Free No Lovelier Death by Graham Hurley Page A

he told me.’
    A week ago, she said, she’d bumped into Matt at Gunwharf. He was with a couple of mates. He’d sent them packing and insisted on buying her a coffee. He’d just been done for some stupid driving offence and the woman he’d borrowed the car from had gone bonkers.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘He’d taken the car without asking. And he wasn’t insured.’
    Faraday made a note. The pull on the M27, he thought.
    He looked up. ‘You were having coffee …’
    ‘Yes. That’s when Matt told me he wanted him and Rach to get it on again. He was really wound up about it. He said she was the best thing that had ever happened to him and next time he wouldn’t … you know … mess it up.’
    ‘He thought there’d be a next time?’
    ‘Definitely. But that’s Matt. He makes things happen.’
    Makes things happen. Faraday leaned back in his chair, gazed up at the ceiling.
    ‘Let’s go back to the party. Rachel got the place sorted before everyone arrived?’
    ‘We both did. Gareth helped. We locked the bedrooms upstairs, put little notices on the doors, hid stuff we didn’t want to leave lying around.’
    ‘What kind of stuff?’
    ‘Family bits and pieces, games consoles. Rach’s dad’s a bit of a wine expert. He had crates and crates of really expensive stuff downstairs in the cellar. Gareth went and bought a padlock and put it on the door at the top of the cellar stairs.’
    ‘Who were you worried about?’
    ‘No one in particular. No one we really knew. But any party you sometimes get walk-ins off the street. It’s best to be careful, especially in a house like that.’
    ‘But you’d no idea so many people … ?’
    ‘Absolutely not.’
    The party, she said, had kicked off around nine. Friends had wandered in from Southsea Common. Most of them had been drinking since six or seven. It was a warm night.
    ‘You’re telling me they were drunk?’
    ‘Happy. Gareth had made a kind of punch thing with lots of fruit and stuff in it and we had a couple of crates of WKD. Some lads from the rugby team turned up. Three of them had cases of Stella. It was cool. No trouble. Good vibe.’
    ‘So what happened?’
    ‘Like I said, it was fine to begin with. One of the rugby guys had brought some laughing gas and a bunch of balloons. We were just fooling around. Then Matt turned up.’
    ‘What time was this?’
    ‘It’s hard to say. Maybe around ten. Maybe a bit earlier.’
    ‘He was by himself?’
    ‘No. He had some other guys with him - friends, I guess. None of us had a clue who they were.’
    ‘What kind of guys?’
    ‘Chavs. Definitely. Maybe St Mark’s boys. I’ve no idea.’
    ‘Not your sort, then? Or Rachel’s?’
    ‘No … but there was no hassle, no trouble, not at that point. One of them had even brought some cans of Carling. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen. I remember he wished Gareth a happy birthday.’
    ‘It was his birthday?’
    ‘Not at all. The kid was pissed. Not stroppy. Just … you know … stupid. Pretty much like everyone else was. A situation like that, you just hope it stays cool.’
    ‘And did it?’
    ‘No. More kids turned up. Then more and more. I knew it was getting out of hand but there didn’t seem much I could do about it. I tried to lock and bolt the front door at one point, just to stop more people coming in, but as soon as I did that someone else came along from inside and unlocked it again. To be honest, it was quite scary. We’d completely lost control.’
    ‘What about the rugby lads?’
    ‘A couple of them tried to sort it out. They asked the older ones to leave and take the younger kids with them. That was pretty hopeless because they just got a mouthful back. Some of these people were vile. At one point it was pretty obvious there was going to be a fight but I managed to calm things down.’
    ‘ You did?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What about Rachel?’
    ‘She was out of her head. She must have been drinking most of the day. When she saw what was happening