Deadlight by Graham Hurley Read Free Book Online Page A

the man, and his obvious impatience to get a result. Confidence and an appetite for hard work were prized qualities in young detectives. No, it was something else, and Faraday knew that Bev Yates had sensed it too. Yates was far too canny and experienced to discuss these thoughts with Faraday but there’d been a moment in the office after Corbett had gone when they’d looked at each other, and raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Talks a good war, doesn’t he?’ Yates had muttered, reaching for his jacket.

Three
    TUESDAY , 4 JUNE , 2002,
22.15
    The Pembroke lay in Old Portsmouth, just round the corner from the Anglican cathedral. Recently, it had become a favourite pub of Winter’s. He liked the clientele – an unusual mix of traders, lawyers, churchmen and retired navy matelots – and he enjoyed the beery cheerfulness that came with them. This was a pub for serious drinkers, free from trash music and fourteen-year-old slappers out of their heads on Vodka Ice. Most evenings you could tuck yourself away in a quiet corner and never attract a second glance.
    Rooke was waiting for him, sitting bolt upright on a padded bench beneath a tankful of tropical fish. Winter had never quite got over the look of the man – bony face, yellowing skin, wild eyes, scary haircut – but put the damage down to an unusually heavy dose of inbreeding. Rooke was a terrible warning for anyone who spent too much time in Pompey. Stay a generation too long, and you’d end up looking like this.
    Winter ordered two Stellas at the bar. Rooke’s glass was already empty.
    ‘Awright, Rookie?’ Winter slid on to the bench and gave him a nudge. Lager from the glasses slopped on to the table.
    ‘Listen.’ Rooke beckoned Winter closer. ‘You want to know about the boy Geech, I’ve got be fucking careful.’
    Winter grinned at him. Most of his touts enjoyed the foreplay when they met, the preliminary gossip about mutual associates, the chance to slag the local football team, but not Rooke. Rookie kept the conversationalfrills to an absolute minimum, partly because he had no small talk and partly because being with Winter made him very nervous indeed. He was here to make a point or two. And then he’d go.
    ‘You know what he looks like, this Darren?’
    Winter nodded. He’d seen Darren Geech on countless occasions, mainly around Somerstown. The boy had always been a problem – thin, pasty-faced, vicious – and watching someone like that grow up offered new insights into the crime statistics.
    ‘So what’s he up to now, young Darren?’
    ‘Every fucking thing. You want my opinion, it’s all down to his brother, Billy. Billy is a couple of years older than Darren and he’s been at it for ever. The latest thing is computer games. Billy got a re-writer off of a market geezer and he burns game CDs by the fucking thousand and flogs them round the estates, twenty quid apiece. Only problem is, he ain’t got no inserts for the boxes. Don’t stop Billy, though. He just goes to that games shop down Commercial Road with his mates and lifts them empty boxes off the shelf. Mob-handed, no one stops them. But then you wouldn’t, would you?’
    Rooke had a point. Even CCTV didn’t seem to deter the likes of Billy Geech. Face a situation like that across the counter, and the loss of a couple of dozen empty CD boxes would seem a small price to pay for staying intact.
    ‘You’re telling me Darren learned the trade off his brother?’
    ‘Doing them corner shops? Definitely. Pull a stroke like that once, the rest comes easy. You’d be amazed what a load of blokes can get away with.’
    ‘Fifteen-year-olds?’
    ‘They’re the worst. They just don’t care. They do it for the laugh more than anything else. It’s pathetic really. Totally disorganised.’
    Winter smiled, then reached for his glass. Rookie might have been talking about maths or French. The factthat Darren Geech didn’t concentrate hard enough really pissed him off.
    ‘Fuck all profit,