Free The Price Of Darkness by Graham Hurley

favours.
    Bazza had dismissed him out of hand.
    ‘Bollocks, mush,’ he’d said. ‘This is like pyramid selling. You start with the QHM, with the guys on the water. Then you rope in the council. Once you’ve done that, it sells itself. The boys at Sky will be throwing money at you. Then you talk to Eurosport, Channel Four, ITV, whoever. You get an auction going. You start thinking international rights, airline rights, video streaming. You know what, mush? Play it right, and we’re looking at a fucking great profit. Every cloud, eh? ’
    Winter was appalled. By the time Bazza got to the end of his must-do list, he knew that he was staring disaster in the face. He was an ex-copper, for Christ’s sake, not some Pompey hustler trying to turn a fatal accident into a huge media event. He’d joined forces with Bazza on the promise that there’d be room for his special skills, his contacts, his experience. Not this pantomime.
    Bazza, of course, had seen the expression on his face.
    ‘You think you’re not up to it?’
    ‘I know I’m not up to it.’
    ‘You’re wrong. You think it’s a crap idea?’
    ‘I think it’s bizarre.’
    ‘You’re right. But so was Big Brother and look what happened to that.’
    The link between Big Brother and Bazza’s latest baby was lost on Winter but as Mackenzie slid the list across the table, he knew they’d got to a point of no return. If he didn’t pick up this piece of paper, his brief relationship with the Bazza Mackenzie organisation was over. With untold consequences.
    ‘This is crazy,’ he’d muttered, folding the list and slipping it into his jacket pocket.
    Now, sitting on the half-empty train, he tried hard not to visualise what lay ahead. Endless phone calls, e-mails, meetings. Arms to be twisted. Ears to be bent. With luck and a generous helping of bullshit, he could cope with the Pompey end of things. But what would happen when he took on the bigger boys in London? The TV people? The media agents? All those savvy guys who held the keys to sponsorship? How on earth could he set about shafting them when he didn’t have a clue what language they spoke?
    He sat back and closed his eyes. A situation like this, it paid to have a mate or two, someone you could drag out for a drink to share your troubles. In the job for most of his adult life, he’d done without friends, glorying in his canteen reputation as the loner, the maverick, the bloke who scored result after result without all that teamwork bollocks and broke most of the rules in the process. The knowledge that most of his colleagues found him deeply irritating had never failed to please him, and on his last day he’d left the force without even considering a farewell pint or two, but now - after a couple of hours of Bazza at full throttle - he began to regret his lack of mates.
    He thought some more about it, about the absence of good-luck cards, phone calls, text messages, about the sheer thickness of the wall that had so abruptly sealed him off from his previous life, and as the train slowed for the stop at Guildford, he fumbled for his mobile. Jimmy Suttle’s number was stored on the SIM card. This time of day the boy would be up to his eyes. When the recorded voice cut in, telling him to leave a message, he wondered whether he shouldn’t just forget it. Then he changed his mind.
    ‘It’s me - Paul,’ he muttered. ‘You free tonight?’
     
    D/C Jimmy Suttle was a couple of hours late by the time he finally made it to Port Solent. Scenes of Crime were still ripping No. 97 Bryher Island apart and so the Family Liaison Officer had made arrangements to rent a room at the nearby Tulip Hotel for the day. The room was on the fourth floor and the door opened at once to Suttle’s knock. The last time he’d seen D/C Jessie Williams, she’d been throwing up over the back of a chartered cruise boat on a CID night out.
    ‘Everything OK?’ Suttle could hear a low mumble of conversation from the bedroom behind