The Take by Graham Hurley Read Free Book Online Page A

on it. I was just wondering whether he’d had any joy.’
    ‘You suggested
what?
’
    A C63 was the form you filled in to bid for access to data from one of the mobile phone companies. A printout on a particular number could pinpoint the time and duration of a call, plus a name and address for the voice at the other end.
    Faraday permitted himself a grim smile. The sergeant was wound up tighter than a spring.
    ‘Just a thought I had,’ Faraday said lightly. ‘Your lad found the mobile switched off. That isn’t necessarily conclusive.’
    ‘So what are you suggesting … sir?’
    ‘I’m suggesting that Prentice had at least a minute to sort himself out after the impact. He wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t unconscious. Had he been on the phone, he’d have switched it off.’ He paused. ‘As I understand it, there were no witnesses.’
    ‘Did Barrington tell you that?’
    ‘He didn’t have to. There are no witness statements in the file.’
    ‘You’ve seen the file?’
    ‘I’m looking at it now.’
    The Sergeant was speechless. Faraday pressed on.
    ‘Prentice was lucky,’ he said. ‘No witnesses except for the other driver, and Vanessa is dead. That gives him every incentive to claim amnesia, and as I understand it, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Got up in the morning. Drove to his first call. Then it all goes fuzzy. Can’t remember driving into Larkrise Avenue. Can’t remember any Fiesta. Can’t remember killing my management assistant. The AI report might help him fill in the blanks. And if it doesn’t, then maybe we ought to be thinking about his mobile. No?’
    There was a long silence, then the Sergeant came back. He’d given up arguing the toss about Mark Barrington. He’d talk to his Inspector. Not about the ins and outs of the Larkrise Avenue RTA but about bloody CID muscling in on Traffic. You do your job, I’ll do mine. OK?
    Faraday let the storm pass, then bent to the phone again.
    ‘Death by dangerous driving. Am I right?’
    ‘It’s on the cards, certainly.’
    ‘Crown Court? Hefty fine plus a ban? This guy’s a commercial rep. He’ll get himself a decent brief. He’ll plead tools of the trade. Take my licence away, I’m out on the street.’ He paused. ‘Number one, we need to get this guy off the road. Number two, it might be nice if he had his tiny mind concentrated.’
    ‘Like how?’
    ‘Like a couple of years inside.’
    ‘On a death by dangerous driving?’
    Faraday let the laughter subside.
    ‘No,’ he said quietly, ‘perverting the course of justice. Courts just love that. In case you’d forgotten.’
    Rawlinson Road lay at the heart of Southsea, a once fashionable address attracting generations of naval officers and their families to the imposing bay-fronted houses. A century and a half later, disfigured by landlords squeezing rents from multi-occupation, it had become a neighbourhood you’d do your best to avoid. Awash with litter, choked by cars and vans half-parked on the pavement, it was now a regular port of call for drug dealers, noise abatement officers and harassed officials from the Social Services acute response teams. Even the trees looked unloved.
    Shelley Beavis, according to the accommodation secretary at the college, shared the basement at number 21. Access to the flat was round the side, a length of slimy paving under permanent bombardment from a dripping overflow.
    She answered Dawn’s knock with some reluctance, a sleepy-eyed, barefoot eighteen-year-old in jeans and a thin cardigan, peering out from a mop of tousled blond hair. Dawn’s first reaction was to wonder whether she was Beavis’s daughter at all. Genetics plainly owed nothing to her willowy body and flawless complexion.
    ‘Police?’ she said blankly, when Stapleton showed his ID.
    The flat was subterranean, pools of semi-darkness smelling of day-old joss and a serious damp problem. Thick, crudely suspended blankets hung at the barred window in the front, and it took Dawn several