Turnstone by Graham Hurley Read Free Book Online

incredulous, brought a sudden blush of colour to Faraday’s face. The man was treating him like a child. Real life was out there on the streets. Real life had fuck all to do with rules and regulations. Faraday had heard the phrases over and over and this time he’d had enough.
    ‘Maybe we should continue this conversation in my office,’ he said thickly. ‘Just as soon as you can get there.’
    There was another silence, briefer this time, before Winter began to chuckle.
    ‘A pleasure, sir,’ he said, ‘then you can check the dosh yourself.’
    ‘You’ll be bringing it with you?’
    ‘No need. I booked it in last night. Brown doeskin wallet. The night-shift skipper put it in the safe. Should be in the crime property store by now, if you’d like to check.’
    Faraday ignored the sarcasm.
    ‘I want the money back to the lad,’ he said carefully. ‘And I want proof that you’ve done it.’
    Pete Lamb was out in the garden when Cathy went through to the lounge to take the call. Two mugs of coffee and a thick bacon sandwich had mopped up the worst of his hangover, and any minute now he’d be suggesting a stroll to the pub. What on earth had happened to day-long hikes across the Isle of Wight? To windsurfing at Hayling Island and a barbecue afterwards on the beach?
    Cathy picked up the phone. It was the duty sergeant at the firearms range over at Netley. The leader on the duty Tactical Firearms Unit had gone down with a virus. Could Pete stand in while they sorted out a replacement?
    ‘He’s booked leave from the end of next week,’ she said quickly. ‘He’s doing the Fastnet.’
    ‘I know, love. It’s just for a day or two.’
    Cathy glanced out of the back window. Pete’s long frame was sprawled in a deckchair, his face invisible behind the
Mail on Sunday
. She was about to go out there and ask him for a yes or no, but then she had second thoughts. Members of the duty TFU weren’t allowed to touch alcohol. That would put the mockers on another gloomy lunchtime in the pub.
    ‘He says it’s fine,’ she said brightly, ‘as long as he can still do the race.’
    Faraday spent the afternoon on Farlington Marshes, an RSPB nature reserve at the top of Langstone Harbour. He went there for the walk as much as anything else, a three-mile trek along the harbour edge that emptied his mind of the conversation with Winter. Years ago, he’d tried to ring-fence at least one day a week from the pressures of the job. Sundays had always been the obvious firebreak and if he’d wasted half of this one, then that was his own fault. The fact that Winter had promised to hand over Scott’s money without insisting on a long meet with the boy was some small satisfaction.
    The afternoon was hot and windless, and there was little activity amongst the birds. Wedged in his favourite spot against the seawall, Faraday watched a pair of newly arrived redshanks for a while, dancing in the shallows, but then he adjusted the focus on his Leica Red-Spots and swept the binoculars back along the harbourside path until his house swam into view, shimmering in the heat.
    It was a two-storey construction, dating way back to the early nineteenth century, red brick at the bottom, white clapboard and glass at the top. It had been built for one of the barge-masters who’d used the ill-fated Portsmouth Canal and Faraday had often wondered whether this man, too, had been fascinated by the pageant of wildlife – birds especially – constantly unfolding on the wide, bright spaces of the harbour. The upper floor of the house was where Faraday had installed his study, tearing down a couple of inner divides to make a big, oblong space, with rugs on the polished floorboards and views out through the windows on three sides. From his first glimpse of the water, he’d known that there was nowhere else he ever wanted to live. The house was, at once, a delight, a shield, and a solace.
    The freehold on the house had been a gift from Janna’s American