purchase on the object, inch it towards him. Finally, he found a handle. He knew now that it was some kind of briefcase. With an effort, his forearm wedged against the ceiling, he managed to lift it clear of the pediment. It looked new, ox-blood red, and it felt heavy.
Good sign.
The phone began to ring in the lounge. Winter, still on the stool, froze. The answering machine kicked in, then came a voice, Pompey accent, male, light, distinctive. 'Mist,' the voice said. 'Mate just told me Trude's letting herself down. Silly girl. Keeping company like that.' The phone went abruptly dead. Winter gazed towards the open door. No doubt about it. Bazza.
Winter stepped carefully off the stool and went across to the window.
Easing back the curtain, he could see the Gunwharf waterfront. One of the white public order Transits from Central had just driven onto the plaza, the winking blue light mirrored in a thousand panes of glass.
Uniforms were piling out of the back, mob handed, trying to contain the clubbers spilling out of Forty Below. Moments later, another blue light, an ambulance this time.
Winter watched as the drama unfolded. The blokes from the Transit dealt with a couple of fights. Youths milled around, watching, drinking, laughing, giving anything in uniform the finger. Then the paramedics returned to the ambulance, pushing a body on a trolley. The youths crowded round, calling to their mates. Opening the back of the ambulance, the paramedics hoisted the trolley and slipped it in. Winter was too far away to be sure of a positive ID but experience told him never to discount coincidence. Bazza's mates had spotted Trudy. And Suttle had paid the price.
Winter retreated from the window, laid the briefcase on the bed and opened it. Inside, on top of a mass of brown A4 envelopes, were two passports, a driving licence, an E1 11 form, and a copy of the Rough Guide to Croatia. Beside it, in a Thomas Cook wallet, a thick wad of foreign currency. Winter began to sort through the envelopes. Bank details. Money transfer forms. Car documentation. Towards the bottom of the pile, he found a brand new envelope labelled with a big T circled in red. He felt inside and extracted four copies of an official-looking document. At the top, thickly embossed, it read 'Confirmation of Paternity'. Beneath, typed, the results of the test Misty had described. Trudy Gallagher was indeed Mike Valentine's daughter, and here was the proof.
Winter read the certificate again. Then he removed one of the copies, folded it carefully, and slipped it into his jacket pocket. The remaining three he returned to the envelope. With the briefcase back on top of the wardrobe, he replaced the stool, turned off the light and pulled open the curtains. He did the same next door, then made for the lift. Back outside on the waterfront, he looked across towards the plaza. The ambulance had gone and the uniforms were doing their best to shepherd everyone back inside the nightclub.
Winter turned and gazed up at the darkened apartment a moment, then stepped across to the rail. The black waters of the harbour lapped at the pilings below and Trudy's bunch of keys made the softest plop as he dropped them into the darkness. The kitchen knife he'd used to wedge the lift door followed, but he made no move to leave.
After a while, he looked up at the apartment for a second time. Why Croatia?
Chapter twenty
SUNDAY, 23 MARCH 2003, 08.14
Broad stripes of sunshine on the wall beside the bedroom window. A curtain stirred by a feather of wind from the harbour. Scents of bladder wrack and crusting mud, of tarry rope and very faintly — rotting fish. Underscoring it all, the squawk of black-headed gulls busy contesting booty from the morning's high tide.
Faraday turned over, reaching for the radio. Another noise, much closer. Footsteps within the house. He lay back a moment, then swung his legs out of bed. Naked except for the dressing gown he kept behind the door, he stepped onto the upstairs landing in time to see a tall, gawky figure disappearing into the bathroom. Then came the slide of the bolt as the mystery intruder locked himself in, and a sudden gush of water. J-J.
Downstairs, Faraday found a pile of dirty clothes heaped around the washing machine on the kitchen floor and a mug of cooling tea on the low cupboard in the lounge where he kept his CDs. The TV was on, with the sound wound down, and he spotted the red record light winking on the VHS player beneath.
He paused a moment, then found the zapper and turned up the sound. Half a dozen British servicemen had been killed in some kind of mid-air collision. Baghdad had suffered its fourth consecutive night of heavy air raids. Coalition forces were facing stiffening resistance.
Faraday sipped at the tea while a studio pundit explored the implications of these latest developments, then the coverage switched to the home front. Yesterday's demonstration in London, said the newscaster, had failed to measure up to last month's protests. British public opinion was hardening in support of the war while the rest of Europe waved a collective fist at Washington and Westminster. Shots of Blair followed, getting out of a low-slung Jaguar in Downing Street. He looked tired but purposeful, ignoring the press pack across the road.
The black front door opened as he strode across the pavement. Then he was gone.
Faraday finished the rest of the tea, then turned the TV off. This was an arm's-length war, he'd decided, an increasingly surreal adventure delivered to every household in the country by the channel of our choice. That pictures like these should sully an otherwise pleasant spring weekend was beyond his comprehension. A month ago, a million and a half people had cared enough to fill thousands of coaches and bring London to a halt. Millions more had begged the government not to go to war. Yet here we all were, tucked up with BBC News 24 or Skynews or CNN, watching a sovereign nation doing its best to defend itself.
This was breaking and entering on an international scale. In a court of law, Bush and Blair would be looking at a five-year stretch.
