Cut To Black

by Graham Hurley

Genres: Mystery; Hard-Boiled; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

'There is no one writing better police procedurals today.' Daily Telegraph Blood is thicker than water... A massive undercover operation turns personal for DI Faraday when his son is involved. Portsmouth's major drug dealer's time is up. For years Bazza Mackenzie has made millions selling cocaine and heroin into the streets of Portsmouth. He's laundered the money and on the surface at least is one of Hampshire's great and the good. The police have had enough and a year long undercover operation is set up to trap Mackenzie. But when one of the investigation's leading lights is run over and put in hospital Joe Faraday is drafted in to wrap things up. It should be a dream job but Joe fears someone will move in to fill the vacuum when Bazza is gone. Bazza seems to be one step ahead of the investigation at every turn in any case. And then Faraday's son J-J is arrested. He faces a manslaughter charge for supplying drugs to an addict who has subsequently overdosed... Why readers love Graham Hurley: 'There is no one writing better police procedurals today.' Daily Telegraph 'Well-written and plotted, utterly convincing and really exciting... Excellent ' Daily Mail 'One of the great talents of British police procedurals... every book he delivers is better than the last' Independent on Sunday Fans of Ian Rankin, Peter James and Peter Robinson will love Graham Hurley: Faraday and Winter 1. Turnstone 2. The Take 3. Angels Passing 4. Deadlight 5. Cut to Black 6. Blood and Honey 7. One Under 8. The Price of Darkness 9. No Lovelier Death 10. Beyond Reach 11. Borrowed Light 12. Happy Days Jimmy Suttle 1. Western Approaches 2. Touching Distance 3. Sins of the Father 4. The Order of Things * Each Graham Hurley novel can be read as a standalone or in series order *

Release date: November 18, 2010

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 476

Sample

TUESDAY, 18 MARCH 2003, 20.13

He slowed in the darkness, the breath rasping in his lungs, trying to think of a thousand reasons not to draw the obvious
conclusion. The car looked like a Vauxhall, maybe a Cavalier. The two shapes bent to the driver’s door had the edgy slightness
of kids. And the music through the open car window, as if this were some movie, was perfect: gangster rap with a heavy bass
line that pulsed away into the night, drowning the nearby murmur of the sea.


He finally came to a halt, annoyed at losing the rhythm of his nightly run, aware of the chill kiss of the wind as it cooled
the sweat on his body. Seven hard miles had drained the strength in his legs but already little knots of adrenalin were swamping
his exhaustion. After the endless months of paperwork – of audit trails and expenditure profiles, of asset calculations and
restraint preparations – it had come to this: the sordid little drama played out across dozens of cities, hundreds of estates,
thousands of similar patches of urban wasteland. The Cavalier, he thought grimly, had replaced the ice-cream van. Stop me
and buy one. Same time tomorrow night. And the night after that. And the night after that. Until your new friend in the beaten-up
Vauxhall had you phoning him every four hours, pleading for your life.


He began to circle the car on the driver’s blind side, still fifty metres out, moving slowly, balls of his feet, stepping
lightly through the tangle of scrub and marram grass. In these situations, anyone with half a brain would be thinking risk
assessment. How would he take the guy behind the wheel? How would he contain him afterwards? What were the dangers of the kids getting hurt? These were important
questions. He needed a plan, and a fallback, but there was something about this little tableau – how blatant, how fucking
insulting – that had cut him loose. All of a sudden, he had the chance to make a difference. Not much of a difference but a difference
nonetheless.


He was ahead of the car now, aware of the line of street lights half a mile away. Silhouetted against the orange glow, every
move he made betrayed him. He began to backtrack, hunting for cover, meaning to close on the car from the passenger side,
then he froze as the driver stirred the engine into life. The music, abruptly, had gone. In its place, the throaty bark of
a dog and a yelp of laughter from one of the kids. The child was barely an adolescent. His voice had yet to break. What kind
of animal sold gear to thirteen-year-olds?


He began to run, suddenly oblivious of the need for cover. Anything to get between the Cavalier and the distant street lights,
between the driver and the next sale. One of the kids had seen him, yelling a warning to his mate. Two shapes melted away
into the darkness as the car began to move. Abreast of it now, he drove himself forward, legs pumping hard. He reached for
the passenger door and wrenched it open. There was someone else in the car, slumped back against the headrest, the seat half
reclined. The thin figure jackknifed forwards. A hand lunged at him, a fist in his windpipe, a choking pain that blurred his
vision. Abruptly he lost his footing, fell head first, felt cinders tearing at his face, heard a squeal of brakes and the
dog again, barking fit to bust. The car was ahead of him, metres away, briefly motionless. The passenger door was still open.
A face appeared, contorted by a grin. Then a voice, thick accent, Scouse.


‘Run the fucker over.’

The engine was revving. Then the brake lights dimmed and for the briefest moment, as he tried to will his body to move, he had a perfect view of the Cavalier reversing towards him and the zigzag pattern of the tyre tread, inches away.
Moments later, a wheel crushed his ankle and he screamed as it happened again – another wheel, his lower leg – and for a second
or two he must have lost consciousness because the next thing was a moment of surreal terror as the blaze of the headlights
and the roar of the engine bore down on him. This time, somehow, he was able to reach out, trying to fend it off, flailing
at the oncoming monster with his bare hands, flesh against metal, then he was aware of his body arching backwards, a gesture
of defeat, before the pain thickened and the darkness returned, unfathomable, beyond comprehension.


WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2003, 01.19

The aircraft appeared well after midnight. It approached high from the west, droning over the sprawl of suburbs around Gosport
then sideslipping down in the gusty onshore wind as the black mass of Portsmouth Harbour disappeared beneath the nose.


Beyond the harbour and the gaunt shadows of the naval dockyard lay the city itself, the shape of the island necklaced with
street lights. Away to the south, there was a queue of cabs for the fares spilling out of the late-night clubs by South Parade
pier; further inland, the cold, blue wink of an ambulance picking its way through the maze of terraced streets.


At 1000 feet, the aircraft levelled off then dipped a wing and began to fly in wide, lazy circles, taking its time, each new
circuit overlapping invisibly with the last. Households in its path stirred, dreams broken by the steady, pulsing beat of
the engines overhead. Even half asleep, groping towards consciousness, this was a noise you’d recognise at once, familiar
city-wide. Boxer One. Pride of the Hantspol ASU. The Air Support Unit’s all-seeing eye in the sky.


The aircraft remained over the city for the best part of an hour. After a while, the circuits tightened and on two occasions
the pilot took it low enough for startled insomniacs in Fratton to report the rush of air over the wings. Then, abruptly,
the beat of the engines changed pitch, and the aircraft lifted and climbed away towards the west, returning the city to silence.


Awake in the stillness of the Bargemaster’s House, Faraday had heard it too. And began to wonder.

It fell to DC Paul Winter to put the obvious into words.

‘There’s sod all here. We blew it.’

‘The Stanley blades? That bit of clothes line? Blood on the lino down in the corner there? More blood on the sofa? Is it your
age, Paul? Doesn’t violence excite you any more?’


‘I thought this was supposed to be a drugs bust?’

‘It was. Is. And a tenner says we’ll get a good hit on the DNA.’

‘Taking us where? Some scroat they tied up and put in a Tarantino movie? What’s he going to tell us we didn’t know already?
These blokes are off their heads, Cath, but we can’t do them for that.’


Winter’s use of her Christian name drew a cautionary look from DI Cathy Lamb. The rest of the squad – three DCs and a dog
handler – were still out of earshot, banging around in the chaos of the bedrooms upstairs, but even so Lamb was wary about
letting Winter too close. The proactive CID team – the Portsmouth Crime Squad – was barely a week old. The last thing she
needed just now were the kind of liberties detectives like Winter were only too happy to exploit.


‘We were unlucky,’ she said flatly. ‘We took every reasonable precaution but sometimes… it just doesn’t work out.’

‘Is that for my benefit, boss? Or are you rehearsing for tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘The post-mortem. Secretan’s going to love this. All that overtime. All that hype. And we come away with a couple of Stanley
blades and a million pizza boxes.’ He poked at the litter of greasy cardboard with the toe of his shoe. ‘What is it with kids
these days? Don’t they know about real food?’


There was a thump overhead as someone tripped but Lamb ignored it. She was looking again at the detailed target analysis supplied by the Air Support Unit, the result of a
casual fly-by the previous weekend. The colour still, in perfect focus, showed a mid-terrace house in Pennington Road, one
of the maze of streets in the heart of Fratton. Every relevant feature was helpfully labelled – the boarded-up first-floor
windows, the TV aerial adrift from the chimney stack, the abandoned fridge in the tiny back yard. There was no rear access
and only one front door. In theory, as she’d been reckless enough to claim at this evening’s pre-bust briefing, it should
have been a breeze.


Yet somehow the two bodies they’d come to nick had both legged it. An area car was still quartering the nearby streets but
the ASU’s Islander – Boxer One – had thrown in the towel and flown home. The two white blobs on the thermal camera had split
up as soon as the aircraft secured a fix. The ASU guys had tracked one of them as he scaled garden wall after garden wall
before emerging at the end of the terrace. Sprinting the length of the neighbouring street, he’d ducked into the shelter of
a garage. After that, in the dry commentary of Boxer One’s observer, no further contact.


The area car had checked out the garage. A rusting Ford Escort with two flat tyres, half a lifetime’s collection of paint
tins, and a plastic dustbin full of fishing gear. No sign of an eighteen-year-old drug dealer with a taste for extreme violence.


The youngest of the DCs came limping down the stairs. His name was Jimmy Suttle. His suit was filthy and his face was smudged
with dirt but his obvious glee brought the faintest smile to Lamb’s face. More hope than expectation.


‘Well?’

‘Cracked it, boss.’ He sounded out of breath. ‘There’s a hatch into the roof space. Little bastards had knocked through to
next door. And then through again. Must have gone out via their back garden. I’m thinking number 34. That’s the empty one down the street.’ He paused, confused by Lamb’s reaction. ‘Boss?’


‘You’re telling me they had time for all that? We were in here in seconds. You know we were.’

Winter nodded. The front door had surrendered to the House Entry Team without a fight. No way could the targets have legged
it into the roof ahead of the cavalry.


Suttle stuck to his story. Crawling across the intervening attic, he’d let himself down into number 34. Fully furnished, the
place was either up for let or awaiting the return of the owners. It had fitted carpets, nice pictures, widescreen TV, the
works.


‘And?’

‘They’d obviously been using it. Or someone had. The place is a shit heap. Beds slept in. Empty bottles. Telly on. Old food—’

‘Pizzas?’ Winter enquired drily. ‘

Everywhere. Kitchen. Lounge. Pepperami, bits of onion, HP sauce. These blokes are animals.’

‘Yeah… like we didn’t know.’

‘Gear?’ It was Lamb again, almost plaintive. ‘’

Fraid not, boss.’ The young detective was rubbing his knee. ‘Bit of charlie, bit of draw, but we’re talking personal, not
supply. They must have taken it with them. Dunno.’ He frowned. ‘What I’m thinking, they probably kipped at number 34, used
the place like a hotel. Bloody sight nicer than this khazi.’


‘So why didn’t we know?’ Lamb was looking at Winter. ‘About number 34?’

‘No idea.’ Winter looked round, pulling a face. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘Dog shit, mate.’ Suttle lifted his shoe, and then nodded up towards the bedrooms. ‘Knee deep, it is. Bloody everywhere.’

The phone call came minutes later. Winter was first to the mobile, half hidden beneath a pile of unopened post. He picked it up in his handkerchief and then turned his back on the watching faces, grunting from time to time.

‘So who might you be?’ he queried at last.

The conversation came to an abrupt end. Winter wrapped the mobile in the handkerchief, then laid it carefully on the plastic
milk crate that served as an occasional table.


Cathy Lamb raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘

Our absent friends.’ Winter grunted. ‘Definitely Scousers. They’ve got an address for us. Bystock Road. Number 93. They think
we ought to pay a visit.’


There was a brief silence. Cathy Lamb was looking ever more resigned. Some jobs left you feeling worse than useless and this
was definitely one of them.


‘They’re taking the piss.’ She sighed. ‘Aren’t they?’

Bystock Road was a three-minute drive away, another of the endless terraced streets that had turned this corner of the city
into a playground for double-glazing salesmen, dodgy roofers, and enforcers from the less scrupulous credit companies.


At Lamb’s insistence, Winter took Suttle and two of the other DCs with him. Turning into Bystock Road, he nearly collided
with a patrol car. Winter got out and walked across. Number 93 was way down the other end of the street but already he could
hear the music.


‘Neighbour complaint. Rang in a couple of minutes ago.’ The young PC at the wheel was Asian. ‘Bloke says he’s going to take
a hammer to next door if something isn’t sorted.’


‘Address?’

‘91’.

The two cars drove on, double-parking in the street outside 93. The upstairs window was wide open but the house was in darkness
and there was no sign of a party. Winter’s knowledge of music didn’t extend much beyond Elton John but Suttle helped him out.


‘Dr Dre,’ he said briefly. ‘You’re lucky you’re so old.’

The PC was already talking to the neighbour who’d rung the complaint in. He was a huge man in his forties, crop-haired with
a two-day growth of beard, and Winter couldn’t take his eyes off the blur of tattoos beneath his string vest. He said he hadn’t
a clue who lived next door, dossers always coming and going, but he meant it about the hammer.


‘What do you think, then?’ The Asian PC had turned to Winter.

‘Me?’ Winter was still eyeing the man next door. ‘I’d kick the door down and let him get on with it.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Always. Except the paperwork would be a nightmare.’

The PC offered Winter an uncertain grin. There were issues here – maybe drugs, maybe weapons – and the night-shift skipper
was manic about playing it by the book. Maybe they ought to be thinking about a risk assessment.


Winter walked across to the front door. Twice, he shouted up at the open window but his challenge was lost in the thump of
the music. Finally, he rapped at the door. When a second knock had no effect, he took a step backwards and motioned to Suttle.


‘You’re uglier than me.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Open it.’

The young DC needed no encouragement. His third kick splintered the wood around the lock and a shoulder charge took him inside.
Winter followed, fumbling along the wall for a light switch. A gust of something stale and acrid made him catch his breath.
When he finally found the switch, it didn’t work.


‘Here.’

It was the man next door with a heavy-duty torch. Winter took the torch and told him to get back outside.

‘No fucking way.’

Winter tracked the beam of the torch back along the narrow hall and into the neighbour’s face.

‘I said get outside.’

The big man hesitated a moment, then shrugged and stepped back towards the pavement. Winter was already in the tiny lounge.
The torch found a single mattress on the floor, one end surrounded with empty mugs, half-crushed milk cartons, and a small
mountain of cigarette ends. There was a pool of vomit under the window and more vomit crusting in the fireplace. Two o’clock
in the morning, thought Winter, and there have to be better things to do than this.


The kitchen occupied the back of the house. A tap dripped in the darkness and there was a low whirring from what might have
been a fridge. A single sweep from the torch revealed a table, two bicycles, and a catering-sized tin of Nescafé in the sink.


It was obvious by now that the music came from upstairs, the entire house shuddering under the heavy bass. Another hour or
two of this, and number 93 would explode.


Winter climbed the stairs, Suttle behind him. There were three doors off the narrow landing at the top, two of them ajar.
Winter checked quickly in both, then turned to the third. This room was at the front of the house.


‘Again?’ Suttle nodded at the door and mimed a kick. ‘

No.’ Winter shook his head, then patted the young DC on his arm.

The heavy torch at the ready, Winter turned the handle and felt the door give. The music came at him like a wave, a wall of
noise. He stepped inside the room, aware at once of a panel of lights in the darkness. Snapping on the torch, he found himself
looking at the hi-fi stack in the corner, an amplifier flanked by enormous speakers. He swung the beam towards the window,
almost expecting someone to lunge out of the darkness, but saw nothing but an iron bedstead standing on the bare floorboards
a couple of feet in from the open window. Lying on the springs of the bedstead was a woman, naked except for a pillowcase
draped loosely over her head.


Winter stepped towards the bedstead, then changed his mind and sorted out the hi-fi. A cable ran to a point on the skirting
board. When he tore out the plug, the silence flooded in, an almost physical presence. From the street, the voice of the neighbour.


‘What’s happening?’

Winter ignored him. The woman was alive, shivering in the draught from the open window. Winter could see the rise and fall
of her chest, hear the faintest sound from inside the pillowcase. Both ankles were tied to the bed frame with cable ties,
and more ties had chafed her wrists where she’d tried to struggle free. Winter stared down at her for a moment, trying to
guess at an age. She was young, certainly, with the kind of body that deserved a better setting than this. Goose-pimpled white
skin, big breasts, flat belly, and the faintest bikini marks from her last encounter with serious sunshine. Recent bruising
had purpled her ribcage on the left-hand side but there was no sign of other injuries.


Winter reached down, telling her that everything was going to be OK, that everything was going to be fine, and eased the pillowcase
off her head. A pale, almond-shaped face. A slash of scarlet gag across her mouth. Eyes that began to swim with tears.


Winter felt a jolt of recognition. For a second, the beam of the torch wavered. Impossible, he thought. Not here. Not like
this.


‘Lost a bit of weight, love.’ He smiled in the darkness. ‘Suits you.’

WEDNESDAY, 19 MARCH 2003, 07.00

Faraday’s second sweep with the Leica Red Spots revealed a flash of white amongst the scrub and gorse around the freshwater
ponds a stone’s throw from the Bargemaster’s House. Racking the focus on the binoculars, he eased slowly left, convinced already
that he’d spotted the season’s first wheatear. Seconds later, the little bird broke cover again, staying low, scurrying a
few feet at a time, finally hopping up onto the back of one of the old wooden benches that ringed the pond.


A couple of months back, this tiny creature would have been wintering south of the Sahara. Late January would have found it
in Morocco. Days it devoted to finding food. Nights, often alone, it sped north again. Only now, in mid March, had it finally
returned to its nesting ground, bringing with it the promise – the guarantee – of spring. Faraday made a second tiny adjustment
to the focus. Carved into the bench below the spread of claw was another message that had survived the winter. Deano’s a wanker, it read. Welcome to Pompey.


Faraday settled himself beside the pond, hoping for a glimpse of the bearded reedlings that were rumoured to be making their
way south from the low smudge of Farlington Marshes. It was still barely seven o’clock, the air still, the sky cloudless,
barely a ripple on the blue mirror of the nearby harbour. In a couple of hours, after a leisurely breakfast, he’d drive into
work, where the clear-up on a recent high-profile murder awaited his attention.


A psychopath in his mid forties had taken out a lifetime’s frustration on a foreign language student, a Finnish blonde unlucky enough to cross his path. Stranger murders
were never supposed to be easy, but the Major Crimes Team had blitzed the backstreets of Fareham where the girl’s severed
head had been found in a Londis bag, and scored a result within seventy-two hours.


Caged by the evidence, mainly DNA, the suspect had thrown in the towel after barely an hour’s interview. The transcript of
what followed, while dark in the extreme, had put a smile of satisfaction on the face of Willard. This, he’d grunted, was
a classic MCT investigation, conclusive proof of the linkage between resource, effort, dedication and justice. A couple of
years back, they’d have been months trying to get a result. Now, thanks to a major reorganisation, they’d redrawn the time
lines. Faraday, who had profound doubts about trophy-talk and management-speak, was just glad the bastard was locked up.


The wheatear had gone. Faraday had begun to search the nearby scrub, wondering whether it was too early for a sedge warbler,
when the peace of the morning was disturbed by the roar of an approaching aircraft. Faraday swung the binos in time to catch
a blur of shadow as the military jet crested the distant swell of Portsdown Hill. Seconds later, it was almost on top of him,
blasting south over the harbour, the noise so physically shattering he could feel it in his bones. Then the plane had gone,
leaving clouds of black-headed gulls squawking madly, and several rafts of brent geese doing their best to get airborne. Any
more stunts like that, thought Faraday, and the wheatear would be back in North Africa.


Faraday’s mobile began to chirp. It was Eadie Sykes. The plane had got her up and she wanted to know what on earth was going
on.


‘You think it’s started? You think the Iraqis are getting theirs in early?’

Faraday found himself laughing. Eadie feigned outrage.

‘What’s so funny? You think we ought to get married? Before it’s too late?’

‘I think you ought to go back to bed.’

‘After that? Listen, you remember the Sixties, Cuba? What do you do with those last four minutes?’

‘I still think you ought to go back to bed.’

‘Yeah… but it’s more fun with two, eh? Ring me later.’

The line went dead. Faraday slipped the mobile back in the pocket of his anorak, then began to search half-heartedly for the
wheatear again. He’d been with Eadie last night, tucked up on the sofa with Newsnight and a bottle of Rioja. The past couple of months, they’d watched the government – Blair in particular – shepherding the nation
to war. Bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age made absolutely no sense whatsoever, yet here they were, in lockstep with the Americans,
hours away from releasing the first fusillade of cruise missiles.


Eadie, behind the wry one-liners, was incandescent with rage. Bush was a retard. Blair was an arse-licking con man. The Brits
should be ashamed of themselves. Only the fact that her own prime minister seemed as hell-bent on Armageddon as the rest of
them had kept her from packing her bags and phoning Qantas for a ticket home.


Back in February, at Eadie’s insistence, they’d taken the early train to Waterloo and joined a million and a half other people
who felt less than convinced about killing Iraqi women and kids. The river of protesters stretched for miles, stopping traffic,
filling bridges, swamping the Embankment, and Faraday, who’d never been this side of the barricades in his life, found it
an oddly comforting experience. Students, mums, kids, pensioners, asylum seekers, nurses, civil servants – a huge slice of
Middle England shuffling slowly towards Hyde Park under the watchful gaze of a couple of thousand policemen.


To Faraday, that was the oddest experience of all. Not that he was himself under surveillance, a copper coppered, but that
he found this single act of protest so natural, so long overdue. Ex-Labour Voters Against The War, read one placard. Too bloody right.


He stirred at the sound of the mobile. Expecting Eadie again, instead he found himself listening to an all-too-familiar voice.
Willard.


‘Joe? Something’s come up. Where are you?’

Faraday glanced at his watch. 07.22.

‘Still at home, sir. I can be in by eight, maybe earlier.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m still waiting to talk to the medics at the QA. Ask for Critical Care.’

The Queen Alexandra Hospital was on the lower slopes of Portsdown Hill, a 1300-bed goliath with views across the city towards
the Isle of Wight. The Department for Critical Care was on the third floor, two open wards with side rooms for solo occupancy.
In the corridor outside, Faraday spotted the tall, bulky figure of Willard deep in conversation with a young nurse.


Faraday paused to peer into the nearest of the open wards. Most of the beds were occupied – propped-up, comatose shapes moored
to life-support machines, monitoring equipment and an assortment of drips. At this range, it looked like an audition for the
city’s undertakers. No one seemed familiar.


‘Nick Hayder.’ Faraday found Willard at his elbow. ‘Third bed on the left.’

Faraday, astonished, took another look. Last time he’d seen Nick was a couple of days back. As fellow DIs on the Major Crimes
Team they’d been obliged to attend a headquarters briefing on a recent change to CPS protocols. Afterwards, they’d gone down
the road for a snatched pint at a Winchester pub. Now this.


‘What happened?’

‘Good question. You know that patch of scrub round Fort Cumberland? He was found there last night. Unconscious.’

Faraday was still gazing at the bandaged figure Willard had pointed out. Fort Cumberland was an MOD site on the south-western
tip of the island, acres of brambles and couch grass, as remote a spot as you could find in a city as densely packed as Portsmouth.


‘So what happened?’ Faraday repeated. ‘

No one knows, not for sure. He was in running gear. It was dark.’

‘Any witnesses?’

‘One old boy, late sixties, walking his dog. Says he saw some kind of fracas but he was a fair distance away. He thinks there
was a car involved but that’s about as far as we’ve got.’


‘Make? Colour?’

‘He can’t say. We’ll start on the CCTV this morning but don’t hold your breath. Nearest camera’s the far end of Henderson
Road.’ Willard was watching a doctor in green scrubs who’d paused at Hayder’s bedside. ‘There must have been a car because
they’re saying he’s been run over. He’s got compound fractures, both legs, a broken pelvis, ruptured spleen, and query brain
damage. They took the spleen out in theatre but it’s the head injury that’s bothering them.’


‘How bad is it?’

‘They won’t say, but they’re talking a three on the coma scale.’

‘What’s normal?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘He’s unconscious?’

‘Very. He was brought in around nine-thirty last night. Still hasn’t surfaced. He—’

Willard broke off. The nurse had returned and was indicating an open door down the corridor. The consultant, she said, would
be in touch with him as soon as he was free. Willard looked pointedly at his watch, then led Faraday to a small, bare office. There was a poster advertising yachting holidays in the Peloponnese on the wall, and a list
of names and bleep numbers on the wipe board. A plant on the window sill was fighting a losing battle against the central
heating.


Willard shut the door, eyeing Faraday for a moment before settling into the chair behind the desk. Three kids beamed out of
a stand-up frame beside the PC.


‘Mates, weren’t you? You and Hayder?’

Faraday nodded. ‘Mates’ wasn’t a term he’d applied to many men in his life but in Nick Hayder’s case he liked to think it
was close to the truth.


‘Pretty much,’ he agreed. ‘

Did he have any personal problems that you’d know of?’

Faraday hesitated. Willard’s use of the past tense was beginning to irritate him. Critical Care was high tech. Critical Care
was where they hauled you back from the brink. So why the rush to consign Hayder to the Recycle Bin?


‘Nick has a partner,’ he said carefully. ‘

That wasn’t my question.’

‘I know, but that’s the situation. I can give you her number. Why don’t you?