Turnstone by Graham Hurley Page B

No one wants to go back to the swamp, do they?’
    ‘Swamp?’
    ‘Portsmouth. You’ve been thinking small-time too long, Inspector. Things have to change around here.’
    She gestured vaguely towards the window, dismissing the cranes and the tower blocks beyond the low sweep of the motorway, and Faraday gazed at her, masking a hot surge of anger behind a puzzled smile. At length, he got to his feet.
    ‘Swamps can be interesting,’ he murmured, ‘if you’re into birdlife.’
    Before returning to Kingston Crescent, Faraday drove to Paulsgrove. He’d phoned Bevan from Port Solent, asking for an update on Marty Harrison, and when the superintendent had told him that the surgeons had done a second operation and that Harrison would definitely pull through, he felt obliged to pass on the news. The least he owed Scott Spellar was a nudge on the elbow. Get out now. While you still can.
    Outside Spellar’s house, Faraday gestured at the scrawled message on the front door.
    ‘Nice area,’ he grunted. ‘No wonder the kids go off the rails.’
    Dawn Ellis nodded, but said nothing. This was her second trip to Anson Avenue in less than twelve hours, but one of the many lessons that CID work had taught her was the need for discretion. Never say more than you have to. No matter what kind of company you keep.
    There was no response to Faraday’s knock at the front door. Round the back, he peered in through the kitchen window but there was no sign of life. Someone had left a copy of the
News
on the window sill and Faraday wondered whether it might have been Scott. Over a grainy photograph of five handcuffed men being bundled into the back of a police van, the headline read ‘Drugs Bust – More Arrests’, and Faraday was still wondering what young Scottie must have made of the story when he returned to the car.
    ‘You interviewed the lad,’ he said to Ellis. ‘What’s the verdict?’
    Dawn Ellis took time to frame her answer.
    ‘Straight,’ she said at last. ‘I just thought he was dead honest.’
    ‘But bent as well?’
    ‘As far as the coke and stuff was concerned, of course. But it was a job for him. It paid well. It was pretty exciting. And round here that’s a definite result. He hated us getting at him, hated it. Poor little sod didn’t know what to do.’
    ‘He grassed Marty Harrison,’ Faraday pointed out. ‘Did that surprise you?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Why not?’
    They were waiting at traffic lights at the entrance to the estate. The conversation was going further than Dawn Ellis had intended.
    ‘Paul can be very persuasive,’ she said carefully. ‘He’s clever in situations like that.’
    ‘That’s what he’s there for. That’s why we get results.’
    ‘Of course, sir. I know that. It’s just’ – she shrugged – ‘the kid was really upset about his grandad, you could tell. When he saw those photos …’ She shook her head, and looked quickly out of the window.
    The lights changed to green and Faraday turned on to the dual carriageway. Minutes later, speeding into the city on the spur motorway, he glanced across at Dawn again.
    ‘Harrison’s place was clean,’ he told her.
    ‘I know.’
    ‘So why was that, d’you think? Did young Scottie tip him off?’
    Dawn frowned. She’d been asking herself exactly the same question, ever since she’d accompanied Winter to the house last night. Had Scott put two and two together about the imminence of a drugs bust, then he might well have passed the message on to Marty Harrison. But if that was the case, how come Paul Winter was handing him an envelope stuffed with cash, albeit his own? None of it made any sense, and in the end she thought it best to be honest.
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He may well have done, but I simply don’t know.’
    ‘Do you think we frightened him?’
    ‘Definitely.’
    ‘And do you think he’d relish a meet with the likes of Harrison? Given the fact we’d pulled him in?’
    ‘Obviously not.’
    Faraday